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How Sushi Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-sushi-works | Sushi grew out of a way to ferment fish a couple thousand years ago and in the late 20th century began to take the world by storm. What began as traditional, rigid food has come to evolve with new delicious innovations being added to the original canon. | Sushi grew out of a way to ferment fish a couple thousand years ago and in the late 20th century began to take the world by storm. What began as traditional, rigid food has come to evolve with new delicious innovations being added to the original canon. | Tue, 15 Jul 2014 13:15:25 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=13, tm_min=15, tm_sec=25, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=196, tm_isdst=0) | 48759185 | 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 from Housetepworks.com. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, it's the Dower, Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry who's snorkeling over there, which is kind of like a laughing through your nose. Yeah, I thought Dower thought it meant like, I'm gloomy or something. Yeah, you seem a little gloomy today. He's kidding. No, I think the smile is fake. Yes, that one. Man, I wish I had a picture of that. We could put that on the t shirt. Yes. And then I could wear that t shirt. And then you could get a picture of me wearing that t shirt and put that on a t shirt and wear that t shirt and so on and so forth. And we'd be like Ryan Gosling. Who do you do that one? McCauley Culkin, right? Yes. I get to be Macaulay Culkin this time, though. This time. Yeah. All right. You're always making me be Ryan Gosling. I know. Who wants that? Nobody. How are you? I'm good, man, I got to tell you. So we're about to do sushi, by the way. This thing made me really hungry. Oh, my God, I want sushi so bad now. And I have for days now. Just remember the yawning episode, and people are like, oh, I listen to this, and I yawn the entire time. Yeah, well, prepare to want sushi, everybody. Even if you don't like sushi or never had sushi, I guarantee you you will want sushi by the end of this or we will give you your money back for this episode. That's right. So you've had sushi. Yeah, I mean, it's one of my favorite foods. I could live in Japan and eat sushi every day. Yes. I'm going to Japan next year, and I plan on eating sushi every day. I would not get sick of it. No, it'd be really tough, too, especially with the variety everybody thinks sushi is basically like a little bite of rice with a bunch of ingredients tucked in it or on top of it. Yeah. Or maybe it's like a little lump of rice with some fish on it or something. There's a whole galaxy of sushi out there. Yeah. Especially when you go to Japan. I mean, just prepare to have your mind blown. I mean, you've had it before, but yeah. My buddy Jason lives over there, and it's not like sushi avenue here in decatur, georgia. Does he ever mail you sushi? No. It probably wouldn't stay very well, but if you figured out a way to stick it into one of those live organ courier things, it would be great. I don't think so. Well, if you eat raw sushi here, with the exception of tuna, and by here, I mean the United States, it's not fresh. It's been frozen by law. Yeah. Except for tuna. And I couldn't find out why tuna was the only exception. But all fish that's intended to be served raw has to be frozen. Flesh frozen is fine, and then, of course, thawed back out. But it can't just be from the ocean to your plate. Yeah. And before the pedantic ones among you start emailing, josh said sushi when he was talking about raw fish, then in fact, sushi is rice, and that is sushimi. True. Thank you. I'm using the colloquial exactly. When people say, hey, let's go out for sushi, it's like a genre of food, like, hey, let's go out for italian. Right. And you don't go and they say, actually, that's a Sicilian item of food you're eating, not Italian. Yeah. If this is ringing true to you and it's reminding of yourself, you need to do some personality changes. If this is your friend, then you should surround yourself with higher quality people in that. Yeah. Go out for sushi. That means you can have miso soup, and that means going out for sushi. And you can have yeah. Like edamame and seaweed salad. And that's all part of the experience that's going out for sushi in this country. It basically is shorthand for japanese. You're going out for japanese? Yes. Sort of. Not hibachi? No, hibachi is not japanese. It's strictly a rocky Ayoki american. Oh, is it? Yes. I mean, they do have habaski girls and stuff like that, but the experience, the benihana version, totally American invention. I've never been to one of those places. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like there's a guy, like, chopping and cooking and going, hey. And, like, tossing stuff into his hat and everything. Just never been all right. So, chuck? Yeah. Thank you for pointing out the sushi thing, because I am going to do that a lot. Yeah. And we should say if you are specifically talking about sushi in Japan, you're talking about vinegar rice is roughly what the word means. Yeah. Medium or short grain vinegar rice, the stuff that's on top the netta, which is a fish seafood topping that you put on sushi is actually that raw fish is called sashimi, like you said. Yeah, you can eat that by itself as well. If it's fried stuff, it's called tempura. Different types of sushi have different kinds of names. But let's get into this, shall we? Let's talk about the history, because this whole thing didn't even start in Japan. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. I mean, if you look at sushi, there's a lot of folklore surrounding it, a lot of mysterious origins. One of the old wives tales from Japan is that fine, it just appeared out of nowhere one day mysteriously. No, it just means they can't pinch. I know, I'm just teasing you're, Joshing. I am. Joshing the truck. That's right. There's an old Japanese wives tale about an elderly lady who would hide her rice from fees and osprey nests, and she would forget where they were and they would ferment the rice wood, and then the seafood that the osprey would eat would fall down in there and voila. That was the first sushi. Yes. That's a great story, but it's a lie. It's not a lie. It's folklore, which are lies. I guess it's told by old ladies. Very harsh way to say it. The earliest sushi supposedly was around in Southeast Asia, like 2500 years ago. They were taking cooked rice, which does ferment, and packing fish in it. And then the fermentation of the rice kept it long before refrigeration. But it also kind of pickled the fish. But then once the fish was pickled over the course of like, weeks, and they would place it under a heavy stone or something like that to basically compress it. And once the fish is pickled, they throw the rice out and just eat the fish. Yes. And in fact, a sushi kitchen can be called a suki BA or a pickling place. Yeah, that's bam. The original version of sushi was basically fermented fish that was fermented with rice. Pickled fish, fermented with rice. Yes. Then they threw the rice out. Somebody said, Wait a minute, what does this rice taste like? Oh, my God, this is delicious. Yes. And what would it taste like if I put this fermented fish on the rice? And they went, oh, my God, this is even better. So they said, well, let's try this a different way. If we're not going to throw the fish or throw the rice out, let's actually gut the fish. And this is the 10th century, by the way. And by now, this is in Japan. Let's get the fish soak it in sake, which is Japanese rice wine, and then pack that thing full of rice and let that ferment. And then after a few weeks, we'll just slice it and then eat that. Yeah. And each of these steps, basically, is speeding the process up a lot. Like the very first process took about a year and a half. Or did it? And it was only for the uber wealthy. Once they added saki, though, that speeded that up. That speeded that up. And that stuff is still around. It's called narez sushi, or rice sushi. I'm sorry, ripe sushi. Yeah. And apparently you can still get that, and it's a little, like, for your American taste buds, it might taste a little funny, but I'll bet once you get used to it, you're like, I have to have this all the time. Probably. So then, in the 1600, early 16 hundreds, japanese military leader Name Tokugawa Ayasu we are going to do our best with these Japanese pronunciations. Give us a break. He moved the capital from Kyoto to Edo, which would later become Tokyo. And by the 19th century, it was a hoppen city. And in the mid 1700, they sped up that process a little bit more by skipping the sake and using rice vinegar. Yeah. Which made it like a matter of days after that couple of hours. Right. Which is what I was following up with. Yeah. That's super quick. And then you would slice it into pieces and again, just cutting that preparation time. Yeah. And then in Kyoto, which was the former seat of power in Japan before it was moved to Edo or Tokyo, they would take that vinegar and some ingredients, maybe a little cucumber, a little dried seaweed, which is known as nori, and they put it in a box and press it together. And you'd have oshi sushi, which is Osaka style sushi. It's like a square of sushi. Right. Yeah. And there was a guy who lived in Edo. In Tokyo in the 1820s. And his name was Johanne Haniah. And he had a little cart where he was making oshi sushi. And everybody liked it and all that. But apparently. As the story goes. Some of his customers were like. I'm very busy and important. And I don't have time for you to press this into a box and hurry up. Make it snappy. So he took some of that rice, that vinegar flavored rice, and rolled it up in his hand a little bit, and then he would take some fish that was taken out of Tokyo Bay or Edomay. Yeah. I mean, he was set up right there on the water. Exactly. And he cut off a little bit of slice and put it in there, maybe with the strike of wasabi, and handed it to the he said, Here, jerk. Is that fast enough? That took me like, three minutes. Exactly. And they said, well, by God, this is Japanese street food. That is fast food that we can use our hands for. And eating two bites and nigiri sushi. What a lot of people think of as sushi was born the modern Sushi was born right there in that food stall. That's right. And then the great Kanto earthquake hit Tokyo, and land prices went down, and all of a sudden, there was a lot of retail space. And so the sushi card said, hey, maybe we should move these things inside and start a legit restaurant. And it happened all over the place. And by the 1950s, the sushi restaurant was where it was at. Yeah. Basically in the 1930s, next to refrigeration, you could chipfish by the war economy. People were loving the stuff. So it started to boom all over Japan and then started to spread to other parts of the world. It did. And in the United States, it was first adopted in the Los Angeles. Of course it was Los Angeles. There was a place called Kawa Fuku, and that was the first big American embraced sushi restaurant in the United States. Yeah. And then the yuppies came. And you think like sushi, right? Do you? I do. I always have. Yeah. But apparently it wasn't until, like, the 90s that sushi really hit New York. And it was because of an unknown man named Robert Tenero who talked to the chef of Nobu, whose name is Nobuyuki Matsuhisa. I'm going to be in so much trouble when I get home. So de niro talked the chef of Nobu Nobuyuki Matsuhisa. I think that's it. Yeah, it's really close if not to open Nobu, which was already in La. Icon in New York in 94. So apparently sushi didn't hit New York big time until the 90s, even though I think of it as, like, total American psycho fodder. Yeah, I mean, it was around I think it probably the explosion didn't it was very much a California thing. That first restaurant was in Little Tokyo in La. And then in the 70s, they opened one in Hollywood called Osho, and that was when the celebrity started going. And they were just like, oh, my God, this is so exotic and delicious, and I could eat it every day. And something really big happened in 1973. There was a place in Los Angeles, and there is a sushi chef there. His name was Manashida. And Monashida created an inside out roll, a maki, which is maki sushi is a hand roll. Oh, no. It's a role that you use a bamboo map for. We'll get into it. So was it inside out or regular? Inside out maki roll. Okay. With avocado, crab, and cucumber. That's right. Yes. Okay. And he made the California roll, and that became the entree. That's the gateway drug to sushi for a lot of Americans. Yeah, because it doesn't have the raw fish in there. If you're creeped out by that, you can start on the California roll and be like, oh, this is just sort of like a salad. Right. And then once you go and eat California rolls enough times, you're like, well, maybe I will try a bite of that, and once you do, you're never going back. Yeah, I can still eat a California roll, like, a bite of it or something like that, but I'm more like that's a waste of Sushi. I want good Nigeria. Yeah, if I've got that, I'll put that $6 towards something else. Exactly. For sure. But I'll make a California roll at home because it's oh, you make it my home. Yeah. Nice. Well, we'll get all that. So, Chuck, that's the history of Sushi up to right now. Yeah. Let's talk about fish in a second. Let's take a message break first. What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system so you tap IBM to UNSILO your data and with the help of AI, start crunching a year's worth of transactions against thousands of compliance controls? Now you're making smarter decisions. Faster operating costs are lower, and everyone from your auditors to your bankers feels like a million bucks. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM. Let's create learn more@ibm.com. Hey, everybody. If you want a great quality website, you want to do it yourself with no must and no fuss. Then there's nowhere else to look. In Squarespace. That's right. Squarespace has every single thing that you need to put together an awesome website. Everything from growing and engaging your audience with email campaigns, collecting donations for your cause through Apple, Pay, Stripe, Venmo, PayPal. Plus, you can also make your website optimized for mobile, which is great for your user on the go. That's right. And if you're into selling stuff, square space is everything to sell anything. They have all the tools you need to get your business off the ground. They have ecommerce templates, inventory management, really simple checkout process, and secure payment. So whatever you want to sell, you can sell it on Squarespace. Yeah, don't just take our word for it. Head to Squarespace.com SYSK and start your free trial today. And then when you're ready to launch, use our offer code S YSK, and you'll get off your first purchase of a website or domain that's squarespace. Comsysksksquarespace. Okay, so we're talking about fish. Raw fish is a common ingredient when you go to a sushi restaurant, but if you're not into that, there are plenty of other offerings. You talked about tempura, we talked about the California roll. You can use Veggies. This article says virtually any type of vegetable, but I completely disagree with that. Yeah, like, you're not going to roll up broccoli or cauliflower and sushi, are you? No, but, man, I am crazy for ground up cauliflower as, like a rice substitute or something like that. Or like a mashed potato substitute. Like collitators, like pureed cauliflower. So good. Yeah, I've been making collectaters for years, dude. I've spent my entire life up until, like, a couple of months ago hating cauliflower. I never told you about collietars? No. I've heard of it before. I just never really tried it. But you and I started making it, and I'm like, wow, this is good. Yes. And I hate it when people say it tastes just like something. It doesn't taste just like a thing, but it's got its consistency and it's good. Right. It mimics the consistency, not the taste. Yeah, but the taste isn't too far off. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, it doesn't taste like rotted horse meat compared to mashed potatoes or something, but I think it's like it's own distinct thing. It is. So that's my treatise on cauliflower. Yeah. You won't put cauliflower in your sushi, though, but you can find asparagus and sushi fairly frequently. Yeah. Cucumber. Sure. Well, I guess that's it. No, there's some more stuff. Mushrooms. Oh, yeah, mushrooms. That's a big staple of a lot of sushi. That was the third one. Yeah. Some nice shiitakes boom. Have you been to, umi, sushi yet? No. It is amazing. Yeah. The one I've been on lately is shoot, I can't think of the name of it now. Miso, I think is the name of it in the old fourth word. And it's good. A little pricey. Oh, yeah. Miso is a kaya. Yeah. It's supposed to be really good. It's good stuff. It's like nouveau sushi, which I guess, umi sushi is kind of but they have an old traditional sushi chef running the place there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in America, you're going to find some variations. In fact, the Inside Out role, apparently, is a totally American thing, even though it has now since found its way over to Japan. But it did not originate in Japan. No. The reverse roll or inside out. It's like an echo that came back by storm. And if you don't know what we're talking about, that's when the rice is on the outside of the roll and the nori is on the inside instead of the other way around. Yes. All right. So, Chuck, if you are going to use fish or you're ordering at a sushi place, most of the fish you're going to see is saltwater seafish. Yeah. You don't want to trout roll. No. And the reason why is because freshwater fish are much more prone to parasites than salt water fish. Parasites don't like salt as much. Right. Yeah. But occasionally you will see a freshwater seafood. There's like a type of eel that's really good. That's fresh water. Yeah. I love the eel. Was is that unavi? I always get the two eels confused, and after all these years, I still can't commit it to memory. Right. And about every third time, I order the wrong one. Oh, really? I don't think I've ever had the saltwater eel. Yeah. I mean, it's not bad, of course, but I like the you like the freshwater more. Yeah, I do, too. And you can buy that's one of the ones that make at home. There's a great Japanese market over by the cab farmers market, and you can buy it in the refrigerator and bake it in the oven. Yeah, because that's the thing. If you order the freshwater eel, it doesn't come raw. Like it's seared or something like that. Yeah, seared like a teriyaki sauce. Right. So delicious. It is. Man you know what? Elevating. Okay, so you're going to have freshwater fish or freshwater seafood most of the time. No saltwater. Saltwater. Thank you. Man and one of the most highly prized seafood that you're going to find in sushi of any type is tuna. That's so good. And there's different types of tuna. They'll use yellow fin, big eye blue fin. And blue fin is the most expensive one. Apparently. It wasn't until the 50s that the Japanese came to prize bluefin, like, before they used it for cat food. They wouldn't even eat that stuff. Yeah, that's what I heard. Like, the belly was originally and now it's like the prize, and the belly now used to be, like they wouldn't eat it. Yeah. Actually, the record for the highest priced fish ever sold, I believe anywhere, was sold at the Tokyo Fish Market last year. It was a 490 pound bluefin tuna. How much? $1.8 million. Holy crap. For just that tuna. Wow. And I guarantee they made their money and then some. Man yeah, that's a big tuna. I feel kind of bad for that guy, even though I love to eat them so much. The tuna? Yeah. Well, there's definitely a moral thread that runs through tuna or not sushi. Like, apparently yellowfin tuna, farm raised tuna, or raised a lot like veal until their muscles deteriorate alive. And then, of course, there's the have you seen the raw or live frog video? No. There is a type of sushi that is called ikizakuri, which is live sushi, and there's an ikizakuri video. And if you have a light stomach at all or anything like that, bothered by animals being killed, you should not watch this. But the point is, you eat the thing while it's basically part of it is still alive on the plate, looking at you like, this frog is sitting there blinking. It's a frog. There's a frog. And I can't remember what the other one is, but they showed two things being prepared. Have you seen oh, boy. The original yeah. Remember he eats that squid live. Oh, yeah, that's live sushi. Wow. That was real. Yeah, not for me. Yeah, you get pretty adventurous, though. Would you do that probably just to try it. Yeah, I know. Everything is killed that we eat. Right. But it's just like I don't know, being confronted with it, who knows? I can imagine some of the people who are into, like, that slow food movement are like, yeah, that's the way you should do it. You should have to confront the death while you eat. No, I mean, a lot of people would say it's hypocritical to not do that. Right. But a lot of hypocritical. Yeah, a lot of people are comfortable with that. Emily won't eat anything that reminds her of an animal. Like, she doesn't even like bones in her chicken, and if someone served her a fish with a head on it, like, fully cooked, she would just be like, no, that fish is looking at me. It's like the duck and a Christmas story. Yeah, he's smiling. Yeah. Okay, so we were talking about tuna. Tuna is delicious. Salmon is delicious. Yellowtail and hamachi and surf clam. And there's all sorts of delicious seafood that you can get on your sushi or in your rolls, and then you just spread out from there. If there's a fried chicken in there, it might be a little too Americanized. Although if that's what you're into, then great. Well, it would be considered tempura chicken in that case. Yeah, but yeah. Come on. If there's fried chicken and mayonnaise rolled up in rice, then that sounds good. Well, I know, but is it sushi? Rogers roasters? I feel like there's been kind of there's definitely a traditional thread of sushi, right? Yeah. I don't mind mixing it up a little bit, and there's, like, traditional preparations, and then there's traditional ingredients. But then it's like you said in the 70s, when the California roll was made here in America, it was sent back, and now you can get a California roll pretty much anywhere in Japan, and it's expanded from there. Yeah. I think sushi is kind of this evolving thing. I've seen cereals added. Have you seen that? Like Corn Flakes or Rice Krispies on top. Yeah, I'm not into that either. For crunch yeah. Or squirting a bunch of sauce on top. I'm not a big fan of that either. Yeah, well, that's another thing that we'll talk about when we talk about how to eat sushi. But really, there's a lot of sushi that's prepared that you're not supposed to do anything to except eat. Yeah, true. So I guess we should finish what can be a sushi thing by mentioning roe and tamago. Roe is the fish eggs, like, the little delicious orange. It's almost like caviar. Yeah. And there can be little tiny ones and larger ones. I'm sure there's a difference in the name. Do you know? I didn't look that up. No. Cherry is nodding. Is there a difference in the name? I'm sure it's not necessarily by size, but probably by fish. Yes. I think the smelt row is the smaller. I think so. Yeah. The little tiny beads. Yeah. And that's usually added with a roller on top of something. And the other larger ones, a lot of times that's just wrapped in the nori. And that's all you're eating. Yeah. Or there's just, like, one on top of the thing. Yes. Like a little bead for presentation. Yeah. I once ate a coil egg on top of Baylis yesterday. Yes. This is raw. Okay. I didn't realize it was going to be raw. I ate it anyway. Like you said, I'm adventurous, but, man, I was like, I'm never ordering that again. Wasn't that good? No, I'm not too big on raw eggs. Yeah. Except, strangely, in, like, a tataki or carpachio or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's weird. I guess I'll just have to keep ordering it then, whether I like it or not. All right. Tamago is egg and sushi, but it is cooked, and it's an omelet. It's made by adding little layers of egg. I've seen some people, like, bake it in a pan. It's probably the shortcut method. There's probably a more traditional method because it's sweetish omelet. It's almost like a dessert. Sushi. Yeah. And it's, like, an inch thick and a slice, and you put it on some sushi rice with a little band of nori tied around it, and that's delicious as well. TomGo avocado. Is that how you say it? Yeah, avocado. That is very popular. And that means tuna of the land in Japan. Yeah. The word for avocado means tuna of the land. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Avocado is, like, a great addition to anything. Yeah, I agree. And very good for you too. It really is. It's a good fat. Yes. Good for your heart and your brain. What else goes along with sushi? The soy sauce. The soyu? Yes. It's a type of soy sauce. You can dip your sushi and soy sauce if you prefer, but you're supposed to use it very sparingly. Yeah. And supposedly you're not supposed to dip the rice either. No, I drown it. You want to talk about how to eat sushi the proper way? Sure. Okay. I don't do it. That's fine. Yeah. A lot of people eat it with chopsticks. Yeah. Supposedly, it's an insult to the sushi chef to drown your sushi and rice. I drown it in the soy sauce, you mean? Yeah. And where would I be without you just saying wrong stuff here and there. No big deal. So basically, let's say you have a piece of nagiri. There's just a little lump of sushi with some topping on it. Tuna. Okay. You kind of lightly grab the nagiri on one side on both sides with your fingers. Yeah. You don't need to use chopsticks. She was originally a finger food, and you can feel free to eat it the traditional way, using your hands. So you grab the sides kind of lightly but firmly. You tilt it over. You tilt the Nigeria over, and then you just basically have it. So you're holding onto the tuna and holding it almost like a basket. So the rice is on top and the tuna's on the bottom. You just flipped your sushi over. Yeah. If you want a little bit of shoyu, you can just kind of just barely pass it through the show. You the soy sauce. Just the tip yeah. Of just the seafood. You're not supposed to touch the rice to it. Yeah, that's what I hear. You take one bite, depending on the size, you can put the whole thing in your mouth and eat it, but you want to put it the topping side down. Okay. And then if it's a big piece of Nigeria, then you can bite it and then eat it in two pieces. All right. Here's Chuck's method. I take it and I dump the entire thing in a big bowl of soy sauce. And then I pull it out and I stick it in my mouth and chew it up and eat it all. And then I wash it down with sepporo. Well, that's customary. I'm a happy guy. You would probably like chirrushi sushi, which is basically a bowl of rice with sushi toppings. Yeah, I could be down with that. Is there the nori in there, though? Because I love the nori. I think everything you want is in there. Okay. Whatever kind of sushi you want. It's just like in a bowl. It's just like a KFC bowl, but with sushi. Yeah, man, one of those awful beef bowl places out west. Yoshi Naki or something. Beef bowl, like in the shopping malls? Yes, I know what you're talking about. I can't remember the name of them. Are they not good? Well, I mean, you tell me. You get, like, a three pound beef and rice bowl for, like, $3. Oh, wow, that sounds good. I don't think they're known for their high quality meats. I got you. So by beef you mean cat yoshinori. What is it called? It's a chain. They're all over La. Yes, I know what you're talking about. I don't think they have them here in Georgia. Wasabi. I don't do the wasabi just because I don't like the taste. I know most people like to put it in their soy sauce and mix it up. Apparently, that is an insult as well. It's abnormal. That's what yummy does, though. Yeah, she puts in her soy sauce. Puts a lot of it in there. Yeah. So does Emily. She loves that stuff. But the thing is, most sushi is going to already have a little streak of wasabi on top of the rice beneath the topping, so you don't necessarily need any. And if you've ever wondered why your nostrils are suddenly clear and you're breathing very easily even though you didn't use any, wasabi it's because it was already on there. Yeah. And here in the United States, you're not eating wasabi anyway. No. Although you can get it at, umi, sushi. Oh, really? But it's going to cost you. Yeah. So that's the fact of the podcast for me, what you're eating is horseradish and mustard paste that dyed green. And they call it wasabi wasabi. When people say it's Japanese horseradish, it actually isn't even horseradish. It's like a cousin of horseradish. And it is expensive. It goes by the river and you're eating it lives in a van down by the river, but yeah. Apparently, it's so pricey. Like, you've probably never had real wasabi unless you're, like, highfaluting like you and go to fancy sushi places. Yes, I'm sure Nobu has real wasabi just, like, a little gentleman. I wear a velvet jacket and velvet shorts with knee socks, branches, a little hat, and they sing while they serve me. It's wonderful. Well, that's funny you mentioned that, because being a sushi chef in Japan, you're also supposed to be kind of part performer. It's a very social thing to sit at the sushi bar. Yes. You're not necessarily performing, like, at a hibachi place. It's not like that. It's not a clown. You're friendly. Yes. You're helpful. You want the person to feel like they are welcome and that they are being led in on your expertise. Yeah. Like, ask if you've never been, and you want to try it out. Sit at the sushi bar and ask. I like it anyway, just because I like to watch it. But ask the chef, like, hey, man, what's good today? Yes. What are you in the mood for? I say, hey, man. Because there's still a lot of discrimination in Japan, even with women becoming sushi chefs. Yeah. It's still a thing. Yes, it is, Chuck. Yeah. Which is no good. And apparently, regardless of your gender, if you're a sushi chef, you are required to work at least two years if you're working at a decent sushi place. It sounds like a lot, but it used to be ten. Yeah. Well, I saw two years just to learn to make the rice and then another year of training with a knife. Yes. Okay. And that's in Japan. Here in America, they're turning them out because there's such a need. Right. But once you're trained sushi chef, you can become a journey man and go anywhere in the world these days and open your own place. Have you seen zero dreams of Sushi? Yeah. Yeah. That's highly recommended. I think that's streaming on Netflix, too. And you recommended that, I think, to me for the first time. Yeah, we went and saw it in theaters. It was good. Yeah, it was really good. Talk about wanting sushi. Yeah. And you didn't have to like sushi. If you just appreciate art and craftsmanship and being the best at something, you should rent that movie. And family, too. It's cute. It's the man and his two sons. I think Giro has been making sushi for, like, 70 years or something like that, and his two sons are following in his footsteps, and it's really intimate documentary about that family. Totally. Yeah. So we talked a little bit, or I mentioned drinking a nice, cold sapporo people. I don't like sake myself. I just don't dig the rice wine. But that is a big thing for a lot of people when they go out to eat sushi, is to drink sake. But apparently, because it is rice based and that your sushi is rice based, it doesn't complement one another. So you technically shouldn't be drinking sake as you eat the sushi. I think it's a lot like putting wasabi in the soy sauce. Just do what you want. Yeah, well, all this stuff is, of course, as long as you're not insulting the sushi chef overtly and calling them things like Sensei and stuff like that. Really buttering them up. I think you're doing okay. Do people do that? I'm sure they do. I haven't yet, but it's probably a good idea. All right. They recommend, like, green tea, light beer, even water. But again, drink whatever you want. But if you're drinking sake, supposedly you're not supposed to pour your own. You're supposed to pour your buddies, and then they pour yours. Yes. And this is if you're going if you want to be traditional, sure. But it makes sake for sharing by definition, by that one moray. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Like, if you can't pour your own sake, you're up the creek. If you're just drinking it by yourself, what are you going to ask? Like a stranger? Sure. Make a buddy, make a new friend. Not in Japan. Now. All right, we're going to talk a little bit about how to make sushi right after this message break. 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? 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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 Y SK, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain that's Squarespace.com sysksksquarespace. All right. So you've never made sushi? I'm surprised you guys haven't tried it. I've never made sushi now. Well, I have. I haven't done it in a while. But you can get your nori sheets and grocery stores. I eat that stuff like a snack. Yeah, of course. Good. You can find your little crab sticks and cucumber, and where it gets a little tricky is the fish itself. If you live in a big city, there's probably a place where you can get sushi grade fish. If you live out in the sticks, you might have a harder time, but you definitely want to get sushi or sashimi grade fish and ask if it is sashimi grade. Like we said, no freshwater. You don't want to trout roll. No. And you want it to be nice and vibrant in color. Yeah. You don't want there to be any weird, like, dark or soft spots. No, that's rough. Yeah. The tuna should be, like, really bright red or pink. Like dark pink? Yeah. If you know how to spot it, you know the difference if you get a little practice. Yeah. And if you're not like Emily and you're buying the whole fish, you want the eyes to be, like, not sunken in. You want them to be still just kind of popping out, like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe this is happening kind of eyes. Yeah. It shouldn't smell too fishy either. If it smells super fishy, that means it's probably not super fresh. Right. But once you have your fish and you've bought your nori, you want to buy your rice. That's the first key ingredient you need to master. And like we said in Japan, they spent two years learning how to make the rice properly. So don't beat yourself up if it doesn't go well at first. No, but the rice you're making, you want to start with sushi rice, which is a short or medium grain rice. And if you go to the store to buy rice, like you go to Asian food market or something like that, they're going to have rice that says sushi rice, and it's going to come out like you want it. It's going to be clumpy. It's not going to be like mushy. It's going to be nice and sticky. White rice. Well, if you make it right, you can mess it up pretty bad, I've learned. Sure. I use cowroads. That's something here in the United States you can look for. That's good stuff. Yeah, it's a real popular I think that started in California. What's another one? The one we eat all the time is I think it's like nishi, I believe. Is that like, the brand? Brand? Yeah, cow rose is a variety, so it may be a cowrose, though. Oh, it's not a brand. I thought it was a brand. No, it's a rice variety. Medium range, medium grain. So the key here, when you're making the rice, there's a lot of keys, but the first big key is you don't just throw it in a pot and cook it. You have to rinse it. And what I do, what my friend john. Chef John, he taught me to just put the rice, the dry, uncooked rice in a pot and start just like a slow, cold water run and just let it go, like, walk away. And the rice will kind of stay at the bottom, and the water will just kind of overflow. But that continuous water movement, it's a little bit wasteful if you don't like to leave your sink running or your water running. But what you want to do is just rinse the rice until the water is almost clear and you'll see it. It's real cloudy and kind of grainy, and as you keep washing it, it'll clear up. And you want to do it with your hands and be gentle with it. You don't want to mash it up. Don't use a strainer because that can beat up the rice pretty bad. Just treat it respectfully and sort of wash it with your hands until the water is clear. Right. So that's step one. Then you got to soak it for an additional half an hour in cold water. Okay. Just walk away and leave it there. Okay. Then you're going to add wait a half hour has elapsed. Okay. We should just sit here for half hour after the half hour has elapsed. If you want, you can add a little sake to it. If you want, you can add something called dashi kombu. It's a dried kelp. I've never done that. But you can it makes it pop. Does it? Sure. Okay. Then you're going to cook it will probably stay on the package, but then you're going to cook it a lot like traditional rice. You boil it, cook it on a medium heat with the pot on for about 15 minutes, then simmer for about 20 minutes over low heat. And then they recommend here I've never heard of this. To turn the heat up to high for a few seconds at the end. I'm not sure what that does. I think it maybe just, like, burns off any excess moisture. That's what I would guess it does. All right. And then leave the lid on and let it sit for about 15 minutes, completely off the heat after that. All right. So now the vinegar, right? You want to start with rice vinegar. That's the kind you have to use is rice vinegar, appropriately enough. No other don't think, like, oh, I can use apple cider vinegar or white vinegar. You could use sushi vinegar, which is prepared rice vinegar. Right. But it's got to be rice vinegar. Right. But if you want to make it yourself, you use a little rice vinegar, about a quarter cup to a tablespoon of sugar and one and a half teaspoons of salt. Yeah. And that's for five cups of rice. Right. And you mix all that stuff up until the mixture is clear, and you've got yourself some homemade sushi vinegar. Once your rice is ready, you want to turn it out into a bowl is what it's called. Dump it out into a bowl. Yes. And what you should get is, if you're trying to make sushi, you probably bought a couple of things, like your little bamboo rolling mat and a little wooden paddle, they call it. And it's basically a big flat spoon. And that is what you use to turn it traditionally into a wooden bowl. You can use anything but metal. Don't use metal. No, because it'll react with the vinegar. Yeah, that's no good. You turn it out with the sushi or rice paddle, which, by the way, you, me and I have seen the world's largest rice paddle. How big was it? It was big. Bigger than me. Like, as big as this table? No, it was like the size of, like, a long canoe. Oh, I said the world's biggest rice paddle. The flat part was it as big as this table? Easily. Okay. And which, for everybody who's not in the room with us right now, the table is probably about 3ft across, three in diameter. Yes. Well, did they use the thing? I don't see how you could or was it just one of the silly things, like the world's biggest spatula, that it was far from silly, but it was big. It was on Miyama, which is a neat little island off of Hiroshima. Oh, cool. And they have the world's largest rice paddle all right. On display. So you're going to use that rice paddle to pry the rice out of the pot into your wooden bowl, and it'll come out kind of like a cake almost before you start messing with it. And then here's the thing, you don't just dump the vinegar that you've made all over the rice. You want to pour it over the paddle and then spread the paddle around over the rice. So it sort of gently falls and distributes evenly. Right. And then you want to fold it in and mix it together gently again. Make sure everything is coated pretty well, and then cool it down to you're supposed to be fanning it while you're doing this and then cool it down to room temperature and then you're all set to go. Yes. And then you want to take your hands and rinse them in vinegar to prevent the rice from sticking this kind of lightly. Yeah. You should have the paddle as well. When you're spreading it, you need to soak that as well, it works well. Right. And then you're ready to start making nagiri sushi, which is the easiest sushi to make. It's just basically finger sushi. You take a little lump of rice and just kind of roll it into an oblong shape in your hand. Press down one side on one side with a finger, and that's the side that's going to be the bottom. So basically you're adding stability. Yeah. And you don't want it super firm, but you don't want it falling apart either. Right. And then you take a little bit of wasabi, smear it on the top, and then top it with whatever ingredients you want. Say tuna. Yum. And they have little molds, by the way, if you don't feel like you should try and make it in the palm of your hand. But they do have little prefab molds that you spoon the rice into, and, like, you press a little thing on top and then pop them out, which would make it basically oshi sushi, the Osaka style. Remember, they have the pressed mold. Oh, is that what it is? Yeah, but theirs is strictly like a box. Got you. Yeah. This is, like, eight little individual compartments. Yeah. They're shaped like flowers and hearts and stuff like that, too. I haven't seen that. Oh, they have. Yes. Mine is just rectangular, but I don't use it. I did it first, and then I was like, no, I'm going to try it in the palm of the hand. Have you ever made nigiri sushi that you were just like, this is perfect? No, I guess it's just practice. Ten years at least. Yes, it tastes fine. And they even point out on this article it'll take some practice before it looks as good as it tastes. Sure, the taste will be there, but it's not what you're seeing the restaurant properly. Right. Those guys are pros. Yeah. That was nigiri sushi I just mentioned. They're all hand rolled, finger sized pieces of sushi. Yes. You could also make maque. Yeah. And that's a sushi roll. That's when you have the full sheet, you want to spread about a third of it with a thin coating of rice. And you want the nori shiny side down, right onto the mat. The bamboo mat. Yeah. And so you spread your rice. You don't want it super thick. On top of the north. Yeah, on top of the nori. And this is a little bit of if it's your first time, there'll be some trial and error involved. I put way too much rice at first, and then it was hard to roll, and it looked like this big burrito, essentially. So you're going to want the rice a little thinner than you think, even. And then you put it on the sheet, it's on the mat, and you put your toppings across, kind of like you're making a burrito. And then you fold the bamboo mat over. You roll the nori into the toppings. And this description feels a little convoluted. You basically just want to roll it in the mat. And I give it a good squeeze at the end to make sure it's all together and to let it know it's loved. Exactly. Yeah. I imagine this is another thing that comes out with practice. Like you said, at first, it looks like a burrito, but if you roll it and I would guess your hands need to be kind of away from the center so that you're putting an equal amount of pressure on the roll. And you're lightly rolling it, being careful not to let the mat get rolled up into the sushi. I've done that. Just rolling it over the top. But you're rolling the roll together, and then you got a little roll squeezed at the end, as per chuck. And then you take a really sharp knife, right, and cut it in half. Then you cut that in half and so on until you have eight pieces. And, my friend, you have a maki sushi maki. Yeah. And like I said, it's a little hard to describe. The best way to do it is just to throw yourself in there and try it. And if you've ever seen sushi rolls, then your instinct will kind of tell you how to do it and just mess around. It's fun. Like, don't put pressure on yourself. Don't plan a big sushi dinner party on your first try. Yeah, that's probably a good idea. Just try it out yourself. And then sorry, what we just described was fudomaki. If you wanted to make an inside out roll, like a California roll, you would be making what's called urumake. Yeah. And basically you follow the same steps, but just reversed. You start with the rice and then you start with the bamboo mat and put the rice on that, then nori, then your toppings, and then you roll that up and did you say it was covered in plastic? Oh, yeah. You want to put the bamboo it has plastic on it, and then the rice goes on the plastic. Like Saran Wrap or something. Yeah. Basically, you just take Saran Wrap and just cover both sides of your bamboo mat with that. Got you. And then, of course, there's one of my favorite things to eat at sushi places is the hand roll, the tamaki. It's like an ice cream cone of sushi. Yeah. And you can make those. I've never had a lot of success with making those. That seem like the easiest, aren't they? Not for me. I never got it to come out right. Got you. But you make it in your hand. That's why it's called a hand roll. You hold the nori and you spread the rice on one end, cover about a third of it, and then you put your toppings diagonally. You're going to fold your bottom corner up over the toppings and then roll it in the same direction. And just picture a waffle cone. And that's what you're trying to emulate. Yeah. And stick some softshell crab in that mug and chow down nice. And I want some sushi so bad. Do you like softshell crab? Have you ever had that? I don't think so. I like crab. I mean, that's when the whole crab is just fried shell and all. Oh, no, I've not had that. Yeah, it's good. In fact, when I was in DC, I went to that farmers market eight that I was telling you about. They had this place that was on, like, crab cakes and softshell crab sandwiches. So good. Is it crab season now? I don't know. It's crab season that day for me. I got one more thing from the book the Story of Sushi by Trevor Carson. Just some surprising sushi facts. Oh, yeah. I think most of these we actually covered. They said in Japan, they eat miso at the end of the meal to aid digestion. They have an appetizer, the soup. Yeah. I never knew that. I like the miso soup, though. Yeah, it's good stuff. And it says American chefs have probably never eaten a proper nagiri because sushi chefs pack it too tightly on purpose because Americans like it that way. Apparently it's looser in Japan. It's not enough rice. Did you experience that? Was it looser in Japan? I've had it looser here. Oh, yeah. It's, like, the nice places. I mean, you can tell us by looking. You would never point to it and be like, that's a dense lump of rice. Right. You can see, like, a few of the individual grain. You can see the detail in the rice a little more. You can find it here. Yeah. And his final little fact, he said that the knives used by sushi chefs are direct descendants of samurai swords, aka katana. Did not know that. I didn't know that either. There was one more factor that I thought was interesting. 80% of all of the bluefin tuna caught in the world is used for sushi. Oh, really? Yes. And the other is grilled rare and a salad. I don't know what they do with the other 20% grown. For $2 million per man, that's a lot per pound. Yes. It had to have been the size of the fish and the quality of that fish, too, I would guess. Yeah. Because the guys at the Tokyo fish market know what they're doing when it comes to fish, I would imagine they don't just look at some aged rickety tuna and say, like, how much do you want for that? Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. So let's figure this out real quick. Chuck, you're dividing it? Yeah. So $1.8 million divided by \u00a3490. Is that what you said? I don't remember that's. 3673 point rounding up $47 a pound. Wow. That must have been one special tuna. Yeah, man. At the very least, he felt special. When they crazy, cut them up. I got nothing else. Well, we could probably sit here for five, 6 hours and talk about this, but we're not going to. Instead, if you want to learn more about sushi, you can type that into the search bar@housetofworks.com. And I said search bars means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this amputation feedback. Hey, guys. I was interested in how amputation works, and I thought I'd share an offshoot topic. In one of my classes, we studied a procedure called rotationplasty, which is an infrequent operation occurs when only part of the limb requires amputation, like a bone tumor in the lower part of the femur or upper tibia. Excuse me? Traditionally it's done on lower extremities, although a few upper extremity cases exist. The operation consists of removing a portion of the leg ranging anywhere along the femur into the tibia fibula region, ultimately removing the knee. The ankle joint is still functional, so the surgeon removes all the muscle and bone, keeping the nerves that connect the two regions intact. The foot and ankle are then turned around to face backwards and reattached along the femur. I feel like we talked about that. I do too. Yes, it may not have been in that one, or maybe it was, but the reason the foot is placed backwards is because it doesn't have the stability for it adds more stability now. Is that what it is? Yeah. She said the ankle becomes the new knee joint and results in a high range of movement, which helps many patients continue active lifestyles. Yeah, we definitely talked about that. Well, this isn't news to us. Then. The end result is it looks really strange, but gives a huge opportunity for the patient. At least check out some of the crazy images. So. Kelly Crabbitz of the Colorado School of Mines. Go 49. Or apparently we discussed that, but at any rate, it's still interesting. Yeah. Thanks a lot, Kelly. Yeah, Kelly. Thanks, Kelly. If you want to describe in greater detail something we mentioned briefly, we are always happy for that kind of thing. Indeed, you can tweet to us at sisk podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyhennow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com and join us at our beautiful home on the web stuffyouheno.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." | ||
President Obama's Health Care Plan: Soup to Nuts | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/president-obamas-health-care-plan-soup-to-nuts | In this special episode of Stuff You Should know, the second in a four-part series, Josh and Chuck -- and a special guest -- discuss President Obama's proposed health care plan in detail. | In this special episode of Stuff You Should know, the second in a four-part series, Josh and Chuck -- and a special guest -- discuss President Obama's proposed health care plan in detail. | Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:32:28 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=17, tm_min=32, tm_sec=28, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=265, tm_isdst=0) | 28013814 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Doctor. And with Charles W, chuck Bryant is Molly Edmunds of Stuff Mom Never Told You. Fame. One of our sister podcasts. And Molly has also been doing more research into healthcare reform than me, Chuck, and Rahm Emanuel combined. So we're glad to have you here, Molly. Sorry. I think I could take Ron down. Oh, but you could. He's a bulldog. Yeah, but I'm pretty spicy. I have seen you have you seen her leg wrestle? No, but startling. I've been behind in front of her sight. Sure. Not a pleasure. Yes, I have two chunky business, which is why we're scared of Molly. But we're glad she's here. Right, Molly? I hope so. I hope you're glad I'm here. We're also glad you're here because, much like the Necronomicon podcast, we intend to use you as a shield. Just to get that out of the way. Let's talk about healthcare reform. All right. I want to also say that we are not going to be discussing any of the politics in this one. This is part two. You lie. Except for that part, we're not going to be discussing any of the politics. What we're going to do is simply present the proposals that are in play right now. Sure. And then part three is going to be criticisms, pros, cons, maybe other ideas for fixing the health care system. And then part four is what I'm excited about. Myths and truths. Yes. We're going to be talking about just outright lies, things that are kind of on the fence and things that actually are true but are discussing. So let's talk about Obama's proposal. Is it even Obama's proposal? Obama has made this a priority in his presidency. Big time. Big time. But he has not come down from on high with a massive plan for us all to react to. You know who did do that? The Clintons. The Clintons did. That's right. Moses. Moses. That was on the third tablet. I think the tablet was dropped. Yeah. The Clintons actually wrote legislation, and we're peddling it around Capitol Hill in the it didn't work. That plan didn't work. So clearly, Obama learned from his predecessors. Right, right. So Obama has laid out eight principles. This is what he did early on. I think this has gotten lost in all the hub. But he came out with eight principles and then left it to Congress as five companies from Congress to create plans. And then in the week we're recording this, he came out and made this mega speech that's come up with all this attention. So now the week we're recording this, obama has come back out with a speech and made it look like it's a little bit more of his plan, try to wrestle control away from the media spin. He's saying what he wants in a plan, what he doesn't want, what he's open to compromise about. Let's start. He was in campaign mode. He was. He's definitely back from vacation. So should we talk about his eight proposals? We're talking about a thousand pages or so of legislation right now, right? We got two bills on the table from four committees. Now, when he says there are four committees who have come up with bills, one of the bills is a try committee bill. So that's where that comes from. Three committees came up with one bill from the House, HR 3200. And then the Senate has a bill. I have to point this out. I'm sorry. Molly didn't even look at her notes to rattle off that bill number. I'm just going to excuse myself, take over. I dream about HR 3200. I bet you do. At this point, she didn't look at her notes again. And you know what I have anxiety dreams about is the upcoming Senate Finance Committee bill. So by the time people hear this, that bill might be out. It's the trifecta. It's the one everyone is waiting for because it's a bipartisan committee, being the Senate Finance Committee, they have to say how they're going to pay for it, which the other bills were not as on the hook for. So that's the one everyone's waiting on. Beta breath. Yeah. Actually, I saw today breaking news was that the chairman of that committee, democrat Max Bacchus, basically said, we're pushing through with this very soon and it doesn't matter if I have Republicans for or not, we're going to push it through and we'll have it up for review by the 21 September. Wow. That's the latest word. Yes. I have dream spot Max now. Do you really? Yeah. That's nice. Anyway, that's a personal note, right? So Obama says here are the eight things that he saw that he wanted in the plan. Okay. He wanted to assure affordable quality health coverage for all Americans. You guys want to go in a circle? I'll do one. Yeah, I'll go next. He wants to remove obstacles coverage for people with pre existing conditions. He wants to invest in prevention and wellness. He wants to maintain coverage in the event of job loss or change. He wants to kill your grandparents. Oh, wait, sorry. No. He wants to improve quality care and patient safety. Right. And let's see. He wants the guaranteed choice of doctors and coverage plans. Right? Yes. And safeguard families from bankruptcies related to health expenses. How many is there? I think it's seven. The final one. He wants to shrink long term cost increases in health care for businesses and the government. So those are pretty broad principles. I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who would disagree with these principles. Just thought in theory, but then the Congress had the hard job of making them into bills. Look at the bills we have that 1000 pages of legislation as it stands right now, I'm not including the Senate Finance Committee. Wow. Without the Senate Finance Committee. Read it all correct. In Braille, which was she taught herself Braille. I had it translated and then read in. I'm so impressed. So let's talk about how Congress did take these eight principles and turn them into health care. As you were saying. Let's start with individuals. One of the big things is that both of the proposals that are out right now say that everyone has to have health insurance. Yeah. It's an individual mandate and it's sort of borrowing an idea from car insurance. If we've all got to carry car insurance, then what's health insurance in addition to that. Right. So if you don't have health insurance, you don't have to stormtroopers aren't going to come to your house and beat your kids in front of you, but the tax man will rent. Yeah, because I think the Senate bill says you pay $750 a year in tax penalties for not having insurance. And then the House plan is, I think, up to 2.5% of your adjusted income. Yes, but no more than the lowest price plan. They're not going to charge you more than you would have to pay in health insurance. Right. I mean, if you can pay the premium and taxes, essentially you could just pay the premium. Well, that's the way I took it, is we're going to get some money, so you might as well hint, hint, go spend it on healthcare rather than funding the IRS. Right. But now most people already have health insurance. Majority people get it from their employers. And so that's pretty easy to meet that requirement. Right, but we don't want the employers to just chicken out. So employers have a mandate as well. Exactly. So now we have two mandates, employer and individual. And I heard actually the Senate Finance is not going to have an employer mandate and that's why businesses are probably going to be a little more favorable for that one. You said that's one of the theories that's what killed Clinton's bills. It's a job killer. Right, but that sounds kind of political. So let's just back off and say you're an employer, you're an individual, you've got this mandate. What if you can't afford it? Well, there are subsidies. Yes, well, not only subsidies. I mean, if you are going to mandate that everybody has to have health insurance, you have to make exemptions for certain people. But also we already have Medicaid, Medicare, so that covers automatically a certain percentage of Americans. Sure, but they're also expanding Medicaid right. I think to 150% above poverty level. Yeah, that is, the current Senate plan would be 150% above the federal poverty level and the House would do 133% of the federal poverty level. Right, and they're also planning on kind of cleaning house in those two systems. Right. And making them more efficient and cheaper. Yes, hopefully. Yeah. We'll get to that when we start talking about how this is going to be paid for. Okay, but let's talk about subsidies for individuals. Let's say that, oh, I don't know, I make 350% income above the federal poverty level. Right? Well, I know there's a dream. Will I be eligible for subsidies? Yes. Yes. Okay. So I think it goes from, let's say if we're going with 150% above poverty level, from that to poverty level, you're covered by Medicaid from 150% up to 400. Is it you're eligible for subsidies on a sliding scale, molly right. What they do is, obviously, if you make a little bit more money, if you're closer to that 400% level of the federal poverty level, you will pay a greater amount of the premium than if you were just making 150% of the federal poverty level. So in the House committee, for example, you get your subsidy, but you will pay let's say you were at 350. You're going to be still paying 9% to 10% of your income towards the thing, but then you'll also get a subsidy to cover the rest of okay, got you. That makes sense. The premium. It's kind of like when I go to my shrink and I say, dude, I make $20,000 a year and he doesn't charge me as much as the physician after me. Yeah, that's actually a really good point, Chuck, that there's a lot of key points in these proposals are already in effect in some ways, either de facto, like your shrink charging you on a sliding scale, or mandate about everyone having to have insurance. Like the Massachusetts experiment. Right. So this is kind of taking a lot of maybe good ideas and putting them together. Good ideas being a very political way to put it. Right. What's the Massachusetts experiment where everyone has to have insurance? I don't think I knew that. Yeah. Wow. And that's probably a good thing for you guys to discuss in the next podcast, because Massachusetts a success in terms of its health insurance. So where is everybody going to get this insurance? There's an insurance marketplace that's being set up. Right? Yeah. This is sort of the new big thing. So the insurance marketplace is sort of this attempt to have the general public get their insurance the same way that Congress people do. Right. Because essentially, when you become elected to Congress, you are presented with five plans. It's not a specific number, but basically you're offered all these plans that tell you exactly how much it's going to cost and what benefits are provided, and it's very easy to use. Yeah. I think plain language is one of the provisions in at least the House bill transparency. Plain language? Yeah. Like, you have to say this is what's covered and this is what's not covered, and this is what you get for what you pay for. Right. Plain language is a really big part of it. Right. So if you're trying to fulfill your individual mandate, you will look at all these plans and say, well, I want this one because I know it costs this much, and I know that this and this is covered. Right. And in both of these bills, every plan that's in that marketplace will have a certain set of minimum benefits that have to be covered. Correct. That has to be in there. And then there will be plans that are better than that in terms of maybe you want spa days covered or something like that. You can pay to get that extra. But let's say you just want to be able to go get a mammogram under your health insurance plan. That's probably closer to what's going to be considered an essential benefit that has to be in the plan. Right. And we'll get into this obviously later, too, but that's getting a little political as well with what can be covered and what's not, right? Right. But let's just, for the time being called the minimum benefits, because what these proposals give the government license to do is to define what these minimum standards of health insurance are. And eventually all health insurance plans, if you already have an existing one, it will probably have about five years to meet these requirements as well. Right. But it won't change at first, right. No, they have about a five year window. They'll be grandfathered in for several years. Right. And you said in your article how healthcare reform works, that these basic requirements will keep the marketplace from becoming like a dumping ground for shoddy policies. Right? Right. We don't want anyone in the marketplace who already maybe doesn't have a job or can't afford regular insurance to just be stuck with sort of crappy coverage. Yeah, that's one way to the whole point of this plan, whether you have insurance or you don't have insurance. And Obama's point of view is to strengthen health insurance for everyone. Right. So obviously, if you don't have a plan already, you're going to want some of that basic care. But you also want to make sure that the people who already have insurance are being protected in the same way. Right. Do you know what insurance everyone should have? What? Motion picture health and welfare. Is it good? It's better than the army. Do you get spa days? You get massage spa days, you get like Manny Petty paid for. Confused? This is the first I've ever heard of spa days. I think there's a sushi clause in Germany. Spa days are included. Really? Yeah. Universal healthcare. That's wonderful. Small businesses, you were saying that businesses are going to have a mandate to provide health insurance. They're also going to be allowed to go to this insurance marketplace to select as well. Right. Employers are going to be subject to a pay or play requirement where if you don't provide health insurance for your employees, you're going to have to pay into a fund for all your employees who don't have health insurance. Now, this would probably be a job killer if it were to be applied to small businesses. Small businesses will be exempt from this requirement. Right. I think Obama said, like, 95% of small businesses in the US. Will be exempt at his recent speech. Right. The Senate and the House defined small businesses differently in their current plan. They might look at how many employees you have. They might look at your income per year. I think if you make more than $250,000 a year, you wouldn't be considered a small business under this exemption. Right. But that's probably going to be one of the things that's ironed out and reexamined pretty closely in the reconciliation of these two bills. But they would also be eligible to enter this marketplace and provide insurance to their employees with the help of subsidies. Okay. And like, people, those employers that decide, I'm not doing this, they are going to have to pay, and that money will be contributed to the insurance marketplace. Right, right. So either way, it's provide, like you said, pay or play. Yeah. So in this marketplace, let's all pretend that we're in there right now. Okay? Close your eyes. Close your eyes. This is nice. Do you see all these little logos? Like there's a Tina's logo. Snoopy. Say hi to Snoopy. Do you see this one? What is that? Like a screaming eagle with a bandage? Ted, what is that? The US of A. That is new. Or it would be if this thing gets passed. That's the public option, right? Yes. The public option has been one of the more controversial parts of all these bills. Correct? Yes. Okay, so it's controversial. What does it entail? What's going on here? So the point of having this marketplace is one way that Obama thinks we can keep our insurance companies honest and competitive, right. Because if you're competing against people, then you will provide good service for good value. Makes sense. Makes sense. Now, Obama thinks that one way to ensure that this happens is to also introduce this public health insurance option so that it's a government run option that will have lower rates, probably. Now, obviously right there, you're going to have some contention about what the rates should be, because can a private insurer compete with a public insurer will have sort of the government stamp of approval that might make it impervious to any sort of attack or disaster. Right. But the thinking is that similar to the way we provide Medicare and Medicaid for certain people, that we would have this option for people to get health insurance at a pretty affordable cost set by the government. Right, but we don't know what cost that would be yet. So you really can't get into an argument about whether insurers could compete. The financials not really set on this yet. No. And if you've been following the news. This is probably the thing you see that, oh, it's been dropped. Oh, it hasn't been dropped. We might have a co op instead. Right. It's really something to watch. That was something that in the speech, Obama said he was willing to negotiate on. So it's still to come. He has said so far, though, that it wouldn't be just another Medicare. We wouldn't just have Medicare rates, which are about 30% lower than most insurance rates because that isn't fair to private insurance. It would have to be similar to private insurance, likely. And it would also have to fund itself through premiums. It would be self sustaining. Yeah. Because if you got federal or injections of federal cash, you're not really competing with anything. Right, yeah. And I think Obama said that he wouldn't back anything to added to the deficit. Is that correct? Yes. Right. So that's the public option. Everybody back away slowly back away. Well, you know, one thing that might be interesting to talk about is we always hear Obama saying that if you like your health insurance, you can keep it. Right, right. If you like your health insurance, you can keep it. The thing is, I'll do it as Clinton saying it. Go on, do it. If you like your health insurance, you can keep it there much better. But the thing is, let's think about the people who don't like their health insurance and might be thinking, oh man, a public option sounds pretty good. That's an excellent point because you never hear that mentioned. You can't really opt out of your employer based health insurance because you don't like it and just get into a cheaper public option. You can't? No. Why not? Because you have the option through work. So you're immediately discounted. Yes. Right now, the insurance marketplace will only be open to those people who don't have insurance through their employer. If we're still five years away from the marketplace, I think we'd be at least five years after that away from allowing everyone in. So right now you have to stick with your employer based health insurance unless your employer drops. That's something that people are saying. If there's some cheap plan and employers figure it's cheaper just to pay the fee than to cover their employees, that could happen. But the thinking is that if everyone has to know sort of what their insurance costs versus what it costs in the marketplace, then that competitive spirit might keep insurance there and honest. It's going to get really tricky. So let's talk some more about how insurance companies are going to be affected. Just in addition to this possible competition from a public option, there are some mandates in this legislation, for example, that says you can't discriminate based on pre existing conditions any longer. Right. Obama likes to use the example of that woman who has denied that what was it? She's going to have a double mastectomy. And then they found out she didn't declare a case of acne from her childhood and thus they postponed the treatment under breast cancer group. Right. Under this proposal, there's no more pre existing condition denials. Right. And it doesn't cost you more. You can't be charged a higher premium because you have a pre existing condition. They're going to do away with that completely. Yeah. For people who have insurance and for people who are trying to get insurance like that's going in under this plan. So if you smoke ten packs of cigarettes a day and you walk in there with an oxygen tank, they have to cover you for the same amount of money. Yeah. As far as I know, that's the country. I know. That's awesome. There's also a mandate that there can no longer be caps on spending by insurance companies. And actually, not only that, it's back on the consumer. There's now a cap on how much a consumer can pay out of pocket every year for their own health care. Right. Because a lot of bankruptcies are driven by medical costs. We're thinking that if you can't go broke because you're sick, then we will decrease the number of bankruptcies, maybe the overall economy right. The damage we might be doing to our economy that way. Interesting. Definitely. So that's insurance companies that's also again, we're just kind of hitting the high points here. We're talking about, as Molly said, 1600 pages of legislation as it stands now. So let's talk about Medicaid and Medicare. Chuck mentioned this earlier about kind of cutting waste in the Medicaid and Medicare system and that actually let's talk about how much this is going to cost. The OMB suggests it's going to be about a trillion dollars over ten years for these proposals for Obama's plan. Obama is saying that two thirds of this can be paid for right off the bat just by cutting waste with Medicare and Medicaid. What is he talking about? Well, there's an estimate that about 30% of the services that are performed medically in this country are unnecessary. And that's overall, that's not just Medicare. Medicaid adding a third limb yeah, potentially. Or getting rid of that third limb that you wanted to keep. Yeah, it just blew my mind. But to get rid of those costs right away and to also cut out some administrative costs, all this paper shuffling that a lot of people do right. Could help as well. The big name you always hear an association to this is Medicare Advantage, which is a private program within the public program, which I don't know if that makes much sense, but it's probably indicative of how whole health insurance system works. That's 170,000,000,000 a year that goes to insurance companies for the exact same service that's provided to people by the government. So they would hold that and shuffle them over to Medicare standard. No more advantage for you. Right. Because it pays 14% more than regular Medicare for the same service, exact same service for people who would have just stayed with regular Medicare. We could have saved 170,000,000,000 a year. Right, but that's just that 170,000,000,000. He's saying you can save another 600 billion just from cutting waste. Right. And I think he's also talking about bundling services that leads to bundling services. Correct? Yeah, that's a big deal. It's sort of his testing ground for this because as I said, this 30% waste is endemic in the system. It's not just Medicare, it's not just the government that can't run a program, it's everyone who can't run a program. But they've done these studies where they compare areas that spend a lot of money on Medicare to just a little bit of money on Medicare. And the people who have less spent on them live longer and are healthier. The people who have more doctors visits, more time in the hospital, are the ones that are more likely to die from the exact same ailment that these lower spending people had over here. So what can we do to emulate those lower spending areas? That's where we get this idea of bundling that Josh was talking about. Right. So if a person goes into the hospital with a heart attack, instead of this doctor seeing him and this doctor seeing him and this doctor, and everyone charging separately for all their tests, fee for service, fee for service, then you go into the hospital as a Medicare patient and you are in there for your heart attack. Right. And all the treatment that you get relates to your heart attack. Your doctors need to work together to figure out the best course of treatment. And so it's more a matter of how you kind of pay your cable bill if you have your cable, your internet and your phone altogether. Sure. Bundling, you just pay one bill to the hospital for all that as opposed to paying for your cardiogram and the MRI scan, they decide you needed and blah, blah, blah. That kind of makes sense. Well, but it also leads to another kind of radical suggestion that's found in these proposals, is establishing what kind of care you should follow when somebody comes into for a heart attack. Right. Because how do you know how much it should cost unless you know what procedures you have to follow and how much those procedures should cost? So to do that, they're setting up a panel that reviews the effectiveness of methods of treatment and says this doesn't work. This has a 98% success rate. So we're going to go with this one, right? Well, I don't think they're going to throw out this one. I mean, obviously they don't want treatments that don't work, but I think it's more and obviously I think we're going to talk about rationed healthcare in the next podcast. Sure, but this is where people start to get this idea. But let's say that there are three treatments for a heart attack the first one works for 90% of population, the second works for 5% of the population, and the other one also works for 5% of the population. Rather than doing all three, do you have a greater chance of starting with this one? Right. And if that doesn't work, then go to one prioritizing more than standardizing. Yeah. Be tearing up sort of what works. But I think Obama's been very clear that if your doctor thinks that he wants to still go with number three that has the 5% effectiveness rate, he can do that. Okay. You should be on that panel. Are you on the panel? Okay, guys, we already talked about some forms of paying for this by cutting waste and getting rid of Medicare Plus Advantage. What are some other ideas for paying for this? Because Obama said he wasn't going to sign anything the editor sent to the deficit, and one complication with him just saying I'm going to eliminate fraud and waste is those aren't scorable measures, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Right. It's got to be something for them to say. Yes, it provides this extra $20 million. It's got to be something the federal government can kind of point to as opposed to this nebulous cutting cost thing. Right. Obama has been pretty clear that he would like to tax people who make more than $250,000 a year, change their tax deductions, and I believe is what the House plan calls for. There's also the idea that we would tax the employer plans that are currently untaxed the employer tax exemption to get rid of that altogether. Yeah. They wouldn't be exempt anymore. And there's the thinking this is something McCain brought up in the presidential campaign that Obama poopooed, which is why it may not come back right away. There's the idea people shouldn't have to tax what is essentially free for them now. Right. But I mean, on the one hand, it would be kind of an invisible tax because, as we say, you already don't know how much your health insurance costs. Right. But also, if it's not just this free perk that employers can hand out, they might be more likely to increase your wages is one thought. I mean, right now, a lot of employers can say this is your salary, but look at this great health care plan you don't have to pay for. Right. Whereas when that becomes an actual cost to a person, then you would weigh that a little bit more in relation to the money in your pocket. Sure. So we can all look forward to raises. That's just one thought behind this idea. But other people are like, no, that's a tax, I don't want it. Right. So then another proposal is to flip that tax and tax the insurance companies that offer the plans because they're obviously putting a pretty penny in their pocket for these tax accept plans and then still kind of rub some people along ways. The proposal has been floated just to tax the mega plans, the ones that do have days. Yeah. Kind of like there's the CEO of Goldman Sachs. He's a plan that's $40,000 a year. You're kidding. And yeah, you always hear him brought up as like, does he really need this tax free $40,000 health insurance? Well. Goldman Sachs beating in here. We mention them all the time. Kashikari. They bear the brunt. Yeah. So there's the thought that maybe we would tax either people who have those kind of plans or the insurance companies that offer those kinds of plans. But there's this Time magazine article that found that actually a lot of state employees have really good plans, too. But I saw that. I think that what people are trying to get at is that there's money in these employer tax exemptions that we're going to have to look at. It is a possible source of funding. Wow. So that's the high points. There's some other ones like, I don't know, Medicaid, paying for family planning services, getting rid of the donut hole, which we should cover. It's big, though, the provision where any child born in the United States is automatically covered if they don't have insurance, stuff like that. We're not going to cover any of the raucousness surrounding those in this one. As a matter of fact, I think we've reached the end of this one, guys. I think so. Molly, thank you very much for coming in. My pleasure. We'll see in the next one. And you'll want to tune in for part three, especially if you wake up in the middle of the night with your teeth clenched shouting you lie. That's going to be about myths, truths and lies concerning healthcare reform and Obama's proposal. And there'll be criticism from the right and the left on the planet. That one, right, Chuck? What about the center? The center? Is the center staying mute and guilly? Yeah. Okay, so stay tuned for that. It's part three in our special four part healthcare suite series brought to you by HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housestoughfworks.com. Want more housestuffworks? Check out our blogs on the Housetofworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, everybody. 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How Ghosts Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-ghosts-work | According to a 2009 poll, more Americans believe in ghosts than don't. But what are ghosts exactly? If they do exist, what are they made of and why are they hanging around? Josh and Chuck explore both sides of the divide between belief and skepticism on t | According to a 2009 poll, more Americans believe in ghosts than don't. But what are ghosts exactly? If they do exist, what are they made of and why are they hanging around? Josh and Chuck explore both sides of the divide between belief and skepticism on t | Thu, 20 Jun 2013 14:21:25 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=14, tm_min=21, tm_sec=25, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=171, tm_isdst=0) | 40573036 | audio/mpeg | "Ah, summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. This July, don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the Musical, the Series season three Zombies, three Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful. From the award winning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and the Disney nature films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles, Debbie, chuck Bryant, and this is Stephanie Schneow. Jerry's over there, fiddling and Fussing, seeing around Halloween in June. Right. Remember when we had the horror fiction contest last year? Actually, this may be July. Yeah. I think that the deadline for submissions was in July. It was weird to be in that kind of Halloween mindset while it was hot out. Yeah. And I'm sure it was weird to ask the authors, or not to ask, but to have them give in that mindset to write something creepy we definitely didn't command. Yeah, you talked me out of that. Yeah. Those good contests, also known as the contest, shall never happen again. Well, we also ended up with the one that we're going to read this year. Right? I think yeah, it's a good one. It is a good one. You guys will have to see in a few months what we're talking about. That's right. So, Chuck, I myself have never officially seen a ghost, but I understand you have a ghost story. I do. I remarked about it and I said, I'm going to wait till we do our ghost podcast. Well, here we are, pal. Is this it? Should I go now? Yeah. Okay. I'm not saying this is a ghost. What I'm saying is one night I saw something very strange that I cannot explain. Okay. Okay. Are you ready? Yeah. I got a shoot of music or something, Jerry, that could probably be done. Okay. So athens, Georgia college, I would say. I don't remember the exact year, but it was probably 1994. Okay. My best friend and I, Brett, had gone out and we're going back home and driving through Five Points. You know, the area. Yes. So we're coming from like, let's say the direction of campus. And there's a cut through if you take a certain road and five points, that cuts you over to Alps Road. Okay. And people are going to be like, what are you talking about? I know, it's terrible. I'm talking to you here. And so there's this one area where you go around the road, curves 90 degrees and then about, I'd say 200ft. After that, there's a four way stop sign. It's a very neighborhood e area. I think that's like where Ray Golf used to live. Vince Duly lives over there. Okay, that might be what you're thinking. So we go around this 90 degree curve and I'm looking, I'm feeling with the radio or something, and my buddy Brett starts kind of joke screaming like, what is that? But getting around. And I look up and in the middle of the intersection and I swear, people, I'm not making this up. And I did not hallucinate it. This is God's honest truth. There was what looked like 100 year old woman wearing a black robe with a purple sash diagonal across her chest. And she was standing in the middle of the intersection holding a Bible like this kind of placed on her fingertips as you would hold like a waiter would hold a platter. Okay. About chest level. And she was sort of looking in the other direction with kind of a vacant look on her face like you have now, or is it just she was completely vacant, completely still. Didn't move an inch and wasn't like a hazy apparition. I mean, was solid and looked real. Real. That was so freaky. We pulled right up on her to take that left and we're both kind of joke screaming. But then as we get closer, we're like, what's going on here? But it all happened in like 15 seconds, so it wasn't a lot of time to register. What is this? We were just sort of kidding around. And we pull right by her and take a left like this is her. We pull within feet of her. And she's on my side at this point because we're turning right by her. She doesn't blink, doesn't move a muscle. And we were going probably 15, 20 miles an hour in this curve. Yeah, he can't drive a stick shift anymore because he's freaking out the cars, like jerking and sputtering. He pulls over, probably 50ft later, we both turn around out the back window and there's nothing there. Wow, I'm getting chill bumps. I know, I can see them. And to this day I have no idea what the heck it was. And it was either a crazy old woman who is really fast, which is really creepy and really fast, or the most believable Madame Tusseau's wax dummy I've ever seen. It's also really fast. Someone ran and set out there and we didn't see it and then ran and took it away. Right. I'm not offering any explanation, not saying it was a ghost, but I have no explanation for what it could have been. And it was the creepiest, weirdest thing I've ever seen. And we both described it to each other immediately, like, what did you see? What did you see? It had gold leafing. I mean, I can't say it was a Bible because I didn't see the cover, but I had that gold leafing around. It looked like a Bible. So you both saw the same thing? Exact same thing, yeah. Purple sash, black robe, silver hair. That is one of the pernicious qualities of a ghost sighting, is that frequently people will see the same thing, two different people will see the same thing, which lends a tremendous amount of credence to something, because if one person just sees it, well, it's a hallucination. Exactly. You were clearly on something we were not. But that's what somebody could say. Sure, both of you saw it. Even if you both were on something, that doesn't mean you're going to see the exact same thing. Yeah, and I wasn't, like, some big ghost guy. I'd never had looked for them or say, oh, I believe in ghost. It would just out of nowhere, boom, there it happened. Right? Exactly. You can also go a little further if you're a skeptic and say, well, I mean, Chuck and Brett just kind of were playing off on another description, and they came to some unconsciously, came to an agreement of this. You guys compiled the story, and you saw the same thing. Yeah. Impossible. Who knows? However you approach that probably depends on whether you're part of the 45% or the 48% of Americans who don't believe in ghosts or who do believe in ghosts. According to a 2009 CBS News poll. I had never given it much thought, but after that, I was definitely like, well, if that was a ghost and I just saw one. Yeah, and I researched a little bit, but this was long ago, before the Internet was born, and so I couldn't find anything and even looked yesterday just to see if I could find out anything, if there was some sightings or some old lady that have been killed there or anything. And nothing? No, I couldn't find anything. So that was just your own personal ghost, maybe. Or just some creepy old woman who was still in not blinking as a car barrel towards her. Right. Yeah. Either way. That is very unsettling. Either way. And that's a pretty good ghost story. It's a good one. It's not a mask. I can say that for sure. Like, we pulled up within feet of her. Like, I looked in her face, and she didn't move a muscle. Didn't move a muscle. Man, that's scary. It was the scariest thing that's ever happened to me. And we told that story many times over the years, and everyone's always like, really? And I always say I swear. Why would I make this up? So that's my ghost story. That's a good ghost story. You can reach us on Facebook. Right? Is that it? Yeah. It's time for message break. All right. Wait, Jerry, it's not really time for message break. She left pretty quick. So we're talking ghosts. Yeah. And like I said, 48% of Americans believe in ghosts. 45% don't. Yeah. And I think a lot of people, especially after reading this, there's the whole I really miss my deceased relative, and I go to Seances and I think those things, the mind can play tricks on you. But in my case, it was just like, those are the ones where I'm like, what is going on here? Right. Well, it's pretty much impossible to disprove something or to prove something doesn't exist. Right. Which is one reason why belief in ghosts continues on. But there's also a lot of factors in ghosts that accumulated create this body of ghost belief. What our ghost, ghostly sightings, hauntings, apparitions, all that stuff. Sure. That kind of, over time have taken on a life of their own, or I should say have been around for thousands and thousands of years and have not been dispelled by science. Right. So we're going to kind of approach this from like, here's what people believe ghosts are, and here's some scientific explanations for it. But throughout this, you'll notice that at no point are we ever going to say, conclusively science has proven that ghosts don't exist because it kind of can't. Right. That's not to say that people aren't using the scientific method to study ghosts. Sure. Because some are. And my hat is off to these people most of all. Yeah. So let's talk ghosts then. All right. Well, I just described my encounter, which, like I said, wasn't hazy or weird. Well, it's weird. It wasn't like a hazy apparition. Right, but many times it's an apparition. Sometimes it's lights. It seems to hit every sense. Sometimes it's a smell, like Tracy pointed out in this article. Like the smell of deceased relatives favorite meal being cooked in the other room. Right. Stuff like that. Or the smell of the deceased relative to smelled something like rotting. But it was just a squirrel in the wall. Right, exactly. It can be a song, can be flickering. Lights can be orbs in a picture. We'll talk about that. Or a ghost in a picture. There's plenty of those. Hey, I got you. You got a Google. It's pretty fun to look at those. Yeah. And there's some that are like this one's not quite explained to my full satisfaction. Yeah. If you look at famous ghost pictures, there's a handful that have made the rounds over the years that are pretty good. Like the lady of Brown Hall, I believe. Is that the girl with the fire? No, that's a good one, too. There's a woman descending a staircase like a ghostly veil woman. Very famous Freddy Jackson. The World War I pilot killed or mechanic? I'm sorry, he was killed. And then he showed up in a group photo two days later. That one was explained as a double exposure, which, I mean, just the coincidence behind it is in and of itself staggering, if that is the explanation for it. Of course, it also could be a hoax, but it's a pretty good one. Freddie Jackson is my favorite one. I think my favorite is the Old West. Did you see that one? It's like Boot Hill or something. It was in this guy dressed up like a cowboy and had his picture made with his friend. And then in the background you see this guy. Oh, yeah, I did see, like, kind of peeking up, maybe behind a tombstone. Yeah, just in the brush. Yeah. And supposedly these things are verified by photo experts and stuff as having been untouched because Photoshop is making it way easier to screw with photography. But it's also fairly easy to detect, too. If you really dig into the individual pixels, you can say, well, this is obviously touch. And especially these old photos when they're examining negatives, those weren't Photoshopped, right? It could be light playing tricks. But when you see a girl standing by the rail with a fire behind her that one was explained as the girl in the fire. Yes, that one was explained as a sheer chance mixture of smoke and light. And then our programming, like us being hardwired to pick faces out of anything. I don't know, man. It looks pretty much like a cold. It definitely does, isn't it? Yeah. And then, of course, there's the funny things like the three men and a baby ghost cut out of Ted dancing. Or The Wizard of Oz, like hanging munchkin, which was a bird. Although I have to say, since you bring it up, one of the greatest short I love short horror fiction. Of course, one of the greatest ones I've ever read was called The Hanging Man of Oz. It's only just a few years old, but it's a good little short story. Really? Yeah, I read about that one. This guy who gets kind of caught up in looking for it. It's good horror fiction. This doesn't have to do with ghosts, but supposedly there's a murder captured on Google Earth. Have you seen that? Making the rounds? No, it's an aerial shot, obviously, of a dock somewhere in Europe, I think, by the water. And it looks like a guy is like, dragging a dead body and a big pool of blood toward the water. But I think they've debunked that it was a dog who had shaken off and got in the ground wet. And people verified later, like, yeah, that was me and my dog. Yes. Stop asking questions. It was my dog. Someone posted it on her Facebook wall. But that's a really good like, you see what you want. Exactly. But again, we say you've can't really prove that ghosts don't exist. So people are like, Prove it. It doesn't prove anything. Right. If you can prove that a photograph has been faked, then you've proven it's been faked. But you can't just look in and be like, oh, I'm sure it's a fake. Right. That doesn't muster. Yeah. So we've covered photos that show up in photos. Well, why are they here? I mean, there's a lot of explanations. Like they're delivering bad news or good news. Right? Yeah. There's a lot of ghost stories where the dead have suddenly appeared to a relative on the other side of the planet at the moment they died. Like, the relative wakes up the next day to find out that the person died at 12:59 a.m. When they just saw them sitting in their room at that same time. Yeah. So sometimes they're coming to say, hey, love you. See you in 15 years. Right. Or they're coming to say, you're about to die. That's another long standing legend. Yeah. Or they're about to say, like, it's sell your Yahoo stock now. That'd be a good guess. Right. There's a lot of stuff you can say that people have attributed to ghosts and why they're here. There's also that horrible experience as their last moments. Yeah. They are at the point where they died too young or maybe have just gone back to their favorite place in life. Earthbound spirits, I think is what paranormal investigators call those situations. Yeah. Like they're stuck here, or it's like get off my train type of situation. Right. They're guarding a place. Maybe there's not one, but two ghost women at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego. Very famous late 19th century built hotel resort. And both of them took their own lives at the hotel when they found out they were pregnant at a wedlock or one was married, but her husband had left her. And so they're in two different rooms still. But that's an example of a ghost being tied to a place. Yeah. And we have an article on the site about haunted hotels. A lot of hotels all around the world, but especially in places like New Orleans and, like, old spooky Spanish, I guess the Coronado is probably one of those. There's one in, I believe, Colorado Overlook or the one they use for the Overlook Hotel. No, it's just like a plain old regular cool hotel, but it has, like, a stream running through the lobby. Awesome. Yeah. Which is cool in and of itself. And I don't remember where I saw this, but it was like, on some TV show where it's like a super haunted hotel, supposedly. See, like, the ghost waiter. I don't remember the river. He had his pants rolled up and flip flops the caviar. He probably was awesome. That was the best I could muster right then. I'm sorry. There are mediums out there who if you saw the movie Ghost whoopi goldberg obviously, there's many times hucksters trying to take advantage of people, saying they can contact people, put you in touch with your relatives that have passed. Yeah. But I'm sure there are a lot of mediums who really believe what they're doing is for real. Yes. And what's kind of ironic is there's a really great article. It's just a little quick editorial, actually, from Los Angeles times in 2006. It's called science afraid of ghosts. It's written by Deborah Bloom. Right. And she basically points out that we used to have psychical research societies like William James, effectively the founder of psychology, investigated the paranormal as well and conducted extensive real scientific experiments, and along the way, debunked a lot of mediums. When was this? The 19th century? The Victorian era. Okay. And so part of this investigation into the paranormal, it wasn't just to prove that ghosts existed. It was just to understand the paranormal on its own terms, and along the way say, this person is a fraud. This person is a huckster, this ectoplasm is cheesecloth that they had, like, stuffed in their cheek. That was part of it. And over time, I think science is just kind of thrown out the whole thing, the baby with the bathwater. And now it's just up to kind of the more mean spirited section of the skeptical world to just go after and debunk. There's nobody looking for there are very few people looking to prove or disprove the existence of ghosts. It's more just like, this photograph is faked. Right. You know what I mean? 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. Yeah. And on photographs, I guess we should talk about orbs. Very famously, orbs show up in pictures, and some people say that that is a very specific part of the journey of the ghost, is when they are an orb. I have an orb picture, which I'll post on facebook. Emily believes it is her grandfather. He had just passed away. And the photograph, he was the biggest dog lover I've ever known. And we had just finished our fencing in our backyard and our house that we bought. So it had been like six or eight months that our dogs couldn't go back there. So we finally let them back there and I had a camera. I was like, I got to take pictures of this. And they start playing around like crazy. And then one of the pictures, there's an orb boom right there above the dogs playing. And Emily was like, that's Charlie, that's my grandfather. That's awesome. He's coming to visit. So I didn't debunk that. But supposedly Skeptics will say that it could be a camera flash reflecting off the dust particles. I use no flash. Water spots on the camera lens, bone dry. Okay. Defects and digital camera sensors. I guess it could be that. Although it was a new camera and it's never done that sense or printing errors, it was not printed or developed well, so who knows? I'm just saying I've got a great orb photo that I'll post of my dogs playing. You raise a really good question. What's the value of debunking that? I don't know. Photo it made it really feel nice. Yeah, it still does. So what is the value? I guess we'll cover it later. But that question keeps coming up to me throughout the research in this. Like it's not hurting anybody. Right. So Chuck, I guess a really good question if we're going to talk about how ghosts work, is what would ghosts be made of? Like we said, the Victorians believe that they are made of ectoplasm. Today, if you talk to someone who believes in ghosts and researches ghosts and that's part of their world. Right. The prevailing idea is that they're made of energy somehow. Okay, I can't remember which law of thermodynamics think that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, just transfer states. Yeah, that would be a pretty good understanding of what ghosts are, if they are real. So a life force that had passed from a live person is now a different kind of energy. Exactly, sure. Midichlorians. What is that? This is a Star Wars. That was how they explained the Force. Who are the midichlorians? I don't remember. It was very disappointing though. It sounds really familiar. Was it from the newer three? Yeah. How they explain basically they explain what the Force was and everyone's like, why don't you go and do that? I got you. I remember that. Now, other theories are that if they are some sort of energy, they could also be some form of matter. Right. So maybe they're made of some sort of quantum particles or an arrangement of quantum particles. Right. Which I find kind of an interesting explanation because think about it, ghosts, they're frequently said to be able to travel through solid matter, right? Yeah. Well, if you go down to the quantum level and you start looking at transistors, there's a big problem in early transistor development, and that individual electrons can pass right through the wall of a transistor. It's called quantum tunneling. Right. And they had to figure out how to use crystals to kind of block electrons in to make them flow the way you wanted, rather than just be like, oh, I'm over here now. So some people say, well, maybe these are some sort of quantum particles or an arrangement of quantum particles that we're able to perceive somehow. Right. And then the question I would have is, is there a consistent explanation on why some people might become a ghost and some others not? And the answer is no. Or are they everywhere? And some you just have a stronger energy force or something. Who knows? Yeah, because, I mean, if people tend to perceive ghosts more than others and that typically from studies has been shown to be people who believe in ghosts, tend to see them more often, report hauntings, why wouldn't they see them all the time? Yeah. That would indicate that there is something about an individual person that would make them become a ghost. So many questions. Well, the whole unfinished business, like, died too young thing, I can wrap my head around that. Like an energy force that was so strong that is now gone. Sure. Still could be around. I'm trying to decide what part I'd lie in. Do I believe in ghosts? I think so. Okay, so there's a dude named Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire. Yes. And he's done a lot of research in GB, Great Britain, and he has found some pretty consistent results that people have generally reported the same things in the same places, even if they didn't know there was any ghost activity there, even if they did or didn't believe. Actually, if they did believe, they were more, like you said, more apt to see a ghost. Right. But he had consistent results of specific places. Yeah. I mean, he applied the scientific method of researching ghosts, and he documented what areas in a reportedly haunted place sightings were most frequently reported. Basically found that you could map out areas where sightings were. Right. Okay, so that's step one. And then step two, we had people who had encountered ghosts describe their experiences, and he kind of compiled the data. Right. Then he went back to see what other commonalities there were for an area. Yeah. Like physical conditions there. Yes. Like, how cold is it? Is it humid? Let me measure the light. Let me measure the magnetic field. Right. What he found, though, interestingly, was that there were specific areas where people who had no understanding of the history of the place they were seeing or had heard that the area was haunted, had reported seeing something. So there was something to a specific area being, quote, haunted. Right. And people who didn't necessarily believe in ghosts or didn't know that the place was supposed to be haunted had reported not only that they'd seen the sighting or something in this building, but in the specific area of this building. Yeah. What does that mean? It's a consistent study. Right. So Wiseman is a part of this kind of long but very small and sparsely populated tradition of paranormal researchers. Like legitimate ones. Yeah, I could get into that, man. When I was a kid, I used to want to go to Duke and study paranormal or parapsychology there. Oh, really? Yeah, they had a parapsychology department. That's awesome. It was led by a guy named Joseph Ryan, who is another legitimate parapsychological researcher. You could have gotten a TV show on Science Channel. Yeah, totally. UCLA used to have one from, I think, 69 to 78. Is Duke still around or no, they shut it down in, I think, the mid 80s, but it was around from the 50s or 60s up to the was well respected. William James was another researcher. As of the 90s, James Hooran and Renny Lange are still doing research and writing books. Harry Price is a very famous one. Yeah. Yeah. He was famous for investigating borderland rectory, which was supposed to be like the most haunted place in England. Oh, really? And then now if you want to get a degree in parapsychology, you can go to the American University or you can go to University of Edinburgh. These are the two places, as far as I know, in the Western world where you can get a parapsychology degree. I could see that the Great Britain has a lot of ghostly activity and paranormal investigations, and they're into it over there. And Edinburgh supposed to be the most haunted city in all of Europe. Oh, really? Yeah. A bunch of dissatisfied Scotsmen roaming the bog. Right. So we've kind of laid it out. Right? Yeah, I feel like we've laid it out. We all understand what ghosts are. I don't think we really said anything that people are like, oh, yeah, sure. I didn't realize that's what a ghost is. Right. What I found interesting is that there's some really good explanations for ghostly activity. Yeah. Sometimes Tracy points out, I mean, there's so many explanations, there's such a wide range from this person just hallucinating something. Right. And I want to say with that specifically, we're starting to understand that hallucinations are way more common than anybody has admitted for a very long time because we are afraid of being put away. Sure. Or label is crazy, but people hallucinate more than we generally understand. They do. Specifically, grief is supposed to be able to trigger hallucinations pretty early, which would explain visitation, dead relatives shortly after they die. Totally. Yeah. We've talked about sleep paralysis before. That's an explanation that you hear a lot about someone laying in bed. They can't move and they're hallucinating spirits and things. Right. They think. They're awake, but they're not. Right? Yeah. And you're incapable of moving. Yeah. There's also the hypnagogic trance, which comes at the onset of sleep and is a sort of trance that supposedly you can hallucinate in. Yeah, I've had that happen before. Like, am I awake in my asleep that I just hear something? Oh, yeah, sure. And then sometimes it's just the window shut itself because it was loose and the wind blew it, or the door shut because there was a draft, or it's cold in here because there's a draft. A lot of times there's just literally an explanation, a physical explanation for what happened. So you hit upon one of the hallmarks of haunting activity is a change in temperature and unexplained change in temperature in a haunted room when a ghost is present. And like you said, it's often like a chimney or a drafty window or something like that. But people who investigate this kind of thing also often explain that phenomenon by a lack of humidity. Right. Lower humidity can make a room feel colder. Right. What about an area of a room, though? I don't know. That's a really good question, dude. How can an area of a room be, number one, colder if there isn't a draft? If it's not a draft, it's just like a static area in a room that's cold. If there's just a decrease in humidity, what causes the decrease in humidity that makes it feel colder. Right. And they have found that areas that are supposedly haunted well, I should say Richard Wiseman found right. In one place that was supposedly haunted, it tended to be less humid than other areas. So that would explain the cold chill. But how is one area just a part of a room less humid than another? Yeah, and I'm curious about what kind of temperature drop people have seen, like how drastic it's been. I couldn't find any reputable information on that. Like in the movies, you walk into the corner and you can see your breath all of a sudden and you're freezing. Yes. Like the 6th sense. Right? Yeah. That poor kid. But also, I wonder then if it's not even necessarily a real change in temperature. Although supposedly ghost hunters can measure changes in temperature in a room, and that means the ghost is present. Or if it's just a sensation of a chill running through your body and it's not actually thermal, it's psychological. Yeah. Your central nervous system. Yeah, I just got chill bumps earlier. You did? What about the electrical fields? That's a very common thing. It's for a paranormal investigator to measure magnetic field and electrical fields in an area. They will say that this is kind of proof that there's some sort of presence there because the ghostbusters emeter is going crazy. Right, exactly. What do they call that? I can't believe I can't remember that. I can't remember it either. The one that Egan held up to. Yes. I don't remember what it's called. We're going to get in trouble for that. Yeah. Sorry, guys, but sometimes these fields can cause wacky things happening with the brain, can cause hallucinations, can cause dizziness or other neurological symptoms. And they're saying that might play into the fact that you think you have seen a ghost. Right. They're saying investigators are saying, yeah, there actually is something different here with the area's electrical field. Right. Electromagnetic field. There's something going on here, but it's possible that that's what's making you think there's a ghost here rather than there's a ghost here. And it's affecting the field. Yeah. It's hitting your angular gyrus. Right. That's a part of the brain that evidently, if it's stimulated, you can get the sense that someone is behind you, mimicking your movements, which is pretty creepy. We're all familiar with the transcranial magnetic stimulation, the thinking cap. That's a cool episode. And when you apply a magnetic pulse to different parts of the brain, different things happen. And one of them is definitely hallucinations. And then another example of the magnetic field messing with us, I guess, is that a lot of haunting activity is reported at night, supposedly. Right. That's scary. Right? Exactly. That's number one. But number two, the magnetosphere, the part of the Earth's atmosphere that protects us from the charged ions of solar wind. Right. The way that the Earth is arranged to the sun, the part that's in darkness has a larger part of the magnetosphere surrounding it. More work toward that. So that might explain it then. Right. Looks like a spider. It does. But there's a lot more magnetic field activity going on in the darker side of Earth, so night, that one could be a stretch. Yeah. I think my favorite explanation that I had not heard about is infrasound. I think that's pretty cool. This, to me is it? Yeah. It's low frequency sound waves that you cannot hear with your naked ear. You won't notice it, but it can cause your eyes to vibrate. It can cause you to see things. It can cause a sense of dread. And Cracked actually one of our favorite websites that tested a concert, didn't they? Well, they reported on it. Okay. They don't do tests. That's right. They report on test. But yeah, there's a great Cracked article on it, and they're talking about in. The guy named Vladimir Gavro, robotics engineer, noticed that one of his lab assistants was bleeding from an ear and traced it to this infrasound. I think it's like seven to 19 hurt, and you can't hear it. Like you don't realize you're hearing sound, but you're reacting to it. And like you said, it causes all sorts of weird psychological effects, like a sense of dread, a sense that there's somebody else near you. All the classic telltale signs of haunting. So much so that they've traced literal hauntings back to infrasound. Yeah. The ghost in the machine is an article by Vic tandy and Tony Lawrence that the same thing was going on there and they traced it back to a fan and then they modified the fan's housing. The sound went away and the supposed haunting went away. Right, exactly. Isn't that weird, though? Like, surely you've been in a room before that you've just had to turn around and run out of because you just knew that there was somebody else in there with you. I have plenty of times, sort of, but I think it's like I've been in Savannah near the Ghost Tour. I'm highly suggestible I get what I'm saying. But isn't it strange to think that a sound that you can't hear was responsible for producing that? Our brains are that malleable. That just the sound we can't even hear. But the vibrations we can still sense somehow are having an effect on our brain and scaring us and making us turn around and run out of room. Yeah. And potentially twitching your eye and causing hallucinations. Right. So the sound has been shown NASA showed that an infrasound at that frequency can make your eye vibrate, imperceptibly, but then something close to your vision, like, say, the rim of your glasses or something, your brain confuses and thinks that that's moving. So it looks like there's a little dark figure moving out of the corner of your eye. Right. Infrasound can actually cause visual and well, not auditory hallucinations. Psychological. Yeah. Psychological effects and visual hallucinations and the creation of a sense of dread. Yeah. That's spooky. Yeah. I want to get an infrastructure machine. It's, like, played around the office. There may already be one here. Well, I don't even think we said what the guy did, though, at the concert, did we? No. Did he play under the concert and people were freaking out? Yeah. I think, like, a quarter of the people at the concert reported feeling, like, horrible dread and, like, some nausea. Maybe it was a Dr. Jon show. That's the first awful thing I could think of. Dr. John's great. I know you're going to say that he really is. Like, I play two pianos at once. Yeah, he's a legend. What am I talking about? You're thinking of? Maybe Dr. Hook and the medicine show. No. Dr. Demento. I was trying to think of the worst band I could think of and that's the first thing that came to my mind. That's who you thought of? Nickelback is out there? Yeah, it was a Nickelback show. Perfect show. We can fix this in editing. Okay, so what else? I think the last thing Tracy has here is that the National Science Board has actually come out and said that if you believe in paranormal, it can be dangerous because that means you have reduced critical thinking skills and can't make great day to day decisions. Right. It's going to mean that irked me, because on the other end of the spectrum, you can definitely make the case that just poopooing out of hand as nonexistent. Anything that science can explain shows a distinct lack of critical thinking and even more dangerously, a lack of imagination, and that irks me to no end. Yes. I enjoyed that you sent me the Skeptoid. Brian Dunning. Is that his name? His article. And I kind of appreciated his approach with this. Maybe that means there are other cool ways to explain these things, right? Like, don't poopoo it. Maybe open your mind to other interesting phenomena that can be explained. Well, he was saying, don't just assume that if you just stop at it was a ghost or it wasn't, right. Then you're not pursuing any longer one way or another. Yeah. And you're kind of shutting down these avenues. That could be really interesting in eye opening. I appreciate that. I appreciated his approach, too, because he's a huge skeptic, but he didn't take, like, a James Randy Glee or delight in destroying the illusions of idiots. Yes. And I think that's his deal, period. I think he gets accused of that oftentimes as a funkiller, and he's like, that's not what I'm trying to do here. I'm trying to apply research and real science to things. I think he likes killing fun a little bit. Yeah, maybe a little bit. So that's ghosts. Yeah. Done. Yeah, for now. If you want to learn more about ghosts and read a ghost story, first hand account of a ghost story from Tracy Wilson. You can type ghosts in the search bar@howstoughfworks.com. It will bring up this article. And I said how stuff works. So it's time for a message break, I'll bet. 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. Now listener mail. Now listener mail. All right. Yeah. This is from a teacher. We always like reading these. Chuck, Josh and Jerry have been listening for over a year now and was never more grateful than about a month ago, I wound up driving three preteen boys to Space Academy in Huntsville, Alabama. Awesome. Remember Space Camp? Yeah. Great movie. Not really. I never saw the movie. I just remember you didn't see Space Camp. Oh, man, that was right in the wheelhouse. Yeah. All right. You see, I'm a middle school teacher in Morgantown, North Carolina. Recently relocated from Decatur, Georgia, where I worked at the Brickstore in Squash, Boston. Jerry's Old Hot school. Okay. Every two years, our 6th and 7th grade students go on a trip to the Science Academy, and we're a tiny school, just 24 kids in the entire middle school. Wow. Teachers frequently end up driving on field trips themselves. It's about a seven hour drive, and on the journey we were plagued with traffic, rain and car sickness. At about hour four, when tensions were high, was white and knuckled, and began questioning my career choice. And I said, Screw it, I'm going to put on your podcast about ninjas. They were mesmerized ninja. During the rest of our trip, we learned about sword swallowing, bigfoot and surfing, just to name a few. So thank you for saving us in our time of need. More pointedly, creating a podcast that appeals to all ages. It's a show. With my thanks, I'd like to teach you a tried and true card game like your podcast only requires that a person be young at heart. It's called pass around the ether, Rag. As you drive down the road, take note of all the car models you pass in front of the model name. Insert any potty word of your choice with middle school boys, and most likely you two as well. Toilet Puke and Poop work marvelously, so we ended up with a few gyms like the Toilet Avalanche, the Puke Avenger, and the Poop Fusion. Many thanks and congratulations on all your success. 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Nostradamus: Predictor of the future? Not so much. | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/nostradamus-predictor-of-the-future-not-so-much | Nostradamus delighted us all in grade school, but it turns out the real guy wasn't quite as prescient as we were led to believe. In truth, he wrote a lot of purposefully confusing riddles that people have twisted into meaning exactly what they want them t | Nostradamus delighted us all in grade school, but it turns out the real guy wasn't quite as prescient as we were led to believe. In truth, he wrote a lot of purposefully confusing riddles that people have twisted into meaning exactly what they want them t | Thu, 22 Jan 2015 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=22, tm_isdst=0) | 36588666 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. I predict this will be the best podcast of the New year. Man, I don't know about that one. I think that prediction is coming true. And the first month when gray filled the sky, the recorders of Gobbledygook hit a high water mark. That's a little on the nose for Nostradamus. Actually. I should have been even more vague. Like way vaguer. Yeah, that was, like, explicit for him. Yeah, because Nostradamus used to like to just basically take concepts and words and put them together and pretend like they were going to happen. Yeah. No stadiums. Snored a little nutmeg. When I was a younger person, I realized, like, from this ESP that I was into some pretty cool occult stuff. Read lots of books about ghosts and things like that to meet you a little bit. And then I was like an older person. I wanted to go to Duke University to study parapsychology. Oh, really? I was into that kind of thing. Wow. And then now as an older person, I'm like, man, some of the things I used to believe just do a face palm here. Like, for example, we got into real science and that's usually what happens. Yes. So the pseudoscience is going to fade away once you start educating yourself. Well, we shouldn't say parapsychology is necessarily a pseudoscience. It's not French. French science. We're here to poopoo Nostradamus, not ESP parapsychology in general. But for instance, I remember not only believing but frequently saying, dude, Nostradamus, he had to be exhumed once, like, at the church he was buried at, they were, like, expanding and they had to exhume his grave, and they opened his casket and he was holding a tablet that had the day they exhumed him. I thought that was real. I thought that really happened when I was a slightly younger man. That's awesome. Yes. When you are in your late 20s, right? Yeah, I remember. I didn't read up on stuff like this, but I was a big fan of, like, Leonard Nemo's in Search of all the TV shows that kind of dabbled in the fringe. And what's wrong with that? Nothing wrong with enjoying that kind of thing, liking it, maybe even wondering if possibly some of it could be real. No, nothing wrong with exploration. Right. But the key to keeping egg off your face as much as possible is to do research, especially when a claim is very extraordinary. Really look into it. Yeah. Like, had I looked around, had the Internet been invented yet, and I looked around and I probably would have found somewhere some interesting, like that is absolutely not true. Well, that's the Internet is one of the big reasons, I think, because before that was around, you'd have to go search out a book that was written by doing Nostradamus in the card catalog, and it was just a lot harder back then. Yeah, but the Internet is a double edged fiber optic line. I mean, there's a lot of sites out there that Nostrils has gotten probably even more popular and even more play since the Internet was invented. Oh, sure. So let's talk about this guy. Let's try to separate the man from the myth and really get into who Nostradamus was, because he was a lot more than a crackpot writer of vague predictions. That's true. One of the tough parts is, though, is that there are so many disagreements about his biography. Even I didn't find that necessarily. Yeah, I saw one guy wrote a book at him that said he wasn't even a doctor. Oh, okay. That is a disagreement. Yeah. Well, let's go ahead and go there then. Okay, so he was supposedly born in no, not true. In France. He was born Michelle de Nasredam. He became Nostridamis because he Latinized his name after he graduated from medical school, which apparently was custom at the time. That's right. But when he was born, he was Michelle Den Nostridam. Yeah. And his family was educated, and they believed in education. So he was from an early age, an academic in a traditional sense. Right. Nothing wacky right out of the gate. Well, his grandfather instructed him when he was a younger man, taught him languages, and kind of sparked his interest in all sorts of different topics and all things learning. Yeah. Do you remember when we did the Inquisition episode where there are a lot of Jewish people who converted, but just converted in name only? Yeah. Apparently Nostradamus family was one of those. Oh, so that wasn't a genuine conversion. Supposedly not. Got you again. It could be myth, it could be whatever, because he was on good terms with the local Inquisition and the local church officials for most of his life. So I guess either they didn't suspect him or he had a pass. I don't know. It's interesting. That makes sense. He studied astrology, which was at the time respected. Well, respected as a science. Yeah. And supposedly his fellow astrologers thought he was full of it. Oh, really? His contemporary astrologer pals? Well, one of the things that he did was he studied, and this would play out throughout his, well, I would say his career as a predictor, but he really just wrote the book, the Centuries Book, which we'll get to. But he studied astronomical patterns that coincided with historical events. That's astrology. Yeah, but he would basically use those to predict the future events. Like, by some accounts, he didn't even say that he was a prophet. He said, I studied history, and basically history repeats itself, and so I'm going to use the stars. And when these things line up pattern wise, in a certain year in the future, this may happen again. Yeah. So that's like real astrology. Yeah, we should do an episode on that. Yeah, I've been thinking about that one for a while. This one? Well, the article we have almost like, spits in the middle. It's so one sided and skeptical. It's just a picture of a big lug. Right, but I looked into it. It's fascinating what they used to believe in, all of the holes you can punch in it, but we should do that sometime. Yeah. I had my chart done one time, like, for real, by my friend's mom, and I remember looking at it and thinking, like, wow, that's a lot like me. It's pretty accurate. And even remove that last part, the amount of thought and effort in what it's based on, in the ancient tradition of it, and everything that in and of itself is fascinating. Yeah, I totally agree. And then you get into it. We're totally doing astrology at some point. So what he was doing with astrology, apparently, where he ran afoul of his fellow astrologers, was to make predictions of how something would come about, rather than the next time Venus is in the 7th house of Mars and a cat catches fire, there's going to be an earthquake. Sure. Something like that. He went further and made predictions about what was going to set us off and where the people involved were going to come from. And then he was very vague. Right. So all of that added to astrologers disdain for him because he gave him a bad name, pretty much. Because they were all right. Exactly. So he left home, supposedly in 1522 to study medicine, legit medicine, and became a physician. Most people agree that he became a professor in a physician in southern France. And apparently he was pretty good doctor at treating plague victims. Yes, he's very ahead of his time. Yeah. Even though he lost his wife and son I'm sorry, his children to the plague and his wife. Yeah. And that had a big effect on his life, obviously. He basically sent him on the road for a decade, which is where he kind of came up with this plan to write this book. So he was a progressive doctor in that, like, he prescribed sanitation practices. Yeah, he prescribed fresh air. He also apparently came up with a rose hip lozenge to help cure plague, mild cases of plague. And that actually makes sense because rose hips are packed with vitamin C. So he was a pretty good doctor, and he had a good record. And from that, he lived in this village with his wife and children and had a patron who basically supported the family. And then once his wife and children died, he couldn't cure them. His star really fell in this village. And about the same time, he also had a pretty good sense of humor. About the same time, they were raising a statue of the Virgin Mary in the local church, and he thought it was the ugliest thing he'd ever seen. And he was making a comment on the artist's abilities, not the Virgin Mary, but he said, these guys are casting demons, like basically saying, that's a really ugly Virgin Mary. Right. Well, the artist didn't like this and turn them into the Inquisition. And that's about the time when he ended up on the road. Yeah. And he went all over Europe, basically. He was described as sort of wandering, but he did meet another woman and get remarried on his wanderings, I think toward the tail end of his wanderings about eight years later, and moved to Salon in France. And then he started kind of getting his act together in a real way to publish, like he said, you know what, I'm going to put together this book of prophecies. I've been messing around, I've been kicking the idea around. I'm just going to do it. So we'll talk about what came out of that right after this. So Chuck Nostradamus is settling down in Salon selective, and he is deciding to put his awesome thoughts down into quadrants that's right. Into a book called the Centuries. But at the time he just called it the Prophecies. Yeah. The prophecies of Michele Nostradamus. I think when did they rename it? I think after his death. Yeah. And apparently The Centuries had nothing to do with time, but it was in the organized structure of the book itself. There are 1000 quadrant, four line versus in hundreds. Yeah. For some reason. So that's the centuries. And it wasn't chronological or anything like that. No. And it became a huge sensation due to a few things. One, simply enough, was that the printing press was a recent invention and books were a big deal now, like widespread books like those. Now something could literally be a best seller for the first time. So it aligned in that way. And another is that he just sort of fit the dark times it was a book for and of its time, with all his dire predictions, when the Catholics and Protestants were warring. And there were all kinds of people saying the end of the world was coming, and it was basically put out right at the right time, and widespread because of the printing press. And then Catherine Demadici of France was a really superstitious queen, and he predicted her husband Henry II death. Yeah. Pretty specifically for once. Yeah, but we'll poke holes in that, too. And it happened a few years later. And so she invited him to the court, which was like the most popular court in Europe at the time. And so he got a lot of attention there. So he was sort of like a big writing superstar of his day because of all these things aligning. Yeah. I mean, he wasn't one of those posthumously honored authors. He was celebrated during his time. Supposedly he met some monks on the road once and correctly said that one of them was going to be the next Pope Bam. No, way case salt nostronomos is the real deal because that supposedly happened. So he had, like, a whole jam going where he would retire in the evenings and he would concentrate on maybe a fire. The flames of fire. Yeah. Meditate on it. Yeah. Or he would take a bowl with some herbs or something in it and just zone out on those. Try to read the herbs. Like you said. I don't know if he was doing lines of nutmeg, but he was ingesting nutmeg, most likely. Yeah. Which could be hallucinogenic. Right. And he had to have been rich to just be doing nutmeg, because they had just discovered that. And he would just kind of zone out. Apparently, he got help from an angelic figure. That's what he says. And then he would just see the future. It would come to him. The thing is, Nostridamus, these prophecies didn't come to him all convoluted and kooky, and however he put them, he understood exactly what was going to happen. Well, he supposedly convoluted them on purpose to avoid persecution during his lifetime. Yes. That is supposedly what he told his son from his second marriage, Cesar. Yeah. Doing all this on purpose because they will string me up as a heretic because I'm so eerily accurate. They will find out which, I mean, at the time, it was a genuine concern. So it's not like this is just a preposterous claim on Nostradamus part. It's just that for skeptics of Nostradamus, it's just one more convenient little thing, because if you read the quadrants, they make almost no sense in all sense simultaneously. Yes. Depending on whether you're reading them on their own or whether you're trying to look at them in context. Well, yeah. Well, we might as well go and talk about that. That's one of the big reasons you can poke holes in it, is because even experts say it's hard to find two copies of this book that are the same. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because it was translated hundreds of times. It was the early printing presses where they weren't super accurate. And if the printer maybe didn't know exactly what he meant, they would say, well, I think he meant to actually have an apostrophe here. And in middle French, that apostrophe could completely change the meaning of the word. Right. So beyond that confusion and the translation confusion, like you said, there are many different ways to interpret something, and if something didn't come true, you could probably find a version out there of it that supports whatever you think he predicted. Right. Yeah. There's a pretty good example that people give of a translation problem after 911, which we'll talk more about in a second. Some quadrant, I guess an assemblage of Nostradamus quadrants were kind of bandied about as proof that he predicted it. Right. Yeah. One of them was that there would be smoke in the new city. Well, in his actual text in the centuries, he wrote villanov via Nove, which means in French, the new city. But it was also a city in France at the time that he was probably talking about. Yeah. So there's a lot of translation and interpretation that can come together and really lead to a misunderstanding, if there is even such a thing at all with Nostradamus. Can you misunderstand them? I don't think it's possible. Can you misunderstand what's not understandable, in other words? Yeah. Well, since we're talking about interpreting, we might as well go onto the famous Hitler prediction. Beasts ferocious with hunger will cross the rivers. The greater part of the battlefield will be against history. Into a cage of iron, iron will the great one be drawn when the child of Germany, germany observes nothing. Man I hope we added some effect to that. Jerry yes. Vocal effects. Yeah, something menacing, maybe. Or maybe we should do, like, clown music. So, history, this has long been looked at as the prediction of the rise of Hitler. Yeah. He says Germany in there. Yeah, it's clearly Germany and history, but history was actually the lower Danube River, and so most people are skeptics would say, well, he didn't say Hitler, he said history, since that was a place that's probably what he meant. Or he would have said Hitler. Yeah, it's kind of a miss right there. Some people say, Well, Hitler was born around the Danube, so he still met Hitler. That's exactly the point, that people will find a way to interpret it if they choose to. But the Nazis still use this to their advantage. They actually dropped pamphlets containing this prediction onto France from planes because they wanted to scare them. Like, hey, even Nostradamus said, we're coming and we're coming. And it worked. I guess it did for a while. So basically, if you're a skeptic of Nostradamus, you say, okay, first of all, he's not really saying anything right, or anything concrete. Right. And a believer of Notre Dame would say, well, he even said that you're not supposed to get it unless you're one of the enlightened few who get it in the future, and I happen to be one of them. It's not for this time. It's for people far from now to understand. Right. And so the skeptic that's arguing will sigh and then say, okay, here's the thing, though. Even if he is saying something like even if there's something clear, he's making a prediction, and it does seem to come true. If you look at events in human history as numbers on a graph, eventually, statistically speaking, one of nostrils, very vague predictions about the rise of a power, a war, sure. An earthquake, something like that is going to happen, and maybe something will have even a couple of predictions that will fit one event. Yeah, like the date might align somehow or something, because every once in a while he used dates, but for the most part, he didn't. But if you look at it statistically, yes. Even Nostradamus predictions are going to come true over a long enough period of time. Right. Again, if you read the predictions, it's hard to say his predictions come true because he's not really predicting anything. It's not like he sat back and said, sometime in the 20th century, a guy with a terrible mustache is going to come to power and there's going to be a horrific war as a result. Nothing even approaching that. I mean, you read what the Hitler prediction was like. It could be anything. Yeah, but even if you have predicted something, if you take his predictions as predictions, if you put them over the arc of time, eventually you're going to get hit. So that's one argument, a skeptical argument against Nostradamus. Yeah. Especially if you believe, like most people do, that history repeats itself in some fashion over a long enough timeline. When he himself said that's the model he used was using the stars to look at past historical events, to predict future events. Right. So it kind of makes sense. And also, some people say these aren't even predictions because the prediction is something that you realize before the fact. And despite the fact that thousands of scholars have studied Nostradamus and millions of people have read him, no one has ever pointed out something before it happened. It's always afterward that they go back and see, look, see here? He said this was going to happen and it happened. Right. Because we interpreted that way. But no one's ever said stopped anything in its tracks because Nostradamus predicted it. That's an excellent point. Yeah. It also raises another argument against Nostradamus in that the people who follow Nostradamus, like you said, the interpretation is always after the fact, and allegations of shoehorning occur where basically you make something fit, you shoehorn it in to the context, and in doing so, you cherry pick stuff that makes sense and you ignore stuff that doesn't make sense. Yeah. In fact, I think this article, this one line says it best imprecise language lends itself well to subjective interpretation. Yeah. I mean, if you throw something super vague out there, you could come up with 100 different interpretations of it. Yup. You know, so what poetry is. Exactly. And, you know, despite all of these very great arguments, there's still plenty of people out there who believe in Nostradamus. It almost seems like there should be a phase in life where you do go through believing that Nostradamus is real, because it does kind of lend some sort of something to life. It also coincides with being really into Pink Floyd. Yeah, it's true. So we'll talk a little more about some of the people who argue for and against Notre Dame specifically centered around 911 right after this. Okay, Chuck, 911 happened and almost immediately people said Nostradamus predicted this. Yeah. His sales went through the roof, apparently, and supposedly his name was Google's more than Usama bin Laden or George Bush after 911. Really? That's what they say. That sounds like something someone just writes on the Internet. Exactly. But I believe it. Well, here's why his star rose again is because this quadrant emerged where it was like yeah, that's pretty close to what happened. Yeah. I remember hearing it and thinking, oh, my gosh. So you want to read this one? You're pretty good at reading. Sure. Can we get the sound effect again, please? Do the clown music. In the city of God, there will be a great thunder. Two brothers torn apart by chaos while the fortress endures. The great leader will succumb. The third big war will begin when the big city is burning. That's super specific. Yeah. The only thing I don't know if most people would agree on is calling New York the City of God or George Bush the great leader. Yeah, but the two brothers, clearly, those are the two towers. The fortress endures, the Pentagon, the great leader, Bush. Yeah. Some people said, and then the third war will begin when the big city is burning. Well, at least one more war. I don't know if it was World War II, but a pretty huge couple of wars started up as a result. So people are saying, here it is, finally, evidence that shows, almost incontrovertibly, that Nostradamus was the real deal. What's the argument against it, Chuck? Well, it was made up. Yeah. Nostradamus didn't write that. No, it was apparently written by several years ago by a guy named Neil Marshall, was a student in Canada and said he was actually using that as a demonstration of what bunk Nostradamus was. Like, I could write something like this and people would think he predicted 911. And somehow it became something that Nostradamus wrote. He actually proved it by writing that in and then getting picked up in 2001. Yeah. So what he set out to do works works like a perfectly. He didn't even have to wait more than four years. So he basically showed just how man, I hate to use this word, but global people can be when they're reading Nostradamus's work because no one checks anything. Dude, they see it and they click on it, and they post it to social media, and then it's done. Here's another really good example of that. A little while ago. This still cracks me up. Click hole. You know, the onions, like, BuzzFeed like site? Oh, is that onion? Yeah. I didn't know that. I believe so. Yeah, I'm almost positive I know. Click hole. Yeah. Okay, so click hole. Satirical site of, like, BuzzFeed charts. They released something called Five Tragedies Weirdly predicted by Adam Sandler. Can I read a couple? Yeah, read all five. In the wake of the 1009 through tragedy, apparently people went back and saw that Adam Sandler, during his early stand up career, would mutter something's coming to Waco. Something dark, like during a stand up show. Is that true. None of this is true. Okay. I thought they just picked apart real things. No. Okay, so the car crash that killed Princess Diana, apparently, if you go back and watch Happy Gilmore, which was made in 1996, sandler looks directly at the camera and says, our queen's eldest, the beautiful flower, will wilt under a Parisian bridge. Can I keep going? Yeah. So the BP oil spill that happened in 2010 and the Gulf, apparently Adam Sandler was on Conan O'Brien in 2005, and he was just wearing a t shirt that said, BP oil spill in five years. The 2010 Haitian earthquake. Yeah. The UN. Estimates that 222,570 people were killed, apparently in Adam Sandler's funny people. He estimated 220,000 on the note. And then lastly, Malaysia airlines flight 370, adam Sandler, when he was operating sketch where he says, I'm missing plane. It's from Malaysia. Makes me insane. This will all make sense in due time. That's good, man. Here's the thing, man. People believe that it went viral. I'm not kidding you. It went viral. That somehow Adam Sandler had made all these crazy predictions, and this is a real thing, because apparently they didn't announce that when clickbait came out that it was a satirical site. That BP oil spell the t shirts pretty good. Well, let's get into some of these, then. First of all, to further the 911 thing, there were a couple of other quadrants which had been cobbled together to try and support the 911 thing. But like I said, they weren't as he wrote them. They would combine things, which is just silly, because that goes against everything that he was saying, was that each quadrant is its own thing. One of them. Century ten, quadrant 72, the year 1999. Seven months from the sky will come the great king of terror to resuscitate the great king of the Mongols. Before and after Mars reigns by. Good luck. That last part sounds like it's from a fortune cookie. That before 911. Back in 99, some people thought he was foretelling the end of the world would be on July 24, 1999. And I remember this happening, and I remember it being a big deal. There was, like, genuine concern from some people. Like, some stores in France had, like, close out sales. There was this one French designer who canceled his big he was a big believer, and he canceled his big show, and of course, it didn't happen. And then it was recalculated, and everyone said, no, this is supposed to be July 24. If you read it this way, it means August 11. And of course, the world didn't end then either. How do you get August 11 from seven months into 1999? Well, again, there were some different translations that maybe were different enough to reconcile, but then that one was also used for 911. Was repurposed for 911. Right. They're like, close. Yeah, exactly. Just a couple of years off. Well, they combine that one with Century Six, quadrant 97, which says, at 45 deg, the sky will burn fire to approach the great new city. In an instant, a great scattered flame will leap up when one will want to demand proof of the Normans. What is that last thing? I'm not sure. That's the thing. Like, you can't just pick part of it and then discount the rest and say that he was wrong on that. But that's exactly what people did. Well, they did because several quatrains referred to an antichrist figure called Mabeth, and if you rearrange the letters, it could be usamb. Yeah. And so people use that as proof, but they failed to mention that previous to that, they used it as Saddam, like up to the day before 911. Yeah, they were saying it was Saddam Hussein was Mavis because Mavis fell backwards as supamm. Kind of a reach, if you ask me. It is. Well, in that 45 deg part of the quadrant, some people said that New York City is around 40 deg, five minutes north latitude, so that's close. But again, he said the new city will burn at 45 Degville Nuevo or Via Nouve is at about 45 deg latitude. It could just be interpretation. I don't know who is really at fault here. Is it Nostradamus? Is it the people who just blindly accept Nostradamus predictions? Is it, though? Because Nostradamus purposefully obfuscated his stuff. So I think he's a little bit responsible for this, too, I imagine, since he has that great sense of humor and made fun of that one guy's statue of the Virgin Mary. He is sitting in his coffin holding a plaque with some future date when he'll be exhumed, just laughing and laughing. Yeah, maybe. We mentioned Henry II. He predicted his death. Miss Quadrane, the young lion will overcome the old one on the field of battle. In single combat, he will put his eyes in a cage of gold. Two fleets, one then to die in a cruel death. So that means two injuries. And this actually happened. King Henry was in a jousting competition, but it wasn't on the field of battle. It was a friendly party, basically. And Captain Montgomery, who was younger, the younger lion, did joust hit him in the eye and through the throat. The two injuries, supposedly from one man? Yeah, but that was all that his wife Dimitici, Queen Dimitichi, needed to know. She was like, Holy crap, this has come true. Yes, and he knows what he's doing. John F. Kennedy. The challenger. The Great Fire of London. People have said that he predicted all these things, but we could sit here all day poking holes. Not that we're poking holes, but other people have poked legitimate holes. I think we poked a few holes. Well, yeah, but I mean, it's all been from other people's stuff. Oh, that's true. I didn't do my own whole poking. No, we should probably say we never begrudge anybody. That believing in something like that or enjoying, like, I don't think it hurts anything seriously behind it or anything like that. Yes. You go out and dump all your stocks and sell your worldly possessions or you cancel your big fashion debut. Yeah. That's all. It just hurts you. Yeah. Although that may have hurt the fashion world. Yeah. He probably had it the week after. You want to hear something crazy? Yeah. About the day before September 11, this group called the Coup. They're a rap group out of Oakland. They're pretty awesome. They were releasing their album, I want to say, like, Party Time or Party Fever party something, and, like, the day before, and it had the guy, Boots Riley, who was like the MC for the group, it had him standing there pressing a button, and the twin towers were coming down, like, blowing up. Oh, wow. They were going to release it, like, the day before it was scheduled to release in September of 2001, and then 911 happened. They're like, well, let's change the cover. And that's why you've never heard of the Coup. I wonder. Actually, they were getting kind of big right around that time. The album had, like, good buzz around it and then they just went away. They're still around, though. Well, all the entertainment that was released around that time notoriously suffered. Yeah. I can't remember what movies in particular, but yeah, exactly. There are a lot of things later on that people are like, well, we released it right before 911, so we were doomed. But it was a movie. Who cares? So if you want to know more about nostradamus, you can go look this up on housetoforce.com by scanning the search bar or you can just kind of look around the internet, because there is plenty of stuff about that dude on there. And enjoy yourself. And since I said enjoy yourself, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this trailer builder. Hey, guys. Chuck and Josh or Josh and Chuck, whichever you prefer. Josh and Chuck. I think it goes either way. Yeah. Well, that's what we kind of settled on. Consistent branding. No, it goes both ways. We go both ways. Yeah. All right. Chuck and Josh. Josh and Chuck. Hey, guys. I must admit that I tried very hard not to listen to you. I was told by several of my friends that I absolutely must subscribe to your show. However, as a stay at home dad by day to a beautiful three year old and three month old boys, a very busy small business owner by night had trouble finding enough time to go poop, let alone indulge in any form of entertainment, needless to say, I did listen and wonder and became instantly addicted. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed learning. The two months since I first gave you guys a shot have been on a steady binge, and I'm quickly running out of back episodes to listen to, which is a frightening prospect to me, considering your podcast as a fuel that powers my motivation engine. While I work, my brother and I own and operate Oregon Trailer, that's trail apostrophe r, where the two of us build high end, tiny, teardrop style camp trailers. Nice. Have you ever seen those? Yeah. Really cool. I want one of these. I found that while my hands are on autopilot building trailers, my brain has been totally neglected listening to my requisite Pandora stations. But now that I'm listening to you fellows and receiving constant brain stimulation and getting more done than ever and enjoying every second, my wife and sons thank you as well. As my general mood has improved despite the potentially unhealthy lack of sleep, however, my lovely wife is still getting a little tired of the phrase. So I was listening to Stuff you should know last night. So I would just want to say thanks for everything you guys do have done and will do in the future, large amounts of platonic love that is Soya Christensen. And I'm going to plug Oregon trailer.net just because these things are really cool. Yeah. Oregon Trailapostrophe. No, on the website. It's trailer. Okay. Oregon. Trawler. Net. Good point. And if you're in the market for one of those, check them out. Small business handmade. Yeah, send me one. Send Josh one. That'd be sweet. Yeah, they're pretty neat. Thanks a lot. Sawyer Christensen. Great name, by the way. And we appreciate the kudos. And if you out there, everybody else who isn't Sawyer Christensen wants to get in touch with us. To say anything at all, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffycheannel. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at how stuffworks.com and join us at our home on the web, stuffyournow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com." | ||
43224bdc-53a3-11e8-bdec-4b39e50427b0 | Mardi Gras! One month late | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/mardi-gras-one-month-late | In true SYSK fashion, Josh and Chuck are late to the game. But never fear, they will still detail Mardi Gras in all its colorful glory. | In true SYSK fashion, Josh and Chuck are late to the game. But never fear, they will still detail Mardi Gras in all its colorful glory. | Thu, 05 Mar 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=65, tm_isdst=0) | 44640626 | 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. 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 Hooza. Whether you're sworn to Team Kim or you just want a good old fashioned mysterious murder, there's a place that has it all. From Atlanta to only murders in the building, it's all on Hulu. So check into your obsessions. Hulu subscription is required. Terms apply. Visit Hulucom for plan details. Hello people in Vancouver and Portland. We're coming to see you in March. Okay. Did I step on you? No. I stepped on you, I think. Man all right. Well, this is as clunky as we usually are. We are going to be coming to those two fair cities that I learned don't have direct flights yesterday. And I can't wait regardless. So we're going to be in Vancouver on Sunday, March 29, at the Chant Center. That's right. We're kicking it up a notch there. So we need your support. Yeah, for real. And then the next day, we're really kicking it up a notch, maybe two. In Portland. We're going to be at the Schnitzer Concert Hall on Monday, March 30. That's right. And we need your support there to Portland, because, again, these are bigger venues. We're giving it a whirl. Don't put egg on our faces, for God's sake. Yeah. So you can get all sorts of information. You can buy tickets, everything you need. Just go to Syssklive.com and we'll see you in March. 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 brian over there. There's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know the super topical, timely edition Because, Chuck, this episode is about Mardi Gras, and we're recording it on Mardi Gras. Right. Which, in true stuff you should know fashion. It will come out a month after. What we need to do is do this a month before. Right. So it comes out on that Tuesday. Well, that would be like the Daily or something. Not stuff you should know. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I've been going around the office showing everyone my boobs all day. I'm all beat. I was wondering why you had all those bees. Now I understand. Yeah. I think we should apologize in advance to the people of New Orleans because when it comes to something this specific, we always just get killed, right? Yeah. It's so personal to so many people, for sure. And we are going to mess up so much. They're going to be like, you didn't mention my crew. Right? Yeah. I've been to New Orleans twice for the shows that we've done there. It was not around Mardi Gras. I read a bunch about it. So now I understand New Orleans Mardi Gras better than ever. But I also learned that it's one of those things where it's kind of like researching humor, where you can understand the mechanism behind humor and you can explain humor, but it doesn't quite capture it fully. That's what we're going to do here. This one will stink, right? No, it won't. It'll be fine. I've never been to Mardi Gras either, and, I mean, I just have no interest at all, mainly because of seeing a lot of cops Mardi Gras New Orleans episodes. Oh, yeah. It's not for me, but I love New Orleans, and you can find the most hospitable people on the planet there at any time of year. Right. And they won't get mad at us. That's what's so great about them. We're going to mess up a lot and they'll be like, yeah, it's all right. Yeah. Don't worry about it, guys. They'll kill us, but they won't get mad at it. You know what I mean? Maybe. Also, I want to shout out our friend doughery sachery. Oh, sure. I practiced it. Chuck. It's a tough name. Who was at our New Orleans show and brought us up what were they called? Buddhin balls buddha. Yes. They were so good. But Doug is a great guy with or without the gift of boodon. Yeah. Boy, that guy is like a friend to the world. He invited us again. So saturday, if that name sounds familiar. The Tony Sasha seasoning. That's an heir to the throne. He's one of the sassery kids. Yeah. Grandkids, maybe. And he has invited us to their company, Boyle, again this April. He has for the last few years. We're going to get to that one of these days. We will. Just a great larger than life guy, like, doesn't know a stranger because we met him once and it felt like he was the best friend. Yeah. He was hanging out with us backstage. He was like, hey, this guy reminds me of the time I was hanging out backstage with metallica three stooges. Yes. They were great. Just like that. Awesome, man. What a good dude. Anyway, hey, Doug. So let's get it started. Charles. Yes. Mardi Gras A-K-A and is it pronounced carnival or does it have to have an e on the end? I think it's carnival and I think it's carnival. Because it actually comes from the Latin words carna or carnavale lee, which means farewell to the flesh. Meat volleyball. That's better interpretation. It's wrong, but I like it. Is that farewell to the flesh? Is that what it means? Yes. Not to be confused with Candy Man. Two, farewell to the flesh. It just means farewell to the flesh. Carney Ball and Mardi Gras begin in January. And like we said, today is Fat Tuesday. So everything has been going on in New Orleans and other places. But we're talking about the New Orleans Mardi Gras, right? Not Mobile, Alabama. I'm sorry. No, I know that you were the OGS, but apparently right, yeah. I was going to say they had the first one by a mile from this, like, I think 15 years before New Orleans was even founded. Yeah. And our very own I mean, there are various neighborhoods around the world that do stuff like this. Kirkwood in Atlanta, for some reason, has a little New Orleans things. Is that right? And every year they do a little Mardi Gras parade and paint the signs purple and gold and green and I don't know why. Maybe there's just some people from New Orleans who showed up. That'd be my guess. Yeah, that happened to post Katrina. We got a lot of people that moved here. Yeah, that's right. I wonder if that does have to do with it. Maybe, but it does seem like the history of Mardi Gras and the different influences from Mardi Gras kind of have converged in New Orleans. It's like, yes, give us this. We'll take this tradition. Yes, give us that. And now everybody thinks when you think Mardi Gras, you think New Orleans. But one thing that I don't think this article really pointed out very well is Mardi Gras is a day that's one part of carnival. Or carnival, yes. The culmination of a couple of weeks of partying and parading and masquerade balling and well, we'll just see a lot of fun stuff. Right. So, like, if you go to Rio for carnival, it's the exact same festival celebrated differently in Brazil, but the same thing they're celebrating the same thing as they're celebrating throughout the Mardi Gras season in New Orleans. That's right. Or in Kirkwood. I bet Brazil would be pretty fun. I can't imagine with all those ugly men and women that live there dressed in drab, like, baggy clothing. Oh, man, that's my favorite part of the World Cup, is just seeing people in the crowd from Brazil. Sure. All the models. The average person is a supermodel. That's what it says on the tourist website. That's right. And Fat Tuesday, of course, is the day before Ash Wednesday, which is tomorrow and the beginning of Lent. I grew up Baptist, as everyone knows, and so I'd never had to you never got the charcoal on your forehead? No. And in fact, in the south, in the there were so few Catholics that they'd throw stones at you if you had the chart on. Well, I didn't even know what it was, really. I think I remember being in college and being like, you got something on your head. I don't remember what the ash is for. I'm sure 1.3 billion Catholics will write in to tell us, but it's the start of lant, like you said, which is a period of fasting before Easter. Right. It's a very holy period for the Roman Catholic Church. Yeah. And I think the original idea was the partying is, hey, let's indulge before we have to not indulge right on, like, foods and stuff. I don't think it was like, let's all get super hammered. Well, I don't know. Maybe so prior to that, even it has roots in paganism. Even before the Roman Catholic. Every holiday we celebrate is based on paganism and then syncretized by the Roman Catholic Church. That's right. But the pagan roots of it were more pragmatic or practical, where you had stuff that was like the last of the harvest from the summer before the fall before, and it was starting to get kind of starting to turn and spoil, and you needed to eat it before that time. So it was this period of using up everything in the house that was about to turn bad. Eat all these eggs, and, like, you would do that. It was called grab boof, I believe, or boof raw. No, grab boo, which means fat cow. Or fat fat beef. Okay. And it was the idea that the beef had been fattened just to perfection, and they weren't going to get any fatter, and maybe they wouldn't even make it any further. And you just slaughter them and eat them, or you just eat all the stuff in your house. Maybe it wouldn't make any further. Like a cow is about to die. It's like, It's so fat, it's about to die. Let's eat it. So they think there's evidence, at least, that there was Mardi Gras celebrating going on maybe as early as the 18th century. Definitely. From what I saw, there was a French explorer named Pierre LeMoy Sierra de Baile. I think you really got it. Yeah. Especially if you crunch it together and speed it up. I can't do that. I think you really nailed it. And he was exploring around and camping out about 50 miles south of what is now in New Orleans, and he's like, hey, I know that they're celebrating in France right now. Right. So I am going to Chris and the site point dumardi Gras. And like we said, though, the real Mardi Gras celebration kind of started in Ernest in Mobile, Alabama, though, right? Yeah. So he named the thing I don't know if he actually celebrated Mardi Gras, but he named that little area he named that area Ponte Mardi Gras. So that was 1699, apparently. Four years later in Mobile, before it was even a town, they celebrated they had their first Mardi Gras party or whatever, a ball or something like that. The Fort. And then New Orleans was incorporated, founded in 1718, and they started having Mardi Gras parties, like, shortly after that. So it was all very close to the beginning of the 18th century. Everybody started having Mardi Crawl, and it was, like, directly from the French influence in the area. And if you look into the early 1800s, like the 1820s and into the 1830s, this is when you start seeing a little bit more of what we're talking about as far as carriages that are decorated people parading in masks, walking on foot probably at this point, or in carriages. It was largely spontaneous, though. Sure. There'd just be people partying on the street wearing masks. Let's walk that way. Yeah. And they did. And then other people walk that way, too. And all of a sudden you had a parade. That's right. But the thing is, this revelry on the streets because everybody was indulging in the point was not just indulge, but we're, like, really over indulge. This wasn't just your average village party. Everybody was getting trashed even back then. And so people were getting in fights, and people were it was cops beating up each other, and horses were kicking people right off of their feet. All sorts of crazy stuff was happening. Yeah. Cops, New Orleans. And so the city leaders were like, we're not going to do this anymore. This is out of hand. And in 1857, I believe yeah. A group of actually, from what I saw, transplants for mobile who were members of a group called the Cowbellion Direction Society. Okay, more cowbell. Sure. They said, hey, how about this? We'll actually organize a legit parade, and it'll be much more orderly. There won't be this chaos. And they formed the Mystic Crew of Comas or Kamu. Yeah. So there's a lot of KS in place of C's. Mystic has a K, but it doesn't look scary like we talked about, right. Does it to you? Well, not mystic crew, but it depends on what follows mystic, because it could look creepy to me. Okay. But Krew is spelled with Akrewe, and we should go ahead and talk a little bit about what a crew is. Yeah, I agree. It's a group of people who get together, and technically, they are like legit nonprofits, and they get larger, at least. Yeah. There's charity organizations. They're supposed to be. Yeah. And they are sort of the group of people who would get together and say, all right, this is our gang, and we're going to gang in a good way, and we're going to make a float and do this theme this year and all get together and get super drunk. Probably all of them. I bet you there's a non drinking crew. Like, one got to be there has to be at least one crew. Right. But they were anonymous originally. Like, they were secret groups that were out and proud in public, but they wore masks and their identity really was anonymous. Like you were an anonymous member of this group. That's right. Over time. Now, people like the Anonymity is not quite as important. It is to some, though. I think sometimes they take it serious. They do still. Yeah. I don't know, maybe you can get kicked out. It might be more of a light hearted thing, but I think generally they try and still respect the masks on approach. Sure, okay. All right. But I mean, if you told somebody like, I'm a member of the crew of Rex or something like that, they're not going to kick you out. It's taking your mask off during the parade, specifically. I think so, yeah. We'll hear about it if we got that wrong. We definitely will. They grew from these little tiny societies into very large groups, well funded almost across the board, because they're supported by dues and they put on parades and balls, masquerade balls, on the night of Mardi Gras. And some of them are just really enormous, have, like, big name celebrities and huge bands that play. Yeah. They'll nominate a person to be, like, the leader or the king or queen each year. They could say, Josh Clark, we want you to come down. They could, and be the king of our crew this year. Right. And that's how it started back in not 1857, I think it was 1872 that the first king of a crew was nominated. Right. But 1857 was when the Mystic Crew of Comas had what's now looked at the first kind of modern Mardi Gras parade. And aside from a few years, were like world wars, interrupted things. They've kind of been doing this every year since then. Yeah, there's another so 1857 was a big year. 1872 that I mentioned was another big year, because that year the traditional Mardi Gras colors were added, I believe. Yeah. By the crew of Rex. And there's a lot of misunderstandings, supposedly. So that year, the crew of Rex named as their king or the leader, I can't remember which one. He was the Russian Grand Duke Alexi, who was from the House of Romanoff, and they said, well, these colors came from the House of Romanoff, the gold, the green and the purple that we all associate with Mardi Gras. That's just absolutely not true. The House of Romanoff has, like, red, yellow and blue, I believe are their colors. But that's just the legend that came about. But some other stuff happened that year, like the idea of electing a king through your Mardi Gras parade throwing beads for the first time happened that year. Yeah, the song. Yeah, the song. What is it? If I ever cease to love that's not how it goes. I was going to say I've never heard it, actually. I bet you if we played it, you might recognize it. So the colors, though, purple stands for justice, green for faith, and gold for power. Supposedly all just made up out of whole cloth. Yes. And the idea with the beads was supposedly originally that you would toss these to people who thought exemplified these traits. I'm not sure how accurate that is either. Now, it is, of course, morphed into another tradition, which I don't even know if that's still going on. Hey, Mr. Throw me something. Mr. Throw me something. Mr. Throw me some combination of those words. Well, I'll show you something and you throw me something. Oh, that's different. So I think it went from, you look like you're involved in justice. Here's some beads, to there's a traditional call, I think. Mr. Throw me something. Okay. And then I think it morphed into the booze thing you just said that literally quieter. But I don't even know, with all the advancements we've made in the past few years, if people are doing that anymore. I would like to know about that, because I'm not going to go down to Mardi Gras. I'll come to New Orleans, not Jazz Fest and not Mardi Gras. Yeah. And I'll have a blast. Sure. But I'm not going to go to those things. When we were there we were there last October, I think, so. Yeah. And there was candy in the streets. And I'm like, there's no way this is left over for Margaret Gras. Did there's parades all the time? That's what I was wondering. Yes. Do they just do it all the time? Every time I've been there have been parties and parades. It seems like one of those towns where they're always getting down. Right. Throw in candy. Should we? Well, I guess we should just say quickly before we break, if you're going to go, we're not discouraging you go, but plan in advance. Because it's not the kind of thing where on the week before you can be like, hey, dudes, let's go, man. I think you can go under those auspices, for sure, but you'll be sleeping in the van. Totally different kind of experience than if you, like, book a hotel. You're in advance. Yeah. You won't get a hotel. You won't be able to eat at Emeralds or anything like that unless you plan, like, far, far in advance. Right. You could storm Emeralds. Sure. Which people who sleep in vans and talk like you just did. All right, so let's take a break, and we'll talk more about Mardi Gras. It's 2022. When things look different, like doctors visits, for example. Sometimes you don't have to go into a doctor's office to be treated for nonemergency situations, like a sinus, infection or allergy. And that's why 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 teladoc. 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. For JDPower 2021 award information, visit JDPower. comAWARDS. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but we're pretty excited about Summer. I mean, what's not to like? School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's right. And that's where True crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. Yeah. And with so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. Prepare to go deep and become your own detective in the world of serial crimes and unsolved mysteries. Get lost hearing spooky stories with a combination of detailed research and lighthearted analysis. Whether you're a lifetime fan of true crime or you just feel like being entertained while doing the dishes at night, there's a podcast out there for you. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. All right, so if you are the city of New Orleans, you love Mardi Gras because it brings in a ton of money every year. Yeah. Like a half a billion dollars. I couldn't believe that, man. A half a billion dollars. So much a year. Yeah, not since it started a couple of hundred years ago. But every year about half a billion dollars in revenue. Yeah. And this is something I thought was super cool. There's no corporate sponsorship. There can be. Oh, really? But it's not like I don't want to interrupt you. Go ahead. Well, it's not like there's one Mardi Gras committee and that is sponsored by X Car brand, and there's a president of Mardi Gras. Right. Like it's all patchworks of crews and neighborhoods and people. Yeah. And all of them operate autonomously. Yes. Basically, what the city does is say, we can have X number of parades this year. These are the routes. Get a permit if you want to do it. Everything else is up to you. But like, a local crew could be sponsored by Chico's Bail Bondsman. Yeah, basically. Yeah. Okay. Man, that was a great deep cut right there. But it's customary not to, right? If you do that again, you're operating autonomously, so nobody can tell you not to. But it's just kind of looked down upon. But some do. I saw somebody sponsored by Bud Light and I could not find it. Oh, really? So it gets that big? Yes. The crew of Endomond E-N-D-Y-M-O-N. Okay. Who knows how to pronounce half of these? I'm sorry. I'm sure we're butchering it. I need to have my word. Butcher apron on. But the crew of Endemon, I'm pretty sure I got it there's usually ends their parade usually ends in the Super Dome with Budman basically in the Superdome. They'll have, like, a huge concert this year. I think the Superdome is under construction, so they're ending it somewhere else. But like Sticks is playing. Train is playing. There's like, five bands. Wow. Sticks, dude. Sure. I would walk however long to go see Sticks. Sticks without Dennis de Young. But that's oh, really? Is he dead? No, he just doesn't they broke up and Stickers went on without their lead singer. I don't know, man. I think the crew of Endemon got enough cash to bring them back. You're going to be cool. As if Endemon had Sticks and the mystic crew had Dennis De Young on the other side of town. Right. You got to choose your allegiance. Yeah. I don't want to hear Mr. Roboto or too Much Time on my hands. I think Tommy Shaw sang that. Okay, so when did that start? Tommy Shaw era? Well, no, he's always been around, but there was the lead singer, and then Tommy Shaw played guitar and sang a few other songs. Okay. And then he took over. When Dennis de Young left. Sure. Okay. What do you do when the Dennis de Young vacuum opens up? I don't know. If you step in there, you could also fill it with Sammy Hagar. Oh, man. I was listening to some band hagar this weekend. Good stuff, because that's what Emily loves. It was great. Big shout out to Aaron Hagar. Yeah. This is the shout out app, huh? I guess so. I don't remember how we got on that, but oh, yeah. So, yes, some of these sponsorship should be so big. The Super Cruise specifically. We'll talk a little more about that. But the Super Cruise are like these big giant ones that are just tradition that have hundreds of members in their parade. One of them, I think Endemont, has one float that's like 360ft long. Wow. There's like 3200 floaters in their parade. Amazing. Just a ton of people they throw out, like, I think 15 million throws things that they throw out everything from beads to balloons and all that. 15 million in a parade. So, yeah, these things can get, like, Bud Light corporate sponsorship level. Amazing. Yeah, it is an integrated parade now and series of parades now. Obviously pre integration. There were communities, African American communities in New Orleans that got together their own jam, which I bet was quite a party. The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club Incorporated is one, said Cruz, although I did see that there are some white people in that crew now. Oh, did it integrate? That's cool. I think so, because there was some controversy. They dress up in, I think, traditional African garb. And they well, they wear grass skirts. Well, they wear blackface, too, which I saw a couple of years ago. There was a call to stop the blackface, even though they're African American, and they said but there were some white members doing it, too. And they said, because of the minstrel roots, which I totally want to do one on minstrel shows, to not do it anymore, other people say no. It's more rooted in, like, the mask tradition for us. So I'm not sure if they're still doing that or not as of 2020. Well, I was reading on their website about their history. This is not the first time they were kind of protested by African Americans in the 60s. Yeah, I saw that, too. There was a big push against them, and their membership dwindled down to, I think, 16 people because it was just so unpopular, what they were doing. I think Louie Armstrong wore blackface one year as their oh, really? King so the Social Aid and Pleasure Club the Social aid part is that that group started out back in the day where and it wasn't just African Americans. But I could definitely see during the Jim Crow era where African Americans needed to do this. They would all chip in. Like. Membership dues. And then when they fell ill. That larger pot of money would take care of them. Basically. Like insurance is supposed to work. Right. But that's where the Social League came from. But they still are a charity organization. Interesting. And Dougie Fresh is playing at their ball today. Oh, really? If you had a chance to see Sticks or Dougie Fresh. Don't make me choose Ma'am or Dennis too young. Don't make me choose, Doug. E. Fresh would be pretty cool. I know of Dougie Fresh, but I'm not hip to those jams. You don't have to be hip to know Dougie Fresh. Well, I mean I mean, I don't know them, I guess. What? I mean, I know I'm not hip already. A second ago, I think you said balloons instead of doubloons. No, I didn't. I think so. Balloons. Oh, yeah. Wow. Wait, we need to fast forward. So doubloons. We've reached a new low here in year twelve. They are aluminum. They are little coin like objects or aluminum. Sure. And they have the Crews and Sydney on one side, and then whatever their theme is on the other, they toss these out at people. There's a lot of tossing. Yeah. And actually, those things, the balloons fall under the larger umbrella of throws. That's balloons. I said to balloons. This right here. Okay, man, you got my head chuck. Yeah, those are throws. Throws. Or anything that is thrown from afloat. And usually it's a very inexpensive souvenir beads, very customary. Sure. Those doubloons are a little more sought after, I think, if it has the group's insignia. And then on the other side of the theme. That year. Sure. It's definitely considered a collectible and not just generic ones, I guess. I think so. Okay. And then other people's throws are like other cruise throws are really sought after. Like the Zulu's throws are coconuts. Oh, wow. Like real coconuts? I think they were at one point. I'm not sure if they know everybody, but I read this Chow Hound article about throws, and they were saying, like, the Zulu don't throw coconuts anymore because of legal reasons. Well, it's funny. There's a lot of stuff in here. You might as well talk about the king cakes. Sure. And the chokable that they would put inside of the king cake. If you've never had a king cake, it is a big sugared cake. It's oval with a hole in the middle. It's like a Danish. Yeah, but it's a Danish just like slathered in sugar. Purple, green, and gold. Right. And very rich and sugary. And the tradition, of course, to put the little plastic baby Jesus, or represented baby Jesus initially, I guess it's a naked baby. Sure. No swaddling clothes. No, that started what was the guy's name? It's a Donald entrance. Who started that in the 40s? Yeah, the so it's not like a 100 year old tradition. Yeah. And it actually didn't survive terribly long because at some point in time in the not too distant past, bakers started to say, we don't want to get sued either. The Zulu's are onto something. We're going to stop baking the little plastic baby dolls into this cake. Yeah. That just seems insane because people could choke on them. Yeah. So now it comes in like a little pack, like a little cellophane pack right. That says stick in at your own wrist. Right. And then I guess you stick it in and then lick your hand and smooth the icing back over to cover up that part. So I'm trying to figure out the first time we went to New Orleans, I think it was around Mardi Gras. Unless they have another big King cake celebration, which they might they don't. This is it. They do not. King Cake season actually runs from Kings Day, which is January 6, which is the day that officially kicks off Mardi Gras season in New Orleans. Until Ash Wednesday, you're not supposed to be able to get a King cake outside of that. So, you know, it may not have been for a tour, because I did take another trip down there with our friends Gus and Matt and their son. I can't remember if that was the same trip or not. So I'm getting a mom mixed up. But whenever we were down there, our friends Migs and Jackie who lived there, took us on, like, a neighborhood King cake. That traveling party, I think that was for our show because those people I think you're talking about came backstage that first show. Meghan jackie definitely did. Okay. And then I specifically remember walking under a scaffolding, bleacher, painted green. Okay, maybe even purple. And it was along the street. It must have been either before or after something. But it was during the season. So I guess ultimately what I'm saying is the first time must have been around then. Yeah. If you put both of our recollections together, it forms a cohesive. And I'm not the first person to have various New Orleans trips kind of blur together in my head, but all I know is that King Cake thing was I felt like strangers, literal strangers, were just like, come on in, and giving you kink. Yes. And every other kind of great food. Sweet. Yeah, they do have pretty good food down there. So we're just knocking the traditions out, aren't we? What else should we talk about? The parades. Yes. There's a lot of parades. 50, 60, 70, 80 parades. I think this year accounted 79. 79. That's the level of commitment you're getting out of josh Clark is hand counting the number of parades from the parade schedule, the twelve days leading up to Mardi Gras. Those final twelve days are when no, that's carnival. I don't know why this article was so averse to saying it. Yes, that is weird. It kept saying anything but just calling it carnival. Well, no, but it leads up to the day of Mardi Gras. Right? Yeah. Mardi Gras one day of carnival, which is what I said. Carnival is the twelve days leading up to Mardi Gras. Right. Including Mardi Gras. That's right. Okay, but those are concentrated in the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and Saul Tamoney. Is that how it's pronounced? Probably, but there are preseason parades, like it has eked out longer and longer over the years, is the impression I get. Yeah, just the same that King Cakes become available January 6. That same day. Kings day. There's a couple of parades that typically a couple of parades, or at least events that typically kick off this whole season, even though carnival doesn't start until the second Friday before Fat Tuesday. Just chew on it. It's all there. The actual Mardi Gras season kicks off on January 6. That's right. Chew on that naked baby made of plastic. Right. And because we should also we haven't said this one more thing about dates and calendars. It's a lot of fun because the lenton season can change because Easter is not on one fixed day. It has to do with the moon or like rabbit reproduction or something like that, that Mardi Gras can actually fall anywhere between February 3 and March 9. That's a big, long stretch that it could fall on. But it has to do with when Easter comes, because Mardi Gras 40 days plus six before Easter. That's right. Those six Sundays. Right. We should have a sideshow called calendar talking. We should. It would be great. We just launched a spin off. Just like too close for comfort. That's right, too close. For comfort. Right. We heard back from a few people on that. So it's not a spin off of anything, right? No, I don't think so. These crews have themes every year, and they can range. Sometimes it's about a legend or a famous story, sometimes it's a kid's story, sometimes something from literature, mythology. I think about half of these crews have names that are Greek or Roman in origin. Right? Yeah. Well, I think it's kind of a nod to these pagan roots. Sure. And it also includes Egyptian stuff, too. And I saw that the whole idea of wearing masks and like, masquerade balls and all that actually traces its roots back to ancient Egypt. So it's really interesting. Like, this stuff kind of traveled from ancient Egypt to ancient, I guess, Greece, and then Rome, and then medieval Europe, and then over to the New World, and then interesting that it's not like it's just been one unbroken chain, but it's connected enough that the current crews name themselves after Osiris or ISIS. ISIS the deity. They're not down with the terrorist organization. Yeah, ISIL. Right there's at least that awareness that this is rooted this whole tradition is rooted in history that far back. I think that's really cool. Yeah, that's cool. All brought to you by Bud Light. And show me your boobs. Should we take a break? Sure. All right, let's take a break and we'll talk a little bit more about supercruise right after this. It's 2022 and things look different. Like doctors visits, for example. Sometimes you don't have to go into a doctor's office to be treated for nonemergency situations, like a sinus, infection or allergy. And that's why 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 Teled Doc is ranked number one by JD Power and Telehealth satisfaction with direct to consumer providers. Teladoc is available through most major health plans and many employers. But even if you're not covered by insurance, everyone has access to use teletoc. That's right. If you want to check it out, download the app today or visit teladoc. comStuff to register or schedule a visit today. That's Teladoc.com stuff. For JD Power 2021 award information, visit JDPower. comAWARDS 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. Yes, 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 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. What's a super crew? Josh well, a super crew, the best crew. So typically there's a couple of qualifiers. One, they're usually very well funded, large membership, and their parades will occur within the last few days before and including Mardi Gras. Yeah. And these are the ones, like you were saying, that have some of them 300 foot long floats or like 100 floats in their crew. These are the ones that get the celebrities in that convertible at the front. Yeah. And just like having corporate sponsorship, it was customary to not have outsiders as like, the king of your parade. I would think so. And then it was the crew of Bacchus that was the first to kind of break from that tradition back in 1969. Danny K, the famous wig designer. What does that mean? I don't even know, really. Okay. I thought there was some serious injury that I was no, okay. Just random. Yeah. Got you. But no, he was a famous musical actor, right? Yeah. And wig design. Sure. And the parade format is basically where the captain I think we're calling them leaders. They can be called leaders, too. A crew leader. They are the head of the procession. They're usually on a float that is or they could be on horseback. Yeah. Or in that convertible like we were talking about. And then it is followed in succession by officers, kings, queens. Sometimes you got maids and dukes and everyone's just having a good old time. Right. And so you said something about the themes, right? Yes. So each parade and processions theme, like you said, there's no overall theme to Mardi Gras. Right. But there's a theme for each and every parade and the crew selected every year. And their floats are going to reflect that. But what's funny is they're very frequently like children's literature, mythology, historical stuff or stuff that everybody knows, like almost bland. And the reason that I kind of drew from the subtext of this article is there's a finite number of floats that you can rent in New Orleans for your parade. Yeah. And a lot of them have things like Little Bo Peep on them. Right. Because some of these are rented and not built. A lot of them are on hold cloth. Typically, it's just the super crew that has the money and the manpower to build a float from scratch every year. And so the super crews will have way varying themes. It's like a smaller crew will have a theme where they can cobble together some rented floats to make a cohesive theme. Yeah. They're like, what have you got left? Too close for comfort. Right. The Jim j. Bullock float for that year. The zulu did the Seinfeld theme. That was right. But I think that the floats available have to do with the theme because interesting, there's a finite pool and there's a lot of them, though. Yeah. So much so that I think St. Charles Parish or St. Orleans Parish, one of the two, has an ordinance that the same float can't go through the business district in more than two parades during one Mardi Gras season. Right. So let's say you have a pre parade with Little Bo Peep. You can't go back out as Little Bo Peep. You can one more time. Oh, you can only do it two more. So they give you two. Yeah. The same float can't be used more than twice in one Martin season through the central business district, but there are four different parishes putting on Mardi Gras. So technically, that same float could see a pretty decent amount that's just in each parish, just in either Orleans or St. Charles Parish. I can't remember. So Little Bo Peep could be seeing lots of action, right. Like eight potential conceivably. Sure. Yeah. All right. But I think that's pretty interesting. It really kind of reveals how seriously they take their Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans. There are local laws saying how many times a float can be used because they want to keep it fresh and interesting. That's right. Yeah. So the other thing, too, when they're selecting these leaders or the royalty, it says sometimes it's just random draws for the king and queen. I would think a lot more thought would go into it than that, but I don't know, maybe some of them do pick randomly. Not if it's coming from your membership. Well, that makes it fair, I guess. Right. Because then you can't jockey for position. Right. But you can also invite celebrities. Other times, you actually will pay for the privilege to be the king or the queen or a duke or a maid. Sure. In the court, I didn't see how much you would pay, but yeah, I was very curious about that. That's pretty rich. Sure. Like, we pick you. Congratulations. Give us some money. Where's my $2? So the costumes and the masks are obviously a big, big part of this. That's where a lot of money is generated. Costume rental and making original costumes. It is tradition, like we said, to leave on your mask. But they're way more flexible about it now than they used to be, I think. Yes. But Bacchus and Rex, I believe you can lose your membership if you take your mask off during their Mardi Gras parade. I'll have you killed. You will. Right there in the street, just ruined more than one Mardi Gras. Yeah, but apparently the mask part of it is so ingrained, it's such an ancient part of this. It goes way back in time that it's still just totally widespread today, not just among people in the parade, but among people watching the parade, too. Yes. And this article says you might feel weird actually not having a mask on. Right. But street vendors have you covered. You can just buy one from one of them. Of course you can. Yes. There's plastic garbage everywhere to buy and throw. Right. You used to sell it, didn't you? Oh, I sold the glow noodles. I love those. Man. Can we talk about Moon Pies? Sure. So this makes a lot of sense as a throw to take the place of something that could really hurt somebody. Because the traditional throw in New Orleans, a sweet treat, used to be Cracker Jacks boxes. Right. Which are very tiny box. If you throw that from ten or 12ft away down onto someone, one of those corners can hit you in the face. And that's no fun. No. So the tradition of throwing the Moon Pie, which if you don't know what a Moon Pie is, you're missing out. It is a Southern what's going to call it? Delicacy. But that might be stretching. You get them at gas station, so it really isn't. But there are two graham cracker cookies, soft ones with marshmallow filling in between, dipped in chocolate. It's kind of like a portable s'more that's room temperature cold and soft. Yeah. Like it's not a hard gram. Right. It's like soft and crumbly. Yeah. I haven't had one in years and years, but I'm from the south, so I've had a Moon Pie or two in my day. Yeah? Yuumi. Went on this little kick a few years back where she was like, what is this? And Tribune, there's a gas station, let's stop and get a Moon Pie. And it lasted for about a week and a half, and she's like, So you got gas twice. I think they have other flavors now, too, but the chocolate is the original. Right. And they started in 17 when a traveling salesman from Chattanooga, the Chattanooga bakery, ran into, as the story goes, a coal miner from Kentucky who said, you know, what we could use down there in the coal mines is a portable snack. Right. And they came up with the moon by, I guess. And that coal miner was Loretta Lynn's father, who that movie was about coal miner's daughter. Yeah, sure. Okay. Great movie. And this became a big Southern thing, but it didn't become a Mardi Gras thing until Mobile, Alabama and their Cracker Jacks crackerjack ordinance. Yeah. Of 1972? I think so. Where they said the city actually outlawed Cracker Jacks being thrown from Mardi Gras floats because people are getting injured by them or hurt. So people said, well, Moon Pies totally makes sense. Get hit in the eye with the Moon Pie, not a big deal. And now if you go to Mary Grand New Orleans, apparently you can get Moon Pies thrown at you all over the place. Great. You don't even have to duck. Nope. Or take your shirt off. You got anything else? No. I don't either. Happy Mardi Gras, everybody. Happy Ash Wednesday. I guess depending on when you hear this, happy Easter. Sure. Okay. And since I said Happy Easter, of course that means it's time for listening to mail. I'm going to call this the long awaited fire safety email. Thank you. I can finally clear this out of my inbox. I know you've been asking me off and on since last August. Has it really been that long? Yeah. Oh, man. But not like every week. It's not like I'm not a sadist. Here we go. I'm a research engineer that studies fire dynamics and material flammability. My group has developed a campaign to educate the public about general fire dynamics, fire safety, and what to do in case of a dwelling fire. The cornerstone of this is this as good as you hope it would be? The cornerstone of this campaign is called close before you doze. And that is C-O-L-O-S-E. Not clothing. I'm glad you said that. Yes. It's focused on residents closing their bedroom doors before going to sleep because the strategy has been extensively tested in large scale experiments and provide I'm sorry, proven to slow down the advance of the fire to provide adequate time for firefighters to conduct search and rescue. That makes sense. To close your doors when you go to bed. Yeah. Because if a fire does break out in your house, it will keep the smoke out a lot longer than it would if your doors open, giving firefighters time to come get you. Did you previously sleep with your doors open or have you always been a door closed guy? I guiltily must admit that I still sleep with the door open. You do? I'm toast. Is there a reason or just like or do you not even care? Is it a conscious thing? I don't it's more it just feels weird to me to have the door closed sleeping. But yeah. All right. I listen to stuff you should know during my morning and evening commutes. I really enjoy all the research topics and I find that the way Josh and Chuck that's us present the information has always been very easy for me to relate to and understand. I think that is a great medium to help educate the population about the potentially life saving difference a closed door can make in the event of a fire. It's truly stuff everyone should know and hope. You think so as well and help us to get this information to the public a year later. Almost. Right? Let me see here. That is from Mark. Nice work, Mark. Who again is a research engineer doing work in fire dynamics and safety. Nice work, Mark. Thanks, Chuck, for doing that one. I hope you guys listen to Mark. Don't follow my example. Close your door when you sleep. Yes. We leave ours open, too. We got animals and the kids like, people need to get in and out if you want to be like Mark and let us know PSA. To tell everybody we love doing those. We'll get to it eventually, I promise. You can go ahead and send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show. Ah, summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. 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. You plan your vacation around your pet at Halo. We get it because we're pet moms, too. We make natural, high quality pet food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopets.com." | |
How Pollen Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-pollen-works | For about 375 million years, plants have been using pollen (aka plant sperm) to propagate their species. And the technique has stuck around because it works. Join Chuck and Josh for a cozy look at the ins and outs of plant reproduction. | For about 375 million years, plants have been using pollen (aka plant sperm) to propagate their species. And the technique has stuck around because it works. Join Chuck and Josh for a cozy look at the ins and outs of plant reproduction. | Tue, 02 Jul 2013 13:50:14 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=13, tm_min=50, tm_sec=14, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=183, tm_isdst=0) | 27217987 | audio/mpeg | "This July, don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the series season three zombies, three Doctor Strange in the multiverse of Madness, and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful from the award winning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, and the Disney Nature Films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus with no fees or minimums on checking and savings accounts. Banking with Capital One is like the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Kind of like choosing to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast. And with Capital One's top rated app, you can deposit checks and transfer money anytime, anywhere, making Capital One an even easier decision that's banking reimagined what's in your wallet terms apply. Capital One NA member FDIC welcome to Stuff You Should Know from Houseupworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant. And that means it's time for stuff you should know. The Itchy Scratchy Edition. Not Skeezy. No, that's not the Itchy Scratchy sneezy edition. That's what I meant. There you go. Funny how you can mix words together and come up with other words you didn't mean to say. Jerry's eyes are itching. Yeah, well, we should say we were just talking about the pollen count here in Atlanta. That's pretty much all we ever talk about, ever. When the camera is not on or the mics aren't recording that in Coca Cola. Oh. You know how everyone comes to Atlanta and they're like, oh, every street is named Peach Tree. Let's go drink a Coke. Those are the only two things we've ever had. Exactly. All right. Sorry. That's fine. So you want to talk about pollen some more? Yeah. It's low right now in Atlanta. 39. That's moderate. Yeah. Well, low for us. Right. But according to the pollen scale, the scale that they used to count pollen and then designate it somewhere along the pollen spectrum, 39 is considered moderate. Not even low. Moderate. When it's really bad here in Georgia, it gets to about $9,000. Yeah. Those are the few weeks that the streets run yellow when it rains with yellow water. Looks like pea. Yes. Your car is totally covered in it. You're covered in it. It's just everywhere. Everywhere. Yeah. But now we're about to tell everybody. We're basically going to turn everybody into a palenologist. Yes, to an extent. Should be a big fan after this. An amateur palenologist. I think about a third of all the plants and vegetables and fruits and vegetables we eat are here, thanks to pollen. So if you like eating food yeah. It doesn't come in a box. Thank you. Pollen, is it just a third that pollinate or a third that are just angiosperms or Gymnosperms. A third that pollinate. Wow. Yeah. What's up with the other two thirds? Well, you know, bananas, they're clones of one another. There you go. There's like, I think, 1000 varieties of bananas. And thanks, by the way, the damn interesting for this information, but there's like a thousand varieties or species of bananas, but each one, if you eat like a type of just one of the species of bananas, you're eating an exact clone of every other banana in that species. Because many thousands of years ago, humans just stumbled upon the banana, which is a hybrid of two basically inedible fruits that came together to form the delicious banana, but made them sterile. All banana plants are sterile. And the only way that they're allowed to propagate is by human hand. They're delicious. I did it. Don't be dumb about that. Yeah, well, you just did it again. Yeah, you can check out Don't Be Dumb on our website stuffystoe.com. Wow. All right. Anyway, pollen. Yes. It's been around for a while. I know. In our Bee podcast, we talked about how bees and pollen kind of emerged side by side 100 million years ago. Some states have evolved. Right. But pollen actually goes further back than that. In this article, it says about 375,000,000 years ago is when the plants started getting clever and spreading their seed, literally using pollen different techniques. And I think the gymnasts were first. Do you think so? I believe so. Yeah. And the author of the article here points out that the reason why it evolved was so plants didn't have to be dumb and rely on water to carry their junk to fertilize other junk. Right. They're like, how about wind? Or how about that bat? Or that beetle? Yes. Or how about that bird? Pooping it out. That's right. Yeah. And like I said, I think pollen grains, plants spread their seed, literally. Pollen is what amounts to plant sperm. Yeah, it's like I always go to the kids science pages to research, first off. I mean, they're good. They're colorful. Yeah. If we want to pollination, very simply, people reproduce. Animals reproduce. They need male and female parts. Plants and flowers are no different. Right. They need male parts to connect with the female parts to make an egg. And in this case, pollination is how it's done. Right. So basically how that sperm, the pollen, reaches that egg, which is the ovule. Yeah. Right. And once they get together, magic happens. That's right. But let's talk about the way it looks, first of all. Yeah. Pretty cool. There's a lot of different looks to pollen depending on the plant and all of these variations. It can be like a cone, literally a pine cone. Yeah. Just look up microscope pollen on Google Images and you'll see all sorts of weird, colorful shapes and sizes. Yeah. Some look like blowfish, others look like sputnik. Really? Yeah. I didn't see the sputnik. Some have ribbed edges. Yeah. And all of these adaptations or mutations, I guess they became adaptations, allow that pollen to kind of better ensure that it's going to be carried to where it needs to go. Yeah. It has a purpose. It's not just like, hey, this one would look neat if it looked like a starfish. It serves to mix it up in the end. Some have wings, kind of what amounts of basically wings, because they're carried on the wind. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like dandelion pollen that's carried on the wind. True. Well, dandelion is self pollinate too. We'll get to that, though. They're slippery little guys. Yeah, they are. They're also high in phytonutrients as well. The indulge are the stems? No, the leaves. Oh, the little leaves. Yeah. The yellow part. Yeah. So here's a rule of thumb. There's a New York Times article that came out very recently about phytonutrients and how we basically bred them out of our food. And the rule of thumb is the bitter or more bitter the plant, the higher it is in phytonutrients, phytonutrients have kind of a bitter astringent taste and we tend to not really like that. So we stopped eating those things over time and replace them with sweet things that aren't necessarily good for us, like potatoes and other starches. Yeah. Well, bitter things can also kill you. That's probably one reason why. Maybe so. That's a pretty good point. But bitter stuff that you know, won't kill you. Dandelion leaves go out and eat some right now. Yeah. But back in the day, I bet people are like, that tastes bad and it killed cook, so let's just not eat it. Right, exactly. Yeah. Alright, so we talk about pollination. Talk a little bit about pollen. Yes. Now we need to talk about how plants make little baby plants. Right. And it's pretty simple, like I said, the mail part. And it really helps to follow along if you go to a handy dandy little visual aid I found, because they really break down the male parts and the female parts. The female has the pistol, and within that you have the ovary, which sits down low in the plant, and the style, which is a long thin appendage, I guess, that contains pollen tubes. Right. And then at the top you have your stigma, which is going to catch the pollen. Yeah. And that's the female part. Right. That's the lady. Okay. Don't be confused because it is phallic in nature. Yeah, true. But it's still the female part. And the male has the filament, which is a long stem, and then the anther at the top, which holds all the pollen. And that's pretty much the long and short of the parts. And is that just angiosperms that you're describing or is that all pollinating? I think these are just the angiosperms. Well, we should say quite explicitly that there's basically two ways that plants can pollinate. There's gymnosperms and angiosperms. And the big difference between the two is that gymnosperms, literally, that means naked seed, which, by the way, gymnasium means place to be naked gynasium in German. Did you know that? Yeah. So gymnastwam naked seed, there's nothing protecting the seed once it's produced. And the seed is just a fertilized ovum or Oviol. Right. Yeah. Angiosperm produce something to protect that seed, whether it's a shell, like a nut or fruit, like an apple with the seeds inside. Right. Because an apple is just an enlarged ovule ovary. And the seeds are the fertilizer. Yes. Well, you can also cross pollinate or self pollinate. Right. Those are the other two differences. So you're saying Dandelions self pollinate. Well, they can do both, but they do have a little cool little feature. They basically grow up. This is when they're still the little yellow flower. They have these little florets that grow up. If you look you probably can't see if you look really close, though, these little florets that grow up. And as it grows, it carries the pollen on its little stem and then eventually gets to a point where it doesn't start growing up anymore, and it splits and then starts curling back on itself to no way. It picks up its own pollen from its own style. It's self pollination. It's not gross or like, perverted. There's a lot of plants out there, though, that have mechanisms to prevent them from self pollinating. It can't be good or bad. That's what I couldn't figure out. Well, the plants somewhere along the way figured out, like, hey, the wider the gene pool, the better off we are, because the more room there is for adaptation, mutations and then adaptations. Right. Yeah. But in here, the author said ideally it cross pollinates, but I don't think that's the case always. Well, it's not ideal. It's just some do and some don't. Right. I mean, if you look at it, like, from just an animalistic or an organism viewpoint. Right. Like with us, if you just get a bunch of mennonites together and they just reproduce with one another, there's going to be defects that just are propagated throughout this little gene pool. But if the mennonites spread out into the larger country as a whole, those defects are going to, I guess, be kind of watered down by the size of the gene pool. I think it's the same thing with self pollinating and cross pollinating. Yeah, because it's interesting because things like peanuts are self pollinators and that's why they thrive. But corn as a mechanism to not allow itself to self pollinate. Right. I think the sperm is ready at a different time than the ovule is ready to accept it. Right. It's a timing thing. The thing is, peanuts would probably be able to talk if they didn't self pollinate, and they sound like Jimmy Carter. So there's a lot of mechanisms that plants have to prevent themselves from self pollinating. Some might have either just male plants and just female plants. Some may be where the male part of a plant has both male and female flowers, for example, diese. Yes. The male flower might come out before the female flower on the same plant so that they're not the timings off a little bit. Right. And then there's some that are just like they'll signal a biochemical marker. If pollen from the same plant gets near the ovule, it'll just basically turn barren. So it just is incapable of fertilizing itself or like corn where the timing is thrown off. Yeah. So they rely on cross pollination. Right. Which is pretty cool. 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. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but we're pretty excited about summer. I mean, what's not to like? School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's right. And that's where true Crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. Yeah. And with so many killer shows like Morbid, My Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. Prepare to go deep and become your own detective in the world of serial crimes and unsolved mysteries. Get lost hearing spooky stories with a combination of detailed research and lighthearted analysis. Whether you're a lifetime fan of true crime or you just feel like being entertained while doing the dishes at night, there's a podcast out there for you to download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. So let's get explicit again here. Gymnast. Yes. Naked seed. How does this happen? We'll use the example of a pine. A loblolly pine? Yeah, pine cone. It's fun to say if it's a conifer. Conifers are ancient. I believe they were the first pollinating plant. Oh, really? Yes, I think so. Nice. Let's talk about it. Well, the pine cones, they're little male pine cones. Little female pine cones. You might not realize that you've got quite a show going on in your backyard at certain times of the year. Right? And basically, once you get the two together, you get a male pinecone and a female pine cone together. The male pine cone fertilizes. Well, the pollen comes in contact with an ovule. Yeah. And the pollen starts to go to town. It absorbs a bunch of water while the female pine comes a little sticky, too. That helps, by the way. It does. It helps collect the pollen. Right. So the pollen, the male part of the pine cone germinates and it starts growing what's called a pollen tube, which basically allows this pollen to directly fertilize the ovule. Once that happens, the ovule basically becomes a seed and the seed is released from the pine cone. They go everywhere and then they're eaten by birds and pooped out elsewhere, carried along. They're trampled by rhinoceros. Sure. Who knows? But just got loose from the zoo. But then that seed is carried along, but it's not protected by anything. It's just a seed, and hence a naked seed. Hence gymnosperms. Right. So angiosperms, they have kind of like a similar process, whereas there's a pollen tube that's grown and the male pollen has to come in contact with the female pollen and all that. Yes. And we're talking about flowers in most cases here. With angiosperm, they're the only ones that flower and produce fruit. Yeah. So when you think about your garden with the honeybee and all that's angiosperm. Right. So that's a non naked seed and that's where the fruit comes in or the shell comes in. Angiosperms have developed a mechanism to protect the seed, to better ensure its survival, and if you think about it, to entice the things that transport these seeds to go ahead and do their thing. Yeah, there's like every flower has some sort of cool shape or scent or color or something that matches with some little insect or bird or bat that's going to be enticed. Like the bumblebee and the fox club. They go hand in hand because it fits up there just perfect. And it has a little colorful landing strip on the bottom petal to guide the bumblebee in. And it's just like nature. It's just like harmonious right there's. That one orchid that I believe Darwin predicted the existence of a type of hummingbird that had a very long curled beak that had co evolved with it. And he was absolutely correct. So cool. Remember it's in that movie adaptation? Yeah. That's a great movie. You can learn a lot from that movie. Yeah, it would be great attention. Yeah, anything that what's his name? Charlie Kaufman writes. Well researched. Agreed. Fruit is another thing, too. Animals love to eat fruit. Yeah. The fruit is basically once a piece of fruit drops to the ground, that means those seeds are ready to go, they're ready to become seedlings. But first they need a fox to eat the apple, carry it in its stomach, right, over several meters or miles or whatever, and then poop it out. And then you have seeds that are basically just planted. That's amazing. They take purchase and a new tree begins with a seed. Her insides were a rocky place where seed can find a purchase. Right. So pollen grains are actually created. I guess we should step back a second and talk about meiosis. The cells are dividing and growing, eventually you get a little pollen. It looks like a little dust spec to our eyeball, but it contains the sperm. It's not actually the sperm. Right. It contains the sperm therein. Yeah. And the pollen is in Poland, sacs at the end of the stamen, which we talked about and that little two loved almost anther. Yes. Eventually it will find its way to the stigma and travel down to the ovary. And in the case of angio sperm, there are two sperm that are used I don't think we said in the case of gymnosperms, only one of the sperm is used. Right, yeah. In a pollen sector, two sperm. But you just need one for the gymnasperm. For the angio sperm, you need two. Yeah. Because one is actually fertilizing the egg and the other is developing into endosperm together alongside in what will eventually be the seed. And if you think that sounds gross, I'm sorry. The endosperm is like a protein, basically, right. To keep it all alive. Yeah. That keeps the seedling happy and healthy. So when you're eating corn, you're actually eating the endosperm. Each corn kernel is actually like that starchy endosperm. Right. Delicious. Which the seed loves to eat itself. That's true. So we talked about bees, we talked about birds, foxes, mention poop a couple of times. Fox gloves. Yeah. And you were saying that basically every flowering plant especially, has some sort of mechanism to attract at least one kind of bug or animal that's been proven to help pollinate transport this pollen. For the most part, we enjoy them. You like the scent of a good flower, right? Yeah, sure. But you might not like the devil's tongue. Yeah. Which is a Sumatran plant that apparently reeks so badly, smells like a decomposing flesh, basically. Did you see this thing? I've seen it before. You it's really remarkable. Yeah. It's like 2ft tall and it basically flowers or blooms once every ten years or 20 years or something like that. Right. I'm not sure if it's the same one I'm thinking of thinking, but it's stinky. Right. And the reason why it's stinky is because it pollinates with the help of a type of carrion beetle that's attracted to decomposing flesh. So the plant attracts the beetle that likes to eat decomposing flesh by putting out the smell of decomposing flesh. That's so gross. Yeah. But it's pretty spectacular. It is, yeah. And the philodendron, something you might have in your house, it actually does the same thing, but it doesn't stink. Always, there's actual chemical reaction that takes place and heats it up to emit this odor that the beetle is attracted to. Which sounds pretty gross, too. Yeah. But it all works, and I would Google that. The Sumatran devil's tongue. It's pretty cool looking. The flower itself is 2ft. It's not like, oh, what a long stem. Right. It's just a huge flower. It's amazing. And then you're also saying, like, was it foxglove that provided a landing strip for bumblebee's? Yeah. So flowers in general typically have certain types of like their color will be based on the kind of creature that helps pollinate it, whether it's diurnal, meaning it's awake during the day, or nocturnal, meaning it's awake at night. Right, right. I guess that's in case of like bats and stuff like that. Yeah. And then our old friend nectar is a big lure. And basically nectar is around. Right. Just because it tastes delicious and is enticing, from what I understand. Yeah, it's basically like a little enticement, like you said, for like a bee or something. Or a bird. Yeah. Come get it. Because it's placed by the stamen. That's right. Or the way the anthers are situated, just the way they're placed in the flower. If it gave it an advantage to bump up against that bee, then it's going to be successful in the long run and live out as a species. That is nice stuff. That is pretty good. So Chuck, we've reached a point where, I mean, ever since we started selectively breeding plants, domesticating crops, like, hey, that's pretty. Right. Or hey, I like this banana. Yeah, well, that's hardy and it grows in my awful hot area that I live in. Exactly. Many reasons to do so. Right. We wanted to keep the bad stuff out, keep the good ones. We wanted it. But it never became more crucial until we started genetically modifying crops. And all of a sudden, not only are the corporations saying like, hey man, you can't cross pollinate with our stuff or else that's patent infringement. And nearby farmers says, I'm not using your seeds, it's the bees, you can't blame me. Right. And the farmers who don't want GMO stuff in their crops say, hey man, you need to keep your crops over there because I don't want your GMO crud in here. I have an organic farm. Exactly. And your roof is blowing by the wind. It's a touchy subject. We should do that as GMOs. I agree. The idea of patenting genes in general and let alone like crops, it's really interesting, but there's been some pretty clever, simple ways of getting around this problem that's posed by pollination of GMO crops with non GMO crops. Yeah. Well, distance is obviously one thing. Pretty simple, don't put my farm near your farm. Yeah. But they have to do all kinds of studies to see how the wind reacts. And how far does that bee fly? Yeah, they found in certain parts of Africa, bees will go about 4 miles, 3 km. That's their range for food. That's a lot. Yeah, but I mean, just using that kind of thinking thought process though, like, okay, well, this guy is growing this over here, so I can't grow this here. Right. That will prevent that kind of pollination though. Yeah. Another thing they can do is sort of like with the corn, they can time their crop rotation to time out so where they're flowering at different times and not interfering with one another. Right. But it's a touchy subject. Like from what I understand, there's a lot more going on than, you know, is preferred by like, the organic farmers of the world. Sure. And in the GMOs, they can then say that you're infringing just because they cross pollinated to their crop. Right. Even though you didn't buy their seeds or even want their seeds. If a bee carries their crops, pollen over to your crops and you start to develop plants that have the GMO characteristics that are patented, according to the corporations, you're infringing on their patent. It's very tricky ground there, isn't it? I don't think it's tricky ground. If you ask me, you should not be allowed to have a patent on any living organism. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? That's my opinion. It gets tricky in courts and in corporations. The course tend to side on the corporations side, typically. Let's do that one though. Soon. GMOs. Yeah. All right. So that's it for pollen, if you're interested in how pollen causes allergies and you should listen to our How Allergies work episode. That was pretty good. Yes, I was going to recommend that. Nice work. Thanks, man. So if you want to learn more about pollen in the meantime, you can type that word in the search bar. Howstop works.com. Since I said search bar, it's time, of course, for a message break. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right. For all their days at the dog park and nights sleeping in bed. Your bed. Yep. We mean that kid your dog. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition for their best health. It's guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. That means digestive health, heart and immunity, support healthy skin and coat, hip and joint support and strengthen energy. Find Halo Elevate at Petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores. Learn more@halopets.com. Hey, Chuck, it's summer, which means school is out, sun is shining, the daylight lasts longer. And best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story, isn't there? There sure is. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, you can tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right Media. That's right. Part true crime and part comedy, My Favorite Murder takes you on a journey through small town mysteries and major laughs, all in the same week. That's Right hosts Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstark Banter with each other, sharing their favorite true crime tales and explore unique hometown stories from friends and fans alike. And they're both great and it's a fun show and you should listen. So listen to new episodes of my favorite murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. And now, how about some listener mail. Yes, we have. Correction. It's been blowing up lately. Oh, man, I'm sorry. You know, it's crazy. That's the second time I've done that in a podcast on the same thing. I don't remember what the other podcast is, but I've mentioned it before and we've gotten tons of corrections about it and I didn't learn my lesson. Well. This guy was really nice about it, so I'm going to read his and it's an important correction because any time you're talking about drugs so, to recap, in the PTSD podcast, we got the two drugs beta blocker called Propanenol, which helps with PTSD, used with proposal, which is what killed Michael Jackson. This is from Chris. He's a big fan. He's listening to every episode on his commute in Southern California, which we know stinks. So he said what we just said about getting the drugs confused, he said, and see how you guys can mix it up, because the names are very similar, but they're significantly different. Obviously, Propanenol is relatively mild and commonly prescribed and very little potential for overdose, while Propyfol is a very powerful drug with extremely high potential for overdose and rarely administrated outside of strictly monitored medical settings. It is actually a hypnotic agent that must be administered intravenously, as we talked about Michael Jackson's trip. Right. And is often used in conjunction with general anesthetics. Like most general anesthetics, it's steep dose response curve significantly increases the risk of overdose, where the effective dose is only slightly below a lethal dose. That's kind of scary. Yeah, it really is. I mean, when you're on that, like, you're right along the border. Yeah. Well, he says Michael Jackson's case is extremely rare, so he was essentially exposing himself to risks similar to those associated with general anesthetics used during surgery, with a high potential for overdose and death on a daily basis for relatively trivial purposes, which word in this case is insomnia. Yeah, but from what I understand, he had, like, years long insomnia. Like, this guy was not sleeping at all. They would give him everything first, and then they try that last resort, and sometimes it still wouldn't work. Really? Yeah, he was really in bad shape at the end. Well, he probably had a resistance to certain things like that. So Chris goes on to say, I'm not certain about the exact amount of risk posed by Proposal administration, but I believe the risk of death is something on the order of 10th of a percent. Meaning he would have died, according to the statistical model, within a couple of years of daily use. Like pretty much guaranteed. Right. Frankly, he would have been better off using heroin that whole time, in spite of his ironically strict yet poorly informed anti drug stance. So that's from Chris. Thanks, Chris. It was a genuinely awesome email. Yeah, it was good. And I'm sorry. Everybody forget. So wrong. Well, I mean, the names are just confusing. Yeah, but I mean, One's like a blood pressure medicine, the other one's like, pretty much a general anesthetic. I know, but what gets me is that half of the emails were like, yeah, they just sound alike. So you give it and half of them were like, those drugs couldn't be any more different. Like, you really thought that it's like a verbal typo. Right? Thank you, Chuck. Yeah, thanks for letting me off. Anyway, if you have a correction for us, we really do like to get those. We like to know what we're talking about. Sometimes we get things wrong, sometimes I get things wrong. But we do want to be corrected in the nicest way possible, because that's usually who gets their letter read, right? Exactly. Yeah. You can tweet to us at syscapodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comstuffystemo. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com, and you can join us at our home on the Web, the greatest website in the history of humanity. Stuff you should know all one word.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.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.com. Nostuff knowstuff to get a free audiobook download of your choice when you sign up today. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen. Today, you want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. Find Halo Elevate at petco, pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores." | ||
Is it better to buy local or organic food? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/is-it-better-to-buy-local-or-organic-food | These days, shopping for food can pose a dilemma. Should you buy regular, organic or local food? Check out this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to hear Josh and Chuck discuss whether it's better to buy local or organic food. | These days, shopping for food can pose a dilemma. Should you buy regular, organic or local food? Check out this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to hear Josh and Chuck discuss whether it's better to buy local or organic food. | Thu, 14 May 2009 14:53:14 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=14, tm_min=53, tm_sec=14, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=134, tm_isdst=0) | 26533396 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Top prize about the vomit. Put the two of us together, you get a squishy fat podcast called Stuff You Should Know. Stuff grows. Yeah, well, it's true, though, too. And kind of hairy, too. Chuck, hairy and squishy is a bad combination. We're like one of those tumors that kind of grows out of you when you ate your twin in the womb. You know, the tumors where they find, like, hair and fingernails and teeth. Yeah, we're like one of those. Awesome. When you put us together. Yes, we are. Yeah. Good stuff, Josh. Thanks, Chuck. So, Chuck, speaking of all that, did you know our first lady planted her own garden outside the White House recently? I did. I bet she had a little help, but she did from some local school kids. Although I bet they just screwed around the whole time. Yes. School kids are useless when it comes to gardening. They are. But yeah. Michelle Obama planted a garden. Apparently, it's the first kitchen garden since Eleanor Roosevelt was in the White House. Pretty cool running the show while her polio stricken husband couldn't even get out of bed. Right. Barack keeps getting compared to FDR, so this is appropriate enough. But the big thing, the big hubbub about all this is that she chose to go 100% organic. Right? Yeah. Good move. Yeah. In this day and age, that's just a smart thing to do. Right? Well and why not? It's my point. If you're planning your own garden, I'll tell you why not. As far as the Mid America CropLife Association, which is basically a pesticide and fertilizer trade association, I bet they have a lot of nice things to say about it. They sent her a letter basically saying they never said the word and this is from a Times UK article, but they never said the word fertilizer or organic, anything like that. They just basically wanted to know that America owes its robust physique to all the technological advances in agriculture that have taken place over the years. Meaning fertilizer and pesticides. Exactly. Yeah. So apparently a lot of people didn't really like the fact that the Maca took it upon themselves to send Michelle Obama a letter. So there's a petition online right now, and at least 100,000 people signed it, basically telling the Maca to lay off their pesticide propaganda. And I just made air quotes for everybody who can't see. Interesting. Yeah. Hope it works. I guess it will. I don't know. But the point is, Michelle Obama's going organic. A lot of people are. Right? Yeah. It's sort of the thing. It is the thing. So much so that now there's a term, big Organic. Have you heard this? Yeah, josh, big Organic is like Walmart is carrying organic food. Now, that's what you would call Big Organic. Yeah. If you're a mom and pop farmer, you can't sell to Walmart. You can't do it. It takes huge agricultural concerns that have tens of thousands of acres at their disposal cranking out as much as they can per acre. And it's kind of sad to see organics go that way, because that's a pretty big shift from its roots, if you'll forgive the pun. Very nice, Josh. I hate puns. I do, too. Yeah. For anyone who likes puns, I would strongly advise you to go listen to Tech Stuff, one of our sister podcasts. Wow. Yeah. Oh, and Strickland isn't completely innocent of his pond, either. Really? Yeah. So I guess we should probably get back to talking about organics, right? Yeah. Great idea. All right. So, Chuck, is it better to buy local or organic? And actually, we probably shouldn't take a traditional factory farm. I guess we'll just call it traditionally grown food out of the equation quite yet. Right, right. Non organic, big farm. Is that what you're talking about? Yes, big farm. Right. The ones that use pesticides and fertilizers and stuff like that. I'm trying to see if we can get the maca after us. I want a letter of my own. That'd be pretty cool. That would be super cool. Frame it for the Cuba. Oh, yeah, definitely. Actually, Josh, when I read this, I thought it was interesting because I wanted to say, well, why not both organic and local? Yes. Which is the pretty obvious thing, but that's kind of not the point of the article. Well, let's talk about it first. What's wrong with traditionally grown stuff? Well, I've got some stats for you. I love your stats. That can illustrate just what might be wrong with it. A conventionally grown apple josh. Josh. May be sprayed up to 16 times with over 30 different chemicals in its lifetime. Sure. That apple that you're eating right before you put it in your mouth yeah. Which is why you watch the food shining it on your shirt. Yeah. I imagine that just kind of smears as a pesticides and fertilizers around, and I imagine running it under a cold tap for a second doesn't do a whole lot, either. Yeah. I found there's a book on Google. Books? It's called super nutrition for men. They actually recommended that if you buy commercially grown veggies what we're talking about traditionally grown stuff. You want to soak it in a 3% hydrogen peroxide solution oh, you're kidding. Before you eat it? Yeah. And they said that if you really want to go to town, you can mix a half a teaspoon of bleach in a gallon of water wow. And soak your vegetables and that'll get rid of the pesticides and bacteria and all that stuff that can come along with traditionally grown food. What happens to the bleach, though? Does it wear off or something? You soak it for another ten minutes and just clean water. But I should also say if you do make a bleach solution, you want to use purified or distilled water because normal hard tap water actually has compounds that can fuse to the bleach and create carcinogens. Not good. No. There's an alternative, though, which we were just talking about. Right. It's called what? Organic? Yes. I have one more stat for you, though, before we move on. Oh, sorry. Just so people know what they're putting in their body, it's important. The FDA, they actually did this one, and they said that between 33 and 39% of our food contains detectable amount of pesticides and 54% of the fruits and 34% of our vegetables out of that lot. Well, so you're eating pesticide and chemicals. Definitely. And these things can have harmful effects. They've been shown to have harmful effects like headaches, fatigue. There's pesticides that have been shown to be neural disruptors, which is awful. Yes. Nausea is not fun. You don't eat for nausea? No. Okay, so we're just going to go ahead and say if you eat traditional farm food, whatever, more power to you. Sure. It's a good idea to know what's in your food. Right. You should know what you're putting in your and you can also make a case for using pesticides and fertilizers and stuff like that. No, you can't. Well, I think their point is in a big farming situation, it's pretty much near impossible to sustain that without using pesticides. Well, plus, also it usually makes for much cheaper food. It's a lot less labor intensive. If you're using natural pesticide methods, this is usually much more difficult. It requires a lot more labor, and thus the price is going to go up. Which is why if you're poor in America, you're not eating organic food. No, it's definitely a bit pricier. Right. Okay, so let's talk organic. Chuck. Yes. The USDA has a program, Josh, called the National Organic Program. Fittingly. And they are the people that certify things organic. When you see certified organic, it has to run through them, your whole operation. The seeds cannot be genetically modified at all or treated with synthetic pesticides or fertilizers. All this is laid out. And if you follow these steps as a program, you can be certified organic. Right. And actually, the standards are pretty good. They were almost questionable there in 2004. In April of 2004, the USDA issued three directives. Right. And one of them was it allowed fertilizers and pesticides to be used that contain unknown ingredients. And I just made air quotes again. And you could also feed livestock non organic fish meal, which who knows what's in there. Sure. And you could also use antibiotics on them. Those are two directors. And then there's a third one, I should say. Those first two, they didn't stick. There was such a public outcry against the USDA repealed in the next month, but there was a third one that stick that I think everybody should be aware of. Non agricultural products, including seafood, skin lotion, anything like that, that's labeled organic. The USDA said, you know what? That's out of our jurisdiction. They can say they're organic if they want. We're never going to investigate it. You know what? This hits home. My wife does. Yeah. She makes a fine line of health and beauty products. Yes. All natural, handmade. And she gets her feathers all riled up all the time because she'll see these companies tout things like organic when it completely falls out of the jurisdiction. And beyond that, just like a lot of huge products, they'll throw things on there like all natural and fresh. And there's really no way to back it up. Apparently with light beer, too. It only has to be light in color. Interesting. It has nothing to do with calories or anything like that, although you're led to believe it does. So, yeah, it definitely hits home. And I would definitely not be angry if anyone went to Loveyourmoma.com and bought some information. I was going to ask, do you have a website to plug? See it one more time? Well, I probably shouldn't plugloveyourmoma.com because that would mean money in our family's pocket. I know that would stick if we pluggedloveymama.com Chuck. Let's not ever do that. So, moving on. Josh, is organic better for you? That's the one thing they really haven't been able to prove. No, I actually found a real dearth of information, like quantifiable information, hard stats and things like that. It's just an assumption, like, okay, you don't have pesticides fertilizers. Right. Logically, pesticides and fertilizers have been shown to create health problems. They can. Right, right. And since they're not there in the certified organic products, then hence these things should be healthier. Right. But the USDA makes no claims to this whatsoever. They're just saying these people follow these steps. Here's the steps that they followed to become USDA certified. Right. We've checked it out and we said, yes, this product is USDA certified. You surmise yourself whether you want to either pay the extra $3 for this dozen eggs. Right. I think the deal is with this is they cannot prove any nutritional value by going organic. What they can say is if it's organic, what it lacks is probably better for you without all the chemicals. But since they can't prove that it's richer in vitamin C or whatever, if it's grown organically, then they have to lay off in that category. Right. And one of the other reasons people choose organic, obviously, is because you get the impression it's much more sustainable. Right, right. I think you have to rotate crops, you have to compost on site, and these things are good and sustainable. But again, we were talking about big organic. These farms are following these processes, but I don't know to what degree. Just enough to be USDA certified organic. Right, right. But it's still having a huge impact on the environment through what's called food miles. So the average food that we eat in the US. I think, travels 1300 to 2000 miles from where it's farmed to where it's consumed. Right, right. And a lot of it actually there's a huge outcry, I found from researching this against air transportation. Oh, really? Yeah, because apparently that is the worst way to fly food. It's the worst carbon dioxide emitter. It's the worst way to get food from source to destination. Right. Makes sense. Again, though, I looked it up. I'm like, what's the average amount of CO2 that's emitted per pound of food or whatever? There's nothing on there. So all of this stuff surrounding this is all very logical and intuitive, but there's no hard facts, which I find frustrating. I have one cool quote. Let's hear it. This is from a guy, Columbia, who's been pioneering local eating for 25 years. Name is Gusau. Wait, does he just have one name, like Cher? Actually, that's just his last name, Gusau. But sure, let's just say that. Okay. And gusal is often quoted saying that a strawberry shipped from California to New York requires 435 calories of fossil fuel, but provides the eater only five calories of nutrition. Nice. I don't know if it's true or not, but yeah, that's the whole question. Do you buy local or do you buy organic? I know the 100 Miles diet and Locovore.com. There's a big local food movement going on to try and cut down on the greenhouse emissions. Yeah. Do you know much about the 100 miles diet? School me. Okay, I know a little bit. So in 2005, this Canadian couple, alisa, Smith and JB McKinnon, they vowed to basically only eat local food. Nothing could have come from more than 100 miles away. Right? Yeah. Cool idea. It is a cool idea, and it makes sense. But I got the impression from reading about this that they had no idea how difficult this is going to be. Right. They didn't realize that they were like seasons and then sub seasons and apparently micro seasons. Right. So if you want cherries in the winter, you could go to the grocery store and get them, but you can if you're on this 100 Miles diet. They were saying something like in this FAQ, they were saying they went without wheat for a really long time until they finally met a local wheat farmer and then they were able to make their own stuff. But that's part of it can be much more expensive because you're buying all the ingredients rather than a packaged product that was part of a run of several thousand dollars. So it's cheaper and also it's just much more difficult and again, labor intensive, but it is a lot more sustainable that you cut down on CO2 emissions 100 miles in that far, as far as food miles goes. And also you get to know kind of one of the reasons they say to eat local is the produce is much fresher. So within 24 hours, it's been picked, and you're eating it pretty much right off of the plant. Right. And you get to know the people that you're buying from because you're going to a farmers market pretty much. Right. Well, let's talk about farmers market. Let's do it. It's the best. Yes. You're a big proponent of farmers markets, aren't you? It's the best here in Atlanta, as most people are. Actually in Decatur, we have the decade farmers market, and I bump into Jerry there sometimes. Is that right? She's a shopper. There actually a bunch of people from work I see there, I'm sure. But it's the best, man. It's huge. And the cool thing about the farmers market is not only can you choose from organic, but above every fruit and vegetable is a sign that says where it came from, which is kind of cool. So, you know, you're getting your avocados from California or Mexico, and usually each fruit and vegetable has a couple of choices, and none of them are very local, though that's surprising because most farmers markets have a pretty strict rule that it can only be from that state at least. Well, this is a little different kind of farmers market. I think most of those are the ones that are like a local farmers market that you'll have on Saturdays only, and they'll set up in a parking lot and the local farmers come and bring their wares. This is a big, huge operation that's been around for 30 plus years. Yeah, it's a little different, I think. A state subsidized farmers market down by the airport. Yeah. And I think you can only via Georgia grower to participate there. Those are awesome. I went to one I used to go to one in La. When I lived there. Well, they had the Hollywood farmers market, which is awesome. And then I went to the one closer to where I lived in Eagle Rock, that same deal. I mean, literally, the farmers pull up their truck and set up their stuff in the crates, and you chatted up with these guys. You feel really good about supporting it. Yeah, apparently. I was reading on the 100 Miles diet site that there was a study that found that people at farmers markets have ten times more conversations than people at the supermarket. I'm surprised it's not more than that. Yeah, well, that actually struck me. I go to supermarkets. I don't normally go to farmers markets. Right. But I know when I'm there, I'm not there to chat, I'm there to go buy food. Right. So yeah, that's pretty cool. I think I'm going to check the farmers market out. Yeah, they're definitely a little more like when I'm at the decade farmers market, you'll be checking out a pepper, and the lady next to you will just say, aren't these peppers amazing? Yes. You never hear that at your local grocery store. Is there? The heavy scent of patchouli? Yeah, and then the lady says that to me, and I say, mind your own business, lady. I don't need to hear about what you think about these peppers. And I stomp off that sounds like my kind of farmers market. It's great. A very aggressive, hostile farmers market. No. Should we talk about co ops? Sure. And farm community supported agriculture. Yeah. Well, that's the big thing about eating local. One of the things that proponents always say is you're feeding the local economy, you're creating local jobs. The money is going back into the local economy. You're helping local farmers. And that's pretty much the opposite of a globalized attitude. Right. But still, it's okay. I mean, to each his own. Of course, Chuck. We always say so if you're into helping the local economy, eating local is a really good way to do that. Right? Yeah. And one of the places where you can go and really help the local economy is a local food co op. We have one here in Atlanta, seven Honda. And there's actually a brouhaha going on I heard about earlier this year. Apparently the general manager, that changed the charter and the general manager has a lot of power now, and the board doesn't like some of the choices that he's making. It's a big struggle. They don't want tropicana, non organic orange trees for sale next to hinds ketchup. That's not organic either. What is this stuff doing here? This is a local community food co op. It's been around seven has been around for a long time, since the early seventy s, I believe. Yeah. Very cool place. But yes, food co ops. And I found this very interesting. The top 100 food co ops in the US in 2003 made $110,000,000,000. That's $1.1 billion a piece. That's insane to me. It is. I can't imagine Seven on to making a billion dollars. But I think it's a pretty good food co op, right? Yeah, it's a great one. Pretty interesting. It really is. There's another way to go here, Josh, which is called a Community Supported Agriculture CSA program, and that my friend Debbie in New Jersey actually is involved in one of these. She writes for our site and also another plug, she runs a very awesome blog called Freakgirl.com, and she is a member of one of these. And what you do is a group of people in a community get together and they prepay a local farmer. They basically invest in the farm. And the cool thing is, some people might not think it's cool. It's a drawback. I think it's cool is you don't know what you're going to get. Every two weeks you'll go pick up a crate of groceries and you never know, like, if the lettuce is great, you might get lettuce, you might get kale, you might get carrots. Right. And so I think it's cool. It encourages people to kind of learn how to cook with new ingredients. And it's like, farm to table, and Debbie thinks it's really awesome. Yeah. And I trust her. Good to know. I've got a whole world of food to go explore. Oh, yeah. Lots. Yeah. And should we talk about Whole Foods real quick? Knock yourself out, pal. I have another thing, too, to follow up with. This is chock full, man. Yeah. Really? I wouldn't have thought chock full of chocolate. Whole Foods, as everyone knows, is a big grocery store chain that costs a lot of money. Whole paycheck is what some people call it. Yeah, it's a little pricey. A billion dollars a year, Josh, is how much produce they sold in 2006, and 16.4% of that came from local sources, which is up about 2% from 2005. And I know they're making a big effort, I would imagine in 2009. It's even higher than that. So even these big companies like Whole Foods are trying to source out local food a little more. Oh, yeah. People are getting a lot savvier these days. I mean, the fact that the FDA's directives were reversed the next month because there is an outcry. There's a petition online saying, leave Michelle Obama alone because she's farming organic. Right. People have gotten a lot savvier, and they realize, hey, I'm putting this stuff in my body, literally. I should probably pay a little more attention to it. Right. I got a garden. Do you? In your little squatting land area? No, actually, this is on our side of property. Yes. John Fuller and I from stuff from the B side he was talking to me about this weekend. He has a little garden, too, and we're going to try and I know a couple of other people here. We're going to get a little vegetable exchange going on. Very nice. Yes. Very nice. Fun. The concept of growing your own food, I think, is John was just blown away by it. He's like, man, this is just the coolest thing. Really? I could put the seeds in the ground, and I can eat it later on and, like, yes, john, it's farming. Really? 10,000 years. Yeah. It is cool, though. It is. I love my own tomatoes, for sure. That's about all I can grow. That and basil, those two good things. You're halfway to spaghetti sauce. Agreed. So check. There is something I think that we should point out. No matter how you eat, whether it's local or you eat traditional farm stuff or organic or whatever, or McDonald's at every meal, especially McDonald's, actually, that definitely factors into this. There's this concept called ghost acres. Have you heard of this? Got me on this one, dude. This one's awesome. So basically, when we think about the amount of acreage it takes to produce food, right? We say, okay, well, one acre of food can produce \u00a320,000 of strawberries on a traditional farm, right? Okay. Ghost acres are all the other parts of land that's required for that strawberry to go through its lifecycle. Right? Right. So you take into account the acreage that the fertilizer factory is built on. Right. You take into account the acreage that the dump, the landfill that's going to accept the strawberry rhines is built on, or the acreage that's polluted by the runoff from this farm. These are ghost acres. And it ups the number of acres required, the actual number of acres, and the impact it has on the land to produce 10,000 \u00a320,000 of rubber or whatever. That's the real deal. It is the real deal. Yeah. So ghost acres, definitely worth looking up, man. Oh, that's pretty cool. Yeah. I thought you were going to throw me some stat. Did you know that for every acre, there's ten ghost acres? Actually, I think that's about right. I think it's 10.1 per person. Oh, really? Yeah. Look at you. Thanks. Nice work. Thanks, buddy. Have we exhausted this? I think we have. Big time. I think we did about ten minutes ago. Yeah. Grow your own stuff. It would be kind of cool. You can join Chuck and John Fuller's little food coop change. Can I get in on that action? Well, you have to grow something. Can I just buy some? Yeah, sure. Okay, good. I'll sell you some zucchini. I got cucumbers grown in the back of my car, remember? All right. Yeah. So, yeah, that's about it. If you want to know more about growing your own food, we got all sorts of gardening stuff on the side, don't we, Chuck? We do. We also have tons of recipes, but we have a whole recipe channel. We do. So there you go. All you need to do is come to householdworks.com and say whatever you want to in that little search bar. You should probably type it rather than say it. I don't think we have the listings. Josh, as you know, we have some fans over in Iraq at Camp Liberty. Yes. Some army dudes and ladies who were very appreciative of and this came from Specialist Norman. I can't say your last name, Norman, which stinks, but he is a specialist SPC Norman. He wrote us a while ago. He's a soldier in the army, currently fettered down in an office job in the greater Baghdad area. Your podcast is not only a ray of sunshine in this sterile environment, it is a rampant light storm pilfered out of Tesla's personal forbidden RMD department. It's that guy. Yeah. I love this guy because he's an awesome writer. He blows things up. It's like what we want to be. He's hyperbolic. So he says, we love you, and flattery complete. And then he has a couple of requests, which hopefully we'll get to one day. He would like to hear something on Dr. Seuss. Okay. And the reason why is because he has a new daughter that he has not met yet. Oh, God, that's got to be rough. Holy cow. That has to stop. And Josh, he has only met her through Skype, which is that video conferencing technology. Yeah. So that's very sad. And Dr. Seuss was awesome. And I would love to do a podcast on him. I would too. Do you know he died the same day as Miles Davis? I did not. Bad day. I remember getting both of those pieces of news when I was in college. It really bummed me out to my heroes. And then he wants to hear one on sexual reproduction and evolution. This is a theoretical marriage that I have never been able to tie the knot on. How, in the vast realms of evolutionary possibilities, the two separate organisms each decide to belch forth half of their genetic material and stir them together. What environmental factors stabilize such a mutation? I love that guy, dude. He's super smart and cool. And we sent them Camp Liberty. We sent them twelve t shirts, and we just got a photo of them wearing the House of Forks t shirts with machine guns and tanks. Bitches. It is awesome. And I hope we can frame it super large and put it in the office. We have to. We should pop it up on the blog. Yeah, it's a good idea. Okay, let's do it. Let's actually do it this time. Well, I'll get his permission and then I'll do it. Okay. Will you actually do that? Yes. Okay, so I want to thank Norman for your service and you guys are awesome. And thanks for listening and supporting us and come home soon and safe. Heads off to all of you. And if you're in Baghdad or Burma or anywhere, you can send us an email whether you want some free t shirts or not. Although it would help your case if you're actually ending our country. Yeah, that kind of thing. You can 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. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. 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416c10c0-53a3-11e8-bdec-af37fe3fd86b | How Disgust Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-disgust-works | Disgust is an odd thing. It makes sense that we would feel a sense of revulsion at the thought of putting rotten meat in our mouths – that’s pure evolution. But why would we feel the same emotion at the thought of weird sex or from hearing a racist rant? | Disgust is an odd thing. It makes sense that we would feel a sense of revulsion at the thought of putting rotten meat in our mouths – that’s pure evolution. But why would we feel the same emotion at the thought of weird sex or from hearing a racist rant? | Thu, 21 Mar 2019 14:43:47 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=21, tm_hour=14, tm_min=43, tm_sec=47, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=80, tm_isdst=0) | 51951141 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from howstuffworkscom you and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck brian over there. And there's Jerry. And this is Disgust and stuff you should know about Disgust. You got to say it like that. I'm excited about this one. Chuck. Do you know why? I have no idea. I think you do. If you stopped and really thought about it, that's fine, but if you stopped and thought about it, you would say, yes, I know exactly why, Josh, and it is as follows colon quotes because this is one of those things that science hasn't fully explained, which means there's a lot of interesting theories, which means we just get to talk smack the whole time. It's interesting. This is one of those where I was reading it and it was sort of interesting, but then I was like, why would anyone even study this? That's a good question. That's a good question. I think one of the reasons that I'm fascinated by it and that I'm sure one of the reasons to dedicate your career to studying disgust. It is kind of a bizarre idea, but one of the main researchers in the study of disgust is a guy named Paul Rosen. He's kind of like the Godfather, maybe even the father of the field. Four people in the family, sure, but he's been doing it longer than anybody. So he's the pappy, as they say in the hills. He said that. To him, disgust is the thing, the emotion, the experience that makes humans human. It is discussed that separates us from the other animals that we share the animal kingdom with, so much so that we actually may use disgust to separate ourselves from the rest of the animals. Okay, that is pretty fascinating. And it's worth exploring, too, because I think it says a lot about us as humans and as animals. Yeah. So that's why that's the answer to your question. How about that? All right, now I get why somebody would want to study. I guess I'm talking about allocating funds to study it. Oh, got you. It just seems like a strange thing to sink money into. Well, I mean, if the humanities are going to sink money into anything, what makes us the most human would be make sense, according to one guy. Right. I love it. Let's talk about gross things. Okay. This whole idea of studying it, of studying discussed is actually pretty new. Rosen didn't really start until, like, the wasn't until the really got it really picked up, which we'll kind of get into. But prior to that, it was basically just philosophers who were talking about discussed. Right? Yes. And I'm not sure about studying, but at least as far as it seems to me, like it was more of like, where's the boundary as far as what can we write about, what can we talk about and what can we perform? Right. And still sell books and tickets. Right. We want people to be penalized at the thought of being gross that are disgusted, but not actually be disgusted. It's a fine line that's walked, of course, and it's subjective. It is. But the other thing about disgust that's pretty interesting is it also appears to be universal. It's a universal reaction. But what disgusts people is not universal. It's culturally bound, I guess. Right. Maybe personal, too. Sure. I think totally personal. So over time, like, as discussed, kind of moved out of the realm of philosophers and into science. There were a couple of people who kind of made contributions early on in the field. One was Charles Darwin. He wrote a treatise on it. And his big thing was that disgust was related to taste, which is true to an extent, but that was Darwin's big thing. And then later on, there was a guy, a psychoanalyst named Andres Angiol, and Andrews Angiell, basically said that, no, disgust is not really related to taste. It comes from the idea or the thought of putting something horrific into the mouth, which, again, kind of makes sense to a certain extent. But then when Rosen and friends came along, it really started to take off, and they actually managed to kind of categorize disgust into a few categories, which is what you do when you categorize things. Yeah, the first one is core discussed, and that's what you think of poop. Or everyone has their own triggers, but if like a vomit or feces or entrails or something, that's core disgust. That's an encounter with some sort of physical contaminant that makes you make that face. Right. And that face specifically, that's another universal thing, too, apparently the faces. It's called the gape, which is your mouth is open, your tongue may or may not be sticking out, your nose is wrinkled, and your upper lip is raised. I don't do that with my mouth open, though. So you just kind of do the nose wrinkle in the upper lip, I guess, like this. But I don't open my mouth. Right. That's why I sort of like I don't know, when it comes to stuff like this, when they make these sweeping statements, like, everyone makes this face. Well, everyone may make a variation of a face. There's like a universal set of characteristics to the face that you could choose from that would fall into discuss like that. Well, I don't know if you choose anything, but maybe your natural reaction. I don't open my mouth. And when I read that, everyone opens their mouth. No, that's not true. So I think one of the reasons why there is like this idea of it being universal is because evolutionary psychology, as we'll see, has said, like, yes, this is our realm. We've got this. We're going to explain this one. And to fully explain it, it basically has to be universal. So I think that's another thing about the point where the study of disgust is right now there's a lot of good ideas, some of which have kind of been shown to be probably true thanks to the wonder machine, but it's not fully explained and so there are some ideas and descriptions that make it seem kind of wacky too. Right? Yeah, for sure. The second kind of discuss getting back to that was animal nature discussed. Which is apparently these are things that anything that reminds us that we're really animals and that's could be a wide range of things there from like some people think people eating with their hands is disgusting and I think that would qualify under animal nature because you're eating like an animal. Let's say sex. And we'll get into that more later. But apparently there's a baseline discussed for sex, which I'm not so sure about that one either. And then hygiene is another one. Poor hygiene is the animal nature discussed. Yeah. And another one is, like you said, entrails something that's called the body envelope, the ideal body envelope being violated, whether it's like there's a deformity or there is some sort of open wound or something like that. They think that this whole animal nature thing, that all these things remind us that we are animals and that disgust can be triggered by that reminder that we are in fact animals. Which is kind of weird, but we'll get into explanations for that later. I can't wait. That's right. And the final one is moral disgust. And this is one where you can be disgusted with someone's behavior or disgusted with something a politician does, or disgusted with racism or bigotry, something like that. Right. And that would make the least amount of sense if you think about it. Okay. The first two were just kind of like, all right, it's animal related, we might have issues with being animals, so we're kind of disgusted by ourselves with the thought that we're animals. Maybe it's a bit more of a stretch than that core discussed. Like core disgust makes this most sense out of all of them. Agreed. Yeah. And I don't even think that the moral discussed. I think that's a different type of thing altogether. So people have proposed that some people have said, well, English speakers are just misusing the word discussed, they're actually talking. Right? Well, they've done studies of people in the wonder machine that shows that the region of the brain, the anterior insula that usually lights up when you're showing a picture of like dog poop and said you're going to eat this, your interior insula lights up. That same region lights up when people are disgusted with other people morally. Remember the ultimatum game? I don't remember. It used to come up all the time back in the day in our episodes, if somebody was given a really low offer, a take it or leave it offer that was so low and so unfair that the person said, I'm just leaving it. I actually don't want this free money because I find it insulting. That same part of the brain that is triggered by, like, Fecal discussed is also triggered, which supports the idea that there actually is a moral dimension to discuss and that we experience it in the same way. Yeah, that's interesting. It is interesting, but it is like it's the most tenuous of those three, I think. So the way this all started out, they're a bunch of theories, but it makes sense that it might have been sort of an offshoot of distaste, which is your body is conditioned, thanks to evolution, to if you eat something that's bitter or rotten, like, your taste instinct is to throw it out and get rid of it, and it's a defense mechanism to save your life. And so the idea is that disgust developed out of that and that it's just simply an evolutionary trait that could have saved tuktuk's life however many years ago. Yeah. And there's evidence, apparently, that this taste, which is basically an involuntary reaction, is like dropping something that's hot. Like, you don't stop and think, like, wow, this cooking pan is about five hold on, 550 degrees Fahrenheit, and then you drop it. I should probably drop it. Like, you just drop the pan. This taste is the same exact thing, and they've actually seen it elsewhere in the animal kingdom. So we've probably experienced this taste since before we were humans, and it's just spitting something out that doesn't seem right. In an effort to, I guess, keep the body from becoming polluted with disease. Right. And they think that distaste somehow became a behavior that was laid over this I'm sorry, discussed was a behavior that became laid over this existing structure of distaste. Yeah. And that's interesting to me because that means that it becomes all of a sudden, it's not like you have to eat poop to be disgusted. Right. Like, the mere sight of poop now can disgust somebody. Yes. And that just happened over time, I think. So that is why Rosen says this is like, disgust is the defining characteristic of humanity, because they suspect that other animals, at the very least, almost all other animals, don't have the cognitive capacity to use their imagination to imagine themselves eating poop and being disgusted by it as a result. Right. So that's why they say disgust separates humans from animals, because it requires imagination to go from an involuntary reaction of spitting out food to not even getting to the point where the food is in your mouth. You can imagine that you would have that reaction and experience the emotion of disgust. So you don't have to go through that process that actually very dangerous process of eating something rotten to figure out that you shouldn't be eating it. You can imagine it beforehand. And that's the function that discussed, at least court discussed, provides humanity. It advances us. We don't have to learn through trial and error over and over again, not to eat rotting meat. We just know on some very basic level that that is a disgusting thing to do and we have a reaction to it. Are you going to take a break? Yes. All right, everyone, we're going to be right back right after this with more disgust. 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 homepage and enter code stuff. So I think we should go back to Tok. And just like how this actually may have worked back in the day. Let's say Tooktok and his buddy Macmack are strolling along the tundra. You know, Chuck, after eleven years, I am surprised that we have a new character. And I am very pleased with Mock Mark. Yeah, well, don't get used to him because Mock Mock is about to die for Macmack. So Tuktuk and Mock mock are walking along the tundra. They find an old dead antelope, and Mock Mock is like, well, this doesn't smell great, but I tell you what, I'm going to eat this thing because I don't have this genetic trait because my mom ate this stuff and it's fine. And Took Tux like, I don't know, my friend smells gross. I do have this genetic trait, so I'm going to pass on that. So mock. Mocks like you're a sucker. I'm going to chow down on this rotten antelope. And then Mock Mock gets sick and dies before Mock Mock can have any babies. And then if this happens thousands and tens of thousands of times over a huge population, you can see how over time, it would be like any physical evolutionary trait that might evolve over time. And all of a sudden, tuktuk's family is thriving today in the United States. All healthy descendants of Tuktuk and Mokmach is long gone. Right? Because Tuck Tuk was able to pass along his genes of being disgusted by rotten meat. And Mock Mock died before he could pass his genes of not being discussed it along. So natural selection or evolution selected for Tuktuks, right, right. And Tooktok was a prolific lover, as we all know, and I imagine Mock Mock in his dying words, gasping, I regret never having seen the ocean. Yes, problem. So the good Mock Mock, everyone doesn't know, but it's true. That was great. Mock. Mock. So Chuck, that's the evolutionary psychology basis for explaining how disgust came along and was passed along. Right? And it makes sense on a very basic level, but it starts to get less and less sensible, as you've already pointed out, as we start to add more and more inputs of discussed. Right. Like, yes, it makes sense that either somehow the idea of not eating meat was passed along, either genetically or even, you could say Took went back to the hunter gatherer tribe and said, hey, let me tell you what happened to Mock Mock. It was crazy. He ate some rancid antelope, which I guess we all kind of thought was okay up to this point, but let me tell you, steer clear of the rancid antelope. You don't want to have anything to do that because it just killed Mokmak. And everyone trusting Took Tuk and not just assuming that he hit Mock Mock with a rock or something out in the wilderness and left him to die. That he actually did die from eating antelope. This became passed along. This is another way it could have happened. And that this like ancient knowledge. We just lost where the ancient knowledge came from that was actually Tuck Tuk seeing Mock Mock die. And instead it just became something that we came to think of as instinct over time. You just don't eat rancid meat. But really what it is, rather than being passed along genetically, it was, I guess, a meme, an idea that was passed along generation to generation and it became so ingrained that we just confused it for genes or instincts as well, which is another explanation of it. But both of them have like an evolutionary component to it for sure. Yeah. And then over time that even changes to where it's not like humans. Let's talk about a human body then, like a dead human body, a corpse. Let me get my poking stick. Well, you probably wouldn't poke it because your evolutionary instinct is to probably just stay away from that body. Well, that's what the stick is for. And it's not just because it may be partially because a dead body just might creep someone out, but there's also an evolutionary basis to avoid that body, get it out of the house and bury it because it may have been diseased. And they've even done studies. There was a study in 2004 in Biology Letters is the greatest teen science mag out there, tiger Beat and biological scientist. So Biology Letters said that they did a study where they found the images of objects that held what was called a potential disease threat were rated as more disgusting. So this is just the idea that, again, because of evolution, we have trained ourselves to avoid somebody who looks sick. Okay, now we get to another big chunk in the armor, if you ask me. Where did we get the idea that a body caused disease and that you could become polluted by some weird magical transference of this disease by handling or coming in close contact with the body? Like pregerm theory? Pregerm theory. Germ theory is very new. It's about 150 years old, almost on the nose. We're talking about people's aversion to dead bodies and corpses for eons before that. Hundreds of years, if not thousands and thousands of years. Right? Well, maybe even more. Like, what if someone just going back in the day where people like, oh, that's great. Come here and give me some sugar, right? Or were people always sort of repulsed by that? Yeah, I don't know. And we don't know. We can't say. We can only go as far back as any historical references we can find. But you can make a pretty good case that an aversion to something like that or a dead body goes back much further than germ theory. Yeah, it's weird you come to that question. Where do we get this idea? Where do we get this understanding on a very basic, fundamental level that corpses are to be avoided, so much so that we are disgusted by them? And even if you're not disgusted, like, I want a wretch if I see a dead body in person, which you may be surprised, I think a lot of people would be very surprised that if they actually did see a dead body, they would probably wretch. It depends on what's going on, the state it's in you, if it's eviscerated or something like that, or the smell. I think also, too, but the idea that there's something that is keeping you from avoiding it, whether it's the creeps, whether it's disgusted, whether it's some form of aversion that is acting to put distance between you and the polluting entity, the dead body, where did that come from before germ theory? That's my big question that I haven't seen answered anywhere. Where did we get that again? Was it somebody handled the dead body and became directly sick from it? So obviously that even, like, could say, yes, the dead body caused this, so we should steer clear of hanging out around dead bodies? Or was there some sort of awareness on a very basic level that we haven't figured out how to explain yet that kept generations and generations of humans relatively healthy before the advent of germ theory and our understanding of it? It is a bit of a mind experiment. It is like, perhaps the very sound of someone very ill and hawking up flim. Sounds gross. Right? But like you say, though, before germ theory, before they knew that was sickness or that made someone sick. Maybe people are like, I'll come in here and do that in my face. I love that sound. Right? But it doesn't seem likely. It's like ASMR to me. I don't know, man. It's very hard to wrap your head around. And also if you remember in our great stink episode, right prior to Germ theory, there was Miasma theory, which was the smell of something directly polluted you and made you sick. Well, maybe that's associated with it. But even that it's like, okay, what made you think that the smell? What makes you think that a dead body, which in and of itself isn't giving off any actual signals that it will make you sick if it's decayed enough and you interact with it? What about that made us associate sickness, a transference of sickness that transfers it's an invisible magical transference of pollution from the dead body to you, the person who's handling the dead body. That is significant and remarkable that we came up with that. That's what I think is just so fascinating about all this. Yeah. And I think this thing about the contingencies plays in too. And it's funny, I have to admit when I read this, the word contingencies in my head, I was adding a letter or something and I kept saying in my head as Content Genesis. And I was like, what is that, content Genesis? And finally I saw contingencies correctly. I was like, man, am I drunk. Like, what's going on? So, anyway, there are Content Genesis. That's like a facetiousus. I had that same oh really? Facetious? Yeah. What did you think it said? Or sounded like fastetious or something like that? And I kept sending it out and then finally I was like, oh, that's facetious. Yeah, but you were probably like twelve and not a professional broadcaster. Yeah, I think you had something in your eye that was all. So these contingencies in humans at any time, there are many contingencies at work within us competing against each other. So if you go back to Tuktuk and Mock, mock died. Let's say he did feel some disgust, but he was also hungry so that's the competing contingenesis and his desire to eat or not desire, his need to eat overcame his low level disgust of like, well, it doesn't taste great, but I have this other contingency that says I have to eat, so I'm going to eat this thing. And he doesn't die. Right. Then it's a little more complicated. It is more complicated. And if you step back and think about it evolutionarily. It would make way more sense for us to not maintain a sense of disgust and be able to eat like rancid meat and then instead learn basically develop a gut biome that will kill any bacteria decay that could make us sick so that we could have that many more things that are available for us to eat when we're hard up that makes way more sense through natural selection and evolution than learning to not eat something. I think that's sort of the thing, too, though. Like, the winning contingency is ultimately going to be the one that makes you more fit for replication, right? Right, yeah. For cloning, self cloning. If you have more available food that you can gain energy from in the environment, that would make more sense to adapt to that rather than to adapt an aversion to a potential food source. Right. So that's one question. And then you can also kind of lay that right over sex as well, too. Right. So this explanation of why we might be averse, why we have competing contingencies for sex, like, you want to be attracted to your mate because a person you find attractive is probably going to be a good match for you reproductive wise. Right. Especially if they smell good. Right. And then if you are trying to reproduce with somebody you're disgusted by, they might not be a good match. Reproductive evolutionarily. It makes sense. There's some mental gymnastics right there to me. It makes more sense to just say, here s an example of evolution screwing us up, of natural selection screwing us up. We developed an ability to feel disgusted by sex because it reminds us that we're animals. And so we're missing out on sex, or at least deriving pleasure from sex because we are possibly disgusted by the act of sex if we step back and think about it in the right way. Right. You see what I'm saying? Sure. So there's a lot of holes here, which is why I've got both of my six shooters. I'm about to start shooting them in the air out of Glee because it's been a while since we had an episode like this. Yeah. Another thing that I found interesting, too, from this was just the mere reaction. Apparently most people open their mouths, I keep mine shut. But regardless, we all have the disgust reaction, I guess if you don't, then you're probably a serial killer. Like, if you saw someone open up and smell like rotten meat and literally just kept this stone face, we're like, that smells really bad. They're clearly sociopath. Right. And that's what Rosen was saying. That's why discussed it's the defining human characteristic, because that person would seem nonhuman in that sense. They'd be a robot, kind of. Yeah. But if people make this face like that is the cue. You don't even need to smell the milk. If I walk in the kitchen and Emily pours some milk well, I was going to say I see it clump out of the thing, but that wouldn't count. Like, if I see Emily just smell the milk, she makes her disgust face. I don't need to smell it. No, but why is it that there is a 100% chance that Emily or anyone else would be smelling who will say, smell this? Yeah, I never. No, that's okay. Thanks for the warning. With the wrinkled nose and raised upper lip. I know, but when you're married, it's like no, seriously, I smelled it. Like, you have to smell it. No, I don't want to smell it. I've suffered. So that becomes like, all of a sudden something that bonds communities together and cultures together, even. Right. Okay, so this then we get to the moral explanation of disgust, of how seeing somebody involved in cheating or some sort of unfairness or racism or just some really anti social violating behavior that you experienced, discussed, at the very least, people say use the word discussed and discussed. Maybe it is the same thing. That's what that one Wonder Machine study said and the other way that they backed it up. There's a really interesting article by Rosen Johnathan Height, who actually was a contributor in our Superstoff Guide to Happiness, if you remember, and then a guy named O. McAuley, what is Clark McCauley? They're kind of like this big three triad in the study of discussed. They're known as the only three. There's a couple of others, but yeah, kind of. But in this paper, they basically say, okay, so you got the Wonder Machine evidence suggesting that our actual brain, the part of our brain responsible for experiencing disgust is lighting up. When somebody gives us an unfair offer of money, that's one thing. But also they go around the world and say that in Japan, in Spain and Portugal, all over the world, whatever that society or language, culture's word is for disgust, they routinely use it to describe things like the experience of seeing somebody hold poop up to their mouth and the experience of being treated unfairly or seeing somebody racist. So it's not just people in English misusing an English word discussed, which means actually bad taste. In older Middle English, there is some sort of moral component to discuss. It seems like, well, even the word distasteful, like, is rooted in the word taste. That's just a similar thing to like. Behavior can be distasteful and rotten antelope can be tasteful. Exactly. Especially if he's a real jerk. Right. The other interesting thing about the work that Jonathan Hate did was this tying it to political ideology. Jeez, what is wrong with me today? I thought it was super interesting because they did research and they found that people who are more sensitive to disgust tend to be more socially conservative and that can be exploited. So when you go to a major news outlet that may be conservative, that is why you were more likely to see photos of unwashed or sick immigrants approaching the border and not like pictures of the handsomest, most fit immigrant approaching the border, because that will, at least according to this study, they have a higher, more powerful emotion of disgust. Right. It's hijacking your ability to experience moral disgust because apparently it's really easy to come up and poke to. Push a person's disgust buttons. And from what the study says is that this happens a lot, way more than we're cognizant of, and that if we can make ourselves cognizant of it, we could actually defend against it a little more. Yeah. Fox News isn't going to put the guy they're not going to put the guy that looks like Antonio Banderas in the immigrant caravan hello. As their front page lead photo. It's going to be the person that's on the stretcher that's sick and dying, and that's going to cause this reaction of disgusting. The CGI flies, like, flying around the person. Can't you see Antonio Banderas walking up in the video and going, this wall is too sexy? And then the other interesting thing about that whole study that he was doing, that hate was doing was they also found that people make harsher judgments when they are exposed to a disgusting stimulus. So it usually was a smell, like the smell of a tootie booty a shot duck. And if you smell this flatulence, you would react more harshly towards, like, a photo of something that might discuss you just a little bit. I want to know the methodology of this study pretty badly. Was it just one of those things where they just kind of suddenly the area between you and the researcher filled with the fart smell? Well, where do you get the fart smell? Is there a synthetic? I think there is. You probably look at some novelty joke shop they picked up, like, a spinning bow tie while they got the canned part, too, right? They're like, thank you. Here's your $10, and have a good day. And they shake their hand. There's a buzzer, right? Exactly. So they were talking about something like, what kind of a prison sentence would you oh, excuse me. What kind of a prison sentence would you give to somebody? And, like, this fart smell just kind of comes up, but they're just not talking about it. I would guess that's how you would have to do it, right? Dude, I had a stranger asked me the other night if I farted. Yeah, had you? No. I was at the Fleetwood Mac concert, standing in the beer line, and this guy in front of me turned around with his wife and fully just said, did you fart? And I went, nope. And I was like, I would tell you if I did. Did he look at his wife and go, did you fart? No. But then we got to talking, and I was like, guys, I hate to tell you, I said, I don't even smell anything, so I think you're looking in the wrong direction. And then he felt like I was a little drunk, so I didn't care. I was playing along. But then he felt, like, really bad and was over apologetic. I was like, dude, you're going to ask someone if they farted, don't then turn around and be weirdly ashamed of that get all weepy. Just own it. Does the guy not know the whole he who smelt it, dealt it idiom? No. Maybe it was the first date and that was the deal. Maybe he did. Yeah, he really played it off well. It sounds funny. All right. Should we take a break? I think we should. All right, I'm going to go fart in the hallway. We'll be right back. Thank you for that, Chuck. 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. All right, it's back. Chuck is back. Now everything's fine in here, and we are still talking about discuss. Let's just kind of go over this real quick one more time. Okay? So we started out with this mechanism of distaste where we involuntarily spit something out that's gross, that occurs elsewhere in the animal kingdom. And then over time, we figured out how to create a new adaptation, a new behavior that is overlaid over that same brain circuitry where we spent something out. And we call that disgust. And it originally started out as an aversion to things like poop and vomit and that kind of stuff. And then that evolved even further, because at some point, we said, we're better than animals, and I don't like to be reminded of an animal. And I guess that desire to not be reminded of an animal developed so much that it became overlaid, over that disgust emotion that had hijacked the distaste emotion. And then at some point, finally, it reached the moral structure, and that hijacked the animal and the core and the distaste to where now just the idea of somebody behaving in a certain way can disgust us. And the whole thing that really kind of changed and made it human was the addition of imagination and symbolism to these ideas so that we didn't even have to taste or smell or see anything anymore. Just thinking about this kind of stuff could disgust us. And that's where we're at and discussed research and that's where we're at in the podcast too, frankly. Wow, that's a nice recap. Thank you. All right, so culturally it depends on where you are in the world and what you might be disgusted by. So while it is universal, it's not like every single thing is universal. People eat things in some parts of the world that other parts of the world might think are disgusting. And that, again, is the thing that basically says I'm a part of this family, I'm a part of this culture, I'm a part of this group. The fact that I'll eat eyeballs right out of a fish right out of a fish's head to scoop it out and eat it. Right. I might think that's disgusting, but that's not necessarily like taboos are not the same in cultures all over the world. Yeah. Whether it's food, apparently they think maybe even, well, cannibalism. Obviously some cultures don't view incest as taboo as other cultures do. So some of the things that we would think would be universally disgusting aren't universally disgusting. And the whole idea of food too shows that you can learn to not find something disgusting or never find it disgusting at all because you were just raised in a culture that eats this food and values it, but to somebody else from outside of the culture, when they see that food, they are disgusted by it. So there's a lot of lack of universality in disgust that we might assume would be there that actually isn't. Yes, vegetarianism and veganism is a perfect example. Someone can eat meat until they're in their mid twenty s and then all of a sudden switch to veganism and a year later the mere sight of meat might discuss them, whereas the year before they were chowing down on it. Which I would guess that's just like you restructuring your brain circuitry, basically, right? Yeah, I think so. Probably that would make sense, but so something that never discussed you before can become genuinely disgusted or the other way around, I imagine. Oh yeah. I mean you can learn to eat other cultures foods that you were disgusted by previously and I know you can learn to eat meat now. Right? Yeah. You can also learn to eat broccoli over time. Broccoli is good. It's not though. It really is roasted in the oven delish. Okay, I will give you that. Roasted broccoli is okay, but if it's steamed or just like floppy in any way, shape or form, I've had bad experiences with it over the years. It sounds like someone's overcooking your broccoli. Not anymore, but yes, I think mum and dad used to overcook it quite a bit. Yeah, I go for al dente when it comes to most vegetables. Yeah. But roasted is good. Mushy is a food quality that kind of discussed me. So food preparation is important. I know we're just kind of kidding about the broccoli, but let's say an eggplant or a squash. If you cook that thing until it's really mushy, it's really gross to me. But I will totally eat an eggplant if it's nice and firm. Yeah. Texture is enormous with it. It also affects taste too, which doesn't make any sense except for like it's part of the experience of it. Right? Yeah. But true disgust happens for me, I think. It's not just like I don't prefer that like mushy food really grosses me out. Well, there's something that it actually hit upon early on in this, is that disgust is it goes around our conscious thought, right? Yeah. You're not like, this broccoli is not to my preference. It is way too floppy and mushy and I prefer to not have it in my mouth anymore. And you spit it out and it just falls back onto your plate. Instead you put it in your mouth, especially if you're not expecting it to be mushy and you start chewing it like you expect it to be good. Your reaction without even thinking is going to be spit it out, probably. And you might not actually spit it out, but that will be your first reaction. And you might have to stop yourself, like bring your napkin up to your mouth or whatever. And that's one of the things that really kind of is a hallmark characteristic of disgust when it is experienced. It goes around our intellect and our conscious thought. It's a basic reaction. Yeah. And it can also get out of hand as far as the idea is that at its root we're trying to avoid disease and dying. We've all heard of cases, phobias really, that develop and pathologies out of fear of germs or dirt or cleanliness. Anyone who's ever seen the great movie Safe by Todd Haynes, that was a movie about that where this woman sort of slowly unwinds and eventually ends up in a community where everyone is obsessed with this kind of compulsive cleanliness. Who's the woman? It's Julian Moore. I haven't seen that yet. Is it pretty good? Yeah, it was great. It's a long time ago, so it's like in the early ninety s, I think. Okay. Like some of her earlier work. But that's just an example of how that can happen and how it can get out of hand until basically you have a compulsive disorder that may have started out of a legit environmental like disgust reaction to disease. Right. Yeah. That's what they think is the basis of possibly all of it that has to do with disgust or like a drive to feel clean or to get rid of germs or to be afraid of germs, that kind of thing that it's being indoctrinated into. Disgust went a little too far and your brain's disgust reaction just became too powerful and now it has this kind of crippling effect on your life. Yes. But it can also like it's. Oddly, there are things that have nothing to do with disease and dying that have been kind of labeled as disgusting. And Ed points out acne is one of them that might trigger a disgust reaction in some people. And it's really completely harmless. It is, but it's playing upon, in an inadvertent way, our predisposition to be grossed out by things like a sore. Yeah, sore. A pox, a pustule. It has nothing to do with that. It just kind of resembles it in the exact same way. People find slugs and snails disgusting, and they suggest that it's because they look like they're covered in mucus. Even though it's not actually mucous, it reminds us of mucus. So we're disgusted at the thought of touching one of those things. Same thing. They're not disease carriers, but they remind us of it. That's the key. Because disgust works hand in hand with human imagination. I got Emily one of those poppet pals. Have you seen those? No. What is it? You know how she's pretty obsessed with zip popping and she's not one of those people who watches the stuff on YouTube, but it's just like a personal thing. But I saw it on Shark Tank. There's this thing now it's about the size of a bar of soap. Okay. But it's made out of silicon. It's kind of a squishy, rubber, rectangular bar. And you squirt this, like I don't know what it's made of. It's almost like crisco or something. I think it's plantbased. And you fill it up with that and the top of it is covered with all these little dimple holes. And you pop them and it comes snaking out just like, the best dimple you've ever seen. So I kept trying to imagine that this is going on the person's face. Now it's like, just basically like, here, keep busy with this and leave my face alone. Yeah, you just like, whatever. You set it in your lap and just pop away. That's really awesome. Yeah, it was really satisfying for you. I thought she might be like, no, this is not the same. But she was obsessed with it for that's awesome couple of days. Is there any great human thing that Shark Tank hasn't given us? I don't know. I can't think of one. Yumi has a thing for Cauliflower ear, and she'll sometimes watch videos of Cauliflower ear being drained. And it's like, I can't hang, man. She ever dated wrestler? No, not that I know of. She missed her chance, I guess, right? She better have missed her chance. Fight. She comes in and she finds you, like, on the carpet, rolling your ear on the floor. Isn't that how wrestlers get it? I think they get it from, like, a trauma to the ear, like a punch of the ear, like an impact of the ear. And then it swells up and then it turns into, like, scar tissue or, like, just pussy infected edema. Well, which is why they wear the ear covers. Yeah, well, that ended up cool. That do look kind of cool. Somehow it offsets the singlet, which is the least cool thing you can wear. It's pretty uncool, I have to say. Sorry, wrestlers, but the entire rest of the world thinks that the singlets look uncool. It's not just us. Oh, boy. So let's talk about the discuss scale real quick. Do you have that? Yeah. I didn't even look at this because I thought it might be fun if you just went through a few of those with me. Okay. Well, this is a great idea. Chuck it into a game. Still innovating after eleven years. I'm so proud of us. So, Paul Rosen and John Height and a couple of other people came up with the sorry, clark McCauley. And Clark McCauley. I'm just going to say the third person. They came up with a discussed scale. Okay. Yes. So, Chuck, between zero and 40 being strongly disagree and four being strongly agree, meaning it's very untrue or very true about you. Okay. Please indicate how much you agree with each of the following statements or how true it is about between zero and what? Three. Four. Okay. 40. Strongly disagree. It's very untrue about you. Four, strongly agree. Very true about you. Sorry. I might be willing to try eating monkey meat under some circumstances. Strongly disagree. Four. That's a zero. Okay. Zero. It would bother me to be in a science class and to see a human hand preserved in a jar. Obviously that would not bother me because when I saw the human head in a bucket, very famously, my reaction was, there's a human head. Okay. Whereas the person with me was really disgusted. Right. Yeah, I think understandably so. I love that story. Okay, here's another one. I never let any part of my body touch the toilet seat in public restrooms. Agree or disagree, untrue or true. I'm just going to ditch the numbers because it's confusing me. Okay, that doesn't really bother me that much. I know that probably really disgust you. Well, yeah, I just have to go to another place. Oh, see, when I do that I don't mind, man. I know that's gross. Probably, but whatever. Okay, here's one more from this one. Then we're going to do another site. You ready? Okay. I would rather eat a piece of fruit than a piece of paper. Well, yeah, I'd rather eat a piece of fruit. Okay. I think that's just like a baseline one that they use. So then between zero and four rates not disgusting at all. Are extremely disgusting. I just say one of those two. Okay. You see maggots on a piece of meat in an outdoor garbage pail. Very disgusting. I agree. Your friend's pet cat dies and you have to pick up the dead body with your bare hands. Not disgusted, just sad. Okay. I mean, I've done that with all of my animals that have passed. I took care of the bodies. Right. I think this leaves out that it was hit by a car and it's now part of the road, basically. Yeah. That's medium disgusting and sad. Okay, well, yes, sad. You're about to drink a glass of milk when you smell it as spoiled. And then in parentheses, weirdly enough, it says, because Emily, just change it under your nose and said, Smell that. That's weird. Yeah. The smell of turned food grosses me out a lot. Okay. While you're walking through a tunnel under a railroad track, you smell urine. Yeah, I've been to New York enough times. It's not that big of a deal. It still gets me, man. I think smelling urine is worse than smelling poop for some reason. Oh, really? Yeah. Interesting. Okay, two more. You see a man with his intestines exposed after an accident. Yeah. That's pretty high up there. Yeah, I think so, too. And then last chuck, you see someone put ketchup on vanilla ice cream and eat it. Yeah, that's gross. Okay. Although it's interesting, though, when I thought about the body's entrails, like, I don't love it, but I can watch, like, a surgery. It's not my favorite thing, but I'm not fully disgusted. But if it's an accident, I think that so it might be a contextual thing as well. So one of the things that I experience when I see something in surgery and I think, yeah, context definitely has a lot to do with it. In that case, too. But if I see, like, a surgery remember there used to be that TV network that was nothing but surgery. You remember that? It was in the late eighties, early nineties, I think. But to see that I'll get, like, faint, right? Yeah. And it's not necessarily the sight of blood. It's like the site of visceral. I get a little faint, and it never made sense to me. It might be mirror neurons, I think, definitely is part of it, too. But I think also part of the disgust reaction is that your heart rate and blood pressure lower would explain why you start to feel faint. Like, I don't feel queasy or nauseated or like I'm going to wretch. I feel like I need to sit down for a second, which is I guess it's still part of the disgust reaction. It just isn't the nausea version of it, but it's still revulsion, but a weird fainty version. So in the med school sitcom that we start in, when they pull the sheet back, you start saying, I don't feel too good, guys, and they're like, yeah, you're so funny. And then all of a sudden, you hit the deck. I think the way I would play it is even more straightforward, where my eyes just go up in the back of my head and I fall backward in response to the sheep being pulled. It's a good move. I can't wait for that movie to come out. Yeah. You got anything else? I don't think so. I'd be surprised if you did. We've gone on for a good six, seven minutes beyond when we should have stopped. I like that game aspect of that one. That was fun. Your score, by the way, indicates that you do experience discussed from time to time. I'm not a serial killer. No. I don't know if you guys heard or not, but Jerry also gave her answers as well. That's right. If you want to know more about disgust, you can just go look at some weird stuff on the Internet. It's out there for you. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this one of the many dyslexia emails we got. Those are really rolling in from people who have overcome dyslexia and adults living with dyslexia. So this one is from a fellow Atlanta named Audrey Short, and she says this hey, guys, I have dyslexia, and I was so happy to hear you talking about my learning disability. I was diagnosed when I was about ten and went to the Shank School in Atlanta, which is specifically for children with dyslexia. Cool. In fact, she sent in a follow up email just to clarify that we learned how to read and write using a technique called Orton at Gillingham. When I left after the fourth grade, I could actually read. More importantly, I loved to read and devoured every book I could get my hands on while I graduated top of my class. I had to work twice as hard as my classmates to keep up with the required readings and homework. My peers seem to think that my extra time I received for exams was the reason I did so well, not the countless hours and late nights I spent learning the material. While this bullying did affect me, did not discourage me from pursuing my education at college. I attended Miami University in Ohio, graduating this May with a 399 GPA. Wow. Biochemistry and physics. Wow. I plan to attend a PhD program at Harvard or UC Berkeley. I'm not saying this to brag, but to tell other children with dyslexia to keep trying. I know so many students are afraid to ask for extra time or accommodations because they don't want to be bullied or stand out. I'm proud of my dyslexia because it has forced me to learn how to stand up for my student rights. I've made it to where I am today by utilizing the tools given to me, like extra time. And I want to encourage all people with learning disabilities to seek help because you are intelligent and your unique perspective just might change your field entirely. Nice. That was Audrey. Audrey Short. Great. Audrey. That is a great email. So that kind of replaces that whole look, this famous person made it. You can just tell people. Let me tell you about Audrey short. Yeah, agreed. Okay. Way to go, Audrey. That's fantastic. Congratulations. Early on graduating with a 3.99 man, that's impressive. And good luck in grad school too. If you want to get in touch with us like Audrey did, you can go on to Stuffyhano.com and check out the social links there. You can also send us an email, send it off to stuffpodcast@howtofworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseupworks.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 bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcast. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-05-16-sysk-champagne-final.mp3 | How Champagne Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-champagne-works | Sure we can all agree that champagne is probably the greatest thing humans have or ever will invent, but how much do we understand how it's made? | Sure we can all agree that champagne is probably the greatest thing humans have or ever will invent, but how much do we understand how it's made? | Tue, 16 May 2017 07:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=7, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=136, tm_isdst=0) | 57324844 | 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 housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Pierre Clark. There's Charles, Jacques Bryant and Jerry Kelly. Oh, nice rolling. Are we allowed to tell everyone your last name? Jerry, we've done it before. Okay. What if they go trying to find her on Facebook and find out she doesn't actually exist? It's all just a plant fake Facebook page that we've created. I know that she is an actual plant. Right. That crows in the corner. Feed me. I am worried about this one. I'm just going to go ahead and say it. Oh, why? You were worried about the wine one? For the same reason we didn't do the wine one. I know. That's exactly why. Exactly for those reasons. Totally fine. Man. No one knows anything about champagne. People spend lifetimes learning this stuff. Yes, but we have a show and everyone knows that. We don't spend a lifetime learning about what we talk about. That we just do our research and we try to find the most interesting stuff to explain how something works. I know, but these anytime is something where someone is like such a huge like where it's such a big thing for so many people. Right. I just know we're going to mess up pronunciation in French. So chimpagny, right? Chimpagney. I think that's how Bugs Bunny always pronounced it, yeah. Oh, so you're following a grand tradition. I didn't know he was a drinker. Well, we are going to talk about champagne. It's a little late now. Do you like champagne? I love champagne. Oh, okay. Love it. I don't. I mainly drink sparkling wine. I don't really drink champagne itself, but buddy, this article made me want to drink some champagne. Well, you do little Prosecco or cava? Sure. I don't really discriminate. Okay, I do. I don't drink any of it. You don't like champagne, huh? No, I don't like sparkling wine. It's not for Chuck, as they say. I got you. I love what they say. I love it, man. I particularly love Shandong out in California. I will say one time at a party, though, many years ago, like in the drank a lot of just champagne, only champagne. This might be why you don't like champagne. The only time in my life, no, actually I felt like a twelve year old girl. That was wonderful. Oh, that's your problem. Champagne is no, I mean silly and bubbly and fun. Like I played hopscotch and stuff like that. Yes, I know. That's terrible. Why would you ever want to do that again? I don't mean I felt like a girl because I was drinking champagne. That's what I thought you meant. I was like, well, there's your problem. Champagne is not a girly drink. No, I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who do think that buddy, I will drink pink champagne with your finger up at a bull fight. Oh, gross. Yeah, you got to do something to wash the pain away. Yeah, it's just not for me. And that gave me such a bad headache the next day I didn't go back to the well, if someone wants to toast me, I won't go, no, I'm not drinking that. Well, you were probably drinking pretty sweet champagne, weren't you? You the higher the sugar content in anything, the more of a hangover you're going to have. Yeah, I don't know. Well, I love it. Good. You mean I've been to Shandon twice, went on to Shandon cruise once. Wow. Big fans of Shandon. Where is that? Hint, hint. It's out in Napa Valley. It's famously attached to Moet and shandon. And then Shandon went and said, hey, we're going to open up something in California, too. Got you. Cool. Because their terroir is heavy beat. Good terroir. And that's another thing, too. This is what I'm nervous about. I'm not nervous about getting it wrong. I'm nervous about coming across like just a complete jackass. Sophisticated. I'm not at all. I just like champagne. I know more now about champagne doing this research for the last couple of days than I ever had before. So I definitely don't put myself out there as like an expert in any way, shape or form. All right, so that's called everybody, put your emails away. Ten minutes of caveats by Josh and Chuck. See, that was French and you pronounced it great. Kavite said Latin. All right, well, I guess if you don't know anything about champagne, you might have noticed that we already said both the word champagne and sparkling wine. And I think most people probably know this, but some people may not. Champagne is a region in France and technically you are only supposed to say champagne for sparkling wine if it comes from that region. Right. So all champagne that's sparkling wine is sparkling wine, but all sparkling wine is not Champagne. That's right. I think that simplified in Champagne itself, the region is about an hour and a half, 90 minutes or so northeast of Paris or east. And this article points out that it's one of the least visited regions of France, but I bet they have their fair amount of enthusiasts that go to regions, but maybe just not as many. I don't know. It's the south of France or other Burgundy, maybe. Right. Well, Burgundy comes to mind for sure. Apparently. Shebli I didn't realize that that was a wine growing region, did you? I don't think I did. And the very famous Mad Dog region. Right. Lunaticrene. So silly. Champagne is a region. It's also a sparkling wine. But yes, like you said, you can't make sparkling wine outside of this Champagne region, and you can even make sparkling wine inside of the Champagne region. And unless you're following a very strictly controlled process within this particular region of France, you are not allowed anywhere in the world to call your sparkling wine Champagne. It's what's called an Appalachian no, that's a mountain range. It's what's called a Trail appalachian door jean Control, or AOC is what we're going to call it. But it's basically the same thing with bourbon here in the United States, right? Yeah. Where you have to follow specific rules and you have to make it within a specific region. And the whole point is you don't want just any schmo making something that's similar to your product, but not nearly as good, that's not going through anywhere near the painstaking amount of process and labor that you're doing and still call it the same thing you're calling it. You don't want to do that. So you have to restrict it, especially the French. They're not going to be all willy nilly about that. That's their region. Yeah. Apparently there's something like 84,000 acres, which I don't think is a lot. And what are those cities? The two main cities are REM and Epranay, but we even have a thing in here that says, if you say REM, then you're an American city. Flicker. If you say Reims, okay, REM. I've seen plenty wrongs, is what they say in the Help me out article that we got. I think you just earned some fans in France with that one. Well, by any other name, it is still Champagne, and those are the cities. And there are but three grapes that you can use to make champagne. You can't just say, oh, that muscatine looks nice, like they do here in Georgia. Right. Throw it in a bottle and firm in it. Yeah. Pete, put this in your mouth. Chew it, spit it up in a bottle. There are three grapes, and they are the Pinot Noir grape, the Chardonnay grape, and how do you pronounce that last one? Pino Monier. Okay. Which is another dark grape or red grape or black grape, I think is what they call it. Yes. If you ever talk to a real wine person and you don't know the lingo, you're going to be confused quick when they say things like black grapes. Right. You'd be like, what the heck is a black grape? But if you dig into it, you start to find that there's a lot of overlap in words. There's a lot of multiple terms that describe the same thing. Yeah. Black grape, red grape. Same thing. Yeah. Purple grape. Why not? If you say that, you're going to get laughed out of napa. I like the purple grapes. Concorde, I think, is what they're calling, but Chardonnay is of those three, is the only all white grape. And a lot of people might not know this. It's the same with still wine, but inside that black skin is white pulp. Yeah. Depending on when you pick the grape. Yeah. So if you pick it early, before it has a chance to turn reddish, you can conceivably squeeze clear or white grape juice from red or black grapes. That's right. And that's what's happening in the case of Champagne. Yeah. Because if you look at it, you're like, well, I mean, this is clear. How is this made from red grapes? Well, as we'll see later on, you have Dawn Perignon to think, well, we should go ahead and talk about that, I guess. Well, let's talk about Champagne a little bit first, and then we'll get to Dawn Perign. So the region itself is pretty ancient. The first vineyards in Champagne were planted by the Romans, who also mine chalk in the area. And there's extensive chalk quarries that are underground that have served as Champagne sellers for generations. So the place has been making wine the region has been making wine for millennia, but it wasn't until about the 16 1700 when they really kind of took what was a naturally occurring problem, which is carbonation happening in their wine, and went to town with it. They said, if you can't beat them, join them. So they took this thing that was viewed as a flaw in their wine, carbonation, sparkling wine, and they figured out how to make it even more so and made it its own thing. Yeah. In that region, that chalk is very key to what you end up getting, because it's very reflective, because it's white. It is. So it reflects the sunlight from the ground back up to the leaves. Right. Yeah. It's a very unique region, and apparently, if you stumbled upon that region today in our advanced winemaking techniques and sparkling wine techniques, you probably wouldn't say, hey, this is a great place to have a vineyard. Right. You go, sacred blood. The soil is terrible. Well, you might, because I think it's a little tougher to grow. Like, it's a very fine line between getting a successful harvest in that region, which makes it, I think, very special. Yeah, it does. Apparently, they have cold, short, wet, growing seasons, and apparently that's where the original sparkling wine and Champagne came from. It was a freak of natural climate and natural conditions. Growing conditions. Right, yeah. Because, as we'll see, a second fermentation is what creates the carbonation. And that would happen naturally because they would harvest the wine, make wine, store it, and then it would get cold all of a sudden, like early, before the fermentation process was done. So fermentation would basically stop, but then there'd be a lot of sugar and yeast left in their wine that hadn't fermented when they started it. So when spring came around again and things started to warm up, a second fermentation process started, and that's really what kicked off the bubbles. Yeah. But for a long time, the people in Champagne, in the Champagne region were tearing their hair out because they didn't want this. It was a sign that their wine was terrible or poorly made. And like I said, it wasn't until Don Perignon came along who didn't like it himself, but was one of the people who created a lot of the techniques that helped establish Champagne as the sparkling wine capital of the world. So he didn't care for it? No, he called it mad wine, I think is what he calls it. He was a monk, though, right? Yeah, he was a Benedictine monk in the area. He was the seller master, which is, if you are a seller master, you are in charge as far as Champagne goes with basically making the master blend of the Champagne. Are you talking about the covet? Yes, the Couvet. And when you put it together, that's the assemblage, right? That's right. So Don Perignon was the guy in charge of that for this abbey. He was a monk. His name was Pierre Perignon. Dom is like it denotes you're a monk, benedictine monk. And he was one of the ones who established a lot of the groundwork for creating sparkling wine, creating Champagne. Very interesting. Like, up to that point, you would have sparkling wines in your cellar, but they were using wood and hemp to stop these bottles. Well, that didn't work all that well. Bottles were very frequently explode, and sellers were very dangerous places to be because one of these stoppers came out, it shoot across the room, hit another bottle, and that bottle stopper would come out, and all of a sudden, you have a chain reaction of these wooden stoppers, like, flying at your head like a Bug Money cartoon. Yeah. Three Stooges or something. Right. So Don Perignon came up with the idea of using corkstoppers in thicker English type bottles, which could withstand the pressure holding them down with little rope. Muzzles. Now we use foil and wire. Yeah. What's that called? A muzzle? Yeah, muzzle. There's a French word for it. But I can't find it. My notes. Something like that. So he came up with a bunch of stuff. He also was the first one to start blending wines from the region. And as we'll talk about in a few, that's the basis of champagne. It's a blend. Champagne is a blend of wine. That's right. Should we take a break? We'll collect ourselves. 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No. I mean, if you opened a bottle of champagne in here, I would drink a flute because A, it's rude when you're offered something to turn your nose up at it. Right. Unless you're under 21. And B, it might help me to relax a little bit. It really would. About this thing, you'd feel great. Should we talk a little bit about the champagne method? Yes. What the French call la method champagne. Okay. La method champagne. If they close your system. This is one reason why champagne is a bit more expensive or can be a bit more expensive, is because there's a lot of processes involved and not like there's not with still wine. But champagne kind of takes it a step further. It's time consuming, and there are people's hands and feet involved a lot of times. Yeah. And like you said, it starts with making wine. Actually, it starts even further back than that. It starts with growing the grape. That's right. But fermentation. All wines are fermented, of course. And that's when sugar breaks down from the grape juice, turns it into alcohol. Delicious, delicious alcohol. And that is called wine. And just like regular wine, still wine, like you said, I guess we shouldn't call it regular wine. Just still wine. Still wine. Basic wine, they start with those scrapes, and in the case of champagne, they are pressed with human feet, which still happens. Right. And I can't help but think of that video still, after all these years of that poor lady who was at Chateau Elan. Right. Is that in Georgia? I don't think I knew that it was Georgia. Lake Morning Show. Atlanta Morning Show. I think it was like Fox Live or something like that. I can still hear it. I haven't seen it in years. But if you don't know what we're talking about, there was one of the early viral videos of this woman on location doing a story about wine in Georgia, and she was stomping on the wine it's on a platform for some reason. Yeah. And she fell out of the barrel and hurt herself. But it sounded like she was in very much heavy distress. Like new dimensions of pain are the sounds that the woman made. I've never heard anything like it before or since. Me neither. Yeah, I'm pretty sure she's okay. Yeah. That's why I don't mind talking about it now. It's not like she was maimed for life or anything like that. I was thinking I love Lucy, too. Yeah. That very famous grape stomping when she gets in, like, a grape throwing fight with the lady. Lizzie. She was always getting into trouble, wasn't she? I shot in the studio where they filmed that show one time in California. Oh, yeah. Right there in Hollywood. Yeah, it was kind of neat. One of the groups just came over. He was like, this is the I Love Lucy studio. And he went, It smelled the grapes. All right, so where were we? Feet, which is this wonderful old world technique that I didn't know this. I didn't know that you have to do that for champagne. Is it just because it's so delicate? Yeah, I think that's part of it. But also they kind of shy away from machinery. And the method champagne was really yes, it's a traditional method. Even though if you look back at the history of wine making, champagne is very relatively new. Like, we're talking 16, 1700. Right. They've been making wine for many thousands of years. Right. So this is a fairly new invention, but it was still invented at a time where you mainly used human labor for things like this. So yeah, they've tended to preserve that as much as possible. All right. Well, you've got your juice, your white juice, and well, they put it in stainless steel vats. Unless you're super old world, I guess some people do use wood still, but yeah, that you're allowed to use for the initial fermentation, where you're just making the basic wine. Yeah, you can use seamless steel. Yeah. So there it sits for a long time, ferments become still wine, and like we said, this is just the first fermentation. And then you move on to the blending, which is where that all important seller master comes in. Right. So if you're a seller master for a champagne house, unless you're a very specific type of champagne house, where you actually make champagne, from growing the grapes to the finished product, right. You are probably going around the champagne region trying different champagne or trying different wines, still wines. And you're coming up within your head a blend of all these different wines. And that blend, as we said before, is called the Cuve. And the Cuve, it's just that it's a blend of wine, and it has mainly three different factors involved that you have to take into consideration if you're the seller master. Right? Yes. If it's a vintage covet, a vintage blend of wines, and that means it's using grapes that were all grown in the same year, same growing season. Yeah. And I imagine the cellar masters, I mean, you said they're tasting things. I'm sure they are, but I imagine these seller masters in champagne also kind of know exactly where they're going to go for most of these. Sure. And they also would know, like, well, if you guys have 2007 vintage wine, like, that was a great year, or that year was kind of rough, it might take a neat edge to some other 2009 grapes I'm using, too. Right. These are what these people are walking around with in their heads, that kind of that level of information. So they're putting it all together. They come up with these clever little blends, and each blend is a Cuba. Again, one of the things they can take into account is the vintage. The years. Yeah. Like you said, if it's a vintage wine, it's just from the one year growing season. If it's non vintage, that means you're combining various years. Right. And typically, vintage wines, I think, tend to be more expensive. I get the impression that they tend to be a little more revered. They definitely take longer to mature. Yeah. The fermentation process is longer than the non vintage. And you'll see this on the label. It'll say vintage, or else it will say NV a lot of times. Right. Two other things for a seller master to take into account are the varieties'yeah and the crew. Right? Yeah. C-R-U. So crew is C-R-E-W or the C-R-U-E with an oomla over the u rakhan. Yes, the crew. It's a vineyard, basically. So you can have grapes all from one vineyard, from different years and different rivals, and that would still be what's called a single crew. Or you could mix different crews, different vineyards, grapes to create a coup vet. Yeah. And the grand crew, you might have seen that before on a bottle. If you get the Grand Cruz status, then you're really cooking with gas, as my dad used to say, in the mid 1980s. Well, initially there were only twelve villages that had that grand crust status. And then in 1985, they expanded that to 17, because five more villages, and I'm not going to try and pronounce all those added to the list. And it says here that less than 9% is incredibly low of all the vineyard land. And champagne has a 100% grand Cruz rating. Right. So, again, 84,000 acres. Only 9% of that is the top rated. Basically, it's saying this land is the primal land for growing Champagne grapes. So if you get grapes that are grown there by these people who really know what they're doing, you're going to pay through the nose for it. Sure. So a Grand Crux Champagne is going to be pretty expensive, but there's a reason behind it. Yeah. It's not just marketing. No. And variety, too. Like you said, there's three grapes. Right. Just those three. And depending on how you put them together, you can come up with a type of cuve as well. Right. So Blanc de Blanc means white of whites that's made just with chardonnay grapes. Blanc de Noir is made with just one of the other black grapes, either the Pinot Moonier or the Pinot Noir. That's right. But all those three things are factored together to create a specific kuve. Well, and then you've got your rose that you mentioned earlier, your pink wine, or as my friend Stacy calls it, pink crack. It's good stuff. She gets a hold of that stuff. Watch out. Yeah. Well, there's a couple of ways you can do this. Sometimes you leave some of the skin for a little bit of time, but these days, more or less, you're going to be adding a little bit of the red wine, pinot Noir, red wine, to the coveted wine. That's different. If you leave the grapes on a little bit, you're going to have pink champagne. If you actually add red wine afterwards, you're going to have rose champagne. What's the difference? It says here rose is also known as pink champagne. I know. This is what I'm saying. So it gets confusing because you definitely get different things from different sources. But I have seen in multiple places that when you add red wine, that's rose, and that keeping the grapes in is pink champagne. Interesting. But apparently there's something like 3 million bottles of red wine are set aside every year just to make rose champagne. What a waste, man. I'm really changing your mind about champagne. No, you're not. I'm going to. Emily likes rose. Rose champagne. No, I mean, she'll have that, but just still rose. There's also rose with gas. That's not champagne. It's just a little gassy. It's kind of different. Yes. I'm just not a fan of all that stuff. Yeah, I love it. And it's not like I discriminate against wines either, but I definitely prefer champagnes or sparkling wines over still wine, like any day of the week. Yeah, we're the opposite in more ways than one. Are we at the Riddler yet? Because this is my favorite part. We've got the blend, and once you blend it, you have to put it in bottles. And one of the things chuck about the AOC, this method, Champagnoise, is once you put in that bottle, it stays in there until the person who buys it and drinks it takes it out. You have to keep it in the same bottle. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Why would you switch bottles? That'd be weird anyway. Well, you used to want to decant it to get sediment out. You might just put it in one bottle to reuse the bottles, who knows? Yeah. But once you put in the bottle, it's got to stay in the bottle. And after that initial QVE is blended, they put it in the bottle and they let it sit. And depending on what kind what kind it is, if it's nonvintage, it's going to sit there for twelve more months, for a total of a minimum of 15. If it's vintage, it's going to sit there for another three years and just age in the bottle. That's right. And so at this point, you want the bubbles. So you're going to start that second fermentation process by adding sugar and yeast. Then you drop the temperature on your cooler to about 50 to 60, which is cooler than the initial fermentation process. Well, you can also do this in the tank. Like, they're different methods, but right. That's called the charm method, the tanks. Yeah. But I think the Old World method is well, jeez, you can't use tanks, you got to use bottles. And I don't even think Old World is the right term. That's oldish. I'll just say old. But I think Old World means something very specific with wine. Oh, yeah, I can see that. I think it means non Californian. See, this is where we get in trouble. So this is a very slow fermentation process, the second one, and the yeast is living and dying and those cells are breaking apart. And this really interesting process is going on inside that bottle. Yeah. It's eating up all that sugar that you added in what's called the liquorage. Right. And when you add that in and you add the yeast in, the yeast are like, this is great, we're going to live here for generations. Eons by our time table. Yeah. Like, look at all this delicious sugar that we can eat. And they eat it and eat it, and they eat. All of the sugar in this second fermentation process. And what we're doing here now is recreating that natural fluke of a condition where it would get cold and then warm up again. And that second fermentation process would start to make the CO2. Same thing's happening here. But this is a very controlled version of that. Sure. So the use of eating it and like you said, they're dying and breaking open. And so when you're drinking champagne, part of what you're drinking are the internal remnants of yeast cells that have spilled their contents into the champagne. That's why I don't drink it. But they also leave behind some stuff you don't want to drink, which are the cell structures. And that creates what's called sediment. It's basically leftover cellular structure of yeast cells. And you want to get that out. Yeah. And that's through a process called riddling. And I mentioned the Riddler is my favorite person in this process. It's a pretty thankless job to be the Riddler, I think. So I'll bet you get a lot of free champagne. Well, sure, that's thanks. Yes. But it's very solitary and redundant. Oh, yeah. Repetitive. Yeah. So this Riddler, the wine at this point is stored upside down at a 75 deg angle, and that is allowing all these dead yeast cells to collect down near the neck. They by hand, go in every day and turn these bottles, one eight of a turn 20,000, 30,000 bottles. I saw up to $40,000 a day. They do this by hand and they're just rotating these. I can't imagine doing this. I mean, it's your life's work. You got to really be dedicated to your craft to be a Riddler. And it takes about four to six weeks of this dedicated attention. It's a very fast process, though, if you've ever seen a Riddler at work. Oh, yeah. But they have to remember that they turn the bottle so they make a little chalk mark on each 140 thousand times in a day. It's amazing. So they're turning the bottle and like you said, it's turned up at an angle. And the whole point of this is that you're slowly because you don't want to disturb the champagne, it's still maturing. Right. But this is toward the end of that maturation phase, either that twelve month or that 36 month minimum. And as you're turning it, what you're doing is kind of shaking the bottle a little bit, too. And you're just trying to get the yeast cells, what's left of them, to move toward the neck. Right. And the whole point is this is called maturing on the leads. And the leads, I think, are what the sediment is called, possibly. Or else what the yeah, I think that's what it is. Okay. I think and as it goes down and accumulates toward the front of the neck, you now have one of the last steps called gorgemont or disgorgement. Yes. And what you have is a thing of sediment. It's accumulated at the neck and you put it in a nice bath. It's really amazing how they do this. Yeah. And what they used to have to do is they would pop open a bottle, decant it, filter it, and they would pour it back so it's filtered. Because one of the things you'll note about champagne is it's very clear it undergoes several different clarification steps, but that would have been one of them. This is the same thing, but this one is way cooler. They put the neck in an ice bath, a salt ice bath, so you know it's really cold because salt lowers the freezing point of ice water. Yeah. And at this point, it's going to create a little yeast plug up there toward the neck. And what they have to do then is get that plug out of there while maintaining the integrity of the rest of the wine that's inside. Yeah. Like you're going to lose some champagne. It's in a perfect procedure. Well, yeah, I mean, that's part of the process is to lose some because then they add stuff back in. Right. Which we'll get to remove. Well, it says in here the cork. But these days I think that initial one is a cap, like a bottle cap. You can use that overall bottle cap and go on YouTube and look at Riddler at work and just check this out. It's pretty neat. It's a fast process as well. Did you see how it's made on that? No. They pop it out and a surprisingly small amount comes out. Like, I thought they'd be like, oh, God. Oh, jeez. It'd be the most stressful job in the world, but enough comes out. It's foaming over, but it's not like just a tremendous amount. And then they smell it to make sure it's not. The dude I saw put his thumb over it real quick so it wasn't foaming over at all. Maybe that's what I saw. Or maybe that's what he was doing. I didn't catch it. Yeah. Pretty interesting, though. So the Riddlers is doing this by hand because there's carbon dioxide gas in there at this point and it forces that plug out. And like you said, you lose just a little bit, then you add maybe a little brandy, a little sugar, a little white wine back in to get the proper amount of liquid inside the bottle. Right. That's called the dosage or the liquor dosage. Don't call it dosage. No, because I did in my head for like, half of this research. Yeah, and then you start well, that's when it helps to watch videos. Yeah, for sure. And then they put that final cork in place. This is one that's going to stay in there until you uncork it and they tighten it down with that wire. As our not so great article points out, you can make into a little chair afterward. Yeah. That's what people do, right? Sure. And you have to have that thing on there because there's a lot of pressure still building up in that thing. Right. And they've actually, thanks to an 18th century French pharmacist named Antoine Bonnet, he came up with a device to measure the sugar content and wine. So now they know exactly how much sugar to put into the champagne to raise the pressure back up. They want about five or six atmospheres of pressure, or about, I think, 60 to 70 square or pounds per square inch of pressure in a bottle of wine. How much? 50 to 70, I think, or 50 to 90. But it's definitely five or six atmospheres of pressure. Yeah, I got 90 average. Okay. So they know how much of that liquor dosage to put in, how much sugar to put back in to raise the atmosphere back up. And the other reason you want to do that, too, Chuck, is when you're adding that sugar back in, that yeast ate all the sugar that was in there and turn it into carbon dioxide that you put in for the second fermentation. And when they did, they made the champagne as dry as a bone, an extra brute. So the amount of it's actually more than that brute natural. Well, I call it a double Xbrew. It's crazy dry. I've never had it, but I can only imagine. How can you have that? Yeah. Oh, really? There's one where they don't put in any dosage. They don't add any sugar afterwards, so it's bone dry. And that's just for people who really prefer that, because apparently the extra brute is the least popular. Yeah, I can imagine. And I think the best selling is sort of that brute, which is sort of in the middle of dry and sweet or set or demisec. And then I think the last one is du doux is the sweetest of all non brute. Yeah. But brute is drier than extra dry, which is kind of surprising. But if you ever it's pretty easy to pick up. If you just read it once or twice, you're like, okay, that's how it's denoted. But all of that is based on how much dosage you put in after you discourage the yeast plug in gorge. Yeah. One of my least favorite words, by the way. That's a bad one. Is this true about Madame Ticole? From what I saw, yes. She was an entrepreneur, famously. In fact, she's called widow at times. She was widowed at a very young age, sadly, at 27, and took over her husband's wine business and supposedly invented that discouraging process herself, which is kind of simple when you look at it. But I wouldn't have thought to do it. No, again, I mean, they were decanning them back then and filtering it out. And this was, I think, 1813, when the widow clickco came up with it. And about then is when champagne, the drink, took off, at least in France, and started to spread very quickly around the world. Yeah, Napoleon had a lot to do with that, right? I think Napoleon did. By World War One, winston Churchill reminded everyone we're not fighting to save just France boys. We're fighting to save champagne. Hurrah. Should we take another break? I think so. All right, we're going to talk a little bit about what the fuss is with this stuff after this. 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All right, so Josh, the Master winemaker, the Cellar Master, has walked us through the process. What a great job that would be. Yes. My friend Robbie is kind of a rock star wine maker in Napa. That's all right. Yeah, it's pretty great. He's living the good life, I'm sure. In fact, he got in touch at one point because he wanted to start a wine podcast, and we sort of email back and forth and he just wanted advice and stuff. Not like he wanted to start one with me, because that would be what did this podcast call when someone is a super expert and you get a big dummy? I can't think of anything. That's what that would have been. Man, that was just ripe for jokes. I would have been the Thomas satan church to his Paul Giamatti. Oh, you're talking about sideways. I thought you were talking about wings. For a second. I would have been like, when are we going to drink? It tastes good to me. Yeah, and Robbie will be spitting it out. Yeah, I don't think he should do that. He's very talented and he does quite well, like making wine for other people. And he also has his own label, lounge Bin and Pearson Meyer Wines. Plug. Plug, yeah. Right. And when you go to his house and stay with him in his awesome guest house, the top of Hal Mountain, you get drunk on, like, amazing expensive wine. So it's awesome that he opens like you're drinking that. Period. I'm sorry? Period. No, this is Pellegrino. Oh, excuse me. That's the Italian version of perrier. It is. It's like the like, spumanti prosecco. What's Spumanti? Spumante is Italian. Is it? It's sparkling, right? Yeah. I guess Prosecco is Italian as well. I just remember that from when I was a kid. Martini and Rossi AI. It's amazing how it's drilled in my brain, martini and Rossi spoke to which probably is like, crap sparkling wine, isn't it? I don't know that it's good. I don't know. I think that's probably what gave you your headache. That and all the low and brow. Is that still around? I don't know. Is that what Bob and Doug drank from strange grew? No, they drank some sort of is it made up? No, they drank Molson. Well, it was probably some Canadian beer. We're going to get killed over this year. Yeah, we are. Sorry, everybody. All right, so let's move on then, to what makes champagne so expensive and so fancy. There's this notion that you drink it for celebrations or that you're like sort of the upper crust of society if you're drinking champagne. Well, supposedly there is an actual reason why champagne is associated with toasting, the big events in life. Because for 1000 years, from about the 9th century to the 19th century, they had no champagne. The kings of France were coronated in champagne. So it was like a celebration town for the whole country. So toasting with even before they were sparkling wines toasting with champagne, wine was traditional. So have you ever been in a restaurant and gotten good news and said, Waiter, champagne ko song? Has anyone ever done that besides the movies? Maybe it's funny. Was watching McConaughey act and I was watching a movie on somebody else's seat back on a flight, so I wasn't hearing it, so I was really just watching the movie. Right. And I was like, imagine if you were in real life around Matthew McConaughey, like, in a room with one of his characters, and just how off putting and bizarre that experience would be. Because he just choose the scenery and everything he does is just so big. In real life, if you were interacting with that character, you'd be like, calm down, man. You're freaking me out. Well, Woodterson was pretty chill. Yeah. But everybody since Wooderson pretty much all right. Boy, that's an interesting thing to think on. A plane just hit me. It hit me on the plane. I think if I was in a restaurant and something great happened, I would say, Waiter, another gin and tonic. And they would go, huh? They'd probably say, you got it. Actually, I started calling those lime salads at my house. Nice. You're on the gin and tonic now? Yes. That usually happens around April. Oh, yeah. April to September. I got one for you. Gin and bitter lemon is a nice combo. Yeah. And I thought bitter lemon was just like a fever tree drink. They make them. They make a good one. But everybody from, like, Canada Dry to whoever else makes bitter lemon as well. So just get yourself a good bitter lemon and some gin. You're going to love it. We'll definitely do a podcast on gin at some point. Okay. Very interesting liquor. Yeah. Complex. Can be sure. I got another one for you with that better lemon. If you want to get really fancy, get some St. George terroir. Yeah, I'm not a fan. You had the dry rye. You tried the terroir one. Yeah, the one that tastes like feet. No, that's the dry rye. I've tried all three of those St. Georges, and I don't like any of them, okay? I'm a London dry guy. Well, anyway, you'll still like it with bitter lemon. Everyone else would like the terroir St. George with bitter lemon. Everyone else on the planet. All right. And I figured out what was up with the dry rye. You're absolutely right. You can't make a martini out of that stuff. It kill you. It's not made for it. It's made for things like Negronis. It makes a killer Negroni. Yeah, it's really good. Yes. I stick to my lime salad. You know, me and my basic needs. But try the bitter lemon sometime with gin, okay? Your dry lemon is fine. Right. But with the bitter lemon instead of tonic. Okay, I'll give it a try. And if I don't like it, then I'm just weird because everyone else in the world loves it. No, I'm not saying that. You said that. All right. Where in the world worry? So we were talking about what makes champagne so fancy. Yeah, well, like we said earlier, it's a very small region, comparatively speaking. Right. So that will lend to the price and all these hand processes that they still might use, or foot processes. Just a big one. It's going to make it more expensive, and anytime the prices being driven up, it's going to have that sort of air of sophistication. And then, of course, when the hip hop scene started, kind of using that in lyrics and popping champagne on the yacht and the videos, I'm on a boat. What was that? That was a silent life. Short. Okay. I think I remember that. I don't remember who it was changed, but I don't think it was got you. Was it one of those Andy Samberg shorts? Not Lil Wayne. Who's the other? Lil. Lil Bow wow. No, he's just bow wow now. Really? Yeah. Lil grows up, man. The guy who was like yeah, that guy. I have no idea. You do? Little John. Yes. Jerry is over there. Yes, it was. Andy samberg short. Yeah, I I do think I do remember that. But that definitely kind of solidified the sort of status. Yeah, sure. That's exactly the word. I would suggest it's already right, solidified. But it definitely didn't hurt. No. Especially in the States here, and with a whole new generation of people, right, like the younger generation, it's like champagne. Whole new generation of humans. Right. But then all of a sudden little John's like, yeah, got some champagne. No, for real. I'm sure the champagne industry was like, seriously, keep doing it. Sure. So the thing though is there's actual reason behind champagne being more expensive than your typical wine, but that doesn't mean that all champagne or all sparkling wines are like out of your price range. Yeah, you can get some cheap sparkling wine that will give you a mix of headache. No, that's not true. You can get sand on wines for $20 and it's not going to give you a headache. I was talking about the six dollar box. Cool stuff. Yeah, but $20, I mean, if you're going to spring for a decent bottle of wine. Sure if it's New Year's Eve? Sure, why not? That's when I'll toast it. Alright, so $20 will get you a good bottle of decent champagne is what you're saying. Yes. Not bad. Or you can spend hundreds of dollars, thousands, tens of thousands at auction, just like wine. If you want some super rare collectible wine, or a champion, apparently a quarter of a million dollars for a bottle at the Moscow Ritz Carlton. And that's not even something you drink, right? If you're a jackass, sure. But I mean, if you have to be a Jackass to spend a quarter of a million dollars on a bottle of champagne anyway, you better drink it, frankly. But champagne you don't keep. Right. You can. And so there's a lot of misunderstanding about it. Right. So a lot of people think that you keep champagne standing up. You do for about the first month. But if you're keeping it in a seller, you want to keep it on its side. Like any bottle of wine, you want the wine touching the cork. But the reason that champagne actually ages in the bottle, it's just like wine that cork it's in there pretty good, but it's not airtight. There's a minimal amount of gas exchange going on. So the wine, the champagne continues to mature over the course of 1020 30 years if you keep it. The key to champagne apparently storing it is you want to avoid temperature fluctuations. You want to keep it at about the same temperature for the whole time you have it stored. So bury it in your backyard sure. On its side, deep, and leave it there. Yeah. And you will find that all the worms drank it, and you'll be like worms. Bury it under the frost line. And you want to keep it out of the sunlight, too. Well, underground, but apparently, as it ages I've never had old champagne, but as it ages, its taste starts to mellow and it takes on dried fruit, nutty toasty, honey notes, or, like, the main notes that it hits. Yeah, we had a bottle of Don Perignon that was awful when we opened it, but we didn't it was every improper thing you could do, we did, including moving it in a hot truck from La. To Atlanta. It's funny, a hot moving truck. I mean, we just don't drink it much, so we just had it and we got it as a gift. If that happens, you just put some fresh squeeze orange juice in there, it's fine. Boom. Then you got a mimosa. Yeah, I'll have a mimosa occasionally. That's champagne. I know an orange juice. Yeah, that's the key with the orange juice. Well, I mean, I enjoy mimosa more than just regular champagne. It's definitely one of those things that's greater than the sum of its parts. Yeah. I don't think I ever said, Chuck, that those two quarter of a million dollar bottles of champagne were from a shipwreck that was headed to Russia to bring champagne to the Czar's family and the shipwrecked, and they discovered it in the they're selling it at the Ritz Carlton to what did you say, Jackass? And I think that's the one that's like a collector's piece, right? I don't know. You, like, put it on your wall. That's not for me. I don't know. I don't know what you do with that besides just drink it and hope for the best. Well, should we talk about drinking it in the proper way to open it and to pour it yes, please. And consume it? Yeah, because if you don't know what you're doing and you've seen too many movies, you might try and pop that cork out across the room. It's very dangerous. It is very dangerous. And people get injured. Right. Are there deaths? I think I didn't see it. Or is that like an urban legend? I would guess an urban legend. I could be wrong. I'm thinking if you died from getting hit with a cork, you had a pre existing condition. Is that covered? Oh, no. Under Obamacare. Sure, I guess we'll see. So you'll get about six flutes. If you're pouring properly out of a bottle of champagne, you want to serve it between 40 and 45 degree Celsius or fahrenheit. That's fahrenheit, right? I don't know. If you are caught with your pants down at a party, just go, champagne and it'll get you out of it. And you want to chill it very quickly. You can put it in an ice bath, and not to get out that yeast plug, but just to make it cold fast, just like you would beer or something. The neck, you mean? No, the whole bottle. If you want to serve it. Sure. You got a hot bottle of champagne in your moving truck, throw it in an ice bath for about 20 minutes, and you should be good to go. Yeah. There's a party trick you can do, too, where if you put just the neck in the ice bath, you can use what's called a saber. You can actually use anything. I've seen somebody do it on video with a shoe. Yeah. You don't even have to freeze it if you're a good saber. Yeah. But you kind of want to you want the neck very cold because you want the glass to just crack off cleanly. Yeah. And what the deal is, if you've ever seen someone, it's called sabridge. We mentioned earlier that the champagne bottle is very thick because it's in there at about 90 PSI. Where the seam meets the lip, it's about 50% less glass. So that's a vulnerable area. And that's what makes sabring possible. Well, like you said, you could use a shoe, I guess, if you're that guy. Right. But there's traditional sabers. They look like a little sword. They are a little sword. They just aren't ground to a point or an edge. They're very blunt. Well, because the point is using blunt force on a weak point of the neck of the bottle. Yeah. But you can use your like a savor can be sharp. You just use the other side of it. Okay. All right. Sure. And it's pretty neat to do because I think for a while I thought you were just knocking the cork out. That's what I thought as well. But you're knocking the glass off. Yeah. The top lip of the bottle is coming clean off if you're doing it correctly. And that is also dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, because that thing will fly 15, 20ft or more. And that's actual glass. What you want to do is have a sharp shooter handy to shoot it out of the sky before it hurts anybody. That's right. And have everyone stand behind you. Yeah. That's the traditional way. How you really open it is. And this is even if you're not just popping the cork, you might twist the cork off. You want to twist the bottle. That's sort of the number one rule, to open it cleanly and non dangerously and without champagne getting all over the place. Like when you open a tonic bottle, anything fizzy. It's one of our traditions backstage at Stuff You Should Know shows is Josh opens a tonic ball, get it all over, and you go, what's the deal? Every single time I think, because I have so many lime salads. I know you got to go easy with those tonic bottles. I do. And it still will spray me. It's almost comical. Almost. No, it's pretty funny. So you're twisting the bottle. If you have a towel, you can hold it over the cork, but you really don't need it as long as you're kind of holding it with your hand. Right. And twist that bottle. Put your thumb in the punt, as they call it, which is the area at the bottom of the bottle. The divot? Yeah, the punt. The concave part. Yeah, the punt, sure. Put your thumb on the punt and then you've got it open and you tilt the glass poured in a little bit, pour a little bit more. You want about three quarters of a flute and put your pinky up and go to town. Yeah. And I did a brain stuff on what the best kind of glass for champagne is, and apparently the tulip is it's a combination between the coupe and the flute. You've probably seen them before. No, I didn't see that one. No, I thought you meant the tulip glass. I've seen tulips, but apparently they allow for the most sparkle. And if you have so the bubbles coming up, the French call effervescence. And if you look at a glass of champagne and you're just holding there in front of you, when they bubble up to the top, they accumulate into a foam, and that is called moose. Like shakalai moose, remember? Top secret. Yeah, but it's not that. It's just moose is what they call it. Or foam is another way to put it. That's what they call it, actually, when you're creating the second fermentation process of the champagne making with the method champagne was it's called the priest de mousse or the foam creation. Wow. That's why you pour it slow, too, because if you go too fast, it's going to get everywhere, like your tonic. Then you pour it three quarters full and you toast and say hazard, I think, is the traditional thing you're supposed to say. So you like champagne yet? No, it's just not for me. That's fine. Don't feel bad for me. I won't. Then if you want to know more about champagne, go get some. And in the meantime, you can type that word in the search bar. Howstaforks.com? And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. All right, I'm going to call this one. Well, getting the nomenclature correct, something we always strive to do and don't always do. Hey, guys, let me start by saying you've been listening to your show for two years. That it's so much joy, laughter and knowledge to my life. I know you're always intentional and sensitive about the language you use on your show. And while listening to the Ms episode, I noticed something I've heard you to say in the past. I work in suicide prevention and. Hope to change the culture and reduce the stigma around suicide. As you know, one of the first steps of doing that is examining the language we use. The phrase commit suicide is very common, of course, and has been used for a very long time. However, the word commit makes it sound criminal. This perpetuates a stigma that there is something bad or wrong with someone who is experiencing thoughts of suicide, making it less likely that they will reach out and ask for help. I want to encourage you guys to use the word died by suicide or completed suicide as an alternative and more factual term. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. It's a great resource for more information and of course, I need to plug my own nonprofit. I work for Notmykid.org. I appreciate everything you guys do. Please come to Phoenix. I guarantee you will sell out a show there. Sincerely, that is Saratisden Aka hopedealer. Oh, wow. Deal and Hope. That's a heck of a ka. Yes. And you know what? I never thought about that. That is not true. That's not true. You have, because we've been called out on this before. Really? Yes. But I think we even done a listener mail in it before. But it's so ingrained. I know. To say commit and then completed just sounds like they finished their homework or something like that. Right, but died by suicide. I can get behind that and I will try, but it's just so hard to not say committed. What, though? If you're saying if it hasn't happened, you're saying someone was going to attempting suicide. Okay, yeah, I think that one's kosher. All right, man. I didn't know we've covered this, so I feel bad that I still haven't gotten over that then. Yeah, same here. All right, I'm going to work on it. Yeah, same here. Thanks for calling us out, Hope dealer. Appreciate that. Thanks, Sarah. Keep dealing that Hope. Open up your trench coat and be like, that's what I got. If you want to get in touch with us to correct us, prod us, whatever, you can tweet to us at s yskpodcast. You can hang out with me on Twitter at joshmclark. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charlesobechuckbryant or stuffychannow. You can send us both an email and Jerry to stuffpodcast@housetofworks.com. And as always, hang out with us at our home on the Web stuffyouchildnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon music My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of My favorite Murder one week early on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're the best pet mom when you growl back during playtime, you've with epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients plus probiotics for digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com." | |
40351c72-121b-11eb-ba6a-9f72992e4ae4 | Short Stuff: Mayday! | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-mayday | Say it three times and help may arrive. But where did "Mayday!" come from? Listen in to find out. | Say it three times and help may arrive. But where did "Mayday!" come from? Listen in to find out. | Wed, 24 Nov 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=328, tm_isdst=0) | 13742951 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and this is Short Stuff, the shortest stuff of all the Stuff stuffer. You calling stuffer. I'm calling you Australia stuffer, buddy. Oh, yeah. Born and bread stuffer. Stuff it. Stuff. It like stuffed crust cheese. Cheese stuffed crust. I bet pizza had been so long. Yeah, I haven't in a little while, either. I had to order a Garbage pizza the other night, though, for the first time in probably 20 something years. Whoa. Are you calling Pizza Hut a garbage pizza? It wasn't Pizza Hut. It was another big brand of delivery pizza. But we usually get the good pizza in the neighborhood, like the neighborhood pizzerias. Sure. Some of it is wood fired. It's nice. I don't know if I call it fancy pizza, good stuff, but every once in a while you want well, I got shut out. It was during the World Series and Halloween, so that's like a huge pizza night. And they ran out of stuff to make pizza, literally. And so I was forced to turn to the Garbage Pizza, and you know what? It was delicious. Yes, of course it is. It's terrible. It's terrible for you. There's nothing good about it. It is delicious. It was really great. It's been so long, I was like, man, I forgot about the Garbage pizzas. And you're still not going to say which one, even though you're ultimately saying it was delicious. That's fine. I think that's remarkable. Okay, Chuck, when you picked up the phone, because I'm assuming you did this old school style and used a landline I did it. Picked up the phone line and called the Garbage Pizza Company. That when they answered the phone, you said, Mayday, Mayday, mayday, I need a pizza stat. Now. I said panpan. Panpan. Oh, there you go. Very good. And they said, you want a pan pizza? And you'd say, no, please don't interrupt me because I'm supposed to say it three times. Pampan oh, very funny. This is about Mayday, the word. We want to thank livement.com Wonderapolis.org ScienceABC today. I found out, and the Government of Canada website was pretty handy. Sure. So we're talking about Mayday, and everybody knows that Mayday is a distress call. And everybody probably has a better handle on what to do in a Mayday distress call than you'd think, because from doing this research, it seems that just about every Mayday distress call I've seen in a movie or on TV was pretty accurate, it turns out. Yeah. What you do is you say it three times. Like you said, you have to do it three times because there are a couple of reasons they don't want to be confused. First of all, they don't want to mistake it for another word if you just say it once. So just literally reiterating Mayday, they won't say, did they say payday? Those are not that great. They're not. So that's one reason you repeat it three times. Another reason, or it could be noisy on a plane or on a boat or something. And the other reason is that they know that you are calling for the Mayday yourself, like you yourself are in trouble, and you are not relaying a call about a Mayday from someone else, which is something we'll get to called a Mayday relay. You're not talking about, I think, like you were saying that you're not talking about some Mayday call that happened three years ago that was just so great you've ever heard. You do want to say it three times mayday, Mayday, Mayday. And then right after that, you've got their attention and you're on stage, and they want to hear what you have to say. So you're going to follow that up with what aircraft or ocean going craft you are. If you have some sort of call number or sign or whatever, you'd want to include that there, then you're going to tell them exactly what the problem is. You're taking on water, which is a problem whether you're an aircraft or an ocean going for it. You don't want to take on water in an airplane. No, you want to tell them where you're located or the last place your known location was and maybe what direction you've been traveling in. You want to talk about the weather, but not chewing the fat, talking about the weather. You want to say specifically what kind of weather you're having in case you got problems. What else? Let me see. Well, basically how many people are aboard. That might be a nice thing to mention. Sure. To kind of help you want. Yeah. And that's sort of the big one is my plane is going down over this part of the ocean, and please send a boat. Yeah, I would probably know what to do. Yeah. I would have been like, please send another plane. But, yeah, that wouldn't make any sense. You'd want a boat, please send a giant trampoline. So I say we take our break now and then leave it as a cliffhanger as to where the word May Day came from to begin with. Nice one. All right, we'll be right back. Okay, Chuck, we're talking about the origin of the Mayday distress call. Where did it come from? Well, it started in 1923. It was an idea of this guy named Frederick Mockford. He was a radio officer at Croydon Airport in London. And they were looking for a word. They said, hey, we need a word that somebody can say that everyone knows as a distress signal. And it's got to be really easily understood. Everyone has got to be able to get on board with this thing, and we don't want to go to a marketing department, so we'll just go right to the people who do this. And he said they've been using SOS, like, Morse code, but since they were using radio communications, more and more we need an actual word. And help isn't good because people say the word help just in conversation. Yeah, let me help you. Yeah. So you don't want to send off false alarms. It's got to be something really independent from other words like that. And I think a lot of the air traffic at the time was between that airport and an airport in Paris. So he proposed a French word. Yeah, a French phrase, actually. Vaness medea. And he said, let's use the shortened one of my air venez Madeir means come help me. Apparently, it's also frequently translated as lend a hand. Like, lend me a hand. But the literal translation has come help me send the boat. Send a giant trampoline. And so he said, how about Maydayer? And they said, oh, it's even better. How about this mayday. Let's use a word that doesn't even exist, although it does exist, but one that no one would ever use in normal conversation, and certainly not three times in a row. Like you wouldn't say like that. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday party was the greatest mayday, mayday. Mayday party I've ever been to. Yeah, like the Mayday celebration. Right? What was the follow up to midterm? Yes. Thank you, buddy. That's right. People liked it. People started using it. They said. This is great. And three years later, four years later, it was officially adopted by the International Radio Telegraph Convention of Washington. And then I think this is mainly for planes. And what I think I figured out is it was 1948 is when it became a nautical term as well. Okay, got you. Because yeah, it says that it was official in 48, but this radio Telegraph convention and adopted it in 1927. Yeah, I think boats got on board a little bit later. That's weird, because there were way more boats than planes in 1927. I don't know, maybe they didn't get on board with the radio communications as quickly. That seems foolish, but okay, all right. Maybe they're still in the Morse code. So there's another way to send a distress call, and you mentioned it earlier, the Mayday relay, which is fun to say, hey, the Mayday relay is if you know that another vessel is in trouble but their communications equipment is knocked out, you can relay a Mayday request on their behalf, and it follows pretty much the similar format. It's just you're calling on behalf of that other vessel, right? Yeah. And I guess there could be a May Day relay relay, too. Sure. I guess it can go on and on. If you're not able to get a message to people, you can relay it through other planes and boats. But the problem is, though, by the time it finally gets to, like, air traffic control, it comes out as purple monkey. Dinosaur. The old telephone game. Yeah, good stuff. So let's say you make a Mayday call and you're just joking. Not funny. Nobody would consider that a big whoop, right? It's a big whoop in the US. You can get fined. You can go to jail for six months. I'm sorry. Six years to jail? You can I have a feeling it's more like you pay a fine and suspended sentence, but it's a hefty fine. It can be up to a quarter of a million bucks. And it's one of those deals where if they call out the Coast Guard, you got to pay them back the money that it cost to run that operation. I saw somebody in Florida in 2009 was giving a hoax mayday call and ended up having to pay the Coast Guard back $906,000 for the search that was mounted. Wow. Yeah. And well, you should, too, if you knowingly purposely call out the Coast Guard for kicks and they spent 906 the Coast Guard should be made whole of that 906 grand out of your pocket. Jerk. He was like, Why was it that much? And he said, well, we built a really nice new boat for your call. Right. We used the gold plated boats for that car. Right. We ordered some really expensive dinner that night. We got a takeout from outback that night. Thanks for that too, Chuck. By the way, I mentioned panpan earlier is kind of a joke, apparently, and I've never heard this before in my life, but apparently panpan and this is another thing that we nicked from the French. It's from P-A-N-N-E meaning breakdown or trouble. Apparently, panpan is to be used if it's not life threatening, but you still need help. And you also say it three times. Yes. That's a really important thing. You want to say these things three times. That's what gets everybody's attention, right? That's right. So that means the Tom Petty song in French is go ahead and give it to me. I love that stuff. Okay, so Pampan is where you're basically saying, like, I've got a pretty, like a noteworthy emergency here, but it's probably not life threatening. Somebody on board our boat has fallen and broken their kneecap. They're probably not going to die, but they really want to get off this boat. Can you come help us as soon as possible kind of thing? Or we actually have a breakdown, like our boat is broken down. We're not in any kind of threat because the weather is fine or whatever, but we do need some help. That's when you would use panpan. That's right. There's another one, too, that I could barely find. I found it referenced in one article on Wikipedia. Chuck oh, really? And that was it. But it's secure t and I don't know if you say it securete or something like that, but it's spelled S-E-C-U-R-I-T-E. Yes, it's from the French as well. This may have been from the Government of Canada website, which would make sense, but this one makes a lot of sense. You'd say security, if that's how you say it. And then you just immediately proceed and talk about something that's like there's a giant rock that wasn't there before and the shipping lane. Be careful of that. Or there's a shipping container that fell overboard. Like you're letting somebody know about a hazard, bad weather, something like that. You're not asking for help. You're just making sure that everybody who needs to know knows about that. That's right. And then this is neither here nor there in terms of distress, but something you will. This is a movie trope that always bugs me, so I threw it in there. If you ever see someone in a movie, say, over and out. It's a screenwriter who doesn't know anything about radio communication. No one who knows what they're doing says over and out, because over means I'm done talking and I'm ready for you to respond. And out means that you're done and you're leaving. So you would never say over and out. You might say over or out, right? You decide. I'll wait here, but never over and out. Man. I love that, though. I wonder who is the first screenwriter to do that? I don't know. I hope somebody will. I want to find out. Do you ever see the what was it? The Secret Life of Sherlock Holmes. No, I did not like it, Chuck. Okay. I didn't like it, and I thought I would. Okay, well, that's it. Chuck's done talking. I'm done talking now, too. And that means short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of Iheart Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio App Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How Grass Works? Yes, How Grass Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-grass-works-yes-how-grass-works | There's nothing more boring than watching grass grow, which is why Josh and Chuck aren't asking you to do that. Instead, you can learn about all sorts of neat things about grass - like how America became obsessed with perfect lawns - in this episode. | There's nothing more boring than watching grass grow, which is why Josh and Chuck aren't asking you to do that. Instead, you can learn about all sorts of neat things about grass - like how America became obsessed with perfect lawns - in this episode. | Thu, 10 Jul 2014 14:21:45 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=14, tm_min=21, tm_sec=45, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=191, tm_isdst=0) | 47655377 | 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. So I was in the at and T store for an upgrade, I left with At Amp T s best deal on a smartphone and a choice of plan. But on my way out, here comes this new guy. A non carrier phone and a plan that raised eyebrows. I felt for him when I tell you we left the store grinning from ear to ear with the same deal. I love watching people prosper. You feel me? That's when I learned that whether you joined today or have been with at and T for years, they'll have the same best deals for everyone on every smartphone. Eligible plan required. Offers vary by device. Restrictions may apply. See att. Comdealsfordetails. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's. Charles, Debbie, chuck Bryant. We were just talking about Canada. So I said yeah. And there's Jerry over there. So this is Stephanie chanel. Hello. Live from the bowling Greenhouseupworks.com, what the site slogan is. Yeah. You doing all right? I'm doing great. Watch this. Chuck? Yes? Have you ever seen grass? I have, sir. You won't find a lot of good grass in my yard, but no. Is it terrible? I've seen it before. I don't remember it. It's pretty bad. Okay. Well, I mean, I will be on myself all throughout this one. Well, you have, it turns out, the traditional American yard crappy. Did you know that? Yeah. Pack dirt, maybe a little bit of garden around. Yeah. And there you go. Some native grasses. Yeah. That's tradition. And it turns out that's the way if you went to an American house, chuck pre Industrial Revolution. Yeah. Pretty much. You're going to find that, like you're just going to find packed dirt in the yard, maybe a garden, some weeds. Nobody really cared much. They were more trying to survive. Yeah. Right. Sure. And then in the 19th century, as Americans said, we've been hanging out here for 100 years. Let's go back to England and visit. Is it safe yet? Right. They found it was, but they also found that the English had something called a lawn, which is a beautiful, well manicured expanse of grass that a very wealthy English could afford. Well, wealthy Americans were never ones to be outdone by wealthy British. No. So they came back and they're like, I want a lawn. I am worth so much money, it's mind boggling. Make me a lawn. And whoever they were talking to said, we can't really do that here. Right. The native grass is not conducive to a kemp lawn. Yeah. You can't pop over to the big box hardware store and buy huge sacks of seed. Right. And so they said, well, you know what? I'll be right back. I'm going to the UK to buy my seed. And then they traveled there, and then 14 weeks later, they made it all the way back and they said, Here you go, grounds Keeper Willie, make me a lawn. Here's some British seed for turf grass. That's right. And he said, hey, man. He said, When I'm done with you, they're going to need a compost mortem. Wow. The deep cut. It was good. I think that was Tree House of Horror. Oh, the one where he's freddie. Yeah. Nice, man. You got to need a compost modem. So he said that? Yes. And then he said, well, here's the problem. Our climate is different than the UK's, and these seeds aren't going to survive here. So the lords and the ladies said, I give up, we'll figure something else out. And it took the Golf Association, the US Department of Agriculture and the American Garden Club to finally get together and say, let's make this happen, everybody. Yeah. They got together, the USDA got together with the USGA, and they said, Our names are similar, so let's plant some grass together. So what they had to do, basically, was look for kind of fool around with the right combination of seed varieties, which they imported from around the world. Yeah. Just to see what's going to grow here in this new country. Because we got a place in golf. Yeah. Like Kentucky bluegrass. Friends. US from Europe. Bermuda grass. Where do you think that's from? Obviously Africa. That is right. God knows where Zoeja came from. Although I believe Asia. And not just because Zoeja and Asia are somewhat similar sounding. It took them about 15 years and they finally kind of settled on some good combination of grasses. Yeah. But you can thank golf to start. So if you hate golf, but you love your lawn yeah. You have to kind of like golf anyway. That's right. But still chuck even though they finally came up with the right grass combinations, you had to still be pretty rich to have a lawn. The reason why was because irrigation was a factor. Cutting it was a big factor. Like all of those manor houses in the UK, they had people whose job it was to cut grass with a scythe. Yeah. A lot of people, I would imagine, because these lawns were not small and like you said, they didn't have, like, garden hoses back then. No. And buckets of water is not a great way to water a lawn. No. Although livestock, they did cut them with the sites, but they also had cows and goats taking care of a lot of that. Yeah. Who was it who had the sheep on the front yard of the White House? I don't remember what administration that was. I think it was Wilson. Was it? He was saying, like, look what you can do as an American. You can put a sheep on your lawn. Yeah. So do it. And then he sold the wall or auctioned it off for, like, $100,000. Oh, wow. And he kept it, probably. That's a good story. The lawnmower mechanical mowing in the 19th century became a real thing when an Englishman named Edwin Budding, who was an engineer, developed what is called the real mower. And that is R-E-E-L. Yeah. And you've seen these. You've probably seen some suckers in your neighborhood with one. I'm just kidding. I actually have a real mower. I live in a condo. Yeah, real mowers. I mean, you can still get them in there. Great. And they have zero emissions, which is really neat because a lot of lawn mowers are pretty bad offenders for missions. Yeah. They're internal combustion engines, which means they put out all sorts of greenhouse gases. Yeah. And it's not like a car. They don't have catalytic converters and things like that. It's just straight up bad junk. So you can get a real mower if you're into it. You've seen them. It's a series of blades around a cylinder, and it's geared which is the key to making it work. If you just pushed it and it traveled like the wheel did, you wouldn't be cutting a lot of grass. But there's a 16 to one gear ratio. Oh, yeah. So when you're pushing it, your wheels are turning at this speed, but the blade is turning really fast. Oh, yeah. Okay. That's sort of the secret to how they work. And apparently Mr. Budding said or he found another machine that was similar that was used to cut the nap on velvet. Yeah. Do you know that? Yeah. And that's kind of where you got the idea. Right. And it took off like a rocket. All of a sudden, people were like, hey, we can have lawns now. Let's buy these things. Apparently, they're somewhat affordable. In 1885, America built 50,000 of these things and sent them around the globe. Yeah. That was the beginning of lawns in America. Really. Right. And you know what else that guy invented? What? The adjustable wrench. Is that right? Yeah. Dynamo. Or as they call it, the adjustable spanner. Who called it that? The Internet. And I was like, what the heck is spanner? And then it turns out it's a wrench spanner. That doesn't even make sense. Yeah, that may be an English thing. So the garden hose comes around. That helps, too. That was a big help as well. But even still, you had this thing. It was kind of like, okay, Richie, rich. Love your lawn. I don't really care. I don't need one. And the American Garden Club said. Oh, yeah, it's the 1950s. You live in suburbia. You have to have a lawn if you are a clean cut, decent American person. And the American Garden Club had this whole thing where they had contests and publicity and PSA and basically drummed it into the head of every American man, woman and child that part of your civic duty was to have a perfect lawn. That front lawn, specifically. Yeah. And there was this article man, I can't remember what the article is or what the website is. I wish I could, because they did a great job describing the history, but they quoted an American Garden Club, I guess stipulation, that said an appropriate type of lawn was, quote, a plot with a single type of grass with no intruding. Weeds kept moaning at a height of an inch and a half too short, uniformly green and neatly edged. Yeah. And then today, Americans spend about $30 billion a year on long care. Wow. You know how people are crazy for their pets and everything? Oh, yeah. Half a billion. Really? 30 billion on lawn care. Wow. Yeah. Now, is that lawn care or is that outdoor care? Lawn care. Okay. Yeah, I looked it up. It's just grass. Long care. Not planning a zelius? No, I imagine, like, just the whole total of outdoor stuff sends it through the roof of 30 billion long care. Yeah, I mean, I looked because that article we borrowed from was way outdated. Well, it was from 2000 survey, and it was like 17 billion on all outdoor stuff. Outdoor home improvement, I think they put it $30 billion on lawns. That's crazy. Yes. All right, let's get into grass. It is the name for the Grammania family of plants of which there are more than 9000 species. And if you think, well, 9000 species of grass, you might not realize that things like corn and rice and oats are grass plants. That's right. And bamboo is grass. Yeah. So building materials, plastics, roam, sugar, all this stuff is made from grasses. Corn. Grass. Yes. If you look at a corn plant and then you get down on your hands and knees and look at your Bermuda grass plants, because your lawn, although it looks like one large single organism and technically you could make the argument that it is really is a series of interconnected related grass plants that form a lush patch of turf. Yeah. And like you said, if you get down and look at the little individual plants closely, it doesn't look so far off of a corn plant. Right. Thank you for calling that thought for me. Obviously growing. No, but what is corn but a type of flower, right? Yeah, I guess. Is it? No, it's the fruit of the grass, I guess. Okay. Because corn does have, like, a flowery top. Yeah. And I've heard I don't know if this is true. I've heard that each corn stalk only grows one corn cob. Is that right? I don't know. I'm not a farmer. We used to grow corn when I was a kid, but I hated gardening when I was a kid, I have to say. You remember we just recorded sushi, and it made me want sushi. This is like man, I love gardening. Yeah. I think when you get older, you get into gardening because eventually you might own a home, and then you want it to look nice and you want it to be a pleasurable place, and gardening is just really like that's why every old British rock star now just gardens out in the countryside, because it's just quiet and peaceful and it's just a really nice thing to do. Meditative. Yeah, very much right now, though. So, you know, I live in a condo, like I say. I've got, like, a pretty nice little patio garden going. Oh, nice. But I am combating this one squirrel. Oh, yeah. Who is driving me crazy. Is it the same one? Do you know? I believe it is. There was one that was driving me crazy. I thwarted him, sent him packing. So I have a bird feeder that squirrels love to attach, but I hung it in a way and cleared off branches around it. So this one squirrel go dive for it and miss and go sailing. And one time he hit it and realized that he couldn't hang onto the chain and fell off, and that was it. This new squirrel, man, he is persistent. Tenacious squirrel. I'll look outside at any given point in time, and he is hanging upside down by this chain with his feet eating out of my bird feed or sapphire seeds, which squirrels aren't even supposed to like. Yeah. And so that's just that he comes onto my patio. Now it's war. He just digs up stuff and it's like, stop digging in my plants. But I'm really kind of like I have a trap. I don't know if it's big enough for squirrel, but you can get traps and then just drive them out to Piedmont parking. Yeah. Or you can set the trap behind, like, the exhaust of your car and turn on your car for a little while. You want to kill a squirrel? No, I don't, but, man, this thing is pushing me. Yeah. I mean, if you look on, like, getting rid of squirrel websites, that's pretty much number one. Yeah, I don't want to do that. No. All right, you murderous thug. Let's talk about you're a Thuggie. I'm not, though. It's the thing. I don't smoke as she and I'm not abandoned. Yeah. I just hate to squirrel. Let's talk about grass. The grass plant itself at the roots, they are a little fibrous thread like, and they're going to reach down to the ground like little fingers. They're going to soak up water and nutrients and they're going to secure it to the ground. And then thusly, that ground is going to be more secure as well. Yeah. Because anywhere you have grass that prevents erosion, any type of grass is huge at preventing erosion. Yes. And I would recommend, as we're describing this, actually go to the article on housetofworks.com about grass and pull up this great picture. Yeah. It's really good one. Yeah. It breaks it all down at the base, the stem is called a comb, and the base is the crown. Right. And the crown is like almost like this clump of matter that's above the roots that the roots are growing from that gives rise to the crown or to the stem. The comb. Yeah. There's a lot of, like, words I had no idea existed until this article came along. Yeah. I always just call it the stem, but apparently it is a comb. Okay. And then from the comb on the comb are nodes, which is, I guess, where new comb growth starts. But for the most part, that stem is going to be hollow, except at the node, which is kind of like a connective ball. Yes. Like if you've seen bamboo and how it looks like it's segmented, those are the little places where it's segmented. Those are the nodes. Right. But it also happens in your backyard grass as well. Exactly. And then you have the leaf. The leaf, yeah. The stuff that we call grass. Yeah. We're actually talking about the leaf, and we're not even talking about the whole leaf. We're talking about the blade. So anytime you hear some old timer called grass blades, grass, he or she is correct. That's right. The lower part of the leaf is the sheath, and then the upper part is the blade. And then you're going to have a liguel L-I-G-U-L-E surrounding the connection of the sheath and the blade. Yeah. It's almost like the blade comes to the stem and just wraps it around in a hug. And the hug is the sheath. Which makes sense when you see this picture, because the stem looks like it's growing out of the sheath that leads into the blade. And then you're going to have a couple of other things, these additional stems that grow sideways that you might have noticed. If it's on the ground, it's called a stolen, and if it's below the ground, it's called a rhizome. And this is where you're going to get new grass plants. Yeah. This is how it spreads. Yeah. There's two ways that grass reproduces. One is through seeds that are usually blown by the air that are produced by their flowers, or through basically moving sideways via a stolen or rhizome, this kind of root system that just goes over and produces a new crown and new roots in a new plant. Yeah. If you've ever seen a new yard and we'll get into this later, you can either just plant seed, you can do sod. Or you can plant individual sprigs or plugs. If you've ever seen a yard that's all dirt and a ton of little individual plants like a foot apart, and you think, well, that's interesting looking, that looks very modern, eventually that's going to all grow together thanks to the Rhizomes and the stolen and fill in and form a full yard. Yeah. So they are connected and because of that, they are related. But really, these are different plants. That's right. And it's green individuals because of chlorophyll. That's right. And Photosynthesis because all Grasses is a photosynthesizing, sugar making little machine. That's right. Remember, sugar powers the Earth. That's right. So, Chuck, there's probably a lot of people out there who are just like, just tell me how to improve my lawn. And we say, hold your horses because we're going to take a message break. First, what if you were a global energy company with operations in Scotland, technologists in India, and customers, all on different systems? You need to pull it together. So you call in IBM and Red Hat to create an open hybrid cloud platform. Now, data is available anywhere, securely, and your digital transformation is helping find new ways to unlock energy around the world. Let's create a hybrid cloud that can change in industry. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. Today's episode of Stuff You Should Know is brought to you by SimpliSafe home security. SimpliSafe believes that your home should be the safest place on Earth for every family. So they offer advanced whole home security that puts you, your home, and your family safety first. With 24/7 professional monitoring simply saves, agents take action the moment a threat is detected, dispatching police or first responders in an emergency, even if you're not home. Yeah. And SimpliSafe uses proprietary video verification technology so that monitoring agents can visually confirm the threat in order to get higher priority 911 dispatch. And SimpliSafe offers comprehensive protection not only against intruders and burglary, but against expensive home hazards, from flooding to fires. You can customize the perfect system for your home in just a few minutes at SimpliSafe. comStuff. Go today and claim a free indoor security camera, plus 20% off with interactive monitoring. Just go to SimpliSafe. comStuff. Okay, we're back. And that wasn't such a bad way. No, I'm sure it was very helpful. Okay, so we're talking how to take a lawn and make it into a world class American Garden Association approved lawn. Yeah, a lot of neighborhoods still have that junkie now where they have the contest, and you're very much expected to keep it up. It's part of your civic duty for your neighborhood association rules, right? I don't live in one of those type of neighborhoods. There's no association, and there's a lot of crappy lawns like mine as a result. Thanks. All right. Soil, that is, I guess, your first startup. It if you want a good lawn, you got to have some good soil. Well, yeah, technically, your soil is what holds your nutrients. It holds your water. It gives stability to the roots in the plant itself. Soil is pretty important. Let's just come out and say it. All right. And so with the soil, apparently for most turf grasses in America, you want to have what's called loam. And loam is a sand clay soil mixture. And ideally, loam would be sand, 40% silt and then 20% clay. Yeah. You want it to be sort of loose so things can spread around and breathe, and water can get down in there, but not too loose. It's got to be that right. Combination. And you also want a PH of about six and a half to seven. Yes. And this isn't something you can look at your lawn and be, like, 5.3. Well, maybe if you're like the grass, the soil whisper, maybe if you are like that, then you should be charging people for that kind of thing. I would think you'd at least have to stick your finger in it. Right. If you have, like, a wacky disco ghost that follows you around and is really the one that's telling you the PH of different soils, you better be making money from that. Yeah. So the PH, you can get a home test kit, or you can pay for someone to come out and test your PH level. Right. That's the more typical way of finding out. Yeah. It'll either be acidic or basic, and you can add various things to correct that. Like sulfur or lime. Yeah. If you want to make it more acidic, add sulfur. If you want to make it more basic, add lime. Yeah. And I've never done my PH rating. My soil I've got Georgia's, famous for red clay. It's pretty awful. It's actually good for growing. It's got to be a mixture. So I've seen, like, 100% clay. This is what I think is going on. Oh, boy. No, I think your soil is compacted. Yes. Have you ever aerated? Okay. You also have a lot of trees, so there's a lot of shade. Yeah. Front yard is way too shady, and it's dry. Yeah. I think if you fix those three things, you would have a fine yard. Well, here's what we're going to do. We're going to forget about grass in the front yard and zero escape it. Oh, yeah. Put some cacti out. Cacti. And just mold plants and rocks. Yeah. We're going to go that route because it's too shady. And then in the backyard, I have no excuse other than just not spending the kind of time you need to spend. The backyard seemed fine to me. Well, if you have enough weeds and you cut them down, it can give the appearance of a green lawn. Oh, I got you. But it's not real grass. All right, let's get back to it, because we're going to solve your problems just by explaining the rest of this to everybody. Okay. By the way, to improve your soil, not only can you use the lime to get the right PH, but you can amend it with compost or fertilizer or topsoil as well. Yeah, manure, you can use whatever. Just go out there and poop. Actually, I looked into this. You want to use composted, manure? Yeah. You don't want to add just poop to it. Now, that's feces. Right? And you can just spread that stuff with, like, a fertilizer spreader. Yeah, you just have to use more of it because it's organic. That's right. Which means it's weak. Yeah. And we'll get into some cleaner options, too, if you're not into chemical herbicides and stuff like that. Right. So you've got your soil. You're thinking about your soil now. Yeah. Share a little bit of brain space for the actual kind of grass you want to plant. In America, there's basically two types of grasses that we use warm season grasses and cool season grasses. And then there's a transition zone in the middle. And by the way, you and I live smack dab in the middle of this transition zone. Really? Where you can conceivably grow. Either the winters are mild enough, and the summers used to be not so hot that either one was prohibited. You could use both. So is that like cool season grasses? Like Kentucky bluegrass, aka eurograss warm season Bermuda grass, and that's the one that turns brown in the winter. Right. I don't like it. It looks great in the summer, but I don't like it in the winter. No, I mean, like, if you've ever driven through a subdivision in Georgia in January is a depressing site. It's just this kind of mustardy, light brown Khaki field with houses that all look exactly alike right next to one another. Yes, it looks great in the summer. Sure. Bermuda is soft, and it's great to walk around on barefoot and lay in and watch the stars. Yeah. Plus, it looks dynamite, too. Have you ever seen people who have their Bermuda cut like a golf course yeah. Where it's maybe a quarter of an inch tall? Yeah. There's special mowers that you have to get. There are thousands and thousands of dollars that let you cut that without killing your grass. Are they the ones where you stand up and ride? Those are my favorite. That's just a mower. Those ones that are, like, they cut in a certain way that are Bermuda, just for that super short Bermuda. But yeah, bermuda turns brown in the winter because it's a warm season grass, which means it's growing season is the summer. Right. Cool season grasses, they don't go dormant, but they only really grow in the spring and fall. Yeah. And by the way, bluegrass, if you've ever wondered why it's called bluegrass, is not named for the leaves, it is named for the seed heads. Is that right? Yeah. So if you let bluegrass grow and don't touch it to, like, two or 3ft tall, it will appear blue at the top. Beautiful. Yeah. And I never knew that. I didn't either. Chuck so they just schooled everybody. Jerry. Did you know that? Everybody? Well, everyone in Kentucky is going, no crap, buddy. Man did. I just in Salt, Kentucky. No, that was dead on. Okay. I love Kentucky. All right. So you're picking your grass you probably will end up getting unless you're a big Bermuda aficionado or something, you're probably going to get a mixture or a blend. Mixture is a combo of types of grass, and the blend is a combo of varieties of the same type of grass. Right. So, like, a mixture is, like, warm and cool, seasoned grasses, maybe. Yeah. Or you get a zoeja blend, and it's all different types of zoeja. And a blend is not as adaptable, but it will probably look more uniform and attractive and pretty. Right. It's not like patchwork. No. But if you're just looking to fill in, like, some shady spots or something like that, you might want to get a mixture. Agreed. And then another thing you want to take into account when you're considering what kind of grass to get is the amount of sunlight that your yard gets. Like, grass loves sun. Yes. Direct sunlight. Some love shade or not love shade, but some tolerate shade. Right. That's way better way to put it. Yeah. No, grass really love shade. And then there are some areas that are, like, just shady all the time. In which case you might want to consider something else, like monkey grass or something that's not a turf grass, but it's still a grass that you can cut. Yeah. Or zero escape. Yeah, you could do that, too. I got that big oak tree, and it's just not very sunny in my front yard. No, I'm glad you bring up Zero Escape, because reading this, especially when we get to the watering part, it's like grass is not going to be around for many more decades. What? Lawns. If we're going to start fighting resource wars over water in the next 50 years, no way that there's going to be such a thing as lawns. Yeah, it's a good point. Yeah. We're going to be zero escaping. Yeah. We're back to the old dirt dobber days. Yeah. I'd welcome that. Sure. Dusty America. Yeah. The Dust Bowl. It was great times. Yeah. We had one game, and it was called Chew the Bark off the Tree. What's that from what was a grumpy old man. Oh, really? The Dana Carvey thing? Yeah. Chew the bark off the Tree. I think that's what he said. That's pretty good. So the sun is you're going to like I said, like you said, take that into account. And then the water as well. There are grasses that like water more than others, and some do a little bit better without as much water. So if you live in Phoenix, Well, you're probably just watering all the time. Yeah, but if you don't want to water all the time because you shouldn't be watering all the time because we'll get into watering later, and you should never be watering every day. No, I predict blondes won't be around in 50 years. All right? Mark my words. 2064, no lawns. Well, I'll be dead, but let's see, I could still be around. I'll be 93 if I'm still around. 93. That would be a sad case of a human being. I don't know, Chuck. Like, they're making some serious advances in aging. Do you want to be that old? 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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 Safefe offers comprehensive protection not only against intruders and burglary, but against expensive home hazards, from flooding to fires. You can customize the perfect system for your home in just a few minutes@simplisafe.com. Stuff go today and claim a free indoor security camera, plus 20% off with interactive monitoring. Just go to SimpliSafe. comStuff. If I were healthy and happy, heck, yeah. All right, sure. Especially if, you know, friends and loved ones were, like, that old, too. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I wouldn't want to be, like, cursed to walk the Earth forever and just me be that way. But I'm not talking about a science fiction movie. No, I'm talking about, like, advances in aging. Supposedly, if not our generation, then definitely the one right below us will see the triple digits for average life expectancy and feed average life expectancy. Yeah, okay. That's the key. Yeah, I don't want to be shuffling around and drooling on myself. Well, there's a whole school of thought that all of these are unnecessary byproducts of aging, that you don't automatically become stooped, over and demented just because you get old. Like we're doing something wrong or not doing something that we should be. Well, if they can combat all that, like sarcopenia, that's easy. But getting into the brain stuff, it's a little trickier, but we're there, and you and I may live to benefit from it. Yeah. I think keeping the mind active is huge. Totally. Because Emily's grandmother is in her 90s. She's sharpest Attack because she does puzzles all day long and reads and on the Internet and balance your check book, all that jazz. All right, so let's talk about if you want to start a new lawn, as they call it, establishing a lawn. Okay. You can plant seed if you want to go the cheap hardworking route. Yes. But you have to wear nothing but overalls, nothing under them, no shoes. While you're planning fees, you can do sod, which is we'll talk about that. Or you can do the plugs and sprigs, which I mentioned. First things first. And you're going to have to do this for all three methods. You're going to have to prepare your soil. Yeah. So you want to get like, a tiller, go down to your hardware store and rent one. Yeah, my mom's got one in this case. Okay, so borrow it from your mom. Yeah, anyone can borrow it from my mom. And basically it's probably a good idea, too, depending on where you live. But if you live in a subdivision and you value your cable TV or Internet yeah. You might want to call your local cable provider, your gas company, the electric company, and say, hey, send one of your people out and mark this. And they'll come and they're going to spray paint your lawn and everything and give you an idea of how deep it is. But you'll know where your cables are and you can make sure the aerator doesn't go too deep. You're going to cut right through one of these cables. That's a good point. So once you've done that, then you're going to take that not aerator I'm sorry, the tiller. And you're going to till the dirt up. You're just kicking it up, down to probably, what, six inches or so, I would guess. Yeah. And if your soil is bad and you know this, that's when you're going to add in your topsoil or fertilizer or compost, and you just till all that up together to a delicious soily soup. Yes. Chuck, it is very important to add something to your soil. You can't just till it. That's right. And just leave it like that? Well, you can if you got good soil, I guess. But it doesn't hurt to add more nutrients, does it? No, probably not. But in some parts of the country, you're good. Like, you've got great soil and you're good to go. Got you. But in Georgia, like I said, there's so much freaking clay, it's a nightmare. Then you want to rake that and level it out. They said you can use a board scraper, too, but you don't want to leave it super bumpy and clumpy. Right. To smooth it out as best you can. Yeah. And you're going to thank yourself later, because if you have big bumps or holes or divots or whatever, you're going to run into those with your lawnmower. Yeah. So you're doing yourself a favor by smoothing things out and leveling them now. That's right. Then you want to scatter your seed. You can do it by hand, but what you want is one of those little walk behind spreaders that you get at the hardware store. They're pretty cheap. And you just dump your seat in there. And remember, when you dump your seat in there to keep the little gate closed, otherwise it'll just start pouring out in a big pile. Yeah. And then start walking and open your gate. And it's got a little bit flywheel that spins and flings the seat out in a nice, equal distributive manner. Yes. If you're doing it by hand, you're probably going to put too much some places and not enough in others. Sure. Unless you're really good. It's very tough to do that. Unless you're that soil whisper guy. He can do anything right because of his ghost friend. That's right. And then you take like a regular rake, and you just kind of want to cover this stuff up a little bit. Just rake over it. About half of the seat is covered. Yeah. If you have a lawn roller, you can use that. But I've never used that. So that is basically it's like a big metal drum that you fill a certain amount with water to make it heavier, and you just roll that over it to compact it. Yeah. And like I said, I've never done that, but I got a crappy lawn. That was the key DrumRoller. Yeah, maybe. So then you want to cover that up if you want, with straw, multi material. They sell stuff in sheets as well. I've never done that either. I'm telling you. I think I realized the mistakes I'm making. I think that you should be a case study in this and do step by step exactly what it says and see what happens to your lawn. All right, maybe I will. Maybe I can get work to pay for it. I'll bet you could. If I document it via video, I'll back you up. All right, we'll see about that. Or you can go the easy route, which is sod and that is when you see the big rectangular rolls of already grown awesome turf and you roll it out on your lawn after your soil is prepared. Green side up and straight road. Make sure it's greenside up. My friend used to yell that out the window when he go by, like, Lancruise, greenside up. It's really obnoxious a little. He's not my friend anymore because of that. Yeah, but that says a lot about why. And you want to stagger it. Like if you're doing a brick wall, don't lay them out exactly in a row. Right. Because the water will just run right through there. It won't get trapped. Yeah. And it'll look a little funny for a while. It'll look like squares of grass and it will eventually grow together and look like one big solid turf unit. That's right. And the closer you lay your side together, the better off you're going to be because any patches in between them will allow weeds to grow. And that's a big problem with using sprigs, which is the third way sprigs are plugs and sprigs or plugs a sprig is just a grass plant, a little individual grass plant that's bare root. A plug is the individual grass plant with like a little dirt root ball associated with it. Yeah. And you can order those online and get a bunch of them shipped to your house. Right. If that's what you're into. Yeah. Because some grass, it doesn't grow well from seed, like Zoeja doesn't propagate well from seed. But then some people are like, I don't have the money for sod. So you can order a bunch of sprigs or plugs. It's always you and do the work yourself. And you dig these little holes about six or twelve inches apart, fill them with water, then you take your plug in your sprig, put them in the hole and cover around it with dirt, and there you go. Boom. You want to weave these things while they're growing in. But Zoeja apparently grows very fast with its stolen and its rhizomes and whatnot. And there you go, lawn six to eight weeks later, or months or years. Yeah. And all of these methods, you're going to water a lot at first just to get things going. But we'll get into watering here in a minute, too. All right. Before we get into maintenance, should we talk about weed and feed? Oh, yeah. Which is like the shampoo plus conditioner of lawn care, pretty much. That is a combination of weed and feed, herbicidal chemicals and fertilizer chemicals. It might be pre emergent, if you don't know what that means. That is an herbicide that kills weeds before they sprouted in the cradle. That's right. Or post emergent, which kills already grown up weeds. And experts say this is not a good way to go because optimum fertilizing time isn't the same as optimum weed killing time. Plus another problem is you may not need an herbicide all over your lawn. No. You don't want to use it just as a matter of course, if you have some real problem with weeds, you want to target them as much as possible using kind of a low level herbicide, rather than just spraying herbicide all over your lawn. Because your lawn is a plan as well. Yeah. And if you have children and animals oh, yeah, that's true. You don't want a crap in your yard. At least I don't. So you got your plugs grown in. Yeah. Or your sod or your seat or whatever. And you're like it's ready. I'm ready to maintain this lawn it's established, what do you do? Well, there's eight steps to lawn maintenance, and we will start with watering. And like I said, you never want to have a sprinkler set to water your lawn every day. No, it's total waste. It's a total waste. You might have to water every day at first, but once it's established oh, yeah. We should say that, like when you plan or whatever, you have to water a lot more than you normally would, I guess. Yeah. But once you're up and running, it's a total waste of water and you're going to run your bill up and it's not good for your lawn either. So there's absolutely no reason to know. What you want to do is deeply soak your lawn when you water it and when it needs it. Right. And you can tell when it needs it, when you step on it and it doesn't bounce back in a minute, few seconds yeah. Then it probably needs water. Yeah. It might curl up a little bit. If you see it curling up or changing color at all, you need the water. So get out there in the morning. Yeah. That's the best time to do it. Yeah. Don't do it in the middle of the day. It'll burn off. Yeah. It will evaporate. And the water in the morning will keep the soil cool throughout the day. That's right. It's just a big treat for your lawn. And like we said, you deeply soak. It so much so that you want to have about an inch of water collecting above ground. Yeah. That's a big long soak. Yeah. And if you think, well, how in the world do I figure that out? Just put a little cup out there, turn your sprinkler on, and when that cup has an inch of water in it, you're all set. I don't know if that's right. No, that's exactly right. No, because think about it, that cup is going to fill up immediately because no water is soaking through it. No, that's how you do it. You put a cup and the cup just collects little drops and it takes about an hour or more to fill that thing up an inch. I think what I said makes sense anyway, because you put a cup out there or not, when it fills up, how is she going to tell us it's? I don't know. I guess you would take a little measuring stick and go out there every once in a while and see, you just put a cup trust me, I think mine is better. Just guess. No, measure with the measuring stick, because then you're measuring how much water is collecting on top of the ground and that's what you're looking for because that means about six to eight inches of the ground has been soaked. So measure down six to eight inches, is that what you're saying? No, just put it on top of the grass, like on the ground. To put it in the grass until what's? The measuring stick? A ruler. Okay, so I want to get this. You stick a ruler into the ground? No, you stick a ruler into the grass until it comes in contact with the ground. Okay. And then when there's an inch of water, that measures up to the inch, but it doesn't. It soaks into the dirt. Right. And you want to keep doing it until there's about an inch of water that's collected. No. Yes. I'm telling you, dude, you will never have an inch of water sitting in your yard. It's called a lake, dude. That's what this article is saying. All right, I'm going to leave it out there. Okay. This is what we're going to do. What other people here, we're going to call for a turf pro to tell us which one is right, and he will say, dude, if you have an inch of water, that means you are flooded. We'll just find out. Agreed. So you're saying the ground has become so super saturated that the water sits on top of the ground? Yeah, I'm not saying it's saturated, but the water has accumulated enough that it hasn't all soaked down enough. Okay. I think it's clear he lives in the condo anyway. I recommend you put a cup out. When that cup fills up to an inch, then that means you've watered enough. I'm calling for a turf expert to let us know what's what. All right. This is a good, legitimate disagreement. Yeah. Okay. So we're done with water. Yes, that's right. And we mentioned water in the morning. Mowing is the second part of upkeep. And this is another important thing because a lot of people think, oh, no, man, you mow really low, and then you don't have to mow as much. And that is not what you should do. You should let it grow because it's better for your lawn. Because when you cut too low, that grass is going to race to try and grow more blades to make sugar, and it's going to grow super fast, and it's going to use stored sugar. It's going to weaken your plant if you have tall grass and that stored sugar is going to make new rhizomes. So it'll just be thicker and more lush. Yeah, but if you let it grow too long, then it's using up a lot of the nutrients from the root system and a lot of energy. So if you do something in between, I think for like, a cold season grass, they say keep it at about three inches. Yeah. When you cut it, you're just basically forcing it to propagate because it's like, oh, I need to produce more chlorophyll, so I'm going to grow some more blades. So actually, cutting it, unlike hair, actually does make the grass thicker and more lustrous. Your lawn? Yeah. So you're doing the lawn a favor and yourself a favor, because you're not going to have to mow your grass as much. That's the dirty little secret you can tell your wife. No, you're supposed to let it grow. Right. And she'll say, look it up and show me. And then you go to houseworks.com. That's right. And in the summer you should let it grow a little longer too. In the fall and winter and spring you can go a little bit closer because your temperatures are cooler. Right. So you don't need to sweat it as much. And then when you do mow, you should vary the direction you mow in. So like one week mow north to south. Right. And then the next week mow east to west. Yeah. And I think a lot of experts think you should always leave your clippings on your lawn and not bag them and dump them. Because when you're doing that, when you're leaving the clippings, it ends up becoming compost and it just helps your soil. If you constantly are removing the clippings, that soil is going to compact and get hard. Right? Yeah. So I'm a big proponent of getting a mulching mower and just leaving the clippings. And those clippings do not equal theatch. Apparently the clippings break down in like a week. Theatch is actually build up of dead crown and calms and other stuff of the plant. It's not the cut blades. Yeah. Actually, if you remove your clippings, you're going to encourage that. So don't do it. That is no good. No, it isn't good because it keeps air and water out of the soil, which are essential. Well, a little bit of thatch can be okay. Some but not much. No. And if you do have a theatch problem, you can just break it out. Yeah. And then your clippings will come back the next week. Exactly. Fertilizing is key. You want to add nutrients to the soil. Granular fertilizers once or twice a year is the way to go. The spray on stuff, that's not a great thing because it just kind of gets on the blade of grass itself. The granular stuff soaks into the ground over the course of weeks and it's like slow releasing. Right? Yeah, slow releasing. And a lot of these are chemical fertilizers. I'm not into it. There's a great brand called Ringer and it's natural. And a lot of the chemical fertilizers are just salt and salt is no good for the ground. So it's really weird. Yeah. That is made up of salt. If they understood that, then the Romans used to salt the earth of the lands they conquered. Totally. People couldn't grow stuff. Yeah. I mean, what about Idiocracy? They accidentally salted the soil using gatorade. Really? Yeah. I don't remember aerating something I've never done, which is one of my reasons why my lawn stinks. Well, that's basically like so over time, your soil becomes more and more compact. And as it becomes compact, there's less air movement, water trickles through less easily and there's aerobic, which means they need oxygen bacteria that helps keep things nutrient rich down there. And if they're not getting oxygen, they're not able to do their thing. That's right. So you want to aerate, depending on how high traffic you are, maybe once a year, where you use one of those, it looks like what's, the drum barrel DrumRoller thing, but with spikes, hollow spikes, and they just pull plugs out of the grass that you just leave in place and bam. Aerated. Yeah. And you can rent those too, at a hardware store. Or they even have this if you have a small yard, they have aerating shoes. No way. Yeah, you just basically attach them. You just attach them to your regular shoe and strap them on. And it's like just spikes that you walk around in your yard. But you'd have to have a pretty small on or kids. Yeah, that's true. Put them to work, attach spikes on their shoes. Yes. That's probably safe to be like go running around just to run around in the same place. We've talked about detaching. And then there's weeding. Weeding is the bane of my existence and I don't really know what else to say about it. It stinks. There you go. I got a lot of weeds. Weeds aren't necessarily terrible for your yard if you have a few. What are weeds besides plants that we decided we didn't like? Yeah, but certain types of weeds can indicate, like if you have a lot of dandelion, that means your soil is too alkaline or too compact. Oh, yeah. Or if you have a lot of clover, means it's too low in nitrogen. So it can be a sign of some amendments that you need to take care of. You can read the weeds. Yeah, read the weeds. And one thing, if you don't make the mistake I made, which is, hey, I'm going to put a bunch of weed killer on my yard and see what happens. Because you might be surprised of how much your yard is weed. And then you'll look out one day and it's all brown. Well, except for a couple of patches of green. Well, then you just start over, right, with some seed. Yeah, I need to start from scratch back there anyway. In the backyard. Yeah, it's time. And then do you have pests? Yeah, I got all kinds of pests. So there's this, I guess it's called biological control, pest control, using this stuff called Bacillus thorageiensis, that is how you say it. And it's a grand positive bacteria. It's similar to the stuff that causes anthrax. Totally fine for humans, but for certain kinds of lawn pests, like flies, mosquitoes, butterflies, beetles, moths, they eat this stuff and it creates a crystalline protein in their guts that turns their guts to mush. And so the things starve to death. Wow. And you can just put that stuff on your soil. Basically, you're putting bacteria on your soil and it will take care of pests. Nice, man. This is informative, I think. Yeah, it was like we don't do a lot of how to. We just did the mother of all how to get anything else? I got nothing else, man. So if you want to know more about grass, you can type that word into the search bar@houstonforks.com. It will bring up that really helpful demonstrative picture, too. Oh, yeah, and I said demonstrative, which means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this fishbowl at the Labreya tarpitz. Hey, guys. Huge fan of the show. Gets me through my long commute. Just listen to the Labrador tarpitz and the fishbowl at the Page Museum. Sounds similar to a set up that I've worked in before at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, which I've been to. It's pretty nice. Is there a fishbowl? Isn't it all fish bowl there? Well, there's a fishbowl where they work. I interned at the veterinary department, which had glass walls so visitors could check out the procedures. Turns out the glass walls are really neat for the observer, but really annoying for the fish inside, meaning us. I never saw anyone tap on the glass and yell nerd. But we did have a regular onslaught of small children tapping and smashing their faces against the glass. One day in particular, we're doing surgery on a chuck walla. A lot of people were outside the glass watching. A little boy started tap, tap, tap, tap, tapping. Eventually, the veterinarian got fed up, slowly, turned with a scalpel and glared and pointed at the little boy. The vet shook his finger at him, and the little boy's eyes widened in fear and he ran away crying. And that was my favorite day of my internship. That's awesome. Anyway, that story always makes me chuckle, so I wanted to share. Keep being awesome. And that is from Caitlin with a K. Nice. Thanks a lot, Caitlyn. Yeah, you've threatened a boy with a scalpel and that was no, Caitlin was just witnessed. That when he cried. And that was Caitlin's favorite day. If you have a favorite day, that's a good one. Chuck, tell us about your favorite day. We want to hear about it from everybody. You can tweet it to us. If it was a short day at Syskpodcast, you can post it on our Facebook page@facebook.com stuffychnow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. And as always, join us at our beautiful home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun shining, the daylight's longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing pool site, tune into the podcast series on Amazon music my Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgueref and Georgia Hardstark. This true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're the best pet mom. When you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them Halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients plus probiotics for digestive health. Find us at chewie amazonandalopets.com." | ||
43a4ba0e-53a3-11e8-bdec-5b541a4c0376 | The Manhattan Grid | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-manhattan-grid | Manhattan is well known for its unyielding and kind of boring layout. Turns out it was the "work" of three men. Learn all about their decidedly unambitious design in today's episode. | Manhattan is well known for its unyielding and kind of boring layout. Turns out it was the "work" of three men. Learn all about their decidedly unambitious design in today's episode. | Thu, 18 Jun 2020 12:33:32 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=12, tm_min=33, tm_sec=32, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=170, tm_isdst=0) | 44104376 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. Hey, everybody, if you want a great website, you want to do it yourself with no must, no fuss. Turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, a simple checkout process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. Comsysk and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code s YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is stuff you should know. Another in our endless annals of New York City edition. That's right. This is a pretty interesting episode, I think, and my favorite part about it, this was Dave Rus, one of our writers help put this together, and Dave is clearly annoyed about this whole thing, and I think it's hysterical how many times he gets annoyed by the laziness of the commission. I have to say I agree with Dave, too. I was annoyed by it as well. I think it's always annoying when you see somebody, like, have a great opportunity and just pee it away. You know what I mean? Yeah. And we should also point out Dave got a lot of his information from a really wonderful book called City on a Grid how New York Became New York by Gerald Keppel. Not Gerald McRaney. Different Gerald. Right. Or is it Kapple? I think it's Keple. If it's K-O-E. That's what I was going with, was keppel. Yes. I'm going to get this book, though. This is right at Maui, because I'm obsessed with the history and the sort of formation of New York City as we know it today. Yeah. Where did you get the idea for this episode? Just my constant desire to learn about Manhattan and how that became, eventually Manhattan that we know and love. Okay. I'm just fascinated by it. I love it. I love everything about it. This is definitely a big chapter in it because what we're talking about is the plan called the Commissioners Plan of 1811. That basically laid out. Manhattan as we know and understand and love it today. Everything north of Houston Street, I should say. Yeah. Here's sort of a quick primer. Manhattan above Houston is almost a perfect grid. Broadway kind of screws everything up, but great street. But it's just broadway is like I'm not following any rules, so I'm going to confuse people. But aside from that, it's pretty much a grid of eleven numbered avenues that run north to south, generally speaking. Then you've got Lexington Park and Madison Avenues, and then 200, and this was, at the time, numbered streets running roughly east to west. And if you want to get a little more granular than that, the southernmost street in the East Village is east first, as you would imagine. The northernmost is 220th street as we live and breathe today. In inwood well, that's on the island, technically, in Manhattan, if you're talking about the borough, it goes up to 227th, I believe. Right. And if you want to go through the Bronx, you go all the way up to 263. Man, that's crazy. There's so many streets. That's so many streets. You've got 263 streets. You've got an east and west signifier which says and this is sort of a Dummies guide to getting around New York for the first time, too. If you broke your smartphone and you also don't want to walk around just staring at your smartphone the whole time no. You're going to miss a lot. Yeah. So try and get a little intuitive feel because it's really easy to get around if you know this stuff. East and west will signify whether you're in east or west of Fifth Avenue. And then here's a little trick, too. Odd numbers streets run west. Even numbers streets run east. So if you come out of a subway and you know which way north, south, east and west are, then you will never do the thing that I always do and walk in the wrong direction trying to go up or down. Yeah, because that's the thing. If you know what direction you're facing and you know where you're trying to go and where you are right now, you can basically make your way anywhere in Manhattan above Houston Street. Yeah. And if you're like me and you have no idea ever what's north, southeast and west, I don't either. I had an easy time in La. Because La has the sun. Well, they have that, but they also have geographical landmarks that make it super easy to tell which way north. And like the Hollywood sign and the hills and stuff like that. Is that real? Is the Hollywood sign real? What do you mean, is it real? Okay, so that makes it a lot easier in New York. When I come out there all those big, tall buildings. I can never come out and say, like, well, that's north. But if you know that stuff and you know that the even numbered streets run east, the odd ones run west. Then you won't walk in the wrong direction for a block and then get there like I do and go, we should have gone the other way. Yeah, because depending on what direction you're walking, if you're walking north or south, going the wrong direction in a block isn't that bad, but if you're going east or west, it's real bad. Very long blocks going east to west. And that's all part of that commissioner's plan that was laid out in 1811. And on the one hand, we've kind of hit upon the pros and the cons of it that it's easy to get around, which is really saying something, because New York is absolutely huge. But you could make it from one end to the other without a map, just knowing that it's on a grid and how the grid is laid out, even roughly. But the problem is it's on a grid, and a grid is one of the least organic shapes around. And because this grid stretches over almost all of Manhattan, most of Manhattan for sure, it's viewed by a lot of people as kind of soulless and canyon esque, because you're just totally surrounded almost constantly by big, imposing buildings, all of these right angles, which it feels like a very built environment. And until Central Park came along, which we did an episode on in what, the or 60s, that was it. That was New York. There was nothing but that built environment. I got a few more of my things. Okay, let's have them, bud. Manhattan is about 13 and a half miles long, so this grid makes sense. But then once you get north of 59th street, you start to get like Atlanta does, and the road will just change names out of nowhere. Atlanta is very famous for that. People get very confused here. It is very confusing also because the road will change names, but one of the names, Peach Tree, will still be there. But it's a totally different street. Right. It does not help things. That's right. So north of 59th, avenues on the West Side change names, but avenues on the East Side do not. So 8th becomes Central Park West, 9th becomes Columbus Avenue, 10th becomes Amsterdam Avenue and 11th becomes West End Avenue. What about Avenue of the Americas? Well, that's six, right? Or is that 7th? Oh, man, I think it's six. I think it's my understanding. But that's really not a name change. That's just something that tourists call it. Right. I remember you making fun of me when I called that. Did I really? Yeah, that sounds about right. It's really jarring. And then to get people really confused between Third and Fifth Avenue, there are three avenues instead of what you would think would be one, because Lexington Park and Madison fall between those. Yeah. And then south of 23rd, you've got your lettered avenues. Okay. A-B-C and D, which is Alphabet City, so you wouldn't need to ever pull out a map. You just have to stand in the middle of New York and listen to the first ten minutes of this episode, and you'll find your way. No problem. All right, should we get into this? You said people don't like the grid. There are a lot of people. What did Walt Whitman call it? Icky, I think. No, I think he said he called it one perpetual dead flat. Yeah. And streets cutting each other at right angles are certainly the last things in the world consistent with beauty of situation. How about this one from Edith Wharton. Rectangular New York. This cramped, horizontal gridiron of a town without towers, portico, fountains, or perspectives, hide bound in its deadly uniformity of mean ugliness. Yeah, I like hidebound. That's a great word. And mean ugliness definitely captures, like, a certain sense of New York, depending on your mood or mindset. Yeah. There's one guy named Peter Markus who is an architecture critic. He said that the grid layout of Manhattan was one of the worst city plans of any major city in the developed countries of the world. Right. But some people love it. Some people said it was pragmatic. Some people said it really accommodated for the one thing it needed to accommodate for, which was massive growth. Right. Let me see here an architect named Rafael Venolli, who's I think a modern architect. Not modern, I just mean current architect, but he may do modern work in those. He said the grid is the best manifestation of American pragmatism in the creation of urban form. And then in 1978, a Dutch architect named Rim Coolhaz said that the grid was the most courageous act of prediction in Western civilization. Clearly talking about the growth. Yes. But a courageous act, that's like architect talk right there. Right there. But for the most part, from what I understand, and definitely Dave says the same thing, most New Yorkers, especially born and raised New Yorkers, are not happy that that's how their city is laid out. There's a lot of room for improvement. Your experience, too. Sure. I mean, Central Park is great, but as we'll find out, they didn't really plan for green spaces, and New York has done their best to kind of carve them out since then. But let's get into this commission. Well, let's talk about grids first, if you want to. Yeah. All right. Do you want to take a break and then talk about the grid story? Yes. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but we're pretty excited about summer. I mean, what's not to like? School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's right. And that's where True Crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. Yeah. And with so many killer shows like Morbid, my favorite murder and small town murder, you'll never be bored to death again. Prepare to go deep and become your own detective in the world of serial crimes and unsolved mysteries. Get lost hearing spooky stories with a combination of detailed research and lighthearted analysis. Whether you're a lifetime fan of true crime or you just feel like being entertained while doing the dishes at night, there's a podcast out there for you to download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. 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As much as they liked to boast that they did, they did not. In fact, a grid layout of a city goes back to that Indus Valley civilization that for some reason keeps popping up in the last year or so. I guess they're going to make a comeback or something like that, but they've just been coming out all over the place. But one of the what was it, Chuck? Was it did they invent the zipper? I don't think it was a zipper. Indigo. There's been a number of them. But anyway, about at least 5000 years ago, the Indus Valley civilization was using the grid layout to create Mohenjo Daro, which is a 750 acre city on a grid. And then shortly after that, the Greek said, I really like this. In fact, there's a Greek thinker and mathematician named Hippodamus who is known as the father of city planning. And he was bullied for grids, too. Yeah, if you have a grid, people still call that the hippodamian plan, which is kind of great all these years later to still get recognized for your grid work. Yeah, if you're ever talking to somebody and they refer to a grid as a hippodami and plan, that person knows what they're talking about. Or listens to this show, it's one in the same basic. You're going to say that, let me see the conquistadors of Spain. They kind of had a habit of coming in, conquering, and then having their template in place to create these grids is what they call the Law of the Indies. And they would sort of just come in, set up shop. You got a town with a big central plaza and then a grid surrounding that central plaza. Right. And they use that for everything from Lima to Los Angeles. And this took me back in my mind to what was the name of that colonial town in Guatemala that we visited? Oh, yeah, I know what you mean. It was wonderful, driving crazy. It really was wonderful. One of the most beautiful towns I've ever been in, but it had like a central plaza with a fountain. It was a much smaller town, but now that I think about it, it was laid out on a grid, too. And it was part of that Law of the Indies that you were mentioning, that it was just like, this is how you build a town. And apparently the reason that they use that law, like in town after town after town, that they just basically took over and said, this is ours now. It's Spain is. Applying a grid was kind of a metaphor for applying order and civilization to a formerly disordered and wild indigenous town, which makes sense from a colonizer's perspective, but I'm sure it sucked from the indigenous person's perspective like everything else. Yeah, that's with this stupid right angle stuff. So New York City comes along. Philadelphia had been laid out in a grid by William Penn very deliberately, though, and that grid was kind of roomy and spacious because William Penn did not like the congestion of London. No, but again, Philly very much purposeful. Same with DC. Too. Yeah. Boy, DC. Has kind of a crazy grid. Yeah. But once you understand it, it makes total sense. Numbers and letters wise and directions. Yeah, it takes more getting used to than New York, too, from my experience, from what I understand. Yes, for sure. So the commissioners plan of 1811 is really sort of the demarcation point between what was first New York, New Amsterdam, and then what we now know as Manhattan, because anyone who's ever seen almost said, games of New York, gangs of New York, knows that those were crazy days down there in Lower Manhattan. And things just sort of sprouted up organically from the river upward as far as the layout and the design. And you can still feel that when you go down to Lower Manhattan, which is why I love the villages now. I like the simplicity of the grid, but I think what I love about Lower Manhattan is how organic it feels. It's a jumble. And I mean it's a jumble for a reason, because those streets largely follow these original organic paths that the Dutch settlers and earliest English settlers basically said, oh, we need to get from the waterfront up to the common land or whatever. Here's a good path. And this path happens to meander around a salt marsh, and we avoid having to go up a hill by going around this way. So it's kind of like meandering, and it's definitely locked in time from those streets down there in Lower Manhattan. I like it too, but it is very easy to be like, are you sure we're going the right direction? Still? It's very easy to get lost in those because it isn't at all a grid. Yeah, I've spent enough time in Lower Manhattan now to where I can landmark it's just familiar enough to me to where I kind of know, like, this block and that block, so I know where I'm going. And you mentioned something important. I don't think we've even kind of said that New York was not all this just big, one big flat slab 13 miles long that we love today, because you can walk forever without ever getting out of breath. Because it's not Seattle. Right. New York was swampland, and it had hills and marshes and creeks and rocks, and it was kind of wild East Coast territory. Yes. And the reason that those marshes and ponds and hills and stuff aren't there anymore is because of this 1811 Commissioners Plan. It basically said, tear it all down, fill it all in, build this over it. And they did that's. The most astounding thing is they did that. We'll see. They passed a law that basically said, we're going to appoint a commission of three people. They're going to come up with three people, and whatever they come up with is law. It can't be challenged in court. We're not going to back it up and change it in any way. And they really didn't. As bad as the plan was, in almost every way, they really stuck to it. But the thing that struck me I had no idea about this was that the 1811 Commissioners Plan was just a rip off of another earlier surveying map that basically provided the basis of the Commissioners plan. Not even the basis of it. They weren't like, oh, we'll take this as a starting point. They just said, we'll take this, print it, and put our names on it. And that's ultimately what happened. Yeah. So pre Revolutionary War, most of Manhattan was in that lower third of the island, and we got into big time debt because of the Revolutionary War. And so the city said in the 1780s, all right, here's what we got to do. We own tons of land, publicly owned land, and all this marshy, kind of reedy, rocky, pondy area. It's not developed. Let's sell the stuff off and make some dough. It's called the common lands, and we need somebody to get in there and just sort of survey this and plot it all out so we know exactly how to best sell this. Yeah. So they hired a guy named Kazamir Theodore Gork. That's how I'm going with this gerk. Sure. It's not a cucumber, it's a gurkin. Do you remember Mr. Cabbage Head from Kids in the Home? Sure. Well, this had nothing to do with that. Right, right. So this surveyor actually went through the common lands. Like basically what we understand is all of Manhattan between Houston and North Harlem. He just went across and broke it into 500 acre parcels. He had a 66 foot chain on his surveying poles. And so he said, Well, I'll just use that as the basic measurement for the widest street. 66ft is what it's going to be. I think you said 500 acre parcels. Weren't they five acre? Oh, yes, I'm sorry. Big difference. It's a little bit of a difference. They were five acre parcels, so that's even more work. That's 100 times more work than what I described. That's right. So he laid him out as a grid because this guy wasn't out to say, here's how Manhattan should be built. Right. This is the best way to promote the future of growth in Manhattan. No, that was not his charge. His charge was like, hey, let's just divide this stuff up and sell it. He had some interesting constraints. They had to be five acres. They had to have a central road that all of these could sort of access like fairly easily. Right. And then he had a survey chain. It's crazy to think about. This was one of the things that informed what is modern New York. His survey chain was 66ft. So he said, all right, that's how wide the road is. Yeah, exactly. So I think that was like the widest road, the central access road. He called that one middle. And now I believe that's Fifth Avenue is Middle. What was originally Middle Road back in 1796. Yeah, that's adorable. So he carved this up, this place up into these plots that are 200ft on the east and west boundaries of it. So going up and down, running north south. But if you're on the plot, it would be on the east side of the plot and the west side of the plot, if that was not confusing before, it is now. And then across the width was 920ft and those were the plots. He said, here you go. There's a bunch of them up there. But I've carved up all of these common lands and you can start selling them if you want. Yeah. Did you mention the names of the other two roads? Oh, yeah. He said, I'm going to put two more in of these 66 ft wide roads. And he had some very clever names for them. Yeah. One was Middle. Remember, the one to the east he named east and the one to the west he named west. Yeah, which makes sense if you're looking at it from if you're on the Middle Road to the east of the east road, to the west of the west road. But they run north south. Right. And I hate directions. And like you said, that was Fifth in the center, so that's now 4th, Fifth and 6th Ave. Right? Or Fourth Avenue? Fifth Avenue. And the Avenue. You're really not supposed to say that. What a jerk. I can't believe I said that. You didn't say it like that. You just made sure that you waited until a crowd had gathered and really laid into me. I think I remember. Was that her first trip to New York? Probably. Yeah, probably. That's funny. We've been back a couple of times since then as a team, huh? Yeah, I know. I've got some really great memories of New York. I miss it. Yeah, it's been a while. 2021. We will see you again. Yes, we will. New York. Don't you work, at least I hope so. There are no guarantees, right? No. We will see New York again. All right, so do we take another break? I feel like you're still alive. There's still a lot we should keep going for now, I think. All right, so in this is when the New York State legislature said, you know what? We're growing here. It's clear that this southern tip of Manhattan is just the beginning. So they passed a bill that they described as an act of relative. An act relative to improvements touching the laying out of the streets and roads in the city of New York and for other purposes. Right, which makes sense. But like I said, this law, they decided to just vest absolute authority into these three commissioners and said, we're going to follow whatever they come up with, whatever seems to them most conducive to public good. We're just going to take on its face that it is most conducive to public good and just go with it. That's crazy that it was just three people and that it wasn't like ten teams of three people submitting the best designs that then would be gone over and voted on. Yeah, no one took it seriously, weirdly enough. Very odd. So who were these guys? So there are three commissioners appointed. One was Governor Morris. His first name was Governor. He was one of the Founding Fathers. He wrote a lot of the Constitution, including the Preamble. He had a peg leg. He lost his leg in a carriage accident, although there are rumors that it was something else. But he was known as Dave Puts, an energetic philanderer, but he was apparently a very likable, Benjamin Franklin esque kind of dude who seemed to be fairly smart, but had really no understanding of surveying, as far as I can tell. No. Then his nephew in law, John Rutherford, he was a landowner in New Jersey. In fact, I think the largest landowner in New Jersey at the time. And by all accounts, it looks like this was pure nepotism. He was late for meetings. He was not especially interested, even to the annoyance of Governor Morris. All the reasons to not exercise nepotism. This guy brought to the table is one third of this commission who's figuring out how to lay out the plan for New York City. That's right. And then the third guy simon Lebanon. No. Simeon DeWitt. Excuse me. And this guy actually knew what he was doing. He was a really very respected, accomplished surveyor. Worked with George Washington, I think eventually became the which I didn't even know was a thing, was the official surveyor for the continental army and then the surveyor general of New York State. Right. So he knew what he was doing, which makes his role all the more shameful that he didn't say, like, oh, well, we got to get cracking. It's been three years and we've got four years to do. Maybe he did, though. Who knows? He might have been completely run over by these other two chumps, and he just got shouted down, I guess. I don't know. Well, at the very least, governor Morris was also one of the founding members of the commission that created the Erie Canal, which was for a very long time considered one of the greatest public works projects in the history of America, certainly in the history of New York state. And that kind of energy and imagination and drive just did not make it to this 1811 commission for the planning of New York. This sounds cynical, but I wonder if he literally was like, man, the Erie canal project really was a big bummer in how hard we had to work. And let's just kind of say, hey, look at these maps that this guy drove to sell off New York. Let's just use those. Yeah, that's kind of what they did. They had four years or they took four years. I'm not sure how long they had, but they took four years from 18 seven to 1811 to turn in their report. Four years of meeting sporadically. True, but they still met over this four year period. They came up with an eleven page report to lay out these 13 miles in length, not even square miles of Manhattan, these common lands all the way from house and street up to North Harlem. They came up with eleven pages to explain their map, and their map really made sense as a grid, but again, they stole the grid from Kazmir gork. I can't remember what I called them before. Gurk. I'm going with Gork now. Okay, sure. But they didn't give him any credit for it whatsoever. No, I mean, I don't want to go so far as to call it a tracing project, but they borrowed pretty heavily. Like, the streets and the avenues were basically the exact same when earlier you mentioned the blocks were 200 by 920ft in Gerk from Gerk. Right. Yeah. This had the exact same layout. And that was no accident. No. And they were in virtually the same spot. They did do some stuff. They didn't just take. His map, like you're saying, and trace it and call it their own. They made some changes to it. They created, instead of the three middle east and west, they created twelve avenues running north south. Not true northsouth, but just for our purposes, north and south. And then they created 155 numbered streets. They added this stuff, but it's sort of just copy paste, kind of. But the big thing is so adding the twelve numbered avenues was definite change to Gerks Gorks never going to say the same thing twice, but was it? Yeah, because he only had the three. I know, but he just had the three and they were like, well, we need more, so let's just do what he did all over the place. Sure. Okay. Alright. You know what I'm saying? That's fair. These guys are definitely not a hill I'm willing to die on. So say what you will about them, I think they're lazy schmoes, too. All right. And then they took these cross streets that are formed by the surveying of these blocks and turn them into numbered streets. So avenues running north south, they were the big ones. 155 numbered streets running east to west. They widened the avenues. They said they're going to be 100ft wide. I guess they had a longer service and bigger chain. Right. And then they widened some of the cross streets to, I guess, ease congestion. I think they widened 15 of them total. Yeah. I think the other streets were 60ft. And then 15 of them went to 100 at 1423, 34, 42nd, 57, 72, 79, 86, 96 one 6116, 125-13-5145 and 150 5th. Right. But why are those particular ones? There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason. Because if you notice, they didn't really hit their stride into keeping them separated by ten cross streets until 86th street. So there's not really much rhyme or reason there. And then we did that for three of them. Right. And then the streets that they did choose to widen didn't necessarily make much sense one way or the other. Like, for example, 71st street was already fairly wide. It was definitely wider than 72nd street. But they decided to make 72nd street the widened cross street rather than 71st, and apparently no one knows why. The closest thing I could find is there's some record in 1857 of somebody having to remove a big rock from 72nd street to widen it. But that doesn't even explain it makes sense because there was a bunch of houses that had to be torn down to make 72nd street widened rather than 71st, which was already wide and had almost no houses. Exactly. So these guys were just when you start to compile all the evidence, we'll kind of pay more out. It really seems like these guys didn't even go to the common lands, that maybe they were just working from Gurk's map. Or if they did go to the common lands, they took zero notes or paid zero attention. And all of this came from a place of laziness and ignorance. Like not knowing that 72nd was wider than 71st or vice versa would explain that decision more than anything else. Yeah. Another example is if you've ever been on the West Side and you feel like, man, these avenues are big, it's because they are. The avenues on the East Side are spaced at 650,610ft apart or 610ft apart. And on the west, they are all 800ft apart for no reason. No reason at all. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Again, it seems like they just phoned us in. And what's even more astounding, is that New York's founding father said, okay, we're going to do exactly what you say without questioning it. Yeah, and actually, we kind of do have the reason, if you read closely. And we'll tell you the secret reason 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. It's part true crime and part comedy. Morbid takes you on a journey through murderous mysteries and major laughs, all in the same week. Yeah, from the paranormal to the pretty spooky and everything in between. Hosts Selena Erkhart and Ash Kelly cover it all. And with two episodes released each week, you'll be hooked on this chart topping series. Before you know it, you can listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. 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I'm still a little tense waiting for you to pay it off. All right, here's the real reason, everyone. And it all lies in this quote that is pulled from their commission report. If it should be asked, why was the present plan adopted in preference to any other? The answer is because after taking all circumstances into consideration, it appeared to be the best or in other more proper terms, attended with the least inconvenience. I think that's the magic phrase right there, that last phrase, attended with the least inconvenience. And Dave rightfully says what is obvious, which is inconvenient for the three commissioners. Yeah, because their plan was extraordinarily inconvenient for basically everyone involved, from the people who were in charge of making this building, this grid or this plan, to the people who are already living in places that were torn down of places were torn down to adhere to this plan, this 1811 Commission plan. Yeah, that's crazy. And again, when you start to add all this stuff up, it does seem like the least inconvenient for the three commissioners. And the fact that if that is true and they just included that is kind of like a cheeky little joke. These guys are not necessarily burning in hell, but they're probably in purgatory somewhere. I also have a lot of respect for that kind of laziness at times, the kind that makes fun of itself in public documents. Well, just that upfront about the fact that, you know what, I didn't really want to work too hard on this, so here it is. Yeah, it was very inconvenient for everyone, but then they did this because of the growth population they expected. So it sort of made sense. But they even got that wrong. They were wrong by about half of what they thought the growth rate was going to be. Yeah, that's the thing. As they were saying, like, okay, this affords enough population growth to afford a population greater than any other this side of China is how they put it. So they clearly did have at least growth on their mind. And that if you build on a grid, it affords for the most growth. It's the easiest to build on. Right angled structures are the easiest to build and settle and live in. But the thing is part of that law, that 18 seven law that established the Commission charged them with creating public squares, although it said in size and form and all that in number that the commissioners see fit. Unfortunately, the commissioners didn't see fit to make almost any kind of public gathering places, especially green spaces for mental health, I guess is what you would call it. Yeah. And the reasoning is kind of BS, actually. I'm not sure which one it was. I guess it was Morris that I'm not going to read the whole quote, but he basically said, hey, listen, we don't have the Sin River or the Thames winding through the middle of town, but what we do have are these two wonderful rivers that just kind of hug Manhattan. And that's enough because everyone's just going to go hang out the river all the time. Because it's beautiful and gorgeous and you can swim in it. And the east river and the Hudson river will forever be our green space, basically. Yeah. Basically, the city had enough. It didn't need green spaces because of the east and the Hudson rivers. And in about 40 years, people were like, no, we do. We need to build central park. Yeah. Which was a savior, because I think it says here on their original plan, only 5% of the grid was public green space, and 240 of those 400 acres was a parade ground. Yes. Which I didn't know exactly where that was. Do you? No, I'm not sure. I don't know. There's Washington square park. There are some cool kind of central promenades and things like that. And then these new York is famous for these tiny little slivers of a park kind of all over the place. But they're small. They are very small. Especially compared to the surrounding areas, for sure, in the building. That's why the high line was such a big deal. Yeah, it was a big deal. And I remember not quite grasping why. No, I definitely do, because people need that. People need green space. They need nature. They need to be like, outside of a built environment, even if it's a built natural environment, you know what I mean? Yeah. And central park is amazing and we love it, but it's a long way if you're in southern Manhattan to get up there. Right. But basically these guys said, you don't need it. Go hang out at the Hudson or the east river. So wonderful and lovely. So there were a lot of people, like we said, that were really unhappy with this. This is a huge exercise of eminent domain. There are a lot of people on these lands already. Remember Seneca village that was destroyed to create central park. They managed to survive the 1811 commission. I can't remember how long that was around, but I want to say seneca village was around for a good 50 years before it was leveled in the 1850. So it would have been around on the common lands during this time. But like you said, about 39% or 40% of homeowners or established buildings had to be torn down. They filled in ponds, they filled in salt marshes. They completely altered the ecosystem of stuff that could have been built around or incorporated had they stopped and thought about how to do that. They just level everything and build a grid over it. And so a lot of people were really unhappy about this. And they were particularly unhappy that the city administration was just sticking to this no matter what. And there were a lot of lawsuits, and all of them, from what I understand, were unsuccessful. Oh, yeah. For about 60 years. There were tons of lawsuits going on. And I know you said it was a big eminent domain act, but it was, I think, still the largest active eminent domain in New York City, and that includes Central Park and How They Get Their Water, which was another good episode. Yeah. Because Central Park is huge, but it's just a small sliver of this larger area. Yeah. This one quote from Landowner Clement Clark Moore. He published a pamphlet about the Tyrannical commissioners planned, and it says this, nothing is to be left unmolested, which does not coincide with the street commissioners plummet and level. These are men who would have cut down the seven hills of Rome burn big time. Yeah. Didn't matter, though. No, it really didn't matter. They just went ahead with it blindly and thoughtlessly and did. And again, it did accommodate growth, although they underestimated the growth. But it took a little while for this stuff to fill up. This plan was delivered in 1811, but it wasn't until 1875 that enough people had started to move in that there were more New Yorkers living above 14th street than there were living below it, because, remember, lower Manhattan was where it all began. It took a little while to fill in, and it didn't even necessarily fill in uniformly. By that same year in 1875, there's still 40,000 vacant lots left in this grid plan. And that was like about half of the space. Yeah, I love that fact. That's good. Dave has some nice facts here. At the end, 1869, the very first apartment building in New York was built, called The Style as Ant. And they called them I don't even think they called them apartments at the time. It was called a French flat or a French house. But prior to that, it was tenement houses and houses. Right. And so the Styuzant is built, and everyone thinks it's silly that anyone would want to live in the same building as other people. And they call it Styles and Folly. But that was at 142 east 18th, between Irving Place and Third, and it was a huge hit. Like, people made fun of it in the newspapers, but people signed up to live there almost immediately. It filled up. It was demoed and replaced in 1960. This is 1869. Very. It didn't take long, though. In 1884, the Dakota was built, which still stands today. So apartment buildings kind of came into fashion, I think probably do. Just dive as ants. Folly. Yeah. Well, yeah, it went over so well and so quickly that it really opened the way for more and more to be built. Pretty cool. So one thing that people point to is this commissioners plan of 1811 is just like that same principle or the same significance, that the Spanish coming in and imposing a grid over an indigenous settlement was somehow taming the wild or the organic or something like that. This is the turning point between kind of unplanned, organic, much more harmonious, naturally New York and the planned, modern New York that we know and love today. This is where it went from one to the other, almost like flipping a switch. And granted, it took decades and decades to realize this plan, but when it was delivered and when it was adopted, that was it. That change happened, and the transition began. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I think so, too. What else is there for New York? I figured we got water, we got the subways covered, we got Central Park. We've got this. Yeah. Let's see. There can't be much else as far as just the bones of I know. What I want to do is maybe how the mail and the trash work. Okay. All right. Yeah, we did the Rockets once even, too. That's right. We've done a lot of New York topics. That's true. Or maybe we should just move to a different city. Let's start talking about Des Moines. Holy cow, dude. It almost simultaneously came out of my mouth. Des Moines? Yes. That's so weird. It is weird. It's in the zeitgeist, apparently. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Okay, well, if you want to know more about New York, just start reading and then eventually travel there. They'll give you the all clear when they're ready. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Hey, guys. My 16 year old son Owen is proud. Your biggest fan, for real. He also has Narcolepsy. I appreciate you taking on this topic and bringing some understanding of it to the masses. He was diagnosed with ten, and it affects every single aspect of his life. I think it has made him wise beyond his years, personally and compassionate to other people with invisible struggles. But it still sucks. If you ever want to read or hear firsthand accounts from people with Narcolepsy, check out Julie Flygar. That is F-L-Y-G-A-R-E or Flygare. I'm not sure. How would you say that? Well, I like the one with flavor. The second one flygari, who is doing all kinds of advocacy for people with Narcolepsy, including a scholarship foundation she founded, project Sleep and Voices of Narcolepsy. She also wrote a great book about her experiences with being diagnosed during law school called Wide Awake and Dreaming. When Owen received his diagnosis, I reached out to her for help. She sent Owen a care package with a book, a T shirt, wristbands, a very kind card, et cetera, to let him know that he's not alone. That is very sweet. It is. I think she deserves an award for the work she's doing. Anyway. Great resource, for sure. Thanks for the work that you do. Could we get an award? We've won a Webb before. I think that's true. Yeah. Sometimes it's fun and entertaining, but sometimes and often, it's really important and educational as well. Sincerely, the mom of your biggest fan. And that is from Brooke. Thanks, Brooke. And thanks, Owen, for listening. It's really good to hear from you guys, and I feel like we should send owen something, too. Sure. Let's do it. Chuck. We'll figure it out. All right. We can't be showing up by this fly Gary person. No. Send us your physical address, and we'll mail you something. That's right. And in the meantime, thanks for listening. And thanks for being a fan. And thank you for listening. And thank you for being a fan, too. And if you want to get in touch with us, like Brooke did, you can send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff Podcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen. 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Uses of the Insanity Defense | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/uses-of-the-insanity-defense | The idea that a person who can't understand the crime they've committed is wrong lets them off the hook from culpability for their actions is a longstanding pillar of Western criminal law. Learn about some of the prominent and overlooked cases where the a | The idea that a person who can't understand the crime they've committed is wrong lets them off the hook from culpability for their actions is a longstanding pillar of Western criminal law. Learn about some of the prominent and overlooked cases where the a | Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:56:21 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=19, tm_min=56, tm_sec=21, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=108, tm_isdst=0) | 29503818 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetuffworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. I'm hungry. And there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant. Did that make you hungry? It did. We were just talking about I made my my last chili of the season. Josh is over here mouth watering. Yeah. Because you're talking about tortilla soup, white chili, red chili. Yeah. I'll eat any kind of chili, really? And Jerry always eats in here. People don't know that she eats lunch while we record, so the smell of her stuff always wafts over. It's delicious. That avocado looks top notch too. It's insane how good that stuff is. Oh, man. It's funny that you bring that up, Chuck, because we are talking today about the insanity defense. Is that why you just did that? Yeah, Chuck, for a very long time, basically, since there was such a thing as law prior to the advent of law in Western civilization, if I killed your brother, you would come kill me. Yeah. Iran. IB. Right. That was actually the first law, the code of Hamurabi. Yeah. From the Bible, but a little after that. Right. Actually, I think it predates the Bible. Hammurabi. Oh, yeah. It's like on a black obelisk. Yeah, it's old, is what I mean. Pretty much the whole idea behind Law from the get go was the idea of what was going on in your head when you did something right. Motive tent. There's a difference between accidentally killing somebody and killing someone on purpose. And this was the idea behind law to get to the bottom of it and then punish accordingly. And so it's a pretty short hop, skipping and jump from getting to the bottom of what someone was thinking at the time to finding that some people weren't thinking anything that any sane human being would recognize as rational. Right. And with that understanding came the beginnings. The premise of what we recognize now is the insanity defense. But this whole idea that somebody can that the insane, those who are mentally ill can't understand or grasp the criminality, the moral wrongness of their act. The idea that that's out there, that people like that are out there has moved us, I think, quite compassionately. Just check one for humanity, in my opinion, to protect them. We need to make sure they don't do that again. But that's not evil. And the point of law is to punish evil. Right. Evildoers. Yeah. It's true. From the beginning of understanding this to even to today, the insanity defense has undergone evolution after evolution after evolution. Yeah. And you know quite a bit about this. A little bit. It started out in 16th century England, and at the time, they had the wild beast test in England, where a person was so depraved of understanding or memory of, like, what they had done that, quote, no more than an infant, a brute or a wild beast could be found not guilty of his crimes. And it's important to say insanity is not a medical condition. You can't look it up and define insane and, like, the medical what's the book? The DS. DSM. DSM. Yeah. Insanity is not in there, I don't think. And there's no single standard in the United States for defining it in the court system. Is that right? As far as the defense goes, even today? Yeah. Like, different states have different methods. Oh, got you. So there's not, like, a single federal standard. Yeah. And there's actually a conversation now of whether or not that's a constitutional right protected by the 8th Amendment exactly. That you have a right to plead insanity or try to prove that you're insane. Yeah. Because some states don't recognize it. Right. Yeah. As we'll find out. So there's a couple of different tests that the United States generally operate under, and the first one is the Monoton test. How do you pronounce that? I think Monoton. Monoton. It's m apostrophe naughten, and it looks like it should be McNaughton, but they left the sea out and replaced it with an Apostrophe. Exactly. He's very stylish Monoton. And that was in the UK. In the 1840s. And I guess we should go and talk about that case now. Well, Daniel Menon yeah. He was a Scottish woodworker who believed that Prime Minister Robert Peele and the Pope were plotting against him. Oh, the Pope, too. Yeah. So Manaton went to London, and he shot and killed Peele's secretary. Was that a mistake in the identity thing, or was it just a bad shot? I didn't see. Okay, so I killed the wrong person. Yes. But he did kill that person with the intent of killing Peel because he thought that Peel was out to get him. Right. And so Peel, he was tried, but he was acquitted by reason of insanity, and he was sentenced to life in bedlam, which is not a nice place to be. It just sounds like why would you name it bedlam unless it was just awful? Well, is that where it comes from? Yeah. Okay. Because Bethlehem is, like, kind of a British I think it was open in 1247, and it was kind of short for Bethlehem, and it was the first mental asylum in Europe. Yeah. Wow. And this guy was sentenced to life there, which was not a nice thing to have happened to you. But even still, the fact that some guy tried to kill the Prime Minister and was not thrown into prison, which I imagine was even worse than Bethlehem, queen Elizabeth herself came out and said, what are you guys doing? Courts? Explain yourself. And what the courts came up with was what came to be known as the Mannaton Rule. They said, here's a test for insanity. If somebody doesn't know what they're doing at the time they commit the crime, or they don't know what they're doing was right or wrong. It's also called the right wrong test. Then from now on, under British law, we are going to uniformly say that that person is insane and can be acquitted of a crime. They really called it the Right Wrong test. Yeah. So that's a monotonous test, and we'll get to how that applies today. And then came along American Law Institute, the Ali established an insanity test in 1962, laid out in the model Penal code, and they then began to consider what they called irresistible impulse. So if you're a defendant, you could not refrain from doing something you knew was wrong. You know it's wrong to kill someone, but you just couldn't help yourself, like what you might call, like, a crime of passion or something like that. Like you're so overwhelmed with rage or vengeance or whatever, you know what you're doing is wrong, but you can't stop yourself. It's also called the volition rule if you're doing it under your own volume. Like Shawshank, for instance, although he didn't really kill anyone, but that's what they thought was Tim Robbins oh, yeah. Had walked in on his wife and, like, shot this guy. Yeah. So under this test, you are criminally insane if you're unable to, quote, appreciate the criminality of conduct or to conform your conduct to the requirements of the law. So you can still go out and kill someone and use gloves and dispose of the body and all that stuff and still be considered insane under the standard used to it was pretty controversial. Yeah. And then 20 years after that, a guy named John Hinckley changed all that again, which led to the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 84. So what happened with Hinckley? We all remember that, right? Yes. He went after Reagan to impress Jodie Foster. That's right. And he shot Reagan and he was acquitted. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and the nation went crazy. Yeah. People were like, because it was the president, how can you acquit this guy? Right. Well, not only that, it was when Monoton was sentenced to bedlam and the Monoton rule came about for about 100 years after that, maybe a little less. If you were found insane, whether or not you're acquitted, you still spent the rest of your life in an insane asylum. Sure. As psychology progressed further and further and got to the point where they're like, hey, this person is cured, this person is cured, that person is cured. Sometimes when you were found not guilty by reasoning insanity, you got out after a couple of years. It was basically tan amount of getting off. And by the time Hinckley was acquitted, the public kind of saw that that was the case, like, he wasn't going to get any kind of punishment and we need to do something. So they came up with a reform for the insanity defense. Yeah. And basically that sort of put the Ali standard aside and brought us back to something more like the Monoton rule. And even more significantly, probably, the federal and state shifted the burden of proof after Hinckley to defense. Right. So you had to instead of being in on the prosecution, it was on the defense to prove that they were with clear evidence that they were legally insane at the time. So that was a big deal, that shift. Yeah. They did away with the Volition rule, too, right? I think so. It's important to know that there are two ways to use the insanity rule. You can go guilty by reasons of insanity or not guilty by reasons of insanity, which is interesting that you can use the same thing for guilt or not guilty. Right. But it's there to protect the mentally ill, so it's a good thing, and it's pretty tough to get it through. Like, only 1% of cases are successful, and then only about 15% to 25% of that 1% are actual acids. So it's not like, oh, I was insane at the time, and so you can't throw me in jail. Yeah, well, it's pretty rare at the time is a really big thing, too. You can't just be like, oh, well, I'm mentally ill, so you got to let me off because then I have blanket immunity from any of my actions. You have to be able to prove that at that time, you didn't understand that what you were doing was wrong. You were not competent to, I guess, stand trial and convince the jury of that, which is the trick. Yeah. So we have some famous cases here. Yeah. Manaton. His case came in 1843, but he wasn't the first one in the west to get off for being insane. Acquitted by reason of insanity. In the United States back in 1835, a guy named Richard Lawrence, who was a house painter, was acquitted by reason of insanity. Trying to kill the president? Yeah, trying to kill him really hard, too. Andrew Jackson was the president at the time. Yeah. I don't think I knew this until this article. I didn't even know, okay? I'm not a dummy. Then he had a darringer, and I think Darringers at the time were notorious for not firing all the time. It's fired. It fired, but it fired shoot a bullet. So it went off, but the bullet didn't come out. Well, yeah, that's what I'm saying. They were known for not firing correctly. I got you. And he actually had two daringers, and they both misfired, and apparently Jackson went after him with his cane. Like, this dude was trying to kill me. Like, there was no Secret Service at the time. I guess Secret Service was his cane. Right. He happened to be coming out of a state funeral. And so not only did Andrew Jackson beat this guy with his cane, none other than Tennessee Senator David Crockett helped to subdue the guy. Really? Yeah, of course he did. Yeah. Richard Lawrence was like, this is awesome. I'm getting beat by David Crockett. Jackson I'll be remembered forever. Yeah. And he was, if you'd know about him. But he was acquitted and committed to a mental asylum. And that was the end of Richard Lawrence? As far as we know. Yes. And we should say, like, it wasn't just going after the president that made him insane. He believed he was Richard III, the king who was recently found buried beneath a parking lot. Yes. He thought he was Richard III, and the Andrew Jackson had killed his father, and that by killing Andrew Jackson, a lot more money would be available during the Depression. And Jackson actually, for his part, came to believe that Richard Lawrence was a patsy in an assassination attempt carried out by the rival, I think, Wig party, who wanted him out of the presidency. Which wasn't true. No. But he spent the rest of his life paranoid about it. Oh, really? Yeah. All right. So Ezra Pound, poet, writer, and, unbeknownst to me, anti Semite and fascist. I had no idea. I didn't either. This is a tricky case because most people believe now that he wasn't insane and that he just really knew the right people and pulled the right strings to get out of a crime. Yes. So he was a big Mussolini guy, moved to Italy 1925, and started doing a radio broadcast, began writing and broadcasting these anti Semitic, anti Roosevelt rants during World War II. That doesn't sit well with the United States, of course, especially not when we invade Italy and take over. Yeah. And so it was an act of treason, and he was arrested and imprisoned in Italy. And then after Mussolini died, he was extradited faced these charges, and he pled insanity and was actually found not competent to stand trial and spent the rest of his days in a minute asylum. St. Elizabeth and DC. Washington, DC. He didn't spend the rest of his days. He got out in 1958. Oh, I thought he died. No. And while he was at St. Elizabeth, which was headed by a devotee of Ezra Pound, a guy named Doctor Winfred Over Holster SR. That's not a real name, I swear. He was the head of St. Elizabeth, and he thought Pound was just one of the greatest literary figures alive. I thought he died there. He vouched for him. And basically, Pound was allowed to have visitors over for sex any time, and he had a really cushy life while he was there and got out and got around being tried for treason. Even though he was never declared insane. No doctor ever said, this man is insane. They just vouched for him that he was I can't remember how they put it, but basically they got around it with semantics. Office rocker. Is that the legal term? That's what they call them. The next one is pretty interesting, too. Anthony and William Esposito brothers dubbed the Mad Dog Killers in 1941. In January, in New York City, they held up their office and office manager for about $650 and then shot and killed him. And then this wild police chase on foot down Fifth Avenue or up Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, like, darting in and out of department stores, shooting and stuff. One of the guys gets popped in the leg, goes down, plays dead, and then shoots and kills the officer as he approaches him. It's a dirty rat. Oh, man, that's such a dirty rat. Move the other guy. Or when he shot and killed the cop, he got up and started to run off and a bunch of New Yorkers got on top of him and beat him unconscious. That's the beauty of New York. Yeah. And they found the other guy, his brother, in a convenience store. And so they were caught and tried, and throughout the trial, they barked and drooled and bang their heads on the death because apparently that's what insane people do. Exactly. And the jury didn't buy it and convicted them both. Sentenced them to death, actually. Yeah. And while they're at Csen, they continued this I don't know if people thought it was real or not. So I don't hesitate to say continued the charade because maybe they were a little off. But they continued this in prison, and they basically didn't care. And Sing Singh. And they were put to death in 1942. So unsuccessful in their bid to get off on the insanity rule. Yeah. Like you said, only is effective in 1% of cases. Andrew Goldstein. Yeah, I remember this going down. Do you really? Yeah. This is such a sad case. He pushed a woman named Kendra Webdale in front of the Entrain at the 23rd Street Station during a psychotic episode. And this was a true case of someone who was deeply, deeply troubled. It wasn't someone who said, Let me use the insanity defense because I didn't know what I was doing at the time. He started off his life as a pretty bright guy and then started suffering delusions in college and had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals, had violent episodes with his mother, violent behavior, basically. Self committed 13 times over a two year period and was just released a few weeks before. He had pushed this poor woman in front of the train. Which killed her. Yes. And as a result of her death, new York came up with something called Kendra's Law, which gives judges the power to forcibly commit people they think need psychiatric attention for up to 72 hours, which is a big deal. But in this case, it doesn't quite jibe, from what I understand, because Goldstein did voluntarily seek treatment. Yes. It's just a sad case. He was tried three times for it. Yeah. The first time, there was a hung jury. He pled insanity. The second time, he was found guilty. But that finding what would that be called? Verdict. Yeah, that verdict. Man, something's up with me. That was thrown out on a technicality, as I understand it. And then in 2005, he was tried for a third time and pledged guilty. Yeah. To manslaughter, though, not murder. Yes. And he is in prison, and he was sentenced to 23 years plus five of probation. And like you said, kinder's law was passed as a result, so yeah. Very sad case. Yeah. Nobody comes out of Winter on that. You got one more? Yeah. John Delling. That there was a discussion about whether or not someone has a constitutional right to plead insanity. Yeah. This is the guy that brought it up most recently. Back in 2007, he shot over the course of a couple of months, he shot three of his friends. They were his friends? Yeah. And killed two of them. One was a childhood friend. Wow. Or a friend since childhood. And it was paranoid. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he was under the impression that people were stealing his powers, I guess the people that he killed. The thing is, even the defense and the judge said the whole reason that you did this was because of your mental illness, and this is a perfect insanity defense. Idaho doesn't recognize the insanity defense, so he was sentenced to two life terms in solitary confinement without parole for the killings. Yeah. And everyone agreed that this guy was mentally ill. But like you said, wrong state, wrong crime. And that's what prompted, like, you were talking about, like, should this be a federal right? And, you know, after the Hinckley verdict, a lot of states repealed the insanity defense, and then a lot of them went back and reinstated it under different terms. Yeah. Like, Utah, for example, repealed it and then allowed it to come back. But it's next to impossible to prove it under the definition that's out there. But Idaho was like, no, there's no insanity defense. I think there's a couple of other states, too. Wow. Well, that's all the cases I have. Same here, man. Anymore. No, it's definitely I mean, it's there to help the mentally ill, but I think you're right. For a little while there, it was plead insane, go to a hospital for a few years, get out. Well, you know, what's interesting is we talked about them getting rid of the Volition rule, right? Yeah. But just quickly, Lorena Bobbitt, she was basically temporarily insane, and she was acquitted of her actions, assault. And the Dahmer. Was a very famous case, too. Yes. But his insanity plea didn't work out. Yeah. Because the jury believed he knew what he was doing was wrong. Neither did his prison stay. Yeah. You know that guy, he's trying to write a book. The guy who killed him. No, I didn't know it. Yeah, I'm kind of interested, too, because there's not a whole lot of information on what's his name? Somebody carver. Clarence Carver, I think. No, you're thinking of the saxophones for the Bruce Springsteen Band. That's clarence Clemons and he's passed away. His name is Christopher Scarbor. Clarence Carter. Carver. Christopher Scarbor. Clarence Clemens passed away? Yeah, man. When? Like last year, I think. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's sad. So anyway, he's trying to write a book, and I was always curious because there's not a lot of information, like why he killed he killed those two guys that day. Oh, he killed someone else that day? Yeah, he was on bathroom duty with two other dudes, two other murderers, Domer and another guy. And I think he got a piece of, like, a metal bar from the gym and beat them to death. And he wants to write a book now to explain why he did it and to reveal Bomber's final words, which is very salacious. But of course, I'm like, what do you say? Well, I hope he does do it and then finds out later on that you're not legally allowed to profit from your crime. Yes, that's true. So he wouldn't be able to if you're listening to this I didn't just say that. Scarborough I don't think he's listening. Okay. People do listen to this in prison. We know that for a fact. Yeah. He's probably making mold wine in a sock. You got anything else on mold wine? No. Okay. If you want to learn more about the insanity defense, there's a great article on howstep works.com called Ten Uses of the Insanity Defense. And there's another one called what is the Definition of Insanity? Right. Yeah. Which will go back we may want to do that one in full. We'll see if it's got more stuff in there. Yeah, you can check both of those out by typing insanity into search bar. The search bar athouseupports.com I said search bar. That means it's time for this now. It's time for this right now. Okay, Josh, part three. Not listen or mail, but part three of what? Administrative details, if you haven't learned by now, is when we thank people for sending us nice things. And we're almost done. We're caught up, man. I have a few on my desk, but that's nothing like a few is no big deal. Yeah. All right. We got some awesome aluminum prints from Dan Gaffney of Tech Lab photo in Baltimore. Yeah. Thanks, Dan. You remember him? We corresponded with them recently. Oh, yeah. Good guy. Thanks, Dan. Is there a website on there? No, but Tech Lab Photo and Baltimore used the old search engine of your choice to figure that out. Yeah, or you can just drive there. Yeah, true. We got a nice postcard of Jesus's baptismal site in the Jordan River from Christina Curtis, who researches water resources in Jordan. Thank you for that. We got some coffee from singing Roosterscoffeecom. 100% of the proceeds go to helpprojecthaty.org. And I think I just said 100% of the proceeds. You sure did. So that's pretty awesome. So support Singingroostercoffee.com. Yeah. We got a postcard of Minar Epakistan Tower from Irfam. Thank you very much for that. Don Kuby or buddy? Kubernetes. That awesome. It was on glass, right? Yeah, it's like a cutting board. Oh, is that what it is? I believe so. It's what I've been using it for. It's got like, her photograph underneath her photograph that she took of like a landscape. But I'm pretty sure it's a cutting board. You should probably let us know. Kooby. Don't break it. And we also got a letter from Boy Scout Brayton W, who wrote us to earn his Communications merit badge that was coming. We got a handwritten note card suggesting we do 3D printers from, I think, another Irfan. We're going to have to do that. Everyone is asking for 3D printing. Okay. It's the hot thing. I know kids are into Atlantic or Vets Drum and Bugle Corps patch and I don't know who sent it. And I apologize that we don't have the name. Yes, sorry, but the Atlantic Corvette Drum and Bugle Corps is a patch and I might put it on a hat. Oh, wow. We got some nice letters requesting info on unsolved questions like the Bermuda Triangle. Handenburg exorcism from Andrea P. Jake M. Jason S. Stephanie B. And Vanessa B. All from the 8th grade class at North Carolina Middle School in Hampstead, Maryland. Sorry we didn't write back in time. I believe they're all in high school now. Oh, really? Yeah. But thank you for writing in, guys. Keep growing up. Awesome insect science. Illustration postcard from Marthaeizerman of big Redsharkscom and New Zealand's Not down under postcard in New Zealand. Fax and we can't really see who signed it because the post office stamped over it. So see our USPS podcast for why that happens. Right. But we thank you for that. We got a letter from Benjamin from Gardners Avenue School in Levittown, New York who wanted info on the Statue of Liberty. Thank you for that. National Radio Astronomy Observatory in New Mexico. And it's a postcard from Dylan Sea. And he's in the Navy and an amateur astronomer. Yeah, he said it was like going to I can't remember where, but it was like a pilgrimage for him. Nice. Yeah. Let's see. We got an exceptional hand drawn postcard from Alex, who is an artist in North Carolina. We got a CD of the album The Broken Record by Twink, which is the Toy piano band. Did you hear that? Yeah, they're pretty awesome. That was great. Yeah. La Serena Chile. We got a postcard from Margaret C. From Chile and coffee and coffee tips from Autocampa. Yeah, I didn't see the coffee tips. Is there a question mark at the end of that person's name? No. We got a Mexican pizza menu from Cristy Feed, which includes, like, peach leg of pork, avocado. Tuna leg of pork struck my fancy. I would eat some avocado pizza. As a matter of fact, I'm putting avocado on my next pizza. Right. I got some more coffee from Alex with a Yx and our friends at the Edina, Minnesota, Dun Brothers Coffee place. Yeah, thank you for that. Well, you've been getting lots of coffee, huh? Like, have you had to buy coffee in a couple of years? Oh, it's all gone, is it? Yeah, that's all from the coffee podcast portrait book of and I shared. Oh, sure, yeah. Okay. Or at least offered. And I was like, no, you take the coffee, I sure. I think I gave some to Connell. Bird. Oh, really? And I think Jerry got some, too. Didn't you, Jerry? You got coffee? Okay. Yeah. Jerry's like, what? You guys still here? We got a portrait book of Justin, and it's waffles of everythingwaffles.com. Yeah, it's definitely worth checking out. And a postcard of a man with a giant fish from Reagan tea. And I think you have one more, right? I do. Let's see. We got a lovely floral note congratulating you, me and me on our wedding. That's Leah Ray. Thank you very much for that. It's very nice. Boy, you have been holding onto these for a while. I know. It's the February before last. Okay. So thank you for that. Finally, thank you to everybody who's been sending us stuff we really, genuinely appreciate all of it. Super sweet. And if you want to send something, you can find the address on the How Stuff Works home page. You scroll down at the bottom of the home page under Contacts and click on that. It has our address. You can send something. Well done. And if you want to get in touch with us just to say hi or whatever, you can tweet to us at s yskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffiestknow. You can send us an email to stuff podcast@discovery.com, and you can join us at our home, on the web stuffyoushouldnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com." | ||
c3a6ac4a-5460-11e8-b38c-1bb4322aa662 | SYSK Selects: How Black Boxes Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-black-boxes-work | Black boxes are designed to be the only survivor of plane crashes so they can live to tell the tale of what went wrong to prevent future accidents. Sit in with Josh and Chuck and learn about how these grim devices are made, how they're tested and the tales they've told, in this classic episode. | Black boxes are designed to be the only survivor of plane crashes so they can live to tell the tale of what went wrong to prevent future accidents. Sit in with Josh and Chuck and learn about how these grim devices are made, how they're tested and the tales they've told, in this classic episode. | Sat, 12 Oct 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=285, tm_isdst=0) | 35343968 | audio/mpeg | "Ah, summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. 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. Hi, everyone. It's me, Josh. And for this week's SYSK Selects, I've chosen How Black Boxes Work, which I'd forgotten was a special request from our good friend Cormac Rondazo, who is an absolute cute kid, but he was at the time that this came out and now he's a cool dude, from what I understand. At any rate, kick back and enjoy a look at an amazing invention that can survive a plane crash. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and they're sitting by me as Chuck Bryant across from you and Jerry Rowland beside us. Yes, here we are. Yes, this is Stuff you should know. Hey, and this is a fan request by one of our younger fans. Yeah, one Cormac Rondazo. That's right. Our buddy Joe's son and wife Kat. They all listen as a family and it's adorable. They shout at their stereo as a family. Yeah, apparently Cat shouted at the stereo when you didn't remember 13 year old girls doing finger spelling sign language. Joe said Kat was like, how can he not have known this? That's all we did. It wasn't around in Toledo. Yes, and you know what? Emily didn't know about it either, and she was in Ohio, so maybe it's everywhere but Ohio. Yeah, Ohio. Colon left behind, as usual. It's pretty funny, but yeah, Cormac suggested that we do an episode on Blackbox flight recorders, and that's what we're doing. Yeah. So, Chuck, if you'll indulge me before we get started. I don't know if you remember, but a couple of years ago, a fan sent in some day planners for us that were like yearlong day planners these ones made out of old library books. Yeah. And they had decoupage liquor stuff on the cover. They were great. Perfect. Can't find anything even remotely that good anywhere. Been looking for a while. So, dear listener, if you are still out there and you are listening, get in touch with us because I would love to buy those from you every year. Oh, yeah. You like those? They're great. Yeah. Yummy. Went crazy for it. Nice. Yeah. So if you are that person, get in touch with us. Put in the subject line, I'm the person Josh is looking for. Or day planner. Or days. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Chuck. Sure. So we're talking black boxes. That's right. It's pretty interesting, I thought. Yeah. We should probably put to rest the name question of if they can make something like a black box that can survive an airplane crash, why you just make the whole airplane out of a black box material? And the answer is because it wouldn't fly. Yeah. Simple as that. So I'm glad we got that out of the way. Yes. And also we should go ahead and say right up front, they're not black. No. They're generally like bright orange with reflective tape and things because you want to be able to find it amongst the rubble. As of the I think the 60s or 70s, there became a mandate where you had to paint a bright orange so you could find them. But they think that they were called black boxes originally because either the original ones were black or because it was kind of a grim moniker, because the boxes would become charred in the wreckage and turn black. Yes. I saw another explanation, too, that I don't think holds water, that they were initially, like, round and red, and when they first debuted at someone in the room said, oh, what a nice black box. Is a smarmy thing to say, I guess, about something that's round and red. I don't know if that holds water, though. Yeah, it's weird all around. And apparently in the aviation industry, they don't call them black boxes anyway. That's like something for the news media and church like us. They probably call them crash survivable memory units. I think what they call them is either one of the two things that are either a flight data recorder or a voice box. Well, there's a lot of yeah, it's not that hard. But because of the media and in part because of this article, it's very unclear that black boxes are different things. Yeah. There's two different we'll get into it, but there's really two different kinds. And what you would think of as a black box is actually a group of components the system yeah. That form the system that's meant to record the flight data and the cockpit sounds, which is the discussion, and the beeps and the pings and all that of every single flight that goes into the air. Commercial flight. Yeah. And then it's housed in a way that it will survive even a horrible plane crash. Frequently. The only survivor of a plane crash. Yes. And we'll get to the testing of these, which I thought was kind of the coolest part later on. Yeah, I thought so, too. And the whole point is, of course, is to get all the data to figure out what happened in a plane crash. What happened, because very frequently, again, if it's the sole survivor, then there's no one there to say, oh, well, there's fire. Somebody lit a fire in the cabin and the plane blew up. Yeah. But you could hit play and hear the pilots going, someone lit a fire in the cabin. Right. Yeah. And there you have it. But it's a little more complicated than that and goes back to in the 1940s. There was a Finnish aviation engineer named VA Ho, which doesn't sound Finnish. There is immigration, and he did some of the first flight recording with something called the Matahari for World War II. Planes test flights, basically. But I think it was only like instrument readings at the time. Really? It wasn't recording any voices like cockpit recording. Well, supposedly the Wright brothers had some sort of recording device to record their propeller rotation. That's pretty cool. Yeah. It's like there's been flight data ever since. There's been flight. That's awesome. I found that an Australian named David Warren was the one who really came up with the black box recorder. Yeah. He's the one that brought the voices into it, the actual audio recording. Okay. Yeah. He was a member of a crash investigation for a mysterious plane crash, and he thought it would be really good if we had a recording of what was going on at the time. So he developed them. Yeah, he's like that couldn't be too hard. Right. That was the believe. And they became widespread and mandated in the in Australia. It was the first country, and I guess even continent to make the mandatory. So go ozzy. Ozzy. Ozzy. Yes. Good on you. So initially, the black box recorders were recording on magnetic tape, and then they moved in, strangely enough, in the late 90s, early 2000s. It wasn't until 2008 that they fully switched. Yeah. That the FAA mandated. Really? In 2005, there was a list of proposed rules, and one of them was, let's get rid of magnetic recorders, which no one uses anymore. That's 2005, after all. And go to solid state digital recorders. Yeah. Right. No cassettes, even. And the FAA thought about it and thought about it and thought about it and finally said, okay, fine, we'll do that. One of the big reasons why was with magnetic tapes, you could just record the last half hour of a cockpit conversation. Yeah. It would re record over itself every 30 minutes. Right. Which is probably that's all you need. Yeah. You want to hope that your plane doesn't take 30 minutes to go down, that would be pretty bad. But the big superiority that Solid state has over that is that the recording time is far greater. The recording media is smaller, more durable. Yeah. If you were moving parts yeah. It can't break down as easily. And if one part breaks, you can still take the Solid state memory sticks and reconfigure them and get the data off of them still. Yeah. They cost between ten and 15 grand each and are usually come straight from the manufacturer. Like they work with the airplane manufacturers themselves to pre install them on these planes. Right. Yeah. So you have a black box manufacturer who sells them to the airplane manufacturers, who sell the airplanes to the airlines with the black boxes are installed. It's like a part of the plane. That's right. So we should probably explain this now. It's been long enough. Okay. A black box can be one of two things. Well, one of three things, really. It can be the flight data recorder or it can be the cockpit voice recorder. That's right. Or it can be the crash. Survivable memory unit. Blackbox refers to all three of those. Yeah. The important thing, the only thing that really needs to survive the crash is the Crash Survival Memory Unit. Right. That's where the data is sent and housed. And that's the one that's super beefed up to survive. Like a nuclear war, basically. Right. So on any flight, on any commercial flight, you have hundreds, if not thousands of sensors going on at all times. And they are measuring things like air speed, altitude, cabin pressure, cabin temperature, wing trim, everything. What are your flaps doing? Yaw. Yeah. You don't just guess it yaw, you got to measure it, right? That's right. And so all of this information is coming into the flight computer and plugged into the flight computer is well, basically it's like an upstream passive eavesdropping unit. It's called the Flight Data Acquisition Unit. And it takes all of this that's upfront right. That's upfront with the pilots. And it takes all of this incoming information and it records it. So not only are the pilots and the ground control getting all this information, but it's being recorded as well. And it's being routed to the recorders through the Flight Data Acquisition Unit. Right? That's right. Also, up front in the cockpit, you're going to have at least four microphones and in some newer planes, also video cameras. Yeah. That's the latest Craze. Right. Which you can't do that on magnetic tape. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. They have to start drinking vodka instead of like brown liquors. What do you mean? No, the pilots like it's water. Right. I'm just having some H 20. Right. Not the Grey Goose. Yeah. I'm joking. Okay. Although pilots have been known to drink here and there and they get in trouble. Yeah. They should get in big trouble for it. They should. You're the DD. Okay. If you're an airline pilot, there's no way around it. Yes. The only thing shouldn't do is drink and do drugs. Right. So up there to eavesdrop on the pilots and not just the pilots, but also all the sounds going on in the cockpit are these microphones, and they're recording everything through the cockpit voice recorder. Yeah. And you talked about the sounds. That's a big deal. Like, only do you want to hear Captain Jim say, Holy crap, our wing is on fire? But they want to hear 30 seconds before that if they hear just some weird noise. Right. And they're trained to pick up all that ambient sound. And experts are trained to listen out for things that you would probably never notice. It's just a regular dude, right? Exactly. And they can sit there and hear a ping or a thud or a knock or a combination of those things and be like, oh, I know what happened. Somebody smoked in the laboratory and kept while they were on their cell phone is loaded. 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 what you need is to make this refreshing crowdpleaser the star of your next party or gathering. Because Martha Shar just might be the perfect summer wine. Come on, let's work hard, play hard, and drink. Martha's Shard, available at a wine aisle near you. And on 19 Crimes.com, that's one nine Crimes.com. Please drink responsibly. So, again, you've got the cockpit voice recorder, you've got the flight data recorder, and all of that info going out to those two guys is going through the flight data acquisition unit, and it's sending the info all the way to the back of the plane where the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder are located. And why is it located in the back? Because the front of the plane takes up most of the force of the impact, and it's far likelier that. Something placed at the rear of the plane, specifically like the tail cone or the aft galley ceiling or something way in the back is going to be, likelier, to survive because the rest get smushed. Yeah, we talked about that in our surviving a plane crash episode. And while they won't come out and say it outright, it is a little bit safer in the back of an airplane because you usually go nose down. And by all accounts, if you drive a plane into a mountain, the captain and the copilot are going to suffer the worst of it. And maybe if you're in the back bathroom having a cigarette, you're shaving like an airplane, you might have a chance to survive. Oh, yeah. An airplane, like, cutting itself. And speaking of mountains, chuck this as good places, I need to put it. There's something called planecrashinfo. Comlastwords, and there's a lot of it's not just the site. There's a lot of sites that have recordings from black boxes no, thanks. From the last seconds or whatever. Yeah. And this site also has just, like, transcriptions of the last couple of sentences. And one of them was mountains. That was the last thing. Last thing. Wow. But then there's other ones, too, like, Ma, I love you, with one the last words of one pilot. Another one was Pete. Sorry. So I guess somebody screwed up. Another one was, Hang on, what the hell is this? No good. Yes. And then other ones seem like they don't realize what's about to happen. This isn't as bad as I thought it would be, right? Yeah. But it's pretty interesting stuff. Some of it's pretty grim. It's super sad. Yeah. It's like, not an uplifting thing to read on a Friday afternoon. Oh, no, it's not uplifting, but it's definitely interesting. Yeah. I would not recommend reading that before you take a flight. No. As a matter of fact, Yummy was traveling recently while I was researching this, and she had to go sent it to her. I was like, no, I can't send her this. She's got to fly back here. That's awful. All right, so let's go ahead and talk about the flight data recorder. You mentioned that there are all kinds of data being recorded. Like, up to 700 types of data can be recorded. Like, they can tell when you just turn a switch on that's, like it's logged all of a sudden, captain turned on even interior cabin light switch, that's all recorded. And the FAA, they require pre 2002 planes to have a minimum of eleven and 29 parameters if it was built after 2002, at least 88 parameters. Right. I don't see why they just don't log at all if they can. Well, apparently that rule that forced up to 88 parameters to be recorded, that cost the airline industry, like, $300 million or something. That's the reason they're notoriously tight. So that's why they keep fighting it. And it's the NTSB that's saying, like, let's push this along. It's 2005, we need to stop using magnetic real. Right. And the FAA is like, I don't know. Well, the FA is being pushed around by the airline industry. Well, scary enough, I guess it's a good time to mention this. There was something called the Safe Act. Safe Aviation and Flight Enhancement Act. And it's been up twice and has not passed this legislation either time. And all they're trying to do is provide a second recorder, and one of them should be deployable in the rear, which makes sense. Like, if the plane hits an impact, this thing pops off the back of the plane altogether. It will cost us, like, $50. I guess so. Because they said the FAA has a long history of delaying much needed upgrades in this equipment. And I guess it's because of price or the airplane lobby. Right. Yeah. When your federal agency is actually like, a safeguard to protect the finances of the industry is regulating. That's not good. No, it's not. All right. Why can't everybody just do things, right? I know. It's frustrating. And money is typically at the root of it all. It always is. Yeah. All right, so we talked a little bit about the testing. I guess we should just talk about what these things are built out of, why they survive the CSMU back in 1945 in Roswell, New Mexico. No, but there are three layers of materials to keep these things safe. You got your aluminum housing on the outside of it, and it holds all your memory cards. No, the aluminum is inside. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. It's the weakest link, you know what I mean? It's on the inside, surrounding it's. The last stand of protection, I guess. Right. That is like you said, it's holding the memory cards, which are the one thing you really want to survive. The only thing, yeah. Besides the people. Yeah, I guess it's a good point. And this is the Crash Survivable Memory Unit, which is actually a part of the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder. Yeah. But it's also separate. It's kind of like the Holy See. No. The holy of holies. The temple within the temple of Jerusalem yeah. Like everything else will get mangled, and it doesn't matter. But all you need, like you said, are those memory cards. Right. Okay, so go ahead. There's an aluminum housing around the memory card. That's right. And then around that, you have it insulated with a dry silica, one inch of it. And that is because a lot of times when planes crash, they catch on fire. Yes. You want to retard fire. Put an inch of silica stuff around this, around whatever you want. Your hand, your head. Sure, just do it. You won't get burned. And then around that is your outer shell. It's either stainless steel or titanium. It's about a quarter inch thick. And that's like that's your bomb casing. And all of that is why you can't build a plane out of all this can't be too heavy. Yes. And so this one, two, three punch of a crash survival Memory Unit. It's a cylinder. Did you say that? I thought it was implicit. So imagine like, a steel box, and you can also go on to how stuff works and type in how black boxes work, and it'll bring up images. Sure. But imagine like, a steel box that forms like an L on its back. Right. So the foot is sticking upward into the air. And then on the part that's along the ground now of the L is a cylinder that's coming up, looks like it's holding some oil or something like that. It's an oil cylinder. It's like a fat, squat barrel. Yes. Then attached to that is this little tube, another cylinder, but longer and shorter. That serves as the handle for the whole unit. But it's also a beacon. Yeah. And that's super important. And actually, we'll get into that. But you got to find these things. Right. There's no good if it's hidden behind a tree or at the bottom of an ocean. They like to hide. They do. So we talked about some of the testing that these things go through, and it's pretty awesome. They do 12345 six ish tests, the first of which is just a basic crash impact. They shoot it out of an air cannon at 3400 GS into an aluminum honeycomb, and it smashes it with a force equal to 3400 times its own weight. Right. It's just like, I want to see this thing in super slow mo, basically. Which, not only does this simulate the impact of a major plane crash, it actually probably overstates the force. I think they overstate everything. And these things survive. They say, okay, good. All right, let's take it onto the next test. And the flight data recorders. Like, wait, what? Yeah, exactly. And they take it onto the pin drop, which I think it's funny that they call it the pin drop. Yeah. It has nothing to do with sound. It's like engineering humor. Yeah, that's right. But they take, like, a 500 pound weight with a quarter inch steel pin coming out of the end of it. It's like a little spike. And they drop it from 10ft to spike onto the weakest axis of the black box. Yeah. It's like a puncture test. Yeah. And nothing happens. So they move it onto the next test. Yeah. The static crush, which would be a good band name, five minutes of \u00a35000 per square inch pressure applied to the six major access points. So it's just a constant, not an impact thing. But just let me see if I can just crush you over time with brute force. Yeah, it's like a headlock. The worst headlock you can ever imagine. And then the fire test, which they fire a propane fireball with three burners at about 2000 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour and just let it sit there and see if it melts or does anything or explodes or whatever. Yeah. It just sits there. And then the planes frequently go down well, when they go down, they frequently go down into the ocean or the sea. So your black box has to survive underwater. So they do a deep sea immersion test, which is like a pressurized tank of water for 24 hours. And then they also do a saltwater submersion test. So this thing has to basically sit around in salt water for 30 days? That's right. And finally, they will let it soak in other types of fluids, like jet fuel and lubricant and fire extinguisher chemicals and anything else in a plane that it might end up submerged in. And if it can withstand sitting in jet fuel for a period of time, then you're good to go. Yeah. And then after all this, they put a little motorboard on the cylinder and send it along its way to be installed in an airplane. That's right. Where it, sadly, will only be used if something really bad happens. Yeah. Capital One offers commercial solutions you can bank on. Now more than ever, your business faces specific challenges and unique opportunities. That's why Capital One offers a comprehensive suite of financial services custom tailored to your short and long term goals. Backed by the expertise, strategy and resources of a top ten commercial bank, a dedicated team works with you to support your success and help you achieve your goals. Explore the possibilities at Capital One. comCOMMERCIAL the world doesn't need just another chardonnay. What it needs is Martha Shard, the Martha Stewart chardonnay that's the newest addition to the 19 Crimes family of wines. Martha Shard is a contemporary lens on 19 Crimes. It's the wine that disrupts the chardonnay category. Brought to you by Martha Stewart. The original influencer. Martha Shard is light and drinkable with a medium straw color, satisfying the palate with bright notes of citrus and round stone fruit with a crisp, clean finish. Framed by a distinctly sweet oat character, martha Shard is exactly what the world needed. And what you need is to make this refreshing crowd pleaser the star of your next party or gathering. Because Martha Shard just might be the perfect summer wine. So, come on, let's work hard, play hard and drink. Martha's Shard, available at a wine aisle near you. And on 19 Crimes.com, that's one nine Crimes.com. Please drink responsibly. All right, so your plane has crashed. Yeah. We're both dead. Right. But the black box has survived. It lives on. What happens to it? Well, they have to find it first. And like we said, these things are tested to make sure that they can withstand deep sea and saltwater immersion, which they sometimes have to. And in the event that they are going to go into the water, the little handle that has an underwater beacon installed in it actually has this water detector. And when water comes in contact with the beacon, it starts to set it off and it sends out a ping, I think every minute or 30 seconds for the next 30 days or something like that yeah, it's 1 /second for a month. Yes. And this ping you couldn't hear it if you were listening for it, but if you were listening through sonar, you would be able to pick it up. And the beacon sends out the ping, and the people go find the ping and they get it. Yeah. They can transmit, ideally, but it can transmit up to 14 0ft, which is pretty impressive. Right. And if you can find the beacon thanks to the ping, that's awesome. There have been cases where the black boxes have been found long after the ping stopped. Air France flight four four seven from, I think, 2009, it went down in the Atlantic. Remember that one? It was awful. It just disappeared into the Atlantic. And they couldn't find the wreckage for a very long time. I tried to block out plane crashes. It was a bad one. It was one of the worst, most recent ones. Right. But they couldn't find the black box for two years. Wow. And they finally found it in seawater at 12,000ft after two years. And when they brought both of the black boxes up, they were able to get all of the data off of them. Wow. So they were well made. Was it dumb luck or were they searching for it? Oh, they're searching for it, okay. Yeah. Even though it stopped pinging and they just kept looking? Yeah. Wow. So you do recover it. Hopefully. And then you need to analyze the data. So they're going to transport it to a lab at the NTSB, the National Transportation Safety Board, we should say the country that this happens in, or if it's like in international waters, the country that the airline is registered in is responsible for leading the investigation. Yeah, that makes sense. So in the United States would be the NTSB. Okay. Yeah, sure. Yeah. And just like any relic you find, if you know about finding undersea items that have been in saltwater, you want to transport that in its own state, that you found it in its own mess. Yeah. It's the same thing as if you find a piece of sunken treasure. You don't want to bring it out and dry it off with a hair dryer. You want to keep it submerged in salt water because that's where it's been living. And that's a fucking treasure. Pro tip from Chuck. I did an article on that, actually. That's how I know this. But yeah, so if they find it in the ocean, they want to transport it in salt water in a cooler to a lab where they can really treat it. Right. Give it the VIP treatment. Right. Yeah. And if the whole black box is still intact, you can actually just use its computer interface. It's already installed. As part of the recorder. You can just plug it in and download all the stuff off of it. Yeah. It can be super quick. Right. But oftentimes that stuff, like we said, is mangled and burned away. And so you have to just take the memory sticks and then hook it up to a different machine so you can retrieve the data. That's right. Which takes a little longer. Yeah. It can take weeks or months when you get the data. Obviously, when you have the flight data recorder data, you can feed that into a computer and create a simulation using a model to visualize what the plane was doing based on all those readings from all those different arrays. When you put them all together, it can create a computer model of the plane to show what it was doing at the time of the crash. The cockpit voice recorder uses a little more of human ingenuity to piece it together. And this takes way longer. Yeah. One thing you're going to have is a representative from the airline. You're going to have a representative from the plane builder because they don't like their planes to go down. No, there's going to be, I guess, whatever country you're in, your version of the NTSB is going to be there. And then sometimes they might have a translator or language specialist, depending on what nationality or your pilot was. Right. Because it might have to translate some stuff. And you have people who are trained in deciphering beeps and pings and knocks in airline cockpits, and they put all this together. It's a pretty interesting job. And you take that information, you put it together with the model, the simulation from the plane, the flight data recorder, and then these days, also, the flight computers send out warning messages, like, flight four, four, seven, Air France. It's sent out, like, 24 warning messages in the four minutes before it crashed. So they had that already on hand. Right. But nothing else. Yes. And then they started to piece it together after they went and got the wreckage, which we should say, in some cases, when possible, they'll actually piece the entire plane back together. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. I didn't know that. Yes. They'll get like, a huge airplane hanger and take all the wreckage and pieces together, piece by piece, and try to get the plane back together to help that, to help give a complete picture of what the heck happened. Did you see The Flight? The Denzel Washington movie? No. I heard it was so depressing. It was good. Was it? Yeah, man, they filmed that here, too, in Atlanta. But yeah, it was intense, for sure. Okay, I'll check it out and then Chuck, it's not just airplanes where you can find black boxes, buddy. That's right. They're on trains. Planes. They're already on planes. They're on trains. And sort of a newish thing is putting versions of these and cars either to give you like an insurance break. I think you can opt for these sometimes to prove that you're a safe driver. And it basically tracks like how fast you go and if you're speeding and taking turns too fast and stuff like that. Yeah, but they're a little controversial, I guess, because I think in England you can actually get traffic tickets based on oh, is that right? Yeah. I knew that was coming. Yeah. But there's some car manufacturers that manufacture basically flight data recorders into their cars already. It's not necessarily recording like your cockpit conversation or anything like that, but it is keeping track of your car. It's like, you know how like your car will tell you that your tire pressure is low or your door is open or something like that? Yeah. There's something that's recording all that stuff, including all of your engine stuff and everything else that's part of your car too, which amounts to a black box. Because we left off we said that the point of having a black box is to figure out what the heck happened. We didn't quite go far enough. Because the point of figuring out what the heck happened, it's not just to satisfy curiosity, but if there's a problem, that's going to translate to other planes too. You want a mechanical failure, right? You want to go be able to fix it. Or if there's a way to make planes safer in the future or prevent an accident. That's the whole point of the black box is to learn from tragedy. Yeah. They should put the voice recorders in cars for drunks. Yeah, for DUI crashes. That sounds drunk. Pull them over. Alright. Focus. Like you start hearing stuff like that, you're in big trouble. Oh, yeah. Like no one else was in the car saying that out loud to yourself, but you're arguing about whether you should focus. I shouldn't be driving. It's fine. Right? We shouldn't be joking about that. That's like super sad. Well, this is a pretty sad episode. Yes, but we should make it pretty sad episode suggested by like a four year old. I know what's going on with Cormac. I don't know. We'll have to get to the bottom of that. I don't know what kind of parenting is going on. You great parenting. I'm sure. I don't have anything else. I don't either. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, we should let Cormac this is how we originally got the idea for this episode. We should let him play us out to listen or mail. Let's hear it. If you want to know more about black box, you take that into the search bar and you can have fun at Fun and entertaininghome on the webstockyshandnote.com. All right. Well, that was just too adorable. It's pretty cute. Maybe we should make that a regular thing. Yeah. So I have an idea. Okay. You guys out there in podcast listener land, if you have a cute kid you should record said cute kid doing our sign off for whatever saying, if you want to get in touch with me in Chuck Tweet to us, join us on Facebook. Yada. Yada. A cute kid that's a fan of the show. Like, don't just train your kid and force them to do something they don't know what they're doing. Exactly. So send us that. Email it to us, email your permission for us to use it. Sure. And maybe we'll put it in some kind of supercut or whatever. Yes. Include whether or not you want us to say your kid's name or not. Right. All the safety standard safety stuff. It's very exciting. We haven't had, like a call out for anything in a while. Yeah, this could be cool. Okay, so listener mail time, right? Yeah. I'm going to call this clearing up some kosher things. Okay, we've had a great response with our episode on salt, so thanks for everyone that wrote in so far. Slight correction for you guys on kosher salt. You were correct on its use of drawing blood out of meat, as eating blood is against Jewish dietary laws. Simply salting the meat, though, will not make it kosher, which is a common misconception. To have a kosher meat. Firstly, you must have a kosher animal, one that chooses its cud and has split hooves. Sure. While pigs have split hooves, they do not chew their cud. They are not kosher. It cannot be a scavenger. So no catfish or lobsters. No lobsters. I saw that. Seinfeld. Oh, yeah, that's right. Although fish is not considered meat, it is called parv, P-A-R-V essentially meaning neutral, as in not meat or dairy, which are never eaten together. Right. And it cannot be a predator. So no hawks or chickens or no chicken. Hawks are chickens, predators. If you're a woman, a chicken is a predator. You know what I mean? All right. Secondly, guys, and this is key, the animal must be killed in a ritual called shakti by a trained ritual. Shekhting the second h through me checking. This process involves a super, perfectly sharp, rectangular ended knife. It's about twice as long as the particular animal's neck. It is forbidden to stab or tear the flesh, hence the squared in and sharpness in one swift motion. The esophagus, trachea, carotid arteries, and jugular veins are all cut. The animal may not even feel it. Well, who's to say it will pass out and then die in seconds? The blood is then drained from the animal, and after butchering, it is salted with kosher salt to draw out the remaining blood and rinsed. You know. I knew a lot of that because I read this very interesting article in Harper's several months ago. And this guy basically infiltrated the meat industry in Nebraska or something like that. And he describes like a kosher process of slaughter and how different it is from regular process because they have this special guy who's. Like. A rabbi or something. Who works on this line at the slaughterhouse in Nebraska. He's like a super specialized dude. Throat cutter. Yeah. Wow. But he uses, like, this incredibly sharp instrument. It's really good. He's a sheikh. It's a really interesting article. I can't remember the name of it, but I recommend anybody going and finding it. You know what? Maybe you can post that in your blog. I have a blog? Yeah, you do. Your blog post about the best things you've read this week. Oh, yeah. Maybe you should throw it in there. All right. So those are the very basics of kosher meat, guys. Jewish dietary laws and certification are much too lengthy for an email or a single episode for that matter. It's very convoluted. I highly recommend a delightfully witty book called Kosher for the Clueless but Curious by Simon Apistorf. This guy's just making words and names. I hope I've shed some light on this highly complex aspect of Judaism. And that is for Michelle in Cedar Park, Texas. Thanks, Michelle. Just near Austin. Nice. If you want to set us straight about something, we are always glad to hear more information. We're kind of like Sponges. Agreed. You can tweet a short burst of information on Twitter at syskpodcast. You can post this information at facebook. Comstuffysheaw. And if you want to send an email to Chuck, Jerry and me, you can address it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out. The sun is shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgueref and Georgia Hard Stark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet. At Halo, we get it because we're pet moms, too. We make natural, high quality pet food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopets.com." | |
How the Autobahn Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-autobahn-works | The autobahn has an international reputation, and people around the world love the notion of driving on a road with no speed limits -- but how true is this reputation? Join Josh and Chuck as they tell you everything you need to know about the autobahn. | The autobahn has an international reputation, and people around the world love the notion of driving on a road with no speed limits -- but how true is this reputation? Join Josh and Chuck as they tell you everything you need to know about the autobahn. | Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:29:05 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=1, tm_hour=16, tm_min=29, tm_sec=5, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=305, tm_isdst=0) | 51073014 | 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, this July, don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the Musical, the series season three Zombies, three Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful. From the award winning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and the Disney nature films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus, brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's. Charles W, chuck Bryant room. Zoom. Chuck. Who's psychic here? Clark sounds good, Chuck. I was hoping you bust out a lot of German. Still coming. We are going to do an episode on The Auto Bond. As you probably noticed when you clicked play, right? Yes. And we're going to get to the bottom of the age old question, who's Zooming? Who? Chuck or me? Who was that? Aretha Franklin. Yes. One of her late career pop songs. She also did the Freeway of Love. So that's interesting. She took up, like, a highway theme later in her career. Although, who assuming it had nothing to do with Auto bonded. No, I think you could make a case ahead to do with sex, maybe. Interesting. Didn't every song in the 80s have to do with that? Or cocaine. No. Get out of my dreams get into my car what do you think? The car is? Of course, getting the fast lane. Bay. Bay. Yeah. See, this one's already better than you thought it was going to be. Let's begin. The Auto Bond. Chuck Far and Father Bond. So we'll get to that in a second. Okay. As a matter of fact, let's just get to it now. Who is that? Chuck that's craft work or craftwork? Craft work. They're German. I actually saw them at the Coachella Festival. Wow. And I'm not a fan, so it wasn't that big of a deal to me. I understand. Their place is like the biggest German band built their own instrument. No, trust me, they were so ahead of their time, they had to build their own instrument. Yeah. The early 70s. Yeah. They were doing techno music, but yeah, I'm just not a fan of that kind of music, so I didn't dig it. But I get it. They're great guys. Yes. They seem like it. Nice dudes. And they had a song called Auto Bond. Yeah. Which was eight in the Big Lebowski. Oh, yeah. By the Nihilist. No. Well, they were Nihilist, but the name of the band in the Big Lebowski was Autobahn. The name of their album was Nagalbet, which I looked up today. That is the periangium, which is the tissue surrounding the fingernail and toenail. And that was the name of their album, which ate Craft Works album cover the Man Machine. There's some kid whose head just exploded. Yeah, exactly. Also craft work. Has a place in Simpsons pantheon. They made an appearance verbally in the Fighting Hellfish episode. Oh, yeah. Remember, the German heir shows up to claim the artwork and he tells the farm boys to get a room. He tells everybody to hurry up because he has to go see Kraft. We should just end up wrapping up right here. Yeah. All right. Thank you, everybody. Chuck, let's begin. All right. You know my brother Bill? I don't know if you've ever met him or not. No. Okay. Well, Bill got into Porsches for a little while. So did my dad. And he got himself a brand new 911 Carrera. Sweet. In, like, the late 90s. It was sweet. It was silver. The moment it hit 55, a spoiler automatically came up. It was just nice. It's a sweet cars. And it had, like, a little sticker on the front. And it said it had a guy's signature on it. And it was like a pen and hand signature. It was a real thing. And basically, it was like, I've driven this car and this thing is AOkay. And he said, you see that? It's a German race car driver signature. This car had, like, 15 miles on it when I got it because they'd taken it out on the Autobot. They do that to every single one. So I did a little research. This is the late ninety S. And from 1996 to today, I thought that Porsche did that with every car. Doing a little research, I figured out that that's not the case. Bill may have been mistaken. It's a myth. Or he could have just gotten lucky and just happened to get the car that somebody test drive on the Auto Bond. I think I've heard that before, actually. That Porsche does every single one. Yeah. Or they test drive their fleet. Yes. Maybe not all of them, but I didn't see any evidence whatsoever that they do anything. But they do use the Autobot. This is the cool part to road test, like, new models. Oh, really? Or they'll say, hey, you're an Auto journalist. Why don't you come on over to Germany and drive this thing? And it'd be like us taking a car out on I 85 or I 75, or probably more appropriately, 285, and just going as fast as we can and then going home and writing about it. I just read an article, like you said, auto writers. It was car and driver. I think some dude got a Lamborghini Aventador and drove and wrote an article about driving 200 miles an hour on there's a stretch outside of Garmish. Oh, yes, Garnish. It's 45 miles of awesome roadway, and it's not, like, flat and straight. It's curvy and mountainous. Apparently, that's, like, one of the great places to go drive fast. Garnish. Yes. Okay, well, look for stuff you should know. Quiz in the future with the answer of garbage. Oh, really? Yeah. All right. I've been coming up with questions in my head. Are you going to write these? Yeah. Okay. No, I'm going to telepathically beam the quiz to everybody who listens to I was writing these quizzes for a while. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about that. I'm a little testy about this one. I'm not a car guy. You've seen my car. I'm not a car guy, either. I drive a truck. That's true. So are you a truck guy? No, I mean, it's just handy. Okay. You drive really fast, though, in your old beater. Yeah. So I thought you might appreciate that. Yes. No, I'm not like a break 100 miles an hour kind of guy at all. You're just a break 80 within neighborhoods of Atlanta kind of guy. No, I've slowed down quite a bit in my old age in residential areas. But, yeah, I still like to get from point A to point B. Like, being on the highway to me is not a luxury. It's not like, a great experience. It's like, okay, now I can get there as fast as I possibly can. Sure. Because that's like, an interruption of life, having to drive from one place to another. Teleportation to me would be one of the greatest inventions of all time. I could take that. Yeah. So you mentioned the myth that Porsche does that. There's another myth was that Adolf Hitler invented the autobahn. Yeah. It's not really true. No. He gets a lot of credit for that, by the way. We should say to anybody who isn't from Germany or America or any other country in the world, if you don't know what the autobahn is, it is the German federal highway system, the Bundes autobahn. Right? Bundes. Bundes. Yeah. Means in English? Federal Motorway. Right? That's it. Yeah. And Bond means track. So federal motor track is boondosauru bond. Yeah, sure. Okay. Strictly translated, Adolf Hitler gets the lion's share of the credit as the father of the auto bomb. But it's not correct, right? No, I mean, the rise of the Nazi war machine definitely had a lot to do with the rise of the auto bond and how extensive it became. But it began construction in 1029 and I think the first stretch between Cologne and Bone was in. Yeah, but he apparently also gets credit as like the father of the highway system in general. Sure. The US highway system is modeled after the auto bond. Most federal interstate systems are, and Hitler gets the credit. But really, if you go back even further to I think there was this experimental highway called the Avis AV US highway in Berlin. Right. So it was like arguably the world's first highway because Germans were the world's first auto manufacturers. True. So they're the first ones to need a highway, and they do it right still. And then also there is the auto strada in Italy that was built in the 20s that linked Milan to the lakes in northern Italy. So Hitler may have been inspired to get this plan out the door, but he didn't even come up with the plan. There was another guy who was the PR head for the Berlin I think it was Berlin, or maybe just Germany as a whole, the German Chamber of Commerce. And he coined the term auto bond in like 1920, 1921. And the German Chamber of Commerce came up with this plan for this whole thing, and then the Nazis stole it. So you had another reason to hate the Nazis. That's if we needed any more. Yes, so that is true. Josh, the initial first section from Frankfurt to Darmstadt was very straight. And they did test Grand Prix racing cars way back when on the stretch of road. Yes, that is true. Because one dude died, barren Rosemire died in 1938 after setting the very brief record 268.42. His little buddy Rudolph it's miles per hour. Yes. 432 km/hour. Yeah. Right after that, Rudolph Karakiola jumped in his car and went to 68.8 and then Burnt said, oh, yeah, let me try that again. And he got in and he died. Yes, his car lifted off the ground, he got caught in crosswind and was killed. Very sad. What's interesting is those two speeds you just mentioned are still the fastest speeds ever clocked on the auto bonds. These old cars. Yes. 1938 in one day. And the first guy, Bert Rosemire, he was driving an auto union, V 16. An auto union eventually became Audi and then Karachiola. He was driving a Mercedes. A V. Twelve Mercedes. W 125. And he beat Rosemyer by four hundredths of a second or four tenths of a second. Did you see those cars? Yeah. I mean, they look sort of like smaller versions of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Yeah, kind of. And they're going 267 miles an hour. Yeah, they look like old timey race cars driven by, like, old timey race car drivers. Who died? The guy died that day. Is that weird? It's weirdly. Sad. 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, host 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. 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 roll up their own slaves. IBM, let's create. Learn more@ibm.com Itautmation. So Hitler again. Father of the auto bond. In some respect, he definitely took roadbuilding to new heights. Or to new extremes, apparently. The Cologne Bond stretch from 1932, that was the first stretch of highway in Germany. Wow. Supposedly the first real one. Six years later, under Nazi rule, 1860 miles of roadway have been completed. So they were like roadmaking machines. Well, they were. And that kind of well, it didn't really backfire, but it went into disrepair in a lot of places after the war because the German citizens weren't in such great shape financially after the war. No. And they didn't even get used during the war, which is the whole reason Hitler was building them, was for military transport. But a lot of the roads are like two steep mountains, so they didn't use them. So they fell in disrepair and took a long time. Some points were even impassable, and it took a long time before they really got on a campaign to reconstruct them and build them back up to the great road. Yes. Great road. That's the mother road. This is our second. Holy coy. Wow. That's shameful. We both just realized that at the same exact moment. Two podcasts on a road. Yeah. Okay, I think this will be the last. Yeah. Chuck, it wasn't until the 90s, after East Germany and West Germany got back together, that the autobahn really started to take the legendary form, I think, that we have of it now. See, I got the fourth largest behind America, China and India. Oh, is that right? But it says the third. But I'm not sure which one is more recent. Or it may have to do with how India counts the road to count it all twice. Well, if it's like a major expressway, or what? Because India is way bigger than any of them, I think. But Germans might say like, no, we're talking highways only. Well, sure. How about some stats, man? It's your time to shine. How big is this thing? I have as of 2010. That's pretty recent. 12,813 clicks. Wow. Really? Yeah. That's kilometers. Okay. It's actually decreased in size then because this article has it as 12,875 km. But when was that? Maybe that's newer or else it's shrinking. It might be. Actually it's shrinking in its age. It's got sarcopenia. And we should say for our American friends, that's 8000 miles of roadway. Very nice. There'll be more stats. We'll scatter them out. Okay. Keep this thing exciting. What's another myth? Josh, you can just drive as fast as you want on this thing all over the place, right? Well, no, you can't, you can. But the Germans are very sensible people. They're very efficient. Sensible is a really good word to describe the German people. One might even say rigid. You could say that. And they are well aware that you should not be driving unfettered speed limit wise through congested areas, like through a city or something like that. Sure. So in a lot of parts of the Audubon you're going to find speed limits, which are called tempo limits in German. Tempo limits. Tempo limits. I think that which is of course, one word. Sure. So congested areas, areas where the terrain is really rough during certain types of weather. There's a lot of factors that go into it, but it's not unlimited. For about three quarters of the 8000 miles you'll find speed limits. But then there's about 2000 miles of autobahn, about a quarter of the whole thing where there really isn't any speed limit. Not bad. You can drive as fast as you want, but there is a suggested speed limit of, I believe, 130 km/hour, which is 80 miles an hour. But that's suggested. Nobody's going to pull you over for that. Right. There is a minimum speed limit of 37 mph, which is about 60. That just keeps the riff raff off the road that will get blown away, including mopeds and stuff like that. Well, horses. Horses which were banned outright from the beginning, that they knew German highways early on, that they wanted this thing to cook. Yeah. Well, at least it seems like. But even if it is unlimited, you can still get a fine if you're driving too fast for weather conditions. You can also, I mean, if you're going to pass an auto bond cop, which are called the auto bomb. Pulitze. Again, one long word, Pulitze. You don't want to taunt him, especially if you're holding like a Big Mac. Yeah. Because the Germans consider driving while eating or drinking as a distracted driver state and they will pull you over in a heartbeat and find you. And they do it routinely. Yeah. Can I just go ahead and take my hat off? To the German people for their sensible and common sense rules when it comes to driving. Sure, Chuck. Because that is one all of these rules to me should be worldwide because they just make sense. Okay. For instance, the two second rule. If you don't follow the two second rule, which means you give yourself 2 seconds worth of stopping time for the car in front of you, then you can get a ticket and that's suspended license. Yeah. We should explain that to our younger listeners. Maybe once we don't drive yet. Say you're following a car and a car passes a street lamp, right. You should be able to count off 2 seconds before you pass that street lamp. Yes. That means there's 2 seconds of space between 2 seconds of reaction time between you and the car in front of you. That's the two second rule. Yeah. That's a great way to do it. My suggestion another rule, Josh, which should be adhered here in the United States. Travel fast in the left lane only pass on the right only. Yeah. It just makes sense. Well, apparently the Germans are extremely well instructed in the art of passing and respecting the passing lane. So I have met so many people on the highway that I really, genuinely wanted to take the lives of. You met them? I met them by making eye contact. Like really angry, vicious eye contact. Wazing at them. Yeah. On the road. Because they just not only won't get over, they may slow down a little bit. When you try to pass them in the left lane, they're going too slow. Apparently, the Germans do not have this problem. No. If you are not getting over, if you're in the left lane and you don't get over for a faster driver, you can be fined because they consider that coercion. You are coercing. A driver who drives faster than you to drive slower. And that is messed up. Yeah. And not only that, but if you're going 120 miles an hour in that last lane and you're Mercedes and Gunter behind you is in his Porsche and he wants to go 190, you got to get over. Yeah. Because you're the slower driver. And also, whether it's you or Gunther in the left lane, you're not supposed to be in there unless you're passing. Right. The right lanes are for traveling. The left lane is for passing. And you don't drive in the left lane. And you can get a fine for that. You're allowed to flash your lights and honk your horn at somebody who's going slower to basically say, hey, I don't want to use up my brakes. Get over, will you? If they don't get over, they can get a ticket. If you do, it excessively. Supposedly that's coercion as well. So you can both get a ticket. If you find a grumpy auto poet, say that's. Right. Auto spawn poetry. That's good. I think anytime you're not sure just like, do it quiet. And you mentioned the left lanes for passing. You can also be stopped and fine if you pass on the right. If your excuse was but hey, the guy wouldn't get over. They can say, I'm sorry, you're still getting a ticket, but we'll give him a ticket, too, if we happen to see that you're both going to get tickets. Right? Can it be any more fair than that? And women have to get a license to wear lipstick. What else? Chuck, the emergency lane is for emergencies only here in the United States. When traffic backs up in certain places, like La. People will drive in the emergency lane because they can't wait. Yeah, that makes me want to kill, too. But they said, I love this part. Even if you run out of gas, that's no excuse because that's an avoidable thing. So that's very sensible as well. I get the feeling it's very shameful as well in Germany to run out of gas because they're just so, like, on top of everything, they're like, if you run out of gas, you're not worthy of being on the road. Like, they have, like, page eight of the local papers. It's like mug shots of people who ran out of gas in the emergency. Yeah. Should we talk about some of these fines? That's kind of the least interesting part. Yeah. How about this? This will drive people to the website after this, if you want to see some infractions and the corresponding finds in Euros, look up Autobahn on howstoughfrogs.com we'll remind you again later at the end of this episode. Another cool thing I like about the system, Josh, it's all consistent with how they letter and number everything. Everything on the auto bond system has a capital A followed by a number. Even numbers go east west, odd numbers go north south. Same exact thing in the US. Is that right? Yes. 75 north south. 85 north south. 95 north south. 2040, 60, 80, all east west. Same thing. It was modeled on the autobahn. Eisenhower is like, I love these Nazis. I don't think they're all like that, though, are they? Yeah. Seems like California had some for interstate, for federal highways only. So what about rings? I don't know. Probably larger. I don't know this, but I would suspect that the larger orientation, whether it's east west or north south, would guide the people naming it, giving it a name. So, like, I'll bet 285, it has longer stretches going east and west, or north and south and east and west, which is why it has an odd number. But it's not a perfect circle, that's for sure. I tend to make stuff up, and that could be an example of you would think that because of the excessive speeds that the autobahn would be a death trap. I would. And for a while there, it was pretty unsafe, I think was the all time high when they had more than 21,000 deaths that year, which is staggering. It is. But it's less than the United States standard of about $40,000 a year. Yeah. We have a lot more highway. We do. In 2008, though, that number fell to fewer than 4500 because of a few things. Better engineering of the cars, safety, obviously. Better engineering of the roadway. Very much. My dad taught me this. My dad is a mechanical engineer, but any type of engineer appreciates the work of any other type of engineer. Sure. And he taught me to really appreciate a curve where you don't have to move your steering wheel. You just tilt it slightly, and then you just hold it in place for the whole curve. And you don't have to turn it to stay into the curve. It's a perfectly engineered and perfectly constructed curve. I have driven on a race track, and that's how it is. But if you pay attention, you'll find that some curves on some highways are better than others. Oh, yeah, for sure. And when you're looking out for it, you really appreciate that one curve where you just pull into it. You're like, that's off to you guys. Like, way to go. This is a perfect curve. Yeah. When I did Atlanta Motor Speedway, I actually got the feeling that I didn't even need to turn my wheel because the bank, it felt like the car just kind of turned itself. I'm sure that's not the case. I'll bet it is. It was pretty cool. Yeah. What were you doing on Atlanta Speedway? We did a commercial shoot there years ago, and I had to go the day before to get some paper signed from someone. And the guy that worked there said he's like, hey. He did. He literally did. He said, hey, man, you won't take a lap? I went heck, yeah, I do. He's like, you got any money? Unfortunately, I was in a production vehicle, so it was like a GMC Yukon SUV going like 90. And it felt on that track, it felt like I was going to about 30. Really? So it wasn't actually a thrill. It was just like, oh, this is neat. But the banks, man, those are scary. I thought I was going to tip over. That's how steep it was. I would imagine so. Especially in, like, an SUV. Especially in a big SUV. Yeah. Wow. It's very fun, though. So, yeah, the autobahn is one of the safest roadways in the world. Now it is the United States, but it's not it's in Germany. That's right. Don't try and fool me. There's been talking recent years, Josh, about imposing some speed limits because of environmental factors more than safety. Yeah. Apparently, if you propose putting speed limits on the auto bond for safety reasons, you're just chided and derided and abraded, like, by everyone. Like, oh, shut up. You don't know what you're talking about. You clearly just moved here from Spain or something. Like that. It's all about environment, though. And in fact, there's three cities in Germany, bond, Cologne, and I think Berlin, who've instituted what are called umlot zones. No, I don't think they're umlat zones. Oomwelt zone, which is an environment zone. And basically it's like you have to have a sticker that shows that your car was inspected and meets approved emission standards to be able to drive in this environment zone. So if you drive a nasty diesel car, you can't drive in certain sections of Bond or Cologne, I think. Really? Well, speaking of stickers, too, you have to have a tire rated for speed as well, which is another great rule. Well, yeah, if you have a really fast car, you can't have really cheap tires. Like your tire has to be rated for your car's top speed, or you can be pulled over for that too. Right. But they do allow exceptions, I think, for certain kind of winter tires, which you need to sticker for, though, to show the cop the bullet site that you're like, I can have these winter tires. Yeah, back off. So obviously, they're going to post speed limits all over the autobahn for carbon emissions, right? Sure. Wrong. Chancellor Angela Merkel. In this country, you would call her Angela Merkel. She said in 2007 that she would not support any speed limit measures for the auto Bond. I love that. Instead, she said, automakers, why don't you just go make the cars more efficient with fewer emissions? That's what I love. She's like, no, change your cars. Yeah, and apparently she's a standard bearer for the rest of the country as far as the autobahn goes. Hey, Chuck, it's summer, which means school is out, sun is shining, the daylight lasts longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story, isn't there? There sure is. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, you can tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right Media. That's right. Part true crime and part comedy, my Favorite Murder takes you on a journey through small town mysteries and major laughs, all in the same week. That's Right hosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstarke Banter with each other, sharing their favorite true crime tales, and explore unique hometown stories from friends and fans alike. And they're both great and it's a fun show. And you should listen. So listen to new episodes of my favorite murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalanche of demand to ensure more customers can buy more Sherpa line jackets? You call IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes. And you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create it. Systems that. Roll up their own sleeves. IBM, let's create, learn more@ibm.com. Itaution you got anything else? No, I don't have anything else. Really? I have one thing, and this makes sense. During the Cold War, obviously, the roads were neglected more in East Germany. In West Germany, right. And so it was sort of in a state of disarray, lots of potholes, impassable places, major obstacles, and a lot of these roads were just used for military traffic for a little while. But since the end of the cold world, since the wall fell, I think they tried to help out East Germany a little bit there. You make the roads a little better so they can be a Germany united in road and spirit. Yes, and they are. Yes, they are. So there you have it, the Autobahn. It's our companion piece to Route 66. I remember when I was a kid, you just heard a lot about the Auto bond. It was like, I don't know, maybe that was the big when cars were really going fast. Because I just remember the autobot. Well. Yes, but that was also the same age where you were eight to nine times. Likelier to have a poster of a Lamborghini on the back of your bedroom door. Yeah, with a girl in a bikini holding a beer mug. Yeah, I remember, though. I remember that Garfield one where it was like a real shot of a mansion and like a Lamborghini and all this, a boat and all that. But Garfield like superimposed over it. It's like whoever dies with the most toys wins. Can you imagine a more 80s motto than that material? What are you doing? You've gone astray. He's back though, everybody, and he's dead. If you don't know what I'm talking about, look up is Garfield actually dead? It will bring up some pretty cool stuff. It's a great way to end. If you want to know more about the Autobahn, including some other traffic infractions and their corresponding finds in Euros, you want to type in Autobahn, A-U-T-O-B-A-H-N in the search barhowstepworks.com. Since I said search bar in there somewhere, that means it's time for not listener mail. Sometimes it means it's time for Facebook questions. Right? And this week, Josh, it's a very special edition of Facebook questions. Because these aren't questions about us for a change. We're not going to sit here and talk about each other, which we love to do. I find it off putting when we do that. Really? Yeah, it's intrusive. I love it. These are Facebook questions for our special guest who is here in the studio with it. It's me, john Hodgman, everyone. Yes, I'm here again. But actually, guys, I got to tell you, I'm not actually here. What do you mean you're here? I am currently a hologram. John Hodgman actual is currently in Brooklyn, New York. So Jerry busted you out? How did that go? She busted you out. Of the safe room. Oh, that went fine. Okay. And I was able to make it back home. You just left. And John Hodgman actually is in Brooklyn, New York, right now promoting well, actually at The Bellhouse tonight. We know The Bellhouse getting ready to present the launch of his new book, that Is All, which I guess came out today. It came out today. November 1, 2011. Wow. So John Hodgman Actual had to be in Brooklyn to begin his book tour, and so he sent me his holographic representation. So should we congratulate you or can you send a message to I can convey a message to Hodgeman Actual. Okay. So we had breakfast this morning. Was that you, or was that the actual John Hodgman? That was me. The Hologram. Okay. The Hologram really puts away the sausage links. Wow. Well, you know, when you're a Hologram, you can eat whatever you want. So are you pre recorded or I'm an interactive program that responds to stimulus in a very similar way. Wow. And for me, Chuck is moving his hand through your head right now. So neato. You look totally solid, but obviously you're not. I am an interactive program that responds to stimulus in a very similar way. I thought I detected odors. John Hodgman odors. But that must just be in my head. I am an interactive program that responds to various stimulus, and I forget what I was going to say. Well, I guess that's good enough for Facebook. Question. I have a question. Can you feel love? There we go. All right. Hello. I am a holographic. John Hodgman. How may I be of service? Well, John Holographic john, we had some fans right in of yours good. On Facebook, because we said, hey, John the Hologram is going to be in the office. That's great, because John Hodgman usually uses a robot to answer his email. Perfect. Then this works perfectly. And they responded in kind. And you don't know these questions. This is not pre prepared. And even if Hodgeman actually did, I don't believe Hodgman virtual would be preloaded with these. Yeah, there's no way that these could be predicted. They're too random. I'm looking forward to hearing the questions from the millions of fake accounts and offshore banks that are registered at your website. We will ask it now. All right. Very well. Do you want me to kick off? Sure. Are we going to call out the people who ask the questions? I think we should. Yeah. We always do. So, John the Hologram. Yes. I don't know if you know this, but John the actual loves the podcast, loves stuff you should know. He always talks about it's, almost to an embarrassing degree. I am aware of his affection for the podcast. I choose not to comment on it. Okay, that's fine. But you basically have access to all of John the actual thoughts and feelings about certain things. Yes. Okay. So we did a podcast, an episode on The Muppets. It's a much beloved episode, I am aware. This question, I think, pertains to that. This is from Josh Bailey, and he asks, which Muppet is your favorite? There can be no question that John Hodgman's favorite muppet is Kermit. He is an incredible character in American fiction that I adore. And also John Hodgman does too. Okay. It's convenient. There is, for the most part, a consensus on the Internet that I resemble Bunsen Honeydew. Yes. Now that you mentioned that and there's a very famous picture of you with said Muppet. Is there? There is. I've seen it on my phone. I have. Well, as a Hologram, I cannot confirm whether or not that picture exists. You are speaking of something that falls under a nondisclosure agreement that you signed check pertaining to the new Muppets movie of which John Hodgman has no part except visiting a table read. Got you. Yes. I think probably The Muppet movie is one of the sort of most overlooked great film of the 70s. Agreed. You know what I mean? Of the great films of the I'm, including 1980s. So we're talking The Godfather and Chinatown and those great, hard, weird, complex, unsparing french Connection. French Connection. Adult, sophisticated. And I don't mean an adult in a story of those sort of way. Yeah, right. Empire Strikes Back obviously falls in that category as well. Sort of morally nebulous and dark. The Muppet movie is equally that. It is a movie about puppets that go on a journey to Hollywood to make a movie about puppets. And at the end of the movie, all of the puppets sing about how life is a movie while they're surrounded by fake props that are imitating the fake props from the earlier part of the movie. And then the ceiling of the theater smashes and a real rainbow comes in and touches them all. And then Kermit looks directly into the camera, breaks the fourth wall and says to you, the viewer, life is a movie. Write your own ending. Spoiler alert. Well, as you know, this is the only movie on which the literary critic Roland Bart was given a screenplay credit. Yeah, I think Brooklyn sisters would call that meta. It's so intensely meta and beautiful and yet also emotionally very affecting. I love Kermit the Frog. I love beaker, too. Put beaker down. Kermit and beaker. Sure. Josh Bailey. All right. This is from Joshua Charles Knowles. Right. Favorite board game. Favorite cartoon and favorite Pulitzer recipient? Favorite board game. Obviously a scrabble. Of course. Favorite cartoon? Animated or strip? Cartoon. Comic. Strip or cartoon? Favorite cartoon. Let's go with television or flip book. Yeah. Favorite cartoon. Watership down. Okay. Favorite fun? Hysterical. Yeah, it's slapstick. Rabbits are funny. Favorite and what was the last part? Pulitzer prize recipient. David Lindsay a bear. The Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Lindsay a bear. All right. Whom I made fun of two podcasts ago. That's right. That's from Joshua and Oles. Thank you, Joshua. Who is the next Joshua to ask me a question? The next Joshua to ask you a question is Bridget Reef Shop Bell. She's got three names. Well, Josh want them. I guess her question yes. Is as follows is Judge John Hodgman, which is a podcast. It is ever going to be a regular, weekly, or more podcast. I asked that question because it's a question and a bit of a dig. Yeah, I get it. Okay, Joshua. Bridget, I feel that that hurts. You probably heard a lot of that lately. Yeah. You know what? Here are some things that happened in my life. I work for the Daily Show with John Stewart. With John Stewart from time to time. I wrote a book that I'm publishing called that is all that comes out today. I have human children. I have a cat that needs feeding and tending. And I do a podcast that I love very much called Judge John Hodgman, where people call in and they tell me their disputes, and I tell them who's right and who's wrong. And Jesse Thorn, the bailiff jesse, the producer of Bailiff, had a baby recently, and he recently had a baby. He's been busy. And also, I'm a deranged millionaire, and I took two months off over the summer. Sue me to sit around and work on my inventions. Right. So here's the thing. I was a little busy. We fell off our regular weekly thing. It's hard to get good disputes. It's hard to get disputes where people aren't simply buzz marketing Facebook all the time like we're doing today. We will put that thing out as often as we can, and I hope it will be weekly, but it will never, ever be twice a week, because we all know that's podcast death, especially after three years. Yes. So that was Joshua. Bridget, any other Joshuas out there? Yeah, this is from Joshua ginger snapdragon. And he's writing from Second Life. Should we eliminate pennies in our currency system? No, pennies are delightful great. If there were not pennies, there would not be the great Paula Tomkins routine smashed pennies available on his CD Freak Wharf. You're a good friend. Well, he has a good comedian. You ready? Yeah. This one comes from Lightning Round. I'll be fast. Well, a lot of people want to know stuff. Oh, I'm happy to tell them from you. There are a lot of people who asked questions about your mustache. Some of them are stupid questions, like, what's up with the mustache? Or what mustache do you look up to the most? Is on my list. It's okay. It's better than what's up with the mustache? But I'm choosing this one from Joshua J. McCracken, who has bullwinkle as his avatar. Sure is your mustache attribute to Stanley Tucci's epic performance and the lovely Bones. That is not the case. Doc Holiday, played by Val Kilmer. Oh, I see it. I totally see it now. Yeah. Dying alcoholic. I'm your huckleberry. That was brilliant, John. There was a time in my life in the 90s when I loved that performance so much that I was like, maybe I should get tuberculosis. Maybe I should sweat and drink all the time, starting at 09:00 A.m. And cough, because I'm already asthmatic. So I'm halfway there. Yeah, sure. And look what it's done for you. Look, I grew a mustache because that is the only facial hair I could grow, and I wanted to grow some facial hair, and this is every hair you see on my face. That is the only hair that I could grow. Like, you're trying to grow a beard right now as we speak and have been for months. Yeah. That's why I see some stuff down there no, you don't want to see. No. I spend a lot of time this summer when I went away as a deranged millionaire, experimenting with the beard, because, truly, if I really want to be a deranged millionaire, I got to go full Howard Hughes. Do you know what I mean? Mustache and Wyatt soul patches. I mean, Dock Holiday Soul Patch isn't going to do it, but it's just not in me, guys. There's still a part of me that's not deranged and not millionaire enough to do it. So that's the answer. Yeah. A lot of people want to know that. John, where do you go? It's like sometimes you wear a different shirt. Can the guy grow a mustache? Yeah. People just want to know why the guy is wearing the concern that people have. And here's another perfectly true answer. You notice that the mustache that I'm wearing looks fake because it's so much darker than my regular top hair. That is true. My whiskers are very dark, and my skin is very pale and palate, much like dark holidays, and I got a little tired. This happened once where someone came up to me and said, I really like that you're growing a mustache. And it was 11:00 in the morning, and I had shaved that day because when my whiskers would come in, they'd be very dark. It always looked like I was growing a mustache. Right. So I decided to give nature what it wanted. Nice. All right, so that's your answer. Thank you, Josh. Boring. Boring. This is from John Riddium. How do you feel about Asian carp? That's not the snake head fish, is it? I don't know. No, you're thinking of the worm face. Is Asian carpet. Predatory species. Is that the issue here? Not predatory. I think you're thinking invasive. Invasive. Thank you. Yeah, you really have lightened up a lot of them. I don't know how to answer that question. They're huge carp, and generally I'm a fan of all. Well, that's a little like Getty Lee's famous words. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. John Hodgman, refusing to answer is your answer. But here's what I didn't write that, but here's what I'm going to say. Neil Pertz famous words. And speaking of giant freshwater fish, there is a long section in this book that I have written that comes out today entitled that is all right, the third in the series of complete world knowledge, including information on wine and sports in the end of the world. There's a long section in this book that follows the path of a semi professional noodler who meets an unhappy end. Noodling, of course, being the sport of sticking your hand down a catfish's mouth and catching it, yanking and yanking it out, and then he later comes to face the ancient, unspeakable one, the giant catfish that is the entire Mississippi River. That's another story. But that whole section is an homage to the first episode of Stuff You Should Know I ever listened to. That was the first, huh? It was. That is very thrilling. And you know what, John? When I was reading your book, I noticed that there were some Stuff You Should Know threads. Oh, really? Well, just a couple of things I noticed, like the Mayan calendar and Prohibition. Prison wine, adrian Collider. Cannibalism. Whoa. Taste sinkhole. Zombies. Fluoride. Hey. Rogue taxidermy. Odd town festivals, spontaneous human combustion. Wait a minute. Crystal Skulls, the mini worlds theory. Wait, one near death experiences. Do we get any money for this book? John? Look, there's obviously a kinship in the way we look at and think about the world. We're both trying to explain everything. Give me the list and I'll tell you where it came from. You're not getting this list. No, read it. Read it. It doesn't even have to be in the podcast. Prison Wine. Prison Wine first revealed to me at the offices of Twitter in 2008, hadron Collider first came to my attention when I was writing an article for Wired magazine in 2007. Toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis, I have a human child. I have a wife who is pregnant. Of course I know that. Toxoplasmosis Wait a minute. You hadn't heard about prison wine until 2008? Yeah, that's right, crystal I did spend a night in jail, but it wasn't long enough to make prison wise crystal skulls go back to my first book, 2005 Secrets of Yale University, where I talk about the rumor that the whiff and proofs gave the skull of Benjamin Franklin to Dick Cavitt on his TV show. And it's not true. It was a crystal skull. Okay, that goes back to the World Book of the Strange that I read in 2004. Writing the first book. Does that have trepination in it? Of course it does. Okay. Trepanation I got from the Golden Compass. Give me more. Come on. I'm not letting this stand. Sinkholes. That's from you. Okay, odd town festivals. That's from you. Okay, because you actually gave us a thank you for that. For noodling. Yeah, we're cited as experts. Yes, even a thank you like expert yeah. Keep going. Really? Yeah. Odd town festivals. That one's yours. Not that I wasn't aware of a lot of those. Odd town festivals. I know he didn't invent it. Yeah. No. Let me give you a little history lesson. Right. Zombie has been around for a long time. Check out Surfing in the Rainbow. Dum. Dumb. Next. I saw that in the theater. Rogue Taxidermy. Bartering. Rogue taxidermy was probably you bartering, though. That Bartering. We didn't do house swapping, you mean? No, we talked about Bartering, didn't we? I'm sure we did. In house swapping. Oh, also conjunctions. We use a lot of conjunction. Bartering goes back to my first year of college when I would tell other freshmen who were from out of state I went to college, university in Connecticut. And I would just tell people that Connecticut is the only state in the union where barter is still a legal form of payment and that you can go into any wawa or convenience store and try to buy things with shiny shells. And if they accept it, it's legal. How would you like to be on the hall with 18 year old John Hodgman? He'd be like, Shut up, nerd. So we'll release this separately on the Internet. Look, I think I stand my ground on this. Right. All right. I guess that's about all the time we have. You guys have questions, though. Yeah. Boy, that was beautiful. If any of you have questions for me or you doubt or you think that I've ripped off stuff you should know on other subjects and are not willing to just accept that we think about the same things a lot well, my point is, I like your show. We're both trying to explain everything, so there's bound to be some overlap. Yes, but I've been at it since 2005. Exactly. And I also don't care about facts. But if any of you have questions for me or, for that matter, accusations for me won't you please come and see me? I am now on BookTour. At least Hodgeman Actual is now on BookTour due dates. Yeah. All right. So this is November 1, right? Yes. So, November 1, I am in Brooklyn at the Bellhouse. November 2 I am in Chicago at the Second City etc. Stage. November 3. I am in St. Louis, Missouri. Oh, you're really getting around. How will you be getting from place to place in such a short amount of time? I traded Nick Mangold my burning Zeppelin for his penny Farthing motorcycle. Oh, yeah. That seems even because the zeppelin is burning. Oh, yeah. Fantastic. On November 3, I'll be in St. Louis, Missouri, at the Mad Art Gallery. November 4, I'll be in Los Angeles, California, with Mr paul F. Tompkins and Mr john Roderick. Wow. November 6, I'll be in Portland, Oregon. I believe Roderick will be there and I know that will be in Seattle at Town Hall on November 7. Is Roderick playing or anything? Or is he'll be playing? No, he's not just going to be sitting with Shadow. Yes. Right. Then I go down to Austin, Texas. Great site of your live stuff. You should know. Podcasts on. What? UFOs. Nice. Which is mentioned in your books. Good point. Oh, you got me. Ancient astronauts. Yeah, you got me. You got me. November 8 at Book People, one of the great independent books stores of all time. Then Durham, North Carolina at the Durham armory. November 9 at the Regulator Bookshop with son of North Carolina David Reese. And then in Asheville, North Carolina, the college hometown of famous Tracy. And then that will be on the 11th, just a few hours drive from here, atlanta, by the way. You're not swinging back through that. No, I can't, unfortunately. I feel very bad about it. But I'm here now. Yeah, sure. Then I'm back in New York November 14 at the Barnes and Noble and then November 15 at the Coolidge Corner Theater in my hometown of Brookline, Massachusetts. And then November 16 at the Fitzgerald Theatre in St. Paul, an extra special episode of Wits, a public radio show hosted by John Moe, starring me and special guest, John Darnell of the Mountain Goats, one of my favorites. I love this guy. Oh, boy. If you want a crazy couple of weeks, just a crazy cuckoo tour yeah. I really hope that people will come out. You have to buy tickets, but you get a copy of the book with the ticket. Wow. And I will sign every book that comes there, and I will talk to you all and answer your questions and I'll respond to your accusations. Yes, ultimately. And I will not be holographic. I will be hodgman actual. That's great. So thank you very much for letting me come by again, guys. Of course. It sounds like goodbye, but I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to come back the next one. Are you serious? Yeah. Sorry. We're doing another one? Yeah. All right. Well, until then. What today's? Tuesday. Yeah, I'll see you. Well, the Holograph will re emerge, so we have to deal with the Holographic. And you're making us do a fourth one of these and you're not even coming down here. Right? Because when are you on again? Thursday the third. So you'll be where? I'll be in St. Louis. Okay. Gateway to the west. All right, well, we'll see Hodgman's. Hologram again in a minute. So will you, I guess, in a couple of days. Right. I'm going to power down now, if you don't mind. Okay. We'll see you in a little bit. If you have a question for John or for us, or you just want to say hi, or you want to say, please bring back listing or mail or anything but this, you can tweet it to us at syskpodcast. You can visit us on Facebook, at facebook. Comstuffysheanow. Or you can send us a good old fashioned email at stuffpodcast@howstoughfours.com, be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join Housetopworks staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing pool site, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarh and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen. Today, you want your kid eating the best, 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." | ||
The Great Wall of China Episode | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-great-wall-of-china-episode | The Great Wall of China is one of the most visited tourist desinations in the world. How'd it get built? How old is it? What's the current condition? Learn this and more in today's episode. | The Great Wall of China is one of the most visited tourist desinations in the world. How'd it get built? How old is it? What's the current condition? Learn this and more in today's episode. | Tue, 29 Dec 2015 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=363, tm_isdst=0) | 38797980 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. This is Charles W, Chuck Bryant. Just the two of us again. Buy and sell. The lone wolves. The pack of lone wolves. Just trying new stuff here today. Yeah. Wolverines in Colorado. Blows my mind. Yes. Where did you think it was again? Michigan. Right. And all the mountain ranges. I thought I hadn't been far enough north in Michigan before. Despite growing up an hour south of it. I saw a little bit of the Old Red Dawn again the other night. How did you stop? It ended okay. I saw the end. Yeah, it's a good move. I saw from Powers booth on. Okay. When he entered the picture. Yeah. Which I mean, like if you think about it, he didn't need to be there. But his introduction was great. It was wonderful. I think he played a vital role. You do? Sure. I think they could have done fine without him. He's a little creepy with the young ladies though. With Leah Thompson. He was a sicko. Yeah. He got what he deserved. Still haven't seen the remake. No need. Nope. So Chuck yes. I have another question about something you've seen. Have you ever seen the Great Wall of China? Not in person. Let me ask you something else. Have you ever seen the 10,000 lee long Wall? I don't know what you speak that's the Great Wall of China. I'm just kidding. Also called the Long Wall of 10,000 lee. That's another way to put it. La. And that is a unit of measurement in China apparently. It's about one click. Yeah. No, two two clicks. Two clicks. It's here 1 I'm sorry, two lee is being is equivalent to 1 km. I'm sorry. Oh, yeah. I misunderstood you. Oh, you did? One click, two lead. Man, this thing the wheels are falling off already. Right. The western hemisphere is generally the folks who say the Great Wall of China. Right. And so if it's the 10,000 lead long wall and two lead is one click then that means that it's the 5000 kilometer long wall is what they would call in China. And that's actually way off. There was a very long time that people thought that the Great Wall was maybe between 2500 believe was the high end somewhere in there? All over the map. Really? Yeah. And finally at one point in 2007, China said, you know what, we're going to take this seriously after nearly 2000 years. We are going to go measure this bag. Yeah. Who's got some rope? Yeah. Luckily by then GPS had been developed and they used that a lot. But they did a modern survey of the Great Wall and they found that it was not a 5000 kilometer long wall. No, they found chuck, how long was it? Over 13,000 miles. Over 21,000 clicks? Yeah. That's a lot of clicks. That is a very long wall. And it depends on who you ask. That is the ultimate length of the entire wall, if you take into account every bit of construction phase that was ever done to it. Yeah. Which we'll get into. But that generally means pre Ming dynasty and post Ming dynasty. Right. Pre Ming was about 7700, roughly miles. In really bad shape. Apparently the premium sections only are about 8% whole. Yeah. Well, I mean, some of them were built back in 200 BCE. Long time. Yeah. They weren't like what you think of as the walls we'll see. I found this interesting in the Ming section, or post Ming section, 5000 out of the 5499 miles, 223 miles were trenches. So not a wall at all. It's like a reverse wall. And about 1400, little less, were natural barriers. Right. Like they just took advantage of ridges. Yeah. Or rivers or really things. Yeah. I didn't know about the river things. So pretty interesting. And it's widest. It is 30ft, it is highest, it is 26ft. And it goes through some rough terrain. And we should mention, stick around through this one because the wonderful Christian Conner from stuff mom never told you has walked the Great Wall. Not the whole thing. You didn't walk all 20,000 it no, but we're going to bring her at the end. And she said, I'm no expert, she said, but I can tell you what it's like to be there. Right. And I said, that's all we need. Yeah. So we're going to bring in conger here at the end. So it was kind of surprising to everybody that the Great Wall is 13,000 miles long. It's way longer than anybody ever thought. I'm sure they're like right. But it's not like one unbroken wall. Even when it was all solid. Even if it were all solid, it wouldn't be one unbroken wall. As a matter of fact, the territory that it spans is about 220,000. Put the emphasis on the wrong 220,000 km long. Right, right. And the wall is a bunch of series of overlapping walls and embattlements and apparently rivers. And the reason that no one knew how long the wall actually was is because for hundreds of years, China kind of didn't like its wall. Yeah. It looked at it as kind of a relic of a backwards feudal era and that it had a lot to be ashamed of. Yeah. In fact, this one article I sent from the Smithsonian to you said that one of the great endangered what makes it endangered today, which it is, is what they call a paucity of scholarship. There is not one single Chinese academic on the planet right. Or anyone on the planet who specializes in the Great Wall of China and the whole planet. Hard to believe it really is. And the author of this article, Brick Larmer, one of those two, Brocklanders points out that's really surprising because this is a very old wall. It's one of the new seven wonders. Right? You can see it from outer space, clear as day. From the Moon, you can see the thing false, and it just deserves scholarship. But it really wasn't until the early two thousands that China actually, it was before that. I think it was the 80s when Zhang Zhao Ping, the chairman who came after Mao, said, we need to preserve this. Well, I think some regions had here and there over the years. It wasn't like the whole country. A lot of folks there. Yeah. In fact, I think that same article points out that just regular citizens in their small village, some had reverence for the wall and would try and patrol it or repair it. Yeah. Led to some not so great repairs. No, the one that who, again, Brocklanders Rocklanders points out she says that there's one section of the wall in a province called a city called Giann, where they repaired it with bathroom tiles. Not the most authentic building material you can use to restore the Great Wall, but it does display a complete, in a lot of cases, change in attitude toward the Great Wall. It was something to be neglected and mocked. Now it's something to be preserved. And they've just recently passed laws saying, like, you can't throw raids on the Great Wall of China anymore. You can't drive on the Great Wall of China, which is apparently a thing. Yeah, we'll get to that, too, later. But you mentioned something that is not true, and we need to really point out that you cannot see it from space. It depends on the old wives tales. That has really stood the test of time. You know who made that up? Al Gore. Robert Ripley. Oh, really? Yeah. What a jerk. In, like, some 30s comic strip, he just completely fabricated. The Great Wall of China is the only manmade structure you can see from space. It sounds like such a great little factor. It's great. It's like a total Ripley Believe It or not thing. Right. And it wasn't until we got to space in the 50s that people were able to say, like, no, you can't. You can see it from lower Earth orbit, but that's not outer space. Which is what Robert Ripley I think he actually said, you can see it from the Moon. That's when we found out for sure that you can't. Right. I think they had the guys on the Moon say, can you see the Great Wall? And they're like, no, not at all. Yeah, they said, you'd be able to see every highway if you could see the Great Wall. Right. So from lower Earth orbit, you can see the Great Wall depending on the conditions. Because, again, a lot of it's made of Earth and clay and stuff from around it. We've talked about this before. Yes, but, like, when it snows or something, you can kind of see some of it, but you can also see the pyramids, too. So big. What? Yeah. And you know what I was just thinking? I was giving Robert Ripley a hard time, but he didn't say Believe it. He said, Believe it or don't. Up to you. Good point, Chuck. And then lastly, this sounds like an urban legend to me because I don't know any Chinese people, anyone in China who can verify or deny this, please let us know. But from what I understand, the Chinese did not believe that you couldn't see the Great Wall from space until their own astronaut, the first Chinese astronaut, I don't remember his name, went into orbit and I think 2003, and said, no, you can't. And that was a collective billion strong. The Great Wall, like you said, was built in pieces over a couple of thousand years, starting with, they believe, the Western Han Dynasty, all the way back in 2006 BC to Ad 24. They were followed by the Northern We dynasty. The Northern Key dynasty. The Dynasty no sweat dynasty. The Layout dynasty. The Xin Dynasty. And finally, that was all pre Ming, and it was just a series of not so great walls before the Ming Dynasty to keep out invaders and largely invaders from the north. Yeah. And remember, in our Terracotta Army episode, we talked a lot about Shishawa, I think his name. Yeah. Nice job. And he's the guy who unified the six separate states into China. Yes. Most of the China we know today. And even before him, there were these walls in these six states to keep one another out. So there was this early these proto walls. But Chishiawa, I'm saying it, like, eight different ways. Yeah. Emperor Chi, we'll call him, he was the first one to say, like, we should connect some of these walls and make a great wall. Yeah, I think that was the initial beginning. And the whole reason was he wanted to keep the Huns out. Yeah. The Huns were not nice. They were fierce and feared and really great at two things. One is riding horses, and two is shooting arrows. Yeah. And doing them at the same time. Yes. Because they were not agricultural, so they did a lot of hunting, and that's why they were so good at archery. And they were to be feared and did a great job at wreaking havoc throughout Asia. So the wall was definitely necessary, and it worked pretty well for a while. I mean, the Emperor Chi and his dynasty were not like milk toasts themselves. No. The Huns were enough of a threat that they're like, we just need to build a huge wall to keep these dudes out. I don't want them hanging out anymore. Yeah. It was built by basically three groups. Soldiers were about the second largest contributor. Commenters was the leading contributor. And then criminals back in the day, when you would get in trouble, you would be sentenced to four years on the wall. You would guard it during the day and you would build it at night. Wow. When did you sleep? In the afternoon. It's a good point. In the evening. That's why they call it hard labor, my friend. Yeah, that is hard labor. Apparently thousands and thousands. I didn't see any hard numbers, did you? I saw up to a million, but that just sounds one of those died. Yeah. Wow. Well, I guess if you think about it, over 2000 years possible. It is possible. And a lot of the bodies and bones are still in that wall. At one point, that was referred to as the longest cemetery in the world. Well, that's neat. Yeah. Well, not really haunting. Yeah, that's what I mean by I know what you mean by you. You know me. So not every single dynasty came along and said, oh, well, let's do our bit to add to the Great Wall of China, because in 2007, it will become one of the seven wonders of the modern world, and we want to be a part of that. Some dynasties, it seemed to all rest in the motivation, like how much of a threat was coming from the north, because the thing runs from east to west, from the Goby Desert to the Yellow Sea, I believe. Right, yes. So how much of a problem you had from the barbarians to the north to how much fighting from within the different cities? Because, remember, it's not just one unbroken east to west wall. Right. There's, like, different areas that are blocked off by the wall. So some dynasties had more problems than others. And it seemed like if you were really having a lot of trouble with outsiders, you would spend a lot of your resources to building the wall or enlarging it or going back and rebuilding some earlier stuff. Sure. And a lot of them did. But it's like you said, a little over half of the wall was completed by all these other dynasties, and then the rest was from the Ming Dynasty. They just went crazy on that thing. Yeah. And you know what? Let's take a break here, and we'll really get into the Ming Dynasty right after this. We'll go crazy on that. All right, here we are in 1368. The Ming Dynasty is in action, and they are killing it on the Great Wall. They are not just building a wall. Sometimes they're building two walls and three walls to confuse people trying to enter. It's confusing and frustrating. Well, yeah, good point. I would just think, yeah, you climb over the wall and you're like, there's another wall. Right. But I wouldn't think like, whoa, did I just climb into the wall that I just climbed? Which side am I on? Right. Yeah, you're right. It's a good point. Turn around and solve that conundrum. Well, maybe in 14th century China it was a little more confusing. Maybe they built it higher and wider than ever before and did a bunch of other things to the wall, specifically guard towers and places to put military supplies, bunkers, things like that. Lights. Yes. Which is a big one. And I think we're going back to Brock landers Brook alarm. Or she says that at one point, thanks to using either smoke or fire, smoke during the day and fire at night, they could send messages all up and down the wall. Oh, I'm sure. At something like 26 miles an hour. And that's awesome. Yeah, that's like broadband Internet of the day. And it was all because the Ming came in and they put up guard posts. And apparently the Ming also were very progressive and had a big problem with desertion. But they said, well, you know what? How about this? If you have to man this guard post for years at a time, bring your family. And as a matter of fact, if you do a really good job, we'll name this guard post after your family. Oh, really? And there's still plenty of guard posts today that bear the family names of the people who live in the region and didn't sell out their own people. Yeah, well, that was a big thing, because if you put people on a wall, you definitely open yourself up for people to let people you don't want in through the wall if they give them money. Exactly. And that's what happened to the wall. Works pretty great until the 17th century. And finally, the Manchu invaded successfully into China, brought down the Ming Dynasty, and they said, this all kind of stinks. We got through it just fine. So why put forth a lot more effort into this thing? And from that point forward, construction on it pretty much stopped. Yeah. And starting in 1644, they made it through the wall, and that was that was that. So for the next few hundred years, I believe, the Manchu, they set up the Qing Dynasty. Right, okay. And so for this time, I think it went up to, like, 1913 or something like that. That definitely is where the roots of scoring toward the wall was set up. Yes. The people, the ruling class, had made it through this wall. It had been set up to keep them out. It hadn't. So this wall is stupid. It's basically the prevailing sentiment in China. And then when Chairman Mao came into power, he was all about the Cultural Revolution now, looking backward, going forward. Right. Yes. And so what better way to get rid of the past and the backwards history of China, but then literally disassemble the wall, a huge symbol of old China. Yeah. So he called he was the founding father of the People's Republic of China, and he basically said all the way up until, like, the 1950s, do you want to build a house? I know where you can get some brick. Yeah. It's just outside your front door. And take what you need. And that was responsible for a large part of the early non natural erosion of the wall. Right. People just taking it apart. Pretty much. There's also zero protection of the wall. Not only was it being disassembled, but nobody was really trying to safeguard it at all. So cattle would be moved across it. Sure. They'd be allowed to graze right up on it. There would be natural stuff, too, like the freeze thaw cycle is really hard on mortar joints, right? Yeah. And just exposure to the elements, period, over that long is going to damage it. And then also, like if people are cutting down trees for firewood of stuff that's holding the soil in place along the wall, when that tree goes, the soil loosens too. When the soil loosens beneath it, the wall topples itself. So when you factor in the human element and the lack of government encouragement of disassembling the wall and then the natural elements too, you've got a wall that's in serious disrepair. Especially considering some of this stuff is like almost 2000 years old by now. Yeah. This one article, I think it was from the Smithsonian again talked about the certification, which we had a great podcast on desertification. Yeah. And apparently in Ninja Xia. I'm so bad with the Chinese words. Well, hold on, let me try and figure this out. I'm going to go with Ning Chia for now. Stop me if you xia. Right. But desertification is a big problem there because this is super interesting. When they constructed the wall in this part of the country, policy was burn down all the trees and all the grass within 60 miles on the other side of the wall, the bad side, and then on our inside, let's clear the land to farm. Right. All great ideas, right? Yeah. But what happens is an environmental disaster is what makes modern what geologists, geographers, geographers sand a graphers, sand people, Tuscan Raiders, they say it's an environmental disaster. So basically, the northern desert in China is expanding at 1 million acres a year at this point. Yeah. And the Great Wall is right in the middle of that path. And what happens is sand dunes will just completely covered up in places. Or remember we talked about flash flooding being a big problem in desertification and that's going to crumble the base. It just erodes it yeah. So that whole area, because the desertification is losing its wall. I remember that from our desertification episode, that the Gobi Desert is just growing immensely every year. Is it Ninja? Did you get an answer on that? It is. You did it. It is that's it ningxia, that's you, man. You have a side career in Chinese pronunciation in life. I don't know about that. All right, let's take another break and we'll talk about tourism and then some of the new efforts to preserve the wall. So, Chuck, we were talking about how the human element is huge on deteriorating the Great Wall of China and not only is it people using bricks for their homes, which you can hardly blame a subsistence farmer for that kind of thing. Especially apparently in the more remote areas, they have no fondness for the wall. Sure. They don't care about it. They don't know that much about it. And a lot of times, especially in the remote areas, these are where the wall is most dilapidated. So it's like, yeah, why wouldn't I grab this brick and make a house that I need? Or should I contribute to the preservation of the wall? You tell me. A guy from Beijing, you know what I mean? Yeah. So those areas in the parts of the wall, in the more rural areas are under the most threat, for sure. But the stuff in the very highly trafficked areas, thanks to tourists, are equally under threat because people still just take bricks. But a lot of times it's foreign tourists taking bricks for souvenirs that's right. Either that or they're carving things into the wall. And every time you carve something into the wall, you're chipping away at it. Of course, there are souvenir shops and cable cars and sky cars, businesses and restaurants and billboards and all kinds of things scattered along the most populated parts of the wall. Yeah, like right up on it. Yeah. You never see those in pictures, people driving their cars on the Great Wall of China having raves like you talked about earlier. Yeah, it sounds like a cartoon. And apparently the raves were outlawed, but I saw online that they still had one in 2015 and it looked lame. Oh, really? I think they had 2000 people, which is not enough, apparently, because there was a shot in the trailer for this grave of people just sitting there with their hands on their and their chins on their hands, like looking bored. You mean it wasn't one of those super awesome rays? Right. It was a lame rave. I was too old for rays, thankfully. That was right in my wheelhouse. Yeah, that makes sense. I lived over on the west side of Atlanta right at the turn of the millennium and those big warehouses and you know the big tower there? Sure. Which tower? In the West End? If you can drive in the West End, there's a big blue tower that sticks up. Okay. And that tower, someone lived there and they would have waves on the weekend. Really? And people dude, people would drive from like, Tennessee and Alabama, go to these things for like a good rave. Yeah. And we would sit around and make fun of them and actually went in one time. What did you think? I'm going to live forever? Not my scene at all. But yeah, I mean, my pants did not taper out to like 2ft at the bottom. Sure. You know what I mean? Yeah. But it was interesting. Yeah. It's a culture I wasn't familiar with. I'm glad you went and exposed yourself. Yeah, well, I didn't expose you. Check this out. Ravers. Here's your god. I thought it was an old man back then. Didn't it crazy. Yeah. In 2000. That was 15 years ago. Yeah, it was like 30. Yeah, that's not old. I'm here to tell you, like, if I went to a rave today, people would call security, like, who's in the dark? Yeah, exactly. Where were we? Oh, yeah. The erosion of the wall. There's a lot of estimates, but I've seen everything from a third of it to half of it is gone. Yeah. And it's probably hard to tell because the same reason it's hard to measure. It's just so big. Yeah. And a lot of it, it's like, is that river part of it? Do we count that? Who knows? Yeah, good point. But yeah, it is in big trouble. And there are some parts of it that are gone forever. In addition to tourists and raves and people driving cars and driving their cattle across the wall, construction companies will build roads right through it. Yeah. Or just a big factory or something. Right upon it. Yeah. So finally, China said and again it was Deng Zhao Ping. I love that guy's name. It's a wonderful name. Yeah. He said, Love China. Preserve the wall. He came up with a slogan, I think 1985. Got to start with the slogan. Yes, slogans work. This is proof positive of it. And within 1520 years, the Chinese government well, I guess provincial governments were starting to enact their own laws restricting what you could or couldn't do on the wall with the wall to the wall. Right. Yeah. And then finally, I think 2008 is maybe 2007, the Chinese government, the federal government itself, said, okay, we're going to come up with our own walls or our own laws regarding the wall. And they started to take it seriously. And depending on who you talk to, it is because it's a huge tourist attraction that brings in 10 million people and all their money every year. Sure. Got to protect that. Or because it's part of China's heritage and it shows like we're in ancient culture that could do this with our eyes closed. Just watch us in the 21st century. Chinese fever. Catch it. Right. You know, that kind of thing. Well, how about it's? Both, probably. But there are some real laws in place now. It is illegal to take any bricks or to do things like build too close to it. I think any building within 600 ft, 500 meters is not allowed anymore. I don't think gathering firewood hurting your animals. So here's what I have to stop you. Do you have any idea what's the gathering firewood thing is that chopping down a tree? I don't know. I couldn't find it anywhere else. Why is there a big deal? Yeah, I could not find it anywhere else. So it has to just be chopping down a tree that leads to erosion. That's the only thing I can come up with. Yeah. Okay. I didn't know if you come across something. No, I just keep saying it. Taking firewood. Don't do it near the wall. Gathering firewood. Isn't that like a quaint folksy thing to think about? Oh, sure. Gathering firewood. That's the first thing you do when you go camping. Yeah, gathering firewood. Yeah. And it's almost like it sounds beautiful, too. Like cellar door. Gathering firewood. Agreed. It is very relaxing. Unless you're in a survival situation. Then you're just a matter of life or death. Exactly. But the laws are punishable institutions up to $62,500 for individuals. $6,250. See what they did there? Yeah. Divided by ten. But apparently from the Smithsonian article, they said that these laws are great, but it's just really hard to enforce this again because the Great Wall is so huge, you can get away with doing a lot to it without anyone around to see you. But I would imagine in the metropolitan areas, it's a little easier to enforce. Yeah, like some yokel from Kansas taking some bricks. They take bricks everywhere they go, don't they? Kansasan. Yeah, Kansas. Kenzania nights. Yeah, Kenzania nights. Let's see. You want to get Kristen Congratul, as promised? Yeah, I got no more facts. You don't need them. It's a great idea. I do want to shout out again to this awesome Smithsonian article from way back in 2008, the Great Wall of China is under Siege by Brooke Larmer. Go check it out and hold tight, and we'll go get Conger. All right, as promised, we have Kristen Conger from stuff Mom Never told you, and she has, as I said in the podcast, walked the Great Wall. But not all of it. Not all of it. A very small portion of the Great Wall of China I have walked. So we learned recently that it's 20 0 km long. Did you know that they did a survey of it and found it's way longer than they thought? Yeah, it's massive. And it's stunning to climate, because since the geography is so sparse around it, you really can just see it sneaking as far as the eye can see. That's awesome. What part did you go to? The park outside of Beijing. I think it's one of the main tourist destinations, like entrance spaces for the Great Wall. Did you take a brick or drive your car on it or go to a rave? Because those are illegal now. I mean, I did all of those things. Who doesn't go to a rave on the Great Wall? No, you didn't do anything. No, I didn't. I was struggling, so I went in December, and it was very cold, so there was the weather to deal with, and also just the sheer steepness of trying to scale this thing. There were two ways we could go. To the left was the more arduous path, and to the right was the little tourist friendlier path. And my fiancee and I were like, we're going to the left. The road not taken. Yes. So how do you actually this is probably a dumb question. How do you actually access it? Are there steps and entry points? I guess, yeah. So we pulled up to it was almost like a theme park entrance. Like, they have a gate and a temple there and you get, like, an admission ticket, and then they have bridges built to access the wall. So being there, when you finally saw it in person, what impressions that you had of it before were just totally destroyed, or was it exactly like you thought it would be? It was surreal being on it because I think a lot of times you see the aerial photographs of the Great Wall, so we have this bird's eye perspective on it. But once you're on the wall, I never considered how steep the stairs were, how the incline is also so steep. There were a couple of times when, climbing up, I was literally on my hands and knees. Wow. Getting up. But I also have a terrible fear of heights. Didn't know that that would be an issue, but it was. And you have winds kicking up because you're kind of on the side of a mountain and then coming down, having to kind of do the butt scoot down a few stairs. Wow. Are you serious? Yes. Holy cow. And I'm pretty fit not to brag. How high up were you? Like, at the highest point? Like, if you had fallen or jumped off the side, how far would you drop? I would have messed myself up big time. Is that the scientific answer? Yeah, I can't tell you altitude or anything. So earlier, too, in the office, you were saying that they like pipe music out and stuff like that. Yeah. So at pretty regular intervals along the wall, they have these lookout towers, and I think some of which were actually housing for people who were building the wall and guarding the wall. And the Chinese government has now installed these lovely speakers that pipe like traditional Chinese music along the wall. So you have a little soundtrack to guide you along your way. Did it add to it or detract it? Added to it in a way, because it was just such a bizarre experience. And we were also surrounded by so many other Chinese tourists as well, who were coming to the wall for the very first time. So you're sharing this experience with people who you can't verbally communicate with, but you're all kind of taking in this one site together. Are you guys all making the can you believe this? Wow. Facebook. We were all a GOG. So was the general impression, like, this is the dollywood of China, or did it seem like reverent and people have died here? And that kind of vibe, it was reverent. Aside from all the cigarette butts on the stairs that was the funny thing. There was an older gentleman who passed me as I was in my crawling face, smoking, the smoke heading on up. So there was a little bit of trash, but it was very clear that you needed to otherwise respect the space. There were actually a couple in my group who were huge sports fans, I want to say, of the Seahawks, and they were in all of their gear, and they want to take a photo of them with their Seahawks flag that got shut down very quickly. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. So they have people there minding the activity. Oh, yeah. If you're at a Chinese tourist attraction, people are watching you. There is nothing wrong with Dollywood, by the way. I want to put that on the record. It's a great place. And Congor, something very special happened to you on the Great Wall as well. Correct. Aside from scooting down on your fanny. Aside from an exotic fanny scoot, yes. And to our English friends here in America, that means butt. Right? Don't get all weird. So what happened? Tell us about your other experience. My fiance proposed to me, so we climbed to the highest point we could, and we were looking at this lovely guard tower, I suppose, and the music would play an interval. So we were in kind of a quiet lull, and I was just, like, looking out. And then I turned around and he was on one knee. And at that moment, as he was proposing, the music swelled yet again. It was amazing. And all these Chinese tourists were up there freaking out, like so many cell phone photos. And the Seahawks people were, like, just throwing footballs at us. That is totally awesome. I imagine not a lot of people get engaged on. Probably a lot of people, but I don't know anyone that's got engaged. I don't think anyone but me, Chuck. It's a very exclusive experience. And then one other thing. You mentioned you alluded to somebody almost not coming down. Was that you or was there somebody else who almost fell off? No, that was a guy named Barry who was part of my tour group. And he was very ambitious and determined to climb as far as he could. But we had to leave at a certain time, and he got stuck for a little while, and no one knew Barry was going to make it down, but Barry was never heard from again. Barry finally made it, but he had to take a cab. It took him so long to get down, he had to take a cab rather than the tour bus to the lunch restaurant, but then just spent lunch complaining about how much the cab cost. Barry strikes me as one of these guys who would be like, you guys missed out, man. You didn't see what I saw. Bingo. Kristen, do you have anything else to share? Go to China. It was amazing. I'm serious. Like, go to Beijing, see everything. It's incredible. Cool. And if you can get engaged on the Great Wall, it's a good story. Nice. That is good advice all around, Kristen. Thank you. Tell everybody how to get in touch with you with Stuff Mom Never told you. Well, you can simply head over to Stuffmom Nevertoldyou.com and everything's right there. Podcasts, videos, social media. Nice. Right there. Where again, stuff mom never told you.com. Wow. Yeah. That was awesome. I was thinking dragon. Conger in here. Boy. Barry, he got that guy in your cross, didn't he? I know that guy, man. There's one in every group. Let's see. What did we say? If you want to know more about the Great Wall of China I think you just did. Okay. Well, if you want to know more about the Great Wall of China, you can look those words up on the search bar athousedupworks.com and since I said search bar, it's time for listing or mail. I'm going to call this pretty serious stuff. Hello, Josh, Chuck and Jerry. Just wanted to give you all a sincere thank you. Sure you're aware of the appreciation we listeners have for the podcast. However, I hope you understand the extent of it. About one year ago, I was suffering from a very deep depression and tried to commit suicide. For obvious reasons, we all know I was not successful. And she puts a little wink in there. I appreciated that extra point. Agreed. In the attempt to gain focus in my life, I started an old hobby of running to summon what passions I used to have. And that is where stuff you should know kicked in. I started tuning into the show and forgot how deeply passionate I was about the world around me. Listening to the banter and filing away new information from the podcast really helped those long workouts. I can say. Now with my anniversary coming up, I'm in a much better place. I finished my degree in animation, and I'm working towards new goals. And you guys really helped out in that little unique way, and I'm forever thankful. Have a wonderful evening. That is so wonderful. Isn't that nice? Yes. Man, and I think name redacted on that. Thank you. Dear listener, we appreciate you for letting us know that we're glad we could be part of the whole jam, the whole road to recovery. Man. 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How Dark Money Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-dark-money-works | Since the Supreme Court ruled in 2010 in the Citizens United case that political contributions are speech and should be protected, the floodgates of anonymous political contributions have opened. But does absolute funding corrupt absolutely? | Since the Supreme Court ruled in 2010 in the Citizens United case that political contributions are speech and should be protected, the floodgates of anonymous political contributions have opened. But does absolute funding corrupt absolutely? | Thu, 10 Mar 2016 14:55:23 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=14, tm_min=55, tm_sec=23, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=70, tm_isdst=0) | 45883631 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Bush and dukakis on crime. Bush supports the death penalty for firstdegree murderers. Dukakis not only opposes the death penalty, he allowed for first degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison. One was Willie Horton, who murdered a boy in a robbery, stabbing him 19 times. Despite a life sentence, Horton received ten weekend passes from prison. Horton fled, kidnapped a young couple, stabbing the man, and repeatedly raping his girlfriend. Weekend prison Passes dukakis on crime. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles to be Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. And what you've just heard was something we brought back with us from 1988 via the Way Back Machine. That's right. An attack ad. The attack ad from the 1988 election between George Herbert Walker Bush and one Michael Dukakis. That's right. And that ad is widely credited as turning the tide against Dukakis's campaign, which was doing pretty good at the time. Yeah, well, some people say so, other people say true. Depends on who you ask. There's always dissent. That's politics. As it turns out, there's always more than one opinion. But the reason we bring up this ad, which first aired on September 21, it's called Weekend Passes for obvious reasons, and it was funded by something called the National Security Political Action Committee, and NSPAC was a non affiliated pro Bush political action committee that was aimed at sinking due caucus and getting Bush elected. Yeah, I think one of Bush's, maybe it was his chief campaign guy, said, by the time we're done, people are going to think Willy Horton is Dukakis's running mate. And it worked, too. I mean, like, still, if you say the name Willie Horton, people of a certain age E-G-R-H can still say, I know who that is. Yeah, well, quickly, the story of Willie Horton is was he in prison for murder? Was furloughed as part of for a weekend as part of the Massachusetts furlough program that was in effect at the time, and he raped and killed somebody on this weekend pass. On the weekend pass, which was a big sign that it may not be a good idea to furlough murderers. Yeah, I guess they needed to test it out to find out one way or another. But, yeah, that pretty much closed the book on it. And the thing was, the Bush campaign linked to the caucuses will Dukakis himself with the weekend passes and insinuated that he had come up with this and that he was in support of it. Well, he wasn't in support of it. He didn't come up with it, though. Yeah, he inherited it from his Republican predecessor, I believe. Yes. It actually started 1972 with a Republican governor of Massachusetts. Apparently, things have been going fine up until then. Up until Willie Horton came along. Yeah. It kind of had a weird long and winding road. The initial program excluded first degree murderers. And then the Supreme Court said, no, the law doesn't specifically say that, so you can't exclude first degree murderer. So the legislature said, well, we got to put a stop to this, and we can't let first degree murderers out on leave. Right. And Dukakis vetoed that. So he did support it until he decided to run for president. And that's when he said, let's get this off the books. Yeah. So the NS pack ad was very widely criticized. It was criticized as being misleading. It was criticized as fostering racist attitudes. But it still worked. A lot of people say, and I understand some people say no, a lot of people say this did work. Some people say it was the tank ride. Remember that? Oh, I forgot about it. But doctors were around that tank. Yeah, I totally forgot about that. He was off the rails there for a little bit. But the thing is, George Bush's campaign was able to say, hey, this had nothing to do with us. Blame an S pack. Right. So it still worked in George Bush's favor. But George Bush got to say, this had nothing to do with me. Not linked to it. Remodel it. That was Clinton. I just did. It was pretty dead on Clinton. Really? It's called a political match up. And the whole way that this pack was funded was with what's called dark money. Yeah. We should just title this one how to Exploit a Loophole in America. Yeah. And how the Supreme Court really screwed things up. Yeah. Or if you don't like Josh and Chuck talking politics, turn it off now. Yeah, but we're taking down the system. Yeah. Here's the thing, man. Billionaires controlling who gets elected in the United States is not a conservative or liberal issue. We're all being screwed over equally here. Everyone. I got a stat for you, and then we'll get right into it. This will shake you to the core. Since 2010, of the $1 billion spent in federal elections by super PACs, almost 60% of that money came from 195 people and their spouses. Right. 195 people. 60% of campaign of super Pac spending. Is that crazy? It is crazy, but it's not that surprising if you really step back and look at what's been going on the last decade or so. And that's what people I mean, some people say, like, spending tons of money on elections isn't bad. It's the fact that 195 people are the ones doing the majority of the spending. Right. That is not right. And that's a billion dollars spent by super PACs or political action committees, and super PACs up until recently had to disclose who donated money to them. So this is just the money that's traceable. And what we're talking about is the money that's not traceable here. So we're going to go back a little bit in the way back machine, back to the early 20th century once again. Yeah. And we're going to talk about money in politics. There's this really good Mother Jones article called Follow the Dark Money. And it gives a bit of a history of politics and money and says Congress is always reacting to some sort of money scandal. Right. But there's this long history and tradition of knowing who is funding campaigns. Transparency in America. Yeah. And it started with Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt ran as a trust buster. He was against the big corporations that controlled so much in the robber barons, but he was also simultaneously secretly going to the same corporations and robber barons and getting secret funding for his campaigns. Yes. One tycoon said, Teddy Roosevelt got down on his knees for us. That's not the normal description of Teddy Roosevelt as far as corporations are concerned, not the public image of him or any Teddy Roosevelt you wouldn't think got on his knees for anybody. So as a result, after Roosevelt was elected, he actually did something about it. He signed into law the Tillman Act that prevented it, outlawed corporations from directly contributing to candidates. That's illegal. Still is today. It is. That's why we need loopholes. Watergate came along in 72 election when Nixon was running for office, re election. Okay. He accepted $20 million in 1972, money in secret political contributions. And we're talking like, delivered in cash and checks in briefcases by couriers who are flying private jets from Texas to DC. For peak's sake. Yeah. And his personal attorney won, herbert Combach. He was the deputy finance chair for the Committee for Reelection for President. He destroyed this evidence and went to prison for it. Yeah. So it was a real thing that happened. What's crazy is their political action committee was the Committee to Re Elect the President. And the acronym was Creep. They call themselves Creep. And they were trying to reelect Nixon. It's pretty funny. I mean, come on. It's a little on the notes, don't you think? Maybe it was lost on them. So you fast forward and you just say, okay, guys, let's stop bashing Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon. How about some Democrats in there? And Bill Clinton was a really good example of that as well. Yeah. You want to go jogging with Bill? Want to play a little golf? Six figure check, please. Yeah. Access to the President or even somebody who's running for the presidency is not supposed to be purchasable. You want to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom? You or I? We can't do that. We don't have access to the President because we don't have that much money. So it's just simply not fair for somebody who does have that much money to have that much more access to the President or somebody running for the President. So over the years there have been scandal and then some sort of change to campaign finance laws. But there's been this through thread over the 20th century that America has said, we want to know who is giving money to candidates. We want to know who they're indebted to when they win. Yeah. But there's also been a thread of every time a law comes into action, there is a loophole that is invariably found that can get around that right. Created by the same politicians who pass the act to begin with. Sure. It's a game. Really upsetting, if you think about it. Oh, it's very upsetting. I'm really doing a good job here, staying calm. Well, you have a vein in your forehead that's pulsing. I can see it. Is there blood spurting out of it right now? So, Chuck, there's another thread, too, to all of this. It's semi political, and that is the tax code. Right. So if you go look at the tax code after 1913, you're going to see something called the 501 C Four organization that's right. Called the Social Welfare Organization. Or you can also be a local association of employees and be a 501 C Four. Those are also known as unions. Right? Correct. And as of the Underwood Tariffs, which brought back income taxes, 500. And C Four organizations are nonprofits that are tax exempt. Right. Yeah. And they can accept donations. But because of this, their 501 C Four status, they don't have to reveal who their donors are. Right. Which wouldn't seem like a big problem, because all nonprofits are are people trying to save animals and save the rainforest. Right. Social welfare one. Sure. So you want to just donate your money, and I want it to be anonymous, and it's no big deal. Right. But that is not always the case. By the well, late 1959, early 1960s, the government realized that politics and were they 501 C Four s at that time? Yeah. Okay. They were intertwined. There was nothing they could do about it. Right. And so they started loosening rules in 1981. They said. You know what? You can be politically engaged as long as it's under the banner of the promotion of social welfare, or the work you're doing is primarily social welfare. And the way that that translated, as far as the IRS, who enforces the tax code, as far as the IRS was concerned, it was, if 51% of your funds are spent on social welfare, you can spend up to 49% on political stuff. Yeah. And the IRS had to fight for that designation because previously, it just said primarily, which is such a loose word. They said, what does this really mean? Right. I think they released an interpretation, a rule that said, this is what primarily means 51 49. And that was the rule from 1981 on, basically. Yeah. And so, okay, you got 501. They're hanging out there, over there. They're doing their own thing. Nobody's paying too much attention to them. And then 2010 rolls along, and there was a lawsuit that had made its way through the lower courts up to the Supreme Court, and it was called Citizens United versus the Federal Election Committee. It sounds so boring that I hazard to say that 90% of Americans have never even heard of it, and it may be one of the most influential Supreme Court rulings in the history of this country. Right. But listen to it. Citizens United versus the FEC Snooze. So Citizens United was a political action committee? Well, I think it still is, as a matter of fact. And Citizens United was spending money on advertisements for a video on demand movie that was basically an attack ad, one giant attack ad on Hillary Clinton. I thought you were going to say it was one of those Kurt Cameron movies. I think it was similar. He had a cameo, I think. Right, okay. And so in this movie, like the Citizens United, I don't believe they funded the movie or finance it, but they were running ads about it. And they were running ads within, I think, 30 days of the election no, sorry, 30 days of a primary election, which under the McCain Feingold Act, which is a campaign finance reform act that came along in 2002, you're not allowed to do. And Citizens United said, you know what? Why wouldn't we be allowed to do this? This is political speech. We're going to sue the Federal Elections Commission. And they did. And free speech, and the Supreme Court ruled on it. And the Supreme Court in Citizens United ruled in favor of Citizens United. But then they released one of the most sweeping explanations of what they'd ruled that just completely changed the face of American politics from that point on. It said, it's open season. Bring in as much money as you want into the American political system because we are opening the floodgates as wide as they can go. Yeah. What they basically did was they equated speech with money, and they said basically they took the term money talks to the breaches that we can't even comprehend. Right. That you can make huge donations, and that is a political statement. That is your speech as a corporation, and you are protected because corporations are individuals. Right. So that's exactly what they did. They said spending money on political campaigns, any political contribution as a form of political speech. Speech is protected under the First Amendment, but the speech of individuals is protected while corporations are considered artificial people. So therefore they should have that same thing extended to them. Right. And so the ruling was that you can spend as much as you want as long as it doesn't go directly to a candidate. And you can also now, since there's 564s, you can funnel as much money as you want to A 500 and C Four and remain an anonymous donor. Yeah. There are a lot of problems. One of the biggest problems is these corporations are spending tons and tons, millions and millions of dollars. The Court essentially said, Joe Schmoe on the street donating $10 to a campaign is the same thing as a corporation donating $100,000 to a campaign, right, exactly. Because they're both individuals. Right. So it created this huge loophole. And I think the Supreme Court they were relying on was that these groups would be independent of the candidates. And that's not only not how it worked out, that was the plan all along. It was extremely naive, the ruling was. And if you look at naive or was it, I don't know. But if you look at the I have the same question a lot of people do. If you look at the ruling, though, there's a section on transparency where they say, we the Supreme Court uphold the constitutionality of requiring transparency in campaign finance. Yeah, that passed eight to one, right, eight to one. Which is like the only person descending was Clarence Thomas. And it was like, yes, we're saying you need to be transparent. And they said, okay, well, then transparency is going to come through people demanding the corporations that they own stock in to release what, political donations they've done. That makes total sense. If you have stock and a company, if your life's fortune is invested in a corporation, you should know who they are giving their money to. Okay, so that's one way. And they also said, well, the Federal Elections Commission, they've got their job to do. The IRS, the SEC, there's all these regulatory agencies that are tasked with keeping transparency in the political process, and we're just going to rely on them. And as we're about to see after this break, relying on that was an enormous mistake. Foolhardy. All right, we're back. Boy, we're getting riled up today. I'm remaining calm still. I'm riled up election season. So the Supreme Court said, spend as much money as you want. Spend it anonymously if you want. The only thing that remains illegal is corporations contributing directly to candidates. Right. Which once you have these loopholes, who cares? You don't need to anymore, right? Plus, also, don't even worry about the mega donors donating directly to candidates because there's requirements for reporting. There's transparency requirements. If you under McCain find gold. If you contribute $1,000 or more to a candidate or a pack that has to report donors, you have to report it. Somebody's got to report it. Sure, there's transparency, right? The Federal Elections Commission, the IRS, all these guys are tasked with making sure that happened. So we're fine. Supreme Court went home and took a giant nap together on their enormous nine person bed. And here's one of the other big problems, is a lot of this money goes toward campaign ads, television ads, which have a lot of sway. Nine out of ten, and people have studied this, the Annenberg Public Policy Center determined in that the 2012 campaign cycle, nine out of ten ads funded by dark money were negative. So that's why you see those negative ads. And not only that, but 26% of those were misleading and there's no accountability. So they're being funded anonymously and there's no fact checker. They don't have to run it by anybody to get approval and say, well, this is all true, it's not misleading at all. So you can basically say whatever you want. The ad runs, it's anonymously funded, and someone's campaign is destroyed in the process. So the point is, as long as the candidate is not coordinating with the Political Action Committee, the super Pac, or the 501 C Four, then it's all kosher. It's all legal and coordinating, meaning, like, so Blatantly, come on, it's still going on. So every election season, as it starts to kick off, you'll see on the news, like Ted Cruz or Bernie Sanders or whoever, just released an eerie twelve hour tape of them doing different things with no soundtrack whatsoever. And the whole thing is what? Yeah, they'll release a reel and it's them hanging out with their mom, them riding a tractor, them like, standing on like a mountain looking as the sun comes up with their foot on the head of a small child. Sure. And it's just that there's no sound to it whatsoever. And they just put it out there. I'm just putting it out there. And then anybody wants to use it can do whatever they want with it. And then the political action committees come along that's raw footage, use that footage to make their ads in support of the candidate. I kind of wondered, I was like, how are they getting this footage anyway if they can't be directed or tied putting it out there? I had no idea. Yeah, it's pretty cynical, really, if you think about it. The idea that they're not coordinating in any way, shape or form, they're just putting all this raw footage out there. Sure. And again, guys, if you're getting riled up, if you're a Republican, when we say they like, the Democrats do this too. But it's really disingenuous to say that all parties are equally at fault here for using dark money. Because again, studies show that if you quantify the amount of money spent by the GOP and by the Democrats, the GOP has outspent the Democrats mind boggling, 83% to 17%. Yes. As far as using dark money goes, yeah, it's definitely not a democrats do it for sure, and they sometimes do it cynically. I read about a dark money committee that released an ad in favor of Harry Reid lambasting dark money. That's pretty cynical as well. Wow. Yeah. So both sides do it, the Republicans just do it way more. Yeah. And I think Hillary Clinton has come under fire for her reliance on super PACs. Right. Being attacked by Bernie, of course, who's like, I don't want any part of that stuff. Although there are some super pecs for Bernie, but I think he's disavowed them, maybe. Yeah, I have to look into that. George Bush disavowed the weekend past his ad to you still benefit from it. It's not like he's like, Guys, you have to stop. Well, that was my Bernie Sanders. No, that was your Larry David. Right. Oh, wait, same guy. Leading up to the primaries here in New Hampshire and Iowa, not too long ago, Bernie came under fire from Hillary because there is a group called Friends of the Earth Action. They're a 501 C four, and they are in strong support of Bernie. And she's like, hey, dude, you're getting dark money, too, from this outfit, right? Friends of Birth Action said, hey, first of all, we've been around since the early 70s. We've been around long before dark money has been around. That's not what we are. We are mainly small, donor based. Do not compare us to these corporations. And they have a point in a lot of ways. You can't compare the Friends of Earth Action to the Koch brothers, but I think Hillary was just trying to get in some, like, hey, you're not completely clean either. Right? It's true. And the Koch brothers is good that you mentioned them because they are basically the poster boys for dark money contributions, right? Americans for Prosperity spent $36 million, and that's their group, right? In 2012. Yes, in 2012. And they actually got outspent by other groups like Carl Rove, created Crossroads GPS. All these names are so dumb. They spent 71 million in 2012. But the Koch brothers in particular have pledged $900 million for the 2016 cycle. That's how much they're going to spend on the 2016 cycle. And if you read up on those guys and their dark money contributions, or just the general political contributions, they've definitely amassed a lot of friends in state legislatures, in the Senate, in the House, and the one that's left is the presidency, and they're spending a tremendous amount of money making friends with whoever is going to become president. All right, so let's talk for a second about does money win you an election? Because that's really what's the root here. If money doesn't win you elections and who cares? I take issue with that, but go ahead. What's the issue? Well, the issue is, like in this article, the author says, a lot of people raise a lot of money and flame out. They don't make it even to the primary. Look at Jeb Bush. Yeah. I think he raised 103,000,000 through Super PACs alone. Yeah, and just burned right through it. Didn't get anywhere with it. But that's a disingenuous that's a straw argument because it's saying, like, yeah, you can raise all the money you want and you're still not going to win. The thing is, somebody's going to win, and the people that help them win through these huge donations, they're going to be indebted to those people. Well, I'll help you out even further, my friend, okay. People that say you can spend a ton of money and still not win, he or she who spends the most money almost always wins. Yeah, sort of. Yeah. Nine out of ten in the House and eight out of ten in the Senate winners are the people who spent the most money. Oh, is that right? Yeah. 82% and 94%. Yeah. So you can't ignore that. If you raise the most money, you have an eight or nine out of ten chance of winning. I got you. So money is buying elections. It is. And then people say, well, as long as the PACs and the super PACs and the 501 C four all stay separate from the candidate and there's no coordination and there's no crossover or whatever, then the candidates not indebted to these people who gave $900 million to their campaign, which is just the most ridiculous assertion you can possibly think of. And I read this I think it was a Bloomberg article or US News, I can't remember, and it basically explained it, how you're indebted to these people. It's not necessarily nefarious, although I'm quite sure there is a tremendous amount of nefariousness out there. But even if you remove the nefarious angle right? Yes. If you are a presidential candidate and you're moving and shaking yeah. You're going to, like, the local diner somewhere in Rhode Island or whatever, and shaking hands or whatever, but the people you're really interacting with that you see over and over again at the same fundraisers, those are the mega donors. Yeah. You don't see the dude who's sitting at the diner asking you a question more than that one time at that one diner, you see him in the photo op. You do see the same mega donors time after time after time after time. Yeah. So the very least, they have your ear. And even if they don't have your ear, they become who you think of when you think of your electorate. These people who you saw time and time and time again, who contributed money after money after money. So even if you're not saying, yeah, give me some money, and I'll make your legal troubles go away with the IRS, even if it's not quid pro quo like that, there's still a mentality that crops up where if you're exposed to these people who are giving you tons of cash to get you elected, you're going to equate their help with your success at being elected. That's, at the very least, how it influences politics. Yeah. All right, we definitely need to take a break now because I can't even do blood coming out of your eye. Ducks. All right, we're back. You good? You got the tissue? Yeah, I'm good. You're crying bloody tears. I'm good. I get riled up, too, man. When you look at the state of American politics these days, it's very hard to not want to go live on a deserted island somewhere, move to Canada, start your own oligarchy. Yeah. Rule myself. Monkeys. I don't know much about politics around the world. I know other, like, wealthy countries are corrupt as well. Right. I feel like we're leaving the race, though. Maybe not the race downward. Yeah. I'd like to hear from other countries out there, other big wealthy countries, about your systems. I'm sure they're largely broken, right? Or are we the only ones? No, we're definitely not the only ones. He's doing it right, the Finns. I don't know. I bet Finland, it's got it all together. You look at Scandinavia and you're like, yeah, they're like a model of using taxes for good and all that. But how much of it do you not hear about? How much waste is there? How much graft is there? Well, they pay so much in taxes over there. But everything we hear, though, from people in that part of the world say, we're happy to because everything is great. We have no crime, we have no gun violence. Everyone's healthy. We all get healthcare. Schools are awesome, we're all happy. I don't know. Maybe I'll move to Finland. So we talked about how money influences politics, but the underlying key is this. If you can purchase campaigns, you can purchase everything else, because you get people who owe you or who you've influenced or who you just share a tremendous amount of common viewpoints with into office. You backed the right horse. Your guy got in there, right? Yeah. You can put it as crassly or as nicely as you want, but you help get somebody into office, and now they kind of owe you, and now the policies are probably going to fall into your favor. And just the ability to do this is such a symptom of the inequality in the United States that we're dealing with right now that I think that's what disheartens me the most. It's like when the Supreme Court ruled in 2010, we're opening the floodgates, basically said, you have the voice individual. Yeah, it did. But did we ever was the Supreme Court really just saying, like, hey, we're going to take the scales off your eyes, right? We're going to take away any pretense. Here's how it is. Here's probably how it's always been, but now it's legal, man. Just get used to it. Yeah, but no one was paying attention. But I mean, like, back in the 70s when Watergate happened, people paid attention to that. The idea that if you are wealthy, you could become an ambassador for 250K or that you had access to the president, it's always ticked Americans off. That's true. Remember when we talked a little bit ago about the 501 C? Four s have to 51% of their spending cannot be political. No comment on that part. But it's unenforceable, basically. Well, the IRS did try to enforce it once. Yes. That's where I was headed. The IRS made the mistake of going too hard at the Tea Party because they felt like they were the worst offenders, and it backfired on them in a big way, to say the least. What. Did you say? Yeah, well, the GOP in Congress came down hard on the IRS. They got the IRS director removed from her position, got a new person installed, and this new guy has basically said, like, you know, I'm just going with everything the Supreme Court thinks, so I'm going to stop enforcing this. And even if the IRS wanted to enforce these rules that they're tasked with making sure that there's transparency, right. Yeah. The Senate actually inserted a couple of bills. And by Senate, I mean Mitch McConnell, who hates campaign finance laws, he got a couple of bills inserted in the omnibus spending bill. A couple of riders. Yes. And if you guys, a lot of people may not know what an omnibus spending bill is. It's basically a big, large, sweeping set of many bills and writers all under one banner. It's the government's budget. Well, yeah, but they don't have to do with one another. When you hear like, a rider was attached to it, that a lot of times means someone is trying to sort of sneak something through. Right. So if you attach a rider to the right bill, you can get almost anything passed. And I shouldn't say sneak something through because it's not like it's in secret, but it's a very convenient way to pass a controversial amendment. Right. Okay. So if you take a very cherry bill, like one that has to pass, like the bill that pays for the government spending for the next year yeah. And you insert a writer in there that says the IRS is not allowed to make clear rules on 501 C four and political action committee spending on politics, you're going to get it passed. And it did get passed. Yeah. And another thing that got passed was, remember when we talked about the fact that shareholders wanted to know if their corporations, who they were donating to? They also got almost in, they almost got in a writer that said, no, corporations don't have to do that. They've did. They said that the SEC is not allowed to make rules considering making corporations disclose political contributions. Yeah. You cannot force them to do that. So there's a ban on the IRS clarifying its rules and the SEC creating a rule just clarifying. They just wanted it more clearly defined. Right. We can't do that. We like it really nebulous. So Congress said, sit down. When it comes to campaign finance stuff, you don't do your jobs anymore. Your regulatory stuff is over with. Now, individuals have petitioned these companies and sometimes they voluntarily given it up. But if that's the solution, then it's not much of one, right? Lastly, the SEC is down, the IRS is down. And the last agency that was tasked with enforcing transparency was the Federal Elections Commission itself. Yeah. Surely they would step up and do the right thing. So the Federal Elections Commission is now split three and three along party lines and apparently deadlocks as a matter of routine. So you need four commissioners, four SEC commissioners to take action on anything to get a quorum. Right. They can't even get a quorum. So as far as campaign finance stuff goes, they have been sitting on their hands since 2010. And there was a couple of rulings about transparency that are about the last things they did. So in 2007, they said, you know that McCain Feingold requirement that says if you spend $1,000 or more contributing to a political group or campaign, you have to disclose it? Yeah. We, the Federal Elections Commission decided that that means that if you spend $1,000 or more on a political communication, like an ad, then you have to disclose it. So that means that if you contributed $1,000 to a political action committee, you would have to say, this is for ads. Well, and for this ad specifically. That came later, but, yeah, that's the way it is now, which no one ever does. It's another loophole. So this last thing, this last bastion of transparency to where you had to say, I donated $1,000 or more, you would have to say it is not just for an attack ad. It's for attack ad number 238. Hillary hates America. Right. That's what this money is for. And like you said, no one does that well, because they don't have to. As far as the Federal Elections Commission is concerned, you don't have to say you donated that $1,000. Yeah, they don't have to. So they won't because they don't want their name attached to it, which is the most cowardly thing you can do, if you think about it. Well, yeah, well, that's the argument that's a lot of people's argument. Anonymous political speech keeps you from getting blowback from the powers that be or whatever. And there was this woman who was caught handing out anonymous pamphlets that she wrote outside of a polling place, which apparently was illegal under McCain Feingold. And everybody was like, well, there's a long, proud tradition of handing out anonymous by Thomas Paine. Right. The Federalist Papers were originally anonymous. Yeah. And Justice Scalia, who died recently, he was actually very conservative. And in his dissent on that ruling in favor of the woman's right to handle out anonymous pamphlet said, anonymous pamphlets have about as much historic tradition and precedence as anonymous phone calls in this country. They're not honorable. There's nothing honorable about anonymously lambasting something that didn't translate to the rest of the court as far as Citizens United is concerned. Yeah. It's the equivalent of going in the dark of night and, like, spray painting something on a wall and running away. Right. It's true. So here's where we're at right now. The Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people. They already had ruled that they upheld it. Political money is protected speech. Right? Yeah. So this opened the floodgates to unlimited money, to 501s, which are nonprofit action groups who do not need to disclose their donors identities, which means that you could contribute as much money as you wanted to anonymously to a political campaign. So the SEC was banned from requiring corporate disclosure. The IRS was banned from investigating the political action groups themselves. And then the SEC, the Federal Elections Commission, removed the last transparency requirements of the donors, and an estimated $10 billion is going to be spent on this 2016 campaign. Five or 6 billion on the presidency. Right. 2 billion was spent in 2012. So the big question here is, are you, the individual, upping your political contribution five times? Do you account for this enormous increase from 2 billion to five or $6 billion? No, of course not. So there are some folks that started digging around and said, all right, who's funding some of these efforts? Maybe like climate change denial. Somebody's funding this stuff. Right. So there's a guy named well, at Drexel University, environmental sociologist named Robert Brew. He said, you know what? Let me look into this and see. Somebody is giving a lot of money to climate change denial. And Exxon was given a ton of money, like blatantly, for years and years and again, the Koch brothers. The Koch brothers. And we all knew that because it was all on record. But a weird thing happened once these changes came about, the Koch brothers, coke industries and Exxon mobile, their cash flow to climate change now disappeared without a trace. Yeah, they're traceable stuff. But 140 foundations funneled almost $600 million to about 100 climate denial organizations since then, and their money dried up. This money increased into anonymous 564. You don't need to be a Sherlock Holmes to figure out what's going on here. Yeah. And the other thing about a 501 C Four is let's say you have a really great political action committee or a really great social awareness group. Right? Yeah. Or social welfare group. And you don't want to let that brand die because it's really established itself. But you don't want to keep funneling money to it because climate denial has a bad name these days. Right. You can funnel money to a 501 C Four that funnels money to that political action committee. Well, that's what's happening. And your donation, it's basically laundered. You're laundering your donation, turning it anonymous, but it's still having the same effect, the same outcome. Yeah. Thanks to that loophole. Yeah. And then one more Chuck, one more criticism of this whole thing is if you say, So what? Who cares? This is the way the world works, especially with corporations in particular, if they start doing what's called rent seeking, which is there's an established pie. And when you rent seek, you go to get your piece of the pie, it keeps you from innovating. You start spending your money on legislation. Yeah. It's like renting is basically, if you're a big corporation spending $100 million on lobbying for regulations against your competitor, instead of spending that $100 million investing in your own corporation to grow right. Which is no good for shareholders. No. Your bottom line still kind of goes up, but really you're just reaching the path towards stagnation because you're not innovating anymore. And the public loses out because regulation decreases. Right. Jobs are lost because you're not innovating. And then as far as consumers are concerned, there's, like, less stuff to buy because corporations are going for the piece of the pie rather than making the pie bigger or creating new pies. Yes. They're going for the money that's already out there. So the solution, I think, is strictly public financing of campaigns. I have no problem with that. Just say, here's $100 million to the candidates who won the primaries. Right. And get creative. This is all you got. It's illegal to use another penny outside of these public funds that were just given to you as the party candidates go to it. Yeah. Everything else is totally illegal. I can't imagine what a seat change it would be in politics. I can't imagine there would be another loophole. Well, you know, what would happen is suddenly these political action committees would start attacking this idea, saying, you Joe Schmo. You can't vote with your or your political speech from your campaign contribution is being restricted. Your First Amendment rights are being restricted. Your $50 you were going to give exactly. A candidate which is suddenly taken on huge dimensions of import. It's being restricted. And that's exactly what would happen. So we move into Finland. No, we need to take this country back, man. What's the best country? That's what I want to know from listeners. Which one is the best? Oh, I can't wait to hear. Costa Rica. That's pretty nice, right? Sure. If you want to know more about campaign finance, dark money, all that jazz, we want you to go check it out. Look up darkmoney in the search bar@housetofworks.com and just check out Dark Money all over the web. Oh, yeah. Including Jane Mayer from The New Yorker. Wrote a really interesting book called Dark Money all about the Koch brothers. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, since I said Jay Mayor, it's time for listener now. All right, I'm going to call this one maybe appropriate for this. Well, not really. Somebody funding us, literally. This is from a coal miner about our Bill Gates podcast. He said, hey, guys, one problem that no one ever seems to talk about with renewable energy is the people. The people you ask. Well, I was an underground coal miner for seven years until the market got so bad that I lost my job. I'm just one of 7000 plus people here in Eastern Kentucky that has been hit hard by this. I'm not saying we need to stick with coal. It's just that people don't think about the people that are behind the fossil fuel industry losing jobs. Not only are people losing their way of life, but entire towns are being killed. I can't count how many people have had to leave the place that they've called home their entire life to find work along with new renewable, cheaper energy. We need to find jobs to fill that void of those who have been lost. I was greed. Yeah, it's not like because creating renewable energy creates a lot of jobs, but they're not going to the coal miners. Right? You know what I'm saying? Yeah, but however, this is kind of neat. I was lucky enough to find work at bitSource, a tech startup here. The company hired ten former coal miners and began teaching us how to be web and software developers. Awesome. The only problem is there are only ten of us and it's just this one company and they cannot fill the void of all those who lost jobs. I know that you guys might be able to help shed some light on this problem. As I said, no one thinks about the people and the families that are hurt by progress. But it happens. Someone told me once, you can be the best wheel maker out there. But if no one needs wheels anymore, it doesn't matter how good you are. Thanks for the podcast. I love to listen on my drive to and from work. That is Michael Harrison. That is a great point, Michael. It is. Somebody should do something or maybe train these people in new renewable energy forms. Sure. And this Bit source company is a pretty good example of how the market can swoop in and foster progress, basically, right? Sure. But the fact that they're hiring ten coal miners out of 7000 who need jobs is also an example of how the market doesn't do that. This is where government comes in. Government spending say, okay, let's move forward and lay the infrastructure for an enormous high speed Internet national grid. We need people to install that. We need people to design it, we need people to develop it, we need people to maintain it. Let's take people who don't have jobs, train them to do this stuff, build this infrastructure and just take off like a rocket from there. Yes. That's one thing you could do. Agreed. Man we're going to get some mail for this whole episode. Good. If you want to get in touch with us to let us know what you think about this whole jam, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychnow, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@houseupworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web studiesheno.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetepworks.com." | ||
What is the future of Earth? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-is-the-future-of-earth | What will the Earth be like in 5,000 or 50,000 years? In this far-sighted episode, Josh and Chuck explore how Earth may change over time. Listen in to learn more about humanity's odds of survival -- and how technology just might save us. | What will the Earth be like in 5,000 or 50,000 years? In this far-sighted episode, Josh and Chuck explore how Earth may change over time. Listen in to learn more about humanity's odds of survival -- and how technology just might save us. | Thu, 17 May 2012 18:34:06 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=18, tm_min=34, tm_sec=6, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=138, tm_isdst=0) | 32237271 | 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. Picture this, friends. You could be packing a carry on for a trip to Hawaii when you realize you're going to need a bigger bag. But it's cool because you booked your flight with your City Advantage Platinum Select card so you can check a bag for free on domestic travel and still have room for those souvenirs. And surprise, those souvenirs also earned you Advantage Miles. Actually, you earned Advantage miles and loyalty points with each swipe. So let's start dreaming about your next next adventure. This could be you, and you could be anywhere with the city Advantage Platinum Select card. Learn more at city comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, with me, as always, as Charles W. Chuck Bryant, maker of some fine yarns spinner of yarns. You're a yarn spinner? I am. I guess I am, too, to a certain extent. Part time seamstress. Yes. But you only make the suit of life formed by matador. That's right. Josh. Chuck. Yes. How's it going? It's great. I can't wait to hear the intro for this. Why? I don't know. Because I thought this is a pretty interesting thing that we're doing. I agree. This is not one, not two, but three articles in one. That's right. Combined and mismatched, taken totally out of context and repeated incorrectly. Yeah. We might be all over the place on this one. Not necessarily. I've discovered a structure to this. Oh, good. So follow me. Just leave me. Okay. Let me give you the intro first. Okay. Chuck, have you heard of the Kio satellite? No. Okay. If you read Ben Bolan's blog, you would have heard of it. He's written about it twice. Who. Yeah. Stuff they don't want you to know is Ben bowling car stuff. Ben Bowen, just a general man about town of awesomeness Benbolin. I love Benny. He wrote about the Kia satellite, which was originally conceived in, I think, 1994 by a French artist named Jeanmark Philippe. So if you didn't believe me that he was French, I'll bet you do now. And his idea was to basically create a time capsule and launch it into space. Right. So we had standard stuff, standard timecastle stuff. A drop of human blood encased in a diamond with the human genome engraved on the outside of it. Kim Kardashian's bikini. Right? Yeah. Let's see. A sample of air, water, basically earth, wind and fire, but without the fire. And with air. And then a CV of earth, wind and fire, which would be great. And water. Yeah. I don't know why you wouldn't put it in there. That would be a fun little ironic twist. He got a bunch of press because one of the cool things that he's invited people to do is to enter your own message, whatever you want to say. Cool. Up to 6000 characters, which is still substantial paragraphs. And originally, since this was from 1994, you could send your submission in via regular mail or as Time Magazine put it in 2000, electronic mail. Is that what they said? Yeah. Now I'm quite sure you can only go to Kio.org and enter it through the website, but then all of this will be compiled into, again based on the Time Magazine report, a CDROM. Now it'll be transcribed onto some DVDs. Now this thing should have been launched like five times, but he's seeking private funding. It's a good idea, people are with it. Has no one ever done this? No, but the whole point of it is all this stuff is going to be put into a satellite shot in his face and it's going to be given, I'm not quite sure how, a 50,000 year orbit, and then after 50,000 years it should fall to Earth. Hopefully be discovered. Within all this will be some sort of pictogram depicting how to create a DVD player. And then interesting, some future civilization would be like, oh, it's a DVD. It'll just pop it in our DVD player and then oh my gosh, I can't believe what Mitch Mouse 14 had to say about what life is like on Earth 50,000 years ago. Yeah. What does this lol mean? And he chose Kio because apparently Keo are the three most common phone names in all the world's languages. It's a pretty good idea. Sure. I love it. At the very least it coincides with one of the articles we're talking about what will the Earth be like in 50,000 years? Boom. Intro done. Nice job. And to get to 50,000 years, Josh, we are going to also touch on the articles 500 years and 5000 years. And through this I'm also going to be disseminating information. I found a live science article that hit 20 20, 20, 30, 20, 50, 70, 82,100. And they sort of called opinions from scientists all over the world on what might be going on. And that's all within the next 200 years. Nice. And the story is not good. Well, yes. So here's the structure I mentioned previously, Chuckers. Okay. There's a couple of ways to approach this. Right? Okay. So we're talking about the Earth 505,050 thousand years from now. There are two big questions. One, will humans be around at each of these periods? Sure. And there's two possible answers, yes or no. And then depending on the answer we choose, we choose our own adventure and we end up with treasure or being chased by pirates. Right, okay. The other possible answer is, okay, if humans are around, how advanced is our technology? And specifically how advanced is our ability to tap energy, which apparently is totally correlated with how advanced our technology will be. Sure. Right. Yeah. So I guess approaching the idea where humans aren't around for any of this, just go watch a documentary called Life After US or Life After People. I didn't get to watch it. It's cool. I know I'm going to watch it. It's a very neat little hour and a half documentary that was a miniseries, like, some time ago on some other channel, but it was neat little documentary, like what if and it shows, like, how long basically, the Earth will erase any mark of humanity after we're gone, and it takes a startlingly short time, and the dogs go feral, and it's crazy. Really. Yeah. But let's say humans are around, especially in that 500 year scenario. Well, before we get there, can I read some of these highlights? And this is in the next up until 2100. Okay. So this is in the immediate future for some of us. We'll still be alive. I'll just read a few of these. By the year 2020, just to scare you. Less rainfall could reduce agricultural yields by up to 50% in some parts of the world. Okay. Wow. World population will be 7.6 billion by 2030. Up to 18% of the coral reefs in the world will be lost yeah. Because of increased temperatures in the sea and higher acidity. Right. Was it lower acidity? I think it's higher acidity. Is it higher? Okay. And the Arctic sea could be ice free in the summertime by the year 23. That's crazy. And these are, according to that was specifically James Overland of the N OA. And Mouyen Wang of the Geophysical Research Letters from UW. Right. So I'm not trying to preach some wacky global warming conspiracies here. Oh, no. Quoting from other people. Okay. By 2050, ocean acidification okay, it is acid could kill off most of the coral reefs. At least 400 bird species could become endangered or extinct due to deforestation and people eating them. In Australia, all you Aussies out there, there will likely be an additional 3200 to 5200 heat related deaths per year. 2080. Josh oh, it gets worse. Between 1.1 and 3.2 billion people will experience water shortages, and up to 600 million people will go hungry. You know, it's crazy. We've talked a lot about this. Like what happens when we run out of water, the climate porn one where we warned against exactly what we're doing right now. We've talked about a lot of this. Go back and listen to it. Everybody agreed sea levels could rise in New York City by more than 3ft flooding. Brooklyn, Queens, Coney Island Island. Let me add something there. 3ft. It's a meter, roughly. It's a lot. And that's totally within the predictions of sea level rise due to global warming, right? Yeah. About half a meter to 2 meters is what's predicted. So 1 meter in there. If the sea levels rise by 1 meter in the US will lose 10,000 sq mi of dry land, 90% of that in the southwest. Wow. If the sea levels rise 1 meter in India, Bangladesh and Indonesia they will lose respectively 6000 dry land lost. And believe me, Indonesia doesn't have much more than 34 0 dry land to give up, right? Sure. And the total of 24 million people will be displaced. I know that's 3ft. Think about it, it doesn't seem like much, but it goes away back. Plus also we lose all those wetland buffers so erosion really takes a hold as well. Well, they also along those lines predicted that coastal population is going to balloon to about 5 billion people and 20% already live along the world's most populated river basins. Survey is going to have to move back a little bit. Everybody back up. So while this is happening too, by the year 2080, while some places are flooded, other places can be drying out. Oh yeah, desertification, we've talked about that. And then flash forward to 2100. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will be much higher than any time during the past 650,000 years. Ocean PH levels will be the lowest they've been in the last 20 million years and the ability of things like coral, crabs, oysters, any kind of shellfish exoskeleton probably isn't going to be alive. Yeah. And a quarter of all species of plants and land animals could be driven to extinction. 25%. Okay, let's say Chuck, that tomorrow everybody's like we're going all wind power, everybody just prepare for some dark couple of years. But we're going to be fine. We're done doing fossil fuels tomorrow and we don't put any more anthropogenic CO2 into the atmosphere. If we did that, within a few decades CO2 levels would go back to normal. Whatever you could consider normal without human contribution. But then about 1500 years from now we could expect to enter another Ice age which will last 40,000 to 100,000 years. So you're starting to get the idea that humans just being us on the planet, just burning fossil fuels, dead plants and animals for energy. Extremely primitive as you're about to see. Yeah, we are in trouble one way or the other. Oh yeah. And dude, that's not even talking about extinction level events. No, that are going to happen at some point. That's normal glacial stuff. Yeah, that may happen millions of years from now, but at some point something will destroy humanity. Okay, yes, agreed. But over the short term, say 500 years. Yeah. Okay. We have a big challenge to stay alive. We have to basically become our technology has to outgrow the frequency of catastrophic events. Things like a meteor comet, an ice Age climate change. That's Michio Kiku talking. But if our civilization can advance fast enough that we can say, oh, there's a comet that's coming and there's going to be a mass extinction event, luckily our technology is sufficient that we can go out there and destroy it before it gets anywhere near Earth. Right. We'll be fine. We should be able to ensure our survival at least here on the planet. And the way to do that is to go from what we are now, which is essentially a type zero civilization, to a type one civilization. Yes. We should go ahead and mention this. It's very important. The Kim Kardashian scale. Okay, that's twice in one. That's crazy. I don't even know about it. I don't even know who she is. Hardly that's good. Okay. 1964, Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashianv put forth his theory that our technical advancement is in direct correlation to how much energy we can consume and tap into harness. Yeah. Type one, which we're not even there yet, we're type zero right now, is we can harness everything on this planet, period. Every kind of energy we can tap into. Right. But it should be any type of energy that's available that's non extractive. Basically, any kind of non harmful energy is kind of the caveat. So basically, solar radiation, nuclear fusion, that kind of thing, we use a billionth of the Sun's? No, there's a billionth of the Sun's energy available to us on Earth through solar radiation. Okay. We currently harness a millionth of that. Wow. So we have a ways to go. But if you look at our progress over the last 100 years, we were harnessing, like, zero of it, pretty much, and now we're harnessing a million. So it's quite possible, according to Mityo Ku, that we'll be able to harness 100% within 100 years. They say that over the past 10,000 years, our scientists estimate that we have evolved 100 times faster than at any other time. So if that continues, then hopefully we can keep pace. I mean, just look at our advances in lighting over the last 100 years. We went from fire to incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescence. Yeah. I feel like we're exponentially advancing. Agreed. What if you were a major transit system with billions of passengers taking millions of trips every year? You aren't about to let any cyberattacks slow you down. So you partner with IBM to build a security architecture to keep your data network and applications protected. Now you can tackle threats so they don't bring you to a grinding halt, and everyone's going places, including you. Let's create cybersecurity that keeps your business on track. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. Hey, Chuck, it's summer, which means school is out, sun is shining, the daylight lasts longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story, isn't there? There sure is. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, you can tune into the podcast series on Amazon. Music. My favorite murder from exactly right media. That's right. Part true crime and part comedy, my Favorite Murder takes you on a journey through small town mysteries and major laughs, all in the same week. That's right. Hosts Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hard Stark banter with each other, sharing their favorite true crime tales, and explore unique hometown stories from friends and fans alike. And they're both great, and it's a fun show. And you should listen. So listen to new episodes of my favorite murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. So, if we move to a Type One, we harness 100% of the energy on the planet, we become, by definition, according to Kardashev, a truly planetary species, where we probably have a universal language. We're all communicating via the Internet like we are Earthlings, and we no longer see ourselves as Americans or Mexicans or Latvians or whoever. Right. We are Earthlings. Right. Exactly. And as a result, our technology should be advanced enough that we can control things on the planet that threaten us, like ice ages or climate change. So if we can do that, then we insured our survival here on Earth, at least from those sort of natural disasters. Exactly. Good point, Chuck, because we could always kill ourselves via war or something like that. Or we may enter the singularity before we've sufficiently attached ourselves to machines, become posthuman. And if the singularity takes off before then, we are doomed. All right, let's get through these next two really quick. Okay, man. Type two means we can summon the power of an entire star system. That's pretty impressive. Which Freeman Dyson. Yeah, physicist. He said that his whole thing is that a Type Two civilization could basically put a gaggle of satellites around a star and harvest its energy like that. Yeah. And he just for the record, Mitchy okayku. Says we might be able to get the Type One in 100 years, and Dyson says it's going to be more like 200. Still, it's not too bad. No. I mean, that's leaps and bounds from where we are now. Yeah. And type three, Josh, the geekiest of all. We can command energy on a galactic scale. I don't even know what that means. I think basically it means, like, we can go to other solar systems. Yeah. We can harness the energy of more than one star at once, and we would have power beyond anything we could conceive of. Probably also, by that time, that would, I guess, mean that we were capable of interstellar travel, which would probably mean that if there's anybody else out there, we're contacting them. Which hopefully doesn't mean we're at war with them, but probably does, at least at first. Right. So you mentioned technology growing a little something called Moore's Law. Yeah. Computer speed and complexity doubles every 18 months. If that continues, then potentially in the not too distant future, there could be a lot of robotics going on controlling these things instead of people. Or in addition to people. Yeah. What do you think about that? I think that if we're not already fused to those machines, we're slaves. Which is transhumanism. Yeah. Right. Which, I mean, if you're looking at it over 100 years, we're so close to mastering genetics that if we stay on this track, it's pretty much impossible that we won't have diverged from evolution taking ourselves out of natural selection because we'll be able to fix ourselves so well. That really the only thing that we just genetics alone. The only thing we wouldn't be able to fix, probably, is death. Well, don't be so sure. Okay. There's a Cambridge University geneticist, Aubrey de Gray, who has said these famous words the first person to live to be 1000 years old is certainly already alive today. Crazy. And whether they realize it or not, barring accidents and suicide, most people that are 40 years old or younger now can expect to live for centuries. She's definitely on the shirt. Is she Aubrey? Maybe not British. Perhaps he or she Wesley. Definitely Sherlock out there as far as his or her predictions. But scientists do think that we are. I mean, they can already extend the age in other mammals and laboratories and we're funding it to the tune of $2.4 billion a year. Antiaging. Oh, yeah. Who knows? And we've talked about this before too. Cryonics, cryonics. It's all coming back together. Yeah. Let's see, what else? Chuck? So 500 years, we will most surely be around, I would say. And we will either be a suffering primate species in the sweltering heat or freezing an ice age that began because we abandon fossil fuels without thinking it through. But we'll probably still be around. Right. Especially if you look at catastrophic global change. We'll probably be okay. Most of us will be. Those of us in line, what, about 5000 years from now? The 7012? Yeah. This thing is blowing my mind, so I don't even know what year it is now. Robert Lam wrote this one and he says that if we reach that type one status, then that's great news because then we've been able to stave off ecological disaster by being able to control these things and harness energy elsewhere. Right. But he also points out, like we said earlier, warfare and self destruction might do away with us. Sure. If we can achieve type two status, then the sky is the limit or the galaxy is the limit. Right. Well, that's the one with interstellar travel, I believe. Yeah. And then he also talks about diverging through transhumanism posthumanism where if we take ourselves out of natural selection, that will probably, looking back, be a point where it's significant as Homo sapiens diverging from Neanderthals or whatever happened back there. Right. Because there's a lot of speculation that humans are like, 6% Neanderthal and, like, 10% something else. And we very much interbred with these individuals we are competing with as well. Interesting. So I guess it wouldn't be diverging, but, say, the extinction of Neanderthals and the skyrocketing of Homo sapiens. Right. Because think about it. We're talking about 50,000 years ago. 50,000 years ago, Homo sapiens were just now reaching Europe and Neanderthals were very much still around and alive. I know. Isn't that crazy? And possibly taking to the seas because they think that they were the first ones to basically build canoes. Neanderthals. Yeah. Wow. They got in a bad Rap and they're just now starting to be understood. Interesting. Yeah. If you don't know your past, you don't know your future. Josh well, that's kind of one of the bases of this little exercise we're doing now. It's kind of like if you look at where we've come, especially if you're talking about how quickly we're progressing 500 years ago, who was it? Ponza de Leon discovered the Turks in the Caicos in 15, 12, 20 years after the age of exploration began. Look at where we are now. We go to Turks and Caicos right now. If we had a lot of money, we can go to Mars. Not really, not us, but we can land things on Mars for robotic cameras. That's like the beginning of the new age of exploration. But humans, they'll colonize Mars at some point. I believe that that's another question to this whole thing as well. What will the Earth look like? If you look at the first two in 500 years and 5000 years, robert took a really ethnocentric view of it. He made it about humans. Sure. But you kind of wonder, especially in the 5000 year thing, like, will we just be like, Earth is kind of played out. We're going to leave, right? And there won't be anyone here, will be on Mars or will be somewhere else, and the Earth will just be like, man, I'm glad. I thought this guy would never leave. Raping me of all my junk. Are we at 50,000? I believe so. Man do we need to talk about axial procession? This is the one. Yeah, we kind of do. Because this one, if you ask me, 50,000 years from now, no, humans won't be around? I don't think so. And what 50,000? Yeah, I think that we'll have either left or we will have diverged so much from humans as we are now that we won't be around. And if there are human descendants, they will be at such peace with the Earth that we can talk about it almost in its natural state of what it will look like in 50,000 years. I'm going with the extinction level event. Okay, but let's back up and talk about precession. Do you understand this? Yeah. So basically the Earth, as it rotates around the sun, or as it revolves around the sun, it also rotates, spins on its axis, the imaginary line that goes from the south pole to the north Pole. Yeah. The thing is, it doesn't spin in a perfect tight spiral. And we talked about this before, too. It's not like a Peyton Manning throw. It's more like a Tim tebow throw. It's got a little wobble to it. You know what I mean? Yeah. So at any point in time, the Earth is wobbling between, I think, 21 degrees. 22.5. Okay. So if it's at 22.1, it's a lot closer to being vertical. Perfectly vertical. Which means that there's a lot less difference in the seasons if it's over at a 24.5 degree angle. The seasons are so different that they could actually be about lopsided from where they are now. Where in the Northern Hemisphere, we would have summer in the winter and vice versa. Right. That's just over like a 16,000 year cycle, right? Yeah. There's also something else called obliquity, which is a 420 year cycle, which is kind of like the extreme of precession. What does that mean? It's the same thing, but it's over a longer period. That's the one with the tilt. Okay. Where the tilt goes fully back and forth. Got you. And then you have eccentricity. And this one is more about the revolution around the sun. Right. Where the orbit of Earth around the sun, it goes over, I think, a 92,000 year. 97,000 year? 97,000 year cycle. It goes from a close to a perfect circle to an ellipse. And as it's going through that when you factor in obliquity and precession. Chuck, what does this all mean? At some point, you have a much colder Earth than at other points. Which is what accounts for ice ages, they think. That's right. Well, they last for about 100,000 years. And in between, which is where we are now, we got about 10,000 years of pretty good weather. Yeah. We are, like I said, right smack in the middle of the one. And scientists think the next ice age will reach its peak in about 80,000 years. So as far as our 50,000 year prediction not ours, but the 50,000 year prediction, we will not likely be in the next ice age. Although ice will be encroaching, they think, as far south as, like, New York City. Well, not necessarily, because I ran across a study that said the next ice age will start about 1500 years from the time that carbon dioxide levels don't exceed like 245 parts per million volume. So when is that? I don't know, because we're way above that now. Got you. But it would have to come back down. And then once that happened, in about 1500 years, we'd be in an ice age again. Okay, this is all scary stuff, but think about it. That's if we have an advance to a type one civilization exactly. If we have, then we'll have figured out how to write the Earth on its axis and it'll just be spring all year round. Everybody will just be happy as larks. It's like Guatemala. It will land of eternal spring. That's right. Are we to extinction level events yet? Yes, this is the one that will be the toughest to deal with. I think so. Busta Rhymes the extinction level event. If you look back, like we said, you got to look back to your past and your future. Over our 4 billion plus history of the Earth apocalypses, global apocalypses happen. Yeah. They have it's unavoidable whether or not it's an impact event, like an asteroid or a comet or some sort of gas related expelling event which happened. Or the scariest of all, now that I've read up on it. The super volcano, which is pretty scary, like tectonic activity, basically causing a volcano that would block out the sun for ten to 20 years. Yeah. Which is what happened at the end of the Permian Period, which I don't think it was a coincidence that the supervolcano erupted at the end of the Permian Period. I think it ended the Permian Period 250,000,001 years ago. Yeah. 51 million years ago. The Great Dying, as they call it, the Permian Triassic extinction event. And they don't know that it was a super volcano. The eruption of the Siberian Traps, they don't know for sure because you can't know something happened 250,000,000 years ago. Yeah. They think it could have been an impact event, maybe an oxygen, which is when the oceans became really depleted of oxygen. Maybe some other gas event, or maybe a combination of the super volcano and an oxygen and an impact event, sort of all converging to basically wipe out most every living thing on the planet. Yes. Like 95% of all marine species. Yeah. And how much? 70% of all land vertebrates. That's crazy. This eruption, the Siberian Traps supervolcano erupted for 1 million years, and the volume of lava was between one and 4 million cubic kilometers. And it took 30 million years for the Earth to recover. That's a big dying. And it was also the only known mass extinction of insects in the history of the Earth. Wow. Because usually insects that live through stuff yeah, they're fine. But yeah, this one wiped out. Apparently, there used to be big, scary insects. Oh, yeah. There's, like, cockroaches, like 3ft long, and dragonflies just as long. So the super volcano took care of that. Yeah. And it could take care of us one day. It very well may. Of course, that is, if we're here and we haven't figured out how to advance to even a type one civilization. If that's the case, 50,000 years from now, we deserved it. 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 an industry. 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 Erkhart and Ash Kelly cover it all. And with two episodes released each week, you'll be hooked on this chart topping series before you know it. You can listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. I'm surprised it hasn't been a super volcano movie. I think that's what that one with Pierce Brosden. Was shooting for. It kind of missed the mark. Well, because it was just local, I was like, oh, no. It'll destroy parts of Los Angeles. Yeah. Not cover the world. Right. That's it, man. Definitively. What will happen on Earth 505,050 thousand years from now? And if you are around in 50,000 years and we're wrong, you can send us an email and complain about it. Yeah. And tell us what you thought of the kiosatellite. Yes. If you want to know more about what the Earth will be like, type those words into the search bar athousetworks.com we have some pretty cool future stuff on this website. And I said the search bars means it's time for listing in mail. Josh, I'm going to call this cannibalism on the high seas. Just finished listening to the podcast on the Donner party you mentioned. This is one of the very few instances of cannibalism and human history. Did we say that? Yeah, I did. I was just picking up William Aaron's work. I recently learned of another one that I thought I would share. The story of the whaling ship, the Essex. We talked about that in this weird position right now because we have recorded the whaling episode. We did talk about that, but it's not out yet. Okay, cool. Time is catching up with us. The Essex took off a whaling expedition from Nantucket to South America in the 1800 th. The ship harpooned a sperm whale, then exacted revenge by ramming the small whaling skiff, but also a large boat, which the large boat would sink quickly. 20 men made it into a life boat with as many rations and equipment that they could get aboard and were adrift for 90 days. As we can expect. Once the ration's insanity began to run low, they began casting lots to see who would be the unfortunate savior to the rest of the party. The interesting anecdote that our instructor told us and she took a class. Apparently, rather than just outright shooting the short sticker, they would wait title up close and mutter reassurance is like, yeah. You're doing okay for now. We got a couple of days. If we wait, we might hit land and then suddenly spot something off on the far side of the ship. And the man turned to look cap. He became dinner. That's just like so ruthless. Everything is going to be okay. Look over there. I'm not sure how true this is, and in the case of Cannibalism, it's hard to say if that approach is more humane or not. I can only think I probably wouldn't want to see it coming. The boat finally made it in there and there were only eight of the 20 men left. And apparently it was inspiration for Moby Dick, which I think is what we talked about, right? And there's a whole book on the ethics that's supposed to be awesome. Yeah. So that's from Ashley with two es. Awesome. Thank you very much. Thanks for that. Very weird. It is weird the way time works. I could have stopped that, but I just figured it's fine. I already told her I read it. Let's see if you have a note about something that we've already talked about but hasn't been released. We will be very impressed. See if you can do it. Send it to us as a tweet at syskpodcast. You can get with us on Facebook@facebook.com stuffyshero or you can send us an email at stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. You know you're the best pet mom when you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly source ingredients plus probiotics for digestive health. 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http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-12-23-sysk-star-wars-special.mp3 | SYSK Selects: The Star Wars Holiday Special of 1978 | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-the-star-wars-holiday-special-of-19-3 | Long ago, in a galaxy not so far away, George Lucas allowed the Star Wars Holiday Special to be made. What happened on the night of November 17, 1978 can never be fully explained, but we make our best effort in a very special edition of SYSK. May the forc | Long ago, in a galaxy not so far away, George Lucas allowed the Star Wars Holiday Special to be made. What happened on the night of November 17, 1978 can never be fully explained, but we make our best effort in a very special edition of SYSK. May the forc | Sat, 23 Dec 2017 13:00:03 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=3, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=357, tm_isdst=0) | 52734431 | audio/mpeg | "What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflows so that every driver and merchandiser can and serve up jalapeno, sesame and chocolate cover goodness with real time, data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comconsulting hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself with no must, no fuss. Turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, simple checkout process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. Comcysk 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. Happy Belated Life Day, everyone. It's me. Josh and I chose. For this week's, SYSK selects the Star Wars holiday special episode. It's true this just came out two years back, but in my opinion, listening to this episode should probably become a worldwide annual holiday tradition. So we missed last year. We can just go ahead and consider this year one of that tradition. I hope you enjoy it, and Merry Christmas and happy Holidays. However you celebrate them. Welcome to stuff you should know from hasteworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuckers Bryant and Jerry Jerome. Roland, the Wookie mother. Yeah. Mala. That was the Wiki wife. Oh, and mother. Yeah, sure. Chewbacca's mom is not with them any longer. She left. She was not about to appear in that. She went out the window. I'm excited about this, I have to say. We should say happy Star Wars Day. Yeah. Today is December 17. I have my opening night tickets. Do you really? Sure. Wow. Are you into it? Yeah, I will definitely go see it in the theater. But why? Won't be their opening night. Sure. I've gotten really adept at ignoring, spoilers people, talking about stuff. I could conceivably see this movie a month after it comes out and still going fresh. I'm in Ostrich. Yeah. You black yourself out. Yeah. You go dark. I do. I make myself go to sleep. You go to the dark side. I've been there a while now. Well, happy Star Wars Day, though. I'm sure that I think this pairs nicely with Christmas. Star Wars Day. It's all come together. Yes. We already missed Life Day, though. So happy Belated Life day. Are they celebrating it this year, november 17? Yeah, but it's every three years. Arcane. Yeah, man. Okay, so it's every three years started in 1978. Let's do the math, shall we? Quick math break. I believe that 2014 was the last Life Day. We just missed it. And then again in 2017. Okay, so 2017 will celebrate Life Day. We'll put on our red robes, our ultra long straight iron wigs sure. And we'll celebrate Life Day the way it was meant to. Yeah. And if you have no idea what we're talking about, we are talking about Life Day, which is a celebration that wookies in the Star Wars universe have every three years. Yes. It's like they're Christmas. Yeah. Or their quanta or their tet supposedly. Sort of like Earth Day, too. They celebrate the diversity of their ecosystem and also remembrance of the dead. And they also give gifts. They're like the Finns, basically. Yeah. It's a very interesting part of the Star Wars canon. It is. And it's almost entirely made up, dashed off, you could possibly say, by George Lucas in the 70s. Yeah. And it's the basis of what has become derided as one of the worst things that ever happened to the Star Wars galaxy. Well, not only that, one of the worst things ever aired on television. Yeah. In this galaxy. Yeah. At first, that sounds like hyperbole. Like, come on. It's because it was Star Wars. We had high expectations, but it's really that bad. Yeah. The people who say that haven't seen even a second of it. Yeah. However, I watched it when I was a kid, then again this week. And you watched it twice this week. Yeah, I watched it last night and this morning. There's something about it. It's mesmerizing. It really is. It's one of those things that you start watching it and you want to turn it off, but you want to see just how absurd it can get. Almost. Yeah. And it starts absurd. It stays absurd in the middle. Yes. Increasingly more absurd. It gets a little less absurd, finishes super absurd. Yeah. It's just a train wreck in every single sense of the word, top to bottom. It's extraordinarily difficult to overstate how bad this is, and some people have been researching this. You read about it, you read descriptions of these things, and it just can't possibly be gotten across until you see it. So luckily, as we will see, you can go on to YouTube and watch it, and you may even enjoy this episode more if you pause, go spend 2 hours watching this thing and then come back and laugh along with us. Yeah. There's a great over the years, there have been many segments of it on YouTube from badly dubbed VHS tapes, but there's one really pretty good version of it in full. Brought to you by Whio dayton, Ohio. Channel Seven, Ohio. Because that flashes up on the screen periodically. Man, it is high quality. Yeah, it looks good. It has to basically be the copy that the actual affiliate broadcast. It's like that quality compared to the other stuff floating around on YouTube. It's clearly recorded on a 1978 PCR, which is really expensive. Very expensive. I did some calculating on west egg. Okay. So the average VCR went for about $1,000. They were brand new. That's amazing. $1,000 in 1978 money. So they're about $3,800 in 2014 money. Crazy. Luckily, there were some rich people out there recording this stuff. And the wealthy have saved us all again, yet again, as they always do. Yes. We need to shout out some articles that we use for this. There's a great article in Vanity Fair called The Han Solo Comedy Hour. Exclamation point. Yes. By Frank de Jacob. And then the Star Wars holiday special was the worst thing on television ever by someone we kind of know, alex Pasternak knows from motherboard. Yeah. Which is not wired, it's vice. We wrote a little bit for motherboard back then and we had a call with that one. We're like, old motherboard vets, basically. Wasn't there one more? There was another one, and I don't know who wrote this one. Chuck. Yeah. The title is the Star Wars Holiday Special. George Lucas wants to smash every copy of with a sledgehammer, which is a famous quote, supposedly. A convention by Lucas. Yes. Which is not correct. He didn't ever say that. No. Okay. That sounded like something that people made up. Yes. But if you go on the internet, you will quickly believe that he did, but apparently didn't. Sure. I'm sure he felt that way, though, clearly, because he did appear on robot Chicken and I think 2005 on the therapist couch talking about how much he hated the special. All right, so let's set the background, shall we? Shall we go back to summer? Getting the old way back machine? All right, let's do it. All right. Here we are. There's Wooderson. Yeah. I'm just a little six year old excited about Star Wars. I've just turned one. Yes. You don't know what's up yet. Please forgive me if I urinate myself. No problem. Okay, so what has happened is Star Wars has become a huge hit, seemingly out of nowhere. Establishing George Lucas is one of the brilliant young minds in filmmaking. Even though in his first movie, it was his first huge breakout hit. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, talk about a breakout hit like no one had ever seen anything like it before. No. 2001 had come out in the late 60s, but it still isn't accessible to all audiences. Yeah, it's pretty cerebral film. Yeah. It's not an adventure movie. This is Star Wars. This is like, basically swashbuckling on the screen, but in a galaxy far, far away. Star wars just changed everything. And it came on just like a hammer and a new hope, by the way. Yeah. And I know we're going to get stuff wrong. Nerds. Yeah. Just go ahead and get your little fingers ready to email us. If it wasn't driven home that I'm not nerd by the fact that I don't have opening night tickets or any tickets yet. Give me a break. Okay. And by proxy, chuck, too. Okay, thank you. It's hard to state how great star wars was in everyone's mind, right. Bill Murray came out with that lounge singer star wars thing. Yeah, it was everywhere. And if you just listen to the lyrics of it, really, it's just Bill Murray singing about how much star wars is awesome. Right? Yeah. So by the following year, George Lucas, he wanted to figure out a way to keep audiences just engaged with the whole star wars franchise that he was just starting to build. But he knew the empire strikes back was a couple more years out. Sure. So I think he was approached by some TV executives who said, have you considered doing some sort of TV special? They're all the rage right now. We have a graphic that's really awesome that we set aside just for TV specials here at CBS. Why don't you let us let's get together and do a star wars special. That's right. Producers Gary Smith and Dwight Hemion were working over at CBS, and they say this is a great way to keep the spirit alive while you're making your other movie, maybe move some more toys. Yeah, george Lucas got a cut of all the toys. Sure. It was right before Thanksgiving, and he said there'd be a lot of people watching TV pre holiday season or I guess in the holiday season. Well, the weekend before Thanksgiving, it's like everybody's shopping, sitting around, family, like, waiting to actually do stuff. That's right. Perfect time to broadcast something on TV. So Lucas says, all right, let's do this. I don't have a ton of time, but how about this? I'll get a story together and then you can go hire a whiz bang team of veteran writers and producers and directors, whatever genre you think is appropriate. And those are the words that will haunt George Lucas to his grave. Yeah. So Lucas said, here's my idea. I want it to be based on wookies, and I want it to take place on their home planet of Kazuk, or wookie planet c. Is that how you say Kazuk? That's how it's pronounced in the holiday special, but it's also pronounced different ways. Other times, I would have pronounced it kashi E-E-K-A-S-H-Y-Y-Y-K which I mean, I guess it sounds like chubbakka's planet. Sure. Also called g 5623. Wookie planet c or edion is a mid rim planet. Right. So the whole reason, apparently that George Lucas was interested in featuring the wookies was it is what we in show business call low hanging fruit. The reason why it was low hanging fruit was because they had just established the different scenes that would make the cut for empire strikes back. How did you pronounce it again? Kazuk. Kazakh had not made the cut even prior to this. Apparently for a new hope, george Lucas had whipped up a 40 page what's known as the rookie bible. It's like a 40 page supplement that's all about Kazuk and Wookies and Chewbacca and his family and everything about Wookie dough. Right? That's right. So he's like, I've got this thing already established. I love Rookies. They didn't make the cut. I'm a little sad about that. Kazuki is not going to show up in empire strikes Back. Let's build the entire special around Wookies. It's basically the one demand me, George Lucas has. Yeah, that's it. I'll be totally hands off from this point on. Which he kind of was. He totally was. And it was actually this experience that apparently taught him to be a very hands on person that he is famous for being. It came out of this Christmas special. Absolutely. He was burned and had an iron grip after that on everything. Here's some of the folks behind it. Bruce Valanch. Famous TV writer. You probably seen him on Hollywood Squares. Wasn't he suspected of being Thomas Pinchon for a while? I don't know. Or was Thomas Pinchon on Hollywood Squares? I have no idea. I may be confabulating some stuff. Confounding? There's some kind of some sort going on. Sounds like it, yeah. So Valancie was hired as a writer. A guy named Lenny Rips was hired as a writer who has some great quotes in that Vanity Fair article. He does. His first quote was, we were really excited because this is Star Wars. How could it lose? Famous last words. Who else was hired? There was a husband and wife team, the Welches, who are the parents of folk singer Gillian Welch, who I'm a big fan of. And I had no idea that her parents were producerssungwriters of the day. They were big on the variety show scene, which would turn out to be a really key cog in this whole experience. So I feel like right about here, jerry should insert a needle coming off of a record sound effect. Yeah, okay. Thanks, Jerry. So, Chuck, you just said singer songwriters. Yeah. What would that have to do with Star Wars? Yeah, well, actually, in this Star Wars holiday special, for those of you hadn't seen it, there are musical numbers. They decided from the outset that there should be musical numbers. And the reason that they decided that there should be musical numbers is because the people who sold George Lucas and at the time, the Star Wars corporation was what it was called on the idea of doing this TV special was that everyone would love a variety show. Yeah, it was the 70s. Great idea. Let's do a variety show. The problem was this apparently George Lucas didn't watch enough TV and he also overly trusted people who talked to him. Sure. Because by 1978, yes, variety shows had dominated television for over ten years, but it had come to an end. It was getting stale. Yeah. We're talking Carol Burnett show. One of my favorite had just been canceled after eleven season. Big red flag. Sunny and Cher had just had its last season. I mean, what else? Like he hall was still going on. Probably. They didn't know what to do. He haw is still on. It's all a golden yet to come on and take up the mantle that would never ride a show. That was a little bit there was talking in between the songs. Yeah, I remember the Mandrel Sisters show. I never watched that one. What was with that country chic thing that happened? Yeah, it was a big deal in the it's kind of happening again, I think. Oh, because of that dude, the guy who won all the CMA Awards. I don't know, he came along. He's like, actually country. His dad's like a coal miner. For real. From Kentucky. I think I know what you mean. Chris or something. Yeah, he is good. He's come along and been like, what are you guys doing? Well, there's a revival in good country music again, that's great. Like in the tradition of Merle Haggard and Cash and I guess it's probably where the country she came from because there was actually good country going on. Yeah, johnny Cash had a variety show. Did he really? Oh, yeah. I knew they did like a Sunday singing thing, like out in Virginia. Yeah, he had his own variety show was actually pretty good. There are some really great performances. Do you know how many nerds are like, get back to Star Wars? I know. I'm so sorry. All right, so the variety show is dying, sort of. And so they figure, what a great time to take the biggest movie property on the planet and wedge it into the variety show milieu. I don't know if wedge is the right word. I think maybe nestle it in there and then start hitting it with the blunt edge of an axe until it mashes into that crevice. That's right, because this is the time when Fantasy Island had just started. Morgan mindy was about to change things. Charlie's Angels was getting huge. Basically, television as we knew it from 1980 to whenever the real world came along, just escapist television is what they call it, was starting and it was the hip new thing. So basically, if they had turned Han Solo and Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker into maybe sexy detectives, it might have gone over even better. But they went the other way. They decided to latch onto this extraordinarily stale genre of television and they hired the best in the business. There was a quote from, I think, Lenny Rips, who was saying, like, we had literally a dream team, a variety show dream team, and everybody was good, but there were probably no bad welders on the Titanic either. That's a great quote. Yeah. The guy they hired to direct it initially was a dude named David Akumba, and he had made his name for welcome to the Film. Or east. It was a concert documentary with Van Morrison and the Birds in 1971, and he actually was at USC Film school at the same time as Lucas, even though they didn't know each other. And he only ended up directing about three segments of the thing before he quit? Yes, before he walked off. Some say he was actually let go, but we'll get to him in a minute. And who replaced him. Okay, as we get along down this gross road well, let's take a little break because I'm overly excited. All right? Okay. 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We'll get to a few more. We should point out that Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher. Sure. Peter Mayhew. They had no grounds to refuse to be on this, basically, yeah, pretty much. There were not huge stars, yet they could throw their weight around and say, this is terrible, and I'm not doing it. They were big overnight because of Star Wars, for sure, but they weren't to the adoring public. Sure, back at the studio, they could still be bossed around, and this is the result of it. And you can tell also, just from watching the actual special, harrison Ford is not happy to be there at any point. Oh, no. Princess leia is clearly on drugs. Was she on drugs at this point? If you watch it, she's on drugs. Especially the ending scene. Mark hamill, it looks like he's happy to be there, actually. He was fine, but apparently he said, no, I'm not doing a musical number. Yeah. And if you watch his part, wedging a musical number in there would have been even more painful. Sure. But everybody who was part of the actual star wars franchise that wasn't wearing, like, a full body costume was like, I really wish I wasn't here. And you can tell. Yeah. In fact, in the opening credit sequence, they're showing the picture, the faces of the people, and you see harrison for it as if he's flying the millennium falcon. And you can just hear the guy off screen going, now look at the camera and just give a nod. Just look at the camera and give a nod. And he finally you can tell he's pissed off. And he looks up at the camera and just sort of smirks yes. And points to the camera like, okay, I'm looking at the camera, and then goes back to what he's doing. Yes. It's pretty awesome. I felt bad for him so early on, valanci and others. Did you feel bad for him, though? Really? Come on. It's harrison Ford. Han Solo. He has to go do this for, like, five days. Yeah, I felt terrible for him. I think it's hilarious that they had to do this, especially now. Well, early on, avalanche and others knew that they may be in trouble because they decided not to subtitle any of the woky dialogue. Right. And they literally started after a brief opening scene. Setting it up. Here's the basic plot. Han solo is trying to get chewbacca back to kazakh in time for life day so we can celebrate with his family. That's the basis of the entire 2 hours. That's the basis the entire 2 hours. They encounter a space battle, and they are delayed, and the next 2 hours are kind of what's going on while the delay is happening. Back on kazoo, back on kazakh, because you hear like, okay, well, han solo and chewbacca evading the imperial guard and all that stuff for 2 hours. I would watch that. Sure. I would too. That's not what they show. Killing time at the wookie household. That is what they show. Yeah, that's what they do. It's people hanging out, waiting for chewbacca, worrying about him, and then killing time while they wait for him to come back. Yeah, literally. Hold on. So you say there's a setup, right? Yeah, that's the initial set up. And then chuck, that's followed by this. Yeah, it's followed by literally ten minutes. Ten solid minutes of incomprehensible wookie speak. So let's join it for a second, shall we? Yeah, let's all enjoy it. And again, you said ten minutes. And you're not exaggerating. You're not being hyperbolic. You can time it. It's ten minutes of Wookies talking to each other with no subtitles. Fortunately, I couldn't follow it at first. I didn't even know who it was. I thought it might have been Chewbacca's mom and dad. Oh, yeah, that's true. And little brother. And I don't find out until later when Mark Camel shows up via Skype Call and says he really explains everything that's just happened. Like you're Chewbacca's father. Itchy you're Chewbacca's, son. Lumpy. And you are chubbakka's wife Ola. Yes. Thank you. So before everybody starts freaking out, we know that that's actually their nicknames. Their real names are his father is Atuk. It's really hard to pronounce. Mulatto Buck is his wife, and his son is Lumpo. Or Lump, as named by Lucas. Yeah, but Lucas also named him Lumpy, Itchy, and Mala. So they're all back there wringing their hands, trying to figure out ways to pass the time until they get word from Chewbacca that he's made it to what is it? Ketchup Kazuk. Kazuk. It's like ketchup ketchup or cats up, if you're fancy. But Chewbacca is having trouble getting back to Khachuk because there's a blockade by the Empire, and they're looking for rebels. Specifically Chewbacca, who I didn't realize is he's the most famous Wookie of all. Did you know that? Yes, of course I didn't know that. Well, I mean, he's the only one that really appears in the movies, but we're seeing, like, these people's view of the universe. What about back on Kazuk? Yeah, it might have just been a fly by night Wookie, right? Yeah, but not the case. Very famous Wookie. Yeah, and he really loved it. Like, soaking his fame. All right, so he realizes there's a problem. valanche, he goes to Lucas and is like, I don't know, man, this is your world, but it may not be the strongest thing to do to set this in Wookie land and have all this comprehensible dialogue. And he says he was met with a glacial stare. Well, he put it a little differently than that. Well, he said glacial stare. He did. The glacial stair that he got was for this quote. He said, These people just talk and what sounds like fat people having an orgasm. He goes, if you want, you can set up a tape recorder in my bedroom, and I'll do all of the foliage for it. Yeah, he's a large guy. He is. So that's what got the glacial stare. But Valanci later said that there was one development meeting that Lucas attended, and it was here's the Wookie Bible. Tell me what you got. And Villanch said he and the other writers and producers and directors were just kind of throwing ideas, and George Lucas would either say, like, no, that doesn't work. Give them a glacial stare, or say, yes, that's exactly it. Yes. Let's make this a variety show. Yeah. And there was a little bit of background there. The Cantina Players in the band had appeared on other variety shows at that point, and I think it went over fairly well just as a short segment on the Richard Pryor variety Show or Donnie Marie. There were a lot of variety shows, but that's what I'm saying. That was television. That's what you did. Like the Brandy's. The show had its course, and then it became a variety show. Everybody loved variety shows. Yeah. By this time, though, everybody was sick of variety shows. Right. And so it really was a terrible choice. In fact, they even hired a couple of writers from Shields and Yarnell, which I hadn't heard of. Have you? Oh, yeah, I watched it. It was creepy, this mind couple who had their own variety show, and they figured, these two will be great because they are used to working without words. Right. So there is a certain logic to the variety shows. Logic all over the place. It's just that variety shows were popular at the time. Somebody was like, well, you don't understand what they're saying, so this is all going to be very physical. So these people who did what is it? Shields and Yarn? L. Yeah, that's a perfect choice. That makes complete sense. You can see this whole process of leading up to the point where it was produced and shot and everything, a series of like, oh, we have this problem. Well, here's the fix. Yeah, but that leads to another problem. Well, we'll fix it with this. And no one is stepping back and being like, all we've done is create a series of problems that are going to come together and make one extraordinarily large problem that will become legendary. No one did that. And so the whole thing was made. That's right. And that eventually airs on November 17, 1978, friday at 08:00 P.m. Eastern time. That's right. According to Nielsen ratings, it attracted 13 million viewers, lost the second hour just in the US. It aired in seven countries total. Yeah, but no one cares about that. I guess not, because none of those are on the Internet. It finished second to The Loveboat in the second I'm sorry, from eight to nine. And then the next hour, I actually finished behind part two of a miniseries about Pearl Harbor starring Angie Dickinson. So it didn't even win their respective hours. No, 13 million. That's not bad. The thing is, apparently, if you look at the Nielsen ratings graph for the first hour yeah, we know about that graph. It's okay. Yeah, we do. And then after a very important part, which we'll talk about soon, it just drops off at the end of the first hour. And that actually probably made the executives at CBS cringe for a number of reasons. Number one is this special was originally supposed to just be an hour, but so many advertisers wanted to sign on that they extended. It to 2 hours, it shines through. You can totally tell that this thing was never supposed to be I think an hour might have been stretching it, to tell you the truth. Yeah, it's 30 minutes of content. 40 if you're generous. An hour, and then 2 hours, it becomes one of the worst things that was ever put on television. All right, well, let's take a break, and then we'll talk a little bit more about the actual I don't want to call it content, but it is content in the strictest definition. Sure. Right after this. All right, so the show itself, we've given you the main plot line, which, again, is that Chewy is trying to get back to his home planet to celebrate Life Day with his family. Right. That's it. And again, we almost barely see Chewy. The rest is his family on Kazuk, waiting for him to come back for Life Day. Yeah. So some of the various things they did, there were guest stars. There was a Harvey Corman from The Carol Burnett Show. Okay. One of my all time favorites. Him or Carol Burnett show. Both. He's great. Yeah. He actually, if you watch what he's doing, he's a comedy genius. Well, apparently he, too was, like, the only one on set that was bringing levity. He was joking around and kind of kept spirits up. Good for him. That's what I say. He had three different parts. Yeah, he played well. I don't even know the names, actually. We could look him up, but he played a Julia Childlike cook. There's an actual cooking segment, a long one. A very long cooking segment, where Chewbacca's wife makes bantha stew to kill some time. To kill some time. Both waiting on her planet and in our living room. Yeah. So Harvey Corman is in drag, is a four armed Julia Childlike TV chef. Right. I think it's Gormanda. Is her name Gormanda? That makes total sense. Yeah. He also plays there's this one weird bit where Chewbacca's son tries to figure out a way to trick the stormtroopers. The Empire had come because the blockade rated the house and other properties. So he tries to trick them by, I think, rigging a comment to speaking of a different voice. So he has to watch the instruction manual. He watches an instruction video, which was Harvey kitel as a robot. Oh, it would have been wonderful. Harvey kitel. Oh, that's a Harvey. Harvey Corn. Oh, man. Harvey murdered someone in the middle of the Harvey Corman. And then the final role he had was a bar patron in the cantina that drinks. He has a hole in the top of his head like a volcano, where he pours his drinks in. That's how he drinks. And he loves bee. Arthur. Did we mention B Arthur was in it? B Arthur is not only in it. Chuck she sings a song. She does. She is the notes to everyone she manages. Or maybe owns the canteen. She's the owner. What's the maz what Mazdaf cantina? No. Mazda is a rapper. Oh, yeah. I think you mean MAS eyesley. Yes, that Can Tina. She's the owner. B. Arthur is the owner. B Arthur of the Golden Girls, but in this case, B Arthur of Mod, because as one of the people who wrote one of the articles we base this on points out, she's just basically playing Maud as the owner of the Cantina. Yeah. And her song comes because they basically say there's a lockdown, so you got to call last call at your bar. So she calls Last Call by singing a song to everyone. Right. And again, we can't possibly have the script lead anywhere else but Chewbacca's house while his family waits for it. So all this takes place as part of a public service announcement, basically broadcast by the Empire about how immoral life on Tatooine is. So let's go see what's going on in the Maze Isley Cantina as it's being shut down for curfew. Yeah. All right. This is incomprehensible, but it goes on. So there in it there's also Art carney. Yes. The Honeymoon or something. Probably the star of the whole thing, really. He has the most lines, I would say the most comprehensible line. Right. So he plays a human traitor that is recently been with Han Solo and Chewy and actually gets to Kazuk and says, they're on the way. It's all good. Yeah. A trader. Not traitor. Yeah, traders and trades humans for money. No, he sells goods. Yeah, a trader. He doesn't trade humans. Yeah, he's in the human trade. No, he isn't. Really? Yeah, he trades humans like he sells humans. I looked it up in Star Wars encyclopedia. It said that he was in the human trade. So in this Christmas special, apparently they sanitized his background because he's basically just selling, like, gadgets and novelties and stuff like that to the Wookies and the Empire who were occupying the area. Yes. He comes bearing gifts. Yeah. Because he's a friend of Chewbacca's family. Yeah. So he comes bearing gifts. One of the gifts he gives is sort of like a little digital insert to a I guess you would call it a virtual reality hair dryer. Like a beauty shop hairdryer. Right. He gives it to Grandpa. Itchy Grandpa Itchy sits under this hair dryer, pops in this digital cassette, and it can only be described as soft core porn. Apparently, the writers who were interviewed for this said that was totally the intent. They were trying to get what amounted to softcore porn that would pass the sensors. That's right. You can't even say it's innuendo. It's too obvious and overt for innuendo. Instead, it's just gross. It's really gross. Diane Carol Kinger yes, she is a Vegas staple, shows up and starts basically Grandpa Itchy again, this is Chewbacca's elderly father, who now engages in some sort of well, he's watching virtual reality pornography now and this is a pretty lengthy segment in and of itself. Oh, yeah. And she literally says to him, now I can see you're really excited. Yeah, it's pretty rough to watch. Yeah. So then you've got another musical number, because also, again, he shutters. Yeah, it's really strange. All right, so there's also a I know it seems like we're jumping around, but it's some mind blowing. This is pretty much like blow for blow. Actually, I forgot earlier on in the special there's, one of my favorite sequences is when Grandpa itchy goes over to Lumpy and basically sets up remember the Hologram chess board that they played in A New Hope? Yeah. Basically kind of sets that up and says, Here, just play this. He pushes the button, which is clearly a 1970s cassette recorder. And another, it's like a Cirque du Soleil acid trip gymnast routine. Happens in front of the kids eyes. And again, it's not like it shows a snippet. They show the entire segments, like, 5610 minutes long of all of these things. So you would think, okay, they've gone to this Hologram well, a couple of times. Why not go to it again? Well, they do. To kill more time. While the Imperial Guard is ransacking their house, art carney, apparently, I guess, is trying to get one of the Imperial Guard the leader, I think, or one of the leaders who looks like somebody from spaceballs, by the way. Very much so. Yeah. And the writer of the Vanity Fair article, by the way, said, this is so incomprehensible. The specialist, George Lucas, didn't even have the Schwartz with them at the time. So, anyway, our carney's distracting this Imperial leader while they're ransacking the Wookie's house, Chewbacca's house with a hologram in this Hologram, instead of being an acrobat or Diane Carroll or any kind of porn or anything like that, is Jefferson Starship. And they decide that they're going to play Light the sky on Fire, which apparently is about UFOs. It's a little music video, basically. Yeah. It's the predecessor to video kill the radio star. You can tell. And again, it is the whole lengthy song, the whole thing. So every time that somebody's like, we need to escape mentally from what's going on here in our house, let's go into this video world, and they don't cut back and forth. No, it's okay. Here's five minutes of Jefferson Starship performing this song. Yeah. And even the Jefferson Starship guys were like, it's sort of a weird trip. We didn't get it, but we did it right. They gave us some money and some cocaine. Well, probably. So we said. Yeah. Chuck, I think, though, yet another segment like this is actually widely regarded as the high point of the whole thing. Oh, sure. Great. There is a cartoon, actually. Yeah. Lumpy watches. Yeah. Lumpy, like the Imperial Guard, is still reinstating my house. I think I'll entertain myself by watching a cartoon on my little, I guess, it was an iPad. And he watches this cartoon, and it's actually remarkable for a number of reasons. It's the best part of the whole special. Yeah. Generally agreed upon as such. It's not just us. And it introduces Boba Fett. It's the first time Boba Fett ever makes an appearance in Star Wars universe. Yeah, it's actually not a bad and you can't find it in the one version I told you to watch. They removed it for copyright, but you can watch a separate version. Right. You can find it on its own. Yeah. And it's very much reminiscent of, like, the cartoon style of the day, like a heman or something, for sure. It's even a little more artsy than that. Yeah. But it does have a plot that you can follow that makes sense as a Star Wars thing. And it introduces Boba Fett, like you said, and it's actually not bad. It's like Luke and R two and C three poke. They crash on a planet or something. Yeah. And Han and chewy in it. It's the first time we see in Darth Vader it's the first time we see Boba Fett and that he is just doing whatever he can do for money. Right. Like, Luke trusts him at first. C Three PO is like, you sure you should trust him this quick? 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LifeLock identity Theft protection starts here. So the cartoon comes and goes. And that was the thing that came at about the end of the first hour mark. And after that everybody just turned off their television sets. Yeah, I don't remember. Did you watch this when it came up? Yeah, I remember watching it, but I don't remember much about it. Like if I made it through at all. I was seven and it was on till ten, so I probably didn't make it through it all. But you're probably disturbed. Who knows? I just remember that I have to ask my brother. He might have a memory of this. Oh, but he does. I'm sure he met everybody afterward or something like that. He has a picture. Well, he was ten at that point, so Cynicism had become a thing in his life probably by then. Sure. When Cynicism kicks in, I can see Scott holding out the 1415. Yeah, maybe. So, Chuck, the whole thing finally does in. And actually there's a guy, his name is Nathan Rabin. He writes over at the AV club. He had a great quote. He basically said that one of the great redeeming values of this special is that it does eventually end. Yeah. You know what the first part of the quote is? I'm not convinced. The special wasn't ultimately written and directed by a sentient bag of cocaine. Go read his review of the Star Wars Holiday Special because he goes on to describe exactly what that must have been like. Development meeting, where the bag of cocaine is pacing back and forth talking about what should happen. That's what it feels like. But it doesn't and it ends. It takes this bizarre 2 hours and wraps it up in just a nice bizarre bow. Yeah. So what happens is eventually, Han Solo shall we say spoiler alert. Eventually Han Solo and Chewy make it to the planet. They park on the far side of the planet because they know the imperial forces are there. And the exercise will do Chewy good. Yeah. So they have to hike over there. They eventually make it back home. They find the stormtroopers at their house, their tree hut. Yes. Which is the paintings that set this up. I don't think we mentioned I don't even call them matte paintings. It looks like someone painted something on the wall and they just put a camera in front of it. Pretty much, yeah. So they get back and Chewbacca. Han Solo hides around the corner. Chewbacca steps in front of his son to protect him. Sure. Han Solo jumps out and the stormtrooper trips over a pile of logs and falls over the balcony and dies in a holiday special. So they wouldn't even not only could he not shoot first with GREETO, but they couldn't even have him wrestle the stormtrooper and throw him off. He trips over a log. Right. And Han Solo has his hands thrown up like, Wasn't me. It might as well have been a banana peel. But again, this is basically produced by Vaudeville, starring Vogue villains. Why not have the one death take place from basically what amounts to somebody slipping on a banana peel? Exactly. It's a perfect way to end it. So that guy basically represents the end of the imperial threat for the rest of Life Day. And we then see Life Day being celebrated, which is celebrated by lots of rookies assembling in what looks like a giant Olen Mills portrait. And all of them are wearing red robes. Sure. And I know I'm up talking, and it's because my mind is still having trouble wrapping around. And then Princess Leia comes out with C. Three PO. Is Mark Hamill there? The whole gang is there. Okay. The whole gang is there. And then they all gather around to hear a great quote from Princess Leia, which we will read verbatim. This holiday is yours, but we all share with you the hope that this day brings us closer to freedom and to harmony and to peace. No matter how different we appear, we're all the same. In our struggle against the powers of evil and darkness. I hope that this day will always be a day of joy in which we can reconfirm our dedication and our courage, and more than anything else, our love for one another. This is the promise of the Tree of Life key song. Right. And we should also point out the Tree of Life has never been mentioned up to this point. I had no idea what that was. It makes a sudden appearance at the end. And when you say Q song by Q song, you mean Princess Leia starts singing. Yes. And apparently that was one of the big contingencies on Carrie Fisher being involved. She's going through a phase where she's like, I kind of like singing. Bruce Voluntee calls it a Joni Mitchell period. Yeah. And she somehow convinced them to let her sing as Princess Leia, and she does. And again, I've said that she looks like she's on drugs. This is the point where she really does look like she's on drugs. And it's not just me. Other writers who have written reviews of this, it's really obvious that she possibly smoked a decent amount of pot before she shot the scene. But she sings. Okay, it's fine. It's just the fact that Princess Leia's singing. And actually, Bruce valanche had a really great quote, too. He says that she very much wanted to show this side of her talent, and there was general dismay because this was not what we wanted. Princess Leia to be doing. She did it anyway. So the whole thing ends with her singing this song about Life Day which is set loosely to the John Williams Star Wars theme. Yeah. So along the way, the original director quit. A new director, Steve Binder was hired to finish the job and bring it in. And he did over the original $1 million budget, of course. Always he did bring it in. And at this point, George Lucas, he was working on Empire Strikes Back. He didn't know what was going on. He wasn't around for the shoot. No, it wasn't until aired, I think, that he actually saw it. Yes. And it was a travesty, obviously, if you haven't noticed that by now. Critics hated it. Star wars fans really hated it. Everybody hated the people who were in it. Hated it. Lucas hated it. Even Harvey Corman secretly hated it. Yeah. Even Harvey. Kyzel hated it. Actually, he loved it. But Lucas has been asked over the years about it a lot and he doesn't talk about it much. But in 2005 and I don't buy this for a second he says it was an interview. He said the special from 1978 really didn't have much to do with us. You know, that part is true. I can't remember what network it was on, but it was a thing that they did. That's a lie. There's no way he doesn't know that was CVS. Yes. We kind of just let them do it. I believe that it was done by I can't even remember who the group was. But there were a variety of TV guys. I'm sure he remembers a few of them. We let them use the characters and stuff and that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. But you learned from those experiences. Yes. I think they even use some of the footage from the movie at the end. It looks like some of the space stuff, like a highlight reel. The gang well, it looked like some of the they had some insert shots of Imperial Cruisers and Tie Fighters and stuff. Remember when Chewbacca leans back and puts his hands behind that's in there? It's like just a highlight reel from the movie thing. Feel like this. Go see the movie. Well, and also, that means it doesn't match the look of the rest of it at all. Yeah, that's true. It's just sort of inserted. They tried. They definitely tried. And George Lucas is totally full of it because in 1987, he told Starlog magazine that the Christmas special would be out on video cassette very soon. Yes. And in 2007, two years after that quote you just read where he's like, I don't even know what you're talking about. Basically, he apparently considered releasing the Christmas special as a bonus on the DVDs of the first three. Right. But did not. And apparently Kerry Fisher told Lucas that if you want me to do DVD extras commentary. Yeah, commentary. Then I want a clean, original copy of the holiday special. Yes. So why go ahead? So I can play at parties when I want people to leave. It's pretty great. It is. And there is one of those clean copies that's floating around out there, so you can watch this in its entirety. Some of it, like the cartoon was removed due to copyright infringement and that kind of stuff. But as the case with the rest of the Internet, you can just go find it elsewhere and piece it together. There's also the original ads that aired in Baltimore that are just fascinating. Yeah, those are always fun GM ads where one of the guys who's in quality control, he says, did you watch it? I don't think I saw that one. He goes, we really care about these cars. That's no jive man on the GM. And I think he's, like, serious. They're trying to be hip. Yeah, it's pretty good stuff. Here's my final thought on it. I love it. It does not taint my Star Wars experience or my love for the franchise. Okay. And I'm glad it is out there because it's a fun little stain that shouldn't be taken too seriously. I think it adds to it, actually, because it's campy and awful and I don't know, somehow that enriches the rest of it. I'm with you. You like it? Oh, yeah. I mean, I watched it twice. I wouldn't have watched it. I wouldn't have made it through the first time. Let me take that back. I'm a pro. Yeah. So I would have made it through the first time. I wouldn't have watched it the second time if there wasn't something about it. And I figured out I think the thing that I liked the most about it is Lumpy Chewbacca's son, played by an actress named Patty Maloney, who, frankly, is hands down the best actor in the entire thing. Her responses and everything is just awesome. I think my favorite parts are well, there's a great Wilhelm scream. Yes, I know. That. Trips over the Lodge. Jerry would not have noticed it. And then there's a part where all the wookie dialogue you can't understand, but there's clearly one part where itchy and Lumpy are having exchange, where Lumpy, you can make it out because I love you. Yeah, I noticed that, but it's covered up. But someone was like, we have to have at least one exchange where you sort of know what they're saying. Sure. Or they were like, I think she said, I love you. Should we have them redo it? And the director is like, no, I want to go and Chuck, there's one other thing that I figured out from watching this. What's that? It's not readily apparent the whole thing is made all the more odd, and that there's situation after situation after situation where we, as normal audiences, were trained to expect a laugh track. But there's not a laugh track had there been a laugh track. It might have been less bizarre, but the fact that it's missing just makes your it agitates the mind. So it's this whole additional element that it is weird. I never thought about it. There's just weird moments of silence all throughout it. Yeah. Like when Art Carney is doing his thing. Yeah. Telling jokes. Yeah. Okay. I agree with you, Chuck. Don't take things too seriously. I think that's the great lesson in this. Yeah, it's a lesson of life day. It is. And in 2007, Rift tracks Great Mystery Science Theater 3000. Guys, Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy provided audio commentary for the full version of the special. So try and go grab that if you can as well. Oh, you can. It's on their site because it's great. I think it's like, $8. And those guys are awesome. I think Corbett listens to us. So hey, Corbett, you got anything else? No, I think we did this. There's some good stuff. Go read the Vanity Fair article. Han Solo Comedy Hour. There's a book called How Star Wars Conquered the Universe that has a very interesting chapter about this. That's where we found it. Asserted that George Lucas never said that he would smash this thing with a sledgehammer. Right? And there's also an entire website dedicated to it. Starwarsholidayspecial.com. Yeah. And if you want to know more about the Star Wars Holiday special, we have a ton of Star Wars stuff on how stuff works, by the way. Yeah, we have cool, sort of fun articles about the Death Star and Lightsabers videos with Holly Fry from stuff you missed in history class. Yeah, she knows her stuff. She does. So you can just type Star Wars in the search bar@householdworks.com and it'll bring up some cool stuff for you. Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. Hey, guys. Just finished listening to the Voyage manuscript podcast. Found it super interesting, especially the theories on its definition or origin. I know Josh mentioned Chuck theory of it being drug induced is somewhat surprising, or even unlikely, given the language, and the manuscript follows linguistic laws only founded in the past 100 years. But if you think about it, it's tough to stray away from familiar structures, especially for something like language. I think back to when I was younger and friends invented their own languages, or even in writing a song or poetry. Creativity can sometimes be limited by what we know, so just thought I'd contribute that to the conversation. Nice. Big thanks for all you guys do. I found the podcast after moving to San Diego in the last few years for some noise around my apartment. So basically, we were blocking out noise. We do that, which I love, and then as a way to get through traffic on my commute home from work, you guys are far more interesting and enjoyable than television and YouTube videos. Sure, I've listened to hundreds and will continue to listen to hundreds more. Keep on keeping on. That is from Amy J Muffet. Thanks a lot, Amy. In San Diego, doesn't that mean like place of the whales in German or something like that? Yeah. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at syscapodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychannel. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@households.com. As always, join us at our home on the web stuffysheno.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.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 Kilgueref and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're the best pet mom. When you growl back during playtime, get epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics for Digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com." | |
419614ce-53a3-11e8-bdec-97946618d000 | What Were Human Zoos? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-were-human-zoos | One of the off-putting byproducts of 19th century European colonialism were human zoos, living dioramas of people from far-away places made to be gawked at. Listen in to what the deeper meaning of humans zoos held people on both sides of the glass. | One of the off-putting byproducts of 19th century European colonialism were human zoos, living dioramas of people from far-away places made to be gawked at. Listen in to what the deeper meaning of humans zoos held people on both sides of the glass. | Thu, 25 Apr 2019 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=115, tm_isdst=0) | 39774740 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, and there's Jerry over there. And we have a special visitor today. Chuck. Jerry's miso soup. Is that what that is? Yeah. He's lied. Jerry, that is miso soup. I don't care what Jerry says, it's miso soup. Chuck is getting up to sniff it. One of his beard hairs has dropped into Jerry's soup. Jerry's miso soup. It smells like armpits. I don't know what that is because miso soup smells good. I don't think that's miso, miso miso is generally cloudier now. Josh is smelling. It smells like miso soup mixed with hospital corridor. If you were smelling, why did the soup ripple under your nose as if you were blowing out? So gross. Did not see this intro coming. Chuck. Oh, goodness. Are you feeling okay? Yeah. Okay. A little unwieldy lately. This is going to be good. This is a really interesting one that a lot of people I think, don't know about. I didn't know much about this, and I think I came across an article just randomly somewhere and I was like, human zoos? What is that? And then I was like, oh yeah, it's like if you went to an Epcot exhibit where they were showing like, hey, this is what this interesting tribe is like in this part of the world. Okay? So far, kind of Epcotti, let's say Scandinavians, that all depends on your approach. As long as it's not like, look at this weird tribe. Right, and look at this interesting thing. Right? Look at this weird tribe. And maybe like throw money and bananas at them to get them to dance for you. Well, we didn't get to that part. It's like if Epcot used humans instead of statues. Sure. And they do use some humans to an extent. You could actually kind of weirdly trace a line between Epcot's, like around the world thing and this. I don't know what that is. So you know the big dome at Epcot? The geodesic dome? Sure. If you go behind that, there's a bunch of different countries. Oh, really? I went to Epcot when I was like twelve. Yeah. There's maybe a dozen countries, maybe ten. Okay. And it's staffed with people dressed like people from those countries. Oh, sure. But they are from those countries, right? That was my understanding. A lot of them are. If not all right, that's the deal. Like if you're Sweden, you're Swedish. Okay? And you're coming out like saying, hey, I'm from Sweden. How can I help you today? Have some food. Basically the whole point is to go eat. Sure. But they're people kind of bringing their culture forth to be enjoyed and decaptivate the people who are at Epcot. Right? Yeah. There's a right way to do that. There is. The human zoos were the exact wrong way to do this. And not only was it the wrong way to do it, they were done for all the wrong reasons too. Yeah. I mean, I wasn't trying to defend this at all when I was researching it, but I did think about the time period and a Westerners inherent fascination with other parts of the world. Right. Which, at its base is like, that's fine. Well, it's okay to be fascinated with another part of the world. Totally. But not like, look at how weird that person is who is different than me. Let's make fun of them because we'll call them more primitive than we are. Right. Or are inherently inferior to our race, which is another prevailing idea. And the premise of this truck started with, like you said, just pure curiosity. It was Europeans traveling around the world to new areas and were encountering people that they'd never encountered before. Yeah. And there was a thread of people who were exploring and, like, saying, hey, you want to come back to England with me? Or, To France with me, you, or, to the Netherlands with me? I can actually introduce you to the king. And the person would hop along on board, and they would go back and they would be gawked at and everything. But they were treated as an individual. They had an identity. They were a person. Even though they were different in other, they still had some sort of agency. That was step one. That didn't last very long. Well, no, because as we saw, there was a fine line between you can go meet the king and you can beat the king's. Pet. Basically, yes. So step two was really supported by this whole thing that happened in about the first half of the 18 hundreds, I gather. Something called, like, biological anthropology. And it basically is that thing that I said about the hierarchy of races where one race is superior to another that's inferior and that there's a spectrum of human beings and on the one end, or white Europeans, which under this idea, this auspice was the pinnacle of humanity. And on the other end, it just kept going and going until you basically reached other primates. Like the apes. Right. And all other peoples of the world were on the spectrum, either closer to apes, closer to white Europeans, but really nothing compared to white Europeans. And so there's this idea that the people around the world were to be studied and analyzed and poked at and prodded and measured to support this burgeoning science. Right. Yeah. In the name of study by scientists, supposedly. But as far as the general public was concerned, something to do on the weekend. Well, that was stage three. Yeah. Stage three is when the public is finally brought in fully. And that's when the human zoos really come in. And that was the peak of colonialism. You remember our druids episode? It just dropped today. So do you remember we talked about how, like, Caesar and some of these other conquering Romans were, like, basically writing propaganda about the Druids. They committed human sacrifice and cannibalism and all that. So they need to be civilized by the Romans. This is the same exact thing, except it was 19th and 20th century Europeans who were showing their people back home. Look at how uncivilized these people are. We need to civilize them. It's good that we are colonizing the rest of the world. Yeah. And obviously this happened in Europe. It happened in the United States, in North America, in France, in the 18 hundreds, late 1018 hundreds. There was a place, it was an agricultural site. And this was sort of like that epcotty idea, which was basically like, let's throw something called the Paris Colonial Exposition and let's recreate these indigenous villages from the colonies. That's always in the background. Sure. People can't forget that because it's not epcot. It's like, these are places we have conquered, basically, right. And see what life was like there. So they would recreate this with live human beings. Not quite human zoos at this point, but more like acting out, like, what they did wherever they were from, but also really playing it up to the point where it was just totally artificial. Yeah. Well, yeah, that might speak more to just all art. Back then, there was a lot of subtlety in performance. But if you're saying, look at how uncivilized these people are and then turn around to the people and be like really kind of like play up this shouting thing yeah, of course. Well, they wanted to sell tickets or at least drive people's attention there. Right. I don't know if they were selling tickets to this one specifically. I believe they were to the Paris Colonial. The other thing you have to remember is they weren't just sort of like it was sort of like they were carney. They weren't treated well. They had terrible living conditions. They would get sick, they would get disease, they would be left in the cold. And if they died, they would be buried in a mass grave. Rather unceremoniously. Yeah. So that's another thing. Like, okay, so the human zoos are horrific enough. Just the idea that they put on these things and then even worse than that, that people came to see and throw money and bananas at people and mock them and jeer at them, that's bad enough. But then the idea that these people lost their lives as a result of coming over to Europe to put on these performances or whatever, we're just buried in unmarked graves. That just takes it down just the darkest path there is that you go to Belgium to be in this exhibition and end up buried in an unmarked grave. You lost your life because you went to a place you otherwise wouldn't have gone had Belgium not colonized Congo in 1876. Right. Yeah. I mean, Belgium, we can get into that. A little bit. What was their exhibit called? Congo Rama. Well, that was the last one of all of them, but sure. Yeah. I mean, the first one they were talking about was France Belgium. Like I said, it was going on all over the place. And they had Congo Rama spelled with a K even. Well, I think there's Belgian. Is it? I think so. Okay. Or maybe they're just trying to sell more tickets. Who knows? These were men, women anden and children, once again, put in these basically shows that show what their daily life was like. These living exhibits where white Europeans would be behind a fence. That was always important. There was always huge offense there to sort of trump up the idea that beware of what you're close to, not just that Chuck. It also reinforces a sense of separateness and otherness, too. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, there's no mingling. You weren't meeting the people, like, where you just didn't walk up to somebody and introduce yourself to the person who is putting on the performance. There wasn't any commingling. It was a fence separated you from them and you were there to observe and watch them and they were there to perform for you. Yeah. And this jumping back to 1897, king Leopold II brought over 267 Congolese men, women and children to Brussels. And this was not even for the Kangarama exhibit. This was for his own palace. Basically saying, like, put them in canoes and lakes and put them over here in the fields. And I just want sort of like, this stuff going on all over the place. Yeah, he made it like a divergence. So this is a big deal for the Congo. King Leopold also is just a straight up villain. If you are fascinated by this kind of stuff and horrified by it, you should go check out behind the Bastards by our colleague, Robert Evans. Yeah, great show. He's done some work on King Leopold II himself. Belgium gets the Congo during this conference in Berlin in the, where basically Europe divided up Africa and said, this is our colony. That's your colony. That's your colony. And the Congo went to Belgium. And Belgium is like this little tiny country. And the Congo is something like 60 or 80 times the size of Belgium. But Belgium went there and just ran roughshod over the people who are living there to exploit it for its rubber and to make money off of this possession that it now had. But part of this also was for the king to show these people belong to us, I'm gonna have some come live in their primitive ways on the royal grounds. And all Belgians are welcome to come see our new possessions. And they did. More than a quarter of Belgian residents, citizens came to see this display the king put on. Yeah. And this was in 1897. But Belgium, they had one of the last ones like you said, in 1958 at the World's Fair in Brussels, there was a Congolese village there, and I believe they had almost 600 people. They were paid. And a lot of people will point to that and say, like, they didn't have to be there. They could leave. They were paid. But that sort of I don't know. That's a bit of a whitewashing, I think, because a lot of them died as well because of the cold summer. And I think that's really important, though, to bring up Chuck. If you read a lot of stuff on this, it's just like these people were victims and nothing more. And that removes a lot of agency from a lot of the people who went there to make money off of the Westerners who were going to come gawk at them or whatever. Right. And they went back home and they took their money with them. There were people who were straight up like victims, who were straight up captives, who were brought to Europe and America virtually against their will, or we'll talk about them, or they were tricked or fooled into signing contracts, whatever, but there were a lot of people who came on their own accord and did it because they wanted to, because they wanted to make money or whatever. And the whole thing is more complex than that. And you have to recognize that fact so that the people do have agency still the agency that they did have. But at the same time, you can't point to it and be like, see, that justifies everything the white Europeans did, because it really justifies basically nothing. Well, yeah, and they talk about after 1958. That was like kind of the last well, we'll talk about some sort of modern versions of this, but like Epcot no, we love our friends at Disney. I love that. We love our imaginary friends. Is that what they're called? Yes. Imagineers. Sure. You got to earn that rank. I think it's a specific kind of job at Disney. Okay. I think I think you really know this, but you'd have to kill me if you really evolved, you got the insider secrets. So yeah, this is one of the last ones. And they said that the advent of movies and motion pictures is what really stopped it, because it's not like they said we just shouldn't do this anymore. They were just like, well, now we're just going to make degrading racist films portraying these people yeah. Like ten years later and have a lot more widespread release. What was the first documentary called? Like Mondo Kane or something like that. Yeah. I've never known how to pronounce it, but it was like Mondo Queen. I don't know if that's right. That's how it's spelled, but it was like the predecessor to things like Faces of Death or whatever. And it was just they just took their camera and went around the world and looked at how savage and weird other people were who played up everything for the camera, just focused on weird rituals and stuff like that. But it was the exact same thing. It was a total extension and outgrowth of human zoos. Yeah. And this isn't us saying weird just to clear that up? I think so. But we just got to be careful. It's true. You want to take a break? Yes. Man let's take a break. And you want to come back and talk about ODA binga after that? Yep. Alright. So I feel like we've kind of given a good overview of humans who's. Right. Basically, from the last quarter of the 19th century up to the middle of the 20th century, they had their heyday and then just became more and more tasteless to Westerners over time as it became obvious, like, what was really going on. But there's one guy who kind of, like, had the most tragic life I've ever encountered ever, and his name was Otubanga. Yeah. Who was the kid kept in a box. There's been multiple experience for that experiment. It was like his father, too, wasn't it? Oh, the Skinner kids? I think so. These are the two people that come to mind when I think of worst human existence. This is depressing. So odobinga he was \u00a3103. He was four foot eleven. When you referenced before the break about people that were literally sort of captured and brought over, he fits that bill for sure. He was brought over to the United States by a man named Samuel Verner from South Carolina. Proud gamecock. He was an African missionary and was commissioned by the St. Louis Worlds Fair. Which was what? Before that, they said, hey, why don't you go over there and bring us back a bunch of pygmies? Yeah. And he's like, all right, I know that we're using that word now and they probably won't in the future. Right. But you shouldn't even say that word anymore. I've seen both. I've seen it used, like it's just like calling Native Americans Indians. Like, some Native Americans are like what we're used to. I've seen the same thing with pygmies as well, although I've also seen it's extremely derogatory because it was also, back in the 19th century, used as a term for monkey. Right. So, like, if you're calling an African Congolese tribes person pygmy, at the time you were calling him a monkey, so yeah, I could see how that would be extremely derogatory, too. Well, this is certainly the language they used back then. And they told him to go over there and he was like, Great. He got letters from the US. Secretary of State, the president of the American Anthropological Association, the Governor of Missouri. They'll open some doors. The Belgian Secretary of State, great name, Chevalier Cuvallier, because at the time, Congo was still under the control of Belgium. Right. And they were like, yeah, go round up some people and let's bring them back for the World's Fair, and one of the gentlemen they brought back was Odobanga. Yeah. So I want to give a little more background on Otobonga, because the fact that he was brought back to be in a human zoo is pretty it's bad enough that's a really dark chapter of anybody's life, everything about his life leading up to that point predicted that this was going to happen when he was a little kid. He was born into a tribe, tribe in Congo in about 1883. And one day he went off on an elephant hunt and came back and his entire family and village had been slaughtered by the Belgians, because remember we said that the Belgians came to Congo and just over ran the place for rubber production? Well, the King held a private army called the Force Public, and they enforced rubber quotas. So if your village didn't meet its rubber quotas for the day or the month or the week or whatever, the Force Public might come in and kill everyone. Or they might hold, like, some public amputations to make an example of somebody or do basically any horrible thing you can do to another human being, all to keep people in line and to keep the rubber flowing for the King's coffers right. This happened to Otobonga's family. So he finds himself little 100 pound, like, less than five foot tall odobanga basically wandering the Congo alone. And he was, in short order, captured by slave traders who enslaved them and sold them to a labor camp. Yeah. If you see pictures of him, he has these fangs for teeth. His teeth were filed down per the Congolese customs and traditions. So at first I thought that the Americans did that, but he had already did that. But they were like, oh, yeah, this plays into our narrative perfectly. This guy's going to sell so many tickets. Yeah. So they trot him out at the St Louis World's Fair, but that's not where his story ends, because he went from there to the Bronx Zoo in New York on display in a literal cage with animals, with chimpanzees sometimes. And orangutans, I think, was his most frequent companion. Yeah. And it's really just devastating. Like, people would poke them and prod him and throw bananas at them. And the New York Times wrote about. I mean, I think their headline was bushman Shares a Cage with Bronx Park Apes. And The New York Times was just it's not like they were writing an article of outrage. No, they were saying, like, come check this out. They were actually responding to the outrage. So, in very short order, the Colored Ministers Convention is what it was called. Some of the black ministers around New York got together and were like, dude, this has to end immediately. There's a black guy in a zoo and he's being held in a cage on public display with a monkey. Yeah. And this is like 40 something years after the end of slavery. Right. So they banded together and mounted protests and eventually, in pretty quick short order, got ODA Benga released to their custody and care. But The New York Times published editorials, at least one of them saying, what's all the hubbub about the guys on the low end of the spectrum as far as this hierarchy of races is concerned? So why wouldn't we put them in a cage and study them and observe them? Of course, there's much to be learned. Right. So that really kind of gets at the heart of what was driving this at the time public curiosity, colonization, but also that completely racist science that would eventually lead to eugenics, the eugenics movement in the west, in the United States. Yeah. He was turned over to one of the leaders of the Colored Baptist Ministers Conference, reverend James Gordon. He was the superintendent of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn, and his, quote is like, one of the saddest things I've ever read. And this is how he tried to explain that it was bad. He said, Our race, we think, is depressed enough without exhibiting one of us with the apes. We think we are worthy of being considered human beings with souls. Like, the very fact that he had to point out that fundamental, so obvious thing is just so sad. Sure. I mean, he had to actually make a press statement saying, by the way, he's a human. Right. Like, you understand that, right? Yes. And we've got enough problems here trying to gain agency in this country. Can you help us out here? Right. And so they turned him over to him. He lived the rest of his life. He almost went back to Africa in 1914, but World War I broke out, and that stopped all, like, passenger ship travel. He did go back to Africa once he visited. He wanted to move back in 1914. So this is what I understand, that Samuel Verner, the guy who originally negotiated for Otobenga to come with him back to the World's Fair negotiated? Well, he negotiated with the slaves, traders. Okay. He took Odda back to the Congo. Oh, yeah. And Otobonga, from what I read, said, there's no place here for me anymore. I'll come back with you. Came back to the States and didn't feel any more comfortable or at home in the States and decided he did want to go back to Africa and never made it back that last time. Yeah. Thanks to World War One. He lived in Virginia. He worked at a tobacco company, apparently was a good worker and a good employee, and killed himself. Shot himself in the chest with a borrowed revolver. Somehow borrowed makes it even worse. You know what I mean? Does it? Yeah. Something about it, I can't quite put my finger on it. Interesting. But during this time, think about this. His whole family and village is slaughtered. He's captured and sold into slave labor for years. Taken away by an anthropologist who trades a pound of salt in a bolt of cloth for them. Is forced into a human zoo. Is forced into an actual zoo in a monkey cage. And then tries to go back home. Doesn't feel at home at home. Comes back to the States. Is just depressed for ten more years. And then takes his own life with a borrowed revolver. That was the life of ODA before Gordon's part. He tried to help him have a life in the States, tried to integrate him with American clothing. He got his teeth capped, send him to school. Yeah, he wanted to try and fit in, but he was a man without a home. He didn't fit in anywhere. It's really sad. Yeah, it's super sad. So he really kind of demonstrates America's involvement in this. He was prominent in the 19 four St. Louis World Fair, and he was put on display in the Bronx Zoo. And again, like you said, not just the New York Times was arguing in favor of keeping him in there. The fact that he was in there and that zoo attendance doubled over the previous year, the month he was there, and that the head of the Zoological Society in New York was like, let's bring some monkeys in and put him in with a cage. Because apparently he was taken to the Bronx Zoo under the auspices that he would be caring for the animals, not that he was going to be put on display. Right. Once he got there, they're like, we have a different idea for you. Yeah. And if you read accounts at the time, he would basically just sort of sit there depressed. Eventually, after a couple of weeks, he got a little, obviously, cagey, like experiencing zucosis like an animal might, and then they start letting him out to walk around the forest some. He would shoot his bow and arrow, some. But then when people saw that he was in the forest, they would come after him, and he was quickly kind of ushered back into his cage. Right. Awful. Yes. But the fact that all this happened really kind of underscores the complicity of everybody alive at the time. I mean, there were people who protested against it, obviously. The Colored Baptist Ministers Conference was very vocal about it and were secured as release, but they were in the minority, and like everybody else, was just tacitly approving this just by allowing it to go on and not speaking out about it. And some people trace this. And the fact that human zoos ever existed directly to the undercurrent of racism prevalent in the west today, that is the basis of it, certainly part of it. So let's take another break, and we'll come back and we're going to talk about St. Louis. So we talked a little bit about the St. Louis World's Fair, but they had more living exhibits than just Otobanga by the way, ODA Benga made friends with Geronimo. Did you know that? I did not know that. So the enclosure for the Congolese and the enclosure for the Native Americans were beside one another and Geronimo and Otobanka actually became pretty good friends from hanging out. Is that a silver lining? Sure. Okay. The Philippines play a large part in this. There was a 47 acre area at the St. Louis World's Fair dedicated to more than 10 Filipinos of various tribes, specifically this one tribe in the mountains of the Philippines, the, ergo, Rot. They in fact, that in Means and Tagalog mountain people, and they were unique in the world. And then they successfully defended their land against colonization forever. Right. Like Spain never got to them. That is exceptional. So, ergo, they were left largely intact culturally. Right. So they had a reputation by the time the St. Louis World's Fair, and I believe they were billed as such as being like the most savage tribe in the world, if not just the Philippines, but either way, which really means white people have not been able to get to them yet, so they're just living their nice, peaceful life as they always have. One of the things that was made, like a lot of hay was made about the Igarads was that they would eat dog. And that in reality, the Igarads did actually eat dog, but it was under very specific circumstances. And if a family sacrificed and ate their dog, their family dog, it was a really bad sign for the family. It told the rest of the village that they were in some dire straits because the family would sacrifice the dog. Basically, like the dog was taking one for the team to get this family out of whatever horrible streak of luck or whatever they had going on, and then they would eat the dog and that ritual process would be done. It was very rare. It was basically done as a last ditch attempt to reverse fortunes for this family that had fallen on hard times or was undergoing illness or whatever. But if that did happen, it did exist. If you take the Igorat people and put them in the St. Louis World Fair, that happens every morning. Every morning a dog would be sacrificed and eaten by the Igarat. Yeah. Not only that, they would take, like, sacred Igorod rituals, like crowning a chief. And it wasn't enough just to put them on display and have people look at them, is they took their traditions, their sacred rituals and used them as dramatic fodder, basically. Right. So it's like a theme park schedule to come see these different, quote unquote shows performed that were really these Igorod rituals that they had held dear and were untouched by white men until this point. Right. And then let's not forget the dogs that were sacrificed every day because of this. Right. So here's the other thing, too. You might say, well, That's crazy. They used to sacrifice and eat their dogs. That's weird. That's other, right? They sacrifice and eat their dogs every day for the satisfaction of white crowds who came to see them. So the igarat village was the most successful and lucrative exhibit in the entire 19 four world fair. There were something like 19 something million people who came to St. Louis for the world's fair that year. 99% of them paid an extra nickel to go see the igarat village. Everybody went to see the igarat village. It's because they wanted to go see someone half dressed, sacrifice a dog and then eat it. That's what people paid to see. Yeah. It had nothing to do with learning about their culture. It had nothing to do with anything. It was about seeing somebody do something horrific and weird for your edification. Yeah. There are so many people that you could pluck out of history and sort of use as an example, whether it's odobinga or this woman, SARChI bartman. Yeah. The hot and hot Venus. Yeah. She was south African, and she was born somewhere around 1780, and she was brought to London in the early 1008 hundreds and put on display. And she actually had a genetic characteristic called stetopagia. Is that right? I think so. Close enough. I should tell the audience I'm nodding silently. But that is when you have a I mean, the way it's described here medically is a protuberant buttocks and elongated labia. Right. Not genetically protuberant buttocks. Yeah. Very big. That's clear. So they brought her over in London, put her on display. Later on, she went to Paris. She was described as having the buttocks of a mandrel. And then finally, in 2002, her remains were repatriated to south Africa. And we haven't even mentioned stuff like that. They would dress up odobinga's cage with bones and things. Right. Like, anything just to make him seem more primitive. And he was probably like, what are all these bones laying around? More primitive, more scary, more in need of civilization. Like, if you think about it, that the igarat exhibit, the Philippines exhibit, and the fact that it was even part of the world's fair, it's the same thing that was a colonial possession of America. The United States had gotten into colonizing itself, and the Philippines was one of its colonial possessions. So they were bringing the most savage of the savage from the Philippines over here to basically justify why America was there to civilize the Filipinos. And it just followed the same script, and apparently it always has. Anytime somebody goes and conquers another land, they have to basically demonstrate how what they're doing is actually good for the people they're conquering. Not that they're being exploited and murdered. This is actually good for them. We're going to civilize them. And it continued all the way up until that 1958 worlds fair in Belgium. Well, some people say it continues today. While they're not rounding people up and bringing them somewhere else. You can go to what they call human safaris when they basically will put you on a bus or on a boat and drive you to these tribes people to let you go them from afar. Notably in India's, ondaman island. The Jarawa sounds like it's saying that wrong, but it's totally right. I think you nailed it. Their tribe, basically, there was a video from 2012 that the Guardian dug up that showed these people just kind of the same thing, except they weren't brought over and put in cages, but they're still gawked at. And this was, what, six years ago? Yeah. Amazing that this is still going on. I think it is. So the Indian Supreme Court outlawed it, but it's still going on. The most recent article I saw was, like, 2017. So yeah, it's like a human safari. Yeah. And again, a lot of people directly trace this to the undercurrents of racism in the west today. Something like 1.4 billion people saw human zoos during their heyday from about 1867 to 1958. One 4 billion people. That's a lot of people, especially if you're considering that it was really just people in Europe and America. Right. And that had to have had an effect. It clearly had an effect. The fact that people were like, oh, I'm going to go check this out and maybe throw a banana at somebody because I want them to dance. The fact that was a mindset clearly is still clinging to the international global psyche, at least in the west today. Yeah. I mean, it definitely helped reinforce that idea of Western white superiority that's still so prevalent. Right. So you got anything else? Yeah, we should talk real quick about this protest art in Oslo about four years ago. Four or five years ago, there were these artists that did a recreation of and this was all to shed light on this. It was protestart, but they were recreating the World's Fair of 1914. In this case, there were Senegalese environments that they were recreating, and it sort of had mixed results. Like, some people got it and were on board and saying, yeah, I see what you guys are doing. Sort of like this meta art approach. But then other people came out and said, it's an abuse of art, and really, we're highly critical of it. Right. They didn't nail it, and it didn't go over very well in all quarters. Yeah. One more thing, Chuck. The 1958 Worlds Fair in Belgium, if everything we've said up to this point seems like weird and far off and just past and historical, go look up the picture of the little girl from Congo at the fair being fed by an older white woman leaning over a fence to feed her. It drives home everything. Everything we just said doesn't even compare to this one picture. It's really tough to look at, but it drives the entire thing home. Yeah, because it's recent enough that it just feels like, oh, this just happened. Yeah, she's in a little American dress. Little white dress. Okay, what about now? You got anything else? Nothing else. Well, if you want to know more about human zoos, just start looking them up around the Internet and prepare to get bummed out. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this. We got another elephant adopted in our name. Yeah, if you remember, a few weeks ago, we read one about somebody who adopted an elephant in our name and sent a little stuffed animal. He was very kind. And this one goes a little something like this. Hey, guys, loyal listener going in about ten years, and I couldn't have been happier than to see your episode on elephants pop up. One of the best Christmas gifts I ever was given was the gift of fostering an orphan elephant at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya. They're an incredible organization that rescues, rehabilitates, and reintegrates orphan elephants back into the wild in Kenya. They also fund anti poaching teams and mobile vet units that respond to and treat injured wild elephants and other wildlife. I'm a wood turner, and I donate 20% of all my sales to DSWT, and I'm thrilled to be able to foster seven orphans right now. That's awesome. So, as a massive thank you for raising awareness, I sent each of you something from my wood shop and donated what I would have made to the DSW and fostered a sweet little Joto in your name. Joto is pretty cute. Have you seen him? Yeah, he's an elephant. Thanks for brightening up my commute and satisfying my insatiable thirst for new and interesting facts. Lowell Hutchinson, parentheses. BTWs, I'm a woman things a lot. Lowell, exclamation point. Well, everybody, if you want, you can go to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and look up Joto and see our adopted elephant that we're fostering now, thanks to Lowell, they should call it Joshua. Can you get the name changed? Maybe? It depends on how much you give, I think. Probably. So there's only, like, five elephants, so they just change the name, right? Different picture. Thanks again, Lowell. Lowell didn't say her website is for wood turning, but if you need some wood turned, look up Lowell Hutchinson and hopefully her site will come up. That's right. And if you want to get in touch with us, like Lol did, or sponsor an elephant for us, that's great, too. You can get in touch with us by going on to stuffiest Noo.com and looking up our social links or sending us an email to Stuff podcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iheartradios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show. 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 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 Kilgara and Georgia Hard Stark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon on music app and listen today." | |
c361cff8-5460-11e8-b38c-5fb5116d63f2 | SYSK Selects: What Makes us Yawn? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-what-makes-us-yawn | What is it that makes us suddenly draw in a deep breath through a wide-open mouth? The beautiful thing about yawning is that researchers really don't know. Whether the answer is physical, mental or even contagious there is pretty much no chance you won't yawn during this classic episode. | What is it that makes us suddenly draw in a deep breath through a wide-open mouth? The beautiful thing about yawning is that researchers really don't know. Whether the answer is physical, mental or even contagious there is pretty much no chance you won't yawn during this classic episode. | Sat, 06 Jul 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=187, tm_isdst=0) | 26811330 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this week's SYSK selects, I've chosen what makes us yawn? It's actually a really good question about something everyone does and yet we don't really fully understand. After all of these easy yons of people yawning and all these centuries of science studying things like people yawning, we still can't explain what yawning is. So buckle in and enjoy this episode of Stuff You Should Know. Slacks. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You're getting comfy? Yeah. Okay, well, you put the two of us together, and this is Stuff You Should Know. The podcast. Frank was squeaking. I thought I was in Frank. Oh, is that Frank? Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm in Francine. Okay. Sorry, Francine. She's squeaking. You are in Frank. Who am I? Let's build a chair. People have never heard this are like, what are they talking about? They've already turned off. We name our chairs people. Doesn't everyone? You name cars, boats, and chairs. Yeah, a surprising amount of people name chairs. If you don't, you should be paranoid because people are talking about you. That's right. Chuck. Yes. Have you ever ossetated? I have. I've even pandiculated you've pendiculated before. I paniculate every morning. You know what we sound like? People running for the Senate in 1950s Florida. Yeah. There's, like Florida has a rich history of people running for political office using technical terms for things that sound way worse than they are to, like, smear their opponents. Really? Yeah. There's this one guy who went and I can thank Uncle John in his bathroom reader okay. Who went after his opponent and said that his sister was a thespian in New York. And all these people were like, I hate spheres. Yes. And apparently the smear campaign was successful. That wasn't the only one. But this guy used that couple of technical terms. We should probably tell people what we're talking about. Right. Because you said you paniculate every morning. Easily. Every morning. And that is a what? That is a yawn and a stretch combined together and is one of my favorite things to do in the morning. It is. Did you see that painting? It was a self portrait. The artist self portrait seemed like it was from the 16th or 17th century of him paniculating. It's just this awesome oil painting of this Renaissance man stretching and yawning. Yeah. I love it because it feels good, and it ties me to my pets because I see them do it. They see me do it, and I'm kind of like, hey, we all eat. We all pee and poop, and we all pandiculate. My little cat will stretch and yawn. My dogs will stretch and yawn. Yeah. And I will stretch and yawn. So do you guys make one another stretch and yawn? I'm going to start looking out for that because I have not noticed that. But apparently yawning can be contagious to animals. Right? Yeah. There's a fun little game you can play. Dog, supposedly chimps for sure, but probably not cats. I don't know. Yes. Just because it's not in here doesn't mean it's not true. There's a fun little game you can play. The next time you're hanging out with people, if you feel like manipulating them on a biological level, just yawn and just start paying attention to how many people yawn as a result. And it should start some sort of chain reaction among maybe 40% to 50% of the people. Because that's the statistic of how many human adults yawn in reaction to seeing somebody on, seeing videos of somebody on hearing about somebody yawning, reading about yawning. Like, how many times did you yawn while you read this article? A bunch. And people will probably yawn while listening to this? Supposedly it's pretty much impossible not to. Yeah. This just really shows how deeply disturbed I am. I will suppress or cover up a yawn if someone else has made me on sometimes just so I don't give them the satisfaction. Oh, yeah, I've done that before. Sometimes like just some stranger on an elevator, they'll yawn. And I'll just be like, Nope, not me, buddy. One of those people who don't realize that they're just your mortal enemy for no real good reason. Yeah. When in fact they really don't even know exist. They're like some guys on the elevator. Right. So yawning is involuntary. Yes. And I've seen a range of weeks that a fetus has been observed yawning from eleven to 20. And that sort of disproves one of the well, many things disproves one of the theories, which is that we yawn to oxygenate ourselves. Yeah. Because a lot of people think that fetuses breathe amniotic fluid in the womb and that is absolutely not true. Right. They're oxygen to the umbilical cord. Yeah. So they're not clearly not yawning to oxygenate themselves. Right. And we'll debunk that with other things in a minute. Sure. But still it is a little bit of a mystery though, the other ideas for why we yawn don't really hold up in the fetus either. It feels like that's where the key to the mystery of yawning is going to be found in the fetus in the womb. All right. Should we go over some theories? Well, hold on. First you were saying it's involuntary. I found this one thing, Chuck, that there's a type of paralysis, like a lesion on the brain, where if you yawn, you still pendiculate. So like your paralyzed arm, if you yawn deep enough, will raise will rise. Really? Yeah. Wow. Pretty weird. Yeah. There's only been a few cases of it over the last 150 years, but it's been documented in a number of different places. That is such a surprise. Yes. Seriously. They're like, can I be tired more often? So when you yawn, just physiologically speaking, you're going to open your mouth, you're going to suck in air into your lungs. I read one place that your eyes usually close. They did this big study and found that most time, your eyes closed. But I don't think it's like, all the time that's sneezing you're thinking of. No. They did a study on the eyes of the yarn. Well, that's part of the yarn, too, as far as cues go. It's not just the mouth opening your eyes, Clint. Yeah. And I found, like, the really good deep yawn, my eyes will generally close. Got you. So you're going to flex your ABS. It's a good workout. It's going to push your diaphragm down. You're going to fill your lungs with air and then exhale. And that is a yawn. That's a stretch. You're vendiculating. Yeah. Also, parts of your brain become active. Right. Basically, what happens when you go through all this process, a bunch of neurotransmitters and dopamine are activated. That is why a guy named Robert Provine thinks well, he says that yawns are basically a part of a change from one state of arousal to another. Yeah. Like, I was asleep and I'm awake, or I was alert. Now I'm bored. Right. Or I was like, just hom. And now I'm, like, in the mood. Because you can yawn when you're sexually aroused. Oh, that mood. Yeah, the mood. The mood. Sorry. The Glenn Miller mood. Yes. That's what they had to call it back then. And that's what we have to call it today on this family friendly podcast. That's right. What's going on, too, is, physiologically speaking, is we are distributing something called the surfactant, which sounds gross, and it kind of is. Okay. It's a wedding agent to coat alveoli in the lungs. But are they saying that's what happens, or that's why it happens? That's what happens. Okay. They're not saying the reason is to coat the alveoli with surfactant. Right. It could be. I mean, for all we know, they still don't know. No, we still have no idea what function yawning provides. Same with the yawning as a symbol of arousal or as a sign of arousal. They think that it's really just a byproduct of it. Right, okay. But it explains why people who are nervous or dogs I'm sure you've seen dogs who are nervous and they yawn in that really kind of weird, unsettling way. Yeah. When they're super worked up. Yeah. And humans, too, people will yawn when they're nervous. It's a sign that you're in a state of arousal. And what that state of arousal is depends on the situation. Yeah. They point to Olympians who yawn before, like, a race, which Papua's one theory that we're going to get to the theory should we just get to the theories? Let's get to the theory. Poopoo's that theory, though, that you have to be bored or you have to be sleepy or tired. Yeah. Like, there's the boredom theory, and it's kind of been pretty fully shot down just by casual observation. There's also the physiological theory, which is that this is the one that I'd always heard when I was younger, like, why are you yawn? Is because you're oxygen deprived or you have an abundance of carbon dioxide. So you're drawing in a bunch of oxygen and like, putting out a bunch of carbon dioxide. That's why you're yawn. And provine that you mentioned. Yeah. He tested this one, right? Yeah, pretty simply. He just said, okay, well, let's just give some athletes a bunch of oxygen and see if they breathe, if they yawn any less. And they didn't. Right. He also increased the carbon dioxide in the ambient air and people still kept yawning. Okay. So that one's gone, but they didn't yawn anymore. Yeah. So we can put that to bed. Yeah. Plus, also there was a terrible proof associated with that hypothesis that explains why people yawn in groups. Because when you have a big group, it's more carbon dioxide and less oxygen. And that's like you're all fighting over the oxygen. Right. So you're yawning through yawning. Yeah. Whoever can yawn the deepest lives. Yeah, that does sound right. Evolution could play a part. Some people think that maybe we used to took with yawn to bare his teeth, to intimidate folks around him, or that it developed as a signal. Tuktuk would give a signal to his mates that, hey, we're hunting now and we need to go now, gather wood. So I will yawn to tell you that yes. Like free speech, right? Yeah. Like a bird turning the whole flock. Yeah. That makes a little bit of sense, but I still don't believe that one. I'm with the brain cooling theory. That's like the most recent one. That seems to be the one that people are subscribing to. Yeah. Scientists generally are leaning toward the fact that when our brains are warmer, yawning might cool it down. And a cool brain is a more whatever. A better brain, I guess I should say. That's better for thinking I just yawned. Did you? I did. Okay. I didn't see it. Well, I covered my mouth. You may have thought I was burping. I think I did. So the brain cooling theory, that's the one that most people think is lately. That's the explanation to Joure. Yeah. There's another piece of research that people are going into, is the idea that contagious yawning is the result of empathy. Right. The more you empathize with other people, the more susceptible you are to contagious yawning. And we said earlier that I think 41% to 55% of human adults are susceptible to contagious yawning. Right. Which the mythbusters confirmed, by the way. Okay. So there is some sort of link between what we perceive as empathy and the susceptibility to yawning. When you see somebody else yawning or reading about yawning or whatever, I wonder if it's like, oh boy, that guy's tired. Let me make him feel better. Well, the provine again, he's, like, really into yawning research. Yeah. He has done MRI scans where he shows, I guess, pictures of people yawning or talks about yawning and they yawn. And when they do, he says that mirror neurons go off. Yeah. Our old friends. Right. So our mirror neurons are activated when you see somebody else yawn, and apparently that triggers the yawn. But people take it a step further in this quest to prove that empathy and contagious yawning are work hand in hand and saying, well, then people with autism, they shouldn't be able to be susceptible to contagious yawning. Right. Because they're known to have less empathy. Right. They have trouble connecting with others. They have trouble developing what's called a theory of mind about other people. Right. And there have been a lot of studies about whether or not people who have autism are contagious to susceptible to contagious yawning. Yeah. And it's been proven not proven, but at least the data says that the stronger your autism, the less you will yawn, even though they will yawn when someone is pretending to yawn. Was that what it was, like, a real part? Yeah, I think it said that when they're watching video of people just moving their mouths, then non autistic kids yawn more than kids with autism, when it was really yawning. Does that make sense? Yes. Well, hold on before we get to that, because this is like a whole thing to me. Sure. The idea that if you have autism, you're not susceptible contagious yawning. Let's first have a message break from our sponsor. Okay, Josh, so I believe we were talking about autism and yawning, which is I just learned a thing for you. Well, yeah. You said that they have found that if you have been diagnosed with autism, you're less likely to be susceptible to contagious yawning. Right. And they found that the higher on the autism spectrum you fall, the less, like, you would even be. Right? Yeah. Which would suggest that there is that link, because there's a link between empathy and autism and empathy and contagious yawning. So autism and studying kids with autism is kind of like the fulcrum. Sure. So, yeah, it just seems to me to be kind of I don't know. I don't buy all the studies that have been carried out in other studies kind of contradicted. Other studies have shown that kids with autism focus on people's mouths rather than their eyes. So maybe they're missing the cue. Remember we said that your eyes scrunch? So, like, a yawn is not just people opening their mouths. Right. It has all these other facial characteristics that might trigger a yawn in another person. So maybe kids with autism are simply missing that. So you're saying maybe the data could be skewed by other factors? It could be. Plus, I just remember when I wrote this article years back, I was kind of like, yeah, it seems just slightly off. You got a good gut though. Well, thanks, man. I've been working on it so bad. Well, we should also mention too that this goes back a long way, like I believe was it hippocrates? Yeah. Was the first person to start sort of postulating ideas and he was like he thought it was fever related, like sickness. It could help cure you. So I got a fever and the only prescription is more yawning. Yeah. That's why he was the father of medicine. That's right. Because he was the first guy to just start saying stuff. But that was pretty quickly disproven. Right. But the idea that yawning has something to do with increasing our alertness and awareness, which is kind of one of the current views of yawning that dates back to the 17th and 18th centuries. Yeah. Well, it increases your heart rate during inhalation, only not during the I think it increases and then levels off and then just drops back down to normal pretty quickly. I got you. Yeah. But up to like 30 beats per minute increase. Right. Yeah. I read a real heady article on the study that really just made my eyes cross. But that was the long and short of it. Right, but that's when they dealt with the eyes like they really measured all kinds of stuff. When we said that fetus is from eleven to 20 weeks of development on the in utero. And did you see any of the 4D ultrasounds of fetuses yawning? Is that adorable? It's pretty cute. But it's also weird at the same time because they're not fully developed. So it's like oh, you it's like a little baby platypus, kind of but you have to be around age four before you're susceptible to contagious yawning. Yeah. Is there any way to put it besides susceptible to contagious yawning? I don't think so. Why do you feel like you've said that 80 times? A lot, and I've had trouble with it every time, too. There's another couple of researchers who a couple of years ago, andrew Gallup and Omar Tansi, Elda Car, they found that outside temperature could affect the amount of yawning. So if it's warmer than usual, then you're going to yawn less frequently. Because their explanation is the outside air is useless to the organism because it doesn't need to suck in more oxygen. I don't get how the temperature would affect that though. Well, if it's warmer temperature and you're using the cooler air to cool your brain gotcha. If it's warmer than the temperature of your brain, then it should work. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. All right. Well, they had other tests though that showed that the amount of yawning increased both when outside temperature and the temperature of the brain increase. Yes. All over the place. No one knows anything about yawning except Robert Pro Vine, the foremost leading authority. Well, he's proven that seeing or hearing about somebody yawning it triggers your mirror. Neuron. Yes. I think somebody should do a documentary on these people that become obsessed with yawns. No, just like a certain small thing. I see you're yawning right now. And that was unsatisfying. Can you make me laugh in the middle of it? Like fast, cheap, and out of control. I've talked about it before. Ariel Morris's documentary Sorted did that, but that was about like, studying naked mole rats or lion taming or what's it called when you clip the hedges. Sopiary gardening. Yes. But they should do things that are even more like, mundane. Like this dude that is dedicated his life to yawning. I just think that'd be interesting. Like, what drives provine to figure this out when it really doesn't matter? You know what I'm saying? Well, I don't know, because it's not just yawning. He frequently is cited as a yawning expert. He's an evolutionary biologist. Okay. But yawning, since it's involuntary and since you find it in all vertebrates, it kind of gives some peak into our evolutionary past. Plus, he probably just loves a good mystery. Sure. He had a great quote, too. We were talking about how arousal yawning is a byproduct of state of arousal. He was saying that he believes that yawns and orgasms share a neurobehavioral heritage. Oh, really? Yeah. So they're possibly rooted in the same behavior. Like, remember you said it yourself, when you pandiculate yeah. Some feel good. Same with orgasm. Yeah, so I've heard. Those feel great. Right. So possibly if you trace the lineage of this behavior back far enough, you'd be like, oh, they both came from when humans used to stub their toe. They thought it was awesome. And then the two things diverged into these two things interesting into yawning and what happens when you're in the mood. The Glenn Miller mood. You got anything else? No, man, that is yawning forever. Until somebody figures it out, it's a mystery. Yeah, and I kind of like it like that, but at the same time, I think it's so amorphous that no one has a clue. Like, sometimes we've talked about stuff that science couldn't fully explain, but we almost always pick a theory. Like, this is the one, it just hasn't been proven yet. Right. This one, I don't feel like we did that. We both liked the brain cooling one, but it was kind of discarded. Yeah. And I'm definitely going to keep an eye on my pets, but then I don't know if can you induce that just by noticing more? Or maybe what I'll do is I'll watch Emily around the pets so no one's in on it. Just be careful you don't accidentally change their behaviors by observing it. Heisenberg Buckley farts every time he stretches, too. That's what I'm saying. We'll see if Emily farts while she fandiculates. Right? That'll be the test. Nice. Okay. I think if you guys want to learn more about yawning, you can type that word into the search bar@housetofores.com. And since I said search bar means it's time for listing or mail. Not quite yet, my friend. We have a quick word from our sponsor again, and then we have a great listener mail, though, about Rodriguez. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. So this is time for message break. Okay, and now it's time for listener mail, huh? Yes. And I already gave it away because I wanted people to stick around for this. And it is called I hang out with Rodriguez. Wow. So we mentioned Rodriguez, the singer songwriter from the 60s, who, unbeknownst to him, was a huge hit in South America and no. South Africa. What did it say? South America? No, you're not south Africa. One's, like, down there, one's on the left, one is on the right. And then later in Australia So we covered that in our apartheid podcast. And you can see the documentary Searching for Sugar Man. It's super interesting. Which one? Best documentary this year, right? Yeah. Heck, yeah. Have you seen how to survive a plague? That was up for Best Picture, too. No. Best Documentary. Yes. Those are good. Yeah, it was really good. It's about the early gay AIDS awareness movement, and it's just what they were up against is mind boggling. The society was just kind of like, no, god's punishing you. Good luck with it, pal. Jeez. Yeah, it was really something. Go ahead. Our friend Stewart of Superhuman Happiness, who they're fans of the show. Oh, yeah. He scored the soundtrack. Oh, nice. And did a really good job with it, too. I want to check that out. I saw another trailer the other day for a documentary about this family of Jews who hid underground for a year and a half during World War II. What? And they never told their story because they didn't think anyone believe it. And this is not cave Diver. Caving guy found these human objects and traced them back to his family, and they came out like the surviving ones, like, told their story of is amazing. Wow. Things called no place on Earth. Cool. And it's coming out soon. It looks awesome. All right, well, there you go, everybody. We like to recommend documentaries around here. Okay. Rodriguez guys, it's so fun to hear you talk about Rodriguez because I've known him a little bit here and there. I'm glad he's getting recognition. And here is a story about the first day I met him. September, 2007, I moved into a 101 year old apartment building in the Cast Corridor neighborhood of Detroit. There was a bar across the street called the Bronx, and after getting moved in, my boyfriend and I went over there, had a night of celebrating and talking with some old and new friends. Our friend Dale pointed out this dude wearing all black with sunglasses on said, you know, Rodriguez, that guy over there is bigger than eldest in South Africa, in Australia. I didn't understand the gravity of a statement at the time. Being friendly people, we talked late into the night with Dale and Rodriguez. The bar closed. We decided to walk back across the street to our new apartment, and Rodriguez followed us out with his guitar in tow. It's very quiet out about three in the morning. The apartment building was Ushaped, with a big courtyard in the middle and low lighting. It was really beautiful. There was a single picnic table and we sat there on it, talking more and more. Rodriguez pulled out a pint of brandy, offered us some, and then asked we wanted to hear his new song, saying he just written it the other day. He said sure because he seemed so incredibly excited about it. He played the song for us and played it again, which I thought was interesting. He played it twice. Did you like that? You want to hear it again? Wait, before you answer, let me play it the second time. And then we talked some more about music and love and he played it once again. No way. I guess he played it three times. I saw many, many times over the next few years and met his middle daughter as well. You play the same song every time. But I'll never forget sitting under the stars all alone with him in a majestic old Detroit courtyard, giving my boyfriend a me a private concert. A single song that's cool played thrice and passing the cheap brandy. He really is as kind and happy of a soul as the movie says. Cool. When you watch Searching for Sugar Man, you can see a couple of people talking to the Bronx bar and even see my old apartment in the background. I hope I see you guys soon. Love, Julia. Well, thanks, Julia. Hat tip to you for being aware of the word thrice. Yeah, and for, I guess, waiting out the storm in Detroit. Yeah, and for listening to that song three times. Like very patient and understanding with that smile plastered on your face the last time. Yeah. Very cool memory, I imagine. Yeah. Let's see if you have a story about any sort of famous singer, songwriter, filmmaker. Anybody remember the guy who hung out with Henry Hill and became, like, really disenchanted as a result? Yeah. If you have a good story like that, we're always in the move for a good yarn, especially if it's true. You can tweet to us if it's a really short story to syskpodcast, that's our handle. The whole thing. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffynow all one word. That's our Facebook page. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast athousepworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshotnow. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts My heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show." | |
How Bounty Hunters Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-bounty-hunters-work | In part two of their series on bail, Josh and Chuck talk about bail enforcement agents, a.k.a. bounty hunters. | In part two of their series on bail, Josh and Chuck talk about bail enforcement agents, a.k.a. bounty hunters. | Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:11:19 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=17, tm_min=11, tm_sec=19, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=56, tm_isdst=0) | 22254881 | 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. Www. Chuck Bryant. Yes, indeed, I am here. I did not skip bail. No, you didn't, Chuck. And if you had, something would have happened to you. You're right. Yeah. Maybe a bounty hunter would have come after you. Part two, Josh. Our first ever. Well, not true, but this is a two part suite. Yeah, it's definitely not our first ever. Thank you, Steve Reader. Steve, who sent in the suggestion. Yeah. And again, it was a M PR three part series on bail in the United States that kind of kicked this thing off. Like I said, it's worth reading. Go to Npr.org and you can check it out. I think you'd probably just type bail in their handy search bar. Yeah, but yeah, we asked the question at the end of the last podcast that came out on Tuesday. Here it is Thursday. The question was, what happens when you skip bail? Right. And as we just established, you get a bounty hunter sick. Done your yes, in many cases, that exactly what will happen, is the bondsman will hire what they like to be referred to as a bail enforcement agent. But of course, we like to call them bounty hunters because it's just a cooler name. It is a way cooler name. And it's a name that goes back several centuries, right? At least one or two. Well, sure. Are you talking about the Old West? Yeah. The whole thing started was when I believe in Supreme Court case kramer versus Kramer. Now, Taylor versus Tainter. Taylor versus Tainter. This case gave bounty hunters authority to act as agents for bail bondsman. And then starting then and even if it wasn't a bail bondsman, there would be the wanted poster in the Old West, like, bring him back dead or alive. Of course, that's just a bounty on someone's head. Right. Because you bring them back dead. It's not going to do much good in court. Debt is easier transporting. Yeah, but that's the way it started. And I believe what was Jesse James was worth five grand at his peak. Yeah. Did you go onto the currency converter? I did. Nearly 100 grand. Wow. Yeah. I would have thought more. Yeah, but the bill was different then. Like now he would probably be like 10 million. Oh, sure. Actually, he's worth about 100 million in adrenal dollars. Yeah. We're basing that on an article by Stephanie Watson who talked to a very legendary bounty hunter by the name of Bob Burton. Right. Yeah. You saw the picture of him, right? I did. And he looks like a total bad dude. Yeah. Carrying the shotgun and the cowboy hat. He has awesome quotes, and I just wish we had Sam Elliott in the studio to read them. That'd be pretty cool. That'd be awesome. Yes. Bob Burton in, I believe 2007. Yes, 2007. Made 20,000 arrests. Yeah. He and his agent, and he's personally made many thousand over the last 25 years that he's been in business. Yeah. He's director of the National Enforcement Agency. I guess that's just the name of his company. Right. Yeah. So we'll be leaning on him a little bit for some pointers about bounty hunting. Right? Yeah. Can we go ahead and issue the first quote? Yeah. As bounty hunters, we're driving around bad neighborhoods talking to stupid people, drinking cold coffee and looking for bad guys, and they talk about the glory of it all. For every buck we make arresting someone, we make 1000 in adrenal dollars. Right. So he's talking about just the rush of it all. Sure. You run up on a bad guy and you've got your gun in his mouth and you're saying, like, try something, try something. And you're pumping, buddy. Yeah. It's awesome. Yeah. So Jesse James would be worth about 100 million in adrenaline or 10% of that is what the bounty hunter would earn. Right. Sure. Is the cat out of the bag? I'm not supposed to announce. No. Yeah. No, it's good. They usually get, I think, ten to 20% of the total amount of bail. Right. Yeah. So they will get this from the bail bondsman. So the bail bondsman obviously doesn't have to pay or not pay a huge amount. Well, yeah. Let's recap real quick. When you go to jail, if you contract the services of a bail bondsman yes. You pay them a 10% premium and the bail bondsman tells the court, I got this guy, technically this person's in my custody, and I will see to it that he or she makes it to the court appearance. Right. And in the meantime, you're out free. And if you skip, then that means supposedly that the bail bondsman is on the hook for you right. To pay your entire bail. So you gave the bail bondsman a 10% premium, say it was $5,000. They're on the hook to pay the $50,000. Right. Indeed. If they are in a county or a state where they don't have the local court system and the local commissioners in their back pocket, then they might actually have to pay that bail. Right. And so they send a bounty hunter after you. Right. Okay. So the bounty hunter works for the Bell Bondsman. Rarely. Are they one and the same? Yes. Two different professions. Chuck, you said back in the Wild West there used to be one of those things that said dead or alive. Right? Yeah. It's pretty infrequent these days. The dead thing. Yeah, the dead part. Yeah. Because you want to obviously collect your money and you cannot, as a bounty hunter, bring in a dead suspect because that does no one any good. You don't get any payment and you cannot even be able to rough them up. No. Because you can bring a roughed up fugitive to the jail all day long, and they're going to say, we're not taking them because the fugitive could say, oh, actually it was the county that did this to me, because they have deeper pockets than the bill or the bounty hunter who did. Right. Yeah. So the idea is to bring them in as gently as possible without excessive force. And I think they said only three to 4% of the suspects even put up a fight. And usually that's just I'll try to run or I'll swarm around. It's not truly like some big violent confrontation. That was Bob Burton's estimate. Okay. Yeah. But I imagine it's probably pretty exemplary of the rest of the field, right? Yeah. And he also Bob pointed out that an experienced bounty hunter can make 50 to 80 and probably up to 100 grand a year, provided they don't have like, a TV show or a book deal. Right. Which we'll get to in a moment as well. We said in the last podcast that when you sign a bail bond contract, you are signing a document that is unlike any other you're going to ever sign for the rest of your life. Yeah, I didn't know that. You are waiving some serious constitutional rights. For one, you are giving the bounty hunter more jurisdiction over capturing you than any police agency. Yeah. You're basically giving them permission to come after you and use almost any kind of means necessary to come and get you. Right. You're waiving any right to extradition within the United States. And you're also saying that, you know what, you don't have to read me my Miranda rights, and if you know where I live, you can come into my house to try to arrest me, as long as you're sure that it's my house. Let's talk about that. This is amazing. That I'm sorry. Bounty hunters actually have way more leeway than cops do. They don't have to have warrants. They can just bust into your house. They can go through your mail, go through your trash. Obviously they can tip off, go behind the scenes and do some more unscrupulous things. As long as no one knows about it, then it's all well and good. Yeah. Burton mentioned that he'll tip anywhere from fifty dollars to three hundred dollars for like, a motel clerk or bartender or a bouncer to give them a call if you show up. And what do they need to do this? Josh? Very little. Not very much. No. It depends. It depends on the state. And in Kentucky, Illinois and Oregon, you're not going to find any bounty hunters. You're not going to find any bail bonding companies either. But like we said, that you waive your right to extradition or right against extradition within the United States. So these states are aware that people do come to their states to flee as fugitives because no bounty hunters are there. Right. And a bounty hunter is going to come into their state after them. Now, say, like Kentucky, you can make an arrest as a bounty hunter in Kentucky, but you have to go to their court system first and say, I need a warrant. Yeah, this is actually a pretty I think it would be the ultimate deal for the bounty hunter is if your suspect goes to Kentucky, because basically you get a court order and then the judge will have a police officer do the dirty work yeah, that's Illinois. And arrest the person, and then you can have them remanded to your custody. So you get the award. Right. So you don't even have to capture them. No, you don't. But I imagine it's probably if you're a bounty hunter, you probably hate working with the cops because it slows things down, bureaucratic. And you're not used to playing by the same rules that they are. True. I imagine it probably is a fly in the ointment when you have to go get somebody in Illinois or something like that. Can they do anything? Josh they want to. Are they completely above the law? No, definitely not. There's one sterling example of what you can't do is cross international lines in pursuit of a fugitive. That's bad news. One place you don't want to go is Mexico. Yes. That is Dog, the alleged racist bounty hunter who has a TV show on an E. And I call him that because he was famously spouted a bunch of nasty racist things. Did you hear that recording? Yeah, he seems like a big jerk, to be honest. Allegedly. But yeah, he actually caught a very famous criminal in Mexico. Yeah, it was Andrew Luster who was the Max Factor heir back in 2003. Do you remember that? It was a big deal. Oh, yeah. And he got in big trouble for it. First he recouped some of his share of the million bucks, and then Mexico said, Wait a minute, it's illegal here. You are under arrest, sir, but we'll let you out on bail. Well, yeah, they did let him out on bail, and his entire job is to bring people back to skip out on bail. And he skipped out on bail. He did. So Mexico wanted to extradite this guy, but by that time he had already made a name for himself. He's a famous TV star. So Condoleeza Rice writes a letter on his behalf to Mexico saying, just drop extradition. And Mexico is like, no, I'd like to vouch for Dog. I wonder if that's what the letter said. Yeah, I'm sure Mexico said, no, we're not going to extradite. And a court said, Send them to us. He's yet to have been sent to him, but well, they dropped the charges. Oh, they did? Yes, a couple of years ago, they dropped the charges. So he's off. He's off scotfree and he's doing his thing. His TV show was suspended for a little while because of the racist remarks in this whole Mexico thing, but it's going strong again. Yeah. Because the American public, they'll forgive you if you will bust outdoors on TV for them. Yeah. Who wrote this? Actually, this is Stephanie Watson. Stephanie Watson wrote about Dog the Bounty hunter, his mulleted militia. I thought that was really good. The other thing, Josh, I thought was interesting, that they cannot do, and this seems like a pretty big loophole, is they cannot enter the home of a friend or family member to catch you. No. So it seems like you should just hide out with a friend or family member. No. It's becoming quite clear that if you or I ever jump bail jump bond. Right, sure. We should go stay at the house of a friend or family member in Kentucky. Okay. Yeah. I actually do know people in Kentucky. Okay. I need their address. I could go stay with Stacy Horns parents. Chuck but they can't come and get me. Who cares? They can sit outside the house in the moment you come out, buddy, I'd be a shut in. Okay. Chuck's got it all worked out. I do. All right. Chuck but, yeah, just about everything else they can do. Sure. Can't rough you up. No. Can't go into Mexico. Although they can do and they can't go into the houses of friends or family members. Right. What are they doing? Like, they're using everything else at their disposal, right? Yeah. They're doing stuff that probably a good detective might do. They're accessing your files and your records, phone records, maybe credit card receipts, asking around on the street, trying to find out where you like to hang out and shoot pool. Right? That kind of thing. Yeah. And then you stake it out, like cop would. Yeah. Some of them use, like, spy gadgets, like pinhole cameras, that kind of thing. My Vision God thing. Yeah, that'd be cool. But yeah, it seems like a stakeout is probably one of the bigger parts of the job of a bounty hunter. Yes. Several days, I would imagine. Hours, if you're really lucky. Yeah. And then you make the arrest. Right. Josh but that's not the most important thing they have to their advantage, is it? No. Stephanie points out it is. What? The element of surprise. Yeah. I like this. Sure you're not a police officer? No. So you can totally trick anybody any way you can. I love to dress up as a meter reader to get into that house. Candy grab your friend or family member. Right, sure. Yeah. And all of a sudden, they open the door, you say you're a Ups guy, and then no Miranda, no nothing. They just bust in there and put you down the ground. Yeah. That's pretty hinky. It is a little hinky, but it is a real job. It's bona fide. And you're saying you guys can do this to me when you sign your Bell Bond contract? Well, exactly. That's the key. Joshua they carry guns? Oh, yeah. They carry guns. Heck yes. Depending on the state, you may have to license it with the state in Georgia, where we live? Yes. You have to be 25 to have a gun license. No, check. You have to work for only one bail bondsman. This is kind of a big deal. There are freelance bounty hunters who work for anybody. Non bushido code bounty hunters. Right. Okay. And a lot of states say, no, you can't do that. You can be a bounty hunter, but you have to work for an express bail bondsman, and they have to have you on their books, and it can only be him. And if you show up in someone else's books, you're in huge trouble. Right. So you're still a freelancer, technically. You're not on their staff. You're an independent contractor, but you exclusively work with that person. Right. I think it can go either way. Legally speaking. I don't know, practically speaking. But legally speaking, you could either be on their staff or you could be an independent contractor. But once you're contracted with one bail bondsman or bail bonding company, that's it. Got you. Okay, but there are states that allow freelancers. Which ones are those, do you know? I think it's more most states allow it rather than fewer states. Got you. I know Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina have rules about freelancing. Well, that's all we care about because we're likely to get arrested here in the Southeast. Sure. Okay. But not by a freelancer. I got another quote from Mr. Burton. Joshua ready? Let's hear. It's very difficult for a wife to say to her husband when he's walking out the door at midnight with a shotgun, have a nice day at the office. So he said, the worry factor, even though it's usually nonviolent, you're going out on your own without the protection of a police officer as well. Right. That's a little scary. And there was one other trick that Burton points out, and it's called finding out the Judas. Yeah. Remember we said that in the bail bonding episode, that in most cases, the bail bond company takes something in collateral from your parents, the title of your parents house. Sure. Let's say you skip bail anyway, your parents are probably going to be fairly pissed at you for doing that. And now all of a sudden, they may say, you know what? I want him back here because I want to keep my house. Right. So Burton figures out who you've wronged by jumping bail, or possibly who you wronged in the first place to get arrested, say, like a drug dealer or something like that. And then he'll find that person and get the information of where you are, where you like to shoot pool, as you put it. All right. That's the Judas, obviously. Name from the Bible. I was about to say Bible character, but I guess Judas is a real person. Sold out. Jesus. That's probably not a real popular name. Baby name, wouldn't you think? Like Judas and Adolf. Right? Yeah. Lucifer and Chuck. Lastly, how do you get to be a bounty hunter? Believe it or not, dude, there are schools who are starting to have programs and bounty hunters and degrees. I'm not sure. What schools? Oh, I can guess, but they're out there. Sure. And is it like evening and weekend schools, that kind of thing? Probably. Or maybe online schools, which I have to say are gaining more and more accreditation and credibility. Yeah. Before we leave, though, I wanted to point out one of the cool little tricks I saw is they'll rig certain things ahead of time to make it harder for you to escape. Like, if they know they're going to go to your house, they'll go to your car first and like, jam something in the keyhole. Like paper. Yeah. So if they get away out the back door, all of a sudden they're at their car fumbling with their keys, and you walk up with your Taser and put them down on the ground. Or just run and put your gun in their mouth. Yes. You can do that, too. And you can be a female. We keep saying him a lot. Yeah. He pointed out that it's a judgment call and the use of force. He said if you're coming up to a 25 year old girl who was wanted for cutting checks, he's going to say, look, just come with us. We don't want to handcuff you. That's probably how it usually goes down. Sure. Not like in the movies. You ever seen a good bounty hunter movie? Dead man? Yeah. Dead man's a good one. We talked about that. What about my favorite Josh, was besides Midnight Run on the comedy end? Was the hunter. Steve McQueen's final picture. I never saw that. It's a good one. I don't know that I've ever seen a Steve McQueen movie. What? Yeah. You never seen Bullet? No. You never seen the Great Escape? I think I have seen most of the Great Escape. Isn't Dustin Hoffman there are some really thick coke bile glasses. No, that's Papillon. Okay, well, then I've seen Papillon. Steve McQueen was in that, though. Okay, so I have seen a Steve McQueen movie then. Wow. Yeah. Check out The Hunter. It's his last movie in 1980. I always confused The Great Escape with Hogan's Heroes. Yeah, similar. Yeah. Is that it? That is it. Done. Bounty hunting we are. That was our two part suite again. Check out the NPR expose. I guess you could call it bail bonding in the United States. It's pretty eye opening. You're always going to want to keep at least $150 in your stock just in case. Sure. And you can also find out more about bail and bounty hunting by typing those words into the search bar@housetofworks.com. Which leads us, of course, Chuck, to listener mail. Not yet. Sir. Now, first we are going to issue what I believe is our first ever official apology that can't be right to people. Well, we apologize all over the place all the time, but this is official because we inadvertently offended Jehovah's Witnesses and the listener mail segment from last week where the kid wrote in about his uncle who gave the blood transfusion to the Jehovah's Witness even though they refused at first. The Portuguese doctor in Brazil. Yes, it was this week. It was Tuesday. Was it? Yeah. Okay, well, we just want to apologize officially to them because we had quite a few Jehovah's Witnesses right in and it came across as us saying that they were just willing to let their kid die and they were callous and this non Jehovah's Witness saved the day and blah, blah, blah. And that is not what we were thinking at the time. It was just like a nice hero letter in my mind. Right. So sorry, guys, we didn't know we had so many of you out there listening to us. And they also pointed out bloodless surgery would be a good topic and it's a very viable thing, so we're going to look into that too. Okay, so you feel better? I do. Okay, so I guess that's it, right? Right. And now it's time for Listening to Mail. Yes, Josh, this is from I'm going to call this Canadian email. We will say that this is from James K in Calgary, Alberta, which is in Canada. Yes, it is. We've been chatted for saying calgary Canada. That's like saying Atlanta. That's in Alberta. And he is a big, devoted listener and basically has mainlined them since the end of September like so many people do. They'll discover the podcast listening, like 150 of them, and then they hate us. And not the case with James. He says, I've listened to every podcast you have to offer and there are no more left. No more. I'm a drowning man, a wash in a sea of confusion and lethargy. I must now live day to day knowing that you will not, cannot be there beside me. I've worked my addiction up to the point of frenzy and then gone cold turkey in an instant. And it hurts. It hurts more than you'll ever know. So please give me more. The habit might be destructive. It might be pulling me down away from everything I firmly held dear and into the pit, some cesspool of intellectual fervor. But I don't care. I want my fix. I need it. And you're the only ones that can hook me up. Yours forever, James. You could get James to send us some money. And he actually pointed out a few stats. 183 podcasts, and there's a few more since he wrote in 3234 minutes of information and entertainment. I don't know about either of those. And the first podcast with me. Does gum really stay in your stomach for seven years? Yeah. Remember those days when we recorded in Tin Can? Yes. Five minutes, 510 can and episodes without me, he says. 19. I didn't know there were that many without me. But, yeah, we should probably rerecord those 19 or just erase them. There were some good topics in there, Chuck. Erase. Okay, if you have any ideas for podcast topics so we can create new podcasts for James and all the other SYSK junkies out there, pop it in an email, bang it out to stuffpodcast@howstaffords.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more? HowStuffWorks. Check out our blog on the housetofworks.com homepage brought to you by The Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from exactly right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarra and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen to today." | ||
8a4b0598-4a58-11e8-a49f-2b054bc20460 | SYSK Selects: How the Cannonball Run Worked | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-the-cannonball-run-worked | The Cannon Ball Run is a cross-country car race famously portrayed in the campy 1981 movie "Cannon Ball Run." But it isn't fictional. | The Cannon Ball Run is a cross-country car race famously portrayed in the campy 1981 movie "Cannon Ball Run." But it isn't fictional. | Sat, 28 Jul 2018 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=209, tm_isdst=0) | 31220392 | audio/mpeg | "Hi, everybody. Chuck here for another Saturday stuffy. Shino selects edition. This week I picked how the Cannonball Run work. October 20, 2009. This was a fun one, the Cannonball Run. We certainly talk about the movie, the sequel. It was one of my favorites growing up, but it was based on a real race. The Cannonball Run is, or was Jesus let me church is still going on. This has been a while since we recorded this one. It is a road race, a cross country road race that seems too strange to be true that people would actually get in their cars in the United States and drive super fast and elude the cops all across the country in order to win. I don't even know if there was money involved. A trophy. Burt Reynolds mustache. Only you can find out by listening to how The Cannonball Run worked right here, right now. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is our good friend Charles W. Chuck Bryant. How are you, Chuck? Thank you, good friend. How are you feeling right now? I'm feeling a little hot. I'm shitting. Yeah. Chuck is bright red right now, everybody. It's kind of weird looking. Yeah. Thank you, Martin, for that. Our super fan in Seattle. Thank you. He's not a super fan. He's a buddy. He has be he was such a fan that he actually became a friend. He's a friend that we haven't met yet. Yeah. So, Chuck, take us back to the time machine. Yes, the way back machine. You ready? Here we go. Okay. All right, Josh. I'm ten years old, kneehigh to a grasshopper. Disco is dead. Margaret Thatcher is the Prime Minister of England. I take issue with the disco being deadline. I don't know that disco ever died. You cannot make the argument that all modern RMB is all disco. Disco is alive. Okay? Margaret Thatcher is the Prime Minister of England. Ronald Reagan is in office just as Jimmy Carter has exited. Walter Cronkite resigned from the CBS Evening news desk. That was a sad day. The first AIDS case was made public in California. Have you ever seen in The Band Played On? My brother worked on that. That was a great made for TV movie. It really was. It was really good. And he had a great experience working on that to find people in that movie. Oh, wow. Great. Major League Baseball has just gone on strike in the summer for what will be the first of 80 times over the next five years. All right, so America is depressed, but not for long. No, because one Mr. Burt Reynolds is about to dash across the silver screen that's right. In a little movie called Cannonball Run. Great movie. It was a great movie. I haven't seen it in forever. I think I probably saw it in, like, 1987, right? It was one of the first movies we rented. Sure. Along with Beverly Hills cop. Yeah. Very hokey and corny, but still beloved. Yeah. Everyone takes it as a comedy because it is a comedy, clearly. But this is not to say that it started out as a comedy. Actually, it was supposed to be serious. And Burnt reynolds part was originally written for Steve McQueen, right? Who died before he could film the movie. Sadly. It was supposed to be a serious movie, and it didn't turn out that way. Why would anybody want a Cannonball Run to be a serious movie? Well, because it was, in fact, based on a real race. What? What? True. Based on a real race, as you know. Yeah, I do know. After reading this article, I think I'd heard that before, but I had no idea the details. I didn't either, until I wrote it. This was really amazing. I'm just going to come out and say, I have a man crush on a 70 year old Mr. Brock Gates. He's a cool dude who I would have loved to have hung out with. I bet he's still a very cool dude and hung out with in a strictly platonic sense. Sure. Yeah. Maybe a little making out. But aside from that, yeah, I bet he's still a way cool guy. I get that impression. He is. This is kind of what I gathered about Brock Gates from researching this and reading your article. Go and say who he is. He was pretty much the premier automotive journalist of his age. 65, eventually. Yeah. But I think he started out as a journalist and something of a gonzo journalist, I take it. But, yeah, he was very well known and respected in the field, and in the early 1970s, America was at a fork in the road, if you will, so to speak, and Brock Yates represented one direction, and that was the out. Just go, and if you die, your number was up. And the mentality behind the wheel, that is. Yeah. Damn the torpedoes. Full steam ahead. Right. On the other side on the other side of the fork was a guy named Ralph Nader who was still there on that other fork. He is for those of you who don't know who Ralph Nader is, he's run for president a couple of times. Sure. He got George Bush elected in 2004. Thanks for that, Ralph. Yeah. But he's also a very dedicated consumer watchdog. He has for many years, lived in a tiny little one room apartment. He uses a hot plate. He lives this very meager life. So no one can say you're corrupt. Right. Because he goes after everybody else. And in the early 1970s, he was going after the automotive industry. Right, right. He wrote this book called Unsafe at Any Speed. Great. And it was basically about have you read it? I've read parts of it through research and stuff. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, then it was basically about how the automotive industry was producing these incredibly dangerous vehicles. Right. Death machines. Right. And at the time, we didn't really have much of a speed limit. Sure. So as a result of his book, seat belts became mandatory. New safety designs had to be instituted by car manufacturer. It's a big deal. So America is at this fork in the road, brock Yates down one end and Ralph Nader on the other, and America went down the Ralph Nader fork. Right. I think what you're referring to is the national speed limit. That's part of it, definitely. But I think even more than that, it's more of a, you know, the way you and I were raised, where we could do anything we put our minds to, and we were special. I think that came out of that collective decision to go towards safety rather than fun at any cost. Reckless abandon. Exactly. Devil may care. Sure. But yeah, the national speed limit was definitely one part of that. Yeah. That was 55 miles an hour, which was in 1974. Yes. That has since gone up quite a bit in certain areas. Of course it has. But even more than safety, do you know why they set the speed limit at 55? Gas consumption. Yes. Really? Yeah. The Arab oil embargo has just taken place. Okay. OPEC was like, hey, US, we're not real happy with you for siding with Israel during the Yom Kippur War, so we're going to cut off your oil. And they did, and prices spiked and the US said, okay, we need to rethink our dependence on foreign oil. Right. It had a huge rippling effect, but one of them was setting the speed limit at 55 mph, which is too slow. It is too slow. Especially in the opinion of somebody like Brock Gates. I thought you're going to say Sammy Hagar. Yeah. He can't drive 50 miles. He's tried. He has. He's made a concerted effort, but it didn't pan out. He tried. I loved that song. It wasn't I don't like to drive 55 or I would prefer to drive faster. It was I can't drive 55. Exactly. I tried and it just doesn't happen. It was very explicit. Yes. So, Chuck, this was 1970, 419, 71. Brock Yates saw the writing on the wall that the speed limit was going to be reduced. America is becoming something of a manbypamby. Yes. Okay. And what did he do as a result? In 1971, he took a trip across the country in a Dodge van with three travel mates, and he drove from New York to Los Angeles as a way of proving, protesting. I believe his quote said something like this good drivers and good automobiles could employ the American interstate system the same way that the Germans were using their auto bond. Right. So he wanted to prove that you can drive fast if you're safe, if you're a good driver, you can get to point A to point B in a car and it's safe. Yeah. And you said reckless abandoned. There was definitely a certain level of professionalism or the people who he considered good drivers were actual good drivers. He had to be a good driver to drive fast, in his opinion. It wasn't just like, everybody go as fast as you can. That wasn't the point. Sure. Right. So he did. So he drove 2858 miles from New York to La in 40 hours and 51 minutes, which is an average of 70 mph. Yeah. Which is pretty fast if you're talking about an average speed. Yeah. Because that included stops, I think. Stops, you name it. Right. So after that happened, I think it got a little bit of publicity by word of mouth. Very. Maybe the racing world. And there was a famous telegram that came, I guess, a month or so later. Yeah. I love this. Can I read it? Yeah, it's awesome. It says, this constitutes formal entry by the Polish racing drivers of America in the next official Cannonball Baker's seat, a Shining Sea Memorial Trophy dash. The drivers are Oscar Kovaleski, Brad nametchek and Tony Adamawicks. If we can find California, we'll beat you fair in square. So basically, the gauntlet was laid and the Cannonball Run was born. Although, like you said, the official name has always been Cannonball Baker sea to Shining Sea Memorial Trophy dash. Right. So who's Cannonball Baker? Cannonball Baker. Erwin G cannonball Baker. He was famous for pushing the limits on a motorcycle. Yeah. So he would drive from Canada to Mexico, from New York to La on an old Indian motorcycle. And we're talking starting in 1914. Right. So, like, the old Indian motorcycle was basically a bike with a motor. Yeah, that's exactly what it looks like. He actually had a pretty well deserved reputation for his nickname and just the stuff he was doing, his endurance level. Apparently on one ride he came around a curve and was about to barrel into a herd of cattle that was in the middle of the road because it's 1914. Sure. And he swerved to miss him, hit a pothole, flew off of his bike onto the back of a cow, which bucked him off and eventually landed in a ditch. Wow. Got up and drove away. That is the stuff of legends. That's how you get a race named after you, my friend. Exactly. And he went on to become the first Commissioner of NASCAR, which I thought was pretty interesting. So there you have that. Yeah. Nothing to do with moonshine, though. Or did he? I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. Curious. So, yeah. Yates wanted to pay homage to Cannonball Baker, so he named it after him, although he did shorten the name. Cannonball was two words, originally. For Baker. Yeah, for Baker. But he shortened it to Cannonball to avoid any illegal men. Right. His lawyers advised him to do that. Yeah. I thought it was kind of weird. Yeah. Well, anyway, so you have the Cannonball, originally called the Cannonball Dash. And then it finally became the Cannonball Run, which is how we know it today. Right. And thanks to the Polish Drivers of America who laid down the gauntlet, it was a real thing. They didn't they weren't the only ones to participate in the first official cannibal. That first run he made in the van was considered like a preliminary test run. It wasn't the first Cannonball because there was nobody competing with them. Right. So the second one there was the Polish Racing Drivers of America and seven other groups, including three vans. There was a huge motor home. There was an American Motors AMX, an MGBGT and a Cadillac sedan. De Ville. And this is probably the coolest part of this entire story. Yeah, I love it. Tell him. This Cadillac was owned by an old gentleman in New York. In Boston. In Boston. And he wanted to and this happened back then, it may still happen now, where you would contract someone to drive your car from one place to the other because you can't get it there. Richard Prior contracted Dana carvey and moving. Really great movie. I didn't see that one. I thought it was a stinker. No, it was good. So this old man put out an ad in the paper and I need to get my car to Los Angeles. And these guys answered it and said, we'll get your car to Los Angeles. And unbeknownst to him, it was one of the entries. And I think one of the stipulations was the car not be driven faster than 75 any time we're in the dark. Oh, is that the other one? Yeah. And clearly they broke both of these because the Cadillac averaged 79 mph. Right. Which means they were driving a heck of a lot faster than that. I think they came in third, too. Yeah. Third place. Yeah. Not too bad. But I think they got the car there in one piece and safely. Yeah. So good for them. Right? They're like, Here are the keys, pal. So go ahead and start with the first race. Where did it start? Where did it end? Well, it started in New York at the Red Ball garage at midnight, I believe, is when all of them started. Yeah. And this is what, november 15, I believe. And the ending place was a hotel in Redondo Beach. Yeah. What is it? The Portofino Inn. Right. Okay. From pictures I saw was pretty luxe little hotel. I think so. And you didn't have to follow any specific route. You just got there anyway you could. Right. Basically, the only rules were you could have as many drivers as long as it was only one car and you could leave at any point within the 24 hours window. It wasn't like everyone started at the start line like a typical race. Just like in the movie. You would punch a time clock for when your starting time was and then punch it again for when you arrived. Yeah. And whoever won one, and I believe there was no trophy at the time, there was only a $50 entry fee. And then they donated $200 apiece to charity. Yes. I thought that was pretty cool. Sure, why not? So apparently, two days before the race, brock Yates had managed to finagle a Ferrari Daytona, a brand new Ferrari Daytona, a loaner out of an auto dealer. And he had the car, but he only had himself. He didn't have a copilot or a driver. Right. And apparently he sent out all these invitations. And a lot of race car drivers, like legitimate race car drivers, and they were like, if somebody dies or something, it's going to look really bad for the sport of racing, and I don't want to do that. And then one guy he had invited, Dan Gurney, who is a professional race car driver, had declined initially, but he apparently was told by his wife that his dying father in law said, you should go do this. Life is short. Right? So Gurney contacts Yates the day before the race and says, hey, can I still come? And Yates said, Heck, yeah. And that proved to be fortuitous because they won. They did all run. Yeah, they did. Their winning time, Josh, was 35 hours and 54 minutes. Not bad cross country. Not bad at all. And not Atlanta. To La. New York to La. Which is further. Yeah, because I've made it in 33 hours from Atlanta to La. Have you? Yes. That's the way I've always done it. 311 hours. Days is how I schedule it out. I never time myself, but I went and drove around the west for several weeks and lived in a van with the dogs and all that. Sure. And I would drive like I think the longest I drove is a twelve hour stretch. That's about all I can muster. Yes, that's enough for me. Yeah. Depending on how much coffee I drank or whatever, right. Then I could drive 6 hours or 12 hours or whatever. But it's amazing the toll that just sitting in a car with your foot on the gas has on you. Sure. Especially when you're driving that fast. Should we talk about some of the things they prefer to do on the first race, please? One of the common tactics, it seemed like, was to keep it slow in the Eastern seaboard. I think New Jersey and Connecticut, in Ohio and Pennsylvania, these states are notorious for having some pretty hardcore highway patrolmen. Still do. Yeah. Like you'll get pulled over for doing 65. Right. Isn't that nuts to you? That is nuts. I can't imagine for getting pulled over for anything less than 72, 75 in Georgia, by the way. Everyone flies as fast as you can get away with this, how fast you drive? Generally, yeah. Even my friend Derek used to say that the deal with Atlanta rush hour is everyone drives as fast as they can until somebody wrecks. Right. And then there's a big stop. Yeah. It's pretty funny to think about that. So the trick was to kind of keep it slow on the Eastern Seaboard and in the Midwest, and then once you got to the Great Plains is when you really opened up. Yeah. And made up some serious, serious time. Yeah. They got it up to 172, I think is how fast they found out the Ferrari would go. Yeah. I think twelve speeding tickets total. Between all the competitors. Yeah. Between four of the competitors. Four of them didn't get a ticket at all. Okay. So four of them split twelve tickets. And the famous quote la. Times, it is, like, kind of a blurb of an article from Dan Gurney. Right. Yeah. Dan Gurney famously said, at no time did we exceed 175 miles an hour. They came close, which is pretty cool. Yeah. So, Chuck, that was the first one. And as with all cool things, that also began its cooption. Sure. News got out, word got out, little by little. Yeah. The Sports Illustrated covered it, and so did the Los Angeles Times. And so when there was a second one, I think the following year, there were a lot more competitors. Right. Yeah. They had 25 entries the second year, and Brock Yates finished second place, this time in a Cadillac. The third race, they skipped a couple of years, and it was 1975, and they moved it to springtime this time, and a Ferrari won the third race with Yates and Gurney behind the wheel once again. Oh, I didn't know they won the third one. Yes. Oh, no, I'm sorry. They beat Yates and Gurney's record time the third year. Yeah. By 1 minute. Right. Yeah. But it was not them. You're correct. So by 1975, which is what, the third one? Fourth one. Third one was in 75. Okay. By 1975, it's officially co opted. There's actually corporate sponsorship. Right. The Right Bra Company placed three ladies in pink in a limousine, and apparently the driver fell asleep in Texas and rolled the thing and I guess rolled into a porta potty. Right. Which tipped over and drenched the ladies inside with its contents. Exactly. So by this time now, you can see why Burt Reynolds would have chosen more of a comedic route than a Sharky's machine route. Yeah. Well, it wouldn't. Bird's choice. Should we move to the final year? Yeah. What happened was Brock Yates was pretty much finished with it. He said it's run its course. He said he was worried that somebody was going to die. Sure. Although no one ever got hurt. No. But the roads in the last eight years have become much more congested. Right. He was ready to scrap the whole thing, but he had a friend, director stuntman Hal Needham. Halned him, or is it Needlem? No, it's need. Him. Okay. And he was famous for a lot of the early Burt Reynolds movies. He did Hooper, which is a great movie. Is it? I haven't seen that one. Are you kidding me? I kid you not, dude. Got to get Hooper. Okay. That was the one about stuntman. You have to see my Blue Heaven, though. All right, we'll get to that later. Okay, so he did Hooper and he did The Cannonball Run and a couple of other Burt Reynolds films. Yeah. They did a smoky and the bandit too. Brock Gates wrote that. I'm sorry. Okay. It's all over the place today. Aren't we, too? We are. How Nathan says. You know what, Brock? I want to make a movie about the Cannonball Run. And so I think the best way to do this is if we stage another one and I participate with you as my partner. Yeah, they did that in and they had a record 46 entries this time. And a lot of what happened in this race actually ended up in the movie. Yeah, there's some Zany Magcap stuff that was going on. Let's hear it. Well, Brock Yates and Hal Needham actually had an ambulance. And Yates wife Pamela posed as a woman suffering from a lung condition. Sure. And as a result couldn't fly because of the pressurized cabin. So she had to be zoomed across the country at 100 mph in the back of an ambulance. That was their vehicle of choice. They modified the engine and it killed the transmission. Right. So it had to be eventually towed across the finish line, which I thought was pretty cool. Right. And in the film that actually happened, burt Reynolds and Dom Deloitte were the Needham, Yates characters, and Farah Fawcett was the wife didn't. What else happened that was real? Three drivers actually did pose as priests. I remember in the movie. It was awesomely. It was Sammy Davis Jr. And Dean Martin. Yeah, Dean Martino, drunk priest in the movie. I don't know that they were posing. They really weren't a drunk party. Well, sure. They were probably hammered. Sure. What else, Josh? I don't know. I haven't seen the movie in a really long time. All right, well, I got it for you. Then. There were in fact, scantily clad, skin tight jumpsuits on a couple of ladies in a sports car. I read the opposite. I read that that was the right Brawl Company that inspired that part. I read the opposite. We'll have to check that. All right, we'll do it. And then there was a wealthy entrant that had his chauffeur drive him in a Rolls Royce. Nice. And in the movie that was Jamie Farr played a Middle Eastern chic. That's right. Clinger. Yeah. You know, he and I are from the same hometown. Toledo. Toledo. Is that why he always wore the Toledo Mud Hinsat in Mash? Yeah. And why he talked about it incessantly. He really was not Toledo. Yeah. And tony Pacos hot dogs that he talks about all the time. Real place, best hot dogs on the planet. Really? Had no idea. So those are just a few of the things that actually happened in the final Cannonball Run that ended up in the film. And a Jaguar driven by Dave Hinds and Dave Yarborough won that year, and they obliterated the time period with 32 hours and 51 minutes at 87 mph average. Well, 50 speeding tickets that year. Wow. Well, there are 42 contestants. Oh, sure. Yeah. So that was the last one, and it has spawned imitators over the years. Before Cannonball Run the movie came out, there were already imitators. Oh, really? Yeah. There was one movie that came out in 75 and two that came out in 76. You want to hear the weird thing about it? What's that? David Carrigan was in two of them. Really? He was in, let's see, Deathmatch 2000. Death Race 2000, which is set in the future, but he was also in Cannonball Exclamation Point. Right. Which is a farcical take on the Cannonball Run. Apparently. There was a second one that had Gary Busey in it or a third one that had Gary Busey in it called the Gumball Rally. Right. And that's a real one. The Gumball 3000 is still in existence? Yeah. Is that European or in America? Well, they do both and they're quick to say that it's not a race. It's more like an adventurous road trip. And then the lame. Yeah. Tell them about the European version of the Cannonball Run. You know why? Because they call it the Cannonball Run. They use that name. And this thing is not even a race. The goal of the Cannonball Run Europe is to stay as close to a 61 mph average as you can. And in 2008, a frigging Smart Car one. Talk about a slap in the face where Brockade Steady would have rolled over in his grave. Yeah, he's rolling over in his grave. Instead he rolled over a Smart Car with his bare hands. He did. If anybody could do it, Mr. Brockate could, my friend. I think so. That's a Cannonball Run. How fast have you driven? What's the fastest you've ever driven? Oh, I don't know, 110? I actually once got a speeding ticket. No, you want to hear a weird story? Let's hear. I don't know if this will make the final cut or not because it's kind of long, but get this. So my friend and I were driving from Atlanta to Charleston in my old Toyota Corolla. It was an 86 champagne colored Toyota Corolla. Nice. And I was doing 110 on I 20 during a stretch where the speed limit was 55. I was doing twice the speed limit. I get pulled over by this guy in this car with a little dash headlight on it, spinning around. And I pull over and this guy is dressed like a paramilitary cop and he's like you are so dead. You're going to jail forever. Right? And he goes back to his car and calls somebody. This other guy comes out and he comes back. He's like, you're at least going to lose your license. And he goes back and talks to the guy who he said later was the sergeant on duty. And he comes back and he goes, you're going to get a ticket of some sort. And he goes back and talks to the guy again, and he goes, here's your license back. You guys drive safely now, and let's go. You're free to go. Exactly. So my friend and I are looking at each other like, what just happened? It was so surreal. And to this day, I wonder, have you seen Pulp Fiction? Of course you have. Sure. Remember Zed? Yeah. I have the distinct impression that these guys were into Zed like affairs, and something else was took precedent. My friend, he's not a good looking guy. So I'm thinking maybe they're like, we'll pass on these two and we headed on to Charles. I got you. Yeah. So they were going to get you back to the police station? I don't think they were cops. Okay. What cop would not give you a ticket when you're driving twice the speed limit? I got you. Yeah. I got a story. Let's hear it. About four years ago, me and my buddy Scotty were doing it was actually the last TV commercial job ever did. It was a Six Flags job. And Six Flags, Massachusetts, whatever that one's called. Six Flags over Massachusetts. Is it? I think it's great. America. Anyway, so we go up there to do this job and what kind of job? It was New Jersey. But we have to drive. Yeah, we drive. At one point, we had, like, two days off while we were up there. And I had a friend in Vermont, and the third Star Wars prequel was being released that Friday. So I said, hey, man, let's go up and see Johnny Pindel and rent a car and drive up there, because we had a camera truck. He said, sure, let's do it. So we rented, like, a little geometry or whatever, the cheapest little four stroke engine car you could get. And we have a time limit because we have to make the movie. It's like a 06:00 PM. Showing. And so we're speeding through Vermont, like the hills of Vermont. Lovely. And this little engine is like and we top this hill. We see one of those signs that say your current speed. And it said, your current speed. And it blinked and went, 102. Wow. And I'd never seen a triple digit on one of those signs. Yeah. So we just laughed and glazed right through it and made the movie. Laughed and you DM it's like, Call the police. And we literally we made it right as the movie was starting. And the engine was like it was like. Ticking. It was red hot. And that's my fast story. Well, if you have a fast story, we'd actually like to hear it. Here's the caveat. Don't go out and commit any kind of crime or act that includes fastness. No. If it's already happened, then we'll hear about it. We'll tell you the email right after we get the listener mail. Right, Chuck? Yes, Josh. All right, let's go. Josh. I'm going to call this the only time we've ever read a listener mail from the same dude. Oh, I don't know about this, Chuck. We have to. This is the Hackster. Ryan Hack, my buddy. All right. Listen to the house history podcast, and I have a creepy story. One of the houses I grew up in as a kid had a hidden door. As you go to the basement, it's more or less just blended into the wood paneling. As you walk through the door, you came to an open area with some shelving and a workbench. There are a couple of old bike tires and some random parts still lying around and a guy named it. And a guy named it. Every once in a while, we'd hear what sounded like people working on their bikes and chitchatting pounding, metal gears dropping, laughing, chains turning every time we go into the room. There was nothing weird, weird. Later on, we found out the history of the house. Turns out one of the previous owners was a couple that enjoyed biking, and they died in a biking accident and forgot to get the memo. So just thinking about it gives me chills. And this is from Ryan, and I'm going to just go ahead and say that ryan Hack has inspired me to exercise because he has a blog called Hacksfirst Five K Blogspot.com, where he started running and lost weight and is into it now. And he got me listening to another podcast called Two Gomers Running a Marathon. I don't know that I'm entirely okay with you leading this extra life that I'm unaware of until you read a listener mail. I know, but Two Gummers Run a Marathon is actually a really funny podcast. These two guys that say they're gomers kind of nerdy and they're completely unathletic, yet they want to run a marathon. So their podcast goes through their trials and travails, and it's really funny. They got a website called Twogomers.com cool. Well, Ryan Hack, since you got all those plugs and because you had two listener mails read on air, you have to go contribute $25 to Kiva.org on Stuff You Should Know Team. Chuck, do you want to tell everybody else about that? Kivaorg go to the click on community and search stuff you should Know team. Join our team. Loan $25 to someone in need. You can now donate to Americans. Yes, I've heard if you're a nationalistic or an isolationist, you can still donate. But right now, as a press time, we have raised more than $4,500 in about ten days. And who has $7,100? Chuck? The lousy, cheap fans of the Colbert quote unquote nation. You know what, Sam? That guy's got way more fans than we do, right? Way more. 110 members on his team. We got 180 so far already. Yeah. So way to go. Those of you and the stuff you should know, Nation, who supported Kiva.org so far, for those of you who want to get on the trolley, you can go to www.kiva.org teamstepiesheaw and you can become a member. And like Chuck said, you can contribute as little as $25. And you actually get that back if you want. Sure. You can roll it over again or whatever. Yeah. So chuck. That's it, right? That's it. If you have a cool, high speed story, Chuck and I want to hear about it. If you have a great unicorn story, we always want to hear about that. Send in an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want morehouseofworks? Check out our blog on the Housetofworks.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 Gap and listen today." | |
43798c62-53a3-11e8-bdec-8f97bca778bb | How Peanut Butter Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-peanut-butter-works | No food is more all-American than peanut butter – 80 percent of homes in the country have a jar of it in the pantry right now. And while the rest of the world might find peanut butter peculiar, maybe even gross, the rest of the world is wrong. | No food is more all-American than peanut butter – 80 percent of homes in the country have a jar of it in the pantry right now. And while the rest of the world might find peanut butter peculiar, maybe even gross, the rest of the world is wrong. | Thu, 14 May 2020 12:20:43 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=12, tm_min=20, tm_sec=43, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=135, tm_isdst=0) | 53873759 | audio/mpeg | "Ah, summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself with no must, no fuss, turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, a simple checkout process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. Comsysk and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code S YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to Peanut Butter Jelly Time. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. We haven't seen Jerry in a while. If you have seen Jerry, please tell her to call home. And this is stuff you should know. Yeah, Jerry, she sent out a smoke signal that said, Send me. So she did, and we sent some on donkey back in that general direction. Are you peanut butter or jelly in this scenario? I want to be peanut butter. You always make me be jelly. Well, I think we should level set here at the beginning and talk about if you like peanut butter, which is your favorite, and then what you like, how do you utilize it? Okay, my name is Josh C, and I love peanut butter. Okay. Almost only smooth. I will eat chunky if civilization has collapsed and that's all I can find. Okay? I eat it any way, shape, or form. Sometimes just peanut butter on a spoon. Sometimes peanut butter on a spoon with a little divot made with my tongue filled with local honey if you want to get tubby really fast. Let me introduce you to the Wonder. That is a spoonful of peanut butter scooped in some Cool Whip. Okay, but really, any kind of peanut butter, anytime, I will eat it. And I've noticed that once I reached my 40s, peanut butter sticks around me a lot more than it used to, so I'm having a real struggle with it. Thank you for listening. And do you want to buzz market your favorite brand? We use this gift natural that's like, in a brown container, and I like it so much, I purposely never looked at the label because I don't want to know how natural it is, but my all time favorite is Reese's peanut butter. Have you had it? You mean in the jar? Yes. Yes. It's so good. I think I've had it once, but I was raised on Jeff now go. Well, I was raised on whatever the gigantic gallon tub is that used to be. Yeah, I don't think it was any of those name brands now. I mean, I love peanut butter. It's one of my favorite things in the world. And I will go crunchy or smooth, no matter. I love them both. I also like it with honey. I like it. And I don't do this much, obviously, because I'm not 19 years old, but a peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich is one of the best things in the world. You know, I've never had that. Is it good? Really? Do you have any CuPy? Yes, peanut butter and CuPy, Sammy. Okay, so half and half or more peanut butter than mayo or what? It's kind of your jam. I definitely don't go light on the mayo because you got to have that tang. Okay. Peanut butter and marshmallow fluff I used to eat when I was a kid. Yeah, that's good stuff. Fluffer nutter. And now I don't eat the sugary hydrogenated types. I either have one of the sort of artisan, natural kinds you have to mix up or just the Cab farmers market grinds the peanuts right in front of your face into a tub and hands it to you right in front of your face, and it says, beat it. You can't have any of this. So that's just peanuts, obviously. Yeah. Maybe a little bit of salt. Do they add any salt, or is it really just peanuts? It's just peanuts. Wow. I wonder if they salt the peanuts when they roast them thing, because I've always seen, like, peanuts with just a little bit of salt. Like, you can't have peanut butter any other way, but maybe they figured out they cracked the code. Well, I mean, they may be salted and roasted. I have no idea about the peanut, but it's good. It's all good. But I have to mix I got to put a little bit of honey in there, maybe a little bit of a gabe to give it a little bit of a sweet. Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, I was going to ask you. I've not had any artisan stuff, and I did a little research and found a couple I want to try, and I didn't know. Is it just straight up adult kind of stuff where you're like, oh, it's really good, but you're wishing that you had, like, the nasty big three brand instead? Well, I mean, if you don't add any sweetener, it's not nearly as good as you know. But I think the naturals are all kind of the same as far as sweetness level. Yeah. The best I could discern is that if you're paying for artisan, craft peanut butter. And, buddy, you're paying. Supposedly, depending on the kind of peanuts that are chosen, the variety of peanuts, the way that it's roasted, almost like a coffee or a wine or something like that, there's like a sophisticated palate or terroir that you really have to pay attention to. That, to me, is kind of like the opposite of what peanut butter is supposed to be. It's supposed to be like this dumb, messy thing where your hair is totally normal and you start eating the peanut butter and you suddenly have, like, a cowlick and you're wearing a striped shirt that shows your gut kind of thing, like you just regress an age. But I also get wanting to enjoy peanut butter in a healthy way because it is surprisingly, from what I saw, it is healthier than you would suspect if done right. Yes. Not a big glob of Peter Pan with Cuba mayonnaise and potato chips smashed in between white bread. Yeah, I'm hungry now. I am, too. I already had some peanut butter this morning, so I'm good to go. But this is like the yawning episode where I kept yawning doing research. I just wanted peanut butter the whole time. Well, peanut butter for me has now become my since January. I'm trying to lose some weight, so that's become my sweet treat at the end of the night instead of going and getting ice cream. Good for you. Just like a spoonful of peanut butter and honey and that'll satiate that desire. I haven't seen you in a while. How's it going? It's good. I mean, I'm down 20 since January, but what really leveled off the past month congratulations, dude. That is really impressive. Just 40 more to go, man. Now that's really great, man. Yeah, it does plateau, but it picks up again. Don't worry. It plateau is because of Quarantine alcoholism. Oh, well, I was going to ask because I'm finding that quarantining has made things like, we have food and everything, but we're eating it less for some reason, rather than the opposite, which both you, me, and I were really concerned was going to be the way it went. Are you finding it easier to keep up with food or harder? Easier, because I'm cooking a lot. Jeez. I'm buzz marketing again, but I'm just having one of those Mike's Mighty goods for lunch, which is very low on calories. Yeah, it's really good, too. And I'm just tracking the calories, and it's alcohol. That's the problem right now. I got you. Yeah. I've been doing one or two nights a week, tops, and then a couple of nights I've been pretty good. Now that I think about it. It's good. Yeah, because this has been fairly stressful, but I haven't been stress eating too much, so okay. Anyway, peanut butter here to me. Chuck, early on, we happen upon the fact of the podcast. If you ask me, this is very jarring. If you'll forgive the pun, that peanut butter outside of the United States in a lot of different countries is looked upon as very weird and gross in much the same way that we Americans tend to think of like vegemite people like the British, Chinese, other countries do not think peanut butter is particularly good. They think it's a little nasty. And that just blew me away to read that. Yeah, I'd want to talk to some people before I let some Internet website tell me that people think peanut butter is growth. Some website push your brain around. Yeah, I'd like to talk to some folks about that. But at the very least, even if they don't think it's gross, it is an all American thing. Like even countries that do enjoy. I've read that Australia actually likes it a lot. It's an American concoction. So much so that it might be the most American concoction there is, to tell you the truth. Yeah, I mean, you make a good point here. You put this stuff together that mac and cheese came from Europe, hot dogs came from Europe. Sort of hamburgers. Even though I would argue that the hamburgers we know it is pretty American, sure. But peanut butter just us as far as modern times go. Yeah, I think that inca in the 15th century used to grind peanuts into a paste, and then that was it until the 19th century when one of our buddies, who's going to make a cameo later, got his hands on the idea. But, yeah, it was an American invention, except it was actually Canadian, as we'll see. But for the most part, people think of it as all American. And to talk about peanut butter, Chuck, we kind of have to talk about peanuts. There's really no way around it. Believe me, I don't want to, but we have to. I think you mean goobers. Have you ever heard somebody outside of TV column that not really but I knew it was a thing, but it's not in the just daily nomenclature of my crowd. But it is supposedly like a Southern and I guess an antiquated Southern word for peanut or goover. P. Yeah, I've heard Guber and that old song about the Raisinet scoober. Well, goober is also a candy, right? Yeah. And there's smokers goobers, which is peanut butter and jelly mixed together in a jar. It's actually good. Is it? Yes. Even as a kid, I was like, this is going to be gross. And then I tried it. I was like, not bad. Not bad. Smuckers. See, I'm pretty discerning with my jams and jellies. So that's for another day, though. You would not like this. I probably would. You would not. If you're at all discerning, you would not like it. All right, so peanuts, a legume. It's also called a ground nut or an earth nut. And just like a lentil or a pea, it is a little legume, not a nut. No, I'm a big fan of peanuts, though. I like to eat them pretty much any way you can slice it from boiled to straight up, raw, out of the shell, like them honey roasted, salted and roasted, and certainly in peanut butter. So Momo and I go and visit squirrels whenever we can, when we go on walks. And we always take peanuts. And I read, you're supposed to take roasted, unsalted peanuts. So we get, like, big bags of those. And if there's no squirrels out, I get to eat all the peanuts. Yeah, mo will give me a look like, those are not for you, but they usually end up in my tummy anyway. You ever seen a squirrel stick one of those in his mouth sideways? Yes, I have. Darn cute. Yeah. I'll shell them and then throw the actual peanut and the squirrel. Somehow we'll know that there's supposed to be another one coming because they'll frequently put one in his cheek and then be like, okay, toss me the other one. Then I'll take that run off and eat it with his two little hands. It's really adorable, right? Or they might stick around to see if it's one of the rare three. Bangers. Right. That's a good squirrel day right there. All right. So these things are legumes, and we think they originated in South America. You mentioned Peru, even though we cannot prove that through the fossil record. But they have found evidence in the archeological culture from Peru from about 7600 years ago. And it was sort of one of these things where they found the fact that they were farming this stuff. And then when you see it in, like, artwork and pottery and stuff like that, then it's sort of a thing. Yeah, right. The peanut has arrived. When it shows up on pottery for real. They've also found them, I guess, entombed with mummies from the Inca and the Aztecs, which makes sense because when the conquistadors arrived, the Spanish and the Portuguese to South America and Central America, they found peanuts being grown as far north as Mexico. But I think the first place they encountered them was actually in the Caribbean. And they took them back with them. They took them to Spain and Spain, passed them along to the rest of Europe and the Philippines and China. The Portuguese took it back again to Europe, but also to India and Africa. And peanuts started to be farmed all over the world. The world loves peanuts. It's just not necessarily peanut butter that they're crazy about. And then, in a really kind of weird, surprising twist, the peanuts were reexported back to the Americas from Africa as part of the West African slave trade. And actually, that word, gober, that Southern word, gober, they think comes from a Congolese word or Congo with the K word in guba. Yeah, pretty surprising. Sure. And guba close enough. Yeah, but it works. You think of the peanut is just american as it comes, and then even as Georgia as it comes. But the idea that it wouldn't have been here had it not been for the importation of African slaves that reintroduced the peanut to the Americas, that's a pretty circuitous and weird route for it to take. Yeah. In Africa still grows about 25% of the peanuts in the world. We are just below that at about 21% here in the States. And it took all the way to 1842 that we started growing them commercially in the US. In Virginia is where it first started for oil and food and to substitute out for cocoa. And it was kind of like for people that didn't have the means to buy something better or maybe feed it to your animals or something like that. Yeah, it was good for livestock. And the poverty stricken basically was who were expected to eat peanuts at the time. That's right. It's just like lobster. Have you ever read Consider the Lobster? That oh, man. I want to say David Lee Roth so bad, but I know it's not his name at all. Who wrote, Consider the lobster? I've never heard of that. But who is now about the lobster? Who is end of tour about that movie? Oh, David Foster Wallace. Oh, sure. Yeah. He wrote this really great magazine article once called Consider the Lobster. It's good, but in it, he explains that it used to be considered a food fit only for the poor. Basically, I guess peanuts were considered the same. That's right. There were sea spiders. Yeah. Or the cockroaches of the sea. Disgusting. It is kind of gross. Think of it like that. And apparently there was a law that said that you could only feed so much lobster to patients in mental asylums at the time, or else it became abusive. Oh, wow. Yeah. They didn't know, did they try them on a hot dog bun with mayonnaise? So one of the reasons why the peanut was viewed as such a lowly crop was that, again, it was used for oil. This wasn't necessarily just cooking oil. They would use it to lubricate machinery, that kind of stuff. So the idea of eating the same thing that your machinery lube came from was probably not super appetizing, but it was also like you would get just basically trash when you got a bag of peanuts, because there was no easy way to harvest it, stem them, clean them, and prepare them for basically general consumption. Again, you could just dump it into a trough and feed it to your livestock, or you could spend a lot of time trying to separate it, or you could just be like, I'm not messing with this. And for a long time, they didn't mess with it, actually. Yeah. When the Civil War happened, the Union soldiers got their hands on some of our Southern peanuts, and they said, These are delicious. And both armies ate a lot of peanuts. And then when the circus rolled around with PT. Barnum, Hugh Jackman, they started selling peanuts, their hot roasted peanuts. And especially in the cheap seats, they become known as the peanut gallery. And that's where that phrase came from, which is kind of interesting. Yeah, because apparently, if they didn't like what they saw, they would toss their peanuts that they were eating at the stage. So that's where peanut gallery came from. Yeah. And then you've got them on the street corners, you've got them at baseball games. Peanuts are starting to get a little traction as a snack. But it was still hard to get, like a really good quality peanuts, because, like you said, the way they were being harvested at the time by hand, it was just tough to do. And then, so two African Americans around the turn of the last century stepped up and basically said, we're going to make the peanut what it is today. So one, obviously, was George Washington Carver, who's known as basically the father of the peanut, who actually, contrary to popular belief, did not invent peanut butter, but he did come up with more than 300 different ways to use the peanut. And I never realized why he was so bonkers for peanuts, but one of the reasons he was trying to make the peanut or establish it as a prominent crop was because the south had depleted its soil so badly from growing cotton for so long. And then at the worst of this, there was a bull weaver outbreak that just ruined the rest of the cotton crop. So the south really needed something to replace cotton. And George Washington Carver helped introduce and popularize peanuts and say, not only can you eat these things, look at all this other stuff you can make out of them. That's right. And there was another guy around the same time named Ben Hicks, mr. Benjamin Hicks. He was from Virginia, which we already talked about being a big peanut state, and he invented a gas powered machine for cleaning and stemming these things. He got it patented, like a lot of well, this still goes on, I guess, with the little guy in their patents. Big farm came around, and a farm equipment company challenged him. He actually had to go to court, but won the case in 19 one. And this picker was a big deal in modernizing peanut farming. And all of a sudden, you could get really good peanuts a lot quicker. Doesn't take as many hands or man hours or person hours. And the demand for peanuts, for oil, for eating them, and peanut butter and candy all just kind of went through the roof at that point. Yeah, because you could get your hands on good peanuts. They were widely available, and they were just delicious. Everyone saw finally how great peanuts are, but not peanut butter yet. And I propose, Charles, that we take a break and then come back and really dig into the peanut butter. Let's do it. Okay. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? 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. Okay? So like I said, the inca probably had us beat as far as the invention of peanut butter went, but it was actually a canadian who they think was probably the actual inventor of modern peanut butter, a guy who I had never heard of before. His name was Marcellus Gilmore. Edson Wallace. I'm kidding. By the last part, I mean, I was going, marcellus Gilmore edson. You just can't say the name Marcellus and not followed up with Wallace somewhere. It really has become like peanut butter and jelly. Very nice. So he patented a paste made of peanuts in 1884, which was described by him and his patent as at room temperature, having a consistency like that of butter lard or ointment. Try this. It sounds gross, but when you think about peanut butter, that's kind of about right. Yeah. He added sugar to stabilize it a little bit. And this was kind of like the first modern peanut butter that we think of as peanut butter. It's sold for about six cents a pound, which is pretty good price. Yeah. And from what I can tell, just reading about it, if you tried it today, you'd be like, yeah, it's peanut butter. Whereas if you tried some of the other stuff, you'd be like, that's the artisan peanut butter. It's punishing. And the other stuff was first developed. So it's interesting to me that there's the first try right out of the gate, the guy who invents peanut butter basically invents the modern version of it, and then it takes a big step backwards or sideways, I guess you can say, depending on your viewpoint. When our buddy Dr. John Harvey Kellogg comes along. You'll remember from the live show we did on the kellogg brothers, he invented nut butters, and in particular, peanut butter is considered one of the main inventors of peanut butter. Well, yeah, it was right up his alley, because I think that might be my favorite live show we've done, actually. Oh, yeah, I think so. PR was my favorite. PR. I knew you were going to say that. You did? Yeah. That was a good one. You did. I think those are my top two. What about Pintos Man? What about Mike Cooper? Those might be the first four that I would name. What else have we done? Malls, bars. We did the secret one that is still supposedly on tour but on hiatus right now. I think that's it. I think that's all. Well, I'm going to go with John Harvey Kellogg, because if you listen to that one, he was very big on chewing food until it was the consistency of peanut butter, basically. And so peanut butter comes along and he's like, well, this is perfect, because you don't have to chew it like that. It's already like that. It'll just glide right through your system and come out as delicious peanut butter poop. Yeah, and it won't poison your entire body, and you won't have to spend any time in the electric light bath. That's right. Or the kneading machine. So Dr. Kellogg creates basically what we would recognize today as the artisan version of peanut butter. It's just ground up peanuts that form a paste. And apparently that's just a natural thing that happens. Like, if you put roasted peanuts in a food processor, it's going to turn, like gritty and everything. But if you just keep going, it eventually reaches this point, this threshold where that grit turns into this oily paste, like peanut butter, like an ointment, like Marcellus Wallace would call it. And that's basically what John Harvey Kellogg did and served at Battle Creek. But most of the people who would have been exposed to peanut butter would not have tried John Kellogg's because that sanitarium was really expensive, and it was for the wealthy, it was for celebrities. So most people experience peanut butter at one or two places. And, Chuck, I really found out in researching this that the history of peanut butter is super murky. It's like a spoonful of peanut butter stirred up in a glass of water. Kind of murky, right? Correct. Where it is kind of gross, where it's just not entirely clear who did what when, whose contribution has been disproportionately mythologized. But from what I can tell, john Harvey Kellogg is definitely one of the fathers of peanut butter. Mr. Marcellus was one as well. And then it gets a little murkier after that. So much so that people say, well, peanut butter made its debut at the St. Louis World's Fair. And then other people like, no, no, that's way wrong. It made its debut at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and I can find good, credible sources that say either one. So I have no idea where it made its debut, I believe it was sold for sure at the St. Louis World Fair and that a guy named Ch Summers sold, like, $20,000 worth of peanut butter as snack items there, but that the people who ate it there had probably already been exposed to peanut butter and liked it. It might not have been something that was part of their everyday thing. They weren't standing in their pantry eating it off of a spoon, but they had probably had it before, and this is, like, a real treat for them to experience it. It wasn't, like, debuted in 19 four, from what I can tell. Right. Well, regardless of who introduced it initially by thanks to companies like Heinz and Beach Nut, they were selling \u00a334 million of peanut butter, up from just 2,000,018 99. So over an eight year period, that's a pretty big increase. And the soldiers come into play again. It wasn't just the Civil War and World Wars One and Two. And I've had peanut butter K rations before. Really? My dad used to get that stuff a lot when I was a kid for camping and stuff at the Army Navy store. So it became a big part of your army rations and the armed forces because it had a lot of protein. It was good sustenance. You could make a PB and J, and that was pretty comforting if you were on the front lines or in a trench in World War One. Yeah. Supposedly they popularized the PB and j. That troops did. That's right. And thank them for that. Oh, I will. I'll salute the troops for that one. But it was pretty regional at the time. In the early 20th century, it didn't travel that great. They finally mentioned hydrogenized earlier. It was this hydrogenation, is that right? Yes. That really led to the big Three coming about with the industrialization of peanut butter production and three gentlemen named Peter Pan, Skippy and Jeff, which I was curious about, Jeff, where that came from. And all I found was they said it's easy to spell, easy to say, and easy to remember. It's true. All three of those had no meaning beyond that, basically. Really? I would have guessed they had something to do with doing it in a jiffy or jiffy or something. Huh? You got to be in the room, I guess, to know where the seed came from. But they just said it was simple and super easy, and that was kind of the end of that story. Good night. A little bit more? No, I'm with you. I do, too. I'm kind of mad right now. But we got to press on with hydrogenation, right? Because there's this guy named John Crampener, and he wrote a book called Creamy and Crunchy all about peanut butter, and he basically points that saying, like that was the turning point for peanut butter. Maybe even tied for first with its invention was the introduction of hydrogenation, which takes. Oils that are liquid at room temperature and adds hydrogen and a catalyst, usually like powdered nickel. And those bonds become infused or saturated with hydrogen, and so they stick together a lot more easily. So those liquid oils have a more stable solid state at room temperature. So you go from, like peanut butter with oil on top to peanut butter that doesn't have oil on top, but the oil is mixed into the mixture. And it stays that way even on the store shelf, which people love because, I mean, you know, from eating artisan peanut butter, it's kind of a pain to stir it up a little dodgy. That initial stir is a little dodgy because it's so close to the lid. Yeah. But you just have to have the right spoon. Take your time. Don't be in a rush. And shelf life stability is super important with peanut butter because only monsters put their peanut butter in the refrigerator. Who does that? Who point them out to me? Monsters? Like you've met somebody who's done that before. No, I think it was in a Judge John Hudson listener mail at one point. Oh, man. I don't think it was a major case, but I think it was one of their listener mail ones. Okay. But totally think it should be on the shelf. That's where it belongs. Right. Although, I will say, if you mix a little PB and J with a natural kind and you put it in the fridge because you've had your two bites and you made too much the next day, it is interesting. It's more like a Reese's cup consistency. It's kind of hard. It makes for a nice little snack, but it's certainly not anything that you can spread on bread. Right. Well, that's the other thing, too, is if the oils are mixed into the solids that forms this creamier substance, that makes it way easier to spread, which moms love. Right? Sure. And then the other thing it does, too, is with all of those hydrogen atoms linked onto the fat chains, the lipids, there's not all these unused or open bonds that an oxygen atom can come along and bond to. And oxidize the peanut butter, which creates peroxide, which gives it a rancid taste. So hydrogenation not only made peanut butter less liquidy, more creamy, it also made it last longer, like sitting on the shelf before it was sold and used. It wouldn't turn rancid nearly as fast, so it was a big deal. The problem is that took peanut butter, which is actually kind of healthy, with a monounsaturated fat that liquid oil and turned it into saturated or partially saturated fat, which is really tough on the old ticker. Yeah, that's why I stay away from that stuff. I mean, it's so good. But, yeah, I made the switch many years ago. Good for you, Jack. Yeah. The hydrogenated outsold natural for the first time in 42 and accounts for about 80% of the current market, peter Pan, believe it or not, I don't think I've ever had Peter Pan. Not bad. Unless it was just at a friend's house or something. I don't think we ever had it in our house. Peter Pan makes a natural one, too, and I'm making air quotes like Jeff does, and it's I think they all do now. It might even be better than Jif's natural version. I think Emily likes the Smucker's natural, but I also got some I can't remember the brand. It's one of the other natural brands. They're all pretty good, I think. Okay, so 1928 was when Peter Pan rolled out and was the first which I didn't know was the first major brand. It was the biggest seller at the time. It used that partial hydrogenation process that was patented by a guy named Joseph Rosefield from Kentucky. And then Skippy came from Peter Pan's parent company said, I want to cut your licensing fee. He said, I'm done with you, and I'm going to go out and I'm going to make Skippy on my own. And by the end of his career, he had ten patents, not just for peanut butter, but relating to food. And he was just kind of like Chevy Chase in vacation movies. He was a food scientist. Yeah. What was it, the thing that he learned to coat a flake with that he used on the sled? Oh, I don't know, some sort of non nutritional I can't remember. I'll figure it out. No need to email everyone. No need to email. No, I want to hear I want every email about this. I think it was called a non nutritional coding is what he called it. But yes, he was very much like that. But he was also way better than anything Chevy Chase could ever be because he was a really great boss. He paid his workers really well. And in creating the Skippy brand, he broke off from this kind of corporate overlord that he worked for, was keeping him under his thumb and then trying to short change him and said, you know what? By creating Skippy, I'm going to not only challenge you, Peter Pan, I'm going to become the best selling peanut butter there is from 1950 to 1980. Like Skippy was it, and I just missed the Skippy train. So I'm wondering if I had been born in 1970, if I would have been raised on Skippy, but I came along at the Jiff era. Really? Yeah, he said, in your face. And they said, I love peanut butter in my face. And he went, oh, I got to think of a new comeback. You know, Chuck, one thing that's always bothered me about Peter Pan is do you remember that jingle where it's like, eat some peanut butter anytime you can? It's like, that's nice. And then they follow it up with, but only if it's Peter Pan. It's got kind of this, like, if I can't have you. No one can. Psychotic mentality to it. Yeah, I never heard that song, so I never really thought about that. You didn't watch the television in the 1990s? I did. I don't remember that one, though. But, I mean, I was in the was in college, so I probably wasn't I don't even think we had cable. I didn't watch much TV in college. Got you. So Skippy is doing great. Peter Pan is just like, well, I guess I'll just have to be second banana. And Skippy and Jeff said, how do you like being third banana? Because that's where you're headed. That same year in 1955. This is when Rosefield sold Skippy to Best Foods. Proctor and Gamble bought Big Top Peanut from William T. Young, also of Kentucky, and then they became Jif, and they held that brand until 20 01 20 02. Yes. I did not know that. That's right. But wait, 20 01 20 02 it's when they sold the Smuckers. Okay, but Jeff is still the number one brand today, right? As far as I know. Okay, yeah, that's my understanding, too. I thought you were saying that it was the number one brand until then, but yeah, from, I think, 1980 to today, it's number one. Yeah, and they got a lot of I think they all do. But Jeff alone has 15 different kinds of peanut butter, which is kind of nuts. If you look at their list, they've got all kinds of different crazy peanut butters out there now. Well, nuts is just one variety. Well, they all have peanuts in it. Well, they have a good almond butter, too. Yeah, I can get down with some almond butter. You know what, buddy? I'm going to buy you some. When we see each other again, I'm going to be brandishing a jar of Jiff almond butter for you. You know, it's not good. What? You can't take peanut butter sandwiches into classrooms anymore, or at least at my kids preschool. And of course, you can't take anything in there anymore because it's closed, but you have to make it with I used to chew these things all the time. What do baseball players chew? Sunflower seeds. Chickpeas. Sunflower butter. That's good, too. I've had that. It's not bad. Oh, I do not care for it. So you don't like it, huh? I think it's all right. I really like basically any kind of butters, including just butter butter. Well, yeah, butter is great, but I just cannot get down with the sunflower butter. Is it sunflower? Yeah, it totally is. And there's a taste of sunflower to it. Like, you could have no idea what you were eating, and somebody gives it to you, and you would be like, that's sunflower butter, isn't it? I love sunflower seeds, though. That was a big thing in college. For a little while, we would sit around and just put a mouthful of sunflower seeds on her mouth. Yeah, I remember the sunflower trend quite well. Remember that? Yeah. You would crack them open with your teeth and you would spit out the shell and then swallow the seed. Chew on the seed and swallow it. So I would eat the whole thing. No, you didn't eat the shell. Yeah, I would eat the whole thing, and then I would smoke a whole cigar and inhale it, you're a very bad squirrel. And then you would drown your lawn and water. Yeah. And you would sit back and say, I'm doing life just right. Yeah. I got it all figured out. Would you really eat the shells? Still do to this day. Really? Yeah, and it's kind of dangerous because every once in a while, there's, like, one part to it that's just a spear, and it can go right into your gums if you're not careful. So I'm pretty good at it, but every once in a while I'll be like, I think I'm bleeding. Well, here's how I eat peanuts. When I go to the ball game, I stick the whole peanut in my mouth. Really? Like a squirrel, and I kind of suck on it for a second and get that salty goodness. And then I crack it open with my teeth and I pull it out of my mouth and then dump the peanuts in and throw away the shells. And then between every bite, you have to coat your lips with lip balm because it's so dried and cracked by the salt. Maybe it is pretty salty. But the only time I eat peanuts in the shell like that is at a baseball game. So now I do something similar, but it's with peanut M and M. I will crack the peanut M and M in half and expose the peanut underneath. Yes. And then eat the freed chocolate shell side. And then eat the other chocolate shell side from around the peanut. And then I eat the peanut by itself. Are you kidding? Are you serious? I'm dead serious. I can't remember the last time I ate a peanut Eminem without doing that with every single one. Right. Here's what I'll do sometimes with peanut, okay? We should just have a side gig where we just talk about our stupid quirks. We do. It's part of the podcast. Sometimes I'll just mouth on them like there's no tomorrow, but sometimes I will. And this helps me eat fewer of them because I will pop one or two in my mouth and I'll just let them sit there and marinate in my saliva oh, yeah. And swirl them around. And then that candy coating kind of melts away a little bit. It makes it like a really soft little crunch. Yeah, I know what you mean. You know that move? Yes. It's really good. I do that, too. But usually I'm a little less patient than that. It's every once in a while, maybe when I'm like, I have a whole tupperware bowl full of peanut m and m. I might go crazy like that. All right, so should we take a break, or should we wait a second? Yeah, let's do that. Let's take a break. Hey, everyone, when you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? Then you could be using stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off Ups to stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, so where we left off was Jeff was killing it. You and I have very weird eating habits. Yes. And Jeff starts killing it. They start putting sugar and molasses in there. Everyone else followed suit. And finally, in the 1960s, the FDA stood up and said, hold on a minute, guys. This stuff you're calling peanut butter is junk food. Now, there's one leading brand, not going to name names. I think it was Jeff. It was only 75% actual peanuts. He's like, so you got to start putting 95% peanuts in the whole thing. The peanut butter lobby said, whoa, whoa, whoa. How about 87%? And they said, we're the FDA. We meet people in the middle. Let's settle on 90% peanuts and peanut butter. And since 1971, that's been the standard. Yeah, I think this went on for a dozen years. There's a really interesting article on today I found out, called the momentous peanut butter hearings. It's definitely worth reading, but it just was literally nuts how long this went on for. And then finally, it's just kind of heartening that the FDA was like, no, 90%. That's as low as we're going. Make sure that your peanut butter has 90% peanuts. Good day to you, sir. And that was that, finally. And it became enforced in still. Today, there is a federal legal definition for what constitutes peanut butter. And one of the first things is it has to have 90% peanuts in it. That's right, because that is still the standard. If it is smooth, it has to be very fine with an even texture and no hint of grainy peanuts at all. If it's medium, you can have a little Grain to it, but nothing Larger than One 16th of an inch in Dimension. And then all bets are off. If you're crunchy. I don't know who says chunky, but it's definitely crunchy. Chunky? Yeah, that's like a type of Campbell soup. Crunchy can be larger than one 16th. I mean, they're all about the same size. I'd be curious to see if there are any kind of half size peanuts if it gets that chunky. Oh, yeah, like larger than a 16th of an inch. Yeah, like a half of a peanut. People would be like, It's too chunky. I can't take it. Maybe that's like candy bar level. It is. So, Chuck, what you've just said is the federal government's definition of the different varieties of peanut butter as far as they're concerned. And I don't know if you said it or not, but that guy, Joseph Rosefield, who was the founder of Skippy, he actually created chunky. Sorry, crunchy peanut Butter. We both said crunchy and now we're both saying chunky. I know it's kind of stuck in my head, but he's the guy. If you like chunky peanut butter, first of all, shame on you. But secondly, thank Joseph Rosefield For that because he came up with it, I think, in the 50s. Yeah, like I said, I like it all. There is not a kind of peanut butter that I won't eat. I think it's all really good. So then I think also this kind of demonstrates just how seriously Americans take peanut butter. The USDA goes on to say there are other qualities that make a peanut butter either grade A, grade B or substandard peanut butter. My Favorite. It's Things Like Color. The color has to match certain color samples that you can only obtain from a company called Agtron, Inc. Of Sparks, Nevada. This is in the 1972 law that you have to write to Agtron and say, can you please send me the peanut butter color standards? Because I need to make sure that my peanut butter matches the USDA standards for color peanut butter. They're Online. Get With It. Why are you writing me a letter? Right. That's a really good point. And you'd write back, like, I don't know. Can you please send me the website? URL And Then They Would. But when you get this color standard, you can't just look at it wherever you have to look at it at a light with a color temperature of about 7500 Kelvin plus or -250 kelvin or something equal to a moderately, partly cloudy day. That's the government's standard for judging the color of peanut butter. All I can think of now is somebody writing a handwritten letter to someone asking for a URL. Someone with a ballpoint pin spelling out H-T-T-P-S coles. I looked up Agtron inc. They're still around and they are on point. Man, they've been in business for I think about a century. But they are all about like food analysis. If you're a coffee roaster or a barista or something, you can take their online class. I think it's online. It's like a day long class that really teaches you all, like, the science behind the coffee you're selling and roasting and grinding. It's a really interesting company, it looks like. But if you start making peanut butter, you need to write a letter to Agtroninc asking for their URL and they will send you a laminated sheet in a manila envelope. Yes. So if you're talking peanut butter in the United States, about half of the edible use of peanuts is from peanut butter. Obviously, peanut butter is in a ton of it's one of my favorite parts of candy bars and stuff like that. Totally. I'm a sucker for any peanut butter ice creams, peanut butter, candy bars. It's just I can't get enough of that combination. I'm totally with you, buddy. Which, by the way, Joseph Rosefield was the Skippy guy, was the guy who came up with that peanut butter and chocolate combo before Reese's did. But the National Peanut Board estimates that it takes about 540 peanuts to make up one of those twelve ounce jars, which is a lot of peanuts. That kind of surprised me. It was more than I thought. Yeah. Sit there and shell peanuts until you reach 540 individual peanuts and you will have a sudden appreciation for your peanut butter. You know what I mean? For sure. But of course machines do that. But yeah. Well, if it's artisan no, somebody wearing, like, a calico Sarang is doing it with by hand in Vermont. That's what I think Vermont people are like. Yeah, I think that's my conception. Prove me wrong. Vermont. So in 2009, we're talking about health aspects. There's a couple of parts to the health of it, of whether or not it's just good for you, which we'll get to. But also there have been a couple of peanut butter incidents throughout the years, in recent years that have scared people off from peanut butter a little bit. In 2009 was the second one, there were 500 people who got sick and eight people died from eating peanut butter from a plant in Blakeley, Georgia, that was pretty gross and not maintained well. I remember that, don't you? I remember both of them. The other one was in 2007, and that was Salmonella and Peter Pan and Great Value, both owned by Conagra, and that got about 600 and change sick. But nobody died, luckily. But I remember both of those. It was a big deal because peanut butter is so ubiquitous. I didn't realize this until I started researching it. There's something called affiliate toxins. Have you heard of them? I think I did back when all the stuff happened. Or maybe not, but I have heard of it. So there's a mold called aspergillus that grows on peanuts, because peanuts are grown underground. Right. And the aspergillus can produce a toxin called athletoxins and apparently humans are pretty much immune to its initial effects or its short term effects, but we have no idea what happens if you eat afloatoxins over the course of a lifetime, what happens? And apparently there are studies of humans that found that it's been linked to certain types of cancer, potentially birth defects, cognitive disabilities, all sorts of horrible stuff. And peanut butter producers say, well, we get at least 89% of the affluentoxins out just by processing peanuts. And you say, well, what about the other 11%? And they're like, have some Peter Pan and forget your troubles. That's right there is like a real risk of something bad happening to you, whether it's a poisoning or not. But a lot of people are like, even if it's pure peanut butter, it's still not healthy for you. Yeah, I mean, the major brands that are sugary and hydrogenated certainly aren't good for you if you're going to the farmers market and getting those peanuts ground right in front of your face. It's not terrible. It's got a lot of nutrition. It's got a lot of antioxidants. This is 100 grams of this stuff. You've got 45% RDA of vitamin E, 67% of vitamin B, three I'm sorry, 73% of manganese, and 39% of magnesium. So it's got a lot of good stuff in there. It's got a lot of calories, too. That's about 600 calories eating 100 grams worth. But if it's, you know, 100 grams is a lot. No, it is a tremendous amount. The other thing is, too, is if you're eating that artisan peanut butter, that craft peanut butter, the non hydrogenated, I guess I should say peanut butter, the oils and the fats in it are actually good for you. The monounsaturated fat is the kind that's good for your heart. It's that saturated stuff that becomes shelf stable. That's the stuff that can build up as plaque in your arterial walls and cause heart attacks and strokes and that kind of thing. But the natural peanut butter actually does the opposite. It helps your cholesterol levels. That's right. Which is great. It's basically just really calorie dense. Like, if you're trying to lose weight, it's a good idea to shy away from peanut butter. But if you're eating natural peanut butter, it's not like a non nutritious food. It's actually pretty nutritious. It's just calorie dense. Right. And if you're trying to lose weight and you opt for a spoonful of peanut butter and honey rather than a pint of Ben and Jerry's, then you're definitely doing the right thing. For sure, man. For sure. One thing, though, that has strikes fear in a lot of people, like you were saying in your daughter's preschool, you can't even bring a peanut butter sandwich in there anymore. Is this the rise of the peanut allergy? There's a survey that was conducted in the think the most recent one was in 2008, and they found that between 1997 and 2008, in this national survey of 5300 homes that the self reported peanut allergies went from zero 4% of respondents to 1.4% of respondents, which 1.4% doesn't sound like a lot, but that's a huge increase between eleven years, I guess. But the thing is, if you look at other studies, they found that, yes, selfreported rates are on the rise, but doctor diagnosed rates have held steady. So there seems to be an increase in perception that people have peanut allergies. That's not necessarily an increase in actual peanut allergies, which is really strange and bizarre to think of, if that's correct. Yes, and I have seen the trend of oral immunotherapy, like feeding your very small child and your baby peanuts a little bit at a time to ensure, or hopefully ensure that they won't be stricken with the worst food allergy of all. It's true, the peanut allergy. And there's a study in Israel that had guidelines for early infant feeding and they said around four to six months of age. Yeah, just shove a bunch of peanuts in their mouth and see what happens. And make them chew. And then hit them with the lip balm. Yeah, hit them without them with a lip balm. So one last thing. Chuck and I couldn't find a place to put it, but it has to be said, there is a phobia called Arachabuda phobia. Yeah, I think I nailed it that last time. Okay. And it is is that for me? Is that my queue? Yes. It's hard to tell because you're not kicking me under the table. I'm not like doing that series of blinks. That is the fear of peanut butter getting stuck on the roof of your mouth. That is a true thing. Which shouldn't be a fear because all you got to do is just keep working the tongue and that peanut butter is going to dislodge and go right down your throat. That's right. Just like John Harvey Kellogg foresaw. Get a little whole milk and you're all set. Nice, man. Or some Cool Whip. Don't forget the Cool Whip. I got to try that. I don't know if you should try that. I think I gained \u00a310 in a month just after I discovered that. It's not good for you, man. Yeah, Cool Whip doesn't last long on the house. We can't keep it here. It's really hard not to. Just sort of oh, I'll just have a little spoonful every now and then. Right. Where did it go? Yeah, it's like your hair is stuck to your forehead because you put your whole face in the tub. So good. And it's good frozen, too, if you ever tried that. Yeah, I tried it both ways. But if you do want to try it, it's about half and half peanut butter Cool Whip per spoonful. I'll give it a shot if I'm ever allowed to go to the grocery store again. Yeah, right. Okay. Well, I think that's it then, for peanut butter. Unless you have anything else? We got nothing else. Okay, well, since we said we have nothing else, that means it's time for those who are male. I'm going to call this early listener that came back as an adult. Love these hey, Guys last year. Well, what I really love is people that never stopped listening. Right? But we'll take this hey, guys. Last year I started getting back into stuff you should know after a long break from the nine to ten days what does that mean? And a need for an educational podcast on my long drive to Blacksburg, Virginia, from the Tidewater area of Virginia. I think they got hit by the apple toxin. He may be. I don't know what he means. When I first started listening, I was in middle school and I always loved trivia, and your podcast helped me annoy other students with random facts about twinkies and fluoride. Once I went through church camp, it was appreciated. I earned the name random fact Kid. You guys helped me encourage my natural instincts in the world. That got me through electrical engineering and also helped me earn free beer at trivia nights. Because of my tendency to remember obscure knowledge, I even made a friend through the podcast, listener Lucas. I take it that's just Lucas first name. I hope so. He was listening to your podcast while driving his bus, and I recognized the familiar voices, so I just wanted to say, thanks, guys. And that is from listener Daniel. So maybe that's how they met. They had the same first name, right? Like, I never thought I would have a brother, but now I do. Daniel and Lucas together. You got anything else? Now I got nothing at all. Well, if you want to be like listener Daniel and let us know how long you've been listening, we want to hear from you. You can get in touch with us just through a simple email. Simple gesture. The gesture of wrapping it up, the gesture of spanking it on the bottom, and gesture of early feeding it peanuts and sending it all to stuff. Podcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iheartradios how Stuff works. For more podcasts MyHeart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite show." | |
8db8290c-ba8a-11e8-a624-d7b8b1799fba | Short Stuff: The Conch Republic | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-the-conch-republic | Back in 1982, Key West seceded from the United States. Don’t believe us? It’s true! Just listen to the episode, will you? | Back in 1982, Key West seceded from the United States. Don’t believe us? It’s true! Just listen to the episode, will you? | Wed, 13 Nov 2019 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=317, tm_isdst=0) | 13979945 | audio/mpeg | "What if you were an apparel company facing an avalanche of demand? So you call IBM to automate your It infrastructure, and now your ecommerce platform can handle spikes in orders. Let's create It systems that roll up their own fleet. IBM, let's create. Learn more@ibm.com. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Josh. Let's go. Key West Florida state line. Southernmost point of the United States. Smugglers island. That's what it's called sometimes, yeah. Because Key West, obviously just the location itself is going to lend itself to smuggling stuff in from other places by boat. I mean, it has, like, it was a pirate haven for a very long time, but apparently the local population really took to that and just kept it up. But, like, over time, what they were smuggling just kind of changed. And at this point in question, this point in history that we're going to kind of dive into right now, it had become marijuana and cocaine. Those were what was being smuggled through Key West. The glorious 80s keys of cocaine and Key West. Shortest shorts you've ever seen? Oh, I imagine so. These drugs were coming in through South America, through Cuba, and then obviously from there, it's a quick 90 miles to get to Key West. There's a report from the UPI 1983 that, quote, cruise on fishing boats, brazenly unloaded bales of marijuana. High school utes made big money driving the contraband 150 miles northward to Miami. Drug dealers held lavish champagne parties at Pier House, the posh waterfront hotel. So these kids were driving the stuff up and just sitting in the back of their pickup truck? Well, yeah, around the island in particular. I think when they left the driver to Miami, they were a little cooler, but it was throw tarp over it, at least wide open in Key West of the time. Like, the local law enforcement, the local city government, everybody seemed to either be directly involved in smuggling or turning a blind eye to it, probably because they were getting kickbacks or whatever. Was there a fire station that was shut down? Yeah, because so many firefighters were busted for marijuana smuggling wow. That they had to shut the thing down, and one of the fire chiefs was actually put in prison for it. Amazing. So by 1982 at the latest, if not earlier, the Reagan administration said, this totally contradicts what Nancy is saying. We're going to do something about this. And they set up the South Florida Task Force Against Crime, which doesn't really create any kind of good acronym, SF. You got to have some more vowels in there. Come on, Ronnie. Right? So by Ronnie alone, I'm sure he named the organization, too. They intercepted $2 billion in drugs coming through South Florida in just 1982 alone. Imagine how much they missed. Oh, sure, yeah. So they were really cracking out. They also basically took over the city government, investigated the police. They really went into Key West and the Keys in general and said, we're cleaning this place up. And that was 2 billion in street value. Right, exactly. That always cracked me up. They used to always say that. Yeah. I think they kind of inflate that to make sure it's like the manufactured suggested retail price. MSRP yeah. So one of the things they did on this task force was set up a Border Patrol checkpoint and between the Florida Keys are off the mainland of Florida. So they would set it up between the Keys in the mainland at Florida City? Yeah, just right there at Florida City on Highway One, just south of that. And basically, effectively what they did was shut off Key West from the rest of the United States. Yeah, they're the only way in and out. They raised the border up above the Keys and basically made the Keys like another country. Ostensibly, that's exactly what happened, and the Keys did not like this very much. Should we take a break? Okay, sure. Hey, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify, the allinone commerce platform to start, run and grow your business, isn't it, Chuck? That's right. Shopify gives entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. So upstart startups and established businesses alike can sell everywhere, synchronize online and in person sales, and effortlessly stay informed. Scaling your business is a journey of endless possibility. You can reach customers online and across social networks with an ever growing suite of channel integrations and apps, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and more. You can synchronize your online and in person sales so you gain insights as you grow with detailed reporting of conversion rates, profit margins, and beyond. It's more than a store. Shopify grows with you. So just go to shopify. comStuff all lower case for a free 14 day trial, and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. Grow your business with Shopify today. Go to Shopify.com stuff right now. Hey, summer is here, my friend, which means school is out, the sun is shining bright, the days are longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. Yeah. Whether you're road tripping or you're relaxing by the pool, you can tune into the podcast here. It's on Amazon Music that's so good, it's criminal. Morbid. That's right. It's part true crime and part comedy. Morbid takes you on a journey through murderous mysteries and major laughs, all in the same week. Yeah. From the paranormal to the pretty spooky and everything in between, hosts Selena Erkhart and Ash Kelly cover it all. And with two episodes released each week, you'll be hooked on this chart topping series before you know it. You can listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. Okay, Chuck. So the Border Patrol is now basically doing drug searches because they were saying ostensibly, we have this roadblock to keep migrants from coming through illegally. Yeah, that was sort of how they dressed it up. Right. Illegal aliens. But they were looking for migrants, according to, I think, Floridahistry.org, they were looking for migrants in the glove compartment or under the seat of the car or something like that. So really it was part of this drug crackdown. And, I mean, that was bad enough that they were masquerading one thing for another, but the effect that it was having was really negative on the Keys in general and Key West in particular. Yes. They rely a lot on tourism. You couldn't get enter out. There was a 17 miles traffic jam, do you imagine? But I said 17 minutes. At first, I was like, well, that's not that bad. I just be like, I just drive right into the ocean. Yeah. 17 miles? Are you kidding me? So hotels are empty. Restaurants are not doing any business. Bars are not doing any business. Right. Which was a big deal there. It sounds silly to talk about restaurants and bars not operating, but when that's a big part of your income, sure, it's a big deal. So they said, We've had enough. They got together and they filed an injunction against the US. Border Patrol. This is the people of the Keys. The government of the Keys. Yeah. The community, the people at large. So we're doing this. They took them to federal court in Miami. The court said, no, you can keep that roadblock. So the mayor of Key West, Dennis Wardlow, which I looked him up, and I fully expected him to look different than he looked. Oh, really? Yeah. I expected him to look kind of like a Jimmy Buffett type. I did, too. And he didn't. What does he look like? He looked sort of square. Did he look like the evil banker from It's a Wonderful Life? Because it's kind of the opposite of Jimmy Busson. No, but I fully pictured, like, a guy in a Hawaiian shirt and no shoes and long hair. But he looks square. He looked a little square. That's fine. But it was 1982. He did that one. Short shorts. Okay, so the press is there. He leaves the courthouse after the defeat, and they said, what's going on? What are you going to do? And he says, A very eye, attention grabbing, ear grabbing thing. Tomorrow at noon, the Florida Keys will secede from the union. So he had a sense of humor. He did. But he also had a lot of follow through on his sense of humor. Oh, yeah. It wasn't just a joke. No, because the next day, people showed up to see what would happen. And at noon, he came out and he said, okay, first things first. The Key West is no longer a part of the United States. It's its own independent nation called the Conquest. Yes. A sovereign nation of the fifth world. Yeah. And there's this really great Atlas obscure article about the conquest. And they described the Fifth World as so, you know, the First World, Second World, Third World is everybody we should say this is an outdated Cold War thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So the United States and its allies were first world. The Soviet Union and its allies were Second World unaligned countries or developing countries. Third world. Fourth world were people who were stateless. I'd never heard that before. I had neither. Apparently Dennis Wardlow had, because he said that the conquer public was the first 5th World nation pretty smart. Which existed as a state of mind. He said we exist as a state of mind and aspire only to bring more warmth, humor and respect to a planet we find in sore need of all three. That, by the way, you guys don't know this was an exceptional Dennis Wardlow. Impressive. He sounds exactly like me. And vice versa. That's crazy. So he officially changes his position and his title from Mayor of Key West to Prime Minister of the Conqueror public. And I felt like I'd heard this somewhere before, but I might just be thinking of other crackpot weirdos like Sea Land and the Pineapple Cult. There's a history of people that do things like this. Really? Yeah. We've talked about a lot of them. Okay. Remember Sealand? Yeah. Not impressed. No, I had forgotten about them. Did they declare themselves sovereign? Yeah. Are they in the ocean? It was like a floating barge or something. Can you start your own country? I think was the episode. Yeah, that was it. That was a good one. So Prime Minister of the Conqueror public and he had a mock secession, a declaration of war on the United States right off the bat. That's a big one. He declared war and it ended with loaves of Cuban bread being broken over the head of a man dressed as a US. Naval officer. That was the war of aggression that the conquer public inflicted on the United States. Yeah. So they're having fun at this point because the press is there and this is the whole point, is they're trying to get press. They are. They're trying to draw attention to the roadblock. They're also trying to draw attention to their tourism. And then after a minute of this war wardrobe, officially surrenders the conquer public to the United States. He went to a Navy base and surrendered. Right. And then requests a billion dollars in aid for an aid from the US. To rebuild after the war. Pretty great. It is great. Of course, the US. Didn't give them a dime. Did you ever see that movie The Mouse That Roared? I did. It was basically the same thing. Yeah. So. I guarantee ward Love saw that. Probably. So the US. Didn't give any of this foreign aid? There wasn't ascent given. But that roadblock ended almost immediately. Yeah. Very quickly afterward. So it had the effect that he was looking for. That's right. And they still celebrate it today. They will issue a passport to you for the conquer public. I saw and I couldn't verify this. I saw the same thing in multiple places. So it's like, sure that they'll stamp your passport. Oh, really? Which I'm like, I'm sure they do, but do you want them to do that? Because I could see us. Customs being like, what is this? Your passport is void. Now you can't just go stamping a passport with whatever you want. That's what I would think. But of course, I'm not at all. There's a Pokemon stamp on the next page. I probably shouldn't have told you that. Oh, I imagine that Customs has seen a conquer public stamp. How about this? If we have any customs agents for the US listening, if you get your passport stamp with the conquer public or some other made up stamp, Pokemon, whatever, does it invalidate your passport? You know, customs officers are famous for their sense of humor. Sure. They're just tickled by just about anything. So they also fly a flag with a motto, we succeeded where others failed. This is just and then every April, they celebrate still. They're a little nutty down there in Key West. Well, they are island people. Yeah. They celebrate the independence of the conquer public. Still in April. Yeah, for, like, nine days. And I looked at there's a guy I panda party down there. Sure. There was a guy named Peter Anderson who was the prime Minister. No, I'm sorry. He was the secretary general of the conquer public, and he was like a guiding light keeping things going, and he died. But they still do it. I thought maybe they would have discontinued it, but they still keep it up. Have you ever been down there? Yeah, I never been to Key West. I did not realize they don't have beaches, and that's what we went there for, and we were kind of surprised. Is it just like a little rocky island? It is a rock. And, buddy, if you like to fish or scuba dive or drink, you're going to love it down there. If you go for beaches, you're going to be unpleasantly surprised. I like to drink. Yeah, well, you should take up scuba diving or Snorkeling. Not much of a fisherman. Never scuba dive. Fisherman's paradise there. It's one of the most otherworldly looking places I've ever been. It's like a rock coming out of, like, the ocean. Yeah, an ocean so blue it doesn't even look real amazing. It's a neat place. And, like, there's a really crazy, awesome, like, gay community there I'm sure you've seen on CNN on New Year's Eve. That's right. And it's just a cool place. It's a neat place, but I like the Keys in general. Oh, one other thing. If you go down there, there is a museum. I think it's just called the Key West Museum. Hemingway or no, there's Hemingway's house. This is different. This is some weird, clunky museum that it's almost like somebody who's never been to a museum said, I'm going to put a museum together. And this is what they came up with. There are rooms where you're like, is this a storage room or is this like part of the museum? It's in an old stone fort. But there's this one exhibit. There's a bunch of them. There's Robert, the famous doll who's, like, haunted and cursed. They have him there. It's really neat to see. But there's one exhibit. It's just amazing. There was a famous Key West resident who engaged in necrophilia for decades with the love of his life, could not let her go. And there's like a whole thing on him there that's really neat. And they redid this mannequin that he basically turned his wife into trying to preserve her. Wow. Definitely worth going to. Well, if we're plugging very quickly weird museums, I should plug the Museum of Umbrella Covers. What? And that is on Peaks Island, Maine. Right off of Portland, Maine. Okay. Take the ferry out to Peaks Island. Sure. Go to the Museum of Umbrella covers. Not umbrellas. Umbrella covers. Umbrella covers. I didn't even know there was put your umbrella in a little sleeve. Yeah, that's it. Okay, so you've got a bunch of them. So there you have it. From Chuck. That's right. If you want no, we don't do that on this, do we? No. 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 app apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How Burning Man Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-burning-man-works | You've probably heard about Burning Man, it's a week-long party in the middle of a desert made of 50 thousand people living pretty much without rules, pretty much without any exchange of money and often nude and on drugs. Get the background on this social | You've probably heard about Burning Man, it's a week-long party in the middle of a desert made of 50 thousand people living pretty much without rules, pretty much without any exchange of money and often nude and on drugs. Get the background on this social | Thu, 27 Jun 2013 13:01:54 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=13, tm_min=1, tm_sec=54, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=178, tm_isdst=0) | 31967263 | audio/mpeg | "You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet. At Halo, we get it because we're pet moms, too. We make natural, high quality pet food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopets.com.com. Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself with no must, no fuss, turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, simple checkout process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. Comcysk, and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code SYSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Crowhart. Clark there's. Charles W. Chuck Cloud. Bryant, you got to pass me the conc so I can speak. Okay, thanks. Now I have the conc. Go ahead. I almost spoke about the conk. Okay, thanks. We just do that the whole time, and we need, like, a circle of people to turn around and shout what we're saying to everybody else. We can't hear. Would you or would you not ever attend Burning Man? No. I mean, it sounds awesome, and I think it's pretty cool that the people who go there having a good time, but, man, not for me either. I like looking at pictures. Yeah, it seems like a fun time. It seems like it would be a really neat experience, but actually going in reality now. Yeah, thanks for getting that out of the way. I was just curious. I'll use one of my father's old lines. I wouldn't go to Birmingham if it was in my backyard. Oh, really? Well, not Burning Man, but that used to be his thing. I wouldn't see so and so play if they're in my backyard. But that's almost like you despise that. It sounds to me like you wouldn't go to Burnie Man just because I know I don't despise it. I was just kidding. Right. It's a very interesting thing, and I'm excited to talk about it. Let's talk about it. Chuck, if you have been living under a rock for the past, like, 15 or so years, since it's become a thing? We'll tell you what Burning Man is. That's right. It's a week long festival that's held out in the desert, the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. Yeah, Black Rock City. They create in their very own city. Right. And it is like a planned city out in the desert. It's a small city. It's meant to be temporary, because, as we'll see, everything that isn't taken down at Burning Man ends up burning and carried out. Right. Everything is not taken down, is burned. Yes. And that's one of the tenants. We'll get to the tenants. Oh, yeah. The principals, right. Yeah. The ten principles. But just like if you are a burner is what they're called, and you go to Burning Man and you're just there for the week, the festival, the fun, and you get there, there's a city and you leave and there's a city, and if you went a month on either side, there would be nothing there. Yeah. Because there's a group of volunteers who work as part of the Burning Man Festival who go and build the city and then take it down, because it's what you're saying, one of the tenants, one of the ten principles is leave no trace. That's right. So when they leave, there is allegedly not a trace that they were ever there. I want to test that in this ancient lake bed in a royal yeah. It is August 26 to September 3 this year. And this year's art theme. They have an art theme every year is Cargo Cult. Yeah. Which is pretty interesting. I think so. 2010, Metropolis. 2009 is Evolution. Before that, American Dream, hope and Fear, the Green Man, they just have different art themes. And one of the things you can do there as a burner is either create your own theme group and experience, like, a theme camp, which can be anything. I mean, did you look at some of the theme camps? It's all over the map. Right. Or create your own big public work of art that is under that main theme. And while you're out there, you're going to need a place to live. And a lot of people make art out of that. I mean, really cool stuff. Right. I'm not easily impressed, but when you look at some of these Burning Man, I won't say exhibits, but art pieces, and it's just mind blowing how involved these things are that these people carry in and assemble from all over the world. Yeah. And like you said, the theme that's given out each year is meant to kind of unite all of these pieces of art into something, some common thread. Yeah. But I'm sure you can just do whatever you want. It is Burning Man after oh, no. It's very strict. If you show up with any art that doesn't fall within the prescribed guidelines, they will turn you away. Not true. No. And you make that joke because Burning Man is very much known for anything goes atmosphere. It wasn't until 2004 that there were ten principles that became official. And this thing started in 1989, I think, or 1986. Yeah. Let's go back. Let's go way back. All right. San Francisco was at Baker Beach. A group of friends burned an eight foot tall man made out of wood as an effigy. The founder and the first dude to do that was what was his name? Harvey Milk. No. His name was Larry Harvey. Larry Harvey. He was close. He supposedly got the idea from this other friend of his, this woman who had burned things in Effigy on that beach before. I think that's where he supposedly got the idea. It was not from the movie The Wicker Man. He said, yeah, a lot of people made that comparison. And he's like, no, you guys are way off. Good movie. And they're like, and have you seen The Remark? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The original is pretty neat. Yeah. Bizarre. So they burned this eight foot tall man and kind of threw a little party, and then the next year, that became a larger man and a few more people and a few more until it became so large that San Francisco said, you can't be burning things that large on this beach. Right. I said, Fine, we'll go take it to the high desert. Well, apparently, Larry Harvey was like, Fine, we won't burn it, but can we keep this thing up? And this is the year that, like, 800 people showed up. Yeah. Because the San Francisco Cacophony Society, which grew out of the Suicide Club, which is pretty cool in and of itself, put it in the newsletter that this thing was going on. So a bunch of people showed up. Larry Harvey said, that okay, we won't burn this thing, but we're going to leave it up and we'll just take it down. And everybody's like, Whoa, no, we got to burn it. So at the end of that one, they disassembled it and decided that they would go burn it in the desert. That's right. And I looked to see if there was an original symbolic move behind this, and I don't think there was, other than he just called it an act of radical self expression, I don't think it represented anything that's one of the tenants, the principles. That's right. Yeah. But it wasn't like, he's the man keeping us down and we're burning him. Right, exactly. Although it definitely has become that in a lot of sense. Not necessarily the Burning Man, but other stuff that burned at Burning Man. Yeah, I think you're right. That was right. Yeah. Started in 86 and then 89 and 90 is when I think they moved Rock Desert. Yeah. They went to burn it at the end of 89 to end the festival in 89. The whole thing began and ended in the desert. Yeah. And it became very much this thing where there are very few rules, no laws. Some people refer to it as a Temporary Autonomous Zone. Basically, it is a little town, like we've said, that is just totally left alone by the authorities. The.org, which is the group that runs the Burning Man Festival, deals with the Bureau of Land Management, and the BLM is like, okay, you guys, just don't mess this place up and we'll let you do it. We're going to leave you alone. Right. And they're left alone, and everybody goes in. They form the social Experiment which is a city, a place, a group, a culture without consumerism or commodification. Yeah, no consumerism, no buying and selling of things. It's not a music festival, although there is music. There like lots of DJ parties and stuff, but it's not like Lapalooza or something, or Coachella. There's nobody who's supposed to be making money off of this for profit. The only thing that really costs money is ice. Yeah. And a few other things. But there supposedly is no cash transactions between burners. Right. Well, hold on. Before we go any further, Chuck, it seems like it's a good time for a message break. CNN. Presenting Morgan Spurlock. Inside man. A new original series. Sunday night, ten Eastern and Pacific on CNN. Okay, where were we? We were in the desert. This thing is growing. And if you look at year by year, it's like 800, then 2000, then 4000, then six, then ten, then 15. And it literally just kind of crept up like that, up to the point now where I believe they're actually capping it at 50 and they're selling tickets and it's now selling out. Yeah, the first time it ever sold out was in 2011. And they have it set up, first of all, so that you can't scout, like, you are allowed to per credit card. Okay. But apparently it's just led to people, like having a bunch of people call with their credit cards and keeping all of them for themselves. Right. They also have it on a sliding scale, so if you are buying early, you pay more. I think it was like $650 for a ticket. That's the opposite of how things like that usually work. Right. Usually the early purchase of the cheaper ones, and it gets more expensive. This does the exact opposite. It's a little weird. They get cheaper and cheaper as it comes. And apparently they're also called low income tickets, which are half price of the lowest normal price. And then apparently a lot of times if you show up, there will be scalpers there. But they're selling the tickets for less than face value, sometimes half of the lowest price. Oh, just to fit that. Yeah. That's kind of cool. And I'm sure people give away a ticket here or there. Oh, sure. But it's gotten to the point now, now that it's sold out officially, 50,000 tickets, I think, or $48,000 now it's, like, different. Like, you have to buy a ticket. You can't just show up because you might drive 350 miles from San Francisco and then be like, we can't let you in. Sorry, there's rules. What if you were a global energy company with operations in Scotland, technologists in India, and customers all on different systems? You need to pull it together. So you call in IBM and Red Hat to create an open hybrid cloud platform. Now, data is available anywhere, securely, and your digital transformation is helping find new ways to unlock energy around the world. Let's create a hybrid cloud that can change in industry. IBM. Let's create learn more@ibm.com. Hey, everybody, Chuck here. Did you know there are millions of people around the world hosting on airbnb right now? Yeah. Which means that's a lot of amazing homes that are making people a lot of extra money. And it doesn't have to be an everyday thing. You can host when you want. Like, let's say you're taking a week's vacation. Why not host your home? Because that money could go toward paying for your current vacation or towards your retirement fund, or even towards your kids college fund. Yeah. For anything. And listen, if you're worried about your stuff, don't be. Air Cover for Hosts. Let hosts welcome guests into their home without having to worry. You get $1 million in damage protection anytime you're hosting. Plus pet damage protection and income loss protection, too. And are you ready for this? Air Cover for Host is completely free every time you host on airbnb. Free with a capital F. With Air Cover for Host, it makes hosting a no brainer and the benefits really start adding up. So learn more and host with peace of mind. At airbnb comaircoverforhosts. There is rules. There aren't many rules aside from that, though. Like you said, it's kind of anything goes. Everything from sex clubs to people setting up their own bars to filmmakers and artists and performance artists. I mean, it's really anything goes. And one of the things that they try to get people to do is take a little piece of that attitude back home with them. Yeah. For a lot of people, I imagine there's some people who are true devotees of Burning Man and Burning Man philosophy and they go set up the city and they maintain the website year round. That's the segment. There's others who are like new. Sure, there are some who are there, but they're still bringing in a lot of the hang ups from the outside world. And, like, sure, they have dreads, but they're also like real gossipy or whatever, and there's, like, just normal Joe's. A lot of DIY makers love going to Birmingham because you're out there in the desert and you better build yourself a shade structure or else you're going to burn. There's just a lot of hands on building. So there's a lot of normal people with normal jobs who use a week of their vacation to go out to the desert and just totally cut loose. And like you're saying like you're saying, part of the hope is that all of the stuff that happens here and just relaxing and forgetting about having to spend money on something or sharing your food with somebody you've never met, all of this stuff is meant to be carried out into the rest of your life the other 51 weeks a year. Is the author of the article puts it, yeah, I just gave away my last bit of food, but a guy gave me three hits of acids and I just had sex with four strangers. Right. And I haven't worn closed for the last three days. Yeah. And we all smell and it's great. Yeah. Now, there's certain aspects of it that you probably shouldn't bring back into your normal life. Like, going to work naked is a bad idea under almost all circumstances, but the mindset, the philosophy behind it just kind of like, none of this matters as much as a lot of people put stock into it. Agreed. So BlackRock City itself, it's not just a big mass of tents. It actually has a design. If you look at photos of Burning Man from above, it is a big C. Is that right? Oh, yeah. You never seen the aerial shop? No. Why is it A-C-I don't know. It should be a B. Sure. Or an M. And it is a big C. With the Burning Man, they just call him the man is at the center, of course, and supposedly they have him up on a big pedestal now, like 50ft high, and it varies every year, but he's generally with the pedestal about 100ft high, so you can see them from anywhere in the camp. Got you. And I think this year, because the cargo cult, they're building them on top of this flying saucer. Oh, really? Structure. That's what the pavilion is meant to look like. Oh, cool. Yeah. It's in the hopes that aliens oh, yeah. It looks a lot like a crop circle. It looks very much like a crop circle. Or half finished crop circle. Yes. Lazy crop circle. The.org is saying on the Burning Man website that they hope that they're sure that this pavilion will attract lots of aliens and they hope that it will stimulate our planet's faltering economy, which I've read a bunch of times and I said, surely this is a joke. It may be. What was they lost on me? No, the economy thing. They're hoping that our planet's economy will be stimulated by Burning Man attracting aliens. Take the whole alien part out. The fact that Bernie Man is concerned with our plans economy being stimulated. There's this really interesting interview on a website called Public Books. It's an interview with TJ. Jackson lears. And it's called the confidence economy. I recommend everybody go read it because he's talking about how everything has transitioned to economics now. Like, as he puts it, like it went from all of our moral ideals went from the religious to the cultural and now to the economic. And so the idea of risk, this existential idea that we're in danger, there's danger out there. And by doing certain things or avoiding certain things, where we're going into or avoiding risk has now been melted down to a number on a banker's computer. That's what risk is to us now. Everything is economics. And seeing that on their website really kind of brought that home. That was my little thing on that. Do you watch Veep? No, it's the White House show comedy. And one of the guys, the new characters this year is Gary what's his face from Office Space. Gary Cole. And he's the numbers guy, and it's just sort of straight along those lines. All he does is talk numbers, and that's his whole entire job and his staff's entire job. That's how we've become as a culture. Everything is economic space now. It's kind of sad. It is. So back to Black Rock City, where numbers don't count. It is 940 acres. That's a number. And it is, like you said, like a city. They have their eye store, obviously. They have recycling and volunteering and medical facilities and information facilities and shuttles. Although one of the rules is you cannot drive on the Playa. That's what they call it. That's why there's a lot of bikes. Biking seems to be the best way to get around. Apparently, you can get a permit from the city, the nearby city that Playa falls under, I guess, the same county. So you can't because there's art cars out there. Well, you're not allowed to drive where the people are, though. Okay. Yeah, there's, like motorhomes is what most people stay in, but once you get there, you take the keys out and burn them, and then at the end of the week, you're like, man, I didn't burn my keys. That was self expression. True. But there are no fires directly on the ground because that leaves a burn scar on the gentle high desert. So they have to, I guess, have, like, fire pits and stuff. And I guess we could get into the core principles, right? Well, yeah, we've been kind of dancing around them a little bit. You said, leave no trace. That's a big one. Radical self expression. Yeah. Radical inclusion, radical self reliance and radical self expression. Those are the three radicals, right? So you can't just be like, hey, man, I forgot to bring some water. Radical self inclusion. Or radical inclusion. And they can be like, radical self reliance. Jerk. Yeah. Although gifting a big one is a big one. It is very much about giving. Things without gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value. So it's not about trading, even. It's about giving. Right. I will give you herpes. You don't have to give me anything back. You mentioned decommodification. No commercial sponsorships or anything like that. Yeah, that's why it wouldn't be a music festival. It's too commercialized. Exactly. Communal effort. It's all about collaborating. Hey, man, I'm out of nails for my big giant alien I'm building out of wood. Right. Don't worry, man. I got nails. I got your back. All right. We'll just disassemble my giant alien out of wood and use the nails from that civic responsibility. We value the civil society, community members who organize events assume responsibility for public welfare. That's a little tricky. I wonder what the law says about that. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like, what if someone got really hurt in someone's theme camp? I don't know. I genuinely don't know. It says that the events have to be in accordance with the local laws, but they clearly break those a lot. Yeah, there's a lot of laws broken at Burning Man, but they don't have their own laws, so technically there's no laws broken. And then the last two are participation and immediacy. And the immediate experience is in many ways, the most important touchdown of the culture is what they say. Yeah. I like that participation in there. You can't just be like some dude hanging out in the background, like, staring at everybody. They want you to get involved. Right. Not only for your benefit, because no one wants to be stared at while they're nude and on acid. It's a bum trip. Well, while we're on that, we should say that Burning Man is in certain areas are an X rated, and they try to put up signage to indicate because there are families that go I don't think there's a lot of families that go no, but there are. And they try to indicate, like, hey, this is a group sex camp or this is a nudist camp. Stay away. Can't you read the sign? Yeah, but keep your kids away. You might want to, though, is the recommendation. Like, if you're not super open minded or if you are easily offended, or if you don't want to permanently damage your kids yeah. Or if you want to be a good parent, then don't take your family or you may not want to go at all. You really need to know what you're getting into here, folks. Yeah. Because you're going to be thrust right into the center of 50,000 people who all came to, like, party. Big part of it. You can call it a social experiment. You can call it, like, performance art, and it is all those things, but it's also people partying all the time for like, a week. There's a lot of drugs and alcohol involved. Yeah. And everything else. So if you're not cool with that, then I would imagine Burning Man would be a really bad place for you to go spend a week. Yeah. But if you don't know that, and if you bought a ticket and made your way out there and you don't know that at that point, then I almost say you should go. Well, I want to see that dude. I think Julia Layton writes that you don't have to go for a week. Like, if you're thinking about it, go test it out for a few days. Yeah, that's what I would do. There's no way I would go for a week. And I don't think they sell any ticket other than for a week. Yeah. So if you decide that you're going to have, like, wow, I really like this. I really, like, partying every single day. Like, I'll stay the whole week. You can stay. Yeah, because you got your ticket. And on the sex note, there have been reports of sexual assaults and even a rape. It is clearly not the opposite of everything that Burning Man stands for. But they're always bad apples. And I think the general consensus is some dumb dudes show up thinking, like, hey, it's just sex fest. Right. Because everyone's free love. Free love. You need to go to Sandals for that. Exactly. It's not really the case that stuff does happen, but it's just like it would happen in the real world. I mean, maybe people are a little more, like, loose with their morals, but there, you know, been reports of, like, a woman, like, dancing nude and then guys, like, kind of descending on her. Like, that's not okay. Right. Just because it's Burning Man doesn't mean she's inviting you to touch her. You know what I'm saying? Exactly. And that raises a really excellent point. Like, Larry Harvey from the beginning has said, this is a social experiment. And I wonder what he was thinking it was going to be. Because surely he's found that any utopia you create will eventually become poisoned by humans who go and take part in it. Yeah, and I think it grew way bigger than they ever thought it would, which generally when the problems come, they've still capped it at 50,000. Yeah. There's still people who can't go, so they're not capping it at 10,000 or 1000. They chose 50,000. So I wonder what they expected or what they're seeing, the people who are really a part of the Burning Man.org, what they're seeing that surprised them or that they were like, I knew this would happen. Yeah. I imagine ticket sales. I mean, if it's $600 a ticket, I know there's lower ones, but that's like $30 million supposedly not for profit. Yeah, and I know they recently lumber is extremely expensive. I know they transferred the holding to a different company recently. And there was, like, a big battle between the original founders because money got involved. And I think the original guy got kind of upset because people wanted to get paid. They were on the board more money. Larry Harvey. Yeah, because there was another guy named Jerry James who is attributed as one of the founders with Larry Harvey. Oh, yeah. Was he upset about the financial thing? I hadn't heard anything about that. Yeah, I think I should look this up more. They transferred it to a new company, burning Man Production, LLC or something like a new nonprofit. I'm not sure how it all shook out, but I think some people cashed out that were on the original board is how it went down. Oh, I didn't get that wrong. So let's say you want to go you're down with all this. You're like, sure, I'll get my sunscreen out and put it in. All the right places and take my clothes off, shave my head, paint myself green. Apparently that's futile because everybody gets covered in dust and turns gray. Oh, really? Yeah. Gross. Isn't that weird? So the sunscreen just gets covered, I guess, and everybody turns into like this new race of people that have gray skin. I can't imagine anything more uncomfortable. But let's say you do want to go. You've bought your ticket. Bring your sunscreen, bring your water. Lots of water. Yeah, you want to bring a gallon of water per day per person at least just for drinking. Yeah. Plus another half gallon for like, bathing and washing your clothes, if you're into that kind of thing. If you're sweating, like me, you need to bring more than that. Yeah. That's what out that gallon of water by noon. Yeah. And I mean, like that's serious stuff because they don't give you water at Burning Man. You might find some nice soul to do it, but you should not come expecting them to give you water. That's right. It gets cold at night in the desert. If you've never been there. It's kind of interesting. Can be like a 40 degree temperature swing in the course of a day to a night. So you got to bring your warm clothes as well. You might not have someone to snuggle up to it Burning Man. I can't count on that. Sure. And you can't just make a fire just anywhere either. You can't make a fire just anywhere. And you need to bring your own lights, too, obviously. Your lights everywhere. But you want your little flashlight in your headlamp and all that good stuff. Yeah, because it gets dark. It's really dark. And apparently people put our installations wherever they want and you may trip over them because a lot of those installations have rebar. Most of them do. I think you need to be able to be highly adaptable because, like you said, you might have a plan in place. But Burning Man, you never know what's going to go on. So you got to be able to just kind of roll with it. That's sort of the idea. If you're a rigid individual, you don't want to go to Birmingham. No. You're not going to have a very good time or your will will break and you'll be like, okay, I'm ready to just kind of let things fly. Yeah, that's true. I just watched that documentary on the source family. Have you heard of that one? No. They were a cult in the 70s in La. I read an article on them 40 times. Yeah, it's very interesting. A lot of people in fact, almost everyone they interviewed from today wasn't like, yeah, this is some bad culture. They were like they were still sort of living that life. Well, it was like Paradise Lost. They all moved down to Mexico and lived on the beach and were swimming. I thought it was Mexico. No, They were in La. And they eventually went to Hawaii, and that was kind of the end of them. So the leader had, like, a bad trip on the beach and then everything turned dark from that point on. Right now, I think you're thinking of something else. No, the Process church. No, this is the source. Okay. I'm talking about the process. No, this is the Source family. I've heard of them. I don't know anything about them. Yeah, it's a new documentary. It's interesting. Okay, what's it called? The Source Family. Okay, well, I'll watch that. You read the article in the 40 and Times about the Process. Was that the it was like late 60s, early 70s. There were colts all over the place. Yeah. All you had to be was, like, a halfway likable person with a steady supply of acid and, like, pretty much got your own cult. That's who this guy was. He was, like, 66 and had this big gray beard, and they were like, you are the father, right? And he's like, I know. Yes. Well, in their tenants, the first thing they had to do every morning was inhale 6 seconds from the sacred herb stoned, like, very first thing in the morning. Wake and bake is what they call that. Yeah, but they're also a band. It's really interesting, this weird psychedelic music and stuff. Still around the time well, some of the surviving members have gotten back together now and are playing again. Maybe that's what I've heard of, is the band The Source. I didn't realize they were a cult, too. Yeah, they were cult first and foremost. It's like the polyphonic spree. It's exactly like who they ended up sort of emulating white robes and the whole deal. Yeah. All right. That's a sidebar. But in the spirit of Burning Man, you know my buddy Toby, he was in the spring. Yeah, he's like a tambourine player. No, he taught himself to play the thermomen. Oh, really? Yes. He is the producer of a movie that's coming out in July or August with Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck called Embody Saints. Yeah, I've heard of that. He's a producer. Good for him, man. I like that dude. Yeah, he's been making his way through Hollywood just like on sheer grit. Yeah. And if you're interested in a Bonnie Prince Billy fan, he produced a short film called Pioneer starring Bonnie Prince Billy. That was really good. Yeah. Him and his collaborator David Lowry do them, collaborate and make some good stuff. Way to go, guy. Not David Lowry from Cracker and Camper van Beethoven. No, different guy. Yes. All right. Okay. Well, if you want to learn more about Burning Man, go to Burning Man. You can also visit the Burning Man site, or you can check out our article on HowStuffWorks.com just type Burning Man in the search bar. And since I said search bar, it's time again for a message break. What if you were a global energy company with operations in Scotland, technologists in India, and customers, all on different systems. You need to pull it together. So you call in IBM and Red Hat to create an open hybrid cloud platform. Now, data is available anywhere, securely, and your digital transformation is helping find new ways to unlock energy around the world. Let's create a hybrid cloud that can change an industry. IBM let's create learn more@ibm.com. Hey, everybody, Chuck here. Did you know there are millions of people around the world hosting on airbnb right now? Yeah. Which means that's a lot of amazing homes that are making people a lot of extra money. And it doesn't have to be an everyday thing you can host when you want. Like, let's say you're taking a week's vacation. Why not host your home? Because that money could go toward paying for your current vacation or towards your retirement fund or even towards your kids college fund. Yeah, for anything. And listen, if you're worried about your stuff, don't be. Air cover for Hosts. Let hosts welcome guests into their home without having to worry. You get $1 million in damage protection anytime you're hosting. Plus pet damage protection and income loss protection, too. Are you ready for this? Air Cover for Host is completely free every time you host on airbnb. Free with a capital F. With Air Cover for Host, it makes hosting a no brainer, and the benefits really start adding up. So learn more and host with peace of mind@airbnb.com. Aircover for Hosts. And now it's time for listener mail. Can we even say that they burn the man at the end? That's the whole point. They burned the man on the last night. Oh, wow. Okay, so let's keep it going for a second. By the way, they burned the man on the last night, the end, which is neat. And I was thinking about this. They have the man. So anywhere in camp, you can see this giant man, and that I think has to really kind of add something like, this week is going to end. This man is going to die. We're going to burn him. And then after that, this week is over, and then we're all going to die eventually. Just the fact that the man and what everybody knows is going to happen to the man is looming over everybody the whole week. What effect does that have on you? Dude, you should go to Burning Man and start a theme camp. Yeah, I'll just talk about what we're going to do to that poor man. Okay, I'd go. So that's the official end of the Burning Man episode now? That's right. Now it's time for listener meal. That's right. I'm going to call this sort of a correction on a correction. Remember when we got the email about the American Red Cross denying men who have sex with men MSM to be able to give blood? Yeah. This sort of explains that a little more thoroughly. Okay guys have been catching up on stuff you should know. After hearing the april 9 platypus episode had to race home to respond. Penelope was correct when she wrote that the american red cross permanently defers or turns away MSM donors. It was incorrect over to describe this as a red cross policy in origin. Policy was determined by the US. Food and drug administration, not the red cross. The red cross is called the FDA ban medically and scientifically unwarranted even and seeks policy change because the FDA ban needlessly excludes healthy donors. I think we came down the red cross a little bit. Yeah, we did. So it's really the FDA we're mad at. Exactly. Please let your listeners know it's not the american red cross, which is discriminating, but us FDA. The red cross is obligated by law to adhere to the ban until the FDA can be convinced to change it. I have met some people who they are eligible to give blood refused to donate because they object to the FDA ban. The well intentioned this refusal will only hurt people who need life saving blood. There are always better ways to pressure the FDA to change its policy. Big government. Am I right? Yeah. In the meantime, I hope everyone who is able to donate blood, platelets and other blood products will continue to do so. Cheers cat. Thanks a lot, cat. Yeah feel bad that we got that wrong or that we were misled by Penelope? Maybe penelope didn't know herself. Not everybody knows it's the FDA's fault. That's right. So FDA change it, what's your problem? And then someone from the FDA is going to right? So you know, it really is it's london johnson's fault. If you want to lay something at the feet of somebody else, we want to know about that. Especially if it clears something up that we got wrong. You can tweet to us at s YSK podcast. Join us on facebook.com STUFFYou knows you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffynow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com hey, netflix streams TV shows and movies directly to your TV, computer, wireless device or game console. You can get a 30 day free trial membership. Go to www dot netflix. Comstand up now. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like morbid, my favorite murder, and small town murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free amazon music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with amazon music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet. At Halo, we get it because we're pet moms, too. We make natural, high quality pet food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopets.com." | ||
What's with the Winchester Mystery House? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/whats-with-the-winchester-mystery-house | After her daughter and husband died, heiress Sarah Winchester became obsessed with the idea that spirits haunted her and to appease them she had to have a house continuously built for them. So she did - 24 hours a day for 38 years. | After her daughter and husband died, heiress Sarah Winchester became obsessed with the idea that spirits haunted her and to appease them she had to have a house continuously built for them. So she did - 24 hours a day for 38 years. | Thu, 31 Oct 2013 12:27:33 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2013, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=31, tm_hour=12, tm_min=27, tm_sec=33, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=304, tm_isdst=0) | 28863100 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the allnew 2014 Toyota Corolla. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and happy Halloween, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Go do what you're about to do. Chuckers. Boo. You put the three of us together me, Josh Clark, there's Chuck Bryant, and there Jerry. Yeah. And you got stuff. The Halloween edition. Yes. We got a big old tub of candy corn here. Have you tried starburst candy corn? My goodness. I don't like candy corn, and I like starburst candy corn. Now, is it starburst or is it candy corn? It's candy corn with starburst flavors, but not starburst texture. No candy corn texture. Okay. Some mad scientists threw it all together. Interesting. Yeah. I'll try it. You got one? I have a warm one in my pocket. It's been in there for a few days. Perfect. Here you go. Soften it up there. That's delicious. Make it chewy. Yeah. It's strawberry and lint. Yeah, it's exactly right, Chuck. Yeah. So we've got candy corn. It's a Halloween edition, and we hope you enjoyed our Halloween episode or story. That's what came out yesterday. Probably my favorite thing of the year, that and Christmas episode. We got to get cracking on the Christmas extravaganza. Yes. We're running out of stories. I got one up my sleeve. I got an idea. Yeah. Otherwise, we can just make stuff up. Yes. And then everything worked out okay because it was Christmas. The end. Chuck? Yes. Have you ever heard of the Winchester Mystery House? I have, indeed. I have to thank God, because that would be a surprise if I was completely unprepared. It would be. I would be surprised, I can tell you that. Yes, I've heard of it. I've never been there. But I would like to go for sure and check it out. I might do that next time I'm in the Bay Area. I might venture towards San Jose to check this thing out. Yes. Well, I've already cleared it with you and me that we're going next time we're in the San Francisco area. Great. How far away? San Jose. From San Francisco. I don't know. Close. Right. Do you know the way to San Jose? I do not know the way to San Jose, apparently. But if I could find my way there, we would find the Winchester Mystery House, because apparently it sticks out like a sore thumb. I bet it was originally in some pretty rural area, and over time, the acreage, I think 162 acres is what the Winchester House grounds eventually covered has been whittled away. And now it's just like the suburbs with this enormous Victorian mansion situated in the middle of it. Yeah. And when we say enormous, we mean enormous. Supposedly about 160 rooms. And I think this is part of building up the lore. Some say they cannot be counted because you will get lost in the house and never get an accurate count and never escape I say that's? Hokumm hokum. Because, hey, if you can put a man on the moon, you can count the rooms in a house. Yeah. And what do you suggest? Using a Post it note. Just put a Post It note up and you've already been in. Yeah. You don't even need to write that. That's the very presence of a Post It note indicates you've been there before. And count up all the Post It notes at the end. Right. You could write the numbers on them. Even better. You wouldn't even have to count them. You just write one and then keep in mind the last number you wrote down and write the next number that comes after that on the next post. Right. You know what we should do? It'd be funny if we did a little video series where you and I, big smart guys, tried to do this and we kept getting confused. I would watch that. Yeah. I would watch it over and over. And then we find the lost wine cellar and everything's kind of peters out from there. All right, so what we're talking about let's include those of you who don't know what we're talking about in we're talking about the Winchester Mystery House, which was, as Chuck said, an enormous mansion of an indeterminate number of rooms. Yeah. I think they estimate 160. But even the state of California, on their tourism website says it is an odd dwelling with an unknown number of rooms. A tourism website said that? Yes. Because it's a tourist attraction. Exactly. They're trying to draw people in with the mystery of the mystery house. Yeah. The whole thing was the brainchild and the result of a four foot, ten inch little firecracker nicknamed the Bell of New Haven in her day named Sarah Pardy, who became Sarah Pardon winchester. Yeah. New Haven, Connecticut. She was born in 1839. Yeah. Not New Haven, New Jersey. No. And she was very smart. Spoke four languages, could play the piano like a champ. Yes. With her elbows. Yeah. She's beloved. She married in 1962. William winchester of the Winchester repeating arms company. Yeah. Remember them? Because it's a big part of the story. It is. They developed what was known as the repeater, the repeating rifle, which is the coolest rifle ever. The Lone Ranger had one. Did he? According to the Lone Ranger place set that I have, he did. I believe that he mainly used the old revolver, though. Yeah. And the cudgel is famous for the rifleman. Used the repeater. For sure. The Lone Ranger did too. Okay. But basically, it was a revolutionary gun that you could fire really quickly and yes. You could fire once every 3 seconds, which is pretty fast. Amazingly fast for a rifle, especially. It was the gun that won the west, and it was the gun that helped the Northern troops defeat the Southern troops in the Civil War. And when the west depends on your vantage point, but yes, westward expansion took place at the barrel of the Winchester repeating rifle. So she marries William Winchester, heir to that fortune. They started a family in 1866 and very tragically lost their loan daughter Annie in infancy. And it was something that Sarah never recovered from, basically. No, it was a pretty sad thing to see. Apparently. The child was alive for either 28 days or 42 days, I guess, depending on who you ask. So she made it to term, she was born, and then she died of a wasting disease called Merasmus, which is a disease of malnutrition. So no matter what they fed her, she just wasn't taking in the nutrients and she died of malnutrition. And at the time, Merasmus was still mysterious. Yeah. So it seemed like, what the heck just happened to my kid? I'm feeding the kid also, here I go, right along the edge of completely losing my sanity forever, and I'll never be quite the same again, but I'm going to come back a little bit, and then when I do, a few years later, my husband is going to die an early death at age 43. Yes. 15 years later, to be exact. Which, by the way, chuck, can I take a second here? Sure. Somebody wrote in and I can't find the email, but they wrote in for our dying podcast, you mentioned life expectancy, and we said that we made the assumption that people used to only live to age 30 or something like that because the average life expectancy was so low. And this person pointed out that that's not the case, that people typically live to old age like they live now. But the infant mortality rate was so high that if you took all of the infant deaths and all the people who survived it and put it together, you had an average life expectancy of 30. Right. So it's not like everyone's dying in their 40s. Right. They were dying in their ones and twos. Exactly. So if you made it out of your ones and twos, you would probably live a pretty long life. Okay. So that was the discrepancy that I never understood until the person wrote in. So whoever wrote in, thanks for writing that in. You didn't catch your name or anything? I don't know. So where are we? She's lost her daughter, she's lost her husband. She's very distraught, goes and sees a medium, which was a big deal at the time. Yeah. In Boston, a man named Adam Cooney, which was strange that it was a male medium. It is, because which is why they're all called Lady So and So. Yes. Are they? Yes. Madam or Lady Charlotte or whatever. Yeah. Lady Charlotte, who I go to. That's why Buzz marketed her. No, you don't. Do you really? No. I got to see Lady Adam. Anyway, she goes and sees Lady Adam and he says, you're going to be haunted by ghosts for the rest of your life because you married into a fortune of killing and murdering with that Winchester rifle. Yeah. So remember, they're haunting you. Remember I said it was important that she married Mr. Winchester? William the Winchester family supposedly had a curse, according to Lady Adam, that all of the people who had died at the other end of the Winchester rifle now haunted the family. Sure. And they had listed demands that Sarah was going to have to put up with or else she would be gotten by the spirits, too. And that's where the house was born? Basically, yeah. The guy said, these spirits need a house, so you're going to have to build a house for them. More and more people are dying from the rifle that your husband's family created every day. So you're going to have to make it a big house. And you can never cease construction. If you see construction, you'll die. And there's two different interpretations here, and they're not quite sure how Sarah Winchester interpreted it, but whether if she stopped construction, she would die or if she kept construction going, she would live forever, eternal life. Because the people who are into spiritualism were into that whole thing a lot, too. Yeah. But either way, she had her walking papers, her instructions, and she decided to take them out west and follow her husband, who she believed was leading her, who supposedly told her all this through the medium and headed toward California. Yeah. She visited, had a Nissan minLow Park, and eventually found a property 3 miles west of San Jose in the Santa Clara Valley there. And she said, you know what? I'm going to buy this land. I'm going to take this house, and I'm going to build on it until forever. And Lady Adam had his cousin was a contractor. It's not true. That would have been great, though. Yeah. He's like, so you have to build forever and non stop here's. My cousin John Hansen, right? He owes me a big one. John Hanson was in fact her foreman, even though Mrs. Winchester was her own architect. So hold on. Mrs. Winchester, who's just really slightly off her rocker, now at the loss of her child and her husband, has instructions that she is to move west, start building forever, a huge house to house the ghosts of all the people who have died at the hands of her husband's company's, rifles. That's where we're at right now. Yes. Before we go any further, let's do a message break. Okay. Before we left, I sort of hinted that she was her own architect, and she was. Not only did you hint it, you said it. Not only was she her own architect, but she supposedly got instructions on building through Seances. Right. And she had an architect at first, but she fired him later on, apparently. Oh, really? I think because he wouldn't listen to her. And she was like, look, I'm getting instructions from the other side, pal. Are you getting instructions from the other side? No. Well, then we go my way. So she had a sauna room, and here's how she would conduct her sales. She would try and trick the ghosts into not following her and disrupting the seance. So she would set out for the seance room. She would traverse, basically elaborate, the rooms and hallways. Like, she would push a button and a panel would fly up. She would step quickly into there, shut the door, she would open a window to that place, climb out onto, like, a flight of outdoor steps that took her down a story, come back inside, like through a window. And she was basically trying to lose these spirits that she felt like were tailing her, until she could finally get into her comforting seance room, where she would receive instruction on what to build next. And then when she got into a seance room, which was the blue room, it was at the center of the house and I think the second floor, she would get instructions, I think from her husband, supposedly, and then also a spirit caretaker named Clyde, and she would get the instructions at twelve, there would be a bell ring. That's when the spirits arrived. At two, another bell would ring, signaling their exit. And she would do this every night. And then in the morning, she would go meet Foreman hanson. Yeah. John Hanson. And say, here's what you guys do today. And here we go. All right. But we should say that all through the night, including at midnight, at two and the time when she was sleeping after the seance and before she met Hansen, there was construction going on. Yeah. Like it was 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including Sundays, including holidays, there was always somebody doing construction on that house. Yeah. As long as she could hear those hammers, nailing, nails, then she felt at ease. She would design rooms that would be built on top of other rooms. She would build rooms, apparently, to get to those 160 rooms. They estimate they may have built five or 600 over the span of those years. Right. Because if there was something that got in the way, she would either build around it, have it torn down, sometimes it was even less explicable why a room would get torn down, but she would just order it torn down, even though, say, they'd been working on it a month up to that point. Yeah. And the whole trick to all this is to pay well. If you weren't paying well, then you probably would have had dudes walking off the job, being like, you're crazy lady, I'm out of here. Right. She paid double the day, right? Yeah. Which is $3. The day rate was $150. She paid three. Yeah. And so the construction dudes were happy to keep working on what they thought was this crazy old lady's plans and they might be frustrating, but they were getting rich or not rich, but they were doubling their money. Right. And I think over time, too, chuck, I get the impression that the people who worked for both the construction workers, once they came, they didn't leave unless they were fired because the money was so good. So when you work for some crazy old lady for 1215, 20 years or whatever, you're going to start to develop a sense of loyalty. Sure. And she was very much protected from the outside world by these people because her neighbors thought she was a total wacko, maybe a little evil. Who knows what's going on? She lived in seclusion. She always wore black, she always wore a veil. Yeah. One of the first things she did was have a private planted around the entire house. But she was also very kind to children, especially orphans. Would have them over for ice cream. So it's not like she was some awful, mean old person. No, she was just mysterious and liked her privacy, mainly. Yeah. And apparently, once she moved into town, a lot of the local charities started getting anonymous donations that they never got before. Of course, she didn't need all the glory, but she was still a very charitable woman. Yeah. She had a bunch of money. The reason she was able to pay double was a big inheritance, obviously about $20 million and a lot of stock in the Winchester company. And it afforded her, they guessed, about $1,000 a day to spend on construction, which is like 20 grand now, 27 and change a day. And this is the money mostly prior to the era of the income tax. So that was all hers. She ended up spending, I think, 5.5 million on the house in 1920. $2. That's a lot of dough. It really is. But she didn't have anything else to do with it except give it away to orphans. That's true. So all of this construction led to some very strange design decisions. And we should say this is probably a pretty good point to say. Mrs. Winchester didn't leave any diaries, any journals. She was never interviewed. All we can say for sure is that she went to a medium in Boston, received these instructions that she had to build the house to appease the spirits, and that's what she did. Everything else is kind of conjecture, like her motivations. Beyond that, the details of her motivations and what she thought and believed, it's conjecture, we should probably say that. And there's a lot of room for misunderstanding. Like the staircases that she built had lots of steps, and they were, like, two inches high. Well, the reason that she did that was because she had very bad arthritis, and those are the only types of stairs that she could climb. But they would also double back all of a sudden or go around in crazy circles. A lot of people say that she thought that you could kind of screw with the spirits and throw them off your trail, I guess, on your way to the Sans Room by having stairs constructed like that. At any rate, there's a lot of weird design elements in this huge mansion. Yeah. The switch back stairs were seven flights that rose only 9ft, 44 steps total. She had stairs that would go down leading to stairs that went up, stairs that would go into a ceiling, chimneys that would stop short of the ceiling, hidden doorways, covered up stairwells. It was just sort of a big, beautiful mess of design. There are doors that led from the inside out to the outside, but it would be a sheer drop if you stepped out the door like that. Last step is a doozy. Right. There is an inside door in the sand room, a closet door that opened up onto the kitchen sink. Another story. Below, there was a corridor behind a cabinet that went along the backside of 30 rooms. There's all sorts of neat stuff. There's a very famous stairs that lead to nowhere. Yeah, there were cabinets are only, like, two inches deep. There was a grand ballroom, and it wasn't all just wacky stuff. It was like really gorgeous design and places. The grand ballroom was built without nails, which is a feat of engineering in itself, and was gorgeous, but never used because of an earthquake that was pretty significant in her life. In 19 six, there was an earthquake that she was known for sleeping in different rooms every night so she wouldn't be found out by the ghosts. And she was actually trapped in the Daisy Room and not found for a little while by her employees because they didn't know where she was after this earthquake cabin. Right. Not only did the ghost not know where she was sleeping, her servants didn't either. So she was in there for a few hours and it ripped her out. Oh, I'm sure, because despite the fact that it had totally killed a lot of people in ravaged San Francisco and burned it down, she took it as a sign that the ghosts were mad at her. Right. That they were afraid that construction was nearing an end. And so to appease them, she boarded up a lot of the damaged interior so that it could never be repaired, and then therefore, the house could never be finished. We should also say that by this time, the house had reached seven stories, and the earthquake was so bad it knocked off the top three, I believe. Yeah. She ended up sealing the front 30 rooms of the home, including the front entrance to the home. These grand front doors that they had just put in, apparently only three people, the two guys that put in the door and her, were the only people to walk through them before she sealed them off forever. Yeah. Well, she had a beautiful Tiffany stained glass window installed and then built a wall behind it so no light can shine through it. Yeah, you can only see it from the outside, and I'm sure it looks kind of dull. And then after the earthquake, six earthquake, which I say freaked her out, supposedly she went and lived on a houseboat in San Francisco Bay for six years. I bet that was nice. And then when she came back, it was different. There wasn't necessarily much of a plan, and so if she ran into trouble architecturally, she just tear the thing down or build around the problem. This was like a different kind of frenetic pace, and it was just like, build whatever, wherever. Right after the earthquake, it really got to her. Just like crazy person building. Yeah. All right, checkers. Before we go any further, how about another message break? Okay, so back to it. Here's some numbers for you. Okay. 47 fireplaces, 17 chimneys, two basements, six kitchens, 10,000 window panes, and 467 doorways. And only two mirrors in the whole house because, of course, ghosts are afraid of their own reflection. And apparently the staff would sneak hand mirrors so they can occasionally see what they look like after getting out of the shower. But she didn't want to have anything to do with the mirror. Yeah. She also supposedly would fire staff who saw her without her veil on. Apparently, her butler and her niece were the only people who could see her without avail. And if you saw her without avail, no hard feelings, but you're cut. So we've talked a lot about the fact that she worked as her own designer and made all these weird, terrible choices that made no sense. But we also mentioned early on, she's a very smart lady, so she actually learned over the years more about design and architecture and got better at it and developed a skill. And she actually had some innovations in her home that were brand new at the time. For instance, they say she was the first person to use wool for insulation. Yeah, it's pretty cool. They had carbide gas lights in the house that had their own gas manufacturing plant for the estate right. Which is brand new. And she had electric push buttons installed to turn the lights on and off. She had an inside crank to open and close outside window shutters. First person to do that. That eventually became the norm. Oh, yeah, that's huge. What else? I guess it was sort of green at the time. She had drip pans under the windows and a zinc subfloor in the north conservatory. So when you watered plants, the runoff from those plants would be captured by drain pipes for the garden below it. It's pretty cool. And she had something called the annunciator, which is a servant call system. Allowed her to summon servants from anywhere in the house, and it would drop a little card to show the servant which room she was in at the time. That's pretty awesome. So it wasn't just crazy, weird steps that lead to nowhere. There were actually some innovations at the time. And it's a gorgeous Victorian, like, when you look at it, really beautiful house. Yeah. And apparently the construction, by the time she died, took up six acres. Six acres of the house, not just the ground, because the grounds are, like, 160 acres. And when she dies, finally, it's and apparently the legend has it that she died at a time when construction stopped the workman, took a break or something to play cards oh, really? And never started back up again because they discovered that she died in her bed sleeping in 1922. And right afterwards, she left everything to basically her nieces and nephews. And one of her nieces, I think the only one who was allowed to see her without a veil came in and was like, let's just auction this stuff off. And it took six weeks, supposedly, to get everything out of the house because there was that much stuff, and it was that difficult to find your way out when you really got into the interior. Yes, and some really valuable things, too, that were locked away in storage that were never even used, like furniture and furnishings just sitting in wait, basically. Didn't you say that there's a wine seller that's lost? Yeah, I think they can't find the wine cellar to this day, which also sounds a little like lore to me. It does. Why can't you find the wine cellar? I don't know. It's lost. It is a popular tourist attraction today and still being renovated and maintained. Apparently. It's continually being painted. The exterior is all year long. They finish painting it, and they start once again. Because it takes 365 days to complete the job. I would imagine so. And it's been a tourist attraction almost since she died. Like, the house was sold to a group of investors who wanted to start it as a tourist attraction for $135,000. That is crazy. Even though she dropped 5.5 million into it. And, again, if you're interested in this, you can go check out the winchester mystery house in San Jose. They have a website. I just imagine you type in winchester mystery house, but also look up something called mrs. Winchester's house. It's a documentary from KPIX. I think it's a San Francisco television station. It's narrated by Lillian Gish It's just a half hour long, but it's really spooky and black and white and just interesting. It's a neat one. Very cool. Yeah. Check that out. All right, so we're going okay, let's go before that, though, chuck, if everybody wants to read this article, you can type in winchester mystery house in the search bar@howstuffworks.com, and it will bring this up. And I said search bar, so that means it's time for listener mail. Yeah, I'm going to call this asexuality call back. I just listened to your asexual podcast guys. I found it very interesting. One thing really caught my attention. You said Asexuals were classified as a separate group outside the range of homosexual to heterosexual. I think it could be different. So Paul is proposing an idea here. Instead of the range being a number line with a subgroup that doesn't fit, it should be more like a coordinate plane. Not all people are equally sexual, I'm sure. You know, people who don't really think about sex often and then people who it dominates a large portion of their lives. That made me think that it could be a coordinate plane with homo and hetero on the left and right. And asexual to extremely sexual, I want to say nymphomaniacal even, but I feel like nymphomania is more complicated than a born sexuality, or at least we don't know enough about it to say whether it is. Yeah. So what is describing is like a plus sign the sexual orientation on left and right and then the intensity of your sexuality going up and down. Exactly. So you could have like high homosexuality, low heterosexuality, right and so on. Exactly. It's a good idea. I've actually seen that elsewhere too. Coordinate plan. It just makes sense, he says. That way all the people could be accurately plotted to some degree at least. Not saying it would count for everything perfectly, but I think it would clarify it a bit more. Anyways, I'd love to know your thoughts on that idea. You just got them. Yeah. Has it been done before or have you read about that? I have not. I do not know. I saw in a paper somewhere somebody proposing that similar thing that who was it? The sex studier? Yeah. They really kind of missed a really obvious aspect of intensity rather than just orientation, just stuck to orientation. It's a good idea, I agree. So Paul of Uniontown, PA, we think it's a swell idea. Get to work on it. Yeah. Go Paul. If you can call it the Paul's sexual plane. Paul's a one sexual plane and a girl. Yeah, Paul, thank you for that. And if you like, Paul has some great thoughts or ideas on things that we've talked about. More expansive ideas. We want to hear them because we like that kind of stuff. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook dot comstepynow. You can send us an email to stuff podcast@discovery.com. And hey guys, come hang out with us at our website, stuffysheanow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howtofworks.com. Brought to you by the all new 2014 Toyota Corolla." | ||
3f72d0ba-5461-11e8-b6d0-ef93e9ac72f3 | Selects: Earwax: Live With It | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-earwax-live-with-it | Despite tons of people using cotton swabs each day to clean the earwax from their ears, cerumen (as earwax is clinically known) is actually quite beneficial to the health of your ears - and even kind of ingenious as your body's defense goes. Learn more in this classic episode. | Despite tons of people using cotton swabs each day to clean the earwax from their ears, cerumen (as earwax is clinically known) is actually quite beneficial to the health of your ears - and even kind of ingenious as your body's defense goes. Learn more in this classic episode. | Sat, 06 Feb 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=37, tm_isdst=0) | 35297151 | audio/mpeg | "Hi, folks. Earwax colon. Live with it is your Saturday select this week. This is from March 12, 2015. And, boy, this is a good one. There's a lot of things people don't understand about earwax and what you should do with with it and what you shouldn't do with it. So this was very instructive for both of us and should be for you as well. So enjoy. And don't ear candle, for God's sake. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles WTOK. Bryant. There's Jerry. It's stuff you should know. He just shrugged. Like, what are we going to do? That's what we are. Yeah. Episode number seven something. Yeah, I have no idea. It's in the 700, folks. If you think there's only 300 because you're on itunes, you're in for to be doubly surprised. Yeah, well, somebody tweeted recently, I've just found that How Stuff Works app, and there's way more stuff you should notice than there is on itunes. I hate you guys. Now, wait, I was cool with 301, but that's it. I had someone ask you the other day if we feel like we're running out of things topics. Clearly we are, because we're recording on your way. Yes, exactly. What did you tell them? Look for boogers in the near future? No. I said no. That sometimes it feels a little like, oh, my gosh, what are we going to do? But there's gazillions of topics in the world, at least. And gazillions are scientific. That's right. What is that? How many? Zeros. Is that a real number? No, I don't think it is. Let's say 90. It's a real number if you're eight years old. Right, but watch, it probably is a real number. Yeah, I think a Jillian is a real number. A bazillion a Jillian definitely is. I would guess gazillion is by now. I might actually look that up. I mean, there's just, like, a handful of mathematicians who are in charge of naming that kind of stuff, so chuckers? Yes? While you're looking that up, do you have ear wax? Do you have problem earwax? No, I don't either. No, I wouldn't say so. It is a little distressing, though, even though we will find out it is awesome and exactly how it's supposed to work when it just sort of falls out of your ear onto your shoulder. Yeah, that's ideal, actually. Yeah, because earwax and your physiology in general doesn't care about what social group you're a part of. No, it's just like, here's some ear wax on your shoulder. Deal with it. Although, and I didn't look up why this is true. Apparently in northeastern Asian countries like Korea and China, their earwax is a little different. They're more likely to have the dry earwax, which can be hard in red to black in color, which sounds gross and flaky or pale yellow. Whereas over here we have that nasty gooey orangey mess. Wet earwax is what it's called. Yes. And the reason why actually is because of the ABC Eleven gene. Oh, is that why? Yeah, they isolated the gene. That was a reason causes the type of earwax that you get and it turns out that say the W mutation or the D mutation, dry earwax is recessive. So the only way to get dry earwax is if both of your parents have dry earwax. Both carry the D gene or Dmutation or the ABC Eleven gene. Well, I have both. Most people are WDS. Okay. Yeah. So you have to get 2D alleles two dry earwax, alleles to have dry ear wax yourself. If you have a W and a D or two W's, you're going to have wet and for some reason but I have both like one ears dry and the other is wet. No, if I get the old cotton swab out now you're introducing something way beyond genetics. That's not even epigenetics, that's human intervention. Point is, if I get the cotton swab out, that's when I'll get out the orangey wet stuff. But I'll also have the dry flaky stuff that falls out sometimes, probably, I would guess. And I'm no serumin expert. Yeah. I'm no seraminist. Now what's the word? I actually looked it up for someone who studies this. Oh, really? It has to have to do with Saramen. I can't find it now. So Sarah Menus isn't ringing a bell? No, it's wrong. I can't find what it is. Sorry. Okay, well, I'm not a person who studies earwax. Okay. But what I would guess is that when you're digging in there, you're getting to the fresher ear wax. That's what I think. And then as it works itself further and further out your ear, which is the natural process, it's exposed to dryer air, that ambient air and it dries out and flakes off. Which is what it's supposed to do. Yeah, I think so. I don't think you have both. I think if you have both, the stuff inside your ear would be dry. Would be dry as well. Yeah. Okay. Alright. Well that makes sense. So what? Earwax is or seruman. C-E-R-U-M-E-N is the scientific name. Yeah, but I'm sure they call it wax. It's the third chubby angel. No, the star of them. Oh yeah. Okay. It is made up of secretions of a couple of little specialized glands in the skin on the outer third of the ear canal. Yes. So you have your sebaceous glands and they're going to secrete and these names all sound so gross. Really? But they're perfect for describing what they are. Yeah, they secrete sebum. Sebum. And then you have an apocryne sweat gland that's modified, that produces it's got a hemi. Yeah. It combines with the sebum and that's where you get your ceremony. And so sebum in and of itself is fairly normal. If you like take your fingertip and rub it alongside where your nose folds into your face. You get a little dry skin there. Well, if your stuff is at all oily, the oil is sebum. Okay. So apparently it mixes in your ear with that kind of apocrine gland, like you said, to form serumin, which is its own thing. It's not just sebum. Right. But all of it is basically a fatty oily lipidy compound that's secreted by these glands in the skin cells. Specialized glands. Yeah, about 60% keratin, which is a protein. And then, like you said, the fatty acids. You got dead skin cells, you got hair follicles, dead bugs. Little bugs. Yeah. Lots of stuff that comes out in this. And like you said, dust. Probably dust mites then too. Sure. And like you said, it's produced in the inner third of the outer ear. Outer one third of the ear canal. Okay. Yeah. And when it's produced in there, it migrates outward, thanks to the motion of the motion. Right. And you talking and chewing. Oh, is that what it is? Yeah. I couldn't figure out like, how does your ear wax move? But it's just from jaw movement. Normal jaw movement moves the newer stuff outward. And as it's coming out, all the gunk and stuff that's protected your ear from are moved out with it. So the stuff that flakes off and falls on your shoulder that everybody points and laughs at the party, that is filled with all the stuff that your earwax caught along the way. It's a beautiful, elegant process. Probably the most beautiful aspect of the entire human experience. Well, I think you're making a joke, but I really do think that it's the little things like that. I'm amazed about the function of the brain and of course the organs and all that, but just something as simple as that. Mechanical talking and chewing will work earwax out of your ear. It's just so basic. And I think it's awesome. I think it's really cool, actually. I know what you mean. I agree with you. So some people produce a lot of this I was going to say gross stuff, but have you seen Paddington? The movie? Yeah. No, I heard it was really good. It's very good. Super cute. Really well done. Why did you see that? Just because it's a cute movie. Really? Yeah, saw it in theaters and everything. All right. Please tell me you took Yummy. Yes. And as a matter of fact, it was just me and you. Me in the whole theater. But if it's just you and no kids, then it's like somebody might want to call the security. And they did. I'm just a Paddington fan, but I am now. Yeah. So anyway, there is a part where there's a part featuring earwax in Paddington. Oh, really? It does not celebrate the beauty of earwax. It's the exact opposite. And actually, Yumu is like oh, really? It was really gross, but interesting. Awesome. So anyway, go see Paddington. Is that a spoiler? No. Okay. I don't think so. Maybe for like a five year old. So, like I said, some people produce a lot of the stuff. Some people don't produce as much and they don't really know why. But they do know that sometimes stress and anxiety can increase production of your wax, which makes interesting hormones. Sure. Hormones affected your glands go off. It also said that some drugs can increase your ear wax production. And I looked all over and couldn't find the drugs. But if stress and anxiety does hiahuasca, I imagine yeah. Cocaine would probably make you produce more earwax or something. Oh, yeah. When you put that stuff in your ear. Yeah. Or something that makes you like to your jaw a lot. Oh, sure. That could probably get more earwax out. Yeah. Interesting. I never thought about that. I couldn't find anything else as gross as you might think earwax is, though, it actually is a great thing for your body and there's a very good reason why you have it, because there are four main functions that your earwax is going to serve, my friend. Okay. One of them is it creates an acidic environment that's great. That kills helps kill bacteria and fungi. Oh, even better. Number two, well, that's a big deal too, because your inner ear, like that is really the place where fungus and bacteria would thrive because it's moist and dark. And what we always say about moist, dark places, fungi thrive. That's right. The thing is, it doesn't seem like that would be a big problem to have fungi in your ear, but it would because it would affect things like your balance, nausea, ear aches. It just wouldn't be good. So the fact that earwax produces an acidic environment alone makes earwax a beautiful thing and to be celebrated. So we could just stop there. We could, but you can go on. Like you said, there's four and that was just one quarter of these benefits that your ex bestows. Secondly, it is a lube. It lubricates your ear canal, basically to keep it from drying out. And you don't want the inner ear becoming all itchy and dry and craggedy. No. And you want to hear something weird? That a new personal hygiene thing I have to do as of yesterday, starting yesterday, something I'll probably have to do my whole life. Hair. I have to moisturize my ears. Now, I thought you're going to say hair inside the ear. I was like, I have been doing that for a while. It's getting I got a little fro inside ear fro? Yeah. But no, like taking moisturizer and rubbing on my ears because I got a haircut yesterday and my ears were exposed and all of a sudden I'm like, wait, why is like there is a streak of white on my ear and they're bright red. And I realized my ears are chapped and that is brand new or else I just noticed it. So I'm in ear moisturizer now? Yeah, you had that 70s ear muff hairstyle cut off of your ears, right. So your ears were exposed. Yeah, it was pretty 70s, wasn't it? Well, I was growing my hair out to create, like, a blank slate that could be worked with. It was kind of longish for you. Yeah, it was really long. And it was that 70s, like your month thing wasn't quite it was getting there. It looks good. Very nice. Thanks. Sure. Did that make you uncomfortable? No, I was fishing for that the whole reason I brought that story up. You looked either sheepish or really uncomfortable with it. A little bit. Both got you. All right. Number three on top four things that ear wax does is your sermon and your hair fall. Just like Letterman. Exactly. It's going to discourage everyone's worst nightmare, which is a spider crawling in there, which I covered. That happened to Emily. I think I talked about that on one of the shows. Right. That was genuinely one of the most awesome things that I've ever experienced because it did not happen to me. Wasn't there a picture? Didn't you post a picture of it or something like that? No, but I think I posted a picture of having to some woman in China. I think that was frightening. And it was a picture of a spider looking out of the woman's ear canal. Right, yeah. But Emily, if people haven't heard the story I think it was in the middle of the night or something. She was like, I got this weird fluttering in my ear, and I don't know what's going on in there. And I was like, Well, I took her in the bathroom and shined the light, and I was like, Holy crap. And the spider, I think, worked, didn't it? With the flashlight. Remember? If you look at your I don't know. Did they say yes? Yes. Okay, so there you go. Well, all I remember thinking is, emily, I don't want to have to break this to you, but you have a spider in your ear. You didn't, like, chloroform her first. I should have. Yeah, you should. She was not excited about that. She was not pumped. What was the process of getting it out? Well, I looked on the Internet super quickly to see how and they said to flush it out. Oh, my gosh. You did use Tweezers. Yeah, and I put the water in there and it kind of loosened it up and went in there and got the Tweezers. And I was like, look at this. How big was it? It wasn't huge, but it was enough spider for her taste. Sure. Yeah, more than enough. Right. Dude, I can't imagine that some people sleep with Vaseline in their ears to prevent that. To keep bugs from crawling in. Yeah, that is the thing. Yes. I mean, people don't want bugs in their ears. No, but that's taken. I mean, that's a severe paranoia, I think, if you're sleeping with earmuffs or vastly in your ears. Yeah, earmuffs. I hadn't thought about that. Alright. And number four, finally, is your earwax is going to trap some dead skin and hair cells and basically all of that junk to carry it back out to keep it clean. So it sounds sort of counterintuitive to trap that stuff, but it's trapping it so it can carry it out. And if you didn't have the rock, it would just go in there. Right. And if you choose things like celery and you talk, then the earwax is going to work its way out in a slow process where all this stuff is cleaned out and you don't ever have to do anything with it under ideal circumstances. Not always our circumstances, ideal. And we'll talk about how things can go wrong after this. Okay, Chuck? So ideally you don't have to ever think about earwax or anything like that because it's a brush, it off your shoulder, right? Sure. But for some people, earwax can build up and become impacted. A lot of times it's because people mess with it. Like with cotton swabs on a stick. Yeah. You may have seen the advertisement on the big game, I think they're just called cotton swabs. Right? Yeah. Okay, so if you use that, a lot of people use those to clear out their earwax, right? Yeah. You're not supposed to. No, it's doing the exact opposite because your earwax is created and moves from the outside third of your inner ear, when you rub a cotton swab on it, you're actually pushing it in further than it's supposed to be and it can't get out as easily there. So what you're going to do eventually is have earwax build up. Yeah. And it's so hard to get people to not do that because it's so rewarding when you get out of the shower and you use that swab and you get that orange gunk and you're like, oh man, I'm so glad that's out of my body. But it's got a purpose. Leave it there. You're supposed to leave it there. Plus, using cotton swabs can lead to other kinds of dangers like you can push too hard and perforate your eardrums. I think it really is true. You're not supposed to put anything larger than the end of a football in your ear. You can also clean it too much. It can result in something called swimmers here, where basically for people who spend a lot of time in the pool, their ears are constantly irrigated and the canal becomes basically free of earwax and as a result, bad things can happen. Yeah. And they say if you do have swimmers here, put a few drops of acidic, slightly acidic, not acid like hydrochloric acid, just put a 55 gallon drum of hydrochloric acid in there. What is a slightly acidic fluid, I wonder? Maybe lemon juice. That's what I would guess. That's probably what I would do. I hope we're not advising something that's really neat. No, as a matter of fact, maybe you should go look up what you should put in there. Or go to your doctor. Yes, but they advise some slightly acidic fluid in the ear after you swim, and that reestablishes what should be a normal acidic environment. Yeah, because when you strip out that ear wax, you lose those Big Four benefits and all of a sudden your ear is dry and cracky and you've got fungus and bacteria growing in there and you get ear infections and it's not fun. The Big Four back to creating a build up of earwax. You get what's called serum and packion. And that is when you have a bunch of earwax pressed against your eardrum, and it can result in all sorts of stuff like headaches, nausea, ear aches, coughing for some reason, and that can be from using Q tips. People who use hearing AIDS run into this a lot. And when your serum becomes impacted, you have to go to the doctor. That's right. Which my sweet wife had to go to the doctor when she was a little girl because ear wax impaction. Yeah, I know. And she said it sucked. Well, when you go to the doctor, if it comes to that, they're going to have quite a few techniques that could use ear syringing. Is one of them painful? It does. I don't think it is, though. I bet it's actually quite a relief. Yeah, that's not how I hear it. Really? Is it painful? Yeah, yumi says it really is not fun. Well, I didn't know if that was like a five year old. Yumi. Well, yeah, but even as an adult, she remembers it as not being very fun. Is this Paddington? Yummy. Maybe that's why she had such a reaction. Maybe they'll use other instruments. Sometimes you use a microphone. I'm sorry, a microscope. That'd be weird. To magnify the ear canal. They shouted to it to shatter your earwax. And some people have a more narrow ear canal. Or if you have a perforated eardrum or something, that can be a problem. Basically, you want to go to a doctor, you could try some home methods, like peroxide or maybe mineral oil. Yeah. Apparently warm mineral oil kind of breaks it up a little bit. Yeah. That's one of my most pleasing memories as a kid. When I had ear aches, my mom would heat up mineral oil and put it in my ears. But that was nice. It felt really nice. Very warm. And for some reason, I like the feeling of water closing my ear, like when I get into a pool. Yeah, but probably because of that. Yeah, maybe so. And think about that. Do you like that? Or is it what I would just imagine you just like crawling to the feet. Why is Chuck just floating in the pool like a baby. No. I've never had much of an affinity for water in my ears because some people hate it. I don't hate it. I don't like it. Yes. And like, I'll bang on the side of my head if it feels like there's like a drop of water in there. Does that work? It can. Not always. I think normally the water just has to dry, right. Sometimes I get dizzy in my head. It hurts. I used to see when I lifeguarded, I would see swim team members do that, though, and I was always like, I don't know, that just doesn't seem right. Once in a while it does, and it just goes and all of a sudden you can hear normally again. Interesting. I didn't see the reason for this, though. But they did in this one article I saw have cautioned people against irrigation if you had diabetes. What? Yeah. Why? I have no idea. I meant to follow up on that. So we don't know what drugs cause an increase in earwax build up, and we don't know why if you have diabetes, you shouldn't do you canal irrigation? I don't know. They said not to use irrigation if you have a perforated eardrum. Yeah, I get that. A tube in the eardrum, a weekend immune system or diabetes? I have no idea. I'll have to follow up on social media and let people know. Okay. But they do say if you do want to clean your ear, it's not like you can't clean your ears, but just wash your external ear with a cloth. But you should never stick something into your ear canal. Right. It's just no good. But it's interesting that the cotton swab business is huge. I mean, they've made it if you think about it, they made I don't want to say they shouldn't be selling these things. I know what you mean, though. Apparently I couldn't find out how much people spend on cotton swabs every year or how many are produced. We couldn't find out that either. But for 2011, apparently Americans spent $63 million on ear cleaning stuff, home ear cleaning stuff, and I imagine a lot of that went to cotton swabs, but also like, home irrigation kits and stuff like that. Yeah, because you can get those at the drugstore. Right, right. And those are fine, I guess. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, everything is upside down right now. No, I think the irrigation is fine if you don't fall into one of those categories that I mentioned because you're not sticking an object into your ear that and then if you don't do it too frequently to where you're stripping the ear wax out of your ear. Right. Because it's not like that thing just replenishes overnight, guys. I know. And I used to cotton swabs not a lot, but occasionally. But I'm not going to do it anymore. But like I said, it feels so good to get a big hunk of that stuff out. Yeah, I've never been into those. Yeah, I'm not going to do it anymore. I'm totally too burnt all that stuff. All I do is I take some soap and lather at my hands, do the outside of my ears, and then I guess I just kind of follow the contours of the inside of my ears. And I'm trying to remember, do I go into my ear canals? And I think I intuitively stop with your fingers. Yeah. At about the outside. So I don't really go into the ear canal and then rinse it out and get off and get out of the shower. And then now I moisturize my ears afterward is the last step. That's great. The other thing, too, that they of course, you should never, ever do, like cotton swabs is one thing, but like a car key or bobby pin or like a toothpick? What is wrong with you? I don't know. You should never, ever stick something like that in New York because you're just asking for trouble. Big trouble. All right, well, after this break, we are going to talk about ear candling sufficient. All right, so, Chuck, you teased everybody with ear candling. Why don't you tell everyone what that is? It's hokum. Okay, describe the hokum. Well, ear candling and a lot of people don't know this, I think. I think a lot of folks say, like, oh, my gosh, it's the best thing ever. It is also known as auricular candy or coning, and it is a procedure. Once you put a waxy cone shaped device in the ear canal, and it's got usually like a plate underneath it between the cone and your ear, right. And you light it on fire. And supposedly what it does is it you stick the thing in your ear and then light it on fire. Yeah. Supposedly what it does is it creates a vacuum to pull out impurities, right. Because the flame supposedly needs oxygen, while the flame definitely needs oxygen to burn. And it's getting its oxygen by sucking it out of the ear canal through the cone. Right. Hence creating a vacuum. And as it does, like you said, it sucks out impurities and ear wax and supposedly also clears your sinuses. Right. Clears the plaque out of your dendrites and all sorts of stuff like that. Yeah. This one article by Lisa Rosen, MD. Said she went to and this was in the 90s, but she went to a Discovery Expo in Atlanta and said that they had ear candlers there in one of the exhibitions. And the lady said that ran the booth, quote, it cleans the whole head, brains and all. They're all connected. Is that quote in there? Yeah, nice. End quote. And of course, it was in Atlanta. I'm like, oh, great. Although that doesn't necessarily mean that could be anywhere. You're right, sure. But there are a lot of people that think it's a cleanse for your ear, and it does connect to your brain and it clears your head. And it's a spiritual thing and they don't know where exactly it came from, but China and ancient Tibet and pre Colombian South America, Atlantis yeah. They all are cited as places where it might have happened. Yeah. No one has any idea where this stuff originated. It could have been created in the US. And the 70s for all anybody knows. Should we read some of the things that supposedly helps? Yeah, we should probably also say, if you haven't been able to tell by now, science is thoroughly debunked ear candling. That's right. And this is from that article dr. Rosen and some of her colleagues got together and kind of step by step took down the idea. Yeah. There's a list of like, 40 things. We won't go through them all, but release vertigo, clears the eyes, purifies the blood, AIDS sinusitis, relieves ear aches, opens and aligns your chakra, releases blocked energy, reduces stress and tension, stabilizes your emotions. It does none of that because it has just been proven to be an outright not only fraud, but dangerous. Right. Here's why. The first one is that you can't pass liquids and gases through an eardrum that isn't perforated or ruptured. No. So it's not sucking anything out of your inner ear or your Lymph system or your sinuses or your brain. That's why your ears pop when you're on a plane. Right. If you could pass air through there, that wouldn't happen. There would be no atmospheric pressure going on. Right. So that means that sticking an ear candle in your outer ear is not going to suck anything out because it can't pass through that's point one. Right. That's zero 1.2 is oxygen. It will create that vacuum and suck out the impurities. Yeah. And that is just not true. Yes. Apparently they tested it and yeah, during trials of ear candles, they weren't able to create a vacuum in any of them. So there's no vacuum created. That's right. There's also the idea that if a vacuum were created, it would suck impurities out. Apparently after ear candling, some of these, at least one of the same trials studied the stuff, the residue that was found afterward, like, I guess in the stump of the ear candle. Well, yeah, and that's what people point to because there's all this gunk and they're like, look at all the stuff that came out of my ear. Oh, my God. Right? So what it turns out to be is ash from the ear candle and leftover wax from the ear candle. But not just the ear candle. Not ear wax. No, just the candle residue. Yeah, like they tested the substance. It is not seraphim. Okay. In any form or fashion. What about the idea that it's safe and effective? I think we took care of the effective part. Yeah, but the safe thing, apparently there's a lot of injuries. You can get from it. You can be burned is one thing. Sure. You can perforate your eardrum, you can get infections. You can get build up of the candle wax to replace whatever wax you think you're getting out. Yeah, it could have the reverse effect. Exactly. And then one woman actually died from a fire that was caused in 2005 from ear candling. I looked it up. She was doing it, I guess, by herself on her bed, and the ear candle fell out of her ear and caught her bed sheets on fire. She made it out of her house fine, but she was asthmatic and had an asthmatic reaction to the smoke and died. How did it happen that fast? I don't know. I guess she had some gasoline, like bedsheets or something. Right. They were made out of some flammable material. There is a company, I won't name the company, but one company that made it, and if it came with a 75 page manual and a 30 minutes video tape, I guess this was a while ago. It was a video tape and candles and plate guards and flame retardant cloth and oil and then odiscope. And if you read the flyer with this kit, it says, quote, it supplies you with everything you need for a safe and effective session of entertainment. Right. For entertainment purposes only. Yeah, because apparently I think it says that Canada regulates those things, or the US does medical devices if they make any health claims. Yeah, I think they're illegal in Canada outright. Got you. Or at least they were. I'm not sure if they still are, but yeah, the FDA won't even I mean, you can't make any kind of claim right on the box. If you get an ear candle at your little health food store, just read it carefully. They can't make any claims for entertainment purposes only, because it's a hoot to put a candle in your ear and light it on fire. There is one other thing I came across in the articles you sent me, and I don't know if it's true, but it sounds fantastic, that if you could create a vacuum with an ear candle, the negative pressure created by the vacuum would rupture your eardrum. Right. Which sounds pretty awesome. I don't know if it's true. It wasn't backed up with a source or anything like that. I couldn't find it anywhere else. But it's pretty hilarious. Yeah. So don't ear candle people. And if you write in and say no, you should see the stuff that comes out. It is not your earwax. Yeah. You should put that stuff beneath the gas chromatograph and see what you I mean, it's proven. This is like what was we talked about recently? Crop circles. We got heat from that, too. People are like, no, it's not proven. What was it? I think it was that the lowest crop circles were like, no, they've proven. These guys came out and said, we made it up. No, I know what they were saying though. It's just like we were talking about with ESP. Just because you can disprove right. Some of it doesn't mean it disproves. All of it except with crop circles. We should come up with the stuff you should know. Tshirt friends don't let friends eat your candle. That's a good one. Yeah. Just love your ear wax. Yeah. Let it fall out on your shoulder and let someone point it out. And you say that's nature, baby. Yeah, because I eat celery. If you want to know more about ear wax, you can type the word into the search bar athousedoforce.com I think we have it down as one word, maybe. Yeah. And I said search bar, which means it's time for listing or mail. I'm going to call this ice cream follow up. We got a lot of good stuff on ice cream. Yeah, we do. People really like that episode. Hi, guys. I'm a student at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Started listening to your podcast just this week and I'm officially hooked. I'm listening to your podcast on ice cream, which is really interesting because I've worked in an ice cream parlor for the last five summers. Wilson's opened in 19 six and is still going strong today. One of the most famous restaurants in Wisconsin. There are definitely different types of vanilla ice cream. We use two types, french or deluxe vanilla and purple vanilla. The label on this other vanilla is purple. We use purple vanilla for shakes and malt because it's less rich, allows for the flavor of the shaker, malt to be more distinguished. For French vanilla and ice cream cone sundaes and floats. And you mentioned having root beer floats. Reminded me of an interesting thing that I've noticed. People often get offended when they order a black cow and we have to ask them what it is. That's because almost everyone has a different idea of what a black cow consists of. Some say that it's a root beer float. Some say that it's a root beer float with chocolate ice cream. Some say it's a Coke float. Some say it's a blended root beer float, et cetera, et cetera. Somehow they all got labeled as black cow. Thanks for giving me more ice cream knowledge. I'll actually be able to answer customers now when they ask what the difference between ice cream and frozen yogurt is. That is from Andrea Nelson. And she says, PS. Those nasty cheap cones with the flat bottoms are known as cake cones. Yeah, I saw that afterward. Don't order them ever. I mean, if you're a Jason's Deli and that's all they got, they have the free ice cream, right? Yeah. And it was like the day that we recorded ice cream and I couldn't remember the name of the cone. I think I ended up going that night and there it was, cake cone. I was like, yes. Kate cone. Somebody else called it a wafer cone, but I think that's just wrong. I see where that would come from. Because it's waferesque. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense, but I've never seen it called that before. And that's too close to waffle cone, right? Makes people confused. So thanks, Andrea Nelson, for that one. Thanks, Andrea. If you want to get in touch with us to say hi or to tell us about ice cream or anything like that, you can tweet to us at sisk podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com, stuffyhe can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housetofworks.com. And as always, you can join us home on the web. The luxurious Stuffyshindnow.com stuffyhanow is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How Tourette Syndrome Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-tourette-syndrome-works | Gilles de la Tourette syndrome, commonly referred to as Tourette's, is a neurological disorder characterized by a combination of verbal and physical tics. | Gilles de la Tourette syndrome, commonly referred to as Tourette's, is a neurological disorder characterized by a combination of verbal and physical tics. | Tue, 13 Apr 2010 20:45:59 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=20, tm_min=45, tm_sec=59, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=103, tm_isdst=0) | 29580722 | 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, www. Chuck Bright doing a little dance. You always give me away. Yeah. I do secret things for you and then you immediately say what I'm doing. Yeah. Hey, Chuck just rubbed his butt. I didn't know they were secret. Just for me? Yes. It's my little gift. I had no idea. Thanks for that Friday, dude. It's so good to be recording on a Friday. Yeah, it's beautiful out. It's like 80 deg. We have a window so we can see the beauty. Yes. And we can actually see the ugly building. The construction and the office is well underway. We've been inhaling volatile organic compounds all week. It's out of hand, actually. Yeah. Everywhere I turn, there are desks that shouldn't be there and cube walls stacked up. Yeah, it's weird. I can't believe we're not working at home through this whole thing. It's quite an idea, Bryant. Is that a complaint? I don't want to come across as complaining. You're fine. I'm glad I have a job. We don't have a sponsor. It doesn't matter. Okay. Chuck. Yes. Have you ever seen Tourette's guy on YouTube? No. You haven't? He's this guy. He's a hefty guy with glasses and a mustache and often a neck brace. Okay. And he has a foul mouth and anger problem. He's fond of using Bob Sagget as an expletive. He goes, Bob Saggett? That's funny because Bob Saggett is a very foul mouth. He is surprisingly about him. That in itself is almost a curse word. Yeah. He's taking a lot of heat because he's very abusive toward his family members. I think I have seen this. I can't imagine that you haven't. Yeah. He says just the craziest stuff and also the stuff he's saying is in response oftentimes. To what? Like questions other people ask or whatever. So really it comes off as just a jerk. So I went on to find out if the guy actually has Tourette. He probably does not. He does. Oh, really? He was diagnosed with Tourette's, but his family admits on the Feeling Guilty page that he does have anger and alcohol issues that exacerbate things. Okay. So he may just be a jerk as well. It's possible. Okay. Yeah. But he has raised awareness, one could say, of Tourette Syndrome. Tourette Syndrome? Tourette is going to be a problem throughout this whole podcast. There is no S. It is Tourette syndrome. Yeah. Unless you're just calling it Tourette. Right. Without the syndrome, then it has an apostrophe S. Right. The reason why is because it belongs to a French physician. Correct, Chuck? Yes. His name was Gilbertoze. It's how I'm going to pronounce it in my faux French. And he was a physician in France in the 1800 and he did not actually he was not the first person to report about Tourette. That was Jeanmark Gaspa. Ita yes. Very nice. And he described the symptoms of a lady, a noble woman named Marquis de Dampia. I am impressed with you, Chuck. She was elderly and she had sounds like she had Tourette's, and he described them as a tick illness. And then later on is when Tourette himself published the study of nervous affliction, when he tracked nine people in a French hospital. And then it officially became Tourette. Right. It became the syndrome de Tourette. That's right. Yeah. We sound like we could collude at any moment. Yeah. So that's where the syndrome gets its name. Right? Indeed. Well, I guess since the 19th century to I'd say the mid 20th century, it was basically like, holy cow. Absurban. You had Tourette syndrome. Yeah. And then in the later 20th century, we started to get a slightly better handle on what was going on with Tourette sufferers. But we still don't entirely know what's going on there. We suspect that it has a genetic basis because they haven't tracked it to the gene, but they believe that there is a and they've noticed that parents with Tourettes have a 50% chance of passing on to their kids. Right. Which is pretty strongly in favor of genetics. Yeah. We also know, and I found the very interesting I didn't know this, that you always have the onset of Tourettes. Right. This is difficult before the age of 18. Yeah. Usually it starts around seven peaks from eight to twelve, and then the ticks start to decrease steadily. After that. Boys get them more than girls. Yes. I think they're four times, likelier, three to four times, likelier, to have Tourettes than girls are. And you can have Tourette's and not notice it, too. Yeah. But not have visible ticks. It's just in the gene is in your body. Right? If it is indeed a gene, yeah. Let's stop beating around the bush, shall we? Let us talk about coprolalia. Very nice. Thank you. Coprolalia. Right. That is what most people think of Tourette as the old joke, hey, that guy's got Tourette. If somebody yells in obscenity right. A vocal tick, it's a complex vocal tick. Very complex. There's a simple vocal tick which might be like a grunt or clearing your throat or something like that. A complex vocal tick is a symptom of Tourette syndrome, where you are stringing words together, or even just saying a word would be a complex vocal tick. But specifically with coprolalia. Coprolalia, I don't know. These words aren't uttered often within a social or emotional context. Meaning that it's quiet in the auditorium when the kid blurts it out, and it's an obscenity. They blurred obscenities or reference to genitalia or bodily functions, whatever, or sexual acts. Right. Yeah. Bob Sagat. Right. The thing is, though, is a lot of people who age and have Copper Lalia, they learn tricks. Like, they might mutter it a little more. Right. It might mask their mouth with their hands, they might say just the first letter or two of the words, like and that is enough for a lot of people who suffer from this affliction or have this symptom. Right. But in other cases, it's so extreme that you can't say anything but that word that comes out. And what I've read is it's akin to wanting to sneeze. But say sneezing is socially unacceptable. Right. So you have to cough, but that doesn't satisfy the urge to sneeze, and eventually you're going to have to sneeze. Do you know what I would do? What? I would just turn around and look at the guy behind me every time you're like, oh, dude, right, yeah. What's your deal? Well, apparently also there's a kind of sub suffering of copper lalia where people blurred out like racial and ethnic slurs in the company of people who would take offense to that. The researchers point out, although I'm not entirely certain that they have a true handle on this, they point out that this doesn't necessarily indicate the thoughts of a person who has copper lalia. It's just this is what's in their mind right then, or what they're saying or what's coming out. Yeah. Well, that can be a symptom of Tourettes, but it's only in less than 15% of sufferers. So the common thing that most people think of is actually very uncommon. Right. And like you said, a lot of people have such mild symptoms you wouldn't even notice it. Like, I could have Tourette syndrome, chuck a very mild case and you wouldn't know. I'd know. Okay, well, they say stat wise, one in 100 people suffer from a mild form, which is a lot more than I would have thought. And about 200,000 Americans. It's just Americans have the most severe forms. Right. So that's definitely a little more common than you would think. And it is pancultural, but it's not found in equal amounts in every culture. Which kind of undermines the genetic basis idea. Yeah, a little bit, because there's a lot more Tourette sufferers in the US. Than in Japan. Interesting. Yeah. I wonder if that's something to do with our culture. We're a foul mouth culture, maybe. Right. And we're very nervous. I think the Cold War did it to us. Well, they do say that anxiety sometimes can increase the amount of ticks and relaxation. That's one of the things they'll try and get you to do is relax yourself with breathing techniques. Right. So that could have some credibility. We'll get to that, Dr. Clark. Thank you, Doctor Bryant. Whether or not it has a genetic basis, and by the way, if it does, we'll know for certain within five to ten years because I want to understand every single gene in the human genome within that time. I think that's scary. It is very scary. All the ramifications. That's a podcast in itself. Yes, it is. Look for that one, 2011, whether or not. It has a genetic basis. And by they, I mean people who are involved in Tourette research sure have a government, although they do fund some through the National Institutes of Health. Yeah, they've kind of narrowed down some regions of the brain that are likely candidates for the underlying mechanism of Tourette syndrome. Right. Yeah. I thought this was a little weak. I did, too. And I didn't like the word pinpointed. Yeah. Because they picked the thalamus, the basal ganglia, and the frontal cortex, and it's kind of like those are the three things that control, like, your motor functions are like, well, it must have something to do with that, then. Or you're from a cortex, which is in charge of controlling the motor activity of speech, including speech. So it seems like I don't know. Those are the obvious parts of the brain. Right. Nobody did any real research. That's not true, of course. They're just like, it's probably this part of the brain. But we know enough about the brain. If someone were to have sat us down beforehand and said, pick out the three parts that may be responsible, I probably would have picked out those three. I would have said frontal cortex. Sure. The problem is, Chuck, is not only do we not know that much about the brain, humanity in general, and science specifically, doesn't have that great of a grasp on the brain. We said before, and we'll say it again, too, but it looks like the likeliest, candidate is not necessarily a brain region, but these brain regions working or malfunctioning in conjunction because of an excess of the neurotransmitter dopamine. Yeah. Misfiring transmitters. That's always the case. And again, the reason why they think that this is possible is not because they have any hard scientific evidence that this is the case. They've just noticed that in Parkinson's patients, which are the opposite of Tourette's patients in a lot of ways, they move much more slowly, unsteadily, and their motor function seems to be impaired. It's decreased. And they found that there is a lack of dopamine in Parkinson's patients. So they're like, well, then it probably just means that there's an excess of dopamine in Tourette patients, because the universe is that cut and dry little flimsy. Right? That's what I think. Yeah, me, too. But like we said, it's the brain, and it's just such a crapshoot when you're dealing with the brain. You just don't know they're doing their best, though. Should we talk about symptoms? Yeah. Well, we already covered the obscenity bursting caperolia. Very nice. Thank you. You took the cue. And that is the rarest symptom. More commonly, what you're going to see is, like, eye blinking, throat clearing, shoulder shrugging. I know a guy facial grimaces. Yeah, facial grimaces. This friend of mine in high school had Tourette's, and I didn't even know it until recently when I was researching. I was like, oh, that guy Andy had tourette. Wow. Because he would go and, like, blink and turn his head and make a little guttural sound like that? Well, yes. Then he would have Tourette's, because you said that he had a motor tick and a vocal tick, right? Yes. So if he just had the shoulder shrugging or eye blinking or twitching, just that, he would have had a chronic motor tick disorder, right. Or if he just made the guttural sounds, he probably would have had chronic vocal motor tick disorder. Tough one to get out, didn't it? Yeah. Well, since we're here, we might as well go ahead and say, and I didn't realize this either, that there are all these very specific classifications. So if you're being diagnosed with Tourette, they rule out a lot of other things first, and then once they've ruled out all the other stuff, they go, okay, what kind of ticks do you have? How often do you have them? When did you start getting them? Because it's got to be before 18. You have to have multiple motor ticks and at least one vocal tick, and both of those have to happen within one year. And within that year, you cannot go three months without a tick and still be diagnosed with Tourette. But I didn't know was that specific. I didn't either, but in all of it's, based on observation, obviously. But if you have something else, tourette falls under the umbrella of movement disorders, right? Right. So there's all these different kind of sister sibling disorders that could be diagnosed rather than Tourette. It's kind of like Tourette is a Milange of movement disorders. Or motor disorders. A Milan. Very nice. Thank you very much. We're back to the French, right? Exactly. So, Chuck, I jumped ahead a little bit, didn't I? Yes. That's all right. There are some other really interesting tidbits about Tourette's that I was unaware of. Like, normally they start out higher up in the body, right? And then as the patient ages, the ticks move further down. Yeah, I thought that was interesting. So you might start out with eye blinking or shoulder shrugging or neck tensing or something like that. Right. I should say, by the way, since this isn't a video podcast, you can't see it, but every time Chuck or I describe some sort of tick, we try it out ourselves. It kind of feels it's almost involuntary. It is. And then from there, it can work its way down to the arms and hands, like clenching your fists, that kind of thing, and then eventually down to your feet. You might stomp your feet really loud, or you might have a hitch in your giddy up, as they say. Who says that? The Tourette researchers. Walter Brennan, old Westerns. Okay. And then ultimately, Chucky can move into the respiratory and alimentary systems. So a tick can manifest as a hiccup or a whistling or belching or throat clearing or something like that. So it cycle over time. It doesn't necessarily, but it can. And once it starts moving further, it's tough to bring back to its original position. Yeah. What happens is there's an urge they all suffered describe this build up. They feel it's like building up in their body, like this urge to do it. And then that is satisfied by the tick, whatever that tick is. And sometimes you can learn to control that a little bit, but they say that you're just kind of putting up the wall, which will be broken at some point, so your tick will be even worse later on in the day. It's like if you're in a business meeting and you're holding it back and holding it back, you might get out of the business meeting and have like a really bad tick or something. Yeah. Which is I guess it's good if you can control it, but you got to know when to let it loose too. Well, yeah. And I imagine that that kind of comes with living with Tourette. Like you realize, okay, I'm going to have a really big tick after this business meeting, but if I can hold it during the meeting, then I'm probably better off. Or if you're alone, I'm sure you just let the ticks fly. Right. And also I was reading about the New York Times has a lot of question and answer blogs about Tourette syndrome. Really interesting stuff. One guy said that he uses his Tourettes as a jerk meter or jerk sensor. So he's found that people react very differently, but they can kind of be lumped into two categories. One, people who can look past it and be friends with you. And the other category are people who just can't. And apparently people who are not down with Tourette are kind of sure. In what way? Other than the fact that they're kind of jerks for not being understanding. I think that's enough, don't you? Oh, yeah, sure. This is something, I don't even know that you could say Tourette Syndrome is misunderstood. I think the greatest misunderstanding is thinking that all Tourette sufferers have Copper Lalia. But other than that, it's not like this is some hidden mystery that everyone walking the planet hasn't heard about just because it's so fascinating. Right. And it doesn't have any attendant, like, physical problems associated with it. It's completely based on brain function. And although there's not like you're not wheelchair bound when you have Tourette Syndrome, there are other, I guess, behavioral problems or disorders that usually accompany or can very frequently. Right? Yeah. OC obsessive Compulsive disorder and ADHD, which is adult Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Yes. Thank you for filling in the blanks there. And they're not always linked, but a lot of times they are like a child. If you've been diagnosed with Tourette's and you're a kid, many times you'll be diagnosed with OCD or ADHD afterward. And not only that, but sometimes you can have disorders as a result of Tourettes. Like a sleeping disorder or a learning disorder because of the Tourettes. Right. And I know that 25% of Tourette sufferers have ADHD, which is a pretty strong link. But I also wonder if some of it has to do with misdiagnosis. Maybe the one that I kind of bought into was the OCD Tourette link. Yeah. You're 20 times more likely to have OCD or symptoms of OCD if you have Tourettes. Yeah, it's pretty high. Parents who have OCD have a higher likelihood of having kids with Tourette syndrome. Right. So there's a little something there something linking them. Little something. So, Josh, let's say one of us has Tourette, and we want to try and rein it in some. What can we do? Do you mean treatments? What are my options? Well, I think probably the gentlest option is behavior modification. Behavioral therapy. Yeah. Josh, habit reversal therapy is one of the behavioral therapies we use. A lot of times it's got five components, but the main key there is the competing response. So if you feel a tick coming on, and oftentimes you'll do, the competing response is sort of linked to what? Your tickets? So if you have, like, a shoulder thing and you feel a tick coming on, you will really relax your shoulders or roll your shoulders and roll your neck around or something to try and fight back the tick. Right. You want to use the same muscles to create the opposite movement, though, right. It's kind of like when your earbud cords are kind of bent, right? Yeah. You have to bend them back the other way for a while to get back to the middle. It's just like that. Yeah. I can't believe you to think of that. Thanks for that, Chucky. What I don't understand, though, is it I mean, it makes sense in one way, but if you're always going to be doing that competing response, what's the difference? No, the point is you're not always doing the competing response. Just like your earbud cord is not going to always be twisted the other way. You're just working it out from being twisted one way for so long. So eventually you would be able to eradicate the ticks by doing this. Okay. Yeah. I thought it was just to keep from doing the ticket. Well, what's the difference between no, I see that point down. No, I think that it's to eventually get to the point where you're not having those ticks any longer. Got you. There's also regular, straight up good old cognitive behavioral therapy, which mainly focuses on relaxation techniques, identifying and dealing with stressors, because, like you said, Tourette Syndrome is often set off by emotions. Stress. Right. There's drugs. There's always drugs. These are tough, man. This is dicey. And I think that these are generally reserved for people with Tourette Syndrome that really interferes with their daily life. Yeah, if you can't get it through behavior modification, it's more than a nuisance, then you might want to look into something like an antipsychotic, Josh. Yeah. Like Pimaxide or helicopteridol or something. Yeah. These are rough. Well, that's the deal. That's why doctors don't throw you on these meds if you have Tourette immediately, because they can bring along some side effects, like men growing breasts. Men growing breasts. Drooling, restlessness, sexual dysfunction and seizures. Yeah. So, in a lot of ways, the cure can be worse than the disease when you're using antipsychotics Tourette syndrome. Sure. Since it occurs in conjunction with ADHD or OCD, a lot of times the doctor will just piggyback the Tourette treatment on the treatment of ADHD or OCD. Right. So if you have OCD antirette syndrome, you're probably going to be prescribed to SSRI, like Zoloft or Prozac or something. Yeah, the Betty and then, like, Ritalin or something to treat ADHD may help alleviate the Tourette syndrome, too. Yeah, but, Josh, if all these don't work, then you've got a really debilitating case of Tourettes, and none of this stuff works. There is an experimental surgery taking place called Deep Brain Stimulation, where they connect electrodes to wires from a small battery pack in your chest. So it's sort of like a pacemaker for the brain, is a good way to describe it. Yeah. And it supposedly prevents against the misfiring of neurons. Yeah. It blocks the firing of the neurons. Is that crazy? It is. And they're not using this widely now because it's really experimental at this point, but they do use it for Parkinson's. It's going to be one of those treatments that in 50 or 100 years looks just ridiculously primitive and barbaric. Right. I can't believe they used to wires and block firing of neurons. Yeah. Patient acres in the brain. Should we talk about famous people? Yeah. Because I know we mentioned, I think, in our OCD podcast about Mama Abdul Ralph, who was the basketball player. Yeah. Was that him? Yeah. I thought it was, like, Chris somebody. Chris Jackson. He changed his name. That's me paying attention. I thought his name was Cassius Clay. And I think we got emails saying, no, he didn't have OCD heteratz or the other way around, but I think he's diagnosed with both in conjunction I might be wrong. You're probably right. Chuck dan Ackerwood. I had no idea. Yeah. One of the Blues Brothers. Yes. Pete Bennett, who apparently was on Big Brother, which apparently is a TV show. I have not heard of this. I haven't, either. James Boswell. He's a writer. Jim Eisenreke. He's a major league baseball player, I think for the Cardinals. Maybe we'll find out. And who else is a little guy named, like, the tinker on the piano named Mozart? Possibly. Possibly. That might be false. They don't know for sure. And then a few other people I haven't heard of. Goalkeeper for Manu. Tim Howard. Yeah. I'm more of an Arsenal guy. Really? Yeah. Figures. What does that mean? Okay. It's just Arsenal. That's like coming to America and be like New York Yankees. Right. But no, I think if you're a man, you fan, you would go to Europe and be like, I'm a MANUFAN. See, I thought Arsenal was, like, the big yeah, they're both pretty big. But it doesn't matter either way. If you don't really play soccer. You're an American and you call it soccer, and you're an Arsenal fan making air quotes. You're a jackass if you walk in here with an Arsenal sweater or something. I would not. Maybe a scarf. These things are saucy. Check. There's one last thing we talked about coprolia. Copper Lalia. Yes, copper Lalia. There's also Copper praxia, the involuntary use of obscene gestures. Sure. Like this. I have that in traffic at times. Yeah, you do. But yours is voluntary. That's a big difference. There's also echolalia. Right? Oh, boy. Exactly. That's when you repeat things that someone says, I guess. Yeah. And then lastly, there's echopraxia, which is me doing I'm stroking my goatee, as Chuck does, too. Except you don't have a phantom goatee. Right, okay. So you mimic someone's motion. Bodily motion. Interesting. Yeah. Well, there you have it. That's Tourette. Is that it? Anything else? Oh, medical marijuana is a field of research right now for treatment of it, and all the potheads are like, yeah, man, it works really well to treat my chart. And all the scientists are like, we don't know. Do you see me yelling out words, bro? Exactly. The jury's definitely still out on medical marijuana and any of its uses, but the one you're looking into it, right? Yeah. So that's definitely it. That's it for now. If you want to learn more about Tourette syndrome, you can type that in. That's T-O-U-R-E-T-T-E syndrome. And there's a really cool picture of a Tourette sufferer. It's a multiple exposure picture of a Tourette suffer undergoing a series of ticks. It's pretty neat. You can type that into the handysearch bar athouseafirst.com, which, of course, means it's time for listener mail. The return of listener mail. Yes. It's been a while. Yeah, it's been a little while. We've been so long winded lately, there hasn't been any room. Carrie has been like enough. She's listening. So I'm going to call this one Patriot Offsets. This is from Robin Cincinnati, rob Kay and I'll just summarize the beginning. He's a little put off by the whole carbon offset thing, because he's like, how can you be an environmentalist and support this? It basically means you're free to do whatever you want as long as you buy these Offsets. He was put off in the same way by the Catholic Church who sold indulgences to offset the sins of the wealthy. We got a lot of email about this. Apparently, I said something about a Karma Offset, and they said indulgences are kind of like that. Yeah. So he was put off by that, and they were very popular. So he says, in the spirit of the carbon offset, Josh and Chuck, I am now creating the patriot offset. Okay. Because I have noticed once or twice in the blogs that you, too, get a few people who are a bit closed minded and question your patriotism. Yeah, that happens from time to time. Yeah. The guy asked me if I served in the military. Very mockingly. Oh, really? Yeah. You should have said. Yeah. Howard Sternhoy says he was in Vietnam when he was. He tells these big, long stories about it. I have 15 years in the army, with three deployments so far. For the simple price of a shout out on the podcast, I'm willing to give each of you a year of my army time and let's say three months of peacekeeping deployment in Kosovo. Awesome. You guys had a blast. Trust me. He says in Kosovo. So next time anyone calls you a hippie or anything like that, just tell them that you bought your service to your country and you are true Americans. And that is from Rob. So we now have served a year in the army. So do we get a year each or a year combined? Were we in the same platoon, same unit, or do we do any, like, search and destroy missions? We need to come up with stuff. I think we were definitely, probably bunk mates, because I remember that one night when I was not in the same bunk. Okay. Bunks are on top of each other. I just remember being on that top bunk of that night when you beat me with the bar of soap in the towel along with looking for it. Squealer. You shouldn't screw things up for the rest of the platoon. I had to wipe down the latrines because of you. Yeah, sorry, pile. Well, I got it in the end with the soap. You certainly did. Wow, chuck, that one was fraught with innuendo. Innuendo. Nice. All of it was super clean now. And also, did you know that in the Civil War, wealthy people could pay people to stand in for their prescription? Oh, really? Yeah. Doesn't surprise me. Which we just kind of did with no money changing hands. It makes it legal. So shout out to Rob. Yeah, big shout out to Rob. Thank you for the military service for us. If you want to give Chuck or I anything, we love free stuff. You can send an email to us describing it and possibly offering something to stuffpodcast@housestuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Want more? HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the Howestofworks.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'll 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." | ||
02d056e6-3b0e-11eb-947e-2b613016c62b | Slime Mold: 0% Mold, 100% Amazing | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/slime-mold-0-mold-100-amazing | If you’ve ever wandered past what looked like a pile of dog barf on a log during a hike in the woods, you’d just seen slime mold - one of the most perplexing organisms on Earth. | If you’ve ever wandered past what looked like a pile of dog barf on a log during a hike in the woods, you’d just seen slime mold - one of the most perplexing organisms on Earth. | Tue, 08 Jun 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=159, tm_isdst=0) | 46641404 | audio/mpeg | "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 Wayne Bryant. And this is stuff you should know. No producer edition. That's right. Just us, buddy. We're going to do it. We're going to be just fine. Jerry took an early vacation for Memorial Day. I know. She's always doing stuff like that. She knows how to live, and we're stuck with slime mold in her absence. I like slime mold. I knew you would love slime mold. Yeah, I think it's pretty interesting. Stuff is very Josh Clarkey. It is kind of Josh clarke. So much so that as I was researching this, I just kind of generally knew about slime mold, that it exhibited some weird level of intelligence here, there, but I didn't know much about it. And then as I was researching, I was like, I'm kind of into slime mold now. All the different kinds of it. I regressed into the nerdy eight year old I never was. Yeah, and then you're like, let me Clark this over to Chuck and see what he thinks. Yes. I like simult, too. I think it's kind of cool. Let's do it. Okay, Chuck, I'm ready. All right, everybody stand back because we are doing it. Yeah, and I think you could file this. I mean, it's not an animal, slime mold. I guess we should just tell you right away it's not an animal. It's not a fungus, even though you would think it's a fungus if you saw it on the forest floor. And we'll get to all this stuff, but it feels like one of our animal episodes anyway, sort of. Yeah. I was going to save the fact that it's not an animal or fungus or the very end, but sure, we could do it at the beginning, I guess. Literally in the last minute, they were like, I still don't know if this is an animal. Is it a dog in disguise? You know, everything we just told you about it's not an animal. It's not even a fungus. And then we just go to listen or mail. So what is it, though, besides super ancient, as in, like, maybe one of the very first living things? Well, it's a protest, actually, they figured out and produce seems to be well, it's one of the five main kingdoms. Animal bacteria, plants, fungi, and then protists. And protists are typically singlecelled organisms like amoeba or protozoans, things like that. And I couldn't find out exactly when they did it, but they fairly recently, I guess, in the history of biology, fairly recently reclassified slime molds from the kingdom fungi over to the kingdom protista. Yes, which is interesting because for years they had been studied by Mycologists, who are fun guys, and they found out later, they were like, you know what? Sorry, this should really go over to the protestorists. And they said, we kind of like these guys can we keep studying them since we have been and they said sure and the protestores were super pissed. They're still actually not over it. They're frequently TPing the academic halls of the mycologist whenever they get the chance. Yes, it's very bitter battle. So that is pretty cute that the fungi people are still studying slime molds even though they're not fungi. But there are some good reasons why they were originally considered to be fungi. Mostly that they're like these big kind of clumps and there's all sorts of different ways that they take shape and form depending on the species. They're different colors, some of them form kind of net like honeycomb structures. Some of them look like dog barf. One of the main ones we'll talk about today looks a lot like dog barf. They look like a fungus though. Like if you're walking in the woods and you saw this nine out of ten people would say well it's got to be some kind of fungus. Yeah. Especially because if you're staring at them, you would have to stare at them for about 5610 hours to see that they have a huge difference between them and fungi. They move, they just move so slowly it's not apparent to the naked eye. But if you film these things with time lapse cameras and speed it up you can see they very clearly move about from place to place. So that's a big differentiator between them and fungi. But one of the reasons they thought they were like fungi, that they were fungi is because they produce spores to reproduce. Right. And I mentioned their ancient origins. They are about a billion years old and like I said, could be like as soon as there was stuff it seems like there was slime mold basically eating the bacteria that breaks down other stuff that dies and that's what they feed on. Bacteria, mold, yeast, basically anything that decomposes dead things, slime mold and gould I think it's not called photography, it's called fagotrophy. Oh yeah, it's not how I was going to say it but what were you going to say? Yeah, but I think you're absolutely right. Well you know us, it wouldn't be us if we didn't probably both get it wrong. But that's when you basically surround something and engulf it and just sort of move it into your body just like sort of absorb it basically. Yeah. Which is another difference between slime molds and fungi because fungi actually break the food down and then absorb the broken down nutrients. But the fact is if you have things that are decomposing other things like bacteria, molds, yeast, the things that crawl onto or grow on dead people, dead trees, all that stuff break them back down into their constituents. So the fact that the slime mold feeds on other things, it makes it a really important part of the food web, part of the nutrient cycle because other things come along and eat the slime molds. There's apparently a kind of beetle that has a specialized jaw that allows it to slurp up slime molds. I think some kinds of insect larvae eat them and then so it just kind of keeps going. But they're really important part where you just have these microbes that the beetle couldn't get to, that they're able to basically get that energy from the bacteria by eating the slime mold. Right. And even though other protists can carry disease, slime mold is quite human friendly, actually. You can eat the stuff if you want. There's a dish in Mexico, in some parts of Mexico called cacca DeLuna, which is exactly what you think. Yes. Moon poop. And they eat the stuff. I even looked online to try and get a good recipe, but it's not unlike the pages of Martha Stewart Living. Like you got to dive deep into reddit and stuff like that to get some good recipes. It seems like almost smacks of urban legend, but I'm seeing it in different enough forms that I think it's probable that it actually is a thing. The thing that scares me is that people say, like in some regions of Mexico, it's like that's not super specific. True. And we pointed out they weren't animals or plants. But we definitely need to point out that slime mold is also not mold. No. As a producer. That's right. So one of the really amazing things about slime mold is there's a couple of different kinds, as we'll talk about in a second, but a whole bunch of different kinds of species. One type of slime mold can get really big. Some of them can get up to the size of like a medium or pizza, large pizza, I guess, depending on whether you're getting ripped off by your pizza guy like twelve inches in diameter. That's enormous. Right. So you're like, well, that's pretty cool. It's a big blob of mold. Well, put your sock garters on because I'm about to blow your socks right off your feet. Some of those types of slime mold that are as big as a pizza are one giant cell. Yeah. I mean, this is truly amazing. The plasmodial slime mold, which is, I guess you could call it one of the true slime mold. It has all the stuff like as if it were undergoing cellular division and all the different nuclei, millions of nuclei, organelles, cytoplasm, all that stuff. But it doesn't have cell walls. It's not individual little cells. It's just, it splits and lives inside this giant fortress wall. Yeah. It's almost like if you took all the cells that should have made this giant blob up as a multi cellular organism and just kind of broke them open and dumped all the contents into this blob yeah. And then through the cell walls away, that's what you would have. It's super interesting. It is. And it's really kind of straightforward if you just hear it, but it's also really easy to just keep going, like, wait a minute, why is it like that? And how is it like this? What's going on here? Which is one of those things that it makes slimel, it's own thing. And we're still learning about this stuff every day. Yeah, there's quite a few times in here where we're going to say, and here's where it gets even crazier. That's right. This isn't super crazy, but the other kind of slime mold, or the other big broad categories, the cellular slime mold, and these are lots of individual single cell organisms, but the kind of knockout fact about them is when they're stressed out, if they don't have a lot of food around, they can join up together and sort of look like one of those plasmodial slime molds. But it's not. It's called, I guess, pseudo plasmodial. Yeah. Because it's not a real one, but it basically says, all right, we're going to all come together to try and find food together. And then when they do have food, they can be like, all right, we'll just go along our merry way and split up again. Yeah, which is pretty nuts. They also will come together. Apparently it makes it harder for predators like those specialized beetles to eat them, because those individual slime molds can be a millimeter in size or smaller. So it's pretty easy for a beetle to eat that. It's much harder for a beetle that eats something the size of like a quarter. Right. So they actually do come together. They come together to move. They also come together to reproduce and produce spores. But the characteristic of this, that what makes it a pseudoplasmodium rather than actual true slime mold, is that they retain their cell walls, their individual cells, when they come together. They just kind of loosely formed together. And a really good way of understanding what these cellular slime molds create is kind of like a swarm. Yeah, that's a good way to put it, I think. God, that's my favorite thing when the birds do that. What's it called? Flock of seagulls haircut. Sure, that's it. Boy, you threw me there. So the plasmodium is covered by a layer of slime. And you want to put a pin in this because when they do move around, they leave behind these little collapse tubules. And it looks basically like not exactly like a snail trail, but sort of like a layer of slime. And you're going to want to remember that for later on because these actually kind of serve as important little markers, as a matter of fact. Write it down, everybody. We'll wait until you get a pen and piece of paper. Pull over, go inside the CVS closest to you. Yeah. Put on your mask. Buy a pen. Yes. Buy a piece of paper. Pay 1012 times what you should have paid for that pen. Really? Oh, my God. Pin. Markup is big at CVS. I think the general markup at CVS is fairly high. They're like, we get them in here for the aspirin, then we really juice them with this ballpoint. That's right. I know there's no CVS ads in this episode, but we'll find out what's a good deal at a drugstore is. There like a there's not zero. Are they all marked up? Yeah, everything's marked up because it's a convenience kind of thing. You sound like a lot of like a grandfather. It's all marked up. Back in my day, you just go to a regular grocery store and buy your penal price from the pin factory. Straight from the man who made it. That's right. When I was little, for a short time, I'm not sure why we did this, because it's not like we lived out in the country and this is a very old timey country thing to do. We bought our milk direct from a farm. Nice. And we would pull up and I would get to walk inside this huge walk in cooler, like next to a loading dock. And I just thought it was like the coolest thing in the world somehow to get that fresh milk. Sure. Didn't they back the cow up and it makes a beeping sound and they just squirt the milk right into the back of your station wagon? That's right. They mark it up first, wash your way home. So where were we? Okay, if you do see the stuff in the woods, if you're hiking along and you see a big or medium sized pizza, like yellow blob or orange blob, they can be red, they can be white, they can be maroon. Very rarely they can be black, blue or green, but usually it's sort of yellow and orange. And you see that in the forest. You're probably looking at a slime mold. Yes. Especially if it's really hot out and it just rained. Yeah. The worst thing in the world for me. You can also see them, like, on your grass, too. Apparently, if it gets really rainy and hot, slime animals will actually come out of the woods into your grass and be like, oh, this is pretty nice. And they aren't going to do any harm. That's not a problem for your grass. It just looks kind of gross. It's certainly not going to hurt you or your pets. And then eventually it will dry up and turn to kind of a gray or tam powder and blow away. That means that it just turned into spores and it just reproduced all over your place. Yeah. I think maybe we should take a break because right now people are probably like, dude, you promised greatness here. And so far it's a little humbrum. What? So put those sock guarders back on because when we come back, we're really going to start knocking them off with some of these amazing facts. Okay, Chuck, we set them up. Let's knock them back down. So here's one cool fact is that slime molds basically can do the equivalent and do the equivalent of throwing themselves on the grenade. They will sacrifice themselves to save others. And these are things without a brain or a central nervous system. It's not like they think, I'm feeling empathy today for my fellow mold. Sure. And so I'm going to save everybody because I've come across some infectious bacteria. But what they do is they come across it, they engulf it, and then they say, let me go. And they cut themselves off from the pack, from the swarm and detach themselves and die of that infection, but save the rest of the group. And my heart will go on playing in the background as they get further and further away. Exactly. But that's altruism. Yes, which is pretty amazing considering, like you said, they don't have a brain or anything like that. So how are they doing this? We'll get to that later. So what about tell everyone about the dictatorcellium discoitis. Disco IDs. Disco IDs. Okay, that's one of my favorite words now, discoitis. Just because there's disco in it. So this is a kind of cellular slime mold. Right. So it's made up of a bunch of different individual organisms that come together. And when they come together, they practice altruism to some degree as well because some of them will basically be like, okay, I'm dead now, I'm dead. I'm going to turn into a bundle of cellulose fibers. And that cellulose is going to connect with other slime mold cells that have died and turned into cellulose and come together and form a stock. And then the top of the stock, a bunch of different slime mold cells, they're called slugs, when they're individual like that will climb up the stalk and then they'll turn into spores. And then in that way, they're sticking up out of the ground and a passing animal will come and they'll stick to it, and they'll get a ride to greener pastures. But to do that, some of them have to die to form the stock to let the spores grow on top of which is pretty amazing itself. It is. We mentioned that they move. They don't just sit around and wait for someone to drop a pepperoni near their pizza shape in the woods so they can eat it. They got to go where the food is. And they either move by these little appendages, like little feet like appendages. Those are the cellular slime molds, the individual single cell organisms that can come together or, and this is crazy, the other kind, they move as one big mass because there's no cell wall going on. So they just sort of expand and contract the cytoplasm to kind of gush their way along the ground very slowly. Yes. Which is really neat to see because especially when they're searching for food, which is basically all they're ever doing. Everything that they do is either to get away from some noxious stimuli or to go toward food, usually to go toward food. Sounds like us, basically. Yeah. I don't like that smell. No wonder we love them. But I like that smell. I'm going to go toward that. So they make these amazing kind of they look almost like Sea fans, you know what I'm talking about? They look very fractally and they fan out is the best way to put it, when they start to go look for food. And when they do find food, they start moving toward it. The cell walls contract, and that cytoplasm goes that way, and next thing you know, over a very long period of time, next thing you know, five days later, the slime mold has moved. And actually, slime molds, if you don't, they're totally fine living in petri dishes for as long as you want them to, as long as you feed them. If you stop feeding them, they'll just get out of the petri dish and start looking for food elsewhere. Yeah, but I mean, again, it's not like you're just sitting there watching this thing crawl out of its petri dish. You leave overnight and you forget to feed the thing, and you come back and half of it is out onto the table or something like that. It's something like right out of Gremlins, kind of. Yeah. And I think you said they moved about a millimeter an hour, but some of them actually, if they're really cooking, can go about an inch and a half in an hour, which it's really fast. I mean, it doesn't sound fast, but when you're talking about what we're talking about, it is pretty fast. Yeah, and I saw that a couple of places. Most people cite something like a millimeter an hour. I can't remember which one goes that fast. But yeah, I mean, you can't see it moving when you're staring at it, but over time you can for sure, sure. If you're just really patient and you can lock in on something, you might be able to see that. So when they started figuring out in the early 2000s, japanese researchers were some of the first to really study slime molds as showing some sort of intelligence. They figured this out from watching these things actually move about. And when you film them, like high speed and then replay it, you can see their movements are deliberate in a lot of ways. They're not just blind dumb movements where they happen onto food. They clearly can sense food somehow or some way, and they spread out, and they seem to spread out and again in a really deliberate way. And so some researchers started to test slime molds to see what they were capable of. One of the first researchers was a Japanese scientist named Toshiyuki Nakagaki. Great name. I think so too. And Dr. Nakagaki, which is even better. Yeah, build a maze, like a pretty simple maze, but an actual three dimensional maze and a good sized petri dish, put what has come to be known as probably the smartest slime mold phasearium polysphalum, which is kind of like the rock star of the slime mold world these days, put a Pfizerium in it and said, Go to town. Go find your little favorite oat flake treat, which is their favorite food. Yeah. And the key here is there were four different routes to two different endpoints where this food was. It wasn't just like, there's only one way to solve this maze. And so they put the little oat flake at these endpoints, and the microorganisms that grow on the oat flakes is what they're after. It's not like they love oatmeal or anything like that. Right. And so he put them there and studied them, and over the course of hours, these things basically learned to get to that food in the quickest, fastest way every single time. Yeah. It could conceivably get to it, like you said, four different ways, but that fast way was the way it would just like, that's impressive. That's definitely noteworthy. You can write multiple papers on that kind of study. And so another Japanese researcher came along and said, Hold my sake. A researcher named At Sushi Taro from Hokkaido University. Did you like that? Yeah, it's good. And Dr. Tyro said, all right, what about this? What if we take some oat flakes and basically make a general map of the neighborhoods in Tokyo and see what the slime mold does with that? Put a little slime mold in a petri dish with these oat flakes that kind of mimic the neighborhoods of Tokyo, and watch it go, I think, over the course of, like, four or five days. Right. Yeah. And you might think cool. It does what it does, and it goes after that food in the most direct way possible, which is what it did. But here's where it gets genuinely amazing, is they went back and they overlaid a map of the current Tokyo Railway commuter system, the subway system. Sure. And they laid it over this grid of the slime, and it was almost a perfect match. Isn't that nuts? I had to reread that, like, five times to even believe that that's what happened. That this slime basically figured out the most efficient route to get around, essentially Tokyo. Yes. Which, I mean, a human had figured out, too, but it took teams of human engineers and a very long time for them to figure this out. Right. So the slime mold was just like, this is nothing. What else you got? You got any more cities that are more densely populated with more neighborhoods? Because I'll just make your subway maps all day long, basically, and they're like, no, tokyo is probably one of the most deads. Right. Okay. I saw another similar kind of bit of research check where they actually used oat flakes to signify ancient Roman cities in the Balkans. Wow. This is crazy. It's like an archaeological study, and they stick some on it, and it mimicked ancient Roman roads that had been lost, were very obscure, had largely been forgotten, and ones that were well known in the Balkans. It mimicked these Roman roads like things that people had been like, okay, this is the best route from this city to this city. The slime mold did basically the same thing and apparently revealed some lost stuff. Yeah, I guess it could. Also, it's interesting. Like, if it doesn't match up, if they do an experiment like this, does that mean the humans get it wrong? Can they use this as a test and be like, Sorry, the slime mold has spoken? I guess so. I kind of like the octopus picking the World Cup. They always take the World Cup away. If the other team that the octopus didn't ends up winning. Well, I wonder if you will get to real applications of this, but I wonder if they could do something like that where let's say they look at the Tokyo system and a couple of places that didn't match. They're like, we totally should have gone this way. Yes. I feel like that is the direction that people are kind of going in, that they could conceivably use this for planning new stuff. So every city planner will have a slime mold researcher at their best. Yeah. This is crazy. Why not? All you have to do is have some oat flakes in a petri dish, and you're good. So I think we should take another break. What do you think? Quite frankly, we want to eat some oat flakes right about now. I'm kind of in the mood for that, too. We'll be right back. Okay. Did you just see some moflakes? I did not. All right, we'll get you some. Because here's the secret, everybody. When we take a break, we don't really go take a break. No. We should have had some crusty old oat flakes on your desk and just eating them real quick. I don't know. I can't see. All right. We said that these things don't have brains, and I don't think we mentioned it's not like they have not like they're jellyfish and they have some sort of weird neural net. Right. They got nothing like that at all. Nothing like they have no way of generating consciousness in any form that we recognize. And yet slime old is teaching us to open our horizons and hearts sure. To new ideas of what constitutes consciousness and intelligence. You know what I'm saying? Yes, it makes sense. As a swarm, as a bunch of cellular slime mold makes sense. We're already familiar with the hive mind and the emergent property of a bunch of different things operating together. The real puzzler, though, is the single cell plasmodial slime mold. That's one big, giant cell. And the fact that it behaves in ways that seem conscious to some degree. Yeah. So if you want to kind of go back in time to where a lot of this research started. It wasn't actually in Japan, but it was in the 19th sixties. A physicist named Evelyn Fox Keller was curious if she could use math to model biological systems, because they had had success using math to explain and expand our understanding of physics. So she was like, Let me see if we can do this with biology. And someone said, well, you got to meet Lee Siegel. Lee Siegel got a little surprise for you. And Lee Siegel got together and said, oh, Dr. Keller, you need to meet our friend slime mold. And Dr. Keller was like, this is the 1960s. I don't know what slime mold is yet. And Keller and sorry, Seagull said, oh, we'll just take a seat, and let me tell you about this, which is dictio dim. I think that's disclosum. Yeah. Okay. But it's the one we were talking about earlier that creates the stems. They sacrificed themselves to create stems for the spores. Right. And I think this was just significant because it was kind of like the first time anyone had observed and fell off of their lab stool and could explain it to others, these pseudo plasmodiums. But what they were missing was they were like, all right, we see this happening, and it's amazing, and how are they doing this, though? And the very first thing they thought of was maybe it's like an ant colony or something, and maybe there's, like, a leader or a pacemaker cell or maybe a few of them, they get together, and they just sort of send out chemical signals to everyone else and say, go this way, and the rest are just sort of the worker ants that follow along. Yeah. And they knew in particular that there was a chemical called cyclical amp, which is related to ATP, the adenosine triphosphate, and that was how they were signaling. But they thought that, like, you're saying that there are just a few signaling. Everybody else was responding. And what they figured out is that they had that totally wrong, that there weren't leaders, there weren't pacemakers who were in charge of signaling and, in effect, making decisions for the group that it was actually like a group effort and that whatever sell or slug that they're called in the cellular slime mold swarm was closest to food. It would signal with amp that, hey, there's some food over here. Let's all go over this way. And that signal would just kind of be passed along through the swarm, through the cellular slime mold, and the slime mold would move toward the food and start eating. Yeah, you can see why they went in that initial direction, because it made sense. And a lot of nature is organized with the top down principle in mind. Humans often organized with a top down principle. Big business, government. It's a system that we're used to seeing in nature and in people. And so it made sense that they went that way, and they never really thought about the fact that it could be like no, it's a total bottom up system, and whatever is closest can send out these signals. Yeah. So instead of like a hierarchy, it's more like it's like how a flock of birds operate. A flock of seagulls haircut operates where they run so far away. Yeah, but it's the hair that's closest to whatever it's running from. It's the first to run, and everybody else follows. It's kind of like a flock of birds will turn depending on which way they need to turn, based on that bird making that decision, and the rest of the flock basically following it the bottom up, bottom up decision making kind of thing. And so we started to learn a lot. We know a lot about bottom up decision making now, as opposed to when these guys were working back in the Think. But in the 21st century, that whole idea of bottom up decision making or decentralized decision making, has become a real component in artificial intelligence design. Yeah, because if you've listened to The End of the World with Josh Clarke, you know that one of the hardest things in the world to do, is program something to understand everything, because you have to input all the stuff it needs to know. Whereas if you can just kind of set up some sort of simple algorithm to let the machine think for itself, you finally got something. Yeah. And I would imagine I didn't see this anywhere, but it seems like this might have some applications in nanotechnology as well. Like the idea that we could program billions of tiny little nanobot bugs to clean the windows of your house every day. Nice. Like a lot of things collectively doing one bigger thing. Am I off base there, or could that potentially be a thing? Not at all. I think it totally could be a thing anytime. You have a huge amount of things that you're trying to all get to do roughly the same thing, but they need to not, you know, redouble their efforts or replicate their efforts. So you don't want one cleaning one part of the window and the other one coming over and cleaning the same part of the window that's already clean. All you have to do is figure out how to teach them if this happens, do this. And if you can, figure out how to strip it down to a basic enough algorithm that could conceivably be used for just about any situation. You've got the key to the universe in your hand. We'll have to do an episode on it one day. But I read an article about a guy who was I think he was a physicist back in the 80s, who was like, I think the universe is basically an operating system that goes down to there are two bits. You could say it's black and white one or zero, it doesn't matter. But there are two kinds of bits, and depending on the combinations that these things form, everything else in the universe arises from that, including consciousness, planets, slime, mold. Everything comes out of these two types of bits that basically make up the fabric of space and time interacting with one another in increasingly sophisticated patterns. Wow. And that is exactly what you're talking about. So if we can figure out what that computation is, what those algorithms are that give rise to larger and larger stuff, you can do anything. It's weird. You can do increasingly sophisticated stuff. The more basic your algorithm is, it's almost a paradox. Yeah. This is like Dr. Octagon stuff. Doctor Octagon? I don't know. Is that right? From Spotify? Yeah, he was. Alfred Malina, you mean? Yeah, sure. All right. I like Alfred Molina. I think he makes some really weird choices for parts. Oh, he's right. I'm sure somebody's like, hey, we'll give you $10 million to play Doctor Octagon. I'd be like, sure, you got it. Where do I sign up? Yeah, I need to get him a Movie Crush because he actually is friends of the network. He's a friend of the network. I think he's been on the Daily Zeitgeist a few times. Oh, yeah. And they booked him on some other comedy shows. I'm like, guys, throw a little Molina my way. For real. Get that Molina spread all over movie crush. You've been on Daily Site guys? Twice. I've never I've been on Movie Crush once. I had Miles on the Movie Crush the other day, and I was giving him a hard time because they haven't asked me on. And they said, keep on twice. That's hilarious. Keep it up, Chuck. Keep it up. He was like, no, man. I was like, Miles, did he really? You flustered him. I feel like he was on skates for a second there. That's hilarious. I let him off the hook. I'm having Jack on next week, so I'm really like going full court press here. Yes. Miles is like, man, beat beyond guard. Chuck does not pull punches. It's funny because Miles, as you know, is such a smart, smart guy and just, like, having a conversation with him is always amazing. And then he comes on and he picks mall rats. Is it really? That's his favorite movie of all time. I mean, that's what he picked. And he was like, hey, man, I never said I had good taste. It was pretty fun. Do you have any hints of what Jack's is going to be? Well, I know it's Pulp Fiction because he had me say it, like, two years ago, and we kept slipping through the crack. So he's going to come on next week for Pulp Fiction. Very nice. All right, so let's get back to I mean, we talked about how the DD, as we're going to call it, moves around without the pacemaker cells, but that original, true slime mold, the big single cell one that's just made up of all the goofy cytoplasm. We didn't really talk about what they do because if you don't have cell walls, you're like, well, how's this stuff moving around? It's actually made up of what's called oscillating units. And so these units oscillate at different frequencies depending on what's going on, like where they are and then what their little neighbor oscillating units are doing. And so when they go close to food, they start oscillating and shaking like, hey, I'm near some food. And then that just sort of gets that flow. Everyone else starts oscillating in a similar manner, and that gets that flow of cytoplasm going in that food direction. Yeah. And so the slime mold effectively moves to the food because of that oscillating unit that looks, again, like a fan spreading out, going to find food and then finding it. The slime mold moves toward it. Or like you said, away from something that they don't like. Yeah. Yes. Which is pretty neat. Those are the two things. It's moving toward food and moving away from something. And one of the things that they found is that slime mold can actually learn and not only learn to stay away from something, it can actually teach other slime mold to stay away from it. Even slime mold that's never been introduced to it, or alternately, it can teach this is really the sock garter fact. It can teach other slime mold that something that seems harmful is actually harmless. This is a pretty cool experiment. Yeah. So these researchers put slime molds, they built a little tiny bridge. It was very cute. And they coated this bridge in a noxious substance. It wasn't harmful to them. It was harmless. It was like salt or something, let's say. And then they put those little oat flakes on the other side as their ultimate temptation. And so these first slime molds start creeping up to it and sort of dipping their little toe in the water and saying, this stuff is pretty noxious. But then they learned right, like, okay, so it's not actually harmful. I can go across this stuff. And what they found was that it learned to cross this little bridge just as fast as slime molds that were placed on bridges that didn't have any coating going on. Right. So it said, okay, this stuff is fine. His gross is way too salty, but it's not going to hurt me, so I'm going to get to food just as fast. Right. That's pretty amazing in and of itself, but your square gets crazy. Yes. Right. We need like a banner mat or Noel to come in and say that. Yes, totally. So they take the slime mold and break it apart and fuse it together with other slime molds that have never been exposed to this noxious stuff before. They're called naive, and the other ones are called habituated. And those naive ones, when they encounter this noxious stuff, like a salt bridge, for the first time, they don't approach it with trepidation. They go right across it as fast as the habituated ones that it's fused to. This is really weird because this is the first time the stuff is encountering it. And they think that somehow the habituated slime molds are passing on the information like, no, we know it's gross, but it's actually fine to the naive slime molds. And they figured out, Chuck, that it doesn't matter if you take three habituated slime molds infuse them with one naive slime mold, or take three naive slime molds and just one habituated slime mold, it's going to approach us and move across it just as fast as in either situation. Yeah. And then they also sort of figured out how long this took. So the naive slime molds, they separated after an hour of fusion with those habituated I'm going to call them in the no molds. Okay. And it forgot. It forgot that the coding was harmless, and it sort of had to approach it with a little more trepidation. But if they had been fused for 3 hours or more and then separated, it remembered technically, can't remember. But they do have this weird sort of memory that works. And I think they even figured out some of this snail trail stuff that they leave behind access sort of like a spatial memory because they come across this snail trail and say, oh, someone's already been here before me. Right? So there's no reason to go research this area because there clearly wasn't food there. And again, here's your ten minute reminder that slime mold don't have brains or neurons. So all of this is just astounding stuff that we're still trying to get to the bottom of, like that habituation thing. They're like, we don't know, we have no idea. But we're going to go find out, and maybe in ten years we'll be able to explain it, right? So eventually the people that are hip to the slime mold thing are like they're trying to spread the word and be like, this stuff is really amazing. They're doing Ted Talks on it. It was a really good Ted Talk on it, in fact. And some coders said, hey, wait a minute, they're doing all this amazing stuff like the overlay of the Tokyo subway, and it's lining up perfectly. What if we actually generated code of the slime mold and kind of reverse engineered it and we could see what that looked like and how we could use it? So. Yeah. This one artist named Sage Jensen basically figured out I don't know exactly who figured out exactly what the slime molds algorithms were. But somebody wrote them down and Sage Jensen came along and turned them into C plus plus code and basically ran these things it's like algorithms. And found that these fractals started forming that look essentially just like slime mold moving across a petri dish in search of food. Which is pretty cool in and of itself. It was an art project, basically. But someone on a team of astrophysicists heard about Sage Jensen's work, and they used it when they were stumped trying to figure out how to map the invisible matter that makes up basically the structure of our universe. If we can just crack that nut, we'll understand the universe exponentially better than we do now, but we cannot figure out how to do it. And so, just like with the ancient roads between the Roman cities or the Tokyo subway map, someone figured out to use slime mold to basically try to create the structure of the universe. This invisible these invisible filaments. Yeah, these filaments that came out of the Big Bang. So I guess they went back to Sage Jensen and said, first of all, Sage, you C code. Isn't it really just B minus code, if we're being honest? And he said, that's not how it works. Get out of my mind. Great coding joke. Thank you. It's my only coding joke. I just made it the only coding joke, I think. No, I think it's not a bug, it's a feature. Oh, that's true. True. Dad old timing. So, yeah, they went to Sage and they said, you're an artist, but this is pretty amazing. I think we can apply it here. And they modified it. And what they did was and of course, there's always Oats involved. They put a model in place with virtual slime mold cells, and they put it on a map with 37,000 real galaxies. And they used, I guess, virtual piles of food to represent the galaxies. And the bigger the galaxy, the bigger the pile of food. And so they did this modeling through the coating and had the virtual slime mold seek out the most efficient way to reach this. And I guess in theory, they're hoping that they get a sort of map of the universe out of it. Yeah. So when the slime mold was finished, they all stood back around. That's amazing. How accurate is it? And they all just realized that they had no idea how to verify. But no, surely I think what they're doing is they're taking this as an initial guide, and then they'll go back and try to figure out how to verify it. And maybe the slime mold did figure out the most efficient way to link together these galaxies, but that would be I can't even put a word on that. Of how impressive that would be if the slime mold recreated how the universe is invisibly linked together the structure of it. What if slime mold is God? What if we're asleep right now and this is all just one dream? Chuck the other cool thing they figured out with the slime mold moving around is when they were researching them, they found that those mazes that they were running them through, they went even faster through the maze when they had some sort of noise, like a bright light or something. Like we said, they like to go away from things they don't like. And that negative input of that light basically made them say, all right, let's pick up the pace and make these decisions quicker and get to that food. Stop fussing around. I don't like this light staring at me. I think we kind of blew some minds today. I think so. My mind's definitely been blown. Did you want to cover the Amazon thing? No. Okay, good. That's it for slime old unless you got anything else right now. Do you? I got nothing else. We'll have to revisit this in ten years. And thanks to Dave Rose for helping us with this one. And since I said Dave ruse, I think Chuck, it means it's time for listener mail. Hey, guys. I'm going to call this Night Trap response. I just laugh every time I hear those words together. Now I know. Night trap. This is from Erin. Hey, guys. Just finished the night Trap video game show. Thanks for bringing it to everyone. I own the 25th anniversary edition. Like you said, it's not a good game, but has its moments. One other game worth noting is called Double switch. It's of the same style and video camera control quality, and it starred Corey Haim, perhaps arguably a little better game, but still had the same thing going on. Really. I'm sure your research finds lots of things that don't quite make it to the final show. Aaron, we did not know about Double switch, so nice work there. Yeah. And Aaron says, I've listened to so many shows, I feel that Chuck and I are some sort of long lost brother separated at birth. I generally agree with just about everything he says, and I'm always fully entertained. It would be nice to meet you guys if you ever get another tour started and make it back to Michigan, keep up the good work. I finish your book. And I have the pre order poster in my office. Very. And I've converted friends and family, so that is from Aaron in Michigan. And we're definitely going to start touring again. I would say probably next year. Although we haven't really talked much about it. No, but we need to. It's definitely starting to get to be time to get talking, I guess. Although I got to admit, I have not missed the traveling. I've missed being on stage, but not the traveling part. Well, that's what they say. That's what rock stars say. It's not the heat, it's the humidity. Now they say that you get paid to travel. You don't get paid to play shows. I've never heard that before. But it really makes sense. Yeah. If you can figure out how to get paid for both, then you're really doing something right. Good stuff. Yeah. And if we get back to Michigan, we've already done Detroit. We've had a lot of calls over the year for Ann Arbor, so maybe that's where we go. Yeah. Well, who was that again? Aaron. That's what I was going to guess. Thanks a lot, Erin. That was great. Emails. Thanks for the Corey Hame reference and all that stuff. And if you want to get in touch with us, like Aaron did, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of IHS Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How Black Holes Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-black-holes-work | It wasn't too long ago when black holes were strictly predictions in theoretical math. Over decades, astronomy has gotten better at uncovering these cosmic phenomena. Learn about how black holes form and their ability to spaghettify you in this episode. | It wasn't too long ago when black holes were strictly predictions in theoretical math. Over decades, astronomy has gotten better at uncovering these cosmic phenomena. Learn about how black holes form and their ability to spaghettify you in this episode. | Tue, 16 Oct 2012 16:49:36 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=16, tm_min=49, tm_sec=36, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=290, tm_isdst=0) | 28982197 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. You put the two of us together in front of a couple of microphones and an alarmingly red room. You have stuff you should know. The podcast. That's right, the podcast. The one and only. Yes. Not Catholic. Stuff You Should Know. Is it still around? I don't know. You need to do penance for that. There's a guy on YouTube, too, that has a little video series called Stuff You Should Know. That's copyright infringement. I know. I think he's being dealt with, actually. Right. I hear you. Yeah, that's what happens. And it's not about stuff you should know. I don't know why you call it that. It's weird. What's it about? Just go watch it. Everybody out there. Go watch it. Right. Yeah. We're just going to boost them to fame. Exactly. Chuck? Yes. Have you ever seen a black hole? No. No, you haven't. And you know why? Because no one has. They're invisible. As a matter of fact, we can't even say 100% that they are real if you're an empiricist, and empiricism if you forgot. Your philosophy 101? I have. Is the idea that nothing exists unless you can detect it with your senses. Okay. One or all of the five senses. Do you know who champion that? I'm just asking. Let's say bacon. Okay, I thought you were going to say Descartes, but I don't think so. Okay. No, Descartes was more into himself. Yes. He talked a lot about the eye. Yeah. I'm going to say sir Francis Bacon. All right. Okay, great. I'm probably totally wrong, but I love bacon. Empirically speaking, black holes don't exist because we can't detect them, we can't hear them. Although I have heard that they do make a sound. Yeah. And Morgan Freeman said that we can probably hear them before we can see them. Okay. The reason we can't see them. So let's just say if you are hard of hearing and you can't taste yeah. And you can't touch, you have no sensation. It's just your eyes that you rely on. Yes. Black holes will probably never exist to you. Got you. That's my answer. That's good. Thank you. This one melted my brain a little. I have to admit, I was expecting a brain melt, but I thought Freud and Rich. We've never figured out how to pronounce his name. Let's go with Rich. The only writer at how stuff works with a PhD. That's where they toss him ones. Like how black holes work. I thought he did a decent job. I think it's high time we get our honorary PhD. Where would you want yours from? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe Georgia. Okay. Why not? I take a doctorate from Georgia. I didn't have to lift a finger for sure. Okay, well, we just put the call out. My dad got a doctor from Georgia. Yeah. But he got a real one. Yeah, sure. He had to write the whole thesis and all that stuff. Do you ever call him doctor? No, but that's what he, you know, he went by the whole time. Dr. Bryant, if you got an itinerary doctor, you could do that whole spies like us thing with your dad. Doctor. Doctor. Yeah. We're really stalling on this one. I know. We don't want to talk about black holes. All right. I'm going to kick it all off. All right. So black holes, we don't know that they exist for certain, although, yes, we do. You can't see them, I guess, is ultimately what I'm saying. But there was a real lag in between the time that they were predicted to exist before we started figuring out how to detect them. And we detect them indirectly. Sure. But a lot of people say Einstein was the first one to predict black holes. Not true. Yeah. This blew me away. Oh, yeah. This dude. Yeah. 1795. Pretty smart. Think about it. What's his name? Pierre Simon LaPlace. And he used Newton's theory of gravity, and he said he calculated, you know, if there's an object compressed small enough right. The escape velocity of that object would be faster than the speed of light. And he was, like, right on the money. Yeah. Which means that nothing can escape this, including light, because if light can't escape, it's the fastest thing around. That's right. Then nothing can. I guess we should just say simply straight up, first of all, I still haven't even said what it is. Yeah, we should probably do it is what remains after a former star collapses upon itself. Right after Gordon Webb collapses upon himself, either by supernova, which is a little more explosive I understand it's dramatic, or I just learned this term, an unknova. Have you heard of that? No, I haven't. I think that's newer on the scene, and that is a little more anticlimactic, and that's when a star will just sort of disappear. It's not a big explosion. It just kind of shrinks and collapses. It's like the Greta Garbo of black hole. Exactly. Yeah. Or an unknowable. I've not heard of that one. I watched through the wormhole today, and there was a guy just going on and on about the unknowables. Yes. He's like, Seriously? They're so understated. It's awesome. Okay, so let's just give a quick primer of what a star is. A star is essentially a big fusion reactor, right? So there's nuclear explosion after nuclear explosion. It's constant, and they're massive, and they want to blow the star, which is a ball of gas, outward, but you have another force called gravity, which is trying to draw the star inward toward its center. So you have this interplay, this push and pull between nuclear explosion and gravity, and that defines the star, the equilibrium between the two. Yeah. And as I understand it, as they have these reactions, they're actually burning up these gases in like a specific order even until eventually there is none left. Is that right? Right. Yeah. Gravity is always going to win out because the star is going to spend its fuel. Right. Okay. So when the star spends its fuel, gravity is like, ha ha, I got the better of you, and I'm going to start pulling in like I've always wanted to and it compresses everything. And then in the case of a supernova, the supernova happened, that explosion. Right. Yeah. Send stuff all out all over the place, and then what's left is a core, but it's a super compressed core, which is fairly small, the most dense thing you can imagine. Right. So our Earth has a gravitational field. It's a pretty massive body, comparatively speaking, it's a speck. But to you and me, it's pretty big. Yeah, sure. And it's big enough that the gravitational field prevents it from being sucked inward. Right. But if the Earth were smaller, the gravitational field will get stronger and stronger because the more dense something is and the smaller it's radiuses, I believe is how they put it, astrophysically speaking, the stronger the force of gravity acting on that. So the gravitational field around that small object, like the core of a dead star, is incredibly strong, right? Yes. So you got that core and this gravitational field acting on it, and gravity just keeps pressing and pressing and pressing until the thing actually sinks into the fabric of time and space. And my friend, you have a black hole now. You have a hole in the fabric of time and space. Yeah. You can't see into it. You can't send anything into it to report back. Oh, yeah, that's the caveat. You can send whatever you want into. It ain't coming back. It ain't coming back. It will swallow anything that crosses the event horizon with mouth. Yeah. It's like the rim, right? Sure. Okay. But it doesn't just like this thing I read and we need to give a shout out to Hobblesite Hubblesite.org is a lot of good info. They have this great interactive thing on black holes. It's just really extensive when you fly through space. Yeah, it's very cool. It's pretty cool. What's important to point out, because I thought it was just like this vacuum that just sucked everything inside of it and killed it. Yeah. It ejects stuff, even. Well, it ejects stuff, but it also doesn't suck anything in to itself any more so than anything else in space with similar mass. Yeah. Cleaner, right? Yeah, exactly. If we weren't going so fast around the sun, we could potentially be pulled into the sun, but because we're going around at 67,000 prevents it from happening. Right, okay. And theoretically, if you could go super fast in an orbit around a black hole, you wouldn't get sucked in either, but you'd have to be in a perfect orbit. Okay. If you're off at all, then bye bye. Okay, so you mentioned the event horizon, right? Yeah. That core, that supercompressed core is called the singularity. Yeah, we don't know a lot about that. And black hole has a lot of really cool quirky aspects to it. Number one quirky, one thing I learned about this I didn't realize is that black holes move around space. Yeah. So, like, you have a hole in space, the fabric of space and time, because time and space are totally intertwined. They can't be separated that's moving around. Right. And there could be lots of them. Right. So, yes, depending on the kind, there's probably tens of millions of one called stellar black holes, which are about anywhere between ten to 24 times the mass of our sun. And then there's supermassive black holes, which are tens of millions to billions of times more massive than our sun, and they think that there may be one of those at the center of every galaxy. Yeah. And at the very least, at the center of the Milky way. Right. So the other quirky part this is my favorite thing about black holes is gravity. If it's strong enough, it has the capability of bending space. It pulls on space. Yeah. Space time. Yes. Because space and time are intertwined, that means it also pulls on time. So if you get close to a black hole and I think we talked about this a little bit in the time travel episode, as you get closer to the event horizon, the dragon time will actually slow time for you relative to, say, people back here on Earth. Right. Because at the event horizon, the reason they call it an event horizon is an event is a point in space time. And as you get closer to the event horizons, time slows until you hit the event horizon and time stands still. You're going faster than the speed of light, and once you pass that, there's time to stop. That's a pretty quirky characteristic. Quirky. Great word for it. Yeah. The event horizon has a radius called the Schwarzfield swatch child radius. Sorry about that. And it's named for Carl Schwartz child, and he was one of the early leading theorists on black holes. And I think the radius, I believe where do I have that note? If the Earth were to become a black hole, I think the radius is the size of a marble. That's what you'd have to shrink the earth down, too. That's awesome. Yeah. Pretty cool and very small. It's mind blowing. It is mind blowing. And I think the supermassive black holes like the supernovas have, only I think they happen, like, once or twice per century. We haven't observed one of these because it's too far away and it's too intermittent, but I think they're on the lookout, and the next time there is one, hopefully it's within the range that we can see or hear. And the dude through the wormhole is like, we wouldn't sleep for weeks if that happened, like, we'd be running so many tests. Got you. Trying to measure and see how big it was and how far away it is. So it's a bit of a quandary. Do you think it will happen anytime soon? I don't know when the last one was. So you just mentioned a super massive black hole, and they think that there's one at the center of every galaxy. Right? Yeah. But there's kind of a mystery if black holes aren't mysterious enough. There's a mystery to, like, why there's such a huge difference in the two sizes. The stellar black hole, which is, like, ten to 24 times our sun. Right. Which, by the way, our son, will never become a black hole on its own. It's too small. That guy Simon pierre LaPlace, or Pierre simon LaPlace, he calculated that it has to be three times the mass of our sun. So our sun is like a third of the mass need. Right. Got you. So it will never become a black hole, but it could become a black hole if it becomes a neutron star or even as a star. If it collides with another star, it can form a black hole. It can be sucked up by a black hole to make an even bigger black hole. And they think perhaps, or I suspect this is the way that they're headed, they think that a supermassive black hole is just a bunch of black holes pushed together. Yeah, because I did read it. If they collide, they potentially would just, like, join forces. Yeah. And they think also that stars can collide and create bigger stars and bigger stars. And bigger stars. Right. And then when those die, they could, on their own form of supermassive black hole. But if it's at the center of a galaxy, probably what's going on is, like, if you have a sheet and you put a baseball in the middle remember we were talking about wormholes? It kind of bends the sheet. So if you drop a marble on the sheet, it's going to go toward the center. Right. So what I think is going on is that there are super massive black holes at the center of a galaxy, and just eventually, everything is moving toward that to form a huge black hole. Really? That's what I think is happening. Wow. So we're all doomed. Yeah. But not in our lifetime. Okay. Yeah. Well, who cares about our children and their children? Yeah. I can't even conceive of how far down that is. Should we talk about a couple of two different types? The Schwarz child non rotating type in the Kerr or Kerr Newman rotating type? It's pretty simple. If the star was rotating before it collapsed upon itself, it will continue to rotate afterward right. For, I guess, as long as it's around. Is that right? Yeah, it's the angular conservation of angular momentum. Yeah. Where, like, if something's spinning, why would it stop? I think it's how it's put like an ice skater pretty much in the curve. Black hole is a little more complex. It has the singularity, which we've talked about, the event horizon, which we talked about, but you don't want to go near. No. Did you see that movie? I love that movie. It's one of my favorite horror movies. I need to go back and rewatch it. You should, because I remember liking it to a point and then not thinking it was so great. No, you're thinking of sunshine. Yeah. Okay. Never has a movie. Spectacularly falling apart. Event horizon with Samuel, right? Yeah. Okay. It's a class act. He is, isn't he? Yeah. And then there's the argosphere. And that is the egg shaped region. Basically, that's the spinning part because it's dragging space around it. Right. So it's going to have the shape and then the static limit is the boundary between the ergosphere and what they call normal space. Right. So there is something in here that and I couldn't find this time, but before I found that a car ring. Right. The rotating black hole doesn't have a singularity because the centrifugal force combat gravity enough so that the core can't be compressed enough to form a singularity. Really? Which is the whole reason why they think that could potentially be used as a wormhole to travel through time. The bridge, perhaps. Right. Because with the singularity, you have spaghettification, which is a real word, right. Where as you get closer and closer to it, gravity just pulls you on an atomic and cellular level and stretches you into this dead string version of yourself linguini. Right. But the centrifugal force prevents gravity from becoming that powerful around a carrying, which supposedly you should be able to go through it. Okay. Is that your theory? No, I've seen it elsewhere. I'm just saying I don't know that a carrying or care black hole has a singularity to dispute that. Okay. I got you. And I think that the sports child black hole does not have the Ergosphere of the static limit. Is that right? Yeah. I don't think so. Just the singularity in the event horizon. Yes. The Sports child one is the one that you think of when you think of a black hole. Is it? It's just like a black hole. It's got a singularity. It's got the event horizon. Light can escape carrying. Light can escape and things can become ejected. And if you get up enough speed, you could pass by it as long as you don't cross the event horizon. Man, there are so many rules. I know. And plus, it's all theoretical, too, right? Or not all theoretical, but a lot of it is. Because if you could only see we don't even know that black holes exist. But we do, but we can detect them in a few different ways. Is that right? Yeah, three ways. Mass estimates. So basically, you can't necessarily measure a black hole, but you can study the things swirling around it and get some idea from that about how big it is. Yeah. It's Kepler's third law of planetary motion, appropriately. And it says that the time of orbit squared equals the average orbital radius cubed, which somehow translates to mass. But basically, if you watch something spinning, first of all you have to say, why is that thing orbiting something that we can't see? Is it wobbling? Right. If it's wobbling, and if you trace its orbit and take that to the second power square, it if that equals the mass of three times or more of the sun, then you probably have a black hole. You've probably detected a black hole that's in the vicinity of that thing that you're tracking. So basically, this thing is acting like it's near a black hole, and there's no other reason we can pinpoint. So it must be a black hole. Yes. All right. Well, that's simple enough. Yeah. Gravity lens. Einstein predicted that you could be in space. It's a pretty smart dude. And he actually confirmed this? Actually, did he confirm it? No, he basically later on, right. Theory of general relativity and special relative. He just made a bunch of predictions that you guys go out and figure it out. And everybody did, if I'm proven right. So it was confirmed during a solar eclipse, star's position was measured before, during, and afterward, and the position shifted because light was bent by sun's gravity. Yeah. Pretty amazing. It was like, here I am. Another effect that a black hole can have, as far as lights concerned is it can concentrate light by bending it by that gravitational lens. So a star can become brighter all of a sudden. Right. And when you can't see what's doing that, you must assume that a black hole passed in between your line of sight and star. Sort of like an eclipse. Right. All right. And then emitted radiation. This one makes a lot of sense because it emits X rays because of the heat generated when something falls into the star. And you can actually measure and detect these X rays. Right. And that's just X rays. Camera rays, too, apparently. Really? Yeah. But this stuff, it's called accretion, where if something is swirling around a black hole and it goes in or it's sucked into the swirl around a black hole right toward the event horizon through gravity, that's called accretion. And what I don't understand, I didn't think black holes spit anything out. Like, I thought they were the cosmic vacuum cleaner, too. Right. But it turns out they can spit out matter, and when they do, they form these things called jets. So if you see a solar system or a galaxy and there's a lot of matter flying out in these concentrated forms called jets, there's probably a black hole there. All right, well, I went to the Hubble site and picked out a few questions about black holes. Okay. That, I think help clear up a few things that we did for me. Do black holes live forever? I'm going to say yes. No, we used to think that, actually. So you were thinking with your 1973 brain. Stephen Hawking came along in 1974 and showed that they actually evaporate over time, really slowly, and just sort of emit their energy back into the Universe, which is kind of sweet, I guess. Yeah. But I don't understand how, like, the core burns out or the core breaks up. I don't know. He just said they slowly evaporate. Okay. And who am I to argue with? Right. Exactly. How large are they? The size of event horizon is proportional to the mass of the black hole. And so they found them with event horizons from 6 miles to the size of our entire solar system. So big differences in size, like you were talking about. Yeah, I can't remember the name of the galaxy, but there's a galaxy that's, like, the size of our solar system at the center, but it has a massive, like, 1.2 billion times the size of our sun. So they're like, okay, there's probably a black hole there. This is when my brain starts melting. It's like, I can't even conceive of this stuff. I know we're talking about the layman's interpretation of this stuff. We're not even throwing numbers out there. Yeah, I don't feel too bad, because the more I researched it, the more I saw a lot of really smart people saying, like, this is mind blowing stuff. Okay, so I'm not that big of a dummy. What types are there? I think we already said supermassive or stellar mass. Yeah. Can you safely orbit a black hole? You can? Like I said, I was going to say no if you get in the exact right circular orbit, but it's very unlikely that that would happen. But once you cross the event horizon, that's it. You're toast that. Okay. And then what is inside a black hole? Because we cannot glimpse inside of it. We don't know for sure. But they think that the singularity is, like they think everything is piled up in the center, like, just stacked up. Like, whatever it's sucking in is stacked up at the center. But to understand it fully, they're having to marry basically two different parts of science, which is quantum mechanics and gravity. And they've even named it quantum gravity, and they don't know how that stuff works, but they did name it. Well, at least that's a step. Yeah. And the Hubble site said it's one of, if not the most important, unsolved problems in physics. Still. Yeah, because there's, like, a hole in this fabric of space time. And Morgan Freeman thinks in the black hole could be the answers to everything. I wonder. Yeah, me too. I've also wondered if, say, the singularity is really just forming a tunnel, does it break through? Can you break through space time? Or is it really just like a well? Because a well doesn't go all the way through the Earth. Morgan Freeman talked about it. Well, that's funny. Well, I mean, but that's, I think, what it is, because something has to hold the singularity in place, right? It's got to be butted up against something. So I wonder if it's just pressed down to a degree that gravity can't push it any further, or is it something that's just, like, punched through and we assume that the core is still there, but it's long gone in China? Good question. They'll answer it in 150 years. I just read our friend Joey, and he recommended these books to us. Time travel books. I read one of them over the weekend. The man who folded himself. Highly recommend it. Yeah. Very trippy written in one of those. Is it fiction or nonfiction? It's nonfiction. It's about a guy who gets a time belt from his uncle. That's nonfiction. What did I say it was nonfiction? No, it's fiction. Okay. Who is this man? No, it's very much fiction, science fiction. And he gets a time belt from his uncle that basically the author ends up subscribing to the mini worlds theory, because every time this guy time travels, he creates a different version of himself in a different world, but they meet up. So he ends up having a relationship with himself. Really? And then he ends up having a relationship with many of himself. Like, has a relationship or makes relations. He has sex with himself. Wow. And then he has an orgy with himself. Wow. That is so it is due when you're reading it, you get to see this guy, like he's from California. It's like a kinky Friedman book. And then he eventually there are female versions of himself created in these different realities, and he has a relationship and gets his female self pregnant and has a little boy who ends up becoming who he was, and he delivers the time belt to him at the end. That's fantastic. I guess it just ruined it. Yeah, that's pretty much the book. Yeah. It's well worth reading, though. I mean, it'll melt your brain. Every wife's over almost no fiction these days anyway, so thank you for that. It's good. You're like a walking Cliffs Notes. And it's short, so, like, you could read it. I read it over the weekend when I was at the cabin, so it was nice. And The Hunger Games. Did you read that? Really? Yeah, I read it in a day. How was it, those books like that? It's like a popcorn movie. It wasn't bad. It really moved along. And then I saw the movie, and the movie stunk. Does it have three page chapters? Is it, like, one of those books? No. Okay. It was fine. Nobody was. Definitely not my art or anything. I don't know anything about it. It's the Most Dangerous Game. Oh, that's a good one. I think there's an RC plane outside. It sounds like it. There's a couple of them. I think there's an RC dog fight going on. A drone insider office. So if you want to learn more about black holes, there's a really cool article on the site called how black holes work. It's a pretty good approach. Initial approach to black holes. Pretty understandable. You think you'll like it? Plus there's some neat pictures. Type black holes in the search bar housedeforce.com. I said search bar. Shut it down and read the listener mail. This is from Mark in New Jersey. 15 year old who is smarter than me. Hey, guys, I'm 15. I'm a big fan of the show, find it very interesting and funny, and I listen to it whenever I have a long car ride. A boring, mindless task to accomplish. I was just recently listening to the Reagan Star Wars program. The cold war and global thermonuclear war are perhaps my favorite topics. How about a nice game of chess? Chuck should read that part in a robot voice. And you did. I was listening to the part about shooting off nukes willynilly in space. You were wondering if they had a negative effect and said some really smart guy would email with the answer. Then I remembered something I saw on Discovery Channel. I don't remember all the details, but I believe Michio Kaku said nukes don't work in space because of the way they transfer energy adam to Adam. Space is a vacuum. So there was a lack of atoms to transfer energy through. This is how he remembers it, at least. Okay. I hope I was the really smart guy who helped answer your question. Technically, Mitchell Cocker was the one really smart guy. But Mark, with a C from New Jersey, he was smart enough to relay that information to us. And we talked about this. We followed it up kind of inadvertently with the testing nuclear weapons without fallout. That's true. And it seemed like they were like the nukes worked, right? I guess. Worked enough to test. I mean, they made some crazy fireworks displaying the sky, but who am I to disagree with Michio Kakuz? Exactly. Thanks a lot, Mark. We appreciate you being so smart and taking the time to write in. If you think you're smart, we want to hear from you. Tell us about black holes or whatever you want. Show off your smarts to us. You can tweet to us at xysk podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffyshtnow, and you can email us at stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer school's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where True crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or if you're brave enough, Late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime. Plus, with Amazon Music you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2016-11-24-sysk-advertising-to-kids-final.mp3 | Should Advertising to Kids Be Banned? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/should-advertising-to-kids-be-banned | As kids’ buying power in America has exploded in recent decades, so too has the amount companies spend advertising to them. But because of a quirk of brain development, kids aren’t equipped to understand ads are manipulating them. Should they be banned? | As kids’ buying power in America has exploded in recent decades, so too has the amount companies spend advertising to them. But because of a quirk of brain development, kids aren’t equipped to understand ads are manipulating them. Should they be banned? | Thu, 24 Nov 2016 08:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=8, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=329, tm_isdst=0) | 63055501 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, friends. 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And we're going to have flowers in our hair, san Francisco, because we are performing at SF Sketchfest for the second year running. We can't wait. We are doing a rare afternoon show on Sunday, January 15 at 01:00 P.m.. Go to Sfcatchfest.com to inquire about tickets and get them fast because they're going to sell out because you guys are always so good to us, and we can't wait to see everybody there. Sfscatchfestcom. Sunday afternoon, 01:00 PM. January 15 Bye. Bye. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there. It's nice and cool in here in the studios. Selection Day. It is, yeah. Don't tell us what happens if you're listening to this after Tuesday. Right. Spoiler free zone. Right. How are you feeling? Nervous? Tense? Bundle? Puke? None of the above. Well, good man. You look like you're yelling like a felony. It doesn't matter. Do you remember being a child? Sure. Do you remember about two weeks ago when we released our action figure episode? I do. Well, we talked a lot about being a child and about toys, and we even touched on advertising and deregulation, which we will get into again a little bit here. But if you were a child and you watch television, basically at any point from the 1940s on, you were probably advertised to in some form or fashion. Sure. But early on, it was kind of clunky. Right. Like the first day I think the first day I'd ever on TV was a bull of a watch ad, and it just showed a bull of a watch ticking off 60 seconds. Hey, what more do you need? Apparently nothing. Right. And then they thought, well, hey, people love to tune in to watch the hosts, so we'll have the host just pitch Colt brand firearms or whatever. I thought you can say malt liquor. No, that came later. Okay. First of the firearms. Got you. They're well together, actually. One makes the other go off. So they would have, like, hosts read this stuff. So when kids programming came into the fold, that followed that kind of natural progression where, like, an ad was just the host suddenly saying, like, hey, kids, by the way, you will love these firecrackers that have my picture on it. Right? Who is that kind of hokey? Okay, there was actually, I found this one really great article on advertising to children, and it talks about this 1950s show called Ms. Francis Ding Dong School. And Ms. Francis, she would read to the kids, talk to them like they were kids, but just basically, it was a cute little kid show from what I can gather. Sure. Then every once in a while, she would say, kids, it's time for a very special message. Go get your parents and bring them in to hear this special message. And the kids would run and get their parents and bring them in to see the TV, and Miss Francis would fool everybody by pitching an ad, basically. So these are, like, the early ads, right? Sure. It wasn't until, I think, 1952, that the actual first ad for a kid's product, a toy by the name of Mr. Potato head first. Hit the airwaves. That's right. Me, too. Wasn't that long ago, but things have really changed since then, and one of the big reasons why it's changed is because companies and corporations and toy makers and fast food chains and candy's. Yeah, sure. Is that a word? Sure, it is. Now, word descriptivist. Coffee makers, they all know that kids, there's a lot of money not only in what kids want to buy for themselves, but the influence kids have on their family and what they do. It's blockbuster. And not only that, but we're going to talk about this a little bit later, but indoctrinating these kids at a very young age as brand loyalists. Yeah. Because get them while they're young. Yeah. And if you do that, you're kind of like planting seeds that will hopefully grow into something where you're like, well, colgate toothpaste. Love me. Yeah. I remember that from being a kid. So when I don't want my mouth. Right, exactly. I remember the cartoons. I want to be loved by Mother Colgate. Yeah. So that's what you buy as an adult. We put holes in teeth. Remember that? Vaguely. It might have been a little before your time. I don't remember the toothpaste. It may have been Colgate. No, I think it was the Crest Team, but it was just a full on superhero team of cavity fighters. I remember them wedged into cartoon programming. Yes, I remember that. Well. We'll talk about it, but I couldn't tell the difference between that and the cartoon I was watching. I remember being at school and being taught how to brush my teeth with those same guys. Yeah. The crest. Cavity fighters or something like that. Yeah. And of course, we're talking about fighting cavities. And as you'll see in some of this material, sometimes these brands try and push things for good, but they're still pushing their brand. Yeah, that's the thing, man. It's so easy to just be like, oh, wow, colgate really does love my children. Or Chris really does care about my kids teeth. No, they don't. They do not. They don't love you or your family. They don't actually care about your kids teeth. They care about creating this kind of relationship between the brand and your family. They care that your kids have teeth there you go. Because they could sell toothpaste. It's true. So when we talk about influence, you found a study from about eight years ago. Yeah, this is the most recent stuff I could find. Some of it seems a little oldish, but this is as new as I can find, man. I'm sorry, Chuck. That's all right. So the influence, basically, is what we're talking about, of kids over their family, these little power wielding monsters. Three foot tall power wielding monsters. Yeah, man, you're in for it. Apparently, 97% of the time, they will influence the breakfast choice. 95%? The lunch choice? Sure. Going out to eat. 98% of the time, you're going to go where your kid wants to go, and then 34% of kids have a say every time. Okay. All right. I think the 98% was just casual family meal. What's the difference between that and the choice of restaurant? So, like, I want to eat hamburgers, or specifically, I want to eat in and out burger. No, I think the 34% of kids, every time the family goes out to eat, the kid has a say, and 34% of families okay. Whereas overall, 98% of restaurant choices have a kid saying it okay. That doesn't mean every kid gets to say every time. It's a bit confusing, maybe even unnecessary, one could argue. I think we could just agree that kids have an undue amount of power. Sure. What else? Software. 76% of the time, they're going to influence what kind of software you're buying in the family. And 60% of the time, what kind of computer. Sure. Family outings? 94% family trips and excursions. That's a depressing state. I didn't have any choice of where we went as a child. Yeah, no, I was told where we were going on vacation. I was never asked. I don't remember being asked either. My parents mostly planned family trips that we would enjoy. Sure. But I remember them being like, do you want to go here? Here? This is where we go. Yeah. I mean, it was always camping for us, and a lot of times in Florida or mostly in Florida. Yes. You grew up in Georgia. A lot of beach camping. Sure. But yeah, we certainly never got any say. Like, I want to go to Disney World. Right. They'd be like, that's great. Why don't you wish in one hand yeah, exactly. So you take that influence that kids have over their parents purchases, and you combine it with their actual allowance or lawn mowing money or whatever, the money that they actually spend from their own pockets. And what you have is called kids buying power. And it is staggering. Right. Back in 2000, kids buying Power equal to about $500 billion a year. Chump change in the United States. Yeah, it just got more and more, higher and higher. 2005, it had gone up to $700 billion. Right. Some change. You want to hit him with the 2012 stat. And this is almost five years ago now. $1.2 trillion. That's how much money kids directly or indirectly spent in the United States. It's amazing. It is. So there's one more factor, too, that makes advertisers really want kids. They will eventually grow into adult consumers. They're already kids consumers. They're already influencing their parents buying choices, but they'll eventually grow up. And like you said, if you can hit them young and get that brand loyalty developed, then they will grow up and remember that affiliation to it, that nostalgia, and you will buy that product throughout your lifetime. I think I use grass toothpaste. Sure. I still go to Colgate. Do you? Yeah. That's what I was raised on. So I looked up something that's called pester power. Have you ever heard of that? Well, it's exactly what it sounds like. It's how kids manipulate their parents into getting them things, and it's by bothering them. Right? And they did some the UGOV Omnibus Parent survey got some stats, and 57% of parents think their children are successful persuaders. And the top tactic for a kid, according to 71% of parents, is verbal negotiation. 50% said they were bartered. Like I'll do more chores. I'll get better grades if you get me this stuff. Whereas it should be like, no, you should get better grades anyway. Not really going to buy you this garbage. 45% create wish lists. That was a big one. We were kids. That was one of the funniest things to do. Wish book. Yeah, man, all those kids always look so happy in there, too. I've showed you that, like, wish book web before where they just go through and scan old catalog. Talk about nostalgia. John Hodgman won't even look at that. And I would see a slight smile. A tier goes down his cheek, and a drop of blood goes out of his ear. Right? And then that tear turns to acid and then burns through the floor. No, I won't give in. Parents say some kids list pros and cons or write letters or PowerPoint presentations. Nice. 14% of kids write PowerPoint presentations. That's the lobby for a gift. I'd be like, Good for you, buddy. You're learning some future skills. You're going to be a salesman, a rogue warrior. And apparently, 42% of parents said that they buckled and bought the item at an average purchase cost of $233. Whoa. Talk about Pester Power. I would make a PowerPoint presentation for $230 item. Yeah, but first you have to lobby for the PowerPoint software. You can make your presentation to get your garbage toy. That reminds me, Yuumi told me when she was a kid, she made basically this menu of stuff that her parents would pay her money for. It'd be like, didn't put salt on my food at dinner. You give me $0.15 penalty, not penalties. It was stuff that she was doing, and then they would just pay her for it. And her parents looked at it and were like, this is a really great idea, except, like you said earlier, you're supposed to be doing this anyway, right? We'll tell you, if you can put salt on your food, we're not going to give you money to not put salt on your food. You just can't automatically no money involved. Right? But yeah. Pester Power. Do you know what my allowance was? Do you remember what your allowance was? Oh, yes. What? $5 a month. Well, this is back in 1976, right? Yeah. Well, that's like $100,000 today. I should look that up. I'm curious what that would be in today's dollar. $5 a month. $5 a month. It does seem small. What did you do with it? I think I probably saved it, if I remember correctly, and saved up to buy things. I got my first job when I was 13 because I was like, I want my money to buy things. Well, to buy Star Wars, my own stuff. I knew that my parents were teachers. In fact, at the time, my mom wasn't even working. Oh, yes. It was a single parent teacher household. Yeah. So we were fine. But they didn't throw money at a lot of stuff. Right? So those socks are good to sew them together and make a new stock and two more socks to get hold of frugal and they didn't give me $100 a week. And, oh yeah, I had friends that got allowances like that, and I was just like, that's. Not even when I was a kid. I remember being like, that seems wrong. Yeah. Why are you getting that? You're not doing anything for that money. The kids who got $100 a week allowances were the ones who did the least of all. I worked around my house, I'll tell you that. I sit on my face all the time. I didn't get $100 a week sweeping that chimney. All right, so all this equals a lot of spending. And then on the flip side of that, you're going to have a lot of spending on advertising in the US. In 2009, companies spent $17 billion on advertising directly at Children and Kids in America. This is horrifying. Kids in the United States today see 40,000 ads a year. Yeah. Wow. So 17 billion. That sounds like a lot. And it is. Right? But in 1983, just in 1983, they spent $100 million on ads. It jumped up that much since 1983. And we'll see why in a little while. That's 110 ads a day that kids are seeing. Would that be right? That's 110 ads that are out there on kids programming. It doesn't necessarily mean they see them all. They're just there for them to see. So when it says kids see an estimated, that just means they're out there for them. Here's something that I've run across. There is a huge body of research on advertising. The kids that we'll get into. There are also some figures out there where it's like, I've seen this, but then I've also seen that. Sure. You said 110 ads a day. Yeah. There's no way that any kid has ever seen 110 ads in a day. I don't know, man. Think about it. But we've billboards. Internet commercials. I guess that's entirely possible. I guess that's possible. You might see 25 ads on your way home from school, but I have seen that 40,000 ads a year thing all over the place. For sure. I could buy that ads in school, which we'll get to. There's this whole idea that, yeah, man, that's a lot of ads. That's a lot of money being spent to advertise to children. Maybe we should tone it down or maybe we should think about how we're doing this a little differently. No. Say some people. Yes. There's particularly a group called Commercial Free Childhood. Campaign for commercial free Childhood. And they say kids should not see ads at all. Yeah. Even say the good ones that say, eat this healthy thing or Brush your teeth, don't. Because what they're saying is if you teach kids to identify with products through the kind of advertising which is basically celebrity endorsement, whether that celebrity is Don Mattingly or Tony the Tiger, like a made up celebrity, it's still a cult of personality that the kid is buying into. Not, oh, these carrots actually are good to me or good for me. It's dom Maddingley says that I can be a world class home run hitter if I eat these carrots. You know what I'm saying? Sure. The focus is still on mindless consumerism, even if they are being leaned toward good commercial or good product or whatever. Yeah. Good habits or whatever. Right? Yeah. This one selection that you pulled here was really telling. It said, advertising in and of itself is harmful to children. Marketing targets emotions, not intellect. Trains children to choose products not for the actual value, but because of what's on the package of the celebrity. Undermines critical thinking, promotes impulse buying. Yeah, it says it all. That was Susan Lynn of the Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood. Right. Makes a lot of sense. They'll regulate it, get rid of it. Exactly. And there's been a lot of pushes over the years to do just that in the United States. Other countries have done it. And as people have kind of battled over this a lot of study has been done on what impact advertising has on kids brains, and we'll dive into that right after these messages. What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system? So you tap IBM to UNSILO your data, and with the help of AI, start crunching a year's worth of transactions against thousands of compliance controls? Now you're making smarter decisions. Faster operating costs are lower, and everyone from your auditors to your bankers feel like a million bucks. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM let's create learn more@ibm.com. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for in demand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice, and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get handson, experience network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K twelve. Compodcast. That's K Twelve. Compodcast. And start taking charge of your future today. All right, before we broke well, earlier we were talking about I was saying when I was a kid, I remember the Crest Cavity Fighters, and I just thought it was another cartoon. That's not because I was a dumb kid. It's because if you are, they've determined this is through scientific study and inquiry that if you are under four years old, you literally cannot tell the difference between a commercial and the program you're watching. No, not at all. Even if they use commercial break techniques. We'll be right back after these messages. Or whatever. Right. Which they have to use. You notice you don't see that between commercials for seinfeld. No, it's true. We'll be back right after this. Can you believe it? But you have to have that stuff in kids programming. Even though if you're under the age of four, that's no good. No. Like, the kid literally cannot discern between the program they're watching and the ads. That's nuts to me. I didn't realize that until I started researching. Did you know that? Well, we talked about it a couple of weeks ago, but yeah. Oh, we did? Yeah. Okay. Between four and five, as you start to get a little bit older, you might be able to tell a difference categorically, but you're still it's more along the lines of, well, that's shorter. That cartoon was really short. Or, It was funnier. Yeah. Or look different or whatever. Right. So you can tell the difference, but you still don't know you're being shoveled and add on your tiny little throat right? Yeah. And there's two things that children lack that you need to be able to understand an ad at its basis. Right. And one is you have to, number one, be able to differentiate it from the program. So you have to be able to say, oh, it's an ad. When they said, after these messages will be right back, it means that the show went away. And now what I'm seeing is an ad. That's step one. Step two is that you have to be able to understand that in any kind of ad you're being advertised to, you're being persuaded, and that the message that's coming at you is biased, and therefore you should take it with a grain of salt. Right. That comes even later than understanding the difference between an ad and the program. Right. The idea that you're being advertised to doesn't come until at least seven. From what I've seen, you don't even know what grain of salt means. You don't know what that expression means. No idea. Because you can't even say, as a parent, I'll take it with a grain of salt. It's an ad. They'll go, what are these words? What? I like salt. There's a center for new American Dream, and this is frightening. They said babies as young as six months old can form mental images of corporate logos and mascots. I didn't find how they figured that out. Was it like your baby draw? Don Manningly. What is it with Don Manningly? Has he ever endorsed Promoter right now? Right. I don't know. What year is this? Like 86. Okay. And brand loyalties can be established by the age of two. Yes. That one. That's crazy to me. And apparently in a British study, at least, they found that you have to be close to a teenager up to about twelve is when you can finally really discern an ad from content in its intent on an adult level. Yeah. It's about where you finally enter that threshold. And what's interesting is the group that conducted that study and concluded that was an advertising lobbying group. So even they are like yes, kids under the age of twelve are mentally incapable of discerning the intent and content of ads. All they get is the overall message of the ad, which is, you want this, go tell your parents that you want this, go make your parents extra power. Exactly. Use a PowerPoint. Yeah. And the American Psychology Association, they had this task force in 2004, and they basically looked at all the available literature over the last several decades, I think it was the 60s where they really started looking into it, and the APA basically concluded, yes, kids can't understand advertising. It's unfair to advertise to kids. This is the position of the APA. Like, if it were up to us, it would be banned. Yes. They suggested that it should be banned. Right. That kids under the age of at least seven, I think the APA said, should not see ads directed toward them, but like I say, not up to them. They can only recommend and be laughed at. Corporations with hippy pockets go work on a commune. Hippie. So when it comes to nutrition, this is a really big deal. There are a lot of advertisements for candy and junk food and fast food that are ram down your kid's throat from a very early age. And you can't provide direct causation, of course. No. Everybody's like, Give it to me. But there's a lot of correlation that watching these commercials and seeing these ads correlates to your kids eating more of the stuff and maybe gaining weight right. And maybe affecting overall childhood obesity. Yeah. And again, remember the advertising, the money spent on advertising to children 1983 is $100 million. It went up to 17 billion in 2009. I'm sure in 83, they were like 100 million. Yeah. But even still, I think it was still considered kind of paltry ish. Yeah. I mean, especially if you adjust for inflation, it's still nothing like 17 billion. Right. If you go back over time and look at the rates of childhood obesity, it tracks along the same graph. Yeah. So it's one of the factors. Sure. Can we just say agree on that? Yeah. And studies have found also so not only are your kids being exposed to a high percentage of the ads that they see are junk food ads, but it's been shown that if you show kids junk food ads and adults, too, actually, but it really works on kids, they will eat more junk food while they're watching the ads. It's basically what's called the priming effect, where the kid will be sitting there seeing an ad for Twinkies. Well, there's no Twinkies in the house, but there's a box of Tweaks. I'll eat the box of Twix. A box of Twix. You see the box of Twix. My mom would hide it around the house. So when I found him, I had to eat the whole thing because I knew that she'd find that I found them and hide them. Even better. You never knew where they were going to end up next. Right. Just be eating them like a little fat squirrel. So a 2009 study found that kids who watched a program with commercials ate 50% more calories than the kids who watch the same program without commercials. So the actual presence of the commercials gets kids to eat more food, and the food that they usually have at hand and they're being primed to eat is junk food. Well, here's a study. This is study and stat packed. I thought you'd like that. It's got my juices flowing. Okay. In Quebec, america's hat. One part of America's hat. They have the opposite effect. They, for the past 32 years, have banned fast food advertising geared towards children online and in print. And that province has the least childhood obesity in Canada. Yes. Actually, it's even older than that. It should cost about that, they banned it. They've said, no, ma'am America's pants. They said no way a yes no in Quebec. They said it in French. They said no. Okay, may not hurt, but I mean, how can you look, I know there are still other factors, of course, but how can you look at these statistics and not just run screaming down the street like a crazy person? I don't know. Like, companies are trying to make your kids fat. Yes. Again, we come back to the Dorito effect. The book should read it, because if you read it, even with me, it's taken malicious intent off the table. It's more just like this is just the way it is. These companies have products, and they make money selling the product, so they're going to advertise the product, and your kid's going to love it. And if you don't want your kid to eat it, tell your kid, no, you lazy parent. Well, yeah, which we'll get into later. Sure. We should point out to this is not just in traditional advertising. Product placement has been booming for the past decade, for sure. But even before that, I think it really started in the 80s. But, I mean, it's really like product placement is like it's never been before. They did a study in 2008, why is everybody in the family eight years old? I couldn't find anything newer. It's crazy. Well, let's just say Gingrich came along and cut off funding for it. Well, I think we can just say everything's worse than these studies then, I would guess. In 2008, there were nearly 35,000 food, beverage, and restaurant brands and primetime TV programming. That's not commercials. That's product placement. Yeah. $35,000. Yeah. Apparently, kids saw an average of 198 Coke product placements throughout the year during 2008. That's about three to four a week. And that's just in a movie that you're watching, in a TV show that you're watching. That's on top of all the ads that they're getting. It's literally like indoctrination. So not only are your kids incapable of understanding what ads are, the ads are having a pronounced negative effect on their health. Speaking through correlation again, there's no smoking gun. That where some kid was like, that Oreo ad just made me eat this Oreo, everybody. And then he was whisked off to Johns Hopkins to be raised in a cage for the rest of his life. That has not happened yet. We can only hope one day. But the correlation is definitely there, and they're also becoming more and more ubiquitous, right? Yes. So there was this Yale study from 2012, Chuck, not that long ago, all right? In 2012, they looked at fast food marketing to children, fast food advertising specifically, and they found that McDonald's was far and away the biggest spender on advertising the kids. Sure. Specifically with their Happy Meal brand, which is basically now a sub brand of McDonald's. The. Happy Meal is. I think I remember when the Happy Meal was invented. Yeah. And the Happy Meal, that was 70s or 80s, right? Sure. And it was not invented for adults. No. The toy tieins, Ronald McDonald's, these were not things that they developed to sell more hamburgers to adults or because the adults make the choice of where to go eat. It was for kids, right? Yeah. It was a specific choice to sell more fast food to kids. Yeah. And in this 2012 study, in just that year alone, McDonald's spent $42 million on advertising just the Happy Meals in 2012. Here's one that'll shake you to the core. The average US child between two and eleven saw 185 Chicken McNugget Happy Meal commercials on TV last year. 185 ads for Chicken McNuggets. Yes. So that's a lot. But to really put in perspective, the number two advertiser to children for fast food was Burger King. They had a kids meal. Kids saw an average of 23.4 of those per year. Not 185. 23 was the second place contestant. Which is why Burger King is never in first. They're not spending enough on advertising their kids. There's a Burger King executive right now that just pulled over and made a note, spend more. I remember how they got I'm sure they still do this. I literally haven't looked at what a Happy Meal is. It's nothing like when we were kids. Remember it came in the box? No, it's in a bag. A paper bag. Is it a special bag? Yeah, like puzzles. You have to be a kid to really recognize it as special. You know what I mean? Where the box is like it's its own thing. Yeah, it was a little gift. Yeah. But how they really got us back then, I don't know if they still do this is collect all four. Oh, they still do that? They do now. It's like collect all 16. Right. So it would be I remember some stupid little car that you would put a penny in. Oh, those are great penny racers. Yeah. And you would pull it back and it would spin or something, or papa wheelie, or just take off like a rocket and collect all four. So it's not even enough. It's hard for me to not visualize the devil himself in an advertising room going like, yeah, well, we can sell this meal the kids more if we include a toy and some other guy saying, oh, well, how about if there's four different toys and they have to go back four different times to get a different color each time? Yeah. And I remember the drive through. People would be like, you got what you got. You have to go through and buy another Happy Meal if you want a different you weren't guaranteed to get that total. Yeah. Way more than four trips to get your Happy Meal. What a time to be alive. Yeah. So advertising has actually gone down in some ways by fractions of percentage points. Little bit, yes. But for the most part, it's trending upward. And apparently there's nowadays little tots that go on to websites to play. Yeah. Some of these websites like Happymeal.com, not to pick on McDonald's, but man, they definitely have spread it out enough so that they're an enormous part of this. McDonald's had a website for preschool children, Ronald.com. They shut it down finally. Yeah, but they literally had a website for preschoolers. Right? I know it sounds like it was clown heavy. Happymail.com in 2012 had 100,000 monthly unique. I don't even think how stuff works. Has 100,000 monthly unique. Happymeal.com does. Right. And these are little kids and they're going on and doing their thing, having a great time playing on Happy Meal.com. But this whole website is one big ad, right? Yeah. And even outside of Happymail.com, on other websites, like Cartoonnetwork.com or Nick.com, like Nickelodeon's website, you're going to see ad placements, banner ads or whatever kind of ads on these other websites for Happy Meals. They're all over the place. Yeah. The top 25 advertisers 19 of those 25 increased advertising to preschoolers. Domino's Pizza. I guess it's more than pizza now. They sell they're just Domino's now. Tons of stuff, right? Yeah. Domino's increased advertising to children by 44%, I think. When is this? Between 2009 and 2012. Wendy's by 13%. And McDonald's is the only restaurant that advertises more to children than teens or adults. Yeah, they advertise more to kids. Right. Hard to believe. Plus, also, I was looking at this. There's apps now, too. So beyond the websites, you can also download apps that, again, if you're a kid, you're just playing you're on the MCC Play app. But if you go on to the MCC Play app so, like, their toy giveaway the big tie in now is the Trolls movie, where it was recently, and you would get your Trolls character out of the Happy Meal box, and you would scan it with your phone and upload it onto your MC Play app. And you could make your Troll character the little real one that you have in real life. Go play in the Troll game. In the MC Play app. Was the troll game, like McDonald's wonderland or something. Yeah, but it's also the Trolls movie. So you're being hit with this advertising, this joint advertising. God knows how much the Trolls production gave to McDonald's to host this whole thing. Yeah. So the average ads are not even ads anymore. They're not even websites anymore. They're games. I don't mean to get worked up. It's just astounding it is. When you start digging in, you just feel like you're drowning. Well, I think once people listen to this, you start to notice things a little more around you. Like, even reading this stuff over the past few days, I just start to see it everywhere. All of a sudden, I'm like, oh my God. Some parent out there was, like, Mick play. I get it now. Give me that phone. Here's something we mentioned earlier. That is what you think that school would be the one place where your kids can go for eight or 9 hours a day and escape this onslaught of advertising. But no. Schools, they have budget cuts increasingly across the country. And so who sweeps in but corporations to say, hey, we'd love to get a computer center for you. We'd hate for your school to fail. Yeah. So how about the new Jack in the Box computer center? Will Jack in the Box be there to cut the ribbon on the first day? Well, sure he will. I think he will be. A homeless man dressed as Jack in the Box will be. Well, every kid get a jackinthebox and ten ahead. Oh, I think they will. So that's what's happening is corporations, they either have partnerships or they have vending machine contracts. And I don't know where you got this particular part. This was very well put together, by the way. Thank you. But they make the point here that you've got a captive audience. Kids are like prison, right? They're stuck there. Can't believe there's a cop that's making sure they stay there. Well, I didn't have a cop in my schools, but I think they came along about my era. Okay, we had our guy. He wasn't a cop, but he was the resource officer. Yeah, we didn't call him that. Barney Fi, sort of. Yeah, he just basically kind of walked around the parking lot with a Billy Bat looking for kids smoking or leaving in their car or doing whatever. I remember he was always very easy to evade. I imagine only so much ground you can cover as one single man. Sure. Single board man. Right. And this is before cell phones, too. I imagine that guy now is just, like, parked somewhere playing on this McLay. I love this Trolls game. But not only they're captive, but it implies the endorsement of the teachers in the educational system, which is huge. Yeah. And so much so that remember we were talking about the Crest Cavity Team, and I learned about oral hygiene. These two words put together are awful, by the way, but I learned that through Crest. Right. And it came with free toothpaste and a Crest toothbrush and all that. And there's, like, an activity book, and yes, I was learning about this stuff, but it was Crest sponsored. But in my little brain, I'm like, well, I guess my school thinks Crest is great, therefore Crest is great. Right. Or they might come out and a bunch of out of work actors dressed up as the Crest Cavity Team sure. Might make an appearance at your school. Yeah. If you go to, like, Hollywood High or something. Rich school. That's pretty funny. If you've ever seen Hollywood High. Not very rich looking. No, there's rich kids that go there, right? Dylan. That was Beverley. That's what I meant. Okay. That is a rich school. Yeah. I'll take you by Hollywood High next summer in La. Okay? Get a laugh. It's right there in the middle of town. Think right next to the inn Out Burger, if I'm not mistaken. Stumbling out of it. So what else are you going to get in school? You might get a craft healthy eating kit again, maybe trying to teach you about eating healthy, but got their logo and products all over it. No more than five boxes of craft brand macaroni and cheese a day. What else? There's exclusive contracts with companies like your high school is a Coke high school. You're not going to find a Pepsi vending machine in this high school district. And those are probably fairly lucrative, straight up advertising on buses. Oh, really? Yeah. We didn't have that when I was a kid, but apparently they do now. How about this? A reading program book. It brought to you by Pizza Hut. I did that. Did you? Oh, man. Reading enough to get a free personal panel. Is that what the deal was? Yeah, I was like, Just give me some books. See, and that's the thing, though. It's like they're incentivizing reading. That's a good thing. Yeah, but incentivizing reading to eat their garbage food product. Right. And it was like the focus of the summer to get to that point where you would get your free personal pan pizza certificate. Man, how did you prove that you read the books? It was an honor system. We were all very honorable kids. Apparently. All right, should we take a break here? Yes. All right, we'll pause for this ad. The irony is not lost on us. We'll be right back. 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. 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.com podcast. That's K twelve.com podcast. And start taking charge of your future today. All right, Chuck. So this kind of stuff is making your blood boil. Some people out there totally understand it, are saying, hey, man, we live in a capitalist country. Sure should be able to advertise the kids. You got a product to sell, sell it the best way you can. Right, okay. Other people out there are just so mad, they're trembling in their birkenstocks. Yeah, that's actually terrible. They're just upset at the thought of all this. Right. And it does seem very overwhelming and unfair. And for a while now in the US, we've got a long standing tradition of groups coming up and trying to fight the advertisers, getting almost somewhere and then failing. Yes. That's the history of it here. Yeah, we talked a little bit about this in the Action Figures podcast, and we'll go over some of that right now. Again. Well, remember that inspired this episode, 1970 is the FCC Communications Commission. They said. You know what? We should ban advertising to young kids. But they said, all right, well, maybe we shouldn't completely ban it. Maybe we should just limit it and limit the kinds of how much they see and the kind of things you can say and do. Right. Specifically, host selling like Miss Francis and her Little Ding Dong Hour, stopping and selling something that was off limits now. That's right. Then later on in the late 1970s, once again, the FTC this time considered banning all the advertising, the kids, citing all the evidence that's always been out there all over the place. That points in the direction that kids can't tell the difference, and it unfairly, takes advantage. Yeah. And Congress said, well, wait a minute. Now. We got here based largely on Crest. They got deep pockets, and they funded us as a whole, our congressional election campaigns. Right. So they stopped it. They put a stop to the FTC, and the FTC said, Fine, do what you want your Congress, but we're going to take a parting shot, saying, if you look even cursorly at the medical literature on kids and advertising, you will see that this is wrong and it's a public concern and should remain that way. And this is on you. Yeah. Who cares? And you talked about groups popping up. There's one called the Actions for Children's Television Act founded in 1968 by Evelyn Sarson and Peggy Charlie. She's the boat keeper on the river. Sticks. What, Charan? The guy, the boat rower who would row you over to the underworld? Yeah, I believe so. Oh, man, I hope so. I thought it was old Skippy. Old Man Skippy. If you knew him, you'd call them if you were a neighbor boy. They're a big deal now, 20,000 members. But back in the day, when they were just getting going, they were a pretty small little grassroots unit, and Romper Room, of all things, was squarely in their sites at first. One of the first ones they took on Romper Room was, like, the least harmful nicest show ever. I loved it. I did, too. Isn't that what Mr. Green Jeans was on? No, it was Captain Kangaroo. Yes, you're right. I don't remember. Romperoon then. I just remember I loved it. Romperon was one that had the magic mirror and at the end of the episode, the lady would look into the mirror and say, like, I see Josh and I see Jerry. You just sit there and be like, Call my name. And I didn't get many chucks. No. Did you say Charles? Did you count yourself for that? I don't remember. It was sort of that feeling you get when you go to anything that had the names printed. Keychain. Yeah. Key chains with a little license plates. And it was always like, Why is it my name Mike? Right. Or Josh. Yeah. I'll just go with the number one astronaut one, the generic one, not the chuck is so random, but I didn't see it a ton. Sure. You don't hear a lot of trucks these days. That name is out of fashion now. Yeah, it's cool. It's not, though. It's a retro. Yeah. Vintage. I'll take it. So what did they do with Romper Room? They said you're host selling. Yeah. Apparently they had their own line of toys. And one of the things was, I guess she'd look in the mirror and say, I see this brand new line of Romper Room toys that you're going to buy. And the act said, hey, this is against the rules. Right. And they didn't even go to the FCC. They went to the station that produced Trumper Room and said, Knock it off, we're mad. And they listened to him. That was, I think, their first real victory. So, Ronald Reagan we talked about in the action figures. One, this is when things got real in the 80s, when Reagan specifically appointed Mark Fowler as commissioner of the FCC. Right. Everything changed. Yeah. Because Reagan, he's like Deregulation. Sure. He believed in free markets and he appointed Fowler, who believed in free markets just as much as Reagan did. Fowler had a saying, as the FCC chairman, which is pretty rich, frankly, because the FCC had long been tasked with basically overseeing broadcasting for the public interest. Right. It's one of the big reasons why broadcasters got licenses. They had to have public interest programming certain amount a week. They were supposed to be looking out for people. Right. And Mark Fowler said the public interest would be decided by the public's interest. Meaning that if somebody started doing something nefarious under this deregulation where the government wasn't paying attention anymore, well, then people would stop watching that network and they would go under. The market would decide it. And advertising to children fell squarely into this purview or this worldview of his. Yeah. And between 1984 and 1985 and this is what we touched on in the Action Figure Show was cartoons featuring licensed characters increased by 300%. It became the new I mean, I don't think there almost were none that didn't have a tie in. No. Yeah. And before that, just a couple of years before, there was none that did. Yeah. Because there was a rule against what are called program length commercials, which was what Gem was in My Little Pony and Pacman and ThunderCats and Heman. All of them were these shows that were created to sell the products, and they tied into the products, and it was just like open season on little kids minds. Yeah. I mean, you love T man, right? Sure, I definitely did. And ThunderCats. Jason the Wheel Warriors. Like all that stuff. I was just a total sucker for it. Smurfs. Although I don't think smurfs. I think they started out as an actual cartoon and then the whole product line was launched as a result, six months later, they were like, Why aren't we selling these things? Yes, I was going to ask you that. In 1990, the FCC finally had some rules push through that limited the airtime to 10.5 minutes per hour on weekends and twelve minutes per hour on weekdays for kids programming. And host selling was officially prohibited. Yeah. That was the children's television act. That's right. Also, the idea of having to break for commercials. We'll be right back. Now, a word from our sponsor that came out of that as well. Yeah. Although I seem to remember it before 1990. Maybe not. All right, so you mentioned earlier that other countries are doing this. Australia, Canada, Sweden, the UK. They all have regulations on stuff like this. Yeah. By doing this, you mean actually doing something. Yes. Correct. Yeah. There's a whole spectrum. Right. Yeah. That has to do with how a country approaches advertising to children. In the US. Actually represents one radical end of it, which is virtually nothing. On the other end, there are countries that abandoned it, like Quebec, which again, is a province, but yeah, it's also an occupied country. Norway and Sweden. Big surprise. There Nordic countries coming in there swinging the bat of justice. Right. Swinging the reindeer rack of justice. They completely ban marketing to children under the age of twelve in those countries. Right. And then a little more in the middle, you've got like, the UK. And Australia, where there's far more regulations than there is in the US. But there's also a large measure of self regulation among the industry, too. Yes. I was really heartened to hear that. In the UK. A lot of these aren't necessarily laws, they're just sort of unspoken rules among advertisers that you don't suggest that a child is lacking in loyalty or you don't encourage them to pester their parents. That's a big one. Like a commercial that shows a kid like, mom, can I have this? I think it was like Itchy and Scratchy. Was up for an Emmy on The Simpsons once or something, and they were showing the other cartoons that it was up against in the category for best Animated Special. And one of them was like the Action Man holiday special, how to buy Action Man. And it showed some kid go, I want it. And the parent looks at the boxes like it's basically right there. Yeah. Another one in England, they say you don't make a child feel inferior or unpopular for not buying a product. Yeah, that's a big one, too. Yeah. And apparently these are just things that they think are decent that you shouldn't do. Because I remember, too, with advertising, I don't remember seeing too many Polo ads. I was very much aware of Polo, but I also knew that Polo was a great brand because my peers knew it was a great brand. Right. So there's that peer pressure that starts from a very young age, especially with things like clothing. So to remove that out of the equation a little bit by not letting advertisers, like, make a kid feel small or inferior for not buying a product, I wonder how much it mitigates that at all. Yeah, hopefully some you know, our own TV show might not have come around if it hadn't been for the conscience of our director and leader. What do you mean? Chad? Our director. He went and started his production company because he was an ad dude and he was on set one day. I remember telling me this story, doing a commercial for a garbage junk food product for kids, and had one of those moments. He's like, what am I doing? What am I doing in my life? And he quit it. Quit his job and went and started his own production company to where they make a job. That's why that's why I started it. Yeah. Nice. Where you go, Chad? Yeah, he didn't develop a conscience. He had a conscience. And it was agitated. And it was agitated. Nice. It's pretty neat. Yeah. Then our TV show came. Yeah. Ruined him. What about online? That's the big sort of not so brave new world. Yes. Like those apps we were talking about. Yeah. They're like, all over the place, right? Yeah, they're all over the place, but they're interactive. So your kid is actively participating in something that has to do with the brand by laying on the couch. Yes. But they're interacting with that brand in their head. They're also immersed into a branded environment for long periods of time. Sure. Plus, also a lot of the advertising, if not 100% of it, is targeted. Right. They're using metadata based on your kid's other play habits, search history, other apps it's downloaded, where your kid lives, any demographic information they can get to make the ad, like, even more targeted to him. That works on adults. Yeah, I can't imagine. It must be like utter magic on a kid. I'll bet you can be like, Watch, I'll make that kid get off the couch right now. Watch this. I'll send him this ad. The kid gets off the couch and goes to the fridge. Yeah, there's a very Truman Show element to it. Yeah, it seems like it. But then again, like you said, you hear the companies in the food industry and people saying there's just consumer demand. It's up to the parents. Like, say, no, don't let your child pester you into buying something. Yeah. Be a good parent. Sure. And that seems to be their position. The counter to that is, well, if you guys think that the parent really has any kind of say over this, why are you spending $18 billion a year advertising directly to children? Why don't you spend that money on me? Like, we like a good fight, right? We don't like money. We like to waste. We're trying to see a good competitive situation. Plus, also, the advertisers have a tremendous amount of power when they're going directly to a kid to go around the parent. And any parent, just by definition, is harried as far as a human being goes. Right. So they don't have time necessarily to keep up with everything their kids watching, encounter every argument and every pester session that their kid comes at them with. And advertisers know that that's unfair as well. Yeah. It was a lot easier back in the day to regulate and monitor what kind of content your children were made available to because you had TV and there were three channels, pretty much, and there was something called outside. Yeah. All right, so how do you combat this? Well, again, if you can find time in your hairy life, there are some techniques that you can use, apparently magically talking to your kid. Yeah, kids are smart. Unless it comes to discerning ads. We always joke about dumb kids, and that's always a joke because kids are very smart. Kids get things. And if you talk to your kids about what buying things means and what advertising is and the difference between wants and needs and how marketing works, like, on very basic levels, you can have these discussions from an early age and the value of spending smartly. Right. So there's something there's a concept called media literacy, and up until fairly recently, this was the prescription for combating advertising to kids among parents, and it was exactly what you just described sitting down, explaining, why do you want that? Do you want it? Do you need it? Is there something better that's less expensive or the same thing that's less expensive? And just teaching them that that's media literacy, and it's teaching them to create a cynical filter that when they're being advertised to, they're being manipulated, and they need to take it with a grain of salt, and then you have to go, okay, this is what a grain of salt means. Right. Take a step backwards. Right. Cynical is such a bad word, though. It's maybe discerning. That's another word for it. Sure. The problem is people like the campaign for Commercial Free Childhood says again, what you're doing is teaching kids to be good consumers. You're focusing on consumerism. You're teaching them everything there is to know about consumerism. Let's just remove kids from the equation of consumerism. So media literacy has kind of fallen out of favor in the last few years. Yeah. It may be impossible. That's the conclusion I came to. Like, our kids aren't living our childhood life, and you can't expect that. No, and it's true. If you're like, no, you can't watch TV, or, no, you can't play video games, or no, you can't use your YouTube app or whatever. Would your kid have anything in common with any of his or her peers? I want to be a complete outcast. Yeah, an interesting one. But no one will know how interesting and charming you are because they won't talk to you. Yeah. They're like, but just wait, when you're in your 30s, you're really going to blossom. Like, what, you're going to have a 401K already? Yeah. No, thanks. You're going to be a real catch. Setting limits on this exposure is obviously kind of a no brainer. Screen time and phones and gaming and Internet and all the things they're inundated with. And limiting your own screen time. That's a big one. Yeah. It's tough to tell the kids if you're constantly staring at your telephone. As a parent, you see that stuff. Shut up. Barney Miller's on your phone. Yeah. I guarantee you could find reruns of Barney Miller on a phone somewhere. Well, my Barney Miller app doesn't feature full length shows, just video clips. Just clips. What a rip. And there's a game, too. It's pretty fun. Mcfarney Miller. What else? Apparently there's a book called the Baron Stein bears get the gummies. Yes. Have you read that one? I don't remember that one. I read the bear and Steen bears get the gimme. Oh, okay. Well, this isn't an alternate universe. No, I never heard of that one. Apparently, it's all about teaching. It's teaching kids how to not be little brats. Right. And just chill out and be happy with your two sticks that your parents gave you to rub together. This last bit, I think was pretty interesting on how to be involved in what they're watching. The three ways co viewing. It just means you're not even discussing it. You're just sitting there and watching it with them. Menacingly. Yeah, menacing. Overlord. Just cross your arms and look at them every once. Just relax. Enjoy yourself. Do you feel like you should be watching this active mediation or Instructive guidance is when you are watching and discussing things and saying, like, what we're talking about? Talking about these ads, or whatever the content is. Right. And then there's restrictive mediation, which is you can't watch that. Yeah. And apparently active and restrictive. Mediation has been shown to decrease kids asking for stuff, which is ultimately what the parent wants. It's like, I don't care how obese you get. I just don't want to hear you ask for another thing. That's what we're really after. If you get thin as a byproduct, great. You got anything else? I don't think so. Oh, I did think this final bit was pretty interesting that you had in here that they found that the tactics to sell kids junk food have the same effect. So if you put carrots and celery and a McDonald's wrapper, the kids are going to be more apt to eat it than if you just gave them carrots and celery. That's frightening. And I guess good. I guess. But again, it goes to the heart of that thing where it's like you're just teaching kids, McDonald's says, Eat these. Carrots, not carrots are great in and of themselves. Right. All right. Well, that's advertising the kids. Make of it what you will. Yeah. I'm going to go walk out into traffic. If you want to know more about advertising to kids, well, dig into the Internet, because it's all over the place. I found a great site called PBS Kids Don't Buy It, and it teaches kids how to discern ads at a younger age. It's neat. You might want to start there. And since I said PBS Kids, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this first time writer from a new listener. Hey, guys. New listener, first time writer. My boss used to work for Kenner in the early 90s, had some interesting tidbits about Star Wars toys. Kenner had a Robin Hood Prince of Thieves collection. Remember the 92? Kevin Costner? Sure. Yes. With the weird accent that kind of was a little British, sometimes, a little Southern California. Kind of came and went. Yeah. I have to say, though, I love that movie when it came out. Yeah, it's good. It's terrible. But it wasn't as good as Men and Types. Mel Brooks. Fine. I remember Robin Hood and Point Break came out that same summer. Yeah. I don't know why I remember that. I just remember them either. Whatever the heck of a summer, 50% of the Robin Hood Prince of Thieves line was repurposed. I can't imagine why. Into the 95 rerun of Return of the Jedi. And at the time, new Power of the Forest line of toys, most notably the Sherwood Forest Playset was simply rebranded the Ewock Village, and the Robin Hood Battle Wagon was altered slightly and made the Ewok Battle Wagon nice. It's pretty smart when you think about it. Yeah, they're all force bandits. Also, there was one figure of the Robin Hood line, one figure that was repurposed from the original 83 Return of the Jedi line. The Friar Tuck action figure was a more smooth out version of the Gamorian Guard, the pig like guard in Java Palace. I remember him with a new head plopped on. That sounds about right. I had another listener sending a video of Rick Springfield's star wars collection. Oh, yeah? Did you watch that? No, I haven't seen it yet. Dude, I saw the email. Haven't seen the video. Rick Springfield, he's richer than an average. The most avid collectors of star wars figures. Yeah, like, he literally has a one of a kind figure. He's the only known one in the world. Wow. He has is it that Boba fett with the missile launcher? He does. He has several of those, apparently. No, he's like, I use those as toilet paper. I was impressed. And he was used, like, from the time I was a kid, I collected them, and I was a little bit older when the star wars things came out. Like, he always collected things, but when star wars came out, he was older, so he started not opening them because he was over playing with them, but he really just loved the packaging, thought they were beautiful and cool and has this amazing collection. I highly recommend just YouTube. Rick Springfield. Star wars. I'll check that out. There's some really big star wars margin there, too. They're very jealous of Rick Springfield collection. All right. Anyway, that was from he just says cheers from Cincinnati, Ohio. That doesn't count. That's dull. Well, thank you, anonymous listener, who apparently is worried about being fired for revealing kenner from secrets in Cincinnati. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us. Well, you can hang out with me at Josh Clark on Twitter. You can also go to the s YSK podcast. You can hang with Chuck at charleswchuckbryant@facebook.com stuffyheanow. You can send us an email to stuff podcasts@howstepworks.com. As always, trying to store a home on the web stuffyouw.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 Kilgarriff and Georgia hardstarkk, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite murder one week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon music app and listen today. You know you're the best pet mom. When you growl back during playtime, give epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients, plus probiotics for digestive health. Find us at chewy amazonandhalopets.com." | |
How Currency Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-currency-works | Even if you entirely eschew the concept of money, we'll bet you'd be hard pressed not to trade in some form of currency. Learn how everything from cows to cacao beans to tiny shells from Maldives have served as currency at some time or another. | Even if you entirely eschew the concept of money, we'll bet you'd be hard pressed not to trade in some form of currency. Learn how everything from cows to cacao beans to tiny shells from Maldives have served as currency at some time or another. | Thu, 18 Sep 2014 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=261, tm_isdst=0) | 44315028 | 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. 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. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetuffworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles WTOK. Bryant and Jerry. All right. Yeah. That makes the stuff you should know you ever had one of those? I don't know why I wanted one, but when I was a kid I wanted one of those coin things you want your hip to make change. I wanted one of those worse than anything. Really? Yeah, like a peanut vendor. I don't know, six Flags or whatever. And I saw those things, I just thought it was boss. That's really funny. And I don't think I knew that you could buy them for like $3, so I would have bought a bunch of them. Yeah, because there's not much to them. It's just like the thing is not counting anything, when you press it with your thumb, it's like releasing yeah. Releases. But each one your quarters. They have different sizes. So without even looking you could go here's three quarters. Buddy, I know what somebody's getting for Christmas this year. I just thought of that out of nowhere. I haven't remember that since I was a kid. I was obsessed with those things for a little while. Well, you know what? You're technically obsessed with a dispenser of currency. How's that? Feed that one up? Yeah, knocked it out of the park. I collected banks too, which is a weird thing for a kid to do. Banks? Like piggy banks? Yeah, even though none of them were piggy banks. What was your favorite one? Oh, man, I still had the collection. My mom's got them. I wonder if they're worth any money. No, I doubt it. I mean, that was like a Garfield bank. And Opus the Penguin. Eric Davis. No. Was it? Opus from Bloom County? Why am I blanking out on that? That was my favorite comic. I don't know. That sounds right. Man. I'm losing it, buddy. So the Penguin from Bloom County. We're going with that. I was obsessed with Bloom County and then change counters. Nice. And piggy banks. Cool. That was my childhood. And Dale Murphy. Not Eric Davis. No. Who's that? Who's for? The Reds. Oh, the Reds player. Yeah, number 44. He was great, though. I loved it. He was as a non Reds fan, I was an Eric Davis fan. I'm with you. Where are you obsessed with? I liked baseball. Baseball cards. Yeah. Did you collect anything? Mad magazines. Yeah, me, too. Those are still, I think, at my dad's house. They'd better be. You still got them. What else did I collect? I saved up my Sports Illustrated for years, too. And I remember the first one I ever got had Mohammed Ali on the cover. That's how old I am. Wow. It was during his comeback, when he was, like, fat and mustachioed. Don't call it comeback. It was not not much of one. That's not how that goes. How's that for a sidetrack to get us going? I haven't even done the intro. Let's hear it. So the intro is as follows. Chuck in 2013, New York Magazine. Not the New York Times, not New Yorker. New York Magazine, which is an equally good publication. Not time out in New York. Not The Village Voice. All right? Just New York magazine, which is actually where the movie Saturday Night Fever came from. It came from an article that was later admitted to be completely fabricated by the author. Oh, really? Yeah, in that magazine. Awesome. Anyway, New York Magazine ran a really interesting article in January 2013 called Suds for Drugs, and it talked about how there's a huge black market for Tide laundry detergent, specifically liquid Tide, in the United States. Yeah. What, they don't make anymore? No, they make plenty of it, but tons of it gets stolen. And the reason why is tied is such an agreed upon, great laundry detergent. Not bad. Tied and only tied. Like, if you tried to use Gain or all or anything like that, you would get turned away. But if you have a jug of Tide liquid laundry detergent, you can buy drugs in the United States with it. Really? It is agreed upon as a currency. I had no idea. Even though you can just buy it in the store. Yeah, that's the part I don't get. Because if you're a crackhead and you steal a carton of them, then all of a sudden you didn't have to pay for this Tide. Right. And you can use it to buy trucks. Interesting. I don't use any of that stuff, and I don't mean to pick on just crack heads. If you're a junkie, same thing. Sure. If you have a gambling habit. Yeah, man, we got a lot of crap from a couple of people about using the word junkie. Yeah. It's pretty derogatory if you think about it. I guess. Well, but it's a word with a definition, which means something, and that's what it means. I mean, it's not like we were just, like, slagging people. Yeah. No, I get what they're saying, though. You're saying, like, it's just such a dismissive term of anyone who's addicted. Right. It really kind of flies in the face of the disease model of addiction. Yeah. So I have talked to the people who call us out on it. I get it. But the point is Tide is now a currency as like remember our prison episode where we talked about how honey buns are currency? Same thing, right? Cigarettes, currency, earskins. Yes, those were currency once. That's where we get the word bucks from. I think what you're getting at, I can't wait to get to that stuff later. Okay. Etymology. I love that stuff. I do too. I think what you're trying to say is that for what you are saying is that currency is nothing more than a medium of exchange and a substitute for something a good or a service. Yeah. It is an agreed upon. That's the key. Yeah. It's got to be agreed upon. Yeah. You can't be like, I'll give you five Lincoln Logs for that car. Well, that's what you do when you're a kid, right. And you go, I don't think I want Lincoln Logs. And your buddy goes, oh, you do? Right. But if the other person says I don't want link and logs, then what you have are linking logs, not a currency because it has to be mutually agreed upon. Like you say, like dollar bills. Yeah. I have gone off on this on our show about the amazing fact that this paper we have all agreed is worth something. And that is the only reason it's worth something that people dedicate their lives to pursuing paper is as ephemeral as a cloud. Almost. Yeah. Not the greatest analogy I've made, but it's still kind of work. All right, so let's talk olden days and currency as a substitute for things. What currency did was solve the problem. It allowed you to give change and make change. Yeah, that's a big one because back in the day if you had a bushel of corn and you wanted a chicken, you would go to your neighbor. Well, you had to find somebody that had a chicken that wanted corn. So that's the first problem. That's a problem. But what if you do find someone you're like, great, my neighbor's got a chicken and I've got this corn. He wants this corn. He wants the corn. But he says, you know, this chicken is worth a lot more than that corn. Somebody's getting a bad deal until you can make change. Yeah, because what if I get corn? That's not the best example because you could take out some of the corn, right, let's say. But you can't chop a chicken. Cows. Yeah, well, you got a cow. Your neighbor has a chicken and that's not an even trade. But you just need one chicken and your neighbor just needs one cow. You can't make change. Like that can't make change. So that's one of the first roles that currency fulfilled was a way to make change, to make trade more equal. Yeah. Before that, I think there were a lot of bad deals going down out of desperation. Like, if your family really needed that chicken for a reason, you might end up taking a bad deal just because you need that chicken. You give your cow away for that chicken. Yeah. And then your family would berate you. That's right. Where's the milk, honey? Yeah. This is like the magic beans incident all over again. Can't milk a chicken, honey. Get berated by your wife. Another reason that currency became popular is because it allows you, for the first time, to really amass wealth, because you can harvest all the corn you want, but that corn is going to go bad unless you can find a way to trade it. And a barn full of rotten corn does no one any good, and it doesn't make you any richer. In practice, practically speaking, you would be an extraordinarily wealthy person if you had tons of corn. In theory, yeah. But like you said, it's going to go bad, so you could lose all your wealth would literally rot away. That's not the case with, say, a gold coin. Gold coins aren't going to go bad and deteriorate, so they're that stand in for those enormous stocks of corn because you had all that corn and then you traded it for gold coins. Yeah. So what you did was you took your wealth of corn and stored it into something of equal value. In this case, gold coins. Yeah. And that had a huge impact on civilization, because the most powerful people were not just the ones who held the political and military influence. All of a sudden, if you could accumulate wealth, then you could buy that junk. Yeah. It gave rise to the merchant class, and it democratized. Is that the word? Yeah, it democratized the world. It did. Because before, it was like you were born into a wealthy, noble family, and that's how you gain power. And if you weren't TS, that meant that you worked the land for this wealthy family. But if you can sell something and get money in exchange for it, instead of a cow for a chicken, you save that junk up and you buy someone to go kill that landowner, and then that's your land. Right. Democracy, they are generally considered to be four categories of currency. You have commodity currency, coins, paper money and electronic currency these days. And in the commodity system, it is a placeholder, like we said, for purchasing power. But it also has value as a thing, because corn is valuable. It's not just a piece of paper. Right. Or in the case of the Aztecs or Little Cacao, beans were valuable, and so they use those as money. But one of the problems with that is if the person you're trading with doesn't find that valuable, then it's worthless. Yeah. Usually within a society, everyone will find that commodity currency valuable. Like the Aztecs with cacao. Yeah, they love the stuff. They made chocolate out of it. It was the elixir of the gods kind of stuff. They drank it, right? Yeah. Montezuma drank like 20 or 40 cups of it a day until he died from drinking too much chocolate. But the canquitters who came didn't value cacao beans at all. So rather than trade, they just took everything. Yeah. And dumped the cacao beans because it was worthless to them. Yeah, but that is a good example of a commodity based currency. Like, even if even if everything else falls apart, that cacao bean still has value and that you can make chocolate out of it. Right. In the society, chocolate is valued. Ergo, they value the cacao beans so you can use it as currency. Plus, in this case, cacao beans are easy to carry, so they're portable and they're plentiful and small, so you can make change with them. Yeah, but not everything was the cacao bean and commodity currency. A lot of stuff is perishable, more perishable. A lot of cattle is super bulky. You can't carry on a bunch of cows, goats. Goats. But nevertheless, that is a form of commodity currency. It's just had its downside. Yeah. Like the goat has value in and of itself. Yeah. Cute. Cute. Milk meat and cute hair and cute and very cute. I'm going to get one of those pigmy goats one of these days. Yes, it's going to happen. You're going to come over to my house and the little goats going to bounce in the room clip clop. You're going to go, what the have you ever seen Be the Lamb? I showed you that right, dude, that's probably my top five horrible things ever. If you don't know Be the Lamb, go type that into YouTube right now. Oh, is it a lamb? I think so. I thought it was a pigmy goat. I think it's a lamb. Jerry says lamb. All right. It went all right. Here's some cacao beans. Nice, Chuck. All right, hold on, hold on. Yeah, I feel like we've got a really good flow going. Okay, so let's interrupt it with these messages. Hey, Chuck, it's summer, which means school is out, sun's shining, the daylight lasts longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story, isn't there? There sure is. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, you can tune into the podcast series on Amazon music My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right Media. That's right. Part true crime and part comedy, my Favorite Murder takes you on a journey through small town mysteries and major laughs, all in the same week. That's Right hosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark Banter with each other, sharing their favorite true crime tales and explore unique hometown stories from friends and fans alike. And they're both great, and it's a fun show, and you should listen so listen to new episodes of My Favorite Murder one week early on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalanche of demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets? You call IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes, and you have an Ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule up their own sleeves. IBM, let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comitoomation. Okay, we're back. Let's see if we can get the mojo back again. All right. The mojo is still flowing because our message break in reality, was only 2 seconds long. That's our dirty secret. Coins is our next form of currency. And they were first minute in Lydia, which is modern Turkey, and their king, Croasis, or crosis, said, you know, I'm going to make these little small metal ingots. I'm going to stamp them with our emblem, and it's 640 BC, and this is called Coins, and it's worth something. And the Greek said this is great. And the Roman said, this is great. We're going to make ours out of silver and gold. So it's actually worth something. Although when you think about it, that's just worth something because someone says it's worth something. Gold. Sure. All of it. Yeah. I read this Forbes article that basically said all currency is a fiat currency. What does that mean? Fiat currency means that it has value by fiat, like the fiat of the king, a decree. Right. And it says the government or the king says this has value. It's 97% gold. It's valuable. So go trade it as such by fiat, right. Yeah. If you think about the only things that really have real value are like food and water. Pretty much. You can make the case that a commodity based currency like cacao beans isn't necessarily a fiat currency because it does have inherent value that anybody can use. But gold is not really that valuable. It's not really that useful, especially in a preindustrial society. I wonder if gold first became valuable because it was shiny, literally. Yes. They could make pretty things with it, honestly. Yes. Interesting. I think that's exactly why. Because it's so malleable, you can't make tools out of it. Yeah. Even today, it's not that useful. I mean, they use it in some solid state electronics and things, but it's more valuable simply because it's gold. Crazy. Yeah. So even if it's backed with gold, it's technically still a Fiat currency. I've never heard that term, fiat. So what is the Fiat car all about? Does that mean it's just special because they say it is? I guess so. All right. In China, I thought the Chinese made the first coins, but Grabster says no. Yes. Grabster says that it happened at about the same time it did in the west, fifth century BC. They started out, oddly, with tools like knife shapes as currency, with little holes drilled in them so they could keep it on a string, and they just shrank over the years until it was about the size of a coin. Right. So I thought it was odd. But they kept the hole in there. Yeah. So even until, like, the mid 19th century, the Chinese coins still where this is little round coins with a hole in the middle, so you could string them on a string. Yeah. That's because they didn't have the little coin dispenser on the hip. They would have thought of that, which is surprising, because the Chinese invented practically everything that's true. Except the coin dispenser. The hip mounted coin dispenser. Do they even still make those? Sure they do. I'll bet. All right, I'm going to buy one. If not, RT. McPhee probably makes it an ironic version. Who's that? You've seen all their stuff. They make, like, funny. They were the original. Probably like, bacon, air freshener car. They make stuff like that. They make horse head. Got you. They outfit all their stuff in Urban Outfitters, probably in the chotky section. Yes. All right. I hate them, then. So one of the big impacts of coins was now the government actually controlled the money supply and could manipulate it and say what it's worth. And Roman emperors were dumb and said, you know what? We're just going to reduce the amount of precious metal in some of these because that makes us richer. But that devalued things such that it ended up being one of the factors in their downfall. Yeah. They didn't quite understand how it worked, and it took thousands of years for anybody to figure out really how it worked. But basically, if you still know how it works, kind of, I think we have a better grasp than the early Roman emperors. That's true, because they would say, hey, man, I've got a ton of gold, and my predecessors would make 10,000 gold coins out of a ton. But I being as clever as I am, I'm going to make 200 gold coins out of this ton and double my money. But rather than double the money, it devalued the currency and led to the decline of the Roman Empire. That's right, like you said. But that's how yeah. And after that, it took a while for coins to come back in fashion all the way to the Renaissance, because in the Dark Ages, because of a lot of that stuff, people didn't trust coins. Right. And for good reason, because there was someone behind it who could decrease the percentage of gold in that coin. The thing is, and we'll get to this later, the powers that be can decrease value, but ultimately it's up to the general public, the people who are trading in these things, to determine really how valuable they are. There's something called perception of value that has to do with just how valuable a currency is or not. We'll talk about it in a minute. But that's what happened in Rome. Yeah. Next up, we have paper money, or as they call it, folding money here in the south. And paper money was first developed by the Chinese as well. And they used, like you said, buckskin, sometimes bark, parchment, and it was a bill of payment. And leather was also used in Europe around 1100, which didn't really catch on then. No, I think leather money would be kind of cool, though. Leather money. Sure. If you hate animals, what better way to kill more of them? I wonder how much a cow would have been worth then. Yeah, well, they were using the skin for other stuff anyway. Yeah, good point, though. In Sweden and 1661, they issued paper money, but they didn't quite understand it either, and flooded the market with it, which made it almost worthless as well. Figured it out. I get the desire, though. Like, oh, everyone says this stuff is worth something. Let's just print a ton of it. Exactly. Yeah. So it didn't catch on after the Swedish experiment in the 17th century, but it didn't take too much longer. It was the 18th century when paper money finally did catch on. And it was based on the practice of goldsmiths at the time, where if you gave them some gold, they give you basically an IOU. Say they were making something out of the gold or they were hanging on to the gold for you. You had what amounts to a promisor note saying, you bring this IOU back to me and I'll give you this amount of gold in return. It was basically the first what's called goldbacked paper currency. And once banks figured out just how that could work, in theory and in practice, anybody could start issuing currency. Yeah. And money was backed by gold, even right here in the US. All the way up until 1971, every dollar not in theory, every dollar had gold somewhere. Not just dollars. Pretty much any paper currency in the world at the time was backed by gold, silver, some sort of precious metal that we all agreed was valuable because it's shiny. Yeah. But there was a stock somewhere in the world that you could trade your paper money for that value in gold. Yeah. You could go somewhere to the gold trader and say, here, I want all this money in gold. Did you know that's what the wizard of oz is about? It's an allegory for the gold standard. Oh, man. Depending on who you ask, it's about ten different things. It's a populist allegory for the gold standard. I just posted an article about ten different theories on what wizard of odds means on our facebook page. Mine is right and yours is right and everyone else is wrong. Thank you. That's all I ever want to hear from you. I know. So now we're on to E money, which is seems like something super new, but it actually came about after World War II when banks started recording the information of the day onto magnetic reels and taking it to the Federal Reserve Bank. And all of a sudden, they said, we don't need these silly $10,000 bills. Yeah, because we can just record this all electronically. And all it took then was a wire connection and trust for people to trust that this really is money, even though I'm not seeing any money. Right. And that is the real distinction of it, because with the electronic transfer, originally, you're transferring information about money. Like, I have $100,000 over here that I officially give to you, and so that electronic transfer becomes a promise or, you know, in and of itself. And they figured out that they can do this after they realize that money in and of itself isn't valuable, so we can just do this whole thing electronically. And like you said, they did have $100,000 notes, and apparently there's some in circulation still. There's a couple of hundred of them in circulation. They had 501,000 10,000 $100,000 bills. There's a really neat mental floss article that you can read called $100000 Bill. The story behind large denomination currency. And it talks all about that. But it was prior to the magnetic tapes that were passed from bank to bank or that recorded this information. This is how banks would settle up transfers through 10,000 $100,000 bills. Yeah. And $100000 has Woodrow Wilson on it. And they only made those for about three weeks. But that was never, like, in the public. That was just between banks. Right. It was never in circulation. They're still around, from what I understand, though. Yeah, I'm sorry. In 2009, there were less than 400 $500 bills, $1,000 bills, $5,000 bills, and $10,000 bills, all between, like, three and 400 still in circulation, which I thought was pretty interesting. Yeah. And they're usually worth frame now. They're worth way more than their face value. This Mental floss article points out that if you have a pristine $10,000 bill, it's worth at least ten times that. Well, and they all had different presidents throughout the years. It wasn't like a single version of it. There was a bunch of different versions of all those, except for the 100,000. Yeah. It was always Wilson. Right. Yeah. Because they just printed it for three weeks would be I wonder why he got that honor. Yeah. I don't know. Because he was money. He didn't even know it. So with electronic money, another few things really helped cement that as a viable thing. One was the first credit card in 50. Diners Club said, you know what, rich businessman? Here's a piece of plastic. So you can impress your friends by not even carrying cash and pay for whatever you want with this thing, and then we'll charge you some interest, and then you'll pay us back. Yeah. And we got even further from the commodity by saying, now you're not even using cash. We're using electronic promissory notes by charging this, that's the promissory note. And then they realize, hey, this shouldn't be just for rich dudes because we can financially cripple everybody. Exactly. This interesting is really neat. So everyone should have a credit card and today there's over 200 million visas which started in 58. Then the Social Security Administration started doing e deposits all the way back in 1975. Then people kind of got used to the idea that all right, I see it's in my bank account now, so I trust it. Yes. Which is a big step forward. Yeah, it took a little while to catch on but then now it's like the grabster points out. People started paying bills, transferring money between accounts and sending money electronically without ever even touching it. Yes. Which is true. Like I hadn't thought about that. But there's plenty of money that I earn and spend that. It's never physical ever. That's all my money. Yeah. I almost never have or use cash. Like I get paid electronically. It goes to a bank number and then I have American Express that I pay for things with and then I pay for that electronically. Right. And I'm just trusting that as long as the lights are on, I guess everything's working out, right? Exactly. And basically it's like the future like what everybody talks about in the future we're not going to have money, we're going to have credits. Well, the future is here. Apparently 8% of the world's currency is in hard currency. This all sounds so dangerous when you start talking about it like that. Like all it takes is one big crash of electronic crash. Yeah. And what if they were like all that money that you thought you had is not here now. Right. We don't know what happened to it. It's entirely possible that they have the FDIC though, in the United States at least. Remember the early days of internet purchases, how distrustful we all were? Yeah, I'm not putting my credit card I'm not typing that thing in. Right. And it never occurred just that we hand it to a waiter or whoever that can do anything with it. And then it finally just became less important just because so many people were doing it, that the chances of your credit card being stolen were lower. Coupled with the fact that it became evident that credit card companies were willing to just like wipe clean debts accrued like that sure. Illegally made people a lot more trusting of it, I guess. Yeah. I had a lady in front of me this grocery store the day that wrote a check and I was just like, oh, were you? Just like I know I felt like a jerk because I had to wait longer minute. But I did want to say like, you know, there's a better. Way of doing that now. Checks. And I can't remember the last check I wrote. It's been years and years and years since I've written a check. For me, it's usually like a government thing, like a tag or something. Tag tax or something. Yeah, I do all that with my car too. And then of course, if you want to talk about the bleeding edge of electronic money, eg bitcoin and that kind of thing, you should go listen to our bitcoin episode, which we're told was pretty good. Yeah, I think even the guys from Pod on Pod reviewed our show and they listened to the bitcoin episode, so we did a good job of explaining it. So we'll talk more about money because it's the topic of this episode right after these messages. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but we're pretty excited about Summer. What's not to like? School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's right. And that's where True crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. Yeah, and with so many killer shows like Morbid, My Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. Prepare to go deep and become your own detective in the world of serial crimes and unsolved mysteries. Get lost hearing spooky stories with a combination of detailed research and lighthearted analysis. Whether you're a lifetime fan of true crime or you just feel like being entertained while doing the dishes at night, there's a podcast out there for you to download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. 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. So, Chuck, we were talking about the gold standard and that's what The Wizard of Oz is about. And prior to that with the gold standard, inflation happened. The price of gold fluctuated, so therefore the price of anything pegged to it. Like the dollar would fluctuate too when we abandoned the gold standard officially in 1971. But prior to that, I think in the when it really started, we really took a huge leap of faith because there's nothing backing it anymore. It's a myth that you can take your dollar bill and turn it in for gold. Some guys in white coats will come and lock you up in a padded room for a little while. They said you can come and buy this gold ring with your cash, pretty much. You can buy gold bullion with it, but you cannot a trade. Yeah, exactly. And we're going to charge you some fees for that, too. So once we abandoned the gold standard, it was a big leap of faith, because, as Milton Friedman put it, quote, the pieces of green paper have value because everybody thinks they have value. And as long as we all think together and believe together, they will stay valuable. But there are certain times, there are certain occasions and events when we all believe that things become a little less valuable, that currency is a little less valuable than at other times. Right. So this perception of value can have an impact on the value of currency. And the Gregson gives a pretty good example. It's when we deflate or devalue currency relative to other currencies, which we'll do sometimes because we want to attract that currency's. Native investors over here in the US. Right. So, like, if right now you can buy five francs to the dollar, \u20ac5 to the dollar, and we say what? We want to encourage more investment in Europe, so we're going to let the dollar devalue, and we're going to make it so it's equal to \u20ac3, and then we'll stabilize it. Well, that will encourage more people in Europe to invest in the United States, because the Euro now has more buying power relative to the dollar. But everyone in the United States gets WTF. Yeah, we got all these dollars, and now it's worth less because you just told us that you're going to make it worth less relative to the Euro. Nothing really happened to the dollar, but everybody agreed literally overnight that the dollar is less valuable now because it was devalued. That's one way that currency can fluctuate these days. Yeah. I wish I had a better understanding of when people say what the dollar is worth. Sometimes it just makes my head spin. I have one for you. You're going to love this, man. Let's hear it. The Big Mac index. Oh, God. It's exactly what you just said. If you want an understanding of it, there is a guy in 1986 who wrote in The Economist, basically the Big Mac index, and it says, yeah, we've covered this in one of them bitcoins. Yeah, we may have done it in our superstar head to the economy then. That was 80 years ago, though. It was, yeah. So we'll go over it again. The Big Mac indexes, the price of a Big Mac relative to the price of a Big Mac in another country. Right. So it's basically saying you can and it's tongue in cheek, but it actually does kind of work. Right. You can show the buying power, the purchasing power of one currency relative to another based on how much a Big Mac costs in each country. The Big Mac. And once you see it and look at it like that. You go to the Economist and type in the Big Mac index, and it'll bring this up. And it's an interactive scale, which makes it awesome. And you understand relative purchasing power. I should spend some time on that side. Thank you. It will make me hungry. So then the other way that things can devalue is with supply. And that is just basically supply and demand. Like, when there's a lot more money available, it by nature becomes less valuable. Yes. Demand is high, prices go up. Supply is high, prices go down. Right. So that's inflation and deflation. That goes up. It goes down. Okay, I guess we should answer this. Are you watching the Simpsons? Every episode marathon. I've tuned in some here and there, but what I've really enjoyed is the influx of articles about the best seasons, the best episodes. It's really like a trip down memory lane. I do not have FXX, and so therefore I'm bereft yeah, but you've seen them all anyway. Yeah, but it'd be so nice to see them again like this. Yeah, they're running a non stop. Like, you wake up at 03:00 a.m. I know. Don't think I wake up at 03:00 am. And realize that I'm missing The Simpsons. Right, then. Well, you caught. Bed goes up, bed goes down. That's because I love the Simpsons. Exactly. So we talked about inflation and deflation, but if you want to know more about that, you should check out how Much Money is There in the World? Our superstar guide to the economy. Stagflation Those are all some good episodes we've done on that kind of thing. Yeah. And we mentioned earlier, I talked about I can see how you might be incentivized to just print loads of money if you want more of it. And we've covered another shows why that's a bad idea, but never has it been more evident than in post World War One Germany. This is amazing stuff. I think Zimbabwe beat them eventually, didn't they? I couldn't remember either Zimbabwe or Hungary. Well. No, I think it was Zimbabwe. Okay. I don't know. Maybe it was hungry. Remember Hungary had a revolution in the 40s that was just staggering numbers of hyperinflation. Yes, but this is a pretty good example of hyperinflation. Well, after World War One, germany owed in war reparations about $33 billion in, like, 19 $19? Yeah. They didn't have that kind of money, so they said, well, let's just print a bunch of it and see what happened. It's not going to be backed by any kind of commodity. And it resulted in hyperinflation to the extent where in 1923, it was called the hyperinflation of the Vimer Republic from June 1921 to January 1924. It's because they funded the war through borrowing, only they didn't, like, raise taxes to pay for the war. They literally borrowed money to pay for World War One. And it resulted in eventually 42 billion with a b German marks was equal to one penny of us money. And I didn't think that could be right. But it's right. Yeah. And it was so bad that there was something called a mental condition called zero stroke that it caused, which is when you're compelled to write endless rows of zeros. Oh, yeah. Because when you see some of these numbers is that even a number? Yeah, when you're trying to do these calculations. And there was an influx of zero stroke in germany at the time. And so I was wondering, like, how did Germany ever recover? They basically started over again and said, this isn't money anymore. We're going to start over and we're going to have a new bank issued shoe. Something called deutsche marks. No, the renta mark. And this is our new money. All that money is no good to start over from scratch. But this is actually back. There was a bank, the deutsche rent a bank, mortgaged land and industrial goods to the tune of about $3.2 billion. Like hard assets that were backing this money. And it worked. And it turned around almost overnight to the point where a us dollar was worth 4.2 rental marks. 4.2 billion. And I guess everyone just got on board. All right, that old money is no good. Wallpaper your walls with it. And now we have new money. You know, a lot of historians credit that really difficult period that Germany was put through, or put itself through, depending on who you ask, after world war one, is the reason why fascism was allowed to take hold there. I believe it. And the lead up to world war two, because when I say it stabilized, it stabilized the money overnight. But it still wasn't like they were still in bad shape. It took a while to dig out of that. Did you see that thing I sent you on calories shells? Oh, yeah, a little bit. Calorie shells are sea snail shells. They're little tiny white shells that look porcelain. And literally for about 2000 years, they were used as currency throughout the world. And they came almost exclusively from the maldives. And if you were an arab trader, you would go down to the maldives, you would buy about a million calories shells for one gold dinar. Then you go back to india or go to india, and you would sell 10,000 of them for a gold dinar. So you could just make a ton of money overnight. And then the further and further away they got from the maldives, and the closer and closer to china they got, which is this country that used these things like crazy, as they were worth less, they were worth more and more. Oh, more, yeah. And maldives, it's just like you just scoop up baskets full of them, right, and they were not nearly as valuable. But as you got away from the maldives, they grew more and more valuable, and they were used as currency literally until the mid 19th century. I mean, they started and we have the earliest reference in about 350 BCE. And in the 1850s is when the currency finally collapsed, just because there are so many of them on the market. That's crazy. That people would pay using 500,000 calories shells, and you'd have to count out 500,000 calorie shells, and then they use them because they were, like, pretty and they were hearty and didn't break real easy. They were portable, plentiful, small, so you could make change with them. Wow. Yeah. And people like them, so therefore they became currency, but they lasted as currency for like, 2000 years. Again, all you have to do is agree that something although that's a weird thing, because that's something you can just go out and find if you're in the right part of the world. If you're in the right exactly. That's why they were less valuable in the Maldives. More valuable. Like in China. Right. So you want to talk etymology? Yeah. You said what was the first one? You said the buck comes from buckskin and the sawbuck I don't know where saw buck is. A tenor, right? I believe so. The word fee comes from the German word for cattle, V-I-E-H. Interesting, right? Yeah. Speaking of shells, I believe Pacific Northwest tribes used wampum, which were white shells, and the phrase shell out comes from that. When you pay somebody in shells, you were shelling out. I wonder if that's where clams comes from. Probably. What's your funny word for money? Beans. Bones. Samolians. I tried to look up some Olivia, because everyone knows that's the cartoon currency, but I couldn't find anything. It kept defaulting and saying, do you mean Somali money? I was like, no, I mean Somalian. I even put cartoons, and I couldn't find much of anything except I couldn't find an origin. Like, who made that up? Right. Let's say Napoleon, since it rhymes. Maybe Chuck Jones. It's possible. You'd ask our friend Jessica? She might know. Yeah. You saw Charles, Schultz's granddaughter emailed us. No, I didn't see that. Yeah. So now Chuck Jones's granddaughter and Charles Schultz's granddaughter are both stuff you should know fans, which is pretty awesome. Yeah. I'm waiting for a return email. I was like, you got to give me some inside story here, please. About grandpa. Right? Exactly. Do you want to know the etymology of simoleon? Do you have it? Yeah. Man. How did my Google skills not pan out? I am proud of you, Chuck. Yeah. For not saying. Yeah. So simoleon is spelled S-I-M-O-L-E-O-N. It's an English word. All right. That's where I got sidetracked. They think that it is a late 19th century blend of simone, which is apparently a French word for dollar and Napoleon. Really? Yeah. And why was it exclusive to cartoons? I don't know, but they think it came from New Orleans in the late 19th century. So Simone was either dollar or six pence coin. It was a British slang. And Napoleon. So I guess that's where Somalian came from. Where did you get that? What's the website WordSense? EU. All right. I believe that EU. That says it all. They have a clean look to their website, which makes me believe that they know what they're talking about. Yeah, when you look at a website, you can get a lot of information about its accuracy. Just if it looks like a MySpace page from I hope MySpace is around in 1993, because the dance will write in yeah, it wasn't MySpace then. MySpace came about in 1994 in the word dollar itself account in Czechoslovakia in a town called well, it doesn't matter where it was. He started minting silver coins in 1519. Yakimov. And they were called taller grocen, which was shortened to Tallers and taller, eventually became dollar in the United States. And we talked in the Salt episode about how the word salary came from salt. So I looked again because I think you said that that wasn't true, that that's a myth, and it's not necessarily true that it's a myth. From what I can tell, it's just unproven. Got you. So in the first century, Pliny the Elder, the Roman historian, says good beer, too. That's what the word salt came from, where they used to pay soldiers in antiquity in Salt. But he doesn't back it up and they can't verify it. That's a good story. Yeah. The very least is about a 2000 year old story, so let's go with it. It's true. Yes. I had a history teacher in college, my best history teacher ever, that said, never let facts get in the way of a good story. I've heard that he was a good guy. I can't remember his name. He might have had him. Man, he was great. One of my first big inspirational teachers in college, that is. I got you. So much so that I don't remember his name. The one guy if you want to learn more about currency, you should listen to any number of our episodes on currency, including this one. Again. Or you can type currency into the search bar at How Stuff Works.com. It'll bring up this article. And since I said search bar, it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this rare shout out. We don't do this a lot, but I'm going to do it today because I like the cut of this dude's gym. My name is Jared Bagnall. Exclamation point. I'm writing to see if you could do a tribute to my wife, Brie Bagnall. When you're listening to mail, I'm a huge fan of you guys, but my wife is most definitely your number one fan. Can safely say that a few hundred of your listeners can be attributed to her alone. She has dozens of people hooked on YSK, and from them a dozen each. She's so excited every tuesday and Thursday that your podcast comes out, she tells everyone about them. She's the nicest person in the world caring, sweet, shy, and deserves some recognition for being so awesome. Our one year anniversary is coming up. Got married in Jamaica, and though it was an amazing experience, she's still bummed that we couldn't go with our family. I would like to see if you could dedicate your listener portion to her into our anniversary so everyone can know that she's great. That's pretty nice, Chuck. Thanks, Josh. Chuck and Jerry. Did I spell that right? No, you did not. How do you spell it? J-E-R-R-Y let's just get it on the record if we have it before. J-E-R-I. That's right. For the 5% of people who listen to listener mail here guys, this would be a great surprise for her while running into your podcast to hear this tribute. So, Jared, number two fan writing on behalf of Brie, number one fan. Happy anniversary. Way to go. Way to make it to the one year mark. Yeah. I wish you many more years of happiness to come. We both do. Yes. Speaking for Josh, although thanks, man. Do you wish them? Of course I do. Okay. I'm glad for them. Yeah. If you want to take your chances to see if Chuck will give you or your loved one a shout out on the episode the podcast. That's what I meant. Good luck. Exactly. You can try tweeting it to us at SYSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com, stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffbychano.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. You know you're are 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." | ||
4dc3f188-25fb-471f-b49a-ae6301070b23 | Selects: The Tylenol Murders, Part I | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-the-tylenol-murders-part-i | On one terrible day in Chicago in 1982, seven people died suddenly and mysteriously. In just a matter of hours, it becomes clear, someone has poisoned bottles of Extra-Strength Tylenol, one of the most trusted and widely-used products in America. Learn all about it in this classic episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | On one terrible day in Chicago in 1982, seven people died suddenly and mysteriously. In just a matter of hours, it becomes clear, someone has poisoned bottles of Extra-Strength Tylenol, one of the most trusted and widely-used products in America. Learn all about it in this classic episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Sat, 26 Mar 2022 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=85, tm_isdst=0) | 42616042 | audio/mpeg | "I was in the at and T store for an upgrade. I left with at and T's best deal on a smartphone and a choice of plan. But on my way out, here comes this new guy. A noncarrier phone and a plan that raised eyebrows. I felt for him when I tell you we left the store store grinning from ear to ear with the same deal. I love watching people prosper. You feel me? That's when I learned that whether you joined today or have been with at and T for years, they'll have the same best deals for everyone on every smartphone. Eligible plan required. Offers vary by device. Restrictions may apply. See att. Comdealsfordetails what if you are a gigantic snack food maker who needs to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to manage your supply chain with real time, data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM, 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. Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this week's select, I've chosen a two parter, one of the most baffling true crime mysteries ever to hit America. The Tylenol murders in part one, which you're about to hear. Now, we introduced the murders, the senseless deaths and the panic that gripped America. And then you'll hear from me again for part two. So in the meantime, enjoy part one and I'll see you soon. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Not me, too. Hi, Chuck. Guest producer Josh is back in the house. And then there's little Chuck in your pocket. Remember little Elvis? I was just about to say that. You got that right, Tina. Oh, man. What a great sketch. It really was. That was Nicolas Cage, wasn't it? Yeah, man. Did you ever see Mandy? Yes. It was terrible. I don't care what anybody else says, you hate it. Terrible movie. Yeah. Nolan and I talked about it on Movie Crush. He's seen it like four times. Thinks it's the best thing ever. Come on, Nolan. He was like, people either love it or hate it. And I was like, actually, I was kind of in the middle. Were you really? Yeah. I mean, I told him, young Chuck like, 22 year old college Chuck sure would have probably liked it a lot more. But today Chuck was kind of like I get it. Sure. Parts of it were fine. Sure. To me, spending an hour doing character development, but not successfully making you care about the characters just really irked me. Well, you had structural issues. Yeah, that was really the big thing. I also thought Linus Roach was very odd for casting, but who's that? Which one was the main bad guy that called later? That was weird. Very weird. I don't even know him, but he's from Law and Order and, like, some other stuff you got to get into. Law and Order missing out on that's becoming a bit do we start recording yet? I think so. Oh, I already welcomed everybody to the podcast. That's right. So, Chuck, this is some true crime stuff we're getting into here. That's right. But I feel like we need to set the tone right, because this didn't happen just yesterday. This happened way back in 1982 in Chicago, Illinois. And I remember this even though I was like six at the time. It was one of my favorite years. Because of this? No, the opposite of that. Right. Mainly because of movies. What was so great about 1982? Look it up, man. Well, I was kind of hoping et. Blade Runner. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. That was some of the best movies. Do you know I didn't see Blade Runner until I was 40? That's not true. Yes, it is. Oh, really? Yes. The original. The original Blade Runner. Did you like it? Yeah, it was good. I liked the second one, too, but they spent way too much time on character. Yeah. And I just did a little poking around about 1982, and it was a good year for an eleven year old, but it was an uneasy time in America. Well, for a bunch of awful things happened that year. And I don't know if it was any more or less than other years, but Air Flight 90 crashed into the Potomac River. Remember that? No. In Washington, DC. The plane crashed in the river. Didn't it hit a bridge? Maybe, but there was like a daring icy river rescue. Oh, really? Yeah. 78 people died, though, that same day, a Metro train in DC derailed killed three people. February was when Wayne Williams was convicted. Got you. And that was just the end of a lot of unease for years. Yeah. Claus Van Bula was found guilty of attempted murder of his wife in March. I didn't make it to the end of Reversal of Fortune, so I honestly didn't know what happened to Klaus. Guilty in June was the murder of Vincent Chen, who was a Chinese American who was beaten to death by two men in Michigan thinking he was a Japanese, and they were, like, stealing their auto work. Oh, my God. I know, right? And then July 9, Pan Am Flight 759 goes down in Louisiana, kills all 146 people on board, plus eight more on the ground. And then in September, early September, pretty tough was when I know, man. Remember planes used to just crash a lot? Yeah. That never happens now. Not as much, but yeah. Weird that we're recording it in the midst of more plane crashes. And then early September was when that paper boy in Iowa was kidnapped and never seen again. Johnny Ghosh. I don't know that one. That was a big deal too, because it was the paper boy, and there was this false story about a pedophile ring from politicians and that turned out not to be true, but he was never found again. So basically everything that's going on today is just a rehash of 1982, it sounds like. I just remember being about that age and they're just the nightly news sort of just being a horror show and not politically speaking, like really bad incidences occurring. Well, yeah, plane crash, like just about at any age that will bring you down if you see that on the news. For sure. Yeah. Because when you get on a plane, you think, maybe this plane will go down while I'm on it. And that would be terrible. Although I was applying at eleven, so all of those things you just mentioned, sweep them totally off the table. Okay. Because come the end of September of that year, nothing else mattered but what we're about to talk about now. That's right. Nothing came close to taking over the national psyche like the deaths of seven people beginning on September 29, 1982 in Chicago, Illinois. Yes. And one of the articles I read about this. Are we trying to keep it a secret? It's a show title, right? Yeah. I think they're going to have to figure it out. Go ahead. The Tylenol Murders. Yeah. Okay. You're like, oh, no, but that comes up in part two. Yeah, this is a two parter as well, so buckle in, everybody. So I was doing some research, though, and I saw one article that said something about, you know, the first domestic terror incident in United States that nobody's ever heard of. I was like, what? Who hasn't heard of this? A millennial wrote that headline. Well, I have to say, Josh on the way in here yeah. I told him, Tylenol murders and he went, huh? He goes, what's? Tylenol, you old codger. We should probably say what Tylenol is, huh? Oh, okay. Yeah. I guess just in case you are a millennial, you've never heard of Tylenol. But Tylenol was and still is an overthecounter pain reliever. It's like you have aches and pains and apparently what's crazy people would take Tylenol, whatever was wrong with them. Right. Because now you can go get aspirin and you can get Advil and a lead. There was no leave back then. That was the 90s drug. There's way more overthecounter pain relievers now than there were back then. Back then, Tylenol was basically it. Yeah, it's acetaminophen, which is different than aspirin. And I think a lot of people just think those are interchangeable. Right. The reason I believe Tylenol became so big is because Aspirin upsets a lot of people's stomachs. Right. Tylenol does not, or it's not supposed to. And that's why it came out of nowhere and just took over the Asper market. I think by 1982, Tylenol had 37% of the market. It's pretty good cornered. Yeah, almost half. Especially since some of the other Aspirants have been around since 19th century. Right. So it makes sense then, that when a little girl named Marianne Kellerman complained that she had a sore throat and wasn't feeling too good at 07:00 A.m. On Wednesday, September 29, 1982, her parents said, just take an extra strength Tylenol and go back to bed, man, for sore throat. Can you imagine the guilt? Oh, no. These parents feel, well, don't blow it. We haven't said what happens to Mary Ann Kellerman yet. I think everybody knows. Yeah. She got up, said, I'm sick. He said, Take this. The father said he heard her going to the bathroom and closed the door, then heard something drop and went to the door, saying, Are you okay? You're okay? No answer. Opened the door, and there she is on the floor. Taken to the hospital, but died very quickly. Yeah. Probably was dead when she went to the hospital, was pronounced there. And they suspected this is just a little twelve year old middle school girl into Jane Adams Middle School. They think she died of a stroke. That's what they thought happen to her. They were just so baffled that they're like, it had to have been a stroke. That's the only thing that can come on like this. Yeah. So that's 07:00 A.m.. The day is just beginning, and one atrocity has already happened. Yeah. This is a very bad day in the history of Chicago. September 20, 1982. Yeah, absolutely. And it started early. Adam Janice, who will detail his story, but put a pin in this one, too, because he figures in even more prominently in a minute. But a little bit later that same morning, this gentleman, Adam Janice, he's 27 years old and lived in Arlington Heights, another Chicago suburb, and he died. And they think that this is a heart attack. He complained of chest pains after he had driven his daughter's neighbor home from school, said, I'm going to take the day off. Comes home, eats a little lunch, takes two extra strength Tylenol that he bought from a local drugstore, collapses in front of his wife, and by a few minutes later, when the paramedics arrived, he was dead. Right. And again, like you said, they said heart attack because he'd been complaining of chest pains, which had nothing to do with it. Right. But just like Marianne Kellerman took an extra string thylanol for sore throat, he took some extra string thylanol for some chest pains. This is just what people did back then. Yeah. And that's what complicated it a little bit at first, was that if you take the Tylenol, it means you felt bad already. So obviously they're going to be saying, like, wait a minute, chest pains or sore throat, how does that figure in? And it didn't. Plus, also what made this even more baffling is that Marianne Kellerman was twelve and healthy. Adam Janice was 27 and healthy, and all of a sudden they just dropped dead. People don't just drop dead. No matter what you see on TV or in the movies or whatever. Dropping dead inexplicably is a really bizarre thing when you're a healthy person. Doesn't happen. Next. We have Mary Reiner. Same day, same day. This is still all on the same day. She's 27 years old. She's feeling a little dizzy. She had just come home from the hospital after having given birth to her fourth kid a couple of days before. Super sad. All of these are obviously, but being just a brand new mom for the fourth time is just so tragic. Then by 345, she was so ill, she was rushed back to the hospital and again died very quickly. Yeah. And like, Adam Janice collapsed in front of his wife. She collapsed in front of her young eight year old daughter. One of her children saw her, and yet when she was taken to hospital, they pronounced her dead as well. This is midafternoon. Mary McFarland was up next. She was over in the suburb of Lombard, and she worked at the Illinois Bell Phone Center. Where do you remember you'd go get your phone, like the rotary phone, you would actually lease your phone? I wasn't involved in that process, but we had them in our home. Okay, well, your parents never knew that. I figured they just bought that stuff. No, there was like a store where you would go it's like the phone company's retail store, and you would go and be like, that pink one. It's like smartphones today, kind of. Same model, kind of. Yeah, I guess so. But this is with a big clunky rotary phone, and you had to pay extra for the extra long court. Well, Mary McFarland worked in one of these stores, and at about 04:00 at the Illinois Bell Phone Center, she had a massive headache that just came on out of nowhere, and she went back and got some extra strength Tylenol out of her purse, took a couple of them, and within minutes collapsed in the store. Yes, she was young as well. She was 31 years old, mother of two. And then remember I was talking about Adam Janice a few minutes ago. His family goes to the hospital. Obviously, everyone converges there. He passes away, and so the family make their way home to begin mourning and just sort of trying to reconcile what had just happened. His brother Stanley, he was only 25, and then his wife Theresa, who was only 19, are both just overcome and worn out and have headaches. So there at Adam's house, they go to his medicine cabinet, get out the Tylenol that he took, completely unknowingly, obviously. And Stanley hits the ground, foam comes from his mouth, his eyes roll back in his head, everyone's freaking out. And a few minutes later his wife collapses and they call the ambulance. By the time the ambulances get there, I think Stanley died that day. And Teresa somehow managed to live a couple of days. Yeah. She hung on and I don't know if her dose is lesser or what, but she survived for a couple of days after that. Yeah. My guess is that there just wasn't as much cyanide in the capsule she took. Right. Did I just give something else away? Yeah, you did. So Stanley took his Tylenol first and then Teresa took hers. And one of the paramedics noted, like Teresa was the one that called the ambulance out to come out for Stanley. And when they get there, they're both like on the ground like, what's going on? And when the paramedics said everything that was happening to the guy happened to the woman like a couple of minutes later. Right. She was just following him through this process of basically systemic organ failure. And this is the same day that his brother had passed away? Yup. This is about five, 6 hours. 6 hours after Adam Janice had died. Then finally I know this is all tough to go through. Everyone. We almost selected this as our next live show. I'm really glad we did because can you imagine trying to liven this up with some jokes? I saw it the whole time. I was like, no, we can do that. But yeah, the more I got into it, I was like, yeah, it's probably not good live material. Right. We should have a rule of thumb that any story that begins with the death of a twelve year old girl probably is not live show material. Yeah, I think you're right. So finally we have Paula prints. Paula Jean Prince. This is a couple of days later. This is not the same day. This is on Friday evening. She was a 35 year old flight attendant and she was found dead in her apartment after police responded for a welfare check that her sister called in saying, hey, I know she's applied a tenant and all, but no one knows where she is. Can you go check on her? A welfare check up. And they finally found her and she was gone. Yes. Very sad. She was found in her bathroom with a bottle of extra strength tile and all still open on the counter. And they looked into her receipts and found that she had purchased it on Wednesday, September 29. That's right. So at the end of this very short span of time in the Chicago area, we have seven people dead. And I feel like that's a good time to take a message break. Yeah. Yeah. The world doesn't need just another chardonnay. What it needs is Martha Chard, the Martha Stewart Chardonnay that's the newest addition to the 19 Crimes family of wines. Martha Shard is a contemporary lens on 19 Crimes. It's the wine that disrupts the chardonnay category. 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To reach new heights, you need the type of network that can keep up with you, with no hoops to jump through. Just fast 5G speeds for downloading and reduce lag. Plus 24/7 network protection with automatic fraud call blocking with at and T Active Armor. So join at and T and discover the power of 5G through our 5G compatible devices. At download of apps required. Five G may not be available in your area. For coverage details, see att. Comfiveg for you, visit www. Dot att. Comcallprotect for details. 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 500 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 do it all without breaking a sweat. And you do it all in style. That's why Infinity fully reimagined the QX 60 to help you take on everything with ease. A luxury SUV as functional as it is stylish, as versatile as it is serene. Available features like a panoramic moonroof, ample cargo space and massaging front seats. Introducing the all new 2022 Infinity QX 60, designed to help you take on life in style. Visit infinityusacom to learn more. Now, with extremely limited availability, contact your local retailer for inventory information. Okay, chuck, you said cyanide. How did you know that? Because I was eleven years old and I watched the nightly news like all eleven year olds did. He just called it right. Just me and Brokaw. Dan Rather. Yes. Copple. Who else? That was it. Peter Jennings. He came a little later, but sure. Was he? Yeah, he came after somebody. Well, I mean, Cronkite wasn't still around, was he? Or was he? I don't know. I don't think so. I was kind of into the news as a kid, a little bit. Oh, yeah. I mean, that was where you got your news back then. Yes. You would watch the evening news. It's very strange to think about now with the up to the minute news cycle. Oh, yeah. I know. How much more innocent things were back then. I know. So remove yourself from the benefit of hindsight or the benefit of Dan Rather's insight and put yourself in the shoes of the people in Chicago. Right? Yeah. These are seven different deaths, I think from five different townships in the greater Chicago area, including Chicago. Paula Prince, the last person to die, lived in Chicago. These people aren't talking. These people have no idea what's going on. It's just that there were seven separate baffling deaths. You keep saying five. You want two fewer people to be dead? Yeah, I do. That's good. My voices aren't working, though. It just so happens that the ambulance, the paramedics that showed up to attend to Marianne Kellerman, the first girl to die, they were just logging everything because there was such a baffling thing and they logged her tile and all. Yeah. Logged as in collected. Right. Took it as evidence to maybe look into who knows? Sure. But they took the extra strength Tylenol that she had taken, not thinking anything of it, but just basically throwing anything at the wall to see what stopped. Yeah. I'm sure the dad was like, she went and took some Tylenol and dropped dead. So it probably made sense, even though it's just Tylenol, to say, like, well, hey, let's at least take this in. Yes. And that Tylenol, right? Because that bottle of Tylenol made its way into the hands of a medical examiner whose name was Michael Schaefer and Michael Shaffer tested the Tylenol and was rather surprised to find that some of the capsules had not Tylenol in it, but 65 milligrams of potassium cyanide. And it takes about 50 milligrams to kill a healthy adult. Yeah, I don't think they're all exactly the same, but some of them had been completely emptied of any acetaminophen and completely filled with cyanide. With cyanide, right. Yeah. I mean, it was someone intent on, for sure, killing people. Yes. Because cyanide is no joke. It's a really small molecule, and it normally attaches to metals outside of the body, which is why you have minerals, I guess, which is why you have potassium cyanide. Right. When it goes into the body. When you ingest it, however you ingest it, whether it's from a Tylenol capsule or breathing cyanide gas, like they used to use to execute people with. Yeah. They stopped using it for executions because it was such a brutal death. Yeah. It's a very cruel, painful way to die in the body. It detaches from its mineral or metal, and it attaches to a protein in the body called cytochrome C oxidase, which doesn't sound like it would be a big problem, but it turns out that that's about the worst protein that cyanide could attach itself to because we really need cytochrome C oxidase to breathe. Yeah. Basically, this sounds like such a cruel thing because it's just rapid cell death, and it's not like your throat closes up and you can't breathe. You're inhaling oxygen, and you are technically taking breaths, but the oxygen is not getting in the cells. No, it's not, because the cytochrome C oxidase is what helps transport the oxygen and allows the oxygen to be used for energy. So if the potassium is clinging to it, the oxygen can't it just stays in the bloodstream, and it doesn't get used by the cells. And since your central nervous system is the most oxygen hungry system in your entire body, that's a lot of work. It starts to shut down first. And when your brain and your spinal cords start shutting down, all sorts of things happen. Your lungs start shutting down. Your heart, God bless it, keeps beating for minutes after the rest of your body shut down. So you're not technically dead. They're not sure exactly how long the pain and excruciation of dying from cyanide lasts, but they think you're probably conscious and aware and freaked out for about a minute, at least. And your heart may continue beating for three or four minutes after that. So it's not a pleasant death at all. No. I mean, you're gasping for air. You're breathing in air. Nothing's happening. Like I said, Stanley, Janice, he was foaming at the mouth, and his eyes rolled back in his head in front of his family. It's just like it's awful, like writhing on the floor, gasping for air. You're breathing, but it's not doing anything. I can't imagine anything more horrifying right. Because your central nervous system is kind of falling out of control or rhythm convulsions are usually a hallmark of cyanide poisoning. And then you turn bright red at the end of it. Yeah, a cherry red, they said, because when your body has gotten rid of oxygen to your cells and the oxygen becomes depleted. Your skin kind of turns like a rusty brownish red. But because it can unload that oxygen when you're dead, it stays a bright red and your skin turns bright red. And then the other real telltale sign is your breath will smell a bit like almonds. Yeah, not a bit. These bottles supposedly were really pungent with bitter almond, and unless you know what that means, then you're probably not clued in. I wouldn't have known if I opened a bottle of Tylenol and it smelled like bitter almond. I'd probably be like, right. It's a nice smell, actually. Yeah, I like this tile and all. I guess they have a new almond flavor. Awful. So Michael Schaefer, the medical examiner, has just realized that this little girl has been poisoned, but he knows nothing about these other deaths. There's nothing like that. It's not entirely clear how everything became connected or who connected it, but what I find just particularly astonishing is that within just a few hours, by that evening, by the evening of September 29, people were saying, there's something up with the tylenol in these mysterious deaths that have been going on all around Chicago. Yeah, I mean, we'll get into the dragnet they cast, but within a few days, they had kind of solved everything but who did it and how it may have happened, who done it? So, yeah, very quickly they figured out the tylenol. There are a couple of different stories, like you said, on who was the first person to point this out. One story is that a reporter for the City News bureau in Chicago was doing the reporter thing and then doing some deep diving and investigating, and called up a deputy coroner and said, hey, I think this is what's happening. They told the police. Another story is that two people who didn't know each other kind of came together independently to let people know. One was a fire captain named Philip Capitali. I knew you were going to do that. There was like a 90% chance. You know why? Because we got a lot of support from people that wrote in saying, I'm Italian and I love it, keep doing it. Right. And only one guy who hated it. But ironically, it was fire Captain Philip Capitali who had written in and said no. So here was his deal. His mother in law was friends with Mary Kellerman, the victim's mother. Yes, the first of the little girl. And she said, hey, would you mind looking into this, because I'm friends with this little girl's mom, and it's weird that she dropped that at twelve and he's a fire captain, and they're all connected to the police and to the medical community. Everybody knows you want something done, ask a fire captain. I would, sure. Because they'll bust into the room with an axe, get everybody's attention. So he's investigating and then there's. A nurse named Helen Jensen. Do you know why she was so into this case? Was she just a do gooder? No, she was the public health nurse for Cook County, I believe. Okay, so she had an official designation to investigate. Yes. But unfortunately no one would listen to her because this is 1982 and she was a nurse. Right. Even though she was like a public health director, she was still a nurse and people wouldn't list her. And she recalled in an oral history I read about this, that she was stomping her feet out of frustration, saying, there's something wrong with the Tylenol. The Tylenol is behind all this. And people wouldn't listen to her. Amazing. Supposedly she and Philip Capital got together and joined forces. Right. And I guess we're able to convince everybody that, no, there's something wrong with the tile and all. And by this time, people started talking. Sure. And the idea that Michael Schaefer had identified Tylenol, I don't know if it was the same day or the day after, something like that, but all this is within a span of 36, 48 hours. Top, it was really fast that all of this is going on, that the dots are being connected. Right. So then what follows is Cook County Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Edmund Donahue holds a presser I've either watched this one or one of the other ones. I remember specifically seeing this press conference on the news. Probably saw Jane Burns. That would have been the nationwide one, I guess. Yeah. And I was like, how would that have been nationwide? And then I looked it up. WGN was a superstition starting in 1980. Oh, you know it, man. So everybody saw it because WGN could broadcast nationwide by 1982. I watched Cubs games as a kid just because it was on. Yeah, that was it. Like that. Embrace games for all you can. Yes, man. So Dr. Donahue has a presser, a local presser. Of course, there is panic initially. Yeah. He scares the s out of everybody because he comes out of nowhere and says, stop taking the Tylenol. Oh, yeah, sure. And so anyone I mean, imagine how many people in Chicago had taken Tylenol within 2 hours of that press conference and are thinking like, should I go to the hospital? Right. And as a matter of fact, the poison control lines, basically in every city where somebody saw this started to light up right after that. People were like, I just took Tylenol. Am I okay? Or gave my kid. Can you imagine? And what came to be the pat response was, if you are still standing and talking to us, you're probably okay, which is sort of a double edged sword. Right. It's like, don't worry, you die super fast. Right? Kind of. So just relax. So just hold the line for five minutes and then I'm going to come back and check on you. And if you're still talking, you're fine. Oh, man. All right. So then the Chicago Mayor's office gets involved, like you said. Mayor Jane Byrne. She says, Print a bunch of flyers. Print them in a bunch of languages, maybe on goldenrod and cornflower blue. Sure, why not? Really catch people's attention. She had police drive through with loudspeakers on their car, literally saying, like, don't take Tylenol. Reenacting that scene from the Blues Brothers where they're driving. I was thinking Slacker. That's funny. Two different movies. But do you remember they're driving through in the police car with the loudspeaker talking about their show? Yeah, same as Slacker. I don't remember. I guess I didn't make you to the end of Slacker either. It was in the middle ish there was no days and confused. Oh, just different movies. Okay, so they're posting flyers, cops are driving around, blaring it through neighborhoods, and then she has a press conference. She has all Tylenol removed from the Chicago area. She calls for it. Well, sure. She didn't go around with her basket. Right now, I'm not 100% clear if she was actually able to demand that the title and all be removed. I think she was more warning. Yeah. I mean, I doubt if there was any law she could invoke. I wonder, though, afterwards. I would imagine. We'll talk about that later. Okay. So the TV and the radio, obviously, everyone picks us up, not just in Chicago or the United States. It goes worldwide. And so there's people in Europe and Asia pulling Tylenol off the shelf. Yeah. So this is a big deal, and there is a lot of attention lavished on this. There was a poll that was taken the next month in October that found that 90% and this was in cities all over the country that found that 90% of respondents were aware of this Tylenol poisoning story. Yeah, some press agency, like a news clipping service, said that the number of stories dedicated to it were second only to the number of stories dedicated to the assassination of JFK. That's how big the story became overnight. And again, one of the reasons why is because everybody took Tylenol for everything all the time. That's just what you did. It was just something everyone took. And that same product was now killing people. So the most chilling part of all this to me, and this is all chilling, maybe the copycat stuff, because almost immediately, copycat incidences started popping up all over the country. There were 270 reports of product tampering in the month after. 36 were, quote, hardcore true tamperings. And that's what's the most chilling to me is. Like, there were that many people, at least 36 let's go on the low end. 36 people across the country that wanted to kill people and just saw an idea, and we're like, oh, that's what I'll do now. I should have thought of that myself. I mean, that's scary, man. Yeah. What's scary, but also infuriating is that there's such terrible self starters that they had to be a copycat murderer in that. Right. You know what I'm saying? Sure. Like, it's bad enough that they're trying to kill somebody, randomly kill somebody, anonymously kill somebody, they didn't even think of it themselves. I know. That is a pathetic murderer right there. Pretty pathetic. Put my foot down. Extra strength excedrin capsules were found, poison with mercury chloride, and that almost killed a man in Colorado. His name was William Sinkovich, and he had liver and kidney failure, but he did survive. This one gets me. More than one person thought, oh, well, people spray and drop things in their eyes and nose. I'll put acid in there. So tampered synax and tampered Visene both turned up after they had burned people with acid. Chemical burned up your nose. Unbelievable. Yeah. That's a bad one. So food was also on the list of things being tampered with. Orange juice, chocolate milk. Very high profile incident with Ballpark hot dogs. They pulled a million pounds of wieners off the shelves and ran them through a metal detector. Yeah, because this was a scare. The old urban legend of razor blades and Halloween candy. Did they actually find pins and needles and things? For sure, yes. Okay. Because I thought that had literally never happened. It hadn't. It was an urban legend that became true. Okay. But nothing in the wieners. No. Some boys, I think, in Detroit claim to have found razor blades in there, ballpark, wieners. And like you said, a million pounds were recalled. And then the boys were like, well, we were just kidding. Wow. Yeah. We'll talk about how ballpark was treated after that, but they were put on shoulders and carried around for how great they handled everything. And there were a lot of hoaxes. There were a lot of tips called in about other tampering. And if the purpose of this was to induce panic and fear and terror, then it absolutely worked. Absolutely. Should we take another break? I think so. Man we're going to come back and talk about the investigation. The world doesn't need just another chardonnay. What it needs is Martha Shard, the Martha Stewart chardonnay that's the newest addition to the 19 Crimes family of wines. Martha Shard is a contemporary lens on 19 Crimes. It's the wine that disrupts the chardonnay category. Brought to you by Martha Stewart. The original influencer, martha Shard is light and drinkable with a medium straw color, satisfying the palette with bright notes of citrus and round stone fruit with a crisp, clean finish framed by a distinctly sweet oat character. Martha stard is exactly what the world needed. And what you need is to make this refreshing crowd pleaser the star of your next party or gathering, because Martha Shard just might be the perfect summer wine. So come on, let's work hard, play hard, and drink. Martha's Shard, available at a wine aisle near you. And on 19 Crimes.com, that's one nine Crimes.com. Please drink responsibly. Smartphones are getting smarter, faster, and that might freak some of you out. It's hard to keep up. Trust me. I'm lying when I say I know what LTE means. So let's simplify wireless together. Just fast, reliable, secure. At and T 5G now that's more surprising than making the league at 5ft. To reach new heights, you need the type of network that can keep up with you, with no hoops to jump through. Just fast 5G speeds for downloading and reduce lag. Plus 24/7 network protection with automatic fraud call blocking with at and T Active Armor. So join at and T and discover the power of 5G through our 5G compatible devices. At and T download of apps required. Five G may not be available in your area. For coverage details, see att. Comfiveg for you, visit www. Dot att. Comcallprotect for details. 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 are in 50,000 Advantage bonus miles after qualifying purchases, Adventure is on. So fasten your seatbelt and put away your tray table, because there's so much world to see and the Cityadvantage Platinum Select Card is your ticket. You can learn more at City comAdventure and travel on with Cityadvantage. You do it all without breaking a sweat, and you do it all in style. That's why Infinity fully reimagined the QX 60 to help you take on everything with ease. A luxury SUV as functional as it is stylish, as versatile as it is serene. Available features like a panoramic moonroof, ample cargo space and massaging front seats. Introducing the all new 2022 Infinity QX 60, designed to help you take on life in style. Visit infinityusacom to learn more. Now, with extremely limited availability, contact your local retailer for inventory information. Okay, Chuck, I also want to point this out. Time magazine. You know how I'm, like, super into going back and reading contemporary news articles about an event? Yes. This one is all over the place. But Time wrote about the copycat incidents back in 1982, and they said that the Copycats were trying to, quote, emulate their demonic hero, the still unknown Poisoner. The demonic hero? That's what the journalists from Time decided to go with. That's funny. That seems like a very 2019 thing to write. That's what I'm saying. I feel like we're reverting back to 1982 right now. Are we? I guess so. After that intro of yours, I'm now convinced. So everybody's freaked out. There are whole towns that canceled Halloween, because, remember, this happened like, a month before Halloween, and everyone was very scared about candy tampering because of the urban legend. Sure. In some places, it turned out to be true. A self fulfilling prophecy. There were all these hoaxes. There are all these actual true product tampering copycats. People were freaked out, and the cops needed to do something. And initially, these seven different deaths in five different towns in the Chicago area were being treated as five different investigations. That didn't last very long. Within two days, by Friday, by the time mayor byrne holds a press conference on WGN, what came to be called the tylenol task force was formed. All five of those investigations got folded into not just local investigations, the FBI, the Illinois state police, FDA. Of course. Yeah, the FDA was involved. And then the whole thing was led by the Illinois district attorney's office, who was the nominal head of the investigation. Yeah. So they figured out pretty quickly that, like I said earlier, they cast their dragnet. They come up with about a 50 miles radius of where all this stuff was bought and sold and go investigate drugstore after drugstore. And they did find more bad tylenol that's still sitting on the shelves, thankfully. Yeah, I don't want to skim past that. They found more tylenol waiting to be bought. That's right. Like, just sitting there like, hey, come by me. Within two days of the first deaths. That's right. These first murders, we keep calling them deaths. These were murders. That's right. And they name their case. They're always code names for all these cases. This one ranks pretty low, in my opinion. Timers. T-Y-M-U-R-S. Short, obviously, for Tyler and all murders. At the very least, the s should have been a z. Timers. Yeah. Just give it a little flavor. Agreed. There was some confusion about how this went down, because they're trying to figure out, did it happen at the factory? Did it happen after the factory? What's the supply chain like? That's huge. It's like the crux of the investigation. Absolutely. Where did the tainting occur? Yeah. So they found out that all of the containers were from lot number MC 28 80, which was pushed out in august. Again, this is the end of September. All states east of the Mississippi, plus the dakotas, nebraska, and a bit of Wyoming. Just a touch of Wyoming for flavor. That's right. Like the z for that mesquite flavor. Right. However, they were from different production plants and they were sold in different drug stores, which is weird. It's tough to wrap your head around that because it's the same lot, but they came from different plants. Right. And it turns out tylenol has also a really weird convoluted distribution network. I think that's every company okay, I have a friend that works in supply chain management, and I was like, so supposedly they'll take boxes and open them up and repackage them in smaller boxes. And it happens at different companies at different points around the country. Yeah, it's pretty complicated. It is. From a product from factory to your mouth. Right. Like, what happens to kind of everything. I would think simplicity would be safer. Much. Probably not cheaper, though. You're probably right. So what they finally figured out was, here's what we think happened is this stuff was not tainted at the factory. This stuff was not tainted in the supply chain, but this stuff was tainted from the store and then returned back to the store. Right. Because these pills were sold in different stores, which is a big one, because not only could it have been, like, part of the factory, it could have been one of the local stores distribution centers where there was somebody messing with it. Right. But since they were sold in jewel food stores in walgreens and other places, too, around the chicago area, that didn't make any sense. It couldn't have just been like, the jewel distribution center. And also, because they were coming from different production plants, it really couldn't have been the production plant or the factory where it came from. It had to be, like you said, happening at the stores. Yeah. And there were a lot of initial theories. Was it someone who, like, a former disgruntled employee of Johnson and Johnson? Was it just a serial killer who just picked tylenol and wanted to randomly kill people? Right, and that's weird. That's a weird idea at the time. Like, now it just seems normal, probably sad. But this was two years before the san diehdro McDonald's massacre, which is one of the next random killings of people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This was kind of the first of that. But it was still so new and remote and alien. That didn't seem like a realistic idea at the time. Yeah, some of the other ideas, they thought maybe this was someone that was targeting a specific person or people and then randomly poisoned other people to cover their tracks. One of the weird theories that came out later, after spoiler alert, we now have tamper proof medicines. I'm sure everyone's noticed. There was one theory that it was someone who had a financial stake in tamper proof technology. Yeah, I saw something like that, too. I don't think there was ever a ton of credence put into that one. But point is, they were flying blind, basically because it was just such an unexpected, odd, random thing. They were basically coming up with kind of any idea they could think of. But the one that the cops settled on and the one that Johnson and Johnson also settled on too because they went back and tested samples from lot MC 28 80 and found that there was no tainting of the lot. Their samples were pure. So the cops and Johnson and Johnson both decided they settled on what's called the Mad Poisoner Theory. Right. That somebody went around this 50 miles radius in the Chicago area in about 7 hours is what the cops calculated it would have taken either bought a bunch of Tylenol and then took it back to their house and poisoned it. Repackaged it and then drove around and redistributed it or went from store to store. Went in. Bought some tile and all. Took it out to the car. Poisoned it and then repackaged it and brought it back in. But it was local and it was specific to Chicago. That was the mad poisoner theory. And again, why still? No one has any idea why. It could have been random. They could have been targeting somebody. It could have been a disgruntled Johnson and Johnson employee. But the main theory for the Tylenol killings of 1982 in Chicago is the Mad Poisoner Theory. Yeah. And do you know how they tested the rest of that lot? They got Detective John Pinky McFarland who had the best drug pinkie in all of Illinois and he went around and dipped that pinkie in, touched it to his tongue, said it's good. He's like, I can't feel my face right now. The guy is a legend. Yeah. His pinky ring is so significant he can barely lift his finger. He only listed to test drugs. I told you we'd find some jokes. Sure. So by mid October, this is sort of the final bit of part one here. There was another bottle that people that they found another tainted bottle this is so crazy. That was purchased on September 29 so it fit the bill and it was a woman who was feeling bad and went to go get that Tylenol and her sister was like, no, I've got some buffering right here, just go ahead and take that. And the lady presumably said, well, I really prefer Acetaminophen, but I guess we'll take an aspirin. Yeah. Her sister in law saved her by offering her buffering instead. She was steps away from dropping dead at a family gathering. Unbelievable. Yes. That is a good place to stop, huh? Yeah. So that's part one of the Tylenol murders or Tylers with an S. And we're going to come back with part two after this if you want to get in touch with us in the meantime, you can go on to Stuffyoushodenow.com and check out our social links or you can send us a good oldfashioned email 1982 version 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. The Neogen device developed by Rst synthesis is a well established, advanced, quantum based 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 Neogenreliefspanecom Now for Provider benefits. About the Neogen System come chat with us. That's Neogenreliefspain.com. Your patience will thank you. You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet. At Halo, we get it because we're pet moms, too. We make natural, high quality pet food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopetscom. Hey, it's Delilah. We can all use a hug now and again. I wish I could deliver them all in person, but since that's not possible, my daily podcast, hey, it's Delilah is the next best thing. It will wrap you in ten to 15 minutes of happy, heartwarming, hopeful radio content every Monday through Friday at whatever time of day you need it the most. Find. Hey, it's Delilah. And get your radio hug." | |
45129e1c-ba8a-11e8-9ed2-7711f876395c | Short Stuff: Korean Fan Death | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-korean-fan-death | There’s a commonly-held belief in Korea that if you fall asleep with a fan blowing on your face you may die in your sleep from it. And while this idea is found nowhere else in the world, Korean culture has come up with some interesting explanations. | There’s a commonly-held belief in Korea that if you fall asleep with a fan blowing on your face you may die in your sleep from it. And while this idea is found nowhere else in the world, Korean culture has come up with some interesting explanations. | Wed, 17 Oct 2018 13:49:48 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=13, tm_min=49, tm_sec=48, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=290, tm_isdst=0) | 13007046 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to Short Stuff, the very brief stuff you should know. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Jerry. Welcome. Yeah, this is cool. When I remember hearing hearing about this, and it may have been when this article was written by our friend Debbie Ronka, but I remember hearing about this, and it was the first time I ever heard about this odd superstition in Korea and thinking, this can't be true. I know. I keep waiting for Korea to be like, guys, we're kidding. We have this Onion like publication over here that made this up. It's been a national jokes in the 70s. You guys really took it seriously. But no, they seem to have octopled down on this over the years. Yeah. So just very briefly, there is a superstition in Korea that if you sleep with a fan on in your room at night, you could die. Yeah. Just a regular old fan. It might even be likely that you'll die. And you call it superstition. Some people call it folklore. Other people call it an urban legend. In Korea, they call it fact. Yeah. It's fan death. Right. Not only is it, like, the average Korean person believes that you will die, like, believes this is true, the makers of fans put warnings about this stuff on their fans, they say, may cause death if you leave it on overnight. Like, the fans in Korea have timers on them so that if you fall asleep with it on, it'll shut off. People sleep with their windows open and their fan on in the heat of the summer so that they don't die overnight. It's very much a widely held belief in Korea. Yes. Not only that, like you said, tripled and quadrupled. Their Consumer Protection Board in 20 05 20 05, not 1895, issued a warning that said, Beware summer Hazards exclamation point. And there were a lot of warnings, but one of them had to do with electric fans, and it said, Leave your doors open when using a fan while sleeping. You could possibly dehydrate die of hypothermia or die from decreased oxygen, which are all they're hedging their bets there, because there's a lot of explanations for this. Yeah. And in that same Summer Hazards Warning Report or whatever, it attributed 20 deaths between 2003 and 2005 to fans. Not fans landing on someone. No. Or cutting your face off or something. Just fans. Yes. The air blowing from fans killing you because you slept with one blowing on your face overnight. Right. Yeah. And there are apparently in Korea, and I should say, if you'll notice, we're saying Korea, not South Korea or North Korea, just in case they've unified by the time this comes out. I wonder if it's probably true in both, though, don't you think? I would very much assume that, although it's entirely possible that it is just South Korea because they took away all the fans in North Korea. Well, no. I mean, Korea was divided in 1950 by 1950, if not sooner. Yeah, good point. This started in the early 1970s. I actually can point to not necessarily the first news report or the first day that it happened, but it definitely started in the early 70s, which is kind of bizarre because Korea, both north and south, had had fans since 1900, back when there was just one Korea, toshiba was making fans that people had in their homes all the way back in 1900. And from 1900 to 1970, no fan deaths. And then all of a sudden, there's such a thing as fan deaths. Yeah. And some people point to a 70s ad campaign to conserve electricity, and maybe, like, the government got involved and said, hey, if we cook up this story about fan death, it'll get people to turn off their fans or put them on a timer, and we can conserve electricity. I don't fully rule that out, actually. I don't either. But what you've just said is an urban legend within an urban legend. Is it really? Yeah, because it's not verified as fact. Okay. It's just people are kind of ascribing that it's as made up as fan death, really, from what I understand. Got you. But it's fascinating. And I don't really rule it out either. Apparently, the leader during the time of the oil embargo from OPEC that led to this energy crisis, you wouldn't put it past them, actually. Yeah. To propagandize this. Yeah, just to he was very much dedicated to Korea becoming self sufficient at any cost, and that would be a pretty cheap cost, like just tricking everybody into thinking fan. That's the thing. Well, and here's the thing, too. What likely is happening and we'll get to in a bit, like, all the real reasons and kind of debunk those, but what likely is happening is they find a dead person. It's usually an old person who died of natural causes, probably, or from drinking or drugs or something, and a fan is on in the room. And because it's a thing, they attribute you to fan death. But it's weird to me that they weren't like, it's mattress death. Yeah. Or whatever. Anything in the room. Right. It's ugly. Shag carpet death. No. But I'm with you because what you just said is. Like. Probably the origin of fan death. Or at least the popularization of it. That somebody walked into a room. Found a dead body sleeping or dead in its bed. And the only thing that was going on in the room was the fan blowing on them and that something in their brain just went wrong. And they saw the fan like a murderer standing over a dead body. Like they just caught it or something like that. Even though they have absolutely nothing to do with one another. Yeah. And here's the deal. Our very own EPA here in the United States says when it's really hot during a big heat wave, they even say, don't direct the flow of a fan right toward yourself when the temperature is hotter than 90 degrees Fahrenheit, which is super, super hot to be in a room. I can't imagine a room being that hot. And this warning is basically it's rooted in the fact that fans in an enclosed room, when it's that hot, could evaporate moisture from the body faster, which would ostensibly, I guess, dehydrate you to death. But the thing is, Chuck, it's really weird that the EPA is saying something like that, because that actually lends, like, a tiny bit of legitimacy or credence to one of the theories about fan death. Do you want to take a break and get to the theories? Let's do it. Okay. Okay. So, Chuck yes? We're talking fan death. Even our own EPA says it might be a thing in a roundabout way. Well, yeah, if you're in an oven, literally in an oven yeah. 99 degrees Fahrenheit. Don't blow a fan on you. He could slow cook a brisket at 90 degrees. You pretty much could. You could cook an egg on your hairy, naked chest. But that actually, like I said, it legitimizes. One of the theories that they have in Korea for an explanation for fan death, and one of them is that when it's hot out, you start sweating more, and that a fan blowing on you, cools you off or evaporates the sweat a lot faster than under normal circumstances. Hence, you will dehydrate to death overnight if you sleep with a fan on you. That's one theory behind fan death. One of the others, which I love for its craziness, is that the fans blades chop up oxygen into carbon dioxide, into CO2, and you die from a lack of oxygen because you can't breathe. Yeah, that's a good one. It is. I also saw that it didn't chop it up into carbon dioxide, because that's just nuts, but that it mutilated the oxygen molecules, and so therefore, there is less available, and you die. So mutilating is different than chopping up. Way different. Man another one till that to a serial killer. Yeah, it's true. It is true. You make a good point. I'm sure there's somebody out there listening. I wonder how many serial killers we have listening to our show. I bet at least ten. Well, listen, guys, stop what you're doing and just go turn yourselves in, right? Or at the very least, to stop what you're doing. I say both. Okay, sure. Because I don't know, if you're a serial killer, you might be addicted to this kind of thing, and maybe you can't trust yourself to just stop. So you need help eg being locked up? Yeah. I don't like this train. I think people want if they are out there, they'll want to find us now. Okay, well, maybe we'll just add it the south. Okay, so I saw another one that was you would just straight up suffocate, and the fan killed you by basically blowing the hot air around the room and affecting the amount of oxygen available. In that way, rather than chopping it up and mutilating it, it would just make less of it available, recirculating carbon dioxide. And then you would suffocate. That one actually is maybe the closest one to it. But the problem is the houses are not built airtight. They're just not. And so you're not going to suffocate in the house even with all the windows and doors closed, you just can't. But to be safe, one of the things that a lot of Korean people will do while they're sleeping with fan on, or just have a fan on in general, is crack a window, keep the doors open to their room. Yeah. And one of these articles too says that sometimes in Korea, they will even crack their windows in their car because their air conditioner fan. Yeah, it's a fan. I got to start paying attention to that now. I'm going to start looking around HMR. And just be like, do you have your window cracked and it's really hot? And then the only other explanation I saw was that it could possibly cause hypothermia to make the temperature drop so low that it would cause hypothermia and then you would die. Which is not true because, well, for a lot of reasons. A, you probably won't have a fan on if it's in the dead of winter anyway, and that's just Chuck talking. But experts say, of course, a fan doesn't even drop the temperature, it moves the air around. And that air is a certain temperature, but it doesn't actually cool it. That's a big one. Yeah, it just circulates there. It doesn't cool it. But I mean, you can kind of see where the kernel of knowledge is growing into like a misshapen thing right. With the idea that your body does cool at night because your metabolism slows. And what they're saying is that while you're already right there on the edge and the fan pushes you over the edge and you die of hypothermia. Yeah. So as far as doctors are concerned, in Korea, any time that they give a cause of death of fan death, which sometimes doctors will actually sign that piece of paper, they say it's death of affixation caused by fan. And at the Samsung Medical Center, they say that when a fan blows on your face, that air currents reduce the atmospheric pressure in front of your face by as much as 20% could cause a drop in oxygen. But that is a big reach if you ask me. Yeah, this from a Skeptoid article, and Brian Donning went on to calculate how much it would take like 650 km/hour wind to cause a change in air pressure that's substantial. So that's not doing it either. But I think one of the bigger arguments against fan death, I think Snopes laid it out like this was no one attributes death by fan anywhere else in the world. And all over the world, people sleep with fans. And you don't have anything like this? Yeah, just the mere fact that it's only in Korea largely kind of says that it's just superstition and folklore that was passed down from family to family, but apparently a Korean person will counter. Well, maybe there's something unique about Koreans or Korea that makes us susceptible to it. Interesting. Yeah, they're hanging on to that one, for sure. All right, so that's fan death. If you want to know more about it, give it a shot, but don't blame us. Okay, agreed. As a matter of fact, don't give it a shot just in case it is real. Yeah. Thanks for joining us. If you want to hang out with us, join us at our home on the webstepyshener.com. We're all over social, and we'll see you next time, everybody. Good day. Ah, summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free amazon. You the Gap, and listen today." | |
The Stuff You Should Know 2015 Jolly Christmas Extravaganza | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-stuff-you-should-know-2015-jolly-christmas-ext | It's the most wonderful time of year again! Join Chuck and Josh as they explore Christmas traditions around the world, tidbits about Elf, holiday foods and lots more joyous stuff in this glad tidings-packed episode. | It's the most wonderful time of year again! Join Chuck and Josh as they explore Christmas traditions around the world, tidbits about Elf, holiday foods and lots more joyous stuff in this glad tidings-packed episode. | Thu, 24 Dec 2015 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=24, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=358, tm_isdst=0) | 43072894 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. Merry Christmas, Happy holidays, and welcome to the podcast. Right. I was like, this isn't the Halloween episode. You sound sad. Do I? Well, you sounded sad. How do I sound now? Awake. Yeah. But happy to yeah. Man. This is one of our two favorite shows of the year, and we are celebrating. We're drinking a little wine. A little bit. How about that? Yeah. You never know what's going to happen in here. No, actually, you usually know what happens in here, which is no wine. Yeah. And gaming. It gets gaming in here. Although they fix the AC. Yes. And by fix the AC, we realize that they turned it on for the first time in here. They're like your flaps closed. Right. Oh, dead raccoon. There's a problem. Yeah, it's usually a dead raccoon. That's right. Well, since we said dead raccoon, that can mean nothing else in the fact that this is our 2015 holiday extravaganza. I don't remember what we called it. I think we've called it something different every year. Yeah. I'm saying, like, I don't know what we call this one yet. I got you. Yeah, but that's not bad. Yeah, but here we are in November. Sure. But we have that Christmas spirit. It's well within us. It is alive in our bones, and we cobbled together. I thought it was starting to get thin. Really? But when you start digging around, you can find plenty of good holiday content. Yeah. Oh, I see what you mean. As far as, like, finding something to fill an hour. Yeah. And we didn't know we couldn't remember because this is, like, the fifth one that we've done. Okay. We couldn't remember which ones we've done. Documents really helped. Went back and listened to all of them, and it's like, okay, we covered this. Did we cover that? There were several things that I was surprised to find that we had covered. Surprised and dismayed. Because we can't do them again. No, they're done. But we have put together a blog post on stuff you should know.com called The Christmas Suite, and it has all of our Christmas specials. Wow. So you can go listen to them all in one place. Yes. And as we do every year, we would like to encourage you to gather the family. Sure. Build a fire if you have a fireplace. Yeah. Not just on your hardwood floor or not out of your hardwood floor. Yes. Unless you're into that. It's a free country. Even still think a free rule. You probably don't want to do that. No. So gather the family around, like the yule log. Pour up some hot buttered rum or whatever. Your boozy eggnog or your nonalcoholic drink of choice. Sure. Sparkling cider. Everybody loves that. Yeah. Cold duck. And then listen cold duck. Yeah. Don't you remember? Cold duck? What's that? There's, like, a non alcoholic sparkling wine called cold duck. Yeah, I grew up on it. Weird. I guess it is a little weird now you think about it. Cold duck. It just doesn't sound like something you'd want to drink. No. Yeah. If you don't have a choice, that's what you drink. All right, support some cold duck and settle in. And let us take you on a Christmas journey through the ages. And thanks to Jerry, by the way, as always, and our friend John Begin. He did the jingles for this one. Yeah. Thanks for always gussing this thing up and putting us in the Christmas mood. Yeah. Way to go, Jerry. All right, let's get to it. Chuck? Yes. You were raised in the United States of America. That is true. I was, too. Did you know that? Yeah. Toledo is in the US. Toledo is in the US. For now. And so we were kind of raised even though you're in the South, I was in the north, the Midwest. Our Christmas customs were fairly similar. Sure. We're children in the 70s, essentially. Yes, for sure. So we were raised with Macrame Christmas. Oh, man. You and the macrame. So if you go around the world, though, christmas is celebrated all throughout the world among Christians, non Christians, secular humanists, everybody. Not everybody. A lot of people celebrate Christmas. Yes. But since it's in different parts of the world, there's different traditions. I bet even Anton LeVay has given and gotten a Christmas gift. Yeah. He was like, this doesn't mean anything. All right. It's a studded leather collar, I'll take it. Right? He's like, you have to open it upside down. That's right. It is celebrated all over the world. And here in segment one are a few customs around the world that I had never heard of. And most of them are pretty interesting. Most of them, actually, they're all pretty good. I thought they were great. Yeah, agreed. All right, let's start out maybe let's get not in the wayback machine, but just our space travel pod, and let's go to India. Isn't it nice? It is. It's balmy. It is. But it's lovely that people are great. Sure. And there's a lot of them. The food is amazing. Oh, man. Doesn't agree with my stomach, but I'll still eat it. Will you have trouble with Indian food? Sure. I lament that for you. Yeah. Indian food is tied for first with Japanese food, I think. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's good stuff. So you'll notice, Chuck, that there are 25 million Christians here celebrating Christmas in India. I can tell. Significant amount of people. And the thing is, they don't have any customary type of tree that you would decorate. Sure. So they use mango and orange trees. That's right. So if you look around, you're going to see decorated trees on the streets. You're going to see if you go into a house, you're going to even see the leaves of these trees used as decorations. Yeah. It's like garland, basically. And by orange, I meant banana, of course. Oh, did you say orange? Yeah. There was my customary holiday slip up. That's right. Yeah. So India's great, everyone. I love the decorations. They're getting in the spirit, even though they don't have the cause. Remember, we covered it. Christmas trees start out in Germany. Oh, yeah. The tenant bomb. Yeah, they're lousy with FIR trees. I can live in the tenant bomb. So we're going to leave India for now and let's travel over in our space pod. Okay. One of your favorite places. Japan. Wonderful. They have a very unusual, to me, Christmas tradition. Oh, it's unusual across the board of eating Kentucky Fried Chicken. Kentucky Fried Chicken is the traditional Christmas Eve dinner for Japan. Crazy. And it has been since about 1974. So apparently there are some American travelers who are stranded or visiting Japan. That's what it was. They were stranded. They weren't stranded. They were visiting Japan around Christmas, and they went to try to find a turkey dinner. They don't have turkey in Japan. Oh, really? You got to be beyond rich to find turkey in Japan. Basically. Wow. So it just so happened KFC had been there for a couple of years. It had just broken through starting about 1970. There was a big expo. Yeah. It wasn't called KFC back then. It was Kentucky Fried Chicken. Right. And I guess these travelers alerted KFC that they had decided to go with Kentucky Fried Chicken instead of a turkey dinner. Colonel Sanders went, I said, It sounds like a good idea. Yes. Was that your Norm McDonald or your Darryl Hammond? It was my Norm McDonald's. That's not bad. If it was Daryl Hammond. Terrible. Yeah. So Kentucky Fried Chicken decided to capitalize on this, and starting in 1974, they created the Kentucky for Christmas campaign and basically established a tradition among Japanese people that you go line up on Christmas Eve day and wait in line around the block for your turn to buy your pre ordered bucket of KFC, your cake, and your bottle of champagne. Yeah, and I think of champagne now, but back then, it was wine. Yes, wine. Okay. And then they got classy. That's right. And today, more than 240 buckets or barrels. 240,000? When I say 240. Yeah. You stopped at 240? No, that was just at the main location. 240,000 barrels or buckets of chicken are sold, which is apparently five to ten times the normal monthly sales. And it's a big deal. And these Christmas cakes are a big deal there, too. Yeah. And they dress Colonel Sanders up as Santa Claus out front. It's a huge deal. It's wonderful. It is. Kentucky for Christmas. Kentucky for Christmas. All right, let's get back in the space pod. All right, let's jet on up to Finland, where the people are nice and the taxes are heavy, but the health care not so bad. Yeah, they pay, like, half your money in taxes, but it's the best place in the world to live. I take that. It's one of the few places on Earth where people live that you can just see a reindeer walking around. Yeah, exactly. How's that for Christmas spirit? And also, Chuck, have you ever seen rare exports? No. You haven't seen rare exports with a Christmas horror movie. No. Oh, man. Go see it's set in Finland. Awesome. Really? It's actually a finished movie with subtitles, and it's a Christmas classic. Is it? What year? 2012. Okay. Already a classic. Yeah. So in Finland, despite their pinchant for enjoying the holidays, they have a little darker side, you might say, to Christmas, because they visit the graves of their ancestors, and they put candles on the graves. It's very nice. It's not exactly dark if they, like, dug them up and put their heads off or something after their first Christmas underground. Yeah. It's not dark, necessarily, because it is a tribute to their deceased loved ones. But it is unusual to me on Christmas to visit the cemetery. Sure is what I'm saying. But apparently cemeteries, because when they visit, they light candles for their deceased loved ones. And even people who don't aren't near their deceased loved ones. They'll still, like, light a candle. So, like, by the time midnight rolls around on Christmas Eve, houses are burning down all over the country. Right? Exactly. It's apparently quite a sight to behold. It is. And not only that, but at home, and this is kind of sweet, they sleep on the floor to leave their beds you know how we leave cookies out for Santa? They leave their beds open for the ghostly spirits of their ancestors. Right. To sleep in. To sleep in for the night. Here, you take the bed, I'll take the floor. And apparently, it's the same with saunas, too. So most families have their own sauna in Finland. Sauna? Sauna. Okay. And after sunset, that becomes they leave that alone for their dead ancestors to enjoy as well. Yeah, but before sunset, it's naked family party time in the sauna. Yeah. Which is not gross or dirty. It's just how it is in Finland. Sure. What are you going to sauna in, like, a bathing suit? That's weird. Well, that's what I do. But I'm at the YMCA. I'd get arrested. Venezuela. Let's hop in our little space pod and travel over to Caracas, Venezuela. So we're in Caracas, and on Christmas Eve, the children do a kind of an odd thing. They tie a piece of string to their big toe, and then they run the string out of their window and hang it down the side of their home. So far, so weird. Yeah. Which is a little strange. Then the following morning, they go to early morning mass. They don't. Other people do. Sure. Grown ups do. And they close off the streets until 08:00. A.m.. So people can rollerskate to mass, and if they see any of these strings still hanging. They tug on the string, which supposedly, or I guess logically, would tug on the big toe of the child and wakes the kid up for Christmas morning. Pretty neat. A passing by roller skater tugs on the string to wake you up for Christmas morning. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Tradition. And finally, we will travel from Caracas, Venezuela, over to Sweden. Really? We should have ordered this differently. We could have really saved some space. Gas. Yeah. But sky miles. Oh, yeah. We are racking them up. Totally. So we're in Sweden now, and this is my favorite one, I think. In 1966, a 13 meters tall goat of straw was erected in the town square of Gavel. Yeah, it's called the gavelbachen. At the stroke of midnight that first year, some kids thought it would be funny if he burned it down. And now it's tradition. Yeah, it is. And so it's not a tradition like Wicker Man, where the town gathers to set the man on fire or the goat on fire. The town does not want the goat to be set on fire. Instead, the town hires security guards. Apparently, one year it was particularly cold, and all the guards went in to get warm at once. And when they did, vandal struck, burned it down. They fireproof the stuff with the substance that they use to fire proof airplanes. And people still manage to burn this down, apparently. Between 1966 and 2011, according to our friends Honkia, where we got this article, by the way, it's been burned down 25 times. What, about 50% or so? Not a bad rate. Not a bad burn rate if you're a vandal. If you're a town elder. That's terrible. Right? So that's segment one. And thanks to who? Our friends at Honky Cat. Oh, honkyat for that. Not honky. Cat. Okay. That's Elton John's subside. Yeah. So Chuck does a nice little interlude. Yes. Have you ever been to New York? I know you've been in New York. No. At Christmas time. Okay. Do you remember the time we were the guests of Discovery for a Christmas party? Yes. At the Campbell apartment at Grand Central Station. One of the great corporate parties I've ever been to. There's a pit bull. There a parole who owned the pit bull. We drank martinis. Yes, we did. Lots of them. I did. I don't know. Would you have whiskey or do you have martinis? I think I have martinis. Yeah. It was good. We were hot shots back then. We were up and coming. Yeah. So during that stay, I walked around and visited shop windows, sacks. I think I hit Barney's. And at the time, I'm like, I'm so clever. What a cool thing to do. What I didn't realize is I was engaging in about 150 year old tradition of traveling to New York to see these storefront windows, the Christmas window displays. It's actually a really old ritual. That's right. And this story is called not really Old, but Kind Of Old. This story is called the History of Department Store Holiday Window Displays by Victoria Lewis. And I am not ashamed to admit that I had never considered the term department store and what that meant until I read this. I was like, Wait a minute, there's departments is in? Yeah, the boys department, the ladies department, the sports department. Oh. I had just never dawned on me what that meant. He just took it as like, that's what it is. I don't know how it's one of those things. I understand what you mean, for sure. You know, we're in an old department store right now. Yes. Yours, yeah, absolutely. Had terrible window displays. It did. So here's the fascinating history of department store window displays, which I really enjoyed this article. Yeah. What was it from? Well, initially it goes back to the Industrial Revolution, the late eighteen hundred s, and like anything, it's usually some weird innovation that leads to something else. In this case, the innovation was plate glass windows. Yeah. Up to that point, up to the Industrial Revolution, shopkeepers just kept their wares behind plywood, and no one could see it. So once they figured out play glass windows, they were like, this is much better. And so the passers by on the street thought it was much better as well. Yeah, because that's literally where the term window shopping comes from. And they said, we can have these great window displays where people on the street could walk by and fantasize, if they don't have money about buying the stuff. Thanks to our enormous see through class. That's right. The best kind of class. And apparently it was Mr. Macy had a great name, roland Hussey Macy that's right. Who did not live up to his name, and he was quite approved, frankly. And Roland Macy's. He tried four times. Open Macy's yeah. Wow. And tried and failed. I should say the fifth time, I think, on 6th Avenue, between 13th and 14th street and 1858, roland Macy opened his store with opening day sales totaling 11.6 cents. Wow. Which you're like. Oh, well, it's 1858, so that's $3 million today. $280. Not good for a department store. So back in the day, these stores were what are called dry goods stores, where you can find everything that wasn't wet. Chaps alaso, stuff that wasn't wet, like that wheat flour. Sure. All this stuff. And these were the progenitors of department stores, and a lot of them grew out of dry goods stores into department stores, and over time, they got savvier and savvier. And again, RH. Macy was one of the first to get super duper savvy, and he was apparently the first to put up these elaborate displays around Christmas time. Not only that, my friend, he was the first in 1862 to feature an in store Santa that children could come in annoy. Yes. And if you want to know more about the life of an in store saying that you should listen to last years because we went into that in depth. Absolutely. So in 1874, he says, I'm going to step it up a notch. We got this plate glass, so I'm going to create a window display. Porcelain dolls from around the world and sort of weirdly scenes from Harriet Beecher Stowe's great book, Uncle Tom's Cabin. It's all the rage. Yeah. It just seemed an odd choice for the holidays, all the rage. But I'm not going to second guess it, because it won't. It would be like making a Star Wars special, holiday special at the time, you know what I mean? Yeah. All the rage. So it really caught on. By the early 1009 hundreds, all the big retailers were doing it in New York, Chicago, all the major cities. And window shopping was a legitimate thing at this point. Yeah, thanks to things like, again, the plate glass window, people actually putting up displays worth seeing. Sure. And then later on, electrical lighting, so that you could see these things long after the store had closed. And that attracted people to the displays, just for the displays sake themselves. It made them a destination, so that 150 years later, yoko like you and me could be walking around New York saying, I'm going to go check out the Six Fifth Avenue window. It looks like real snow. Yeah. 1938, Lord and Taylor were the first to actually not even worry about showing merchandise in the window and just say, you know what? This is something cool looking that will attract people to our window. Well, the cool looking thing they did, too, at the time. It must have been mind blowing. You have to put yourself in their shoes. But it was automated bells that moved in time to a recording of the sound of bells playing. How about that? Which sounds about as primitive as a monkey turning a crank. But that must have been pretty mind blowing at the time we're talking. And even before that, I think it was. Neiman Marcus in Dallas used Freon in air conditioned copper tubings to basically create frosted trees in their window display. That's what they call for people who read books on airplanes. A game changer. And not to be outdone in the 1950s, Washington D. C. Woodward and Lowthrop, which I've not heard of. Have you? No, never. But it totally sounds like either a law firm or a department. And they put live penguins in the display. This is clearly before animal rights activists had a say in things. They're like, how can we make our window display cruel? And over the years, many famous artists have even been involved, including Andy Warhol, Marie Syndic, Salvador Dali and Jasper Johns. Imagine it pays pretty good if you hire one of those artists. Or maybe they were up and coming. They were up and coming. Actually, I think they also hire famous people to come in. Oh, they definitely do sometimes. For sure. Yeah, you're right. So apparently today it's spread around. It's not just New York. And it's in London, too. It started in London in thanks to an American. Sure. The guy who started who worked at Marshall Fields and then came and started selfridges. Right. But today, if you ask Lord and Taylor, about 250,000 people pass their holiday window display every day. That's crazy. And between Thanksgiving and Christmas, they'll attract 8 million shoppers to their store. Yeah, New York is great, and it's awesome during the holiday season because you can go broke, but you can also not spend a dime and just walk around and look at all the cool junk. Yes. New York, I love you, and you're giving me chills. All right, moving on to the next segment. All right, Josh. Now we're moving on to something, believe it or not, I have never even tasted in my life. Really? Never tasted fruitcake. I would be even more incredulous if I hadn't, either. Right. Have you? That's what I'm saying. I haven't. Okay. I was trying to make sense of all that. Sorry. So neither one. Jerry, have you ever had fruitcake? Wow. Jerry says no. NOL is, like, in the window with a fruitcake in his mouth. I got a fruitcake in my pocket. All right. So fruitcake is famous for one thing yeah. Which is being a maligned food product that is generally made fun of as, like, a brick or a concrete block or a door stop. So much so that there's a town called Manitou Springs, Colorado, that at the beginning of January holds the great fruitcake toss every year, and you throw a fruitcake as far as you can. It's kind of like pumpkin chunking, but with fruitcakes, basically. You know what they should have, though, is on the landing side, they should have plate glass and just see how much the fruit cake like, maybe layers of plate glass sure. And see how many layers it can smash. Yeah. Like that one ice breaking scene. And Karate Kid, too. Exactly. So the fruitcake, it's not much loved. Not a lot of people like it. The people who do like it are just trying to be ironic, by the way. Or elderly. Yeah. And being genuine, maybe. Yeah. I can't tell elderly people. It's tough to pin down whether they're really secretly being ironic, and it's just a big performance piece. But it is in and of itself ironic that fruitcake would be so malign because it started out as a distinct luxury item, for sure. Because the stuff you find in fruitcake today, you're like, oh, what is this terrible stuff? Is actually an assemblage of if you go 10 00, 15 00 years back in history, you will find that these are the most sought after items on the planet. Sure. Spices, nuts, fruit cake, ginger, all this stuff coming together to create some very rich delicacies. Wow. Thank you. It did not begin as a cake, though. Supposedly in ancient Rome, they used pomegranate seeds, pine nuts and raisins, and then they folded it in some barley mash. This is before ovens. They didn't really bake it into a cake at this point. Was it before ovens, though? I took issue with that. Oh, yeah. I think they had bread back then. People have been baking bread, remember? Uses a starter for beer. Sure. For thousands of years by then. All right, so official issue taken ovens. Sure. We'll look that up. Okay. And then they started adding other spices in the Middle East. Honey ginger was a big deal in the Middle East before it spread to Europe. One of my favorite things in the world, ginger. Fresh ginger. Oh, yeah, sure. Love it. Get your hands on some good fresh ginger. You're like? This is good. I do shots of it. Oh, yeah. Hot stuff for health. Yes, health and wellness. Do you drink it hot or cool? And it's like, hot spicy? Yeah. I mean, have you ever done a ginger shot? Yeah, sure. It's super hot. It'll burn your throat. So fair warning to all your juicers out there. But if you're a juicer, you're way on the ginger tip. This is nothing new to you. This is the hippiest Christmas special we've ever recorded. Anyway, I love ginger. And they loved it in the Middle East and eventually spread to Europe in the 15th century. Then they added some butter and sugar. They said, we have a lumpy, dense cake on our hands, people. We definitely have ovens, so we're going to bake them. Bake it, yeah. And now there's apparently a couple of bakeries in the United States. One here. Right here in Clackston, Georgia. You knew that, right? I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. Clackstone fruitcakes are huge. Yeah. One of the big two, right? Yeah. The other one is in Corsicana, Texas. That's Collins Street Bakery. And if you have a fruitcake look at the label, I guarantee you it's one of those two. I'm going to start giving them for gifts. Ironically or sincerely? Both. Nice. Because it's all in how you take it. Sure it is. Someone might say, It's pretty funny, Chuck, and someone might say, this is delicious, my friend. Yeah. And then you go, you are on my nice list. That's right. Moving on. What is another Christmas food? Sugarplum. This one was kind of surprising to me. So sugar plums have nothing to do with plums, it turns out. And there's a lot of confusion, I guess, in the fact that it uses the word plums. So you would think, well, a sugar plum is a sweet plum, and food historians say there may actually have been some sort of fruit producing shrub that produce something that you would call a sugar plum. A plum like fruit that was very sweet. Sure, we don't have any evidence of it. It's all conjecture, apparently. Right. But sugar plums themselves were candies. They were sugar balls surrounded with nuts or spices or seeds or some combination of that. And they had nothing to do with plums. Plums never made an appearance in the actual sugar plum. Yeah. And apparently a lot of dried fruit is called plum. Right. Which I didn't know. That's where the confusion comes from. Yeah. And plum pudding in England apparently doesn't even have plums in it. No, it can have, like, raisins, corons, all that kind of stuff. Doesn't have any plums whatsoever. They're plum like it's just from, I think about the 17th century on, plum became a widely used term to describe certain kinds of candies, certain kinds of sweet desserts that dance in your head. And bribes, I read. Oh, really? Yes. So if somebody gives you a bribe, you're like, this is quite a plum. Right. I can put it in my fruitcake. Right. Or that's a plum job. Sure. It's something like, super sweet, something great, like you or a bribe. I'm asking for a bribe right now. Oh, okay. I wasn't picking up on that. I'll slide this five dollar bill think off the table. Thanks. Gingerbread is one of my favorite things. Are you like gingerbread? Love it. I meant to tell you this. In one of the fairy tales episodes, hansel and Gretel is based partly in fact. I know that there's a woman named Katerina Schroderin who in 1618, she was a renowned gingerbread baker. She was so good that a local rival tried to marry her to get her to quit baking and undermining him. Wow. She refuses advances. He accused her of witchcraft. The town came and burned her alive. Holy cow. That's true. Yes, it is true. And they think that she became the basis of the witch in the Hansel and Gretel story. Wow. Yeah. How about that? But she was really good at creating gingerbread, and she was in Germany, which is the whole point of what I was just saying. That's right. Because it started in Germany, like, so many Christmas e things. Sweet, spicy cookies, cakes, breads, ginger flavored, which, you know, is one of my favorite things. Like you said, I don't pick up on it a ton in gingerbread. Not as much. No. The molasses definitely dominates. Absolutely. But try eating gingerbread without any kind of ginger in it. You'll spit it out. Really spit it out on the ground. It evolved into the Christmas tree we know and love, because early on, it started to be known to be something you would serve at a special event. Right. And I guess that dwindled down to the holidays. And then some people got smart and started cutting it out to fun shapes. Yeah. Pretty early on, the medieval bakers, including probably Miss Katerina the witch, would cut them into, like if you were having a coronation, you could probably in Germany, you could find gingerbread cookies in the shape of a king. Yeah. You. Know, that kind of thing. Right. And that evolved into Christmassy things, and it became associated with the holidays. Gingerbread, thankfully. I really want some gingerbread right now. And then lastly, Chuck, have you ever did you get oranges as a kid in your stocking? I did. Weirdly. Wouldn't you reach your hand in and be like, oh, this is great. I like this candy? And then your hand would hit that familiar, cold, wrinkled skin and draw it out and hold it up accusingly to everyone and be like, who did this? And your parents would be like, Santa. With Santa, you just glare at them, that kind of thing. And I'd say, I think I saw these in the kitchen yesterday. Right. It turns out that oranges are actually a long standing tradition, and they used to be an amazing thing to get in your stocking, because until the 1880s, if you lived outside of Florida or California, you were sol as far as oranges went. Yeah. So it was a special treat, which I guess caught on. I don't buy this other theory at all. Apparently, they said it may reference a Christmas tail when St. Nicholas left bags of gold in stockings. Sure. And in place of bags of gold, they put in orange. You think lemon. Yeah. I don't buy that. Everybody wants to suck on a lemon on Christmas morning. Yes. I'm not so sure about that. I might be wrong. I could see it. But either way, it became a special Christmas treat that somehow endures to this day. Josh, if you know me, then you know I love the movie Elf. I suspected that's why you selected this. Do you like it? Yes. Elf. It's good. Okay. It's not my favorite. It's a good new classic. Yes. Agreed. It's no Christmas story, but it's good. It'll hold up over the decades, I guess. This is a great article that I found called Ten Things You Didn't Know About Elf. And we're going to go over those right now because it's one of my favorite things. Will Ferrell in the classic movie about an elf that is really a human that realizes he's a human and goes to New York City to find his real Papa Jamescon. But he's not insane. He actually is an elf in Santa's workshop, which he has to leave to go find himself. Yeah, but he's not really an elf because he's super tall and goofy and everyone that's the joke. Right. And everyone else is elf size. So if you haven't seen Elf, pause this episode, go watch Elf and then come back. Yeah. Tell me what the sunlight looks like outside your home, because you've been living under a rock. So initially apparently, Chuck, the script for Elf is pretty old. I think it was originally made in 20 10 20 07. 20 08. Somewhere around there. Okay. And it was actually written in back in 1993, will Ferrell was basically in diapers, even though he was a grown man by this time, but the script was initially written for Jim Carrey or with Jim Carrey in mind, and it was offered to him, and he turned it down. Yeah. No good. I say, with Jim Carrey being no way. I can't see anybody but Will Ferrell doing it. Yeah. I think it's one of those things where anytime someone is ultimately cast, you can't picture anyone else. Except for Tom Selleck. You could still probably picture as Indiana Jones. Sure. Yeah. Or Christopher Columbus. He played Columbus. Oh, he did he or did he play King Ferdinand in the movie adaptation of 1491? Your favorite book? No, it was 1492. Okay. So Jim Carrey out Will Ferrell in classic now, because of that great move. Sentence fragments. Ralphie in A Christmas Story. Yeah. Peter Billingsley appears as an elf. He's buddies with Favreau, has produced a lot of his movies, and there he is, little Ralphie, all grown up, makes a cameo. So does Ray Harryhausen. He makes a voice cameo. And he if his name sounds familiar, he was the guy who basically pioneered stop motion animation and film in motion pictures. So, like, if you love Clash of the Titans, you loved Ray Harryhausen's work. That's right. And John Favreau, very smartly, said, you know what? There's a lot of people out there who love those ranking bass Christmas specials, rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer and others. And he said, let's have that same look so we can echo that beloved style. And it really paid off. I think it's one of the reasons it's such a classic today. Yeah. So instead of doing a CGI, which he totally could have, you can make it look stop motioning using computers. I was like, no, I want to shoot it that way. And just as an additional nod, he grabbed Ray Harryhausen and said, why don't you do one of the stop motion polar bear cubs? Yeah. And he voiced it, which is pretty cool. Very cool. And an additional nod was the costumes that the elves wore were the exact costume replicas from the original Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer stop motion film. Yeah. So another nice little nod to the past. So if you find yourself just, like, overwhelmed with nostalgia and weeping when you watch Elf, these are probably the reasons why. What else? Oh, the famous scene, one of my favorites, with the jack in the the boxes. When Will Ferrell is testing the jack in the box, I had to go look it up and watch it. It's pretty great. And those were genuine reactions, apparently. You can tell. Yeah. He wanted Will Ferrell to not know, so I think he had the last one rigged to not even be attached to the jackinthebox. He had the control off screen, and he wanted it to seem like it wasn't going to open at all. So yeah. In the movie, Will Ferrell's elf what's his name? Buddy. Buddy. He's been relegated to having to test Jack in the Boxes for the little clown to come out at Jackson the Box. Jack's in the Box. Yeah, you're right. Jackson in the Box is okay. And he's the tester, the quality control guy. And when they were filming it yet, John Favreau had a remote control, so he had no idea when they were actually going to pop out. And you can tell when you watch it. Like, his reactions are delightful. Yeah, they really are. The huge burp that he has after drinking the two liter of coke was done by a voice from a very popular voice actor named Mariel Lamarcke, who voiced everything from egon on The Real Ghostbusters to brain on Animaniacs, and apparently was really good at burping. He's a belching champion. He's a Belching champ. Like booger from Better off dead. Was it better off dead or revenge of the nerds that he burped in? Well, it was Revenge of the Nerds. Okay. He was better and better off dead. Yes. Agreed. This entire mountain made pure snow. All right, let's go with one more here. Okay. Will Ferrell actually worked as a department store san at that point, not to train for it wasn't a method actor. Like, this was years before when he was with the Groundlings in Los Angeles. That's like Second City kind of. For UCB. Sure. And he and a fellow Groundling named Chris Katan actually got the same gig. Will Ferrell was Santa, and Chris Catan played an elf, and they both ended up on Saturday Night Live together. Can you imagine being in Los Angeles and Will Ferrell is your Santa and Chris Catan as an elf? And you have no idea, right? Yeah. Or watching Santa live five years later, being like, wait a minute, wait a second. And Farrell has even offered a boatload of money to do a sequel to Elf. Almost $30 million. Yeah. And he said no, which I think is great, a great move, because then you have the untainted classic and like, A Christmas Story part Two. You never have to suffer through something like that. Or Anchorman Too. Although, dude who was in our TV show was in that. He has speaking part. Matt I don't remember his last name, but he played the paramedic in the episode where you get stung by a t. Yes, I know Matt. He's in Anchorman, Too, and he has, like, a little speaking role. Oh, no way. Because they shot there in Atlanta. Yeah, it's great. He does good. I haven't seen Anchorman too. I avoided it because I didn't want to taint the original. I heard it was so bad. I take issue with that. I don't think a sequel can taint the original. The original stands on its own. You know what I mean? I disagree with it. Okay. And I could be wrong. Well, now it's your opinion. Thank you. You can't be wrong. That Chuck for your Christmas. Wasn't that christmas. Yeah. Let's do it with our traditional reading. Yes. So, everybody, if you didn't have the ULOG going yet, or you didn't have a family gathering, if you didn't take trucks advice at the beginning, you probably should now, because it's whoa unto you. Yes. Whoa. Everybody, it's time for our Christmas reading. And we read all sorts of stuff. We found the most obscure Christmas story of all time written by the guy who wrote wizard of Oz for last year. We've done twice the night before Christmas. We did some story about naked elves a few years back. You remember that? Yeah. Do we do Gift of the Magi, maybe? Yeah. We read the entire gift of the Magi towards the night before Christmas. Yeah. So this time we are finally we cannot put it off any longer. We are going we're going to read a selection from the movie Boogie Nights. All right. The word Christmas is used, but out of context. That's good, Chuck. Thanks. We're going to read a very classic letter, a real life letter that was written to The New York Sun on September 21 by a little girl named Virginia O'Hanlon. And this really happened. Yeah. How about this? I'll read the little girls, and then you can read the response. Oh, wow. Really? Yeah. Wow. Are you sure? We have to take our roles here. Okay. All right. New York Sun, September 21, 1897. People. Dear Editor, I am eight years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says if you see it in The Sun, it's so what he means is The Sun newspaper not look directly into The Sun because you'll go blind. Please tell me the truth. Is there a Santa Claus signed Virginia O'Hanlon of well, should we read her address? I think she's long gone. The Fifth Street. Man if you live at Today, you should know that it's a very legendary abode. Yeah. All right. And here was the reply, which was pretty great. This is from the editors of The New York Son, who wrote, we take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that it's faithful author is numbered among the friends of the sun. This was their reply. Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All mines, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. And you know that they abound and give your life its greatest beauty. And joy. Alas, how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment except in sense, in sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. Not believe in Santa Claus. You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch and all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus. But even if you did not see Santa coming down, what would that proof? Nobody sees Santa Claus. But that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not. But that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders that are unseen and unseeable in the world. You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes a noise inside. But there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Virginia. In all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. No Santa Claus. Thank God he lives and lives forever. 1000 years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times 100 years from now he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood. How about that? Pretty great response. Yeah, slightly scathing at times. Yeah. Take that, your little non believing kids. All in the good name of the Christmas spirit. Yes. So, in the good name of the Christmas spirit from us, Chuck and Josh and Jerry and Noel. And from Casey too. Casey. Emily and Yummy and Anna. Sure. Nice. Ruby Rose and family. Wow. I know. It's been a great 2015. It's pretty sweet. Who else? Anybody? I think that's everybody. That's the whole stuff you should know. Family. My mistress Natasha. All right, we want to wish you guys a happy holiday season. Merry Christmas. Yeah, be safe out there and enjoy each other. And hey, we'll see you again in 2016. Mean well, we'll see them before then. Merry Christmas everybody. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com." | ||
426df79a-53a3-11e8-bdec-d7011ea4764d | How Project Blue Book Worked, Pt I | https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/how-project-blue-book-worked-pt-i.htm | In June of 1947, a flying saucer was sighted by a pilot in Washington. That first report opened the floodgates and a UFO hysteria set in. Were they aliens? Time travelers? Russians? The Air Force began an investigation that lasted for decades. | In June of 1947, a flying saucer was sighted by a pilot in Washington. That first report opened the floodgates and a UFO hysteria set in. Were they aliens? Time travelers? Russians? The Air Force began an investigation that lasted for decades. | Tue, 15 Oct 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=288, tm_isdst=0) | 39426593 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself. With no must, no fuss, turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, simple checkout process, process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to squarespace. Comsysk and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code s YSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You know you're a pet mom when you plan your vacation around your pet. At Halo, we get it because we're pet moms, too. We make natural, high quality pet food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopets.com. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there. And there's Jerry over there, still dressed up in a silver jump suit, as usual. A jumpsuit. I pulled it out. Should we edit that out and retake it? No, I think we should leave it. Jerry behind the scenes stuff, everyone. Jerry sometimes has to get what's called room tone, which means she has to roll tape digitally and we have to be completely silent for a few moments. We get the tone of the room for, I don't know, purposes of magic. And every time she's done that, we always have the urge to giggle or fart or be six year olds. So she looks at us sternly the whole time during that five or 6 seconds of her. Oh, man, it's so funny. I don't know what that instinct is. We can't sit here for 5 seconds and not speak without cracking a joke. We've got a bit of a class clown in us, I think is what it is. Oh, boy. I sure did still do. Yeah. Were you a class clown? Really? Yeah, but on the download. Like, I wouldn't fire out something for the whole class to here unless I knew it was, like, comedy gold. But I would work my circle around me. I got you. You're a regional act. I was fairly disruptive, okay. But it was always fun. So teachers liked me, but they were just like, just shut up, though, sometimes. Well, your parents are educators, so you knew where the line was, right? Sure. Were you going over the line because you could get away with it? No, they weren't teachers. I mean, actually, that's not true. My dad was the principal. But I didn't start real cutting up until high school. I got you. Why are we talking about this? I don't know. I'll tell you why, Chuck. Because it reminds me of Henny Youngman, who just so happened to be around the peak of his career on June 24, 1947. Did you fact check that? No. Okay, because then we're going to get a letter henny omen's career peak was in 1948. You morons. You do get paid during a government shutdown. Oh, yeah. And are we going to correct that now, or should we do it at listener mail? No, we might as well correct it now. Yeah. So I got it wrong big time. And we heard from apparently, everybody, 900,000 of our million listeners are government employees who worked through the last shutdown, because all of them email in and said, hey, by the way, whether you worked or not, if you were furloughed, you got back pay this time. But we were right. It does take an act of Congress. It doesn't happen automatically. What does this take an act of Congress? Yes, it does. So we got that one wrong. I got that one wrong. Chuck went along with it. Went along for usual. Yeah, sure. Yeah, that sounds good. Josh. Whatever you say. I want to get you back. I appreciate that. So anyway, back on June 24, 1947, it was a very important day, because you can use this day to basically pinpoint the moment that America's just ongoing fascination with UFOs and by extension, aliens began. It did not exist, basically before that time. Yeah. Why do you think that is? Because I think a skeptic and we're going to talk a lot in this episode about skeptics and believers, for lack of a better word. Okay. Skeptics would say, while all of a sudden, in 1947, the UFOs just start appearing. Right. And I think there are some answers to that. Oh, yeah. Like, I don't know, maybe they just found us, or maybe they just decided to start poking around our airspace. Well, that presumes that there is actual, like, UFOs and extra. Yeah, they yeah. Do you have another explanation for if there isn't a well, maybe just newspaper. I mean, were there no, like, even newspaper reports preventing 47? As far as I know, all of it began on June 24. All right, well, then my answer is the aliens started their business then on that day. Okay. I mean, there would have to be basically a day zero if that ever really did start. And I got to start somewhere. Yes, why not June 24, 1947? Who knows? They may have been zipping around with the dinosaurs. Maybe, but the dinosaurs didn't put that on the news. No. Did they? No. See? Well, they didn't preserve any of their own news reels. At the very least. That's true for me. The explanation is mass hysteria, dogs and cats living together, that kind of stuff. All right, so on June 24, there was a man named Kenneth Arnold. He was a pilot to private pilot. Not a private in the army who was a pilot? No, private sector pilot. Sure. I think that really got across with the private pilot. Sure. And he had a good reputation. He was known around town as a respectable business guy. And he was flying near Washington's Mount Rainier, and he was looking for downed plain. I guess he was a search and rescue guy. I think he was just helping out, maybe. Precisely. Air Patrol. It was right around the time that it started. Okay. But even still, I think he was just being like a good Samaritan who had his own plane and was helping. But I'll help look. Sure. And he saw, and this is a quote, nine saucer like things flying like geese in a diagonal chain like line, and estimated the speed of these saucer geese to be 1200 mph. Right. Which really is pretty funny. Well, at the time he must have been going probably about 50 mph in his old little prop plane. Right. So 1200 mph, that was really saying something. You wouldn't hardly be able to see it, I would think. So he lodges this report and within just a few hours this is what I don't know how this happened, but within a few hours, the Associated Press got wind of this. The AP is a wire service, which means they do the reporting and they send it out to newspapers for syndication. And newspapers just print what the AP wrote all over the country. So the AP picking it up, made it national news almost the same day, basically, that this man had seen something. And in this AP report, the writer coined the term flying saucers. Yeah. Because Kenneth Arnold had called them saucer like things that were flying. And he went, let me just rearrange this in a way that's a little more grabby. Flying what? Flying what? He saw saucer geese like saucer geese. Flying saucers worked and it was a big deal. And all of a sudden everyone starts seeing we didn't call them UFOs yet. Keep your pants on, we'll get there. Flying saucers. Flying saucers or flying discs. Right. There was even in 1947 in the San Francisco Chronicle headline that said, flying saucer is seen in most States now. So that headline was printed on July 7, 1947. Kenneth Arnold saw his sighting on June 24, like a couple of weeks atops. Yeah. And within that time, so many reports happening that basically every state had a report of a flying saucer. Now. Pretty amazing. It was like a floodgate opened. Yeah. Which, if you're in the United States Air Force at the time, is problematic because they were in charge of security for anything not on the ground in the United States. Yeah. The airspace. Yeah. I guess I could count the sea and that's the Navy. Yeah. I was trying to say it in a more clever way, but I think you're right. Airspace. Sure. And what are we going to do here? Is this a threat to America? Do we need to start legitimately investigating this stuff? Right after Pearl Harbor, the Cold War is starting to heat up a little bit, and people are freaked out, and we need to see what's going on, at least. Yeah. People are a little jittery in that decade in particular. So the Air Force does decide that it needs to do something, especially at the behest of a guy named Lieutenant General Nathan Twinning, who is the commander of Air Material Command. And he wrote a memo titled Flying Discs, and he basically said, we need to figure out what is the deal with all this, because these reports that are coming in are describing things that shouldn't be possible. So let's look into this. And he had enough clout that a project, an Air Force project was created, named Project Sign. Yeah. This is the first of what will be several projects which culminated and I think the final one was just shut down, like, six or seven years ago, like, officially. Well, 2012. I don't know if it's technically related to Sign, but it followed in that I mean, just projects investigating UFOs by the US. Government. Yeah, like officially designated investigations. Yeah. The one you're referring to was supposedly shut down in 2012, but some claim it was never really shut down exactly. Because it's usually the case. So this project sign, technically, was originally called project saucer. Not bad. It's okay. I like project sign cooler more. It sounds cooler. Yeah. Don't you think it sounds very mysterious? Well, yeah, I'll give you that. What is it related to? It's not as good as the next one, but we'll get that. Okay. So project sign is associated with Wright Patterson Air Force Base. It's assigned to it. The project has run out of Wright Field at the time outside of Dayton. And if you were a Ufologist, you would say, well, of course it's Wright Patterson. That's where they reverse engineer all the alien technology. So, of course that's where they would investigate it. And they actually do reverse engineer technology at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. And they have since, like, World War I, when a down German biplane was captured, and they took it to Dayton and said, figure out how this works. That's a really interesting job in project, I think, reverse engineering stuff. Yeah, because it's basically copying. I get why they call it reverse engineering, because you're starting at the end and going backwards. Right. But just to be handed, like, here is an enemy. Whatever. It could be a weapon. Cato, cannon. Yeah, whatever. And say, just figure out how it works. So we can build one if we want to. Right. Or if it's not worth our time, then at least we know how it works. Exactly. Or we can come up with measures to counteract it. Yeah. How can we destroy this or copy this? What kind of potatoes are they using in there? Those new potatoes, they'll put a hole right through you. New potato caboose. Oh, yeah. Remember that? Man, was that a real band or one you made up? I can't remember. No, it was real. It was like a little hippie shake band. That's right. So the long and short of it is anytime Wright Patterson is mentioned, that's when the one guy that everyone the Meme, always posts aliens, man the guy from Ancient Aliens. Is that what it was? From his name? Do you remember that's one of the first things that Aaron Cooper did of us oh, really? Was us as the Ancient Aliens guy. One of the first steps you should know meme copies. Yeah. After Van Nostrins era ended. Sure. After Van Nostrins reign of terror ended, cooper picked up the thread. So it might say, Ben Austrians continues today. His reign of terror. Yeah. Just not photoshop based. Right. Yeah. If it's right, Patterson, then people are going to think there's something going on there. And like you said, there was a lot going on there, including very secret projects that are still going on there. Right. Supposedly, that's where they took the Roswell flying saucer, which also happened in 1947. A lot of people connect those dots, but apparently Roswell in the crash and aliens didn't really become part of cultural consciousness until the 80s. That's right. Anyway, project science going on. And the following year, after Kenneth Arnold first had his sighting, they released a document called the Estimate of the Situation. And these are Air Force personnel working on Project Sign. Sure. Okay. And they get together and they say, you know what? We don't think that based on some of these sightings, and in particular, what we consider very credible witnesses describing very incredible things, that they have any kind of origin in US or even USSR technology. And there's a possibility that these are extraterrestrial in origin. And that was the basis of this estimate of the situation that they handed off to the Air Force brass. And the Air Force brass said, Are you out of your mind? So in the end, the report basically said, we can neither confirm nor deny the very famous line that everyone uses these days, which basically means there's something going on. Yes. But remember, we found the place where that first was coin. What was that? The Glomar Explorer. Right. And that wasn't until the 60s. So I think this is somebody using an anachronism here. Yeah. I mean, I don't think it necessarily said that in the report, but that was the upshot. Basically. They just said it with different words back then. Sure. So here's the deal, though. There were a lot of people that worked on this thing that would have probably confirmed it was kind of split between people like, maybe there's something going on here and people that just didn't think so and probably didn't want to deal with it. Yeah, I didn't have a sense of just how evenly split it was, but there were definitely people working on this project who said they're extraterrestrial in origin and other people who said, no, we just don't understand it. The Air Force brass. Like I said. Are you guys crazy? You actually made this document and got their hands on all the copies, destroyed them all. And as a matter of fact, the Air Force has always denied that the estimate of the situation ever existed and that any understanding that it did exist came from people who did work on Project Sign who said, no, this did exist, and this is what it said, and this is the reaction it got. Yeah. It's kind of hard not to like, because we're both fairly skeptical, but it's hard not to go down that conspiracy trail a little bit when you hear stuff like, no, that report never existed and people that worked on it like, no, it totally existed, and here's what it said, here's what it was called. And they just basically incinerate the thing. Right. You had a copy. I thought you made little flower doodles on it. It's hard not to go down that road. It really is. And that's kind of part of the problem with all this is because there's this huge, massive public viewing of all of this stuff reports, suggestions, becomes a thing. And at the same time, as we'll see, the government is simultaneously investigating it and then denying it. Right. And it created kind of a weird headlock on the nation's psyche. Yeah. So there was one sighting in Project Signs book and report that doesn't exist that most everyone was pretty impressed by, and that was the chills Willis child wided witted. Witted. I'm going child witted. The child's witted UFO encounter. And that was in Alabama in July of 1948. And this is the beginning of what you will see as a recurring thing where it's not the drunk farmer in the field right. Or the college students partying in a cul de sac. It's like military pilots or airline pilots. Like people that are trained to understand aviation and know what doesn't look right. Right. And this one was two Eastern Airlines pilots. They were flying a DC Three and they said they nearly collided with, and here's the quote, a strange torpedo shaped plying object that looked like, quote, one of those fantastic Flash Gordon rocket ships. And the funny papers, it doesn't really help the legitimacy. No, but the fact that these guys described it, that they were sober at the time, that they were both trained commercial pilots, it really did impress a lot of people working on science. And it did kind of give them this confidence that there may be something going on that we don't understand here and we need to investigate this. Right. But for the Air Force's part, general Hood Vandenberg said, no physical evidence, no case. Exactly. He's the one who allegedly ordered all of the copies of the estimate destroyed. And he also basically ordered from on high. Look, all of this can be explained somehow, some way, using our current understanding of science, go make that happen. It's what came to be known as the conventional explanation paradigm, which I put this together long enough ago now that I can't remember if that's an actual thing or if I coined that. Oh, the CEP. Yeah. Sounds official to me. It does when you say it that way. But I also have a very dry style, so it's entirely possible I came up with that. But there are three things, basically three causes of why somebody might think they have seen an alien ship under the CEP. Under the CEP. Mass hysteria and hallucination, which is what you think. Dogs and cats hoax. That's super easy to believe. That someone plenty of those have happened. Yeah. Remember crop circles? Sure. And then misinterpretation of known objects, which is a very big bucket that you can toss things into if you're the military. Yeah, because there's a lot of weather phenomenon. Phenomenon. You can just make stuff up and say they were looking at this. Right. Rubber bands. What? It was rubber bands. How are you going to prove otherwise? You'll note, though, in all three of those explanations, none of them say extraterrestrials no. Or even secret unknown technology. Right. Because that's not conventional. Right. Or an explanation. Well, it is an explanation, but it's not conventional. But it doesn't fit the paradigm. It does not. And then they actually worked with the Saturday Evening Post, which everybody was reading at the time, and they did a two part article which debunked flying saucers. And this was sort of the beginning of, like not kind of like, very much a PR campaign to debunk flying saucers. Yeah. Should we take a break? I think we should. Chuck. We've reached the break part. All right, we'll move on to Project Grudge right after this. Josh, my friend, do you know where your passport is right now? Well, you better dig it up, because Adventure is around the corner and there's a card that's going to get you closer with the city Advantage Platinum Select Card. Every swipe earns you advantage miles and loyalty points, and two times advantage miles at restaurants and gas stations so your everyday purchases can take your travel to new heights. Plus, card members get access to built in travel benefits. For example, your first check bag is free on domestic travel, so you and your family have room to pack for every possibility, like coming home with extra souvenirs and with preferred boarding, you'll be in your seat sooner, ready for takeoff into Adventure. The hard part is deciding where you'll go first, because when you earn 50,000 Advantage bonus miles after qualifying purchases, adventure is on so fast in 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. 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 okay, so here's the thing, though. The Air Force, even if they really, genuinely were like, no, man, there's no such thing as aliens, whatever this is, it's just Americans being freaked out about the Cold War. Okay? Let's just call it that. This is the Air Force brass talking. I'm doing my best impression of them. They still needed to investigate them because the Air Force is charged with protecting US airspace, and there are reports coming in on a daily basis from all over the country of unidentified objects, flying saucers, flying through American airspace. So they still needed to investigate this, but the Air Force decided they could investigate it on their own terms. And so Project Sign was dissolved and replaced by what? This is your favorite name for Project Grudge, which is named exactly why you think because they didn't want to be messing with this stuff. They should have called it Project. Are you freaking kidding me? Right? Are you joking right now? I got to do what? Do you hear yourself? Yeah, that was the attitude in the Air Force at the time. You didn't want to get assigned. There might have been, like, one person that was super into it. I think there were a handful. But generally, you didn't go into the Air Force to do this, and you were probably irked if you were assigned this duty. Yeah, I got the impression that this is something like being stationed in Greenland or Siberia, Alaska or something like that. Probably not Siberia. I bet Greenland is nice. No, it's not. Alaska is lovely. Okay. Depending on uninhabited Canada. Okay. Canada's great. Anyway, I got the impression this is like, a backwater assignment where if you ticked off your commanding officer, they would put you on Project Garage. Oh. You should have said South Georgia. Okay. Yes. Albany the worst place in the world. Sure. So, yeah. You call this the dark ages of Air Force UFO investigation? Because Project Grudge, the basic tenant there, was, we're here to debunk these claims. Not so much investigate, but just to debunk. Right. Not only do these have some sort of conventional explanation, even when they seem like they don't, we're still going to give them a conventional explanation because that's it. Because these are not extraterrestrials, and we're sick of this S word. Yes. That's what the Air Force said. That's right. And one of the people they hired as a civilian scientist consultant was a man named very important figure in this whole story. Yeah, J. Allen. Heineck from the Ohio State University. You did that. And he is a prominent astronomer. Does that make you mad? A little bit. I'm not sure why either, but it does. Okay. He was a prominent astronomer, and he was recruited specifically to be chief debunker. Right. And that's how we saw his role, for sure, too, especially initially. So he was a UFO skeptic to him. He really kind of fell in line with that mentality that everything could be explained as a hoax or a misunderstanding or a misidentification. But he was also a scientist in his core. He was a very well respected astronomer, and he believed that this should still be investigated, especially cases where somebody who was like a trained pilot or an astronomer or a meteorologist or somebody had seen something and reported it, and that it seemed incredible, those incredible sightings by credible people. That was kind of the confounding thread that wound through these decades of investigation of UFOs. Yes. And the other thing, too, that you got to remember about Heinz was he was very much the face of this debunking, and it's a role that he would grow to loathe over the years, to say the least, because we'll get to some of the more ridiculous explanations. He was the one that had to parrot the stuff out. Yeah. They'd shove him out there, and then all of a sudden, he realized there were cameras in his face, and he'd say, hello, everyone. That's what he was famous for. Was that his intro line? That's how we start every press conference. So one of his first efforts here and this was and maybe his most famous this was the 1948 case of Captain Thomas Mantel. He was an Air Force pilot who died when his P 51 Mustang went down while he was chasing a UFO. That sounds like an Air Force pilot and a P 51 Mustang. That's what you would do. Let me go after that thing. Sure. I want to see what it's like. That's what Maverick would do. Yeah, I guess so. You excited about that movie? No. No? Did you see the trailer? No. I'm going to show it to you. Is Tom Cruise dAGED in it? No. They should have just gone with that. So are you excited about it? Listen, man, I like Top Gun. I didn't think I was some big nut for Top Gun, but when I saw that trailer, it gave me a little bit of the feels, for sure. Oh, really? Yeah, man. I was like, Why am I so excited about this? Wow. Okay, well, maybe I'll give it a a gift him for child of the 80s. But when I saw him on that Ninja motorcycle or whatever, riding around with his helmet on, that music. Who is Top Gun now? Well, I think the deal is now he comes back and now there's a brash young kid. Right? Who's the brash young kid? Is it Cristianovaro? I don't think so. I predicted it would be, and I don't think I'm right. Well, he would have been better than whoever they got, is what I'm saying, because he's a friend of the show and the other guy is probably not. No, of course not. Although if it turns out he is, then it would be an even match. That's right. We cast our lot behind people who listen to they're the only respectable people. All right. At any rate, I will go see this. I will, to my dying day, not see the remake of Red Dawn, despite oh, no. At least a friend of the show, if not a former friend of the show, producing that film. Oh, Luke. Yes. He says, it stinks to okay. I'm not sure you're allowed to see that. You might want to email them first. Okay. The P 51 goes down and Heineck says, you know what? He may have been pursuing and chasing Venus. Sure. And they went, you know, that's a planet. He went, yeah, so maybe and it was daytime, and you can't see Venus in the daytime. Right. He went, yeah, I'm just going to stick with Venus. I'm going to stick with Venus. Goodbye. And that was just one explanation. There were other ones, obviously. The weather balloon thing has always been a big one. Right. Conventional aircraft that you saw it in the wrong light, maybe. Yeah. So, you know, like, you watch Next Files and everything, right? Sure. Okay. Do you remember how this kind of agitated molder would get? And he'd start talking really fast. He would just be talking about all the ridiculous explanations that have been given for UFOs. This is where they actually started. Yeah. With Jay Allen. Heineck for sure giving these public explanations that over the years, as we'll see, really stretch credibility, reason, logic, common sense, and became just kind of a PR problem for the Air Force. Yeah. Because it might have been nothing or something explainable, but to just brush it under the rug as X or Y, like, hey, it's Venus. That makes them do nothing but look bad. Like they're not even taking it seriously. Right, exactly. And I think in the Air Force's defense, from the position they were coming from, they didn't think the American public could handle an unknown oh, sure. Just by saying, I don't know what it was. It wasn't a UFO. Everybody. It wasn't an alien, it wasn't the Russians, but we can't say what it was. They were not prepared to just go out there and do that. Yeah. And again, in their defense, I think America may have proven them right. They would have just been like, I knew it. It's aliens, and yeah, well, they didn't want that. They didn't want that kind of hysteria getting whipped up, which is why they explained everything, no matter how ridiculous it was. That's right. So this happened. More and more and more sightings would come in. Air Force would. Trot. Heinek out there again with his hello and goodbye, and in between a bunch of BS, basically. Yeah. Everything from balloons, planets, meteors, optical illusions, solar reflections, large hailstones, is one that really got everybody. That's a good one. But as far as the Air Force is going out there and just explaining everything in the actual project, people are saying, like, there's some out there that we just don't understand. There's some core of this phenomenon. Yes. A lot of it is probably mastery. Yes. A lot of it is misidentification. But there are, again, credible witnesses who are giving these reports and we just can't quite explain these. Yeah. So it was one in particular, in September of 1951, that really kind of brought things to a head. This was in Ford. Monmouth, New Jersey. And there were pilots, there were radar operators. They observed fastmoving, highly maneuverable, dischaped aircraft. Right. And this is something that you're going to see again and again and again. They're always super fast and can do things that they've never seen aircraft do, like start and stop on a dime and turn and do these weird things that are inexplicable for really experienced pilots witnessing this stuff, or travel even just 1200 miles an hour. It's like there's not anything that at this time was supposed to be able to do that right. And so Project Grudge, the personnel there, had to investigate all this stuff, and the chain of command basically, was to report it to Major Or. Well, the man in charge was Major General Charles Cabell. He was ahead of Air Force intelligence at the Pentagon. Yeah. And because these were military witnesses, it was a military incident, he wanted this directly to him. That's right. So there was one Grudge investigator, lieutenant Jerry Cummings. Not Jerry sitting next to us? No, she's never been in the Air Force, as far as I know. What? She's been telling me otherwise for years. Really? Oh, yeah. She's a big time imposter if she hasn't been in the Air Force. So he actually believed that they were, quote, intelligently, controlled what they investigated. He thought he's basically using code for aliens, man. Right. Like the guy from Ancient Aliens. Exactly. So here's the thing. That Lieutenant Jerry Cummings, who headed up this project for Grudge, he was on the side of people who were like, no, this is being just swept under the rug. It's not being seriously investigated. And he actually griped about it to the head of Air Force Intelligence. Cable. That guy Cable. Right. That guy Cabel. Cable. Cabel. Cabel. Okay. And Cabell was like, what? You guys aren't actually investigating this stuff? This is all just a PR campaign? And he was told, Affirmative, sir. Affirmative. And he went a little nuts. Oh, that's what happened? Yeah. Okay. It wasn't quite clear on what made it happen. I didn't write it very well. Okay. So he said, okay, this is ridiculous that we're not actually investigating it. Got you. That's going to change. So he had enough clout that he got Grudged dissolved. Oh, I thought he didn't like grudge. He didn't like the way that Grudge was conducting this investigation, which is to say, not at all. This makes more sense. And he instead said, we need to do something else. We need to revamp this whole project. We're going to dissolve Grudge, create a new project. We're going to call it Project Blue Book, because at the time, college exams were given in the standardized Blue textbooks. And he said that we need to approach this with all the seriousness of a test in college. Got you. We're going to call this Project Blue Book, and we're going to get a new guy to head it up, a guy named Captain Edward J. Ruple. And he could not have found a better guy to head Project Bluebook. All right, let's take another break. We should also announce this is a two parter. I don't think we said that at the onset. Well, that was going to be the big cliffhanger. Oh, was it? Yeah, it's going to be like the bicycle repair episode of Different Strokes where no one claps. Everybody just sits there and stunned silent. Well, we can still do that. Okay. All right. 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. 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. All right, so project Blue Book. In this special two part episode this is the second half of part one. Oh, my God. You just confused me so bad. This was the new jam after Project Grudge. And you mentioned Edward. Captain Edward J Rappel. Or is it Repelled? I've been calling him Ruppell. Oh, really? Yeah. Your son is a little more regal, so let's go with Repelt. Okay. Man, do people get sick of this. I can't believe they don't, but they don't seem to. Our numbers are steady, if not still growing. I imagine that we lose .5% of listeners over pronunciation alone. Oh, probably more than that. Yeah. We're lovable in almost any other way. Okay, so Blue Book is happening, and under the command of Repelled, it is the Salad days of official military UFO investigation. I'm glad you use salad Days. Have you ever seen the Monty Python Salad Days sketch? Jeez, I don't know. They're playing like tennis in the late Victorian era, and all of a sudden it just turns in this bizarre blood bath. People, like, lose arms. Some of the head falls off, and there's just blood everywhere. Just watch it again. Okay. Anytime I hear salad days, it's what I think of mining python. They're so great. So the objectives of Blue Book were, one, determine whether UFOs are a threat to US. Security, because that's the big deal. That's why the military is involved. It's not just like, we just got to calm people's nerves. As we said earlier, they really had to do this, because if Independence Day happened, they can't be the ones who are like, oh, we quit investigating this stuff because we thought it was just movies and science fiction. Yeah, that's the problem. They don't want to investigate this, but they have to a security concern just in case. And at the very least, the Air Force has to be showing the country that they're investigating, that they're on top of any security concerns like that. That's right. So that was the first objective. Number two was and this makes sense as well, to determine if they possess they, meaning the aliens, I guess any unique scientific information or advanced technology that we could use. Yeah. And it didn't necessarily have to be aliens. It could have been the Soviets, too. I think that was probably the largest suspicion among people who said, no, this is real. Not necessarily that it's aliens, but maybe the Soviets are way further ahead than we think they are. Yes. Like, maybe they have some advanced spy plane in us. I don't want to spoil anything, but we had good reason to believe that might be going on. Right. You know what I mean? I know what you mean. I hope no one else does. So you can thank Mr. Rapellt or Captain Repelled by creating the term UFO. He was like flying saucer, flying disc geese, he said. Who even came up with that? Those are totally unscientific. We need something that just kind of resets things and says, this is a scientific investigation, and it worked. It's easy to think UFO now sounds so like goofy and unscientific, but when you break down the words, it's the classification that really worked at the time. It's just kind of gone on to feel like something else. Right. And meaning. Yeah, it's definitely got a lot of cultural baggage around it now. But at the time, it's an unidentified flying object. Exactly. And one of the other benefits of creating this new term was that they are also allowed to kind of redefine it. Right. And they defined it really broadly as any aerial object, which the observer is unable to identify, which is I mean, that's a really broad definition. And it also puts the onus for figuring out what that object was on the investigator. It's like basically saying somebody saw something, they don't know what it is. Here's the description, go figure it out. Yeah. To his credit, he was like, let's get a database on a computer. And everyone said, what's a computer? He said, It's right here inside this warehouse. The warehouse is the computer. That's right. Plug it in. And he was going to apply statistical methods to really try and figure something out. Drew up these questionnaires for people. Right. A streamlined questionnaire. Yeah. Stuff like draw a picture that will show the shape of the object. What was the condition of the sky? Did it suddenly speed up or rush away? Did it change shape? Did it flicker? Did it throb? Did it pulsate? Never mind. This is creepy. And they shoved the questionnaire back across the table. Right. And the US Air Force Base basically designated a special officer to collect all these reports. Every base had one, every single base. And they all had to send those to Wright Patterson. Right? Exactly. So they were taking this really scientific approach that was saying that we don't know what this is, but we're going to apply science to it and we're going to get to the bottom of it. And as a result, they said, okay, because this definition for Unidentified Flying Object is so wide, because it's up to us to investigate, we're going to come up with three categories that these can possibly be placed into. There is identified, where we figured it out. It was a meteor, it was a weather balloon, the person was drunk on corn whiskey. Who knows? There is insufficient data. We're like, I don't know, it was just this thing that flew by. You'd say, okay, that's an insufficient data one. Right. And then the last one, the most famous one, is unidentified, where no matter what they try during this investigation, they have enough data, they have a good enough description, but they can't correlate it with any known object phenomenon technology. Right. And as a result, because of this open mindedness led by Captain Rapelt, there was a 25% unidentified rate in Project Blue Books investigation during his tenure. That's right. 3200 reports. 69% were misidentification of known things, 9% were insufficient information, I guess. Insufficient data. And then known category. One and a half percent were crackpots, 8% were probable hoaxes, but basically miscellaneous. And then 22%. I think you said 25. Is it 22? Yeah. I'm sorry, it's 22. Yeah, 22%. Unknown, unknown or unidentified. And to this day, the official number of unidentified flying object sightings that remained unidentified and unexplained is 701. That's the magic number. Yeah. There are dudes out there with that tattooed on the back of their neck. Probably I want to believe Is that the end of part one? I think so. Chuck is a pretty good spot. Yeah. So as is tradition with two partners, we're not going to do a listener mail, but we'll do a call out for help with you guys. Okay. Like we do every now and then. So it really helps us out if you guys leave ratings and reviews on itunes or the podcatcher of your choice and tell a friend, a coworker that you listen to stuff you should know and you get a lot out of it. And that stuff really is what made the show popular to begin with. Yeah. And we appreciate the continued support. Yes. We try not to ask much. Couple of times a year, maybe. Yeah. May I have another review? Yes. Okay. Well, if you want to get in touch with us in the meantime, while you wait around for part two, you can go to Stuffyshireknow.com and follow us on social. And as always, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast. iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist 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. 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c471108e-5460-11e8-b38c-0b0417108c71 | SYSK Selects: All We Know About Guessing | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-all-we-know-about-guessing | Guessing is a weird thing. For millennia, it could have meant the difference between life and death. Now it's not as vital, but we still do it every day, whether behind the wheel of a car, or judging what another person might be feeling. In this classic episode, learn everything we know about the brain and how it manages this odd, very human act. | Guessing is a weird thing. For millennia, it could have meant the difference between life and death. Now it's not as vital, but we still do it every day, whether behind the wheel of a car, or judging what another person might be feeling. In this classic episode, learn everything we know about the brain and how it manages this odd, very human act. | Sat, 04 Jul 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=4, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=186, tm_isdst=0) | 54240745 | audio/mpeg | "Hi everyone, its your pal Josh. And for this week's SYSK Selects, I've chosen how guessing works. It was one of those great ideas for a topic that didn't pan out to have much information on it actually. So we just talked a lot about subjective stuff and stuff said and it turned out well, I think in the end, if I may say so. Hope you enjoy. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's. Charles W, chuck Bright. Jerry's over there in the corner. Everybody puts Jerry in the corner but you shouldn't. And this is stuff you should not. She's the opposite of baby. Jerry's back. She's back from the mall. Is that where she's been? Yeah. Remember we said that she was at the mall, she was buying a house, she was doing all sorts of stuff. Okay. But she's back now and things are normal again. Yeah, she was at the beach and she's now eating in front of me. What I ate about an hour ago. Do you want to throw up or do you want more? It's this weird in between. I'm drawn to the smell, but I'm also full. So I'm kind of like, yeah. Oh man, what a life. I know, eating. Who needs it, right? Me. I do too. I love eating. Love it. You know what else I love? What? Really good magic. Like illusions. Well, what do you mean? Because that could mean two different things. Well, let me tell you. You and I went to New York recently and we saw this show. It's called in and of itself. So one man stage magic, I guess you could call it that illusionist show by a guy named Derek Del Guardio. That's how you say his last name. I strongly recommend anyone go see this show. I think they extended it through the rest of the year. But it's like kind of his life story told through these different acts and just the stuff he's doing is not like, oh man, that rabbit came out of nowhere. Nothing like that. It's all much more psychological than that. But the basis of it is that this guy must be just one of the better guests walking around today. He's just good. He's also like a card shark. It's just a really neat show. It's really original and different. But just to see somebody do something to where they probably are guessing but they're doing such an amazing job at it that it just appears to be magic. That's one of my favorite things in the world to see. Like when he talks to people and think of a number, except obviously more fun and complex than that. Yes. And I don't want to give any of it away. I don't want to give any bit of it away. Like for anybody who's going to go see it, everyone should go into it fresh but yeah, just after you see it, go back and listen to this episode again, and you'll be like, oh, yeah, totally. Now, I think the deal a lot of times with that situation is powers of suggestion, correct? Oh, I don't know, man. I don't know if that's what this guy's doing or not. No, he's not doing, like, cold readings or something like that. Like john Edwards? No, nothing like that. But power is a suggestion, and that if you can lead someone to think of a certain thing, that they then guess that you're, I guess. So get it? Didn't even mean that. But that kind of dives into what we're talking about, which is guessing in general. There's this whole science really doesn't have any idea about how we make guesses. All we know is that we are capable of making guesses and that we make guesses almost constantly, and that our brain is basically set up to guess. Like, our construction of reality is a series of guesses, most of which pan out to be right, but then can also be terribly wrong, which is what optical illusions prove. Yeah, and I thought it was going to be more interesting than it was initially when I picked this one out, so I was a little disappointed. And then we found, like, other supplemental stuff that kind of helped it, but in the end it felt a little unwieldy. But I think that's just because of the nature of the topic, like, there isn't a concise beginning, middle, and end to this kind of topic. No, because, again, science is pretty well stumped and sometimes, chuck, if you'll remember, these can be our best episodes, unless the ones where there's just, like a clear cut, completely understandable, neat explanation. Those ones are great. And then on the other end of the spectrum, like this one, the ones where science is just kind of like, maybe this is it. I don't know. This could be it. Those are usually pretty good, too. So this one has potential. All right. That's my estimation. Well, I thought it was interesting in our very own house of works article, and they started talking about in days of yore, starting with tuktuk, and basically up until the point where we could measure things or prove things, there's still a lot of guessing going on. But guessing was a daily survival tactic, right? That's how we learned. Should I go this way and fall off a cliff? I'm going to take a guess. Or should I eat this thing? Will it kill me? Or like in the case of Lewis and clarke, I remember Clark estimated and there's guesses, and we'll get into different types, but an estimation is kind of a guess, even if it's informed and well reasoned. In clark's case, of course, he estimated I think he was only off by about 40 miles when they got to the pacific. Oh, really? I don't remember that. Yeah, he estimated 4162 miles. He was off by 40. Wow. Remarkable. Yeah, it is. But it wasn't a wild guess. It was Clark being a very smart dude who probably took copious notes. Not probably. He definitely took copious notes. Right. But I don't know. I just never really thought about guessing back in those days, you could end up a bad guess means the end of you. Yes. But if your friends were standing around watching you guess that lizard over there wasn't poisonous, you can just go ahead and eat it raw, and then you keel over and die. They learn from your bad guess. That's called taking one for the team. Very much so. Yeah. Before the universal editability test, man, you were just have you been going through the archives or something? No, I wrote that article back then. Got you. That one stuck with me because, you know, I mean, I thought you were, too. I'm cursed with that new information and old information. Oh, sure. Getting squeezed out. Yeah. So she'll get into this. I guess. I don't mean to do this. I'm sorry, what? Saying, I guess. Yeah. It's pretty commonplace, but it does kind of underscore just how much we do get in our lives. Yeah. All right. Let's go ahead and start it with the brain, then, because while you're correct in saying that they don't know the pathways necessarily of a guess, all different parts of the brain not all the parts, but many different parts of the brain are at work, which makes a lot of sense when you think about what different kind of guesses can entail. Whether you're guessing someone's age or guessing, because that involves, like, recognition with your eyeballs or a memory of someone else who was a certain age who looked like that. Like recall. There's all different parts of the brain that are lighting up whenever you're guessing something. Yeah. They think that it's a global phenomenon. Right. Like, is it brainially global? Yeah, exactly. Right. So there's, like, some region of your brain that specializes in the particular task at hand. The thing you're guessing about, whether it's volume or, like you said, someone's age, that region of the brain that has to do with saying numbers would light up. I think it's the parietal anterior gyrus or something like that that lights up when you're trying to guess someone's age based on how they look at that one, I think. Right. Using the wonder machine. Right. But that's just one functional part of the whole process that the brain is going through. They know that there's a number of different regions that are operating at any given point in time when you're making a guess, but they still can't say, well, if somebody's guessing that this is what's going to happen here's the cascade that's going to go through the brain, we haven't reached that point yet. Yeah. They think that if you're guessing about a visual object or subject, then your frontal lobe and occipital lobe are at work. Numerical quantities, like, how many jelly beans are in that jar. That's kind of the common thing. They mentioned that, like, that still happens. Is that still a thing? You know who is a jelly bean jar guessing champion? My wife really is, yes. Long standing. Her spatial reasoning is outstanding. Well, spatial reasoning and numerical quantities are a big part of trying to guess the quantity of something into something. Right. If your brain is kind of specialized in that manner, you are probably going to be better at it than somebody whose brain is not. Right. So Yummy would beat me every time. My spatial reasoning is horrific. Right? Yeah. But I'm really good at recognizing faces, so I'm probably better at guessing someone's age based on their face or possibly how they're feeling based on their facial expression than she might be. Yeah. That's a whole, like, I didn't even think about that being part of guessing. But the emotional thing of guessing yeah. Like someone's feelings or what they're thinking, that's a whole different thing than guessing jelly beans in a jar, which is different than guessing someone's age. It's, like, all lumped into guessing. It's really more varied than I ever considered. Right. Well, let's talk about the different types of guesses you might make that so I think what you just kind of did, Chuck, was you divided guesses into two buckets. I'm trying to decide what the buckets would be called, though. So one bucket would be just kind of working knowledge, and the other would be, say, like, emotional. Right. So how many jelly beans are in a jar that'd be in the working knowledge bucket? What somebody is feeling based on your guess, based on, say, their facial expression, that's emotional or intellectual. Yeah, that's right. Intellectual or emotional buckets. Bam. Just carved them up. But I think those are kind of like the two categories you can put guesses into, even though you can break types of guesses down further. Yeah. And breaking them down further, you have your wild guesses. This is when you have no information, no outside input whatsoever. And you often say, this is just a wild guess. If I had to guess, yeah. You're saying here, listen to me, I can speak. There's no basis in fact or reality or anything like that. Then you have your educated guess, which is in the middle, and that's when you have a little bit of information. There's a military term that I had never heard of called Swag, which stands for stuff. We all get no scientific wild ass guessing. Okay. Which is like a guesstimate, but it's a military term by all accounts. Most people say it started in Vietnam with General Westmoreland, and you will hear military people say swag. And that's when we got a little information. I'm not just wild guessing here. This is a ballpark educated guess. Right. It's not bad. Still less than an estimate that's where we have a lot more information. Yeah, not just a lot more information, but you're pretty familiar, also with the topic that you're guessing at as well. Right. So Lewis and Clark, I think both of them were surveyors, so they would have had a lot of training as far as judging distance goes. They would have had some information to put together. So Clark coming up with an estimate of how wide the continent is and just being off by 40 miles, like you said, that's remarkable. But if you had one of us do it, it would have been a while guess. So it has to do with the training, the expertise, really, and then the amount of information you have. That's what an estimate is. Yeah. And you may not even know that you have information stored away in your brain that you're recalling when you're trying to hazard a guess on something. You might think it's a wild guess, but you're really kind of picking out something that happened in your past, maybe. Right. Or another way to look at it is that is intuition, which is, from what I understand, intuition is kind of its own category. But if it's most closely related to any type of those three guesses we just mentioned, it would be an estimate. And it comes from years and years and years of training or exposure to whatever you're guessing at to the point where your guesses don't even seem like guesses. It just seems like foreknowledge of what you're about to do. Yeah. I used to be really bad at guessing crowd sizes, but through our live shows, I've gotten pretty good at it. Because when you go to these theaters, you know how many people are in there? And then you stand in front of that many people. And if you do that enough times, I can now say, like, when I'll go to a show or something will be like, how many people you think this place holds? I used to say, like, I have no idea. I know. But now you say better around eight or 900 people. Yeah. And you're probably pretty close. Yeah. Within 40 miles, I'll bet. And that's just because of exposure and learning. Right. And that actually brings up a really good point that you can actually get better at guessing. And we'll get into that right after this break. How about that, Chuck? Great. All right. So, Chuck, you said that you got better at estimating crowd sizes by performing at our live shows, right? Correct. So you were terrible at it before. Very bad. But just from exposing yourself to it going out on stage and exposing yourself to crowds that you could judge the size of, and everybody clapped except that one guy. Remember that guy? Yeah. Nelson pointed and laughed. Nelson to Portland. You got better at it. And when it comes to probably both, but especially intellectual guesses, intellectual bucket guesses, you can train yourself to get better at it. And part of that is making a guess, getting pretty much immediate feedback, and then learning from that. Yeah. Like, you're wrong. This is what the answer is. It's like anything else. Exactly. If you do that enough, you're going to get better at it. Yeah. And there's this pretty interesting I guess it was interesting little kind of sidetrack that the author of the guests article, Aliyahu took, and Alicia, I have to say no is Aliyah. It's not Alicia. No, it's Alia. There's no saying Alicia for theirs. Not only is the sea silent, it's not there. Wow. It's invisible. So Alia hoy my hats off to her, because doing supplemental research for this, there are not a lot of people who are coming up with really substantial stuff about guesses. It's like it's barren. It's probably the least amount of research I've ever encountered in all of our almost 1000 plus episodes. Wow. So the fact that she put this together, my hats off to her. But a sidetrack she takes is to teach the reader how to get better at guessing a jar full of jelly beans. Yeah. Boy, that was exciting. My method was always to pick out a smaller area, like the bottom inch of the jar okay. Count as many as I could and estimate that and then multiply that out. That's actually a great technique if it does not work bad. Well, I don't know. I haven't guessed jelly beans in a jar since I was probably twelve. Right. But that was always my method, which has a little there's a little bit of method to it, but it's definitely not as good as this one. Okay. It sounds a little more complex than it actually is, but say if you look at a jar and it's filled with jelly beans, you can say the volume of that jar is, say, a quart. Okay. But then you want to begin with sure. Right. But you can learn. Right. You can just look around. Like, here's the point. If you want to get good at guessing jelly beans, it just takes a little bit of work. Yeah. Most people would walk up, say, a million jelly beans, and they're off by like 900,000. They're like, well, I'm terrible at guessing jelly beans, I'm going to sleep for the rest of my life. But if you want to get good at guessing at jelly beans, all you have to do is poke around, learn a few things, and then you can basically apply those to every situation. And one of the things you would need to learn is how to judge the volume of the container to start. Correct. So that's one part, right? Yeah. Which most people would do that by comparing it to like, a milk jug or a two liter bottle or something like that. Right. But in this case, to get a really accurate estimate, you would want to know specifically, say, how many ounces a container held. Correct. And then another thing you would probably do if you started researching guessing jelly beans and jars on the Internet, you would run across some research that found that if you have spherical objects in a jar, they typically take up about if you fill the thing up, they typically take up about 64% of the actual volume of the jar. Yeah. And that's if they're just randomly dumped. Right. So if you come across a jar and you say and it's filled with, like, perfect balls okay. Perfectly around bouncy balls. Right. You can say, well, those are spherical, and they're taking up about 64% of the jar. So all I have to do is figure out basically the size of each of the ball. Right. And then divide it by 64% of the volume, and then, bam. You just guessed how many are in there, and you're probably pretty close to right? Sure. So this all sounds mind numbing. I've got a little trickle of blood coming out of my ear right now. But the whole point is you can train yourself to make better guesses, to estimate better. That's the whole point. Yeah. And if it's non spherical, by the way, like if it's peanuts or something like that, or ice cubes. Not disgusting. Circus peanuts. Oh, man, that conjures up so many memories. Did you like those? Well, I think I might have when I was a kid, but I haven't had one in 40 years. But I still remember the taste. You may just have some. She says they still hold up, and I'm like, I didn't like them then, I'm not going to like them now. Well, they hold up for you in a bad way. Right? Yeah, exactly. I know I'm not supposed to yuck anyone's yum, but yuck. So if it's circus peanuts, let's say it would be between 50% and 54% of the space, not 64. Yes. So what is yui's method? Did you ask her? She said she just kind of knows. So she's a precog. Exactly. She shaves her head once a while and lays around in a VAT of liquid. Wow. That would scare me if that was my wife's answer. If she just kind of walked by and said, I just know. Right? Yeah. I would be like, well, what else do you just know? Yeah, well, she's kind of unstoppable, too. You have no idea how many cabs we've won at county fairs in the last year alone. Our house is overrun with them. All right, so that's just guessing. Volume of a thing and a thing. It's intellectual guessing. Yeah. Right. But you can train yourself to get better. What's really up for questioning is whether you can train yourself to get better at the other bucket of guessing. Emotional type of guessing. Right. Where you're walking around and you are interacting with other people, and you're making judgments about how they're feeling right. Then about what they're thinking. Right. Then what their motives are, how well they're actually listening to you, all of these things, right? It's part of our interaction with other people. And there's something that two researchers called IX and Tukes, great combo, that back in 1988 established this kind of field of inquiry in which they were trying to get to the bottom of what they called empathic accuracy, which is how accurately we can surmise what someone actually is feeling or thinking just from interacting with them. Some people are supposedly good at it, some people are not. And from what I saw, there's a big kind of push and pull about whether it's worth practicing or whether you should just not do that at all for the sake of your own sanity. And just say, if you tell me that you're in a good mood, I'm going to take that at face value. And if you're actually not, then you're covering up your feelings for your own reason, and that's on you. And that's fine. If you want to just keep them to yourself, that's fine. If you want to share them, I'm here. But I'm going to take what you're saying on face value, so bully for you. That, to me, is sanity. Like going, how are you really feeling? One can spend a lot of time doing that. So can I share a little bit about myself here? Well, I know it's weird, feels gross, but for a very long time, Chuck, I thought that I was a born and bred empath, that I could understand what anyone was thinking and feeling, maybe even better than they knew how they were thinking and feeling. And I finally came to the hard truth that I was wrong almost all the time. And in figuring this out, this was really jarring. And it took a little while for me for this to sink in, but once I figured out that I'm actually terrible at reading, engaging other people's thoughts and feelings, it was one of the most liberating things that's ever happened to me because I just stopped and I realized how much of my life I've been walking around wasting just thinking about what people really think. Or do people really like me? They probably don't. Or do they? Or what do they mean by that look or whatever. And just taking people in life on face value, it occupies so much less of your mind at any given moment. It's just great. That's my prescription. Stop trying to figure out what other people are really thinking and feeling. You should have just asked me a long time ago. I was like, you're terrible at that. I don't know if I would have listened. It took a little while, but to walk through their own doors, you know what I'm saying? That is well put, man. You're a stoic sage. So cognitive distortion is phrase you hear pop up a lot when it comes to assessing another person's emotions, and these are these inaccurate thoughts that you have in your brain. Sometimes they lead to negative thinking or encourage that. I think probably most times that's probably the case. And then polarized thinking is another bucket, I guess, since we're bucketing everything today, which is everything is great or everything is terrible. And the example they give in this article is simply it's a little boy reading a girl's face that she doesn't like me, but that's a kid in elementary school. You can apply this to anyone walking into a room and basically reading either the room or reading a person and saying, like, I don't like the way that person just looked at me. That's bad. Right. And so I don't think they like me. And those are both of those things at work, cognitive distortion and polarized thinking. Right, which I think polarized thinking is a type of cognitive distortion. I think that's the umbrella term for that kind of thing. Right? Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I think this is kind of where you get to why a lot of people are terrible at guessing or get their guessing wrong, especially when it comes to what other people are thinking and feeling. Is that your guesses, whether you realize it or not, are actually colored and come through a lens of your past history, right? Yeah. So, like, if you were raised in a house where people, your family members are really critical of you and one another, if you see two people in a corner, like kind of like having a quiet conversation but laughing too, you're probably going to think they're laughing at you even though they may not even be paying the least bit of attention to you. Yeah, sure. But because of the history of how you grew up, that's what you're going to guess at. Right. Whereas if somebody was raised in a house where they were instilled with a lot of confidence and like a great sense of humor, right, that person might just think, man, they must be talking about something hilarious. I wish I knew what the joke was. Or they might have so much confidence and sense of humor, they might even walk up and engage them and say, what are you guys laughing at? Right? And if they go, no, nothing, never mind, then you may be onto something. Right, but there's this blog post and man, I wish I could remember what the site was. I apologize, site. But it was basically like, stop trying to read other people's minds, was the gist of it. And they actually used that example and they went on to say, like, even if the person who thinks that they're laughing at them turns out to be right, that's not the worst thing that can happen to you. It's fine, who cares? Some people aren't going to like you. Some people will. It doesn't really matter. Like if somebody doesn't like you, you got to have a little more self confidence in the life that just completely derail your day. Yeah. And you have to find it within yourself. Yeah, for sure. And some people get that through years of therapy. Some people are born with it, some people never achieve it. Yeah. Even if you are born with it, I think you can lose it from time to time. If you're not born with it, you can gain it from time to time, but it's not something I think you have every moment of every day, necessarily. Yeah. Boy, people with just too much confidence are so annoying. They really are, because everyone wants that. I think that's why it's annoying. Sure. It's like, man, I wish I could be that confident about everything. I hate that guy. And then you end up in a corner talking to somebody else about how much you hate that person with so much confidence totally lost on the other person. So I have another theory that's not scientific at all. It's just my personal theory that when it comes to guessing things your own not well, your past experience has certainly influenced it, but your own how you are also influences oh, yeah. Like, I think a liar is more apt to think people are lying to them. Precisely. Yeah. No, that's absolutely I agree. I was going to say that's absolutely true, but I agree with you. Yeah. Because who knows? It's just a theory. Right. But I mean, it's based on some pretty ancient folk wisdom. Like that whole thing about how when you're pointing a finger at somebody, three fingers pointing at you, or judge not lest you be judged. Like, when you think about people in that way, you think that they're doing the same thing to you even when they're not. It's your own hilarious little personal hell. Yeah. And it's not always that. Like, I think that dude is ripping me off. Maybe you've been ripped off before, and that's where that's coming from. Or maybe you've ripped someone off before, but I bet one of the two has happened. I think that more what you're talking about is our core character traits, though, like being judgmental or being a liar or being a BS or something like that. When you do notice that, though, what's great is there's so much room for growth oh, yeah. When you realize that, wait a minute, I think everybody's judging me because I'm so judgmental. I need to work on being judgmental. What's almost magical is that when you realize that and you work on not being judgmental, you stop thinking that other people are judging you and your life is just freer. Well, there are these psychologists all over this article that Alia just rocked my world with that wrote, and one of them was talking about these interpretations without evidence. And her advice, which is very simple and it seems like a no brainer, though, is to maybe just focus on things you know to be true and. Not inventing and surmising, like, well, what if they're talking about this and you're just kind of inventing all that? Like, if you concentrate on what you know to be true, then life gets a lot simpler. Right. But that same shrink also pointed out that one of the big problems with guessing, and especially guessing incorrectly, is that we tend to forget that we're guessing at stuff. We take our own guesses as fact. Right. And since they can be so horribly wrong, if you're guessing that other people are judging you even when they're not, you're going to basically walk around feeling judged all the time because you think that that's absolutely accurate when it's not necessarily fascinating. All right, you want to take a break? I was just going to say the same thing. All right, well, we'll take a break, and we are going to come back, talk a little bit about guessing on tests, how to win at rock, Paper, scissors, and apes and guessing. All right, so we've talked in esoteric terms about guessing so far, but I think what everyone really wants to know is how do I pass a multiple choice test? Because that's another kind of guessing. Guessing runs the gamut from emotional to stuff like this. There have been different theories over the years, like, well, first of all, back in the day, and I guess until semi recently, for, like, the Sat and act and other standardized tests, you would be penalized for an incorrect guess. I don't remember that, do you? Yeah, something wrong. It's like a quarter point deduction, I think was the deal. It sounds familiar. I think I may have blocked it out, but they don't do that anymore, so now they say yes. Yes. If you don't know the answer that has run the gamut from always guess C because it's in the middle to this one person. I don't necessarily agree with this one, but they say just choose the same letter every time, like always guess B, and you're going to be right one out of every five times if it's ABCDE. Right. Which makes sense, though. If you jump around, you lessen your chances every time, whereas if you use the same one, you have the same chances of getting it right every time. Yeah, but this guy wrote he actually did a little studying. Paula POUNDSTONE. That wasn't his name, was it? It was William POUNDSTONE, her brother. Yeah. And he did actual research on he studied tests and did a statistical analysis of 100 different tests ranging from middle school, high school, college, professional exams, driver's test, firefighters, radio operators. He studied all kinds of tests. All right. And he has what he calls four ways to outsmart multiple choice tests. And a couple of these make a lot of sense to me. Yeah. The first one he said is to ignore conventional wisdom because you kind of always have heard teachers say, like, avoid answers that say never or always or none. So, like all of the above or none of the above, don't choose those. And he found the opposite to be true. Yeah. He found that none of the above or all of the above are correct 52% of the time. Yeah. So if that's offered up as an option, first of all, we should couch this with always try and deduce the answer with intelligence. Well, yeah. POUNDSTONE says there's nothing none of this is meant to replace knowledge of your subject. You get knowledge of your subject by studying ahead of time. But he's saying if you're facing a question on a multiple choice test and you have no idea what the answer is, there are some techniques you can use to increase the likelihood that your guess will be right. Right. So all of the above or none of the above? If you really have no idea about that, I would say pick that one. It's weird, though, because later on so first he says ignore conventional wisdom, but then later on, the one piece of conventional wisdom I've always heard he says is actually true. That is that you want to choose the longest answer on any multiple choice test. Right? Yes. Because if you are saying something's true, most of the time, you have to add qualifying language to make it absolutely true, because you don't want somebody coming back and be like, well, that's actually not quite true. So when you start adding qualifying language into an answer, it gets longer than the other ones, and the test writer is probably not going to go to the trouble of making the wrong answers similarly long. Right. So the longest answer is very frequently the correct answer. Yeah. I thought that one was a really good piece of advice. That's the one I always heard. That's really the only one I've ever known. Oh, really? Do you remember scantron sheets? Oh, yeah. Were you ever so recklessly wild that you made a Christmas tree out of a test? Did you ever have the goal to do that? I never did. Bad. Because there are kids that listen to this, but I had to take a test one time that was not for school, but it was something I didn't want to do. I won't get into the details, but I made a big snake. Well, and it was bad. I look back and I'm ashamed of it. I made a mockery of their process, and I wasn't that kind of kid. I don't know what happened. I was a good kid and a good student. I'm surprised to hear this. I know, but I feel so bad. It still really stands out in my mind as what a jerk move that was on my part. I'm not only surprised though, Chuck, I'm a little delighted outed myself. Yeah. All right. So one of the other pieces of advice from Doctor POUNDSTONE doctor I don't think he's a doctor. He did write a book, though. It's called rock breaks scissors. Why does everything have to have a colon now? It makes it smarter. Rock Breaks Scissors Colon a Practical guide to outgassing and outwitting almost everybody. One of his other ones is to look at the surrounding answers because he's found that the correct answer choices are rarely repeated consecutively, so you rarely get two B's in a row as the answer. So if you definitely know the answer in front of it and the answer behind it, then it's probably not one of those two. So if you've just whittled down your options good advice? No, not bad at all. What else? And the last one is going to eliminate the outliers. If there's anything that seems like it doesn't really fit with the rest of the stuff, you can automatically get rid of that. And then conversely, if there are two answers that seem extremely close, they probably can be gotten rid of as well, because it's the same thing, basically. So if you have, say, five potential answers and one of them doesn't fit with the other four, get rid of that. Two of them are similar. Get rid of those two, you're down to two, you got a 50 50 chance of getting it right. Yeah. I thought the example they used in here was pretty fascinating because they didn't even use the question or give the question on this Sat practice test. They just give the answer for ABCDE, haphazard is to radical, inherent is the controversial, improvise is to startling methodical is to revolutionary, derivative is to gradual. And if you just look at the right hand side, you have radical, controversial, startling, revolutionary, and gradual. And obviously gradual stands out as just being different than those other words. Right. Radical, controversial, startling, revolutionary, gradual. Doesn't make sense. Right. That's really a good piece of advice. And then if you look on the left hand side for ANC Haphazard and improvised are really close. So he says you should eliminate those two as well. Yes. I wish I would have had this kind of advice for the Sat. Well, I'll tell you what, that's an actual Sat set of answers. Have you ever run into haphazard, radical, inherent, controversial, improvised, startling, methodical, revolutionary, and derivative, gradual. You want to go with D? Methodical, revolutionary, and we just got you into college. Yeah. You ever wanted to take the Sat again? Like now? No. That's funny. I really don't. I've never wanted to. I've been glad since the moment I finished that test that I was done. I only took it twice. I took it once and I was like, good enough. Yeah, I took it twice. I did not score very well the first time and I scored pretty well the second time. Oh, good. And I was like, I don't want to know which one is the real me. I said. So I'm done. Yeah, I scored blandly the first time and I was like, that's fine. I'll get by my wits and real life skills. Hey, look at you. You've done great. I've done. Okay. So you want to talk about rock, paper, scissors? A little bit, yeah. I thought this was awesome. Our friends over at Motherboard, and we can say that because we used to have a short lived column on Motherboard. Yeah. From Vice. Yes. They have a German outfit called, appropriately, Motherboard Germany, and they ran a post called Win at Rock, paper Scissors every time with math, colon. What's with the colon? They basically got into how, using game theory, you can win a rock, paper, scissors basically all the time. Yeah. They didn't do the research, but they got together with some researchers at the University of Hangzhou in China, and they got 360 students to pair up and play 300 rounds each of rock, paper, scissors. And then they track that, please let us stop, and they said, no, this is Communist China. Do it again. So they charted all those out and then summarized it with some strategies. I don't know if you would win every time. No, I mean, there's always, like, what they call in rock, paper, scissors, the October Surprise, where somebody just pulled something out of nowhere, like a dynamite. Right. Those are offshoots. Remember kids that would do those? Oh, really? Yeah. Some interesting people. Yeah. They would add other weapons, basically. Well, the Motherboard article talks about there's this other guy who came up with a whole different variation of it that's like 25 or 26 different possible ones. God, I would never remember all of them. No, how could you? But at least one guy does. No one can remember 25 things. Yeah, right. Okay. There's a few things, and this falls in line with learning how to get better at guessing how many jelly beans are in a jar. If you arm yourself with a little bit of foreknowledge, you can better guess. That what your opponent is going to come at you with in a game of rock, paper, scissors. Starting with that. Men tend to open a game with rock. Of course they do. Yeah. That's such a man thing. Rock smash. Right. So if your opponent is a man, and there's a pretty good chance they're going to come out with rock the first time. Go paper. Yeah. Although they do say statistically, the opening scissors is the one that will win you the most games. But I guess that's if you're not playing a man, I guess they kind of counteract themselves or contradict themselves. Statistically, more women play rock, paper, scissors, I guess. Is that true? Here's one. I don't think so. Yeah, here's one. I've been making a lot of this stuff up in this episode. Here's one that I thought was kind of funny. Basically, this is like the Babe Ruth move. Say what you're going to pick before the game. Like, I'm going to pick scissors next. And then the person's, like, they're not going to pick scissors, but you just psyched them out. And when you throw scissors, baby, they're going to be blown away because they threw paper and they thought you were going to throw rock. Yeah, it's like the princess pride in what part was that with a man sitting at the place talking about the poison drink. Oh, yeah. Remember trying to get the other guy to drink the poison drink? He was awesome. Inconceivable. What is another strategy to counterattack? So if you played scissors and your opponent plays rock on the first move, and they win, obviously, the chance that they have confidence now in that move. So you might be able to guess that they will play rock again because the chances are pretty high that they will do. So then you anticipate that play paper. So basically it says play the option that wasn't played in the previous round. Right. And you can also mirror your opponent. Right. So if you just want a round, play what your opponent just played, because they probably are thinking that you're going to play with the same gesture that you won with a second ago, really throws them off. So the idea is they're probably going to play the same thing that they just won with, and if you won, don't do that. Right. And that'll frustrate them, too. That's the rock paper, scissors version of why are you hitting yourself? Right. Or you get into that thing when you both throw rock and you throw rock again, you both throw rock and you keep that's when the psychological warfare starts, like, who's going to break first and go with paper? And then ideally, you go with scissors and you have thus outsmarted your opponent. Right. So interesting. So we were talking you mentioned that we were going to talk about apes, right? Yeah. I didn't fully understand this, so maybe you can help me. I don't know that science fully understands it. Okay. But basically, let me give you an example here, okay. We were talking about how the brain they're trying to figure out what regions of the brain are activated to form, like, this cascade of thought that results in a guess, right? One of the things I ran across was one theory of how we guess what other people are going to do is through mirror neurons, where if we see somebody doing something, our mirror neurons are activated, and it puts us in a mind of how we feel when we're doing something. And we use that past experience and that current sensation of the example I ran across with somebody grabbing an apple to guess what the person is going to do next. Right. So you would say, well, I know most times when I grab an apple, I take a bite out of it because I'm usually hungry when I grab an apple that's after I rub it on my shirt to give it a nice shine. Right. Well, that's just showboating if you guess the person is going to rub it on their shirt first before taking a bite, that's showing off your mirror neurons are the part of your brain that's triggered that sets that off. Right. That gives you that basis, the foundation for making a guess of what the person is going to do next. And then it gets run through again, that lens of your past experience, your history, everything from how you are raised to what you do with apples, to what you've seen other people do with apples, and you come up with a short list of possibilities of what the person is going to do with that apple. And it includes rubbing out on their shirt, taking a bite, putting it away in a cupboard, throwing it at a wall, and then you're going to pare down based on what you know about that person. Like, is that person neat freak? If so, they're probably going to put that apple away in a cupboard, which who does that except for neat freaks? And you may be right at your guess, right? Well, they're definitely not wall throwers, at least, right. They whittle down your guesses. Yeah, that's how apparently it's one theory for how we make guesses, starting from brain based, going through personal history and then making the guess. And what some research found was that ultimately what we're doing here is called theory of mind, where we have the capability of bestowing the idea that other people have thoughts and feelings on other people. Right. It's so common to us that we take it for granted that we can attribute mental states to other people. But that's a pretty significant thing. And for a very long time, researchers thought that just humans were capable of that. But they found out that actually some apes, at the very least, just apes, can do the same thing. They can attribute mental states like thoughts and feelings and emotions to other apes. And that shows like a higher form of reasoning. That was basically the gist of it. Okay, that makes sense. And they found that true in chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans. That's pretty neat. It is. Sasha Baron Cohen, his cousin Simon Baron Cohen is one of the leaders in theory of mine. Oh, really? Yeah, we've talked about him before, remember? Yeah, but one of the big areas that it influences is autism. That people with autism tend to have more difficulty attributing mental states and theory of mind to other people than people who don't have autism. Right, right. But one of the ways that they find this out, and I think one of the ways that they detect autism in young kids is by attributing false beliefs to other people. This is like an early part of human development. And apparently apes are good at it too. Where you are an observer. Right. And you're watching a scene and there's a little boy named Tommy and tommy comes in the room and he grabs the three musketeers off of the kitchen counter and he walks over to a chest of drawers and he puts it in one of the drawers and walks out of the room. Well, Sally comes in and the narrator says, sally is really hungry for three musketeers. She knows it was last on the table. Where is she going to look for the three musketeers? And people with theory of mine who are able to attribute false beliefs to other people will say, well, Sally is going to go look on the table even though it's not there any longer because Tommy put it in the drawer. Right. You can know that Sally can believe something that's no longer correct. If you have trouble with theory of mind and specifically if you're testing for autism, that child, the child with autism might say, well, Sally is going to go look in the drawer because that's where it is. They have trouble attributing false beliefs to people. What's true is true. And everybody would know that. Right. And that's one way that they test for autism. And it has to do with theory of mine. Interesting, isn't it? Yeah. And it all has to do with guessing. It all has to do with guessing, man. You got anything else? Well, just that Tommy should not be so touchy. Oh, yeah. And like share the three musketeers. Yeah. Do you know why three musketeers are called that? I have no idea, my friend. It used to be a neopolitan candy that came in three different pieces chocolate, strawberry and vanilla. And they just went with chocolate after a while and kept the name because why not? Yeah. Interesting. Well, that's it about three musketeers for today. And hey, Chuck, before we go to listener mail, I want to give a huge congratulations from us to Stephen and Jane, our buddies, the bars on the birth of their firstborn child. Yeah. How about that? Congratulations. You guy. Good looking baby too. Yeah, because they're not all good looking. No, it's true. Especially like right after birth. And because they're New Yorkers, they walked home from the hospital. Like, how great is that? I'm surprised they didn't take the subway. But you do. They are pretty new York. It's awesome. Yeah. Big congratulations. It's wonderful. Congratulations, bars. Okay, well, since we say congratulations, bars, it's time for listener mate. Yes. This one is a little long, but it's about registering to vote in Texas. We got an email from Monica and her story goes, as such 2013 to move from Alabama to Texas. Had a really horrific time trying to register to vote. Or I went to the county clerk's office. I looked online to check what I needed, downloaded the application so I could have it filled out in advance. I took my Alabama driver's license, my lease, my birth certificate, and because I'm divorced, my divorce decree stipulating my legal name change. You probably think that would be else you needed, right? Right. No. Once I got there, I was told that the lease was not sufficient for residency and that I would need to bring two pieces of official mail, like utility bill, tax bill. So I leave after spending the better part of a day waiting in line, waiting for my power and gas bill to come in order to add the other documents. A couple of weeks later, with all of the documents in hand, I took another day off work, went back to try again. This time, the clerk looks over the divorce decree and notices. My name change wasn't to go back to my maiden name. This was a name change that was ordered by a court in Alabama and explicitly spelled out in a notarized document that the clerk was disputing its validity. When I asked what the problem was, he said, well, that's in Alabama. If you want that to be your official name in Texas, you have to go through the courts, have a draw at noon in the center of town with the judge, a shootout. What's that called? A shootout. A quick draw. Now, he said, you'll have to go through the courts and have it declared here in Texas. After literally blinking at him silently with my mouth agape for a moment, I said, you're telling me that the divorce in Alabama is a valid because it was adjudicated in Alabama, that I am going to have to go through the whole process of getting a divorce again for it to be official in Texas? Is that correct? His reply was, well, when you put it that way, it sounds silly, but yes. Though I demanded to speak with a supervisor. Clerk got the supervisor, who looked over everything and asked why I didn't just go back to my maiden name, which I replied, it doesn't matter what I changed my name to. You have the official documents signed by a judge and notarized and this should be all you need because of the Constitution of the United States, that all judicial rulings and contracts that are valid in one state are valid in every state. At that point, the clerk walked off. The supervisor said, okay. I gave my stuff to another clerk, who simply smiled, entered my application, and took my check, pointed me toward the desk where I could get my picture taken. And then she closes by saying, imagine how this would have gone. I would have been an hourly worker, had less of an understanding boss, and not known about the ins and outs of the Constitution or didn't have access to all these documents. Chances are I would have been disenfranchised driving around with an expired license. These laws are absolutely created to suppress voter registration and participation, and they work spectacularly well. That is Monica's story. Thanks, Monica. And welcome to Texas, too, by the way. Yeah. If you want to get in touch with us, and tell us a real life adventure that has something to do with one of our episodes. We want to hear about it. You can tweet to us I'm at Josh Clark and at Syskpodcast on Twitter. You can hang out with Chuck at Charleswchuckbryon on Facebook or at facebook. Comstuffyshow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast athouselworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web. Stuffyshow.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." | |
f820aa5d-2ecf-4581-8625-ae9a00d4ee6b | What's in a surname? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/whats-in-a-surname | Surnames are way more interesting that you think, trust us. Just hit play and prepare to be wowed.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Surnames are way more interesting that you think, trust us. Just hit play and prepare to be wowed.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Thu, 19 May 2022 12:59:37 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=12, tm_min=59, tm_sec=37, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=139, tm_isdst=0) | 41631732 | 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. It's just the two of us, kind of like old times. Hunt Chuck. Sure. And this is Stuff you should it's not the full thing without Jerry. That's right. But you said you're Josh Clark. Don't you mean Josh Clark? Yeah, that is what my name is from. It's one of the most boring names you could have, but it is my last name and that's what we're talking about. I don't even know my I mean, I know the country of origin and stuff for Bryant, but I don't really know this is one of those episodes where I was constantly going, oh, well, that's where that came from. Oh, that's interesting. But I didn't have anything for me. I have something for you, friend. You got the origin of Bryant. No, origin of Wayne. Okay, let's hear it. It denotes a driver or builder of wagons. That's you, buddy, in a nutshell. Well, that was my surname. Yeah, but I mean, it still works for your middle name. It's not like it just loses all meaning when it gets moved to the middle. Right. Builder wagons. It's me or driver. You could have been a driver, too, chuck wagon or Double Trouble. A builder driver of wagon. Right. Yeah, that's it. But we're not talking about middle names. We're not really talking about first names, we're talking about surnames, which, if you've ever been confused about which one that is, it's the last name. It's the family name, generally. Yes. And depending on where you live in the world, it might come before your first name, it might come after it. There might be a couple of surnames involved, there may be a hyphen joining them. There's a lot of different things you can do with surnames. And like you, I was like, oh, okay. There's actually a lot of interesting stuff to this, so good pick and thanks to the grabster for helping us out. Yeah. And Ed will feature later on, because I don't want to spoil it yet, but his last name is interesting because it's Polish, and Polish names are generally interested in how they look on paper, on the page sure. And are often changed. So we're going to float that out there as a teaser. But we're going to be talking about Ed's last name. And speaking of it being on paper, I thought it was a polished name all this time. I'm glad you said something first. The deal with surnames, though, is they have been around a lot less long that's one way to say it. Than a given name or a first name. Like first names, they came first from the beginnings of people. Like with Tuktuk, people wanted to call each other things and so people would just give each other names. But surnames were invented much later for reasons we're going to talk about kind of around the 11th century. Yeah. That's for, like, England, western Europe. There were places where they came along much earlier. I think in China, they've been in use for 3000 years, as far as we can tell. Yeah. And then in Rome, there were different name and conventions that had two names, sometimes three names, a couple of thousand years ago. So, yeah, surnames are in England at least, or Western Europe. They are definitely late comers, relatively speaking. Yes. And one of the reasons you might think, like, why would you need a surname? And there are a bunch of reasons. One of which one of the earliest reasons was that there were more people being born. And so your little quaint town that had John and Jane, everybody knew who John and Jane were. But then as more and more people are born, the town gets bigger and bigger, there's more Johns and Janes. It was literally just like a way to differentiate people. Yeah, exactly. And then also as people started to travel more, that also kind of called for people to differentiate themselves a little bit too. So population pressure is a really good reason, a really good explainer for why there were such things as surnames, why they came along. There's just more people. So you needed to be able to say, no, not Jane. That Jane. The other Jane. People got really sick of doing that. Especially if a third Jane came along, they just pulled their hair out and be mad all the time. Right. And then by the time people own property or had legal things to transfer to one another titles and things like that right. Then you had to have certain names. So nobles, of course, there's a lot of class that plays into this because a certain class of people were landowners and had official titles. So these nobles adopted these surnames. Or maybe the monarch said, you have to have a surname because we need to know the rights of succession of your land or it's just got to all legally check out. So being John isn't enough anymore. Yeah. It's strange to think of but naming somebody and like saying, either choose a name or I'm going to choose one for you. It was a way for the ruling class of a civilization to basically track people, keep them in line. Sure. Keep one group from marrying another group and consolidating power. And it's interesting because they think that in China, one of the reasons why the surnames came along 3000 years ago was because of population pressure, but also because the Zoo Dynasty, and I'm probably not saying that correctly, I think it's Z-H-O-U is that right? I'm going to go with Ziau. I'm feeling a little spicy today. I thought it was Zhao. Or am I thinking of something different? Okay, so even more I'm going with Zhao. Okay. But anyway, the Zhao Dynasty was saying we want to keep track of you nobles. And a good way to do that is to label something. That's how you keep track of something. And that's one of the other reasons why these surnames came along in China and the same thing played out a couple of thousand years later in England for basically the same reasons. That's right. By the way, I was wrong. It is the ho w. I'm sorry. Ou. Okay, I'm going to go with Joo, then. Okay. Are you talking about? William the first. Yeah. The Conqueror and his Doomsday Book, which, boy, if there was ever a book that was mistitled, I know it's not doomsday, it's domesday. D-O-M-E-S-D-A-Y. But when you look at it very you just want to say Doomsday Book. Yeah, but what it was, it was just a survey of land and landowners in 1085 and 1086. And William I commissioned this thing and basically said, all right, we got to book now, so all these informal names aren't going to do it, so we have to have an official historical record of the stuff. So pick us their name. Yeah. It was almost like taking a snapshot of the conventions and the customs of naming people at the time, because William the Conqueror didn't say you have to have a surname now. It was more like whatever you go by, you're going to go down in this book as that right. And that basically solidified. And created that tradition of passing down surnames from that point on, it kind of like, kept it going. What is so funny? I'm just trying to think. So funny. Do you want to be John the Ahole the rest of your life? Exactly. That's what you're known as around town. If you have a chance here to rewrite things. Yeah. And if you go back and look, there's a website that had found I'll try to find it later, but it's basically just a tittering tour through medieval England and some of the horrific last names people got saddled with for nicknames and that became, like, their last name, like, stuff we just can't even possibly say on this podcast. Yeah. And Ed points out, too, and just since we're talking about that, that sarcasm is not a recent invention. So you might be called something like you may be John Goodman. Well, not John Goodman. You could be John Goodman. I'm just going with John for everything. When you were like, a very not nice dude, somebody might have said Goodman as a good man, as a sort of a nod in a wink or a joke or a play on words. Like, imagine if John Goodman were basically like Russell Crowe. That gets the point across. He's still in Russell Crow. I'm trying to throw back here, man. I'm trying to bring everybody back to our period of comfort rather than moving along with everyone else. But it's interesting you mentioned the medieval period because the Roman system that you talked about, which eventually evolved to a three name system, I think at first, I guess, before Rome, in different civilizations, they had single names, but then the Romans came along and they had what was called a pregnan, which would be the equivalent of a given name. Then the gnomen, which what we would think of is the last name. And then later on, if you were like an elite, you would have a third name, the Cognoman, if you want to show off a little bit and show your status. But it went away after the Romans for a long time and then came back with the Europeans. Yeah, it's really interesting that the Europeans had all this influence. The Chinese had already invented this for a couple of thousand years and it just kind of evolved in isolation later on. So it really kind of does just go to show you, like, surnames are just once you reach a certain point of a civilization or a population growth, it's just something that's just going to come up inevitably, organically. It's pretty neat. It is pretty neat. And I know we mentioned some Asian names, I think Korean and Japanese and Chinese are traditionally written with the surname first, and then you're given name, and then just a few years ago, Japan, I think, formally enshrined that and said, we're not going to Westernize this anymore, we're going to go with the surname first. Yeah, they're going back to their roots. I love it. A new kind of suit. That's right. You got that one. Really? Yeah, sure, man. Chuck, I'm impressed. Well, since you're impressed, let's take a break. Yeah, because I want to just bathe in that for a minute. I think it's a wise move, or rather two minutes and we'll be back and talk about the different types of surnames and how they came about right after this. All right. So what's interesting is that surnames take all sorts of different shapes and forms and there's actually some cultures that just don't have them or don't use them. I believe the Philippines didn't use surnames until they were colonized by Europeans. Is that right? So, I mean, there's some cultures that don't use surnames at all, but among the cultures that do use surnames in different ways, shapes and forms, there's actually some commonalities, almost universalities among surnames and where they came from and what they mean. And there's at least four or five that you can kind of hack out that say, wherever you go in the world, if they're using surnames, they may have some sort of, like, version of this. Yeah. And this is the stuff that's really cool, I think, and this found me saying, because Ed gives a bunch of great examples of a surname, and then when you find out how it evolved to be that, you just go, oh, well, that completely makes sense now. Well, I was about to say something about jobs, but we'll get to jobs in a minute. First though is place names. Specific place names. I think a lot of people know this one, but if you were from a place you might have been Chuck of Atlanta. Or if it was in Europe you might have substituted de for the Latin. Like Chuck D Atlanta. Right. And then over time that D. There's this process that happens to words where if you use a word for 1000 years it gets kind of molded and shaped and cut down to a more manageable size. So you're saying lol and OMG. Right. Exactly. Or LMFAO, because Party Rock is in the house tonight but it's called truncation. And the same thing happens with names too. So instead of Chuck De Atlanta, it could just become Chuck De Atlanta. Atlanta. Which is very kind of nice. I like the way that rings that's lanta. Yeah, you have to say it like that. Or you could just get rid of that apostrophe and make it one word chucked Atlanta. Right. And that actually happened. Like with the name Darcy. It used to be somebody dear is a village, I believe in France or Normandy maybe. And then over time it became Dapostrophe RC. As in Jefferson Darcy from Married with Children or just Darcy. D-A-R-C-Y. As in Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. Who I presume Jefferson Darcy's character is based on. But if you have the name Darcy there are other ways that you can acquire last surname which we'll see kind of along the way. But chances are you can probably trace that back to the fact that someone in your lineage was from RC. Yes, and it also suggests that somewhere back in your lineage somebody was probably a noble lineage because it was the nobles who would have taken the place that they were from as their surname. Because number one, they would go off to court so they would be I'm Jefferson Darcy. So, you know, not Jefferson Atlanta. Jefferson Darcy. I'm the one from Darcy or from RC. Right. A commoner from RC would have no reason to say that they're from RC because they don't ever leave RC. They spent their entire life there. Exactly. And then also it let people know that you basically like ruled that land that you are from. That was that. And it's called a top and mimic name where it's a place name that you've taken as your last name. That's right. If you were a commoner like you said, you would not be a Chuck of Atlanta. Because I grew up a commoner because I could make no claim that I ruled Atlanta back in the medieval times or post medieval times. And everyone else would have that name too. In my little neighborhood that didn't have a lot of money, let's say. But you might have a really local name that is more like topographic. Like if your last name is hill or underhill or green, then chances are your distant relatives lived on a hill or on a green or under a hill. I don't know if they were cave dwellers, but those are literally named. There's a name by water. I've never really heard that. But it literally means you live by the water. Yeah, there's some really nice names that have to do with water that serve as last names, like Bay Shore, Bay Meadow. I think those are very pleasant, but I never really realized that means that their family live by a bay, by meadow. I guess those are very nice last names. And then Chuck, I also realized just now when you were talking that you could have rightly. Called yourself Chuck unpaved road. Right, sure. That would have definitely placed you there. Yeah, I grew up on truck de gravel. Yeah, de Ville Gravel. Another Locator or I guess topographic is sort of along those same lines. If you ever hear anyone with the last name of, like, Scott or Western. Western is a great example. It's a great last name. Or the last name ireland. Those are just very quite literal last names taken because chances are they moved to a different place and maybe that was a differentiator like maybe they even called the person from Ireland that moved to a place not in Ireland. Ireland, right, exactly. They were probably immigrants. They were the Scott who just showed up that everybody liked the Scott. Oh, okay. Yeah. John Scott, sure. The Scott Talk School. Right, exactly. It's also like in the movie Zombieland where everybody's called where they're from? I don't remember that. Yeah, I think what's his name? Jesse Eisenberg. Isn't that who's in it? Yeah, he's like Columbus and I can't remember what woody Harrelson where he's from? Texas, maybe, or something like that. Got you. Yeah, I just wanted to give a Zombie Lantern shout out, you know. It's a good movie. It really was. Surprisingly so. Or if you just finished Severance, you just have a last initial, like Mark S or Emily R. Well, I just watched it twice because Emily didn't watch it the first go round and I was like, I think you would like this, actually. So I watched it all the way through again, so I obviously loved it. But boy, that season family was just a 45 minutes panic attack. Really was, and one of the most unfair cliffhangers in the history of TV. It really was, but really good stuff. Love it. So, moving on, Chuck, one of the other things we could have adopted is our surnames. If that were a thing, like people were still taking new surnames, we could be Josh podcaster and Chuck podcaster. Yeah. I mean, I love this one because this is probably the most common way that someone would get a surname. I think more than 10% of English surnames are because of an occupation in your lineage. So Karen Carpenter, she had someone way back in her family that was a carpenter, probably, or earl Weaver had a weaver in his family. And any Smith. Well, that's not true because there is a thing, too, where a lot of time immigrants would adopt the name, like one of the most common names when they would immigrate to a country to fit in. So there might be Smith acquired that way. But if you were Smith, then you had the last name Smith. Right. Or Clark is a derivative of clerk, which was at the time not just some pencil pusher. It was a scholarly person who could read and write at a time when most people couldn't read it. Oh, yeah, my ancestors was real smart. Thatcher is another example of an occupationally based or shepherd. These are all very obvious, but one kind of cool little moments is in medieval England, they would use S-T-E-R or XTE r as a suffix if it was a woman's occupation. So a baker would become Baxter or brewer would become Brewster. That's right. That holds not just for England, but like if you went to Germany and your last name Schmidt, the same thing as if you were in England and your last name Smith because there was somebody in your lineage that was a blacksmith, which is pretty cool. And it was almost like I was saying when that doomsday book was when it came out. Sure. It was like a snapshot of professions at the time. And apparently within about 300 to 400 years, the use of surnames had solidified enough that it became weird for the tradition of it being weird for us to say, I'm changing my last name to podcasts because it's my job. That had really kind of solidified. People weren't taking on new surnames, they were getting them passed along. And so professions that came after the 14th and 15th centuries don't usually pop up very often as people's last name. No. But it's funny now that I'm thinking my instagram handle is chuck the podcaster. Chuck podcaster should change it to deeposterfield chuck the podcaster. That would be pretty fun. I think that's a great idea. Charles another fun thing that had found was sometimes actors back in the day would sort of with a nod and a wink, take a surname of a character that they played a lot. And anyone that knows the origins of the theatre knows that actors were not like they are today. They were generally sort of of the lower class. And so that would sort of explain away why you might find someone of a lower class, maybe with the last name king or lord. Sure. Because they might have been an actor who played a king or a lord a lot. Yes. And then nicknames play a really big role across cultures. And again, this is kind of what they think the tradition of first names came out of. Like your first name was not necessarily John or Jim or Josh or Chuck or anything like that. Way back in the day. It was probably just the initial differentiator for you. Like, instead of that guy. No, not that guy, that guy. They would say red or apparently Sherlock means Fairheaded. So apparently if you did things with, say, like, your penis, you might end up with a nickname name like Shakespeare, they think is actually that or wagstaff from that kind of lewd toilet humor, lowbrow humor that people used to love in the medieval era. Oh, yeah. Shakespeare itself was sort of body. But I took an English class where we did I took a couple of, like, not playwrighting. Well, I did take playwriting, but play reading classes. What did you call that? Yeah, play reading drama. Had a better name than that. Sure. And a lot of the plays that we read from the time period that weren't Shakespeare were just toilet humor, blue humor, dirty body humor. It was pretty fun. And it's not like this has gone anywhere. I mean, I made a Married with Children reference not 20 minutes ago, so it's still around, although Married with Children is not around anymore, but you know what I'm saying. But I would posit that sophisticated, intelligent humor is a pretty recent invention. I'm sure there are pockets of it here and there over time. Like, Benjamin Franklin had a pretty sharp wit, and he was an intelligent humor. No, you're right. I mean, the first joke was pulled my finger, let's be honest. Right. And that lasted a long time, and people use that until that well went dry. But I think it's a fairly recent thing, and I think that's kids introduction to humor is, like, lowbrow toilet humor. But I think it's a pretty big marker based on how fast you evolve into intelligent humor. Yeah, for sure. Like my daughter's, the funniest words for her, or when she's trying to make a joke, like, kids don't make really good jokes. No, they don't, because they're not sophisticated yet. But they sure do like to talk about having poop in your hair and stuff like that. It is a pretty good one. And me laughing certainly doesn't help. No, definitely not. Does Emily get mad or does she laugh, too? No, she just walks through the room and goes, she got that from you, so she is of your own making. And I'm like, yeah, she said, I actually do have proof of my hair. It's not a joke. They say, pull my finger, Emily. I probably should take back, like, my little soapbox thing condemning toilet and lowbrow humor, because it is still kind of funny that you mentioned it. Yeah, I love it. I like both. I like a sharp wit and I like a fart joke all at the same time. That, Chuck makes you a renaissance man. All right, good. Well, I was trying to tie that into what I was about to say next, but I really couldn't think of a good last name for that. But another very common surname convention is if you were the son or daughter of somebody, and if John was your dad, you would be Johnson or Smithson. Sometimes it was even more basic than that. Like, if your name was it gives the example of someone named Martin and then a son named George, they might just take the dad's name and be George Martin. Right. And it's typically, especially in Western Europe and the UK, it took the father's lineage. So it's patronymic is that kind of naming convention. And there is such a thing as patronymic naming conventions. It's just much rarer in our cultures. But it does happen. Like Marriott means a child of Mary. Yes. So it happens from time to time, it's just much less common. But that is, like I said, it's a very common thing to name, to take a relatives name, and it happens in a bunch of different ways. And a good example of how different it can be is in Icelandic culture. If you're a son, say you're the son of Eric. Really? Okay. Of course, your last name would be Eric's son. If you were a son. If you were a daughter, you would be Eric's daughter. So Eric has a son and a daughter and they're both his son and daughter, but they have two different last names. And the reason why Iceland is not catching fire and people are running all over the place in confusion is because they don't really care as much about last names. Yeah, this is kind of cool, because Ed brought up Bjork, and she doesn't just go by Bjork to be like Madonna. Bjork goes by Bjork because in Icelandic culture, the surname just isn't that big of a deal. Right. And so I looked up her surname and Bjork's surname is actually, and I'm going to mispronounce this because I have no idea about Icelandic stuff, but it's Gooman's daughter, which is, of course, D-O-T-T-I-R because her father was Guvender Gunnerson. That's a great name. Which means that his father was named Gunner. Right. So it's sort of this weird flip as you go back. It's like almost like a little puzzle, little Icelandic puzzle. It is. It's pretty cool. And then also, in a stroke of awesomeness, iceland has also come up with a third name for non binary gendered, people who don't go by son or daughter, they go by Burr. So it'd be Eric Burr. And that's the thing now. Especially with hyphenations. We'll get to why you might change your name. But one of the sort of I feel like it's kind of antiquated. But one of the things that we do here in the west sometimes is a woman who might take her husband's last name or they might hyphenate it. But with non binary parents or gay parents. Sometimes they will hyphenate their last name. Which apparently can present a little bit of a conflict sometimes in that their struggle to have a nontraditional family. But also sort of try and fit in with a more traditional naming convention. Yeah. Which I had never considered. And that's sad that that is even a question, but it makes sense in the sad kind of way. Iceland now. Yeah. And then also, we really shouldn't leave our Arab cultures who use Ibn for son of. Or if the name Ibn comes in the middle of the name, it'd be Bin or Bent is daughter of and it usually can go back a couple of generations, sometimes three, which explains why there's a lot of IBNS or Bins, followed by other names in somebody's full name from Arab cultures. That's right. Or it gives a great example of Saddam Hussein was Saddam Hussein Abdal Mashid al Tikriti, and Saddam would be the given name there. Hussein would be the father's name, abdal Majid is grandfather's name, and then Al Takridi is where he grew up. So that's sort of a mesh of not topographic, I guess what do we call the geographic yeah. Top of mimic and then the patriarchal. And everything's just sort of matched together and with his grandfather. Right. Well, you want to take another break and then come back and talk more about, I don't know, surnames? Sure. Okay, we're going to do that. Everybody sit tight. So one thing we didn't cover with the UK, we got to cover the max. Yeah. And the APS. So if you are Irish or Scottish, the prefix Mac would mean son of. So if your name was Dougal and you had a son named John, you would be John McDougal. Very nice. Or in the case of being from Wales, they use AP to mean son of. And this is kind of interesting because it gets truncated along the way. So AP rice Rhyth would be son of rice. But then over time, that gets truncated and the AP just becomes a P. So the name Price originally can very well, it's hard to say, like in all cases, obviously, but it could have very well been like the son of Rise. Yeah. Or Reese. So it could also be the last name Priest, which don't sound right. Right. We're going with Price instead. And then Chuck, we talked a little bit about changing names and there's all sorts of reasons people change names. There's also a lot of reasons people take on names. Again, sometimes it's decreed by law. Apparently there was a law during the Austro Hungarian Empire that you needed a last name, and so there was a kind of a customer or a trend, you could almost say, among Jewish people who lived in that area, or under Austro Hungarian rule, to kind of take names from nature, like Tennbaum or Rosen, meaning FIR tree, or rose. And that's where a lot of the more common Jewish names come from. They have a kind of a Germanic tone to them. And then also there was a big conundrum or I guess a decision that faced freed enslaved people after the Emancipation Proclamation and later on June 10 because they didn't actually have surnames at the time, especially if they'd been 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th generation American, they might not have a surname at all. That's right. And so in many cases, they were given or sometimes chosen the name of the person who enslaved them, which obviously, as generations went on, that doesn't sit as well. And so a lot of times, if you're African American, you may change your name later on, like many generations later, just sort of shed yourself of that enslaved name. And then probably the most common reason, especially in the west that people change their names is through marriage, which has evolved over time. Traditionally, it was the wife took the husband's last name, shared her own maiden name, maybe moved it to her middle name, and then that was it. And then over time, there's been kind of like this push against just being completely subsumed by their husband's identity. And that introduced the hyphenated last name into Western culture. Which, again, if you go to Spain, they've been doing that for a very long time. Yeah. So much so that the children will actually have both of their parents last names. Father's first, hyphen mother's second. That's been going on. It's called Dosapolidos. But here in the West, I should say in the United States, because I guess Spain would technically be the west that's becoming more and more common. But it's still fairly new if you think about it. I don't remember people hyphenating their names very commonly before, like, the 80s or ninety s, I would say. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it happened, but it seems like it definitely caught on, you know, obviously was sort of in lockstep with the women's liberation movement. Yeah, they called it the Flash dance effect. There's no wrong way to do it. People should do what they want to do. I never wanted or expected Emily to change her name because she's got a great last name and that's who she is. And I don't know, it seemed outdated to me, but there is no right or wrong way. And eventually, years later, I think it was probably lined up when my daughter came along, she ended up going with a hyphenate. And then our very good friend and friend of the show who played Jerry on The Stuff You Should Know TV show Lucy Wainwright Roach that is a hyphenate because her father is Loud and Wayne Wright and her mother is Suzzy Roach. And so she went with a hyphenate. Yeah. Apparently there's a famous bass player for Jethro Toll. I had not heard of this dude. Did you know his first name is Jeffrey? We'll call him that for the moment. But both of his parents had the last name of Hammond. They weren't related despite him playing base for Jethro Toll, and he wanted to honor both of them. So he took the last name, Jeffrey Hammond hammond with a hyphen in between them. Yeah. It's pretty funny. Good job, Jeffrey. I know, it's pretty great. He's got a great story everywhere he goes. Intelligent humor, right? That's right, yeah. You think somebody who went to a Shakespeare play would get that. No, we totally lost on them. One of the myths we can kind of bust, although I'm sure it happens some, was this notion that if you came through Ellis Island, you were just given whatever name the person at immigration on Ellis Island felt like filling out, or if they wanted to shorten it, they shortened it. Or if they want to get rid of some of the hyphens. They got rid of the hyphens, apparently. I'm sure that did happen some, but Angman, I could never say this. Anglosizing, he nailed it. Yes. Anglosizing did not happen to the extent that people think it did on Ellis Island. And many times it was the people themselves that New Country, New Start wanted to fit in, that would drop the Apostrophe from Darcy and stuff like that. Yeah. And I saw that, if anything, Ellis Island immigration officers were more prone to actually correct mistakes and spelling errors that some shipping clerk over in Europe had made on the ship's manifest. Most of them spoke multiple languages and were pretty familiar with what there's a finite number of last names, and so if you see one with the name Misspelled, they probably corrected it. So it's like the opposite of the myth that you have. Yeah. Another thing that people have done to make it maybe just a little bit easier on everybody else and themselves is if they have a name that got a lot of consonants in it, let's say. Yeah, we're looking at Yuslavic Country is to phonetically spell it out and Ed like a tease at the beginning. Ed's last name we always call the Grabster is Grabanowski, and he lives in a region where there are a lot of Polish people still living there. And he says that he has never seen another Grabanowski, but he does see Grabowskis or Grabskis. Yes. No grabsters. No. We're trying to make it happen, though, aren't we? Yeah. My friend Paul's last name is Wazlow, but it is not spelled W-A-Z-L-O-W-I can't even remember how it's spelled, but it's not intuitive. But he held onto it and he didn't change it phonetically. Good for Paul, sticking it to the man. Paul's family. Yeah, that's right. You got anything else? I am looking here. Do we have anything else? Not really. Nothing of any great interest, if you ask me. No, I think this is good stuff. I think it's cool. People should check. I'd love to hear some stories from listeners or maybe do a little research into your own name and where it might have come from because there's a lot of interesting stories out there. I'd love to hear more. Yeah. Also, Chuck, by the way, your last name denotes somebody who used to live by a hill in the Celtic era. Oh, really? Bryant? Yes. Derived from Brion Hill. People pronounced Briony in northern France. So you're a Frenchy Chuck. Interesting. Yeah, pretty cool. Yeah, that's a haunteda. Well, since Chuck said ha ha, of course that means it's time for listener mail. Alright, I'm going to call this choir math. And I should say that Lyle here had a lot of consternation after Lyle sent this email about because Lyle is a math person and I think a math teacher about how Lyle chose to express this. So much so that I almost didn't read it because I didn't want to cause Lyle any stress. I'm going to read it anyway. And this is about the church choir coincidence. When we said one in a million, he said, did you guys calculate that yourself? I'm guessing you repeated it from something else. Because unless I'm missing something, one out of 1 million is crazy wrong using the assumptions you stated for two reasons. Here we go. If there are 15 members and each had a one quarter chance of being late, the probabilities were equal and independent. So it was like rolling 15 four sided dice. That would be roughly a one in a billion chance. And number 2.2, even the calculation in one completely fails to capture what you seem to want to express the chance of something like this happening. I e. The simultaneous quiet lateness coinciding with the explosion. That would be trickier to work out. The simplest way to calculate it would be to decide on the chance of a 1950 Nebraska church blowing up on a given night and multiply that by the one in a billion chance above. So basically it sounds like we did half of the equation and didn't even do that half, right? No, that sounds like us. So he says, did churches blow up often? In 1915 nebraska. But see, you could also say a building blowing up. Sure. Or a building killing somebody. I don't know where you draw the line because I'm not a math person or how you would quantify that. I would think you'd need to go with churches just to compare apples to apples. And then also not every building is going to invite people into it at 07:00 P.m. On Wednesday night or something. Good point. And then Lao actually goes on to say, it's easy to get overly dazzled doing calculations like these. And I think that's what we are now is overly dazzled. I'm dazzled. The more specifically you describe any event or collection of events, the more astronomically unlikely it becomes. I. E. The chance of my spaghetti being in this exact configuration are mind bogglingly low. Pretty amazing story still. And that is from Lyle. That is classic Lyle, always slipping a spaghetti reference into his emails. Yeah, that is interesting to think about, though. Depending on how far you want to drill down, it gets a little nutty. Totally. But I like his calculations even better than ours. One in a million chance. Kind of dazzling. One in a billion chance. And that's just step one. I got stars in my eyes, basically. Wow. Well, thanks a lot, Lyle. I'm sorry for driving you a little bit crazy. We are glad that you could take the time to explain to us what we got wrong and not call us stupid in the bargain. Thank you. If you want to be like Lyle and get in touch with us, 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." | |
43d71774-53a3-11e8-bdec-5bce26722bde | How Soap Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-soap-works | Soap is a miraculous substance – and mysterious too: we have no idea how humans first figured out to make it. We lived with soap for millennia before we thought to use it to wash ourselves with it, but once we did a love affair with cleanliness was born. | Soap is a miraculous substance – and mysterious too: we have no idea how humans first figured out to make it. We lived with soap for millennia before we thought to use it to wash ourselves with it, but once we did a love affair with cleanliness was born. | Thu, 30 Jul 2020 13:54:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=13, tm_min=54, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=212, tm_isdst=0) | 47206883 | audio/mpeg | "Hello, friends. We have a book coming out finally, and it is awesome. You're gonna make me say the title again? Yeah. Fine. It's stuff you should know. Colon an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. And and get this, Chuck, you don't have to wait to order until the book comes out. You can do what we in the book biz call preordering it. And then when it does come out, you'll be the first to get it. Or among the first. Well, and not only that, you get a preorder gift. You get this cool custom poster from the illustrator of the book, Carly Bernarddo, who is awesome. We worked with another great writer who helped us out with this thing a great deal. His name is Nils Parker. And it was just a big team effort. And it's really cool. We love how it's turning out. Yeah, we do. So anywhere you can buy books, you can go pre order the stuff you should know colon and incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. And then after you do, you can go on over to Stuff. You should read books.com and upload your receipt and get that preorder poster. So thank you in advance for everybody who is preordering. That means quite a bit to us. And we appreciate you. Stuffyoushoreadbooks.com preorder. Now. 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 Brian over there. And Jerry Flitted. In and out like a little coated ferry. This is stuff you should know. I don't think you want the code ferry to visit. How about the COVID safety ferry? You want the soap ferry. Yeah, because the soap ferry can take on the Covet fairy and smack that B word down. Yeah. And more specifically, it can pry it open and say, spill out your guts. Yeah. Corrupt virus. It's pretty amazing what it does, just from just this research. I'm just fascinated with it. It's a magical potion. And I think the fact that we have no real clue how we figured out how to make soap just makes the whole thing even that much more delightful. Yeah. And knowing how it actually works is really neat. And hopefully this convinces some people that it does work better than hand sanitizer. Yeah. Rather than just running your hands under some water for a half of a second and then wipe them on your shirt. Well, that do. Yeah. We are talking about soap. And I want to chuck, before we start, I want to give a special shout out to Dr. Braunners because they are soap makers and they also requested this episode years ago. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They wrote in and said, hey, here's some free samples. How about an episode on soap? We said, okay, we can't be bought with free samples, but an episode on soap is a good idea. So finally we're getting around to it. Yeah. And we had their big jumbo daddy liquid castile soap by our sink here at work. Yeah. Remember we had that castile soap fight? The great castile soap fight of the odds. Yeah. Twelve. No, their stuff is good. And if it wasn't for the fact that my wife makes soap, then I would be firmly on the doctor bronner's train. I like their stuff. I feel like you can do both. No. Okay. Emily wouldn't allow that. She's like it's. Them or me. Well, I mean, how about this? Tell you me to open a business for 20 years and then say, I feel like I might like to use your competitors some as well. Okay. All right. But I'll bet the people at Dr. Browners use Emily soap. I don't know. Maybe. Let's find out. Maybe they can write in. So, yes, Emily does make soap, too. She sells it@loveyourma.com, does not she? Yeah. I mean, I haven't had to buy soap in 15 plus years. It's been great. Do you help out making the soap? I did in the early days. I've made quite a few batches in my day, but just not anymore. What's your specialty? Well, I mean, I didn't have a specialty. I would just make whatever she told me to make. I got you. It's fun. I have to make genital soap again. And that's not soap for the genitals. It's soap in the shape of genitals. And also for the genitals. Sure. I guess you probably shouldn't really make a distinction there. No. So, like we said, soap is kind of magic. Chuck and I feel like we should just kind of off the bat, talk about why it's magic. Because it's one of those things where science can explain it, but that doesn't really make it any less impressive. Actually, it makes it kind of more impressive, to tell you the truth. Yeah. And what soap is? Just a couple of things. Like, if you were to go back a long time and we'll talk about the history, or go out in the middle of the furthest reaches of, I don't know, the jungle, where people are sort of making their own versions of soap, you really just need a couple of things, which is some sort of a fat or an oil and an alkali. Right. And that's really it. People can use a lot of people through history have used animal fats and stuff like that. Obviously. Fight Club had the big joke about using lard from Liposuction lard, I think. Right? Yeah. So that's fat, too. But Emily's is an olive oil based soap, and I'm a big fan of that. Yeah. They figured out finally you didn't need to sacrifice goats anymore. You could just use sacrifice olives. Right? Yeah. Same ceremony. It's just dinkier. That's right. That's all there is to it. An alkali in this case? Well, an alkali in every case is a type of base. It's the opposite of an acid on the PH scale. It has a high PH. And usually, traditionally, when making soap, it comes in the form of Lie and Lye. You can get by chopping down some wood, specifically hardwood. You don't want soft wood burning it, taking the ashes, boiling them, and then scraping off what floats to the top. You have lye right there. And that's one of the two main ingredients, along with fat, like you said in making soap. That's it. That's all there is to soap. Right. But you would never put those two things together. It's almost like it makes more sense how we figured out how to make alcohol than it does how we figured out how to make soap. You know what I mean? Yeah, totally. It's not very intuitive. No, it's not at all. But that is what soap is, and we've been making it for at least about 48 00 50 00 years, as we'll see. But before we get to the history, Chuck, let's talk a little bit about how the whole thing works. Okay? Yeah. So you've got water, and that's a key component to washing your body. If you've ever heard the term oil and water don't mix. That's true, because it's all about it goes down to a molecular level. And water molecules, they like each other a lot, but they don't like oil. They don't like fat because the oil molecules are big and they don't have these poles that have different electrical charges. And it really is interesting that it comes down to literal chemistry in this case. Yeah. Do you remember, I think in our pepper spray episode, we explained why if you rinse your face off with water after you've been pepper sprayed, it doesn't work. It's because the water and I think the capsaicin don't bind together. But if you use something like milk, like a fat, that fat binds to capsaicin. So that's why you'd want to use milk to wash your eyes out after being pepper sprayed. The end. So there's a very similar thing going on with water. Water, like you said, likes to bind to itself. And that binding, Chuck, is what accounts for surface tension, which is how you can fill a glass of water up with water slightly over the rim of the glass, and it will hold its shape. It's because water molecules are so attracted to each other that they form, like, basically a surface, hence surface tension. So when you add soap, things change. Soap comes along and says, I see what you like, see what's going on here, but I'm going to shake things up a little bit. Yeah. And it's so cool because soap basically gets oil and water to party together. Right. Soap comes in, they have these pin shaped ends, and each end, it's almost like it was meant to be this way or something. They have very distinct ends and they bind with the water on one side and the oil on the other. As if it was just made to say, you guys need to get together and clean things. Yeah, but not only do they, like, bind with the water on one end and oil on the other end, they have, like, polar opposite ends, as a single soap molecule does. So not only does the end like to bind with oil, which means it's oleophilic, it hates water, which makes it hydrophobic. And because the end is hydrophobic. It does everything it can to get away from water. Including pushing through water and separating water into its constituent molecules. Which loosens that surface tension of water. Which makes soap a surfactant. A surface active agent. Which means that it makes water a little more permeable. Like water can get into tinier cracks and crevices than it normally would because that hydrophobic end of the soap molecule is keeping the water from coming together because it's just plowing right through trying to get away from the water. Yeah. And that's the tail end. The head end of the soap has a little bit of a negative charge, and that says, all right, I really want to bond with that positive hydrogen atom and water. So that makes it hydrophilic. So that end loves water, the other end loves the oil when they come together. And I love the way Dave Rus put it. He said the hydrophilic head and the hydrophobic tail act like a team of bouncers that surround the particles and say, Get out of here. And I think the one thing we didn't mention that makes us all work is the fact that and the reason why just rinsing your hands off doesn't work as well as with soap is that all the dirt and all that stuff that builds up on your body has oil in it. Right. Let's give an example here, Chuck. Let's say that you have some cake frosting on your hands. Don't ask. Well, you know how you take care of that? Yeah. But you've looked at so much so that now it's kind of getting gross and you finally reach that point where you need you're going to suggest washing that off of your hands. Right, okay. No, not that. We're past that stage, the licking stage, and we're at the hand washing stage. Now, when you wet your hands with water, you get it nice and primed. Then when you add soap and you lather the soap up, what you're doing is you're introducing those soap molecules, which are, again, special, magic little molecules, into this. You're creating, like a solution, a soapy water solution. And so those soap molecules are basically trying to get away from the water on one side, and on that side they're saying, oh, hey, a little bit of oily hydrogenated cake frosting. Great. I want to be attracted to you. And a bunch of different soap molecules are going to do that to a single little particle of cake frosting, and they essentially surround it. So that the tail ends of a bunch of different soap molecules are all pointing inward, enveloping basically a little particle of cake frosting. And then on the outside, they're connecting to the water molecules that are surrounding that. Right. So that's basically stage one. And the cake frosting starts to sweat a little bit. It's like, well, what's going to come next? What's coming next? I don't really like being surrounded like this without knowing what's coming next. And the cake frosting doesn't want to know what comes next because it doesn't pan out well for it. Yeah, so it gets surrounded, and like you said, the tails are pointing in, the heads are pointing out, and it surrounds and basically traps the dirt and the oil in what are called my cells, micelles. And that's a little bubble around the dirt, basically. And all those little outside pointing heads lift that dirt from the surface and all of a sudden it's floating around a little bit now and not bound to your skin. He was like, I don't know what's happening. And that's where your good friend water comes in to just wash it all down the drain. Yeah, because, remember, in addition to being oleophilic, where it's attracted to oils, it's also a surfactant. So it breaks water molecules up, which means that that water can get into smaller crevices, for example, underneath that piece of cake frosting. So it makes it easier for it to just get carried away, too. So it's all just kind of coming together into this amazing little process that happens every time you wash your hands and form those little micellar bubbles. That's where all those particles go. They just get carried off, thanks to these soap molecules surrounding them, connecting with the water molecules, and then just getting rinsed away. It's kind of like, you know that scene in True Lies where Jamie Lee Curtis is hanging from the helicopter and Arnold Schwarzenegger is holding onto her and he's actually holding on the helicopter. So Arnold Schwarzenegger is the soap molecule, jamie Lee Curtis is the cake frosting, and the helicopter is the water that's rinsing it all the way down the drain. That's right. And the dirt saying, I'll be back, and the soap saying, no, you won't. Terrible. The famous retort to all be back. And the coolest thing about all of this, that's just how it takes care of the dirt on your body, which is amazing in and of itself. But it can do the same thing with viruses and bacteria, especially. Well, not especially, but including the coronavirus, because a lot of these things have this double layered lipid membrane, including the coronavirus. And to deal with that hydrophobic end of the soap, it's really sharp. You get a bunch of those guys together, and it can wedge in between those membranes. And if you get enough of them, pried up like it's a crowbar or something. And then that's when the virus is all of a sudden like Arnold Schwarzenegger just taking care of business. Yeah. It basically gets ripped apart by so many, like, deaths by 1000 paper cuts. But instead of paper, it's soap molecules. And the lipid membrane that protects the virus just gets torn. Right. Opens the virus proteins out and those virus proteins actually get enveloped by even more soap molecules. So not only does it get rid of microbes, it actually kills certain kinds of microbes. We're just talking about regular, plain old soap and water here, everybody. Yeah. And not to get too ahead of the game, but that's why soap is better for washing your hands during at all times, but especially during a time like this. Because I think people just figure, like because we have this association with alcohol and that smell like it just kills everything on contact. Sure. But it doesn't kill everything on contact. And if you're in a pinch and you don't have soap and you're at a store or something, and it's good to have that stuff to use, but it doesn't necessarily kill it 100%. And what you're not doing is washing it off with water and down the drain. No, you're not. There are two problems here. Yes. It killed a bunch of stuff, especially things that alcohol can kill. But the stuff that it can't kill, you just basically gave an alcohol bath too, and it's still there on your hands. So when you do touch your face again, inevitably those things are going to be introduced to your mouth. Including things like polio virus, which, as we learned recently, you don't want to go into your mouth. Should we take a break? I think we should. And then we'll come back and talk history, maybe. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. All right. Chuck. Soap. Like we said, we're not entirely sure how we ever figured out how to make soap, but we do know from records, hieroglyphics, cuneiform tablets, all that jazz, that in Mesopotamia people were making soap, taking alkali and the fat, mixing them together, adding heat and water and through hydrolysis, going through this process called saponification and producing soap. That's how you produce soap. It has to have gone through saponification to be considered soap. Right. That we've been doing this, we humans, for at least 5000 years. Yeah. It's kind of cool. When I was making batches of soap, I heard that word a lot from Emily because there's a lot of mixing involved. And I would think I was done with the mixing and she'd say, it hasn't saponized yet. It's just sort of an easy test. You would lift the mixer out and kind of sling a little bit of it on the surface and it's almost like seeing when a pasta noodles done. You can just sort of tell by the way the thickness is and the way it sits. Yeah. And when you finally reach that saponification point, you're right. A rock. It's a great word. It is I always called it. I would always say that we're pulling into Saponification Station, which was my old joke. That's a good one. So Saponification actually took I didn't realize that it was from legendary, mythical mountain. Did you know that Mount Sappo is that the Roman one? Yeah, that's the sort of the legend. And no one knows if it's true, but it makes for a good story. From what I understand, it is definitely not true. Okay. But it does make for a good story. So we're going to agree on that. Yeah. In ancient Rome, there was a Mount Sappo, and as the legend goes, that is not true. Ancient priest would sacrifice animals up there, and when it would rain, that animal fat from that disgusting animal sacrifice ceremony would flow down along with the wood ash that you already mentioned was the alkali, and go down there to the river, the Tiber River, and people were washing their clothes down there. And when that happened, they would be like, man, this stuff sudden up, and my clothes have never been cleaner. Yeah, it's not just plain clean. Yeah, that's SOPO clean. Right. From what I understand, there's just no question that there is no such thing as Mount SAPO and that this is all just kind of a made up, fun origin story. It really is. God, I didn't know that that was fake. Mount Sappo was fake. I just thought the legend was fake. Are they Romans? Are they fake? I don't know. The jury is kind of still there are today, but we're not sure where they came from. Now, from what I know, there's not a real Mount SAPO, but the fact is, the Romans felt compelled for some reason to say, where did this come from? Well, let me explain with this made up story. By the time this Mount Sappo legend came around, I mean, people had been making this stuff for a couple of thousand years already. So it definitely did not originate in Mount SAPO because there is no Mount SAPO. But we do know the Romans were into it, not just from that legend, but also Plyiny the Elder mentioned it in his Naturalist Historia from 77 Ce. You know what else the Romans were into? Yeah, or gee, I do. They were into a lot of stuff. They're like, I got a great story for you about the soap. Come on into this room with the other 35 people. Yes. Have you met my friend Priya Piss? I'll tell you all about it. You're going to love him. So they were definitely producing what you would call soap, though, by 200 BCE, that was from Curd and like goat fat and beech tree ash. They would clean stuff in towns with that kind of stuff. They would wash their pots out. Other people would use it to clean cotton, to make textiles and stuff like that. But it wasn't for personal use yet. No, that was like the one thing in common is people were using it for everything but washing themselves. I don't know if it just didn't hit upon them or whatever, but they didn't like, apparently the Galls even used it to slick their hair back. Not to wash their hair, just to slick it back and give it a nice little reddish tint. Apparently nice. But Europe so Europe had soap making guilds from, I think, the 7th century. For a very long time, people had been making soap in Europe. But it wasn't until after the Crusades that some of the crusaders returned, as the legend goes, Mount Sappo style story. But they returned supposedly with Aleppo soap from Syria, which is fragrance with bay laurels. Very nice, beautiful olive oil soap you can still get today. But the story goes that the returning crusader said, get this stuff, it's soap, but you use it to wash your genitals. And Europe started to get very clean. At least, like the elite aristocracy who had the money to afford things like that got very clean. Well, at least their genitals did. Right. It took another 300 years for someone to be like, I wonder if you could use this on your underarms as well. Right. What about your face? They're like, you know where you've been washing with that stuff? It's true. It's got hair on it to prove it. Oh, goodness. That was too much for you. No, I didn't even use the word pubic hair. I mean, we said the word genitals like five times so far. That's true. So that was how Europe supposedly started to come into soap. It was imported from the Middle East, but in very short order, I think Spain started making Castile soap out of olive oil and it took off in France and England and elsewhere. Again, it was a luxury item, but it became much more widespread when Europe started making it themselves. Yes, I think the Castillo region Right. Isn't that where that came from? Yes. And as long as it's supposedly originally it was made from olive oil, qualified as a Castile soap. But even now you can make castile soap from like, palm oil or coconut oil or whatever, and it's still considered Castile soap. So I think it's just a free for all. Yeah. What I like about Emily's liquid soap and the doctor Bronners is that it's how liquid soap should be, which is to say, thin. It's almost like it has the same sort of viscosity as water. And whenever I see and I don't want to name like slam and name brand, but let's just say the very popular hand soap that they've had around since the way that stuff comes out all gooey and pearly is just so gross. Pearly? Mother of pearly. It's really nasty looking to me now that I've seen, like, good, real liquid soap. Yeah. One of the other things I like about Castile soap with Dr. Bronner's and emily's in particular is that your hands feel washed afterwards. Totally. It doesn't feel like you missed any, like there's a residue, it's gone. But it also has left behind like a clean feeling. It's just it's own thing for sure. Yeah. And since we're talking about this, I want to say a huge thanks to people that went out and bought stuff from her store after the essential Oils episode. We've given her plenty of shout outs over the years and there's always been a little spikes in our business, but I think the topic and small business and hurting because of the coronavirus and everything kind of came together and they've been overwhelmed with support and it's been, oh, that's great, really sweet and a little bit much even. But it's been kind of like be careful what you ask for. Right. And corporate BuzzFeed, they say that's a good problem to have. Yeah. So if you're going to order soap, just wait a week or two. Okay. Fair warning, everybody. Or just be prepared to wait a week or two in the back end. Hey, by the way, you can also order something now too that you have to wait for. And that would be our book, an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things which you can order right now anywhere you buy books. And if you're lucky enough to live in the United States and Canada currently, you get a free poster as a gift or pre order. Wow. That was a nice segue, my friend. Thank you. So it took hundreds and hundreds of years. Thousands of years, chuck, think about this. Thousands of years after the invention of soap before we finally started to use it on ourselves. And then apparently it wasn't until after the Civil War, at least in the United States, that using soap really took off and soap making and the soap making industry became like kind of a thing all around the same time. Yeah. Like, I think. Ivory Soap was released in 1879. Paul Malive was released around the same time. And I never realized palm olive soap is so named because it has palm oil and olive oil in it. Did you know that? I didn't, but I know those are two potential soap ingredients. And palm oil is a little controversial these days because of the way it's sourced and we don't have to go down that rabbit hole. But just when you're shopping for stuff, just sort of try and figure out where that stuff's coming from is all I'm saying. And then let's see what else? Lifeboy, the one that Ralphie hated so much, was that lifeboy? Yeah, that one came out in 1895. And what was remarkable about lifeboy is that they were the ones who coined the term body odor bo as part of a marketing campaign to get you to actually buy and use soap. Did not know that. I feel like we must have talked about that in our body odor episode? I don't know. I do like that little Ivory story, too, though, that in 1879, a soap maker at PNG made a mistake, as the legend goes, and forgot to turn off the mixer, and then that whipped a bunch of air in there. This is what happens when you over mix something and shipped him out anyway, because he was like, I don't want to get pinned for this. And apparently a lot of people wrote in, and they're like, I love that floating soap. And that was sort of always the selling point for Ivory was that it floats. Yeah. And the moral of the story is that they fired him anyway for withholding the information. That's right. Jimmy Ivory. Yeah, they kept his name. They kept his name. And then the hand soap. In 1865, William Shepherd patented the first liquid soap, but it took all the way until 1980 when soft soap came around. Yes. And here's the thing. Did you know the story from the Minnetonka Corporation? I didn't previous to reading this. This is so great. So the Minnetonka Corporation are the ones who debuted soft soap. And before then, it was like you had bar soap. That was your option. But in 1980, they said, we're going to release this, and I think it's going to be a big deal. So we're going to go around and buy up all of the soap pumps that anybody could possibly use. And they cornered the market on liquid soap just from buying up all the soap pumps. Do you think that's a good thing before they release as far as, like, from the lens of a Robert Baron? Okay, it's a great thing. It seems like a jerk move to me. At the very least, it's a good story. And everyone they talk to, they're like, oh, no, go out and make liquid soap. What are you going to put it in? Yeah, what are you going to do, deliver it by hand to people and just be like, here, hold your hand, cup your hands, we'll give you some of our liquid soap. You got to wrap it in paper. I don't think so. It's true. Oh, and speaking of wrapped in paper, I have one more little piece of soap lure. You ever use Irish Spring? I did in college. Okay. That's the appropriate time to use Irish Spring for sure. You know, that sent. There's actually a name for it. It's not like publicly named, but internally at. I think. Colgate palm olive. It's called Ulster Scent. Did not know Ulster Fragrance. And when they came out with Irish Spring, it wasn't debuted in Ireland. No one in Ireland invented it. It was actually invented in Germany in 1970, and then it made its way to the United States in 1972. And initially for the first decade that Irish Spring was around, on the package, it said, a manly, deodorant soap. Oh, interesting. So it was for men. They couldn't. Call it German Spring either, because that sounds like some kind of Nazi offensive or something they call the Irish Spring, but in German. I don't remember how it's pronounced. I don't remember that one. You can't put two and two together from that. No, I'll see if I can find it while we're still talking. Okay. So should we talk about how you should wash your hands? Since that's relevant? Yeah, I think so. And I know we talked about this on the Covet episode, but I love the way that this doctor put it. It was a health official, I think, that said wash your hands like you've been chopping jalapenos and you need to change out your contact lenses. It's really great advice. It was sort of like when we did this reminds me of when we did Poison Ivy and they said, you need to scrub like there's black auto grease on your body. You remember saying that? No, I mean, that was just the advice from the Poison ivy episode. Okay, but that's what I'm saying. Like, I don't remember giving that advice. I'm impressed is what I'm saying. I remember that because you've got to get that poison oil off your body and it's very greasy. I got poison ivy again the other day, man, it's terrible how bad it was. Very concentrated in a small area, I think. On my genitals? Yes. On my ankle. Around my ankle, I think. But it was just a study in self control not to touch it. I had zero calamine lotion or anything like that that I could use. It was bad. I officially get it now because I think when we recorded that, I had not yet. I didn't think I was allergic or whatever, but I've since gotten it a couple of times, including a couple of weeks ago. Just like you. Wow. Not much, though. Just a couple of tiny little spots. Maybe yours is sympathy, poison ivy. Oh, maybe because I had it. Yeah, my genitals itched your genital is always itching sympathy for me. Oh, man. I think how many times have we said that now? Eight. We should put in a little ding or a buzzer or something. Let's see if we can get Gerry to do that. All right. Hey, do you want to know what Irish Spring is in German? Yeah, Irisher Friedling. All right. How is my German? Great. Is that how you would say it? Irisher? I guess so. How is it spelled? Just Irish with an e R. No? Irisch. Yeah, that sounds about right. Okay. And then freelength. There's even an UMLA I love to zoom out. So do you want to take a break and talk about how to wash hands or do you want to wash hands and then take a break? No, let's take that break. Okay, everybody, we'll be right back. Alright. We're going to wash our hands. We're going to do it. You got to wet them. You got to start with water got to soap up, and then you got to really start scrubbing, especially now, these days, when they've and you should just do this from now to the end of time, now that we really know how to watch Annes. Right. Scrub those palms. Scrub the backs. Get in between those fingies. Get in those Fingy nails. They say to sing Happy Birthday a couple of times. ABCs once. Sure. If you know them. I like to use really hot water just because it makes me feel like I'm getting them cleaner. Hurts me. Does it really? Yeah. Do you like cold water? No. I'm not crazy. But I do like warm water. Warm toward the hot side, but definitely not hot. I wouldn't characterize it as hot. Yeah, I like it so hot I can barely stand it. Really? Oh, boy. That to me, I shy away from that. And here's something that I've been wanting to say for a long, long time, because this has been one of emily's big sort of things is stuck in her craw is I guess that's not the right thing. Something stuck in your craw? No, that's not quite right. But you know what I mean? A thorn in her side. Okay. I can see both working. Is that antibacterial soap is not more effective, people. It's not? No. And in fact, it's actually kind of harmful in the larger scheme of things, but it doesn't do anything that soap can't do. No. You're falling for some marketing gobbledygook. Stop it. And, I mean, it makes sense. You would think, like, okay, I'm washing my hands, but I'm also washing my hands with something that has an antibacterial agent. So it's killing stuff. And yes, it kills some things. That's true. But the problem is the stuff that it doesn't kill stays around and evolves to be resistant to those antibacterial agents. Right. And the problem is that those same bugs aren't just on your hands. And don't just encounter soap. We use antibiotics against them. But if they've learned to be resistant from soap washing by billions of people every day, it makes it way harder to kill them with antibiotics. And so they finally figured out that some of the antibiotic resistant bugs that we were starting to see were basically in training through antibacterial soap. And eventually, I think the FDA banned two of the ingredients that were commonly used in antibacterial soap. Right. Yeah. They banned triclocin and triclocarbon and said, use regular soap. Everybody. The FDA said that. It's not just me talking. No. And I mean it's because that regular soap does all the same things that antibacterial soap does, too. And I have to say, Chuck, so we're talking about hand washing. One of the things that I found, astounding in all this, is that hand washing is so prevalent now, but it's not like it was anything new when the Covet pandemic came around. Right? Sure. But apparently it's still relatively new. As far as hand washing guidelines go, that wasn't until the 80s that the CDC issued their first hand washing guidelines, and that was for hospitals. Hospitals didn't have hand washing guidelines issued by the CDC until the 80s. Isn't that astounding it is? But I wonder if that was just because they were, like, duh everybody. And then someone said, well, you should probably just codify it. I don't know. I saw that it was in response to some hospital acquired infection outbreaks. Okay, so maybe the CDC was like, you know this, right? And it turns out that hospitals were like, no, not really. Yeah, very interesting. All the doctors were walking around touching their genitals and doing surgery. So here's another thing. Liquid soap versus bar soap. You would think that. And I think a lot of people may be disgusted by bar soap that other people use, especially when they're hairy. Sure. But they have done studies. They did a study in 1965 where they contaminated the hands of the researchers with 5 million bacteria and then had them wash their hands and then had other people afterward and found that the bacteria was not transferred to the second user. This was confirmed in another study. And the conclusion they came to, basically, is there could be some surface bacteria on a bar of soap that's just left out like that, but it definitely doesn't transmit infection. Well, why wouldn't it? I don't know. They just showed that it didn't, huh? Yeah, they showed that it didn't transmit infection. And I don't know, maybe it's the properties of the soap at work, or maybe it just doesn't live that long on a surface like that. I could see that. I could see soap not being a very hospitable surface for microbes. But when I do pick up bar soap in the shower, like, I always give it a rinse off first, get it wet, get the layer of gunk off first. Yeah, that's true. And I think people probably would be grossed out if public restaurants just have a bar so open there, but it's not going to get you sick. But I get it. You have those pumps of individual soaps. I get it. It's true. Plus, also usually when you encounter liquid soap, it has other stuff in it that maybe moisturizes your hands or does things that a bar soap might not. What's the deal with detergent? So here's the thing. Most of the stuff that you have in your bathroom right now that you consider soap are actually detergents. A detergent is simply a synthetic soap. The only way for somebody to qualify as a soap is for it to have gone through Saponification Station right back. I'm glad this came up because Emily came through when I was researching, and she was like, you know, soap isn't even soap anymore. She's like, they can call it soap legally, but it's not even soap. Yeah, so you've got your fats and you've got your alkaline and you put them together and they undergo saponification, and you have soap. If you don't start with fats and alkalines and they don't undergo saponification, you have something that does the same thing and in many cases is even more desirable, has more desirable traits than just natural soap. But it's just not soap. It's a detergent. And the first detergents, and plenty of detergents still around today were derived from synthetic chemicals that came from petroleum, actually. Yeah, because the deal was, once they figured out soap, many years ago, they just washed everything with soap clothes and your dishes, and they would clean floors. That's not what it was made for. So it would leave a residue. It's called soap scum. And especially when it's mixed with hard water, if it's really high in mineral salt, magnesium and calcium, it's going to make a lot of soap scum. And it was a big problem back in the old days when it would be left over on your kitchen floor or big time on your washing machine. Yeah, well, that was a big problem because washing machines came out before laundry detergent did, and it could really gum up the works when you had a soap scum layer that was hard as concrete on it. That's right. But detergent solved all that. It did, because detergent doesn't leave soapscom because it doesn't interact with calcium and magnesium in hard water, which made it vastly preferable to use for laundry. Which is why the first detergents that they ever came out with were laundry detergents. And specifically, from what I saw, the first detergent was draft in 1933, which is still around today. You can get draft. Really? Yeah. It's still very much around. And in Canada, it's called Ivory Snow because Canada is just weird with everything. I've heard of Ivory Snow giving draft everything. Well, draft came around and that handled like, pretty decently soiled things, but nothing too heavy. And so was it the same company that went on to create Tide? I'm pretty sure it was Procter and Gamble that did draft. Did they do tied to I want to say yes. I want to, too, but I don't want to get sued. Actually, let's just go with yes. Okay. The next big one in 1943 was Tied, and that was a combination of these synthetic surfactants and something called builders. And the builders kind of worked in concert with the synthetic surfactants to just kind of get out tougher stains. And in 1946, they brought it onto the test market as a heavy duty detergent. Everyone loved it. And this is kind of cool. Where did you get this? Actually, this piece, I think that one was from Thought Company. And I also want to give a shout out to another Thought Company piece that was written by an historian named Judith Ridner, who gave us a lot of the history stuff, too. Well, Todd has tried to improve it a lot over the years and has not stopped. And it says that each year they basically try and duplicate mineral content of the water in all parts of the US. Like, what are all the kinds of water that we have in the United States? And let's do 50,000 test loads with Tide just to make sure we're still up to snuff. Yeah, every year, 50,000 test loads. Imagine being the person in charge of that laundry. Wouldn't you just go just totally out of it pretty bad. $50,000. I wouldn't make it to 50. Yeah, 50 loads of laundry. No way. Taking a stand against laundry. Although I have to say so one of the things we were talking about, castile soap, in addition to just being soap, it's known to do a lot of stuff and one of the things supposedly is laundry. So I did a test on grease staining on some shorts oh yeah, correct. With some soap. And I will report back eventually to let you know if it worked. Okay, where was it? I pretreated it around the genitals. Okay. On the leg, not too far from the genitals. Now that you mentioned that detergent again, it's just a synthetic soap and it doesn't do anything differently. But the reason why companies prefer detergents is because they can control it a lot more. It's something that they create themselves. They don't have to rely on nature, they don't have to keep a high priest on the payroll to oversee the goat sacrifices to get the tallow. It's just a lot easier to control from beginning to end. The problem is a lot of times some of those synthetic detergents can be harsh on your skin. They can dry things out. It can be irritant, for sure. If you have eczema, that's definitely something you might or dermatitis. And Emily's had a lot of success with people that specifically use her soap because it's real soap and they had X amount of skin problems and that really helped it out. Yeah, because I mean, like, even soap, it's high up on the PH scale, higher than your natural skin PH, but it's usually much lower than, say, like a detergent. The thing is, modern chemistry and modern south banking can adjust things as needed to make things easier on your skin. For sure. Yeah. And those detergents aren't great for getting that gray water, getting into the eventual fresh water supply. It's no good for animals and fishies, especially now, supposedly, you know how soaps are surfactants detergents are as well, which means that they break the surface tension of water, which makes it easier for fish to absorb all the gunk that we put in the water, along with detergents, too. So it's bad on that side and it also stretches out and breaks through the membrane that keeps them gooey, which is not good for fish either. No, it's no good. Fish just need to use soap. I don't know what their problem is. I know. Get clean, you wouldn't smell so fishy. Right? You got anything else about soap? Got nothing else. Use it. People. Wash your hands a lot. Yes. Wash your hands, everybody. Say your ABC, say Happy birthday twice, but really get a good lather going and wash them a lot. Okay. Okay. Since we said okay a couple of times and genitals God knows how many times, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this hot off the presses. You guys don't know this, but we are playing it dangerously close here lately with our recording schedule. Too close for our comfort. So things that we're recording are coming out days later and that means the corrections are coming just days later. So this is about the recently released Billy the Kid one. Hey, guys. Love the show. It seriously keeps my workday interesting. Just listen to the Billy the Kid short stuff and really enjoyed it. But I thought I'd share a tidbit of info. You mentioned that Billy went to slice up a bit of yearling, aka horse meat for post coital snack. I'm from Wyoming and my family raises horses as well as beef and show cattle. I just thought I'd share in the livestock industry. Technically, almost all live stock is a yearling. Once they've had a year of age, especially common to call younger butcher cattle yearlings. And then I looked up the movie. The yearling. Remember that? It's about that little baby deer. I thought that was about a horse, too. About a deer. Or at least there's a deer on the cover. Well, that's probably about a deer. It'd be very misleading if it was. It either that or like the person who is in charge of the cover design didn't bother to read the book. Well, Jewel says this while it's very possible it was a horse because people did eat horses back then, yearling horses don't have much meat on them. So unless the family was really starving, it's unlikely they butcher a horse that young for dinner. More than likely Billy was carving up a little bit of beef. Okay, that makes a little more sense. But is this from Jewel? Did you say as a Jewel the singer? Well, it's from a jewel. I don't think it's no, it's not. Because I'm looking at the last name now. Okay. I don't know what Julie's last name is. I didn't even realize she had her last name. I want to say it's Kircher or something like that. Okay. Well, either way she's great because I was listening to some of her old stuff not too long ago for some reason. Yeah. And I was like, this is still really good music. Okay. Yeah. Give Julie a listen. Chuck. I think you'll be like Josh is. All right. Well, thank you, Julie, for writing, though. Yeah. Thank you other Jewel for writing in. And if you're the same Jewel, I'm on to you. If you want to get in touch with us like Juul did, you can send us an email like Juul did. Go ahead and send it off to Stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more Podcasts Myheartradio, visit iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
445b74ba-53a3-11e8-bdec-87f6a6559a9b | All the Gold In Fort Knox: Meh | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/all-the-gold-in-fort-knox-meh | When Fort Knox was built in the 1930s to house America’s gold supply, it was billed as an impenetrable, impregnable, don’t-even-think-of-trying vault. But as the world has moved further away from gold, the stockpile’s lost a bit of its luster. | When Fort Knox was built in the 1930s to house America’s gold supply, it was billed as an impenetrable, impregnable, don’t-even-think-of-trying vault. But as the world has moved further away from gold, the stockpile’s lost a bit of its luster. | Thu, 05 Nov 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=310, tm_isdst=0) | 49388646 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark nurse. Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And Jerry's out there somewhere. And this is and stuff you should know. Gold plated. Isn't that what happens? Like, if you put a bunch of gold together, it means more carrots? I think so. I'm afraid to doubt you, though, because I had a movie crusher say that all I do lately is saying you're wrong to you. What do they mean lately? I know. They must be a newcomer to the podcasting all the time lately. Josh makes really good points, and all Chuck does is poopoo it by just saying, no, you're wrong. Like, is that even happened once? I'm sure it's happened more than once, but if it makes you feel any better, I haven't noticed. Then that's what really counts, don't you think? Yeah, I guess. Although there are, like, a million plus people listening, so I guess their opinions count as well. You're wrong. Oh, man. You know what's funny is I didn't even see that coming. Chuck. Oh, see there? Yeah. That was good stuff. And I almost just said the S word. That was good stuff. You're wrong. It was mediocre. Let's just do this for 45 minutes. Yeah. Now let's do a real podcast episode. This is interesting. All I could think about was heist movies. Oh, really? I don't know what I thought about. I think I was kind of stuck in the thirties. I just thought of everything kind of old timey and quaint. Right? Because it's kind of, in a way, where the story really kicks off. The story of Fort Knox, in case anybody's listening and didn't check the title. Oh, I thought we were doing an episode on the United States boolean depository, buddy. That is the same exact thing in a lot of ways, but actually they're different, too. Let's talk about this, right, for anybody who is outside the United States. And I would wager that a lot of you I'd wager all the golden Fort Knox. But a lot of you are very familiar with Fort Knox because it does seem to be kind of like this world famous place where the United States hoards its gold, and it's just totally impenetrable, so don't even try. But there's also, like, a lot of conspiracy theories, too, that there's no gold in there, and we'll talk about all this and why there's gold in there, too, but I feel like we should at least give a background on Fort Knox and the ins and outs of it, don't you? Yeah. In 19 three, this is where it all started. The US. Army said, you know what? I think we need some training ground out here in Kentucky, in West Point, Kentucky. And everybody said, Why? Yeah, I don't know. Good places any, I guess. Okay. And they use that area. They got a few counties to kindly hand them over some land and they use that area for training and stuff. Made it a permanent training camp in 1918 and then named it after Henry Knox, a Revolutionary War officer, as Camp Knox. And someone very quickly said, that doesn't sound at all tough. It sounds like children belong here and people are roasting s'mores. Right, that's what I was going to say. How about Fort Knox? It seems like all the best fort started out as camps. Yeah. So they said, sure. In 1932, it became officially Fort Knox. Right. Nice one. It started out as a legit army base, but then eventually in the 30s, which is why I've been stuck in the 30s, because so much of the story takes place there. The United States Mint said, hey, we could use a new spot to store some gold because we got a lot of gold and this isn't even all of it, but we need a new spot to store some gold. And they actually took possession of part of Fort Knox and built what's known as, like you said, the United States Bullion Depository there in Kentucky. And it is legitimately. Fort Knox is now not just the army camp. Even more famously, it is really what you officially would call the United States Bullying Depository. Yeah. And the camp is still there, and some say it is there as sort of a means of maybe intimidation, maybe backup. Like, hey, there's an army camp right next door. But they also asked to borrow that name because it sounded tougher than the Bullion Depository. And they said, sure, you can go ahead and just call that building Fort Knox as well. And that's where we moved. Well, not all of it, but we had a lot of gold at the time, as you were saying, and it was a little unnerving, I think, to have most of the gold in the country stored in Philadelphia. That meant there and in New York because it was so close to the coast. And if some boring nation wanted to invade us and grab our gold, then they wouldn't have far to go to get it onto a boat. Yeah, truly. Which is pretty sensible, really, and I never really thought about that. But New York is not very far from Water, and neither is Philly, so why not? So they decided to move as much as they could. And there was silver move, too. There's a lot of stockpiles of silver that we're not even going to bother with in this story because silver, we're talking gold here. They moved a lot of it to Denver, and they very quickly said, well, Denver Mid is a great place because it's protected from the Pacific Ocean by the Rocky Mountains, which that makes it much more difficult for an invading army to come in from the Pacific and steal it. But we've run out of space and we need some more space for all the spillover gold and that's when they decided to build a Fort Knox, which in Kentucky is protected from the Atlantic Ocean by the Appalachian Mountains. So it's pretty clever why they chose Fort Knox. Yeah. So the treasury, like you said, took control of that land in 36, and then in 37, they started building. They couldn't just keep it intense, even though the intimidating Appalachian Mountains were right there. They were like, we need a building here. So they built a building over just a few months. Cost about impressive. Yeah. Cost about a half a million bucks. And in 1937, they said, we're open for business. Bring that gold from New York City. They did. And they did it exactly the way that you would think they would do it. They had a lot of secret location where they were loading it. They sent a bunch of trains out that were decoys, and it didn't all happen at once. It wasn't one shipment that made its way from New York and Philadelphia over to Kentucky. It would have been the movie, I think. Exactly. Yeah. But it happened actually in many shipments over several years. But supposedly they did it, like, sometimes darkness of nights. There were decoys, and they were always protected by a number of groups from the post office inspectors that are licensed to carry guns, which would I hate to say it, everybody, but that's the one that you would try to hijack if you were going to hijack. Yeah. To be honest. Right. Yes, chuck all the way to the army, which I would probably not try to hijack that one. If I were going to hijack one, which I wouldn't do, it would probably be the postal inspector one. Yeah. And I'm sure that someone has written a movie treatment at some point for a 1937 train on the way to Fort Knox heist type of thing. Right. And they surely would have cast those poor post office gunslingers as the likely train. Those poor guys. So we've got the gold showing up at Fort Knox, and the thing is, people knew about this. It wasn't done in secret. This is known about. And I get the impression that the reason that it was talked about and discussed and there were, like, little tidbits here there in the popular media to give this idea, like, okay, yes, we're moving this goal, but, like, don't even try it. Like, here's just enough that you need to know to not even come anywhere near this place. And over the years, little tidbits have kind of been released here, give a pretty complete picture of what you would be dealing with if you did, in fact, try to impregnate Fortnite. First of all, you can't just take a tour, and you can tour almost anything in this country except for Fort Knox. Even if you're a sitting congressperson, the chances are you're probably not going to get a tour. Yeah. If Ed is correct here, who helped us put this together. There have only been three official tours, is that right? Yes, that's what I saw. So there was one from FDR himself, which is pretty understandable. Sure. There was one in the 70s, which we'll talk about, which made sense, but it was a congressional delegation. And then I think in 2017, Stephen Minutian and a delegation toured it. So there's at least three, but those are the three that we know about. There may have been more, but I would think they would kind of publicize that because the whole point of being a delegate to tour of Fort Knox is to basically reassure the public, there's a lot of gold in there. Don't even worry about it. Yes, the gold's there. That's pretty much the reason why anybody gets a tour of Fort Knox. I wonder if they let FDR in just to say, hey, you might as well just urinate on this golden person because that's what you're about to do with policy. That's probably what happened. We'll get to that later with the gold standard. And of course, you didn't urinate on it, even with policy. You don't know. You can't ever tell with that. FDR so here's a bunch of things, and this next bit is going to be just sort of a lot of the facts and figures that we know and we've gleaned over the years. Some comes from official releases, some comes from an old 1930s issue of Popular Mechanics, which is kind of cool. But should we take a break first? Oh, sure, man. Yeah, I think that's a great cliffhanger. Great. We'll be right back. All right, so we promised you stats and figures about Fort Knox in 1930s issues of Popular Mechanics. I know. How's this for you. The vault requires, of course, multiple people to open it up. And each person nobody knows the entire combination. Each person knows only a part of it. And even if you got it open, there's a 100 hours time delay lock. So if you have them at gunpoint and you force them all to open it, you got to sit around and wait for four days no matter what. That's my favorite one. It's pretty great. That and the fact that it's really just artificial intelligence from the future is the only one that has the entire combination in its possession. What else? Well, let's see. The vault itself is actually inside a building. So you remember in our Alcatraz episode where the cell blocks were buildings inside of the larger prison building? Yeah, that's exactly the same thing. And not coincidentally, they're built around the same time. So I think there was that kind of impenetrable building within an impenetrable building in the Zeitgeist kind of thing going on. And the only place the vault and that building are connected is on the floor. But don't even think of coming up from under the floor because the flooring is 2ft thick of granite, which you are not going to get through even if you successfully dug under. And I'll just go ahead and tell you why you would not be able to successfully dig under the building from the outside is because you have barrier after barrier after fence after razor wire separating you from the building. There's a huge blank field around the building, so it's not very easy to kind of walk up to it. And they apparently have said that the field around the building is a minefield, which means that they apparently studied cartoons to design Fort Knox, which I love. They're like, what would wild ecoyote do? Exactly. Yeah, it's definitely worth googling like an aerial image of this building. It's pretty interesting. It does. It sits out in the middle of nothing in this big flat area and there's like a circular driveway around it. And it's made of what you think it's made of, which is granite and concrete and steel. They said that the walls are also 2ft in thickness and inside those walls are fabricated steel coils that are so closely smushed together that they say a human hand can't even get between them. Right, so you need a baby or a child. Yeah, you need a baby. So you got to bring a baby. You have to bring diapers and food to last the baby four days until the time lock open. Yeah, of course. Don't forget a gun to hold people off with and probably some people you don't like to send through the minefield to clear a path for you. Yeah, and you got to get one of those Diaper Genies to put the diaper in, otherwise it's going to smell in there. Oh, man, it would smell so bad in that little building. Here's another cool thing. Well, the whole building isn't huge. I mean, it's not small, it's 10,000 sqft. But I don't know, you think of Fort Knox and you think of something the size of like a maximum security prison or something like that. It's not huge, but the building inside the building. So the vault inside has an 18 inch space clear on every side and they have all these mirrors everywhere. And of course now they have real cameras. I guess this was from the Popular Mechanics pre camera. You just use mirrors to make sure that you can see every square inch of this thing. Yeah. So if you did somehow manage to get inside the vault, the people whose job it is to watch the vault would see you immediately. Social service workers. Yeah. They would just start lobbying dead letter office packages at you until you got annoyed and left. And of course, there's heavy artillery. There are four corner machine gun turrets essentially on the outer building, just looking on that. So I'm sorry. I was confused. Is that on the outer building or is that part of the vault? I think that's outside. Okay. I don't know. I couldn't quite tell. And I didn't see it outside. Did you see them outside? Well, that's all I didn't see any really close ups. Everything was kind of an aerial, and I did see what looked like corner turrets, but maybe they are inside. Okay. I don't know if I'd be shooting up machine guns inside a granite room. Yeah, that's actually probably a pretty bad idea. I've seen Wiley. Cody too. Those bullets bounced all over the place. That's right. So you've also got a door to contend with. So far, you've got 2ft thick everything to get through, which means that your best bet is to go through the door, because rather than 24 inches, it's only 21 inches thick. But you should probably be dissuaded by the fact that it's blast drill and torch proof. Said the US. Mint director from back in 2016, Phillip Deal. Yeah. And again, this is all under the banner of don't even think about it, buddy. Between the there's a corridor that encircles the vault and then the outer wall of the building. They do have some offices. I guess that's where Dotty the secretary has been since 1950. Something answered. Or Danny. Or Danny. That's true. Sure. I don't think they gave jobs like that to Danny in the 1950s. Okay, maybe not in the 50s. That's fine. But I got called out for letting that Stooge's comment pass, and I'm not going on the grill again for you, pal. What? The ladies don't like the Three Stooges. We got not one, not two, but three emails about that, and most of them were not happy. Well, actually, two of the three were very fun about it and said that they love the Three Stooges. Yes, but they weren't happy. One I couldn't tell. And I even wrote her back, and I was like, I can't tell if you're really mad. But I said, if you Google women don't like Three Stooges, it's a trope. It's a familiar trope. I wasn't, like, inventing some sexist thing. I was just kind of funny around with it. Yeah, it's like everybody not liking Detroit or Kentucky. Like Google. That right. Or Google women don't like Rush, the band. Hey, let's bail out of this while we still have our limbs. People can likely like but trust me, I've been to a Rush concert, and there was a lot of masculinity in that room. What year was that? Because I'll bet I was at the same concert. Depending I went to, it must have been 88 or 89. Oh, no, I wasn't at that one. Okay. This would have been like 92, 93. We just missed each other. Yeah. Just by a few years. Had I just hung out at the Omni for three or four more years, or had you we would have passed each other. But you're right. Women like all sorts of things, and men like all sorts of things. That's right. And Danny and Dotty can both be secretary. That's right. And we don't even call them secretaries anymore, Chuck. We should just stop podcasting altogether. We have aged out of it. So, to me, the only way in would be the escape tunnel. Yes. Which they thought of that they realized that they actually put a tunnel underground that you could use to get into the Depository, the actual vault which they installed in case somebody got locked in there, which I'm really surprised they even installed that or designed that in there. I would think. Like, if you have people guarding it as closely as it's being guarded all the time, but if you got locked in there, they could let you out. It just give you food or something through those slots. That for the four days. Yeah, or just food in there. That's an even better idea, actually, now that you mention it. But no, they didn't do that. They actually put an escape tunnel in so that you can crawl out. It's not like a pleasant walk or anything. You crawl through this tunnel and then out into the minefield, basically. But the door that you reach that lets you outside only opens from the inside. It's impossible to open from the outside, which I take to mean it doesn't have a door knob on the outside. And then it's guarded 24/7 by people who are ready to just shoot you up if you try to approach this door with your own door knob that you brought to open it from the outside. Right. Because you're not going to come in here with a presumably a freight train to steal all this gold. Where are you going to put the tracks? You can't do it. How you going to get that gold out of there? I just love the fact that we're doing a podcast in 2020 explaining and dissuading people from trying to get into Fort Knox. I mean, it's just so like seventy s to me, or 30s or fifty s. I love it. The other cool thing is that it can go off grid. It has its own water and power in the movie version, of course. Once again, I would think you would try and knock it offline somehow, get those cameras down, but they say, no, we have those generators. We can live off grid. There's a gun range in the basement, so if you want to brush up on your machine gunning down there, you can do that. No, that's kind of like a little lon yacht to the whole thing. By the way, these guys are training with guns downstairs in the basement for fun because they've got nothing else to do. They're just waiting for you to come. Now, who is guarding it, though? From what I understand, they're treasury agents. Right. The army can be called in if needed, because, again, it's like right there. Yeah, the US Mint Police Force, which I imagine is probably a pretty cool gig to have. I don't know where they would have come up, but I swear we've mentioned that they exist before. It seems familiar to me. Have we done this all before? No, we haven't done this one. But we have talked about money and currency before. Yeah. And I feel like that's where we're at. Don't you like that? Maybe we should talk about the gold itself, because yes, it's cool that there's a 21 inch blast door and there's a door that only opens from the inside and the escape tunnel, but I think what everybody's really fascinated with as much as anything is the fact that there is a lot of gold inside of Fort Knox. Yeah. And this will kind of hit home, too. If you've ever seen movies where you're bringing gold out of a place in a duffel bag, those gold bars weigh almost \u00a328 a piece. Just one? Yes, just one of those things. So if you see people throwing them around in a movie or putting ten of them, 15 of them in a duffel bag, and slinging it over their shoulder, that is not realistic at all. They're seven inches long, three and five eight inches wide, one and three quarter inches thick. And weigh \u00a327.5 each. Yeah. Or 400 troy ounces, if you know what that means. I have no idea. And I think it's about 1012 kilos a piece for those of you who aren't listening in the US. And the weird thing, I didn't realize this, but as far as the treasury is concerned, and to me, this really kind of goes to demonstrate how little the actual value of maintaining this gold horde is. That just for bookkeeping, they assign, like, an arbitrary value. The statutory value of gold is what it's called at $42.44 an ounce. So they can keep track using that dollar amount of how much gold is in Fort Knox, rather than tracking it as it relates to the international gold market. Yeah. So I did the math this time. I did, too. Let's see if we can come up with the same figures. Supposedly, there are 4600 metric tons of gold, which, by the way, is about 2.5% of all the gold ever mined in the world in human history. That's pretty impressive. And if we're just going, I want to make sure we use the same numbers here 4600 metric tons and use that forty two point forty four cents per ounce. Okay, I did it differently, but let's see if we came up with the same figure. Well, what value did you use? Oh, no. You go first, Mr. Georg Guy. So using the statutory value of gold that the US. Has set, I came up with $6.8 billion worth of gold. Close. For mine, I used a different method. And this is one of the great joys of math. Is there a different approach to the same problem? What did you do? I took that 4600 metric tons of gold and divided it by \u00a327.5. So I came up with the number of individual bars. Then I multiplied that number of individual bars, which is 368,773 bars, by that $16,888 per bar I came up with in the neighborhood of $6.26 billion worth of gold. Well, first of all, there's a psychologist that's listening to this that is really looking at what that means for both of our personalities. For sure. It's got to say a lot. Are you sure you use metric tons and not just tons? Yeah, I did pound to metric ton conversion. You know how you can go on the Internet and just say pound metric ton and it brings up a little conversion thing for you? Yeah, I was just making sure, because at first I didn't do metric ton, and that was different. You did a short time at a short time and that came to about six closer to your number. Okay. Yeah. And I actually rounded a little bit because I was like, what the heck is that? When the total came up. So I went back and redid it and I didn't feel like plugging in all the same numbers, so I rounded it. What I did was I just took how many ounces are in a metric ton, multiplied that by 4600 and then multiplied that by 42. 44. Right. Well, I propose that move along because I just suddenly read there's probably people who, like their fingertips are dug under their eyeballs. They're in such agony hearing us discuss math like this. Well, what's important is that the Fed in New York actually has more gold in their Manhattan vault, which was, in a movie, 6000 tons of gold. That would have been Die Harder. Die Hard. Three. I believe it may have been die another day. I don't know. But it was a good one. That was the one with Sam Jackson. Yeah, that was pretty good. And by the way, I need to say something. I realized that I said Event Horizon is a good movie and holds up. I went back and saw it again and I was like, this is way jokier than I remember from last time. Oh, really? Yeah. And sadly, there's a sheen or a coating of hokiness that I guess maybe they brought in somebody to punch up the script or something and that was their contribution. But it's not. So it doesn't hold up anymore. No. And it's a great galactic Lovecrafty and horror movie in concept and in some parts, but no, it's unfortunately, rather hokey. I'm a little gutted to say that, as our British friends would say. Maybe you should watch it again in, like, three years and it might be back on track for you. Well, maybe it's me that's the problem. Well, taste, waxes and wains. Yeah, that's true, Chuck. There's some other stuff in Fort Knox, and there has been other stuff through history in Fort Knox because it's just a great place to keep stuff if you don't want to lose it or have it stolen. They have some rare coins in there. These are coins that were not released to the public. They may have been promotional coins or test pressings. And so there's some of that stuff, including the Chicago a dollar coins that flew on the space shuttle. Is that funny? Yeah, that's Tucker Julia. Yeah. That's like the American bastardisation. It's Chicagoay. Oh, well, maybe we should keep this in. Okay. Because I've never heard anybody say that. I really thought you'd just mispronounce it. Other people say it like that. Yeah, I think it's one of those things where, like, the native pronunciation is sakagaway, and Americans were like, Sakajawea? No. Oh, my God, I've got so much egg on my face. Maybe we won't keep this part in. You have to say it. You said it wrong, though. You have to be like, that's wrong. That's wrong. Okay, thank you. So it is Chicagoay. Is it sakagawaya? I think it's just Chicagoay, and I only learned that from Ken Burns. God bless Kim Burns. America's here. And you, man, thank you for sending me straight in front of a million people. Let me see here. 1933 gold double eagle, $20 coin. That's kind of cool. Yeah, sure. There's an aluminum dime, no penny. An aluminum penny from 1974, which I'd love to see that thing. I would, too, but it just strikes me as a little sad. Sure. There have also been because Fort Knox is just so well known as this impregnable place, and it really is legitimately. You cannot get into it no matter how hard you try. It's actually served as the site, the storehouse for some truly valuable stuff, like the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, the Gutenberg Bible, the Magna Cart, actually, during World War II, England's like, hey, can you hang on to this for us? Because the Germans are really, like, up our butts right now. That's kind of cool. Yeah. So we held that at Fort Knox during World War II. That's just fascinating to the idea that apparently some Secret Service agent traveled secretly with a bunch of these documents from Washington, DC. And put him on a train out to Kentucky to go to be held in Fort Knox during World War II. I love it. That's really cool. And that was temporary, I think. Didn't they return them right afterward? Oh, yeah, for sure. Apparently they dedicated the Jefferson Memorial in 1943, and they're like, we need to get the Declaration of Independence out there. And they found out that the guards were using it as a placement to eat their dehydrated foods. No, they swapped it with something that they only use crayon to forge. Kept the original themselves. So should we break now before conspiracies or wait and break before gold standard? We'll break now, and I'm not 100% sure I'm going to be able to come back from that Chicago way thing. Okay. So it might just be. You. And we come back from break. No, never. Okay, Chuck. So one of the things one of the favorite things Americans love to do is to suggest quite seriously in a lot of cases that there is no such thing as gold in Fort Knox and that there hasn't been gold in there for a very long time. And if you went there and you saw gold, well, you're a fool, because the best possible scenario is that you saw something like tonguestin that was spray painted or plain in gold, and that the golden Fort Knox is not there and hasn't been there for a very long time. And not only that, it was sold for the most nefarious, outrageous purposes we can possibly come up with. Yeah. So they audit Fort Knox and they count the gold, allegedly. Supposedly, Dotty and Danny get in there with their adding machine and they type everything out. And I love how Ed put this. He said that all the conspiracy theories rely on, quote, some fundamental misunderstanding of how currency works, how the gold standard work, or just outright nonsense. But it's kind of true. Yeah, no, it totally is, because there's this call for which we'll talk about the goal to be used again the way it originally was, which is the back our currency. If that's really the basis of your problem with the idea that the gold was secretly sold off in Fort Knox, then you misunderstand how currency works or how economies work. And you probably don't fully understand how the gold standard was not really great and that America actually blew up and the whole world blew up after we switched off of the gold standard. That's how the global economy really started to take off, was when we decoupled our currency from being pinned to gold. So that seems to be another factor in kind of banding about conspiracy theories about Fort Knox gold, too. Yeah, and a lot of these conspiracy theories are anti Semitic, believe it or not. There are some really smart people who think who may or may not believe in some of these theories, and some that believe we should go back to the gold standard, including Alan Greenspan, a woman named Judy Shelton, who Trump tried to push for appointment to the Fed, to the Federal Reserve. And I'm not sure if she believes in the conspiracy theories or she just wants to go back to the gold standard. Yeah, they're not I mean, it's not hand in hand. If you do think we should go back to the gold standard, it's basically impossible for your attention not to fall on Fort Knox. And then you may be like, well, is there even gold there? Yeah, true. But there are some truly wackidoo things out there. This Peter Better guy oh, is that how you're saying his name? What is it? Petter Better? Yeah. If his name is not Peter Beter, then I'm sad. I am, too. Peter bitter. B-E-T-E-R. That's what I'm going to call him, at least. Yeah, it's like Peter with a B. Yeah, but his first name is Peter. It's magnificent. It's perfect. So he has thrown a lot of conspiracies out there since the 70s, including a popular one that we sold off all the gold to these global elites for next to nothing so they could hoard that gold and then one day just destabilize the economy of the world and ascend to power. Basically. Yeah, because they would have all the money and they sunk the value of the money so they could buy everything else at rock bottom prices like they bought the gold. Apparently this involves the Rothschild, which automatically makes the whole thing anti Semitic because the Rothschild started out and are still around, as far as I know, as a Jewish banking family many centuries ago and rose to power and wealth pretty quickly and actually had a huge role in a lot of world affairs. Like we're able to bail out entire nations like France after they went into debt over war. The family could do that and it started a lot of conspiracy theories. So they're kind of like one of the OG conspiracy theories. And usually it was based on a combination or it was based on suspiciousness of a combination of them being Jewish and then being extraordinarily wealthy. Yeah, there's this other guy, his name is Yon Neeven houis. I'm sure that's wrong. He had an alias named Kooz. Janson Koos. And I listened to and read some interviews with this guy and did you check into him? He seems like a pretty level headed economist that just seems to think that these audits aren't correct and there is something kinky going on. He didn't seem really out there, though. No, it seems like a case of paying too much attention to details and starting to see things that aren't necessarily there. Or if you do turn up a discrepancy, assuming that it does reveal some larger plot rather than just being a mistake or an accounting error or somebody forgot to carry the one, that's my impression. I could be wrong. I don't know much about Kuz Jansen. Yeah, but the interview just seemed very level headed. He wasn't talking about Robotoids, which is what Peter peter talks about. Right. Literally talks about stuff like that. Well, that's what makes it believable as the OIDs on the end. If it were just robots, it would just seem rather farfetched. What about Ron Paul? His is a little out there. He thinks it's all fake. Right. So Ron Paul. I can't tell if Ron Paul is the source of a lot of this or was an amplifier for a lot of it that he's tapped into or as part of one of the larger followings of conspiracy theories as far as Fort Knox is concerned. Which is that either. Like I was saying earlier. There's either no gold there really. Or the gold that is there is fake and the real goal has been sold. And that the US. Has been doing this for a very long time for all sorts of uncertain reasons. And usually these days that China has been the big recipient of cheap gold. And maybe we've been doing that because if we sell China a bunch of cheap gold, it will actually keep the dollar low and will strengthen our exports. I'm not quite sure how that works. There also seems to be a certain amount of national pride associated with it where like, no, that's our goal. That's the people's goal. That can't be sold off secretly by the government. And here's to me where it's like, even if there isn't any gold in Fort Knox at some point in the not too distant past, but the past for sure, we've gone so far beyond that having any importance whatsoever based on the dollar value of the golden Fort Knox, it legitimately doesn't matter. But that's why I think some people are like, no, it does matter. That is our goal. That's America's goal. I've seen it referred to I think Ed said somebody referred to it as the equity of our national wealth. And there seems to be a certain amount of American pride or patriotism in being really mad about the idea that Fort Knox doesn't have any gold anymore, that the American people were duped by whatever elites are running the show at the behest of whatever Jewish people are running the elite. Right. Because here's the deal. And this is where we kind of get in more to the gold standard. And we talked about this in currency and how both of us are kind of consistently blown away that money, all money is is just something that everyone has agreed on has value. Yeah. Which we've been doing forever. Yes. Since there has been little ingots and trinkets. Yes. As long as you agree. I mean, it could be well, it could be a stick. There has to be something that you can't just go out and forage, although you can with gold, which is a problem. You can I mean, think about Wampum. That was extensively used in, I believe, the Pacific Northwest by more than one tribe in nation. They were like little seashells that you could go and collect if you wanted to. And they were considered valuable currency and were for a very long time, too. So it could conceivably be a stick as far as humanity is concerned. Right. But in our case, in the case of paper money these days, we've had to make it incredibly hard to recreate and counterfeit. You can also listen to our counterfeiting episode. But what really struck me with that thought experiment this time is that gold really doesn't have much value either as a commodity. It's nice for making pretty trinkets and they use it in some electronics and stuff like that. But we've also just sort of agreed that gold is valuable. And the only thing that really has true value is food, air and water, if you think about it, and love. And the irony is that we're doing our best to kill all that stuff away. Oh, Chuck, the stuff that really matters. Man I want to give you a hand to help you down from your soapbox, and I'm going to put a king robe around you. Okay? Okay. Is it goldflex? It's gold flex and it's got like the little white leopard collar. Yeah, whatever that is, you look great in it. That was wonderful. Now it's just so funny. These things that we've agreed have value really don't. And the things that really, truly have value are really just the things that keep people alive. Right. But even like taking the hippie stuff out of the equation, there was a time where people said, no, gold actually is valuable. People have valued gold for eons now. It's one of the first things humans agreed had inherent value, even though it doesn't really have inherent value, because it was yeah. And so it made sense that we would say, okay, gold is really hard to lug around and you don't want to actually trade gold. How about we make paper that represents a certain amount of gold? And so that's kind of where we got paper currency in the world, and that's what we've been using for a very long time. But over time, the problems, the issues that can arise from pinning your currency to gold, they became apparent. For one, you're limited to the amount of gold that exists in the world, which is substantial. I mean, all the gold. And Fort Knox is only two and a half percent of all the gold that was ever mine. So there's a lot of gold in the world, but that's a finite amount, which is why some people are like, yeah, that's why we should pin our currency to gold. It prevents it from getting out of hand, and you can't just print however much you want. The problem is, it's like you were saying, like with a stick. You can go in the forest and go get a bunch of sticks. Conceivably you a private company could go mine a bunch of gold that you found. You found a horde and you can mine it. And that will affect the value of not just gold, but the entire national economies and the global economy as a whole if everybody's pinning their currency to gold. Yes. And the thing is. If your economy is backed only by gold. It's really tough to make adjustments to the economy as a government. Which is something as things have become more complicated over the years with finance throughout the world. We've relied upon. And I don't think we even mentioned the reason we did this to begin with. Is because when we first had the idea of paper currency. People are like. No. I don't trust that at all. Right. Like coins that people were kind of used to because they've been using trinkets and gets in coins for many years. But when they brought out paper dollars and part of this was understandable because private banks and I think we talked about this in currency, especially in the south, precipil war south, there were all kinds of values for their paper currency, so none of it really meant anything. Yeah, a bank, a company, a town could print their own money. There was no federal monopoly on printing money in the United States until sometime after the Civil War, I think. So people just said, yeah, we don't like this paper currency thing. So we came along and said, all right, well, what if we back it by gold? And in theory, all the money has a real gold value attached to it, and you can even come trade it in for gold if you want to. Right. So that's how we went forward for a very long time. And then kind of slowly but surely. We started to move away from it. Particularly starting in 1913. Where the Federal Reserve was established. Which a lot of people. Especially ones who think we should go to the gold standard and people who think that we shouldn't have. That there's no golden fort Knox believe. Kind of ruined the world when we established the Federal Reserve. And one of the first steps that said was like, okay, we need to maintain 40% of the value of all of our currency in circulation in gold as a country, which was a lot different from 100%. That's a huge amount of money that can now be printed and more money that's out there, more things can be bought because that money can be traded for services and goods, and you can employ people with it. And all of a sudden, your economy can start getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's exactly what happened. And as that became more and more evident, we started moving further and further away from the gold standard. Yeah. And like I said earlier, kind of joke that Roosevelt, they allowed him to urinate in person on the gold. He really led the charge in the 30s because of World War One and the Great Depression, and said, you know what? We really kind of need to get away from this gold standard officially, and I'm going to take a series of actions weakening that link between gold dollars being backed by gold, and you can't exchange it anymore, everyone. So don't even think about that. And not only that, you can't hoard gold. We basically want all the gold, and we want to hang on to it. Yeah. And so for a very long time, the only reason people maintain gold or countries maintain gold, or the United States maintain gold, was to pay off foreign debts if need be. And then Nixon said, nuts to that in 1971 and from that moment on, the United States currency and economy was decoupled from gold and has been ever since. Again, look, I'm not a Roth child robot. OED. I just believe in progress, basically. And if you go back and look at the world economy in the United States economy since 1971, it's made some pretty impressive gains since then. And that's largely due to decoupling from gold and being able to print money. Now, that said, and this is an entirely different podcast that I think we need to do sometime, there are massive problems with paper currency, what's called fiat currency or fiat system of currency, where by fiat, by proclamation, we say our currency is worth this amount. And that's what we do now, which is totally made up and totally in the air. But as long as people have faith in the government and the economy and the workforce, we can survive those ups and downs through that sense of faith, not just among our citizens, but also people around the world. Understand? Yeah, let's just all keep agreeing. Let's keep that pinky swear going. Exactly. Why do we still have value? Why do we still have Fort Knoxon if we don't need the gold? Well, I mean, they're not just going to give it away. You still got to keep it in a couple of places, right? That's one thing. I think there is a certain amount of that national pride, too, even among the governments. We got a bunch of gold and it's in Fort Knox, and it's almost like symbolic of America's wealth and strength. One thing I did see is there are lots of other countries, have lots of other gold hordes themselves. And although the gold market is basically separate, it's like its own thing that it responds and reacts to the stock exchanges in other markets, but it's not entangled with it's its own thing. So really, if you release a bunch of gold, you're really going to mess with the gold market, but it's going to have a ripple effect through the world, in the other markets, in the global economy. So it would be really foolish to release a bunch of gold onto the market for the US to sell or any country to sell its gold hordes off. It would be a real big problem that you don't need to have. It's easier to just keep the gold in Fort Knox instead. Agreed. That's why it's still around. This turned out to be pretty good, aside from Saka Julia. And now I'm wondering if I even pronounced wampum correctly. Well, how humiliating. Chuck Wampum was the real thing. If you want to know more about Fort Knox and start looking at pictures of it, you'll still see what we're talking about. And since I said you'll see what we're talking about, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this wetlands. Follow up from Donna. Hey, guys, been listening for many years. And always enjoy the shows in the banter. Today, out of my morning walk, I was listening to wetlands, wetlands, wetlands and serendipitously came upon cattails just as you brought them up. Wow, we love this stuff. These little coincidences. She's like, no, I'm listening to the fort Knox episode. So lay it on me. I'm tunneling in as we speak. It was one of those weird coincidence moments that I just had to record. I walked off the path into the grasses and took a quick cattail selfie, which I included in this email. Lovely picture. Growing up in New Jersey in the 80s, cattails were called punks, and my dad would take the dried out plants and light them to keep away mosquitoes. That's what a punk is. Yeah. I've never heard of that. Have you heard of that? Never heard of that. Back then, it seemed like a normal thing to do, but having grown up moved away from New Jersey, I have never come across anyone that ever partakes in this practice anymore. It was such a huge part of my childhood summers. I had forgotten about it until now, until listening to the episode. And then I happened to walk upon some in the adjacent marshes, and that moment truly delighted me. Mosquito season is over where I live now in DC. But on next summer's todo list is to cut some cocktails from the parkland and introduce my two teens sons to that distinctive punk smell. That may be against federal law now, though. Oh, really? Taking punks from the parkland, it seems like against the law. I'll tell you what, Donna h. Look into that. We don't want you to get in trouble. That's right. Or to do anything you shouldn't do. But I get the urge to want to introduce things to your children that you did back then that weren't necessarily proper. But the nanny state will say no and throw you in jail, so don't try it, Donna. Yeah, maybe. I mean, where I saw wetlands recently, where I was hiking here in Arabia mountain. You can't beautiful granite outcroppings part of stone mountain, actually. And my daughter wanted to take those rocks. You can't take the rocks. We go get thrown in jail by the nanny state. You can't do it. You got to leave those rocks. What else did Donna say? Anything else? No, that's it. That's from Donna H. That was great, Donna. Thank you very much. Be careful with the cattails. We won't tell if you do, but we just don't want you to get in trouble. We're no snitches. If you want to get in touch with us, like Donna did, we want to hear from you. 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 show." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-07-18-sysk-sunscreen-final.mp3 | Sunburn, Suntans and Sunscreen | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sunburn-suntans-and-sunscreen | It's pretty obvious something's gone wrong when you get a sunburn, but did you know a tan means you've damaged your DNA? Dive into the three Ss of summer and learn all about how to protect yourself from the sun. | It's pretty obvious something's gone wrong when you get a sunburn, but did you know a tan means you've damaged your DNA? Dive into the three Ss of summer and learn all about how to protect yourself from the sun. | Tue, 18 Jul 2017 13:26:51 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=13, tm_min=26, tm_sec=51, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=199, tm_isdst=0) | 46162419 | 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. 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. Stuff You Should Know is going on tour. What are the dates, my friend? Okay, so starting August 8, in Toronto, that's in Canada. We're going to be at Danforth Music Hall. And then Chicago, we're going to be there the next night, August 9 at the Harris Theater. Yeah, Chicago. We want to see your faces. Step it up. Step it up. Vancouver. The Vogue Theater, September 26. That's going to be a great show, I think, don't you? It's going to be a greater one. And then Minneapolis at the Pentagon Theater, where we've been before. It's lovely. September 27. Yeah. And then we're going to swing down to Austin. It's going to be during Austin City Limits, although it has nothing to do with Austin City Limits will be there October 10. Yes. And then we're going to lovely Lawrence, Kansas. Go, Jayhawks. Yes. On October 11. And, hey, if you're in Kansas City or anywhere in that area, this is your chance. Get in your car. Yeah. If you are anywhere near Brooklyn, well, then you should go to the Bellhouse, October 22, 23rd and 24th. We'll be there all three nights. And finally, we're going to wrap it up here in Atlanta at the Bucket Theater on November 4 for a benefit show where we are donating all of the monies to Lifeline Animal Project of Atlanta and the National Down Syndrome Society. Yes. So for all this information, again, visually, and for links to tickets, just go to sysklive.com. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's. Charles. W. Chuck Bright. There's Jerry. This is W shino Summer Sunburn edition. You're tan. Well, I did think it was kind of funny. I probably have more sun on my face than I've had in years. Yes, very easily, I would say. And I've been in the sun a lot more lately, but I have been applying sunscreen. But as you will see very shortly, I haven't been the best at reapplying it. No, that's what I'm guilty of, too. And so I end up getting a tan and then, of course, like a dummy, I'm like, hey, tans look pretty good. I look foxy. People look good with a little bit of a tan, which is just how you fall into that trap of doing what's ultimately very bad for yourself. Sure. Next up, ascott. Going down the George Hamilton route. But the rest of my body well, my lower my lower arms are tan and my face is tan. Do you have, like, milk bottle calves? Tell me you do. Everything else is white. Take off your pants. They're already off. Okay. As always. Well, your pants really are off. Jerry, did you know Chuck's pants are off? She's known for nine years. Remember the T shirt that listener made? His pants off. Mike's on. Yes. Or Mike's on. Pants off. I can't remember the order that we do it. Wax on. Wax off. I think this one is long overdue, though, I think. And file it under our General Public Service cast yeah, there's a lot of info that's floating around that is wrong. Yeah. Starting with the idea that tans are healthy or even protective. Yeah. Well, we'll go through all these and bust some myths, but tanning bed companies saying, you need that vitamin D. Yeah, I know. Or, hey, that base tan, that will help you not burn. Right. We'll go through all this. We're going to. But let's start where everything starts. Chuck, let's start with the sun. All right. Sorry. So the sun is streaming down. You're familiar with the sun? Our star, our closest star, provides light, heat, that kind of stuff. It's also bearing down on us. Deadly radiation trying to kill us all the time. Right. And there's three types. Well, there's three kinds of energy that the sun shoots at us. There's infrared heat, there's visible light, and then there's ultraviolet light. The scary one. Ultraviolet radiation. Right. And then you can break down ultraviolet radiation into three more components UVA, UVB, boo, and UVC. Actually, if we didn't have our atmosphere, we'd all be dead right now, just because of UVC, it's extremely deadly, but we do. So that's on it. Right? If you're an astronaut, you got to worry about UVC. Right. But those of us here on Earth, we only have to worry about UVA and UVB. And for decades, ever since we started thinking about protecting ourselves from the sun, we've basically been focused on UVB. Yeah. UVB is what will sunburn you. Right. Which is why everybody wants to protect themselves from it. But it turns out, as we'll see, UVA is even worse than UVB. It is no slouch. No, it really isn't. But those are the three kinds. And when sunlight comes here on Earth, and even when it doesn't, if it's reflected on a cloudy day or through fog or something like that, I'll be fooled. No, because UVA is still getting through. And as you'll see, you need to protect yourself. As a matter of fact, as we will see. Some people recommend that you use sunscreen every day, all over your body, every day, indoors and out. Well, if you do that, you will probably never get skin cancer. That's right. Unless it's genetic. Yeah. But you're definitely helping yourself out. Right. So you're talking about that sunlight beaming down and fog and cloud cover and all that stuff. If you've ever been snow skiing, gotten sunburned, because on a sunny day, that snow will reflect about 90% of UV light. Yeah. So you get the sun coming down on you, and then you're also getting a second dose of it reflected from the snow at a 90% rate. Right. If you're at the beach and you wonder why you might burn a little more at the beach, it's because that sand does the same thing to a rate of about 20%. Where you will not get sunburned, they say is in a greenhouse. Yeah. Did you know that? Didn't know that. You'll sweat to death. Sure. And you can still get tan, but you won't burn. Yeah. Apparently, glass is a substance that absorbs UV radiation. This is a big thing that I realized, chuck and I just kind of touched upon it for my entire life. I thought that sunburn was like a tango too far, or conversely, that you got sunburned and then you got tanned as a result of sunburn and then you were fine. Oh, yeah. Like the people that are like, oh, I always burn on day one, and then it turns into a tan. Right. And then I keep that for the summer, and I don't even need sunblock after that. Right. No, actually, a sun tan and a sunburned are two different things, and they're the result of two different types of UV radiation. Yeah. People that say that stuff are completely talking out of their buttholes. Right. Don't listen to them. Listen to us instead. Yeah. Because there's actual science behind it. The UVB is what causes sunburns. UVA rays are different, and they are what ultimately, I think it's a deeper penetration. They will ultimately cause wrinkly skin and internal collagen damage and stuff like that. Right. So UVA for aging. UVB for burning. Right? Yes. And combined with both, you look like that lady and There's Something About Mary made out with a dog. Yeah. So it's not like we're just complete we're just completely at the mercy of the sun. Right. We have natural reactions to sunlight that are kind of protective measures. But really, more than anything, we're finding nowadays that there are huge red flags that are meant to say, like, get out of the sun. You're being internally damaged on a molecular level right now, hence your sunburn. But it turns out tan is the same thing. Basically, it's a big red flag or a big brown flag that says you're undergoing genetic damage currently. You may want to get out of the sun, not go lay by the pool somewhere. You got your tan. You're fine. Yeah. When you're getting that tan. What that is, is a pigment called melanin, and it is produced in reaction to that, I guess, UV. UV tan for burning. Right. I should remember that. Yeah. But it's tough to separate the burn from the tan and think that they're two different things after thinking that they're related all your life. Well, it's why tanning beds use mainly UVA light, because they don't want you to sunburn when you go to the tanning salon, because then you'll be like, wait a minute, that's not how it's supposed to work. Right. And you don't get tanned from UVB, so why even include it anyway if you don't have to? Well, yeah, and here's the deal, though. I guess I might as well go ahead and let the cat out of the bag with the tanning beds. One of the things, one of the bogus things that they will tell you is, no, your body needs vitamin D. Go to the tanning bed because it's safer than being in the sun. 100% BS. You get vitamin D from UVB, not UVA. And tanny beds use UVA to get you tanned. Oh, is that right? So that's completely bogus to begin with. One recent estimate suggested indoor tanning caused about 420,000 cases of skin cancer in the United States every year. Oh, my God. That's about double the number of lung cancer linked to smoking. Wow. And twelve states at this point have outlawed tanning beds for minors under 18 years old. Yeah, that seems smart. I got one more stat for you. Okay. People who use tanning beds for the first time before the age of 30 presuming they will you know, it's not a oneoff, have a 75% increased risk in developing melanoma. Wow. Don't go to tanning beds, people. No. That's a great advice, Chuck man A lot of people also think, like, melanoma nothing. You just cut it out, it's fine. Actually, melanoma can spread, can metastasize really quickly, and it's a very dangerous form of cancer, so don't take that lightly at all. Plus, if you're going to a tanning bed, you're probably doing it for your looks. Have a little foresight, because what you're doing is subjecting your body to advanced hyper aging. You're going to age prematurely from going in tanning bed. And that whole, like, people will say, I don't care, I'm young. I want to look tan and look good. That's why we have nanny states to choose for you, because you're too stupid to choose for yourself. Was that judgy? No, we're trying to help people. I mean, it's a danger. The guy with a freshly tanned face. Let's go back to the skin and what the skin is doing. Okay. Alright. Should we take a break first or we're all worked up. We can. All right, let's take a little break. Get into the skin. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo. 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Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock. comStuff. That's Lifelock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. So, Chuck, we're back on the skin. You said that when UVA interacts with our skin, melanocytes are stimulated to produce melanin, correct? Yeah, it's totally bailed on that. And melanin is a pigment, and one of the roles that it plays is to absorb it actually absorbs radiation. UVA radiation. And under normal circumstances, I think literally 999 times out of 10, when it interacts with a photon of UVA radiation, it takes that photon and it basically absorbs it into its molecular structure. Yeah. And it spits it out as waste heat. So it takes the radiation and turns it into something that it's just heat. It's not deadly. It's not dangerous any longer. Yeah. And this isn't something that happens overnight. It takes a little while to produce this melanin, which is why you don't go out and get tan in a day. Right. There's a longstanding myth that people who have melanin production constantly, people with darker skin tones that they can't burn and that they can't get skin cancer. And that's wrong on both accounts. Correct. It is more difficult for somebody with very dark skin tone to get sunburned. But I was reading skin cancer, right? Yeah. There's a lower prevalence, but I was reading up on it, and I saw some dermatologist said if you have skin, you can get sunburned. Just give it enough time. Under the right conditions, you'll get sunburned. Sure. And then, yes, skin cancer is a thing as well. People of the failure complexion, the worse you're going to burn and the higher your incidence of getting skin cancer from being out in the sun is. But it can happen. It's just a spectrum but on the other end of the darkest end of the spectrum, that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It just means it happens less. So all of this applies to people of all different skin tones? Yeah. And like we said before, when it comes to UVA, that's a deeper, penetrating light into the skin. It's going to destroy collagen. It's a structural protein, and that collagen goes away, and that's when your skin becomes less elastic, less smooth. Right. And that is what you think of when you think of wrinkles. Yeah. They found this University of Michigan study found that when the participants were exposed to UVA light, something called matrix metalloproteinase One was produced and that goes and destroys collagen. It's one of the body's natural processes breaking down the cell walls that give skin structure, and that leads to wrinkles and saggy skin eventually. And they found that even when you started to tan, the MMP One production didn't decrease at all. It just kept going. So this idea that when you develop the tan, when your melon in production kicks in, that you're being protected, that's actually not the case at all. We're finding that it's actually just a defense mechanism, but it's not a protective measure that keeps everything fine once your tan is set. Yeah. I looked up just a quadruple check about the base tan theory, and it's complete BS. They found that a base tan provides and we'll talk about SPF sun protection factor. Right. Yeah. I don't know why I got hesitant at the last second. A base sand provides an SPF of three or less, which means it buys you about ten extra minutes in the sun. Right. And so little that the chief of dermatologic surgery at Yale said it's essentially completely meaningless in terms of providing protection. In fact, they say it can have the reverse effect because people are under the assumption that a base tan helps. So they won't do the things you need to do, like wear the hats or the UV shirts or the sun tan or sunscreen or stay out longer. Right. And so it ends up being even worse for you because you think you have this protective layer of brown. Yeah, that's one thing that kept coming up in the research, is that we have a lot of stuff to protect ourselves and it can be made better. And people are at work right now trying to improve the things that protect us from the sun, but that most people aren't using them right. Or don't understand the reality of the situation, which is going to mess you up pretty good. All right, well, that's coming up in a SEC. We've talked about suntan, right. So now let's talk about sunburn. Sunburn, kind of simply put, is literally cellular damage from ultraviolet radiation. It's called erythema. Or erythema. It's a reading of the skin. And it is this delayed Redding of the skin caused by an increase of blood flow to that area. Yeah. And the reason why you have increased blood flow to that area is because you've so damaged, your skin on a molecular level that your immune response has been set off and blood is rushing to the area to bring in white blood cells and other helper immune cells to try to repair the damage you just did from letting yourself get a sunburn from UVB rays. Right. And if you've ever had a red, like to check and see if your sunburn you look at your red skin, you touch it, it turns white, then goes back red real quick. It turns white because you momentarily disrupt those capillaries and then they immediately go, no, we need to send blood there. And then the red just comes rushing back. Right. And there's no worse feeling than a bad sunburn. No, it's pretty bad. It ruins your beach trip. Sure. If you get that thing on the first day, everybody gets mad at you, you're screwed. Yeah. It's just no good. It's no good. It doesn't turn to tan. I don't care who you are. That is not science. That's a myth. It is a myth. Like, no, you don't know my skin. It turns to dead, right? No, it doesn't. That's wrong. There is a lot of folklore surrounding suntan and sunburns and stuff. Well, I think because people think they just like, I know my body and my skin. Like, no, there's science that supersedes all that. Right. But I think the reason that there is so much myth and folklore around suntans and sunburns is because science really kind of dropped the ball for a while and didn't really investigate this. They are only now starting to investigate it on a really legitimate level. It's a good point. So, I mean, it's kind of science's fault. And like you said before, any skin can get burned. Any part of the body can get burned if the sunlight can touch it, even through clothing, which we'll talk about a bit later, too. You will get sunburned. Yeah, that's another thing too. You might think, well, I'm wearing a shirt. Most shirts, unless it's specifically designed to protect against UV radiation, is letting UV through. And you can get burned, you can get tanned, you can get wrinkled, you can cause cellular damage anytime UV radiation comes in contact with your skin. And from what I saw, the UVB radiation is usually the likeliest culprit when you get skin cancer because it goes in there and directly knocks around DNA. DNA, it turns out, actually is pretty good at absorbing energy and releasing absorbing radiation and releasing it as heat energy, just like melanin is as well. But every once in a while it gets excited and it gets kind of knocked out a whack. And some of its base pairs fused together, what we call a mutation. And if that base pair gets fused and isn't repaired and it happens to be at a site that, say, expresses a protein that protects against tumors, well, then you can get skin cancer. And that's how it happens. And even though that happens, that the base pairs fuse together and aren't repaired out of maybe one out of every thousand times. That's one out of every thousand interactions with a photon. Think of how many photons are barreling down at you over a given minute of exposure to sunlight. The odds are against you. Agreed. And since you mentioned the UV clothing or SPF clothing, they are pretty great. Like, most people I know now wear those shirts well. They look cool. Well, I wear one of those now because it serves three purposes. Looks kind of cool. Yeah. I hate applying sunscreen, like, all over my body. I'll hit my face and arms and stuff, but putting all over my chest and belly and back and all you're going to miss spots. Sure. And have weird streaks of sunburn here and there where you missed it. Right. And it's just no good. And then third, when you have some extra pounds, it's like slimming. Well, if you wear the T shirt in the pool, everybody knows it's not a good look. Right. But you can get away with the SPF shirt. I think that is one reason why SPF shirts were adopted. Oh, sure, yeah. But they really work great and they dry super quick. Like, my skinny friends use them. Right, but it's good for fat dudes, too. But they are rated up to like 50 plus. The tighter the weave, the better. They say, to hold a shirt up to the light. Just a regular shirt will work. Like denim. They said it's one of the best things because it's such a tight week. Yeah. Nothing like wearing a jean jacket. Put on that denim tuxedo and you're all set. But a UPF rating, they go from about 15 to 50. If you can hold it up to the light and not see anything, the darker the better. It's like mine is, like, gray and black, and some of them are even treated, I think. Yeah, that's what I thought. So some of them are just the weave is so tight that sunlight can't penetrate. It's a physical barrier to UVB. What do they treat some of them with? I'm not exactly sure. That's the one thing that I'm kind of sketchy about, because I try to not use harmful chemicals as much as possible. So I don't know if those are, like, soaked in some carcinogenic. Probably not, right? Yeah, probably not. Probably magic dust of some sort. But this woman who is I think she's the director of dermatology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, says that clothing is the single most effective form of sun protection, even more than sunscreen. Kind of for the reasons I mentioned, because you get complete coverage. I've got a long sleeve one, too, so it's just nice to throw it on and have to worry about all the sunscreen junk and then my legs. I usually don't get a ton of sun exposure to my legs. I guess because you're usually vertical in a pool. Like, I don't lay around on a float and it's under water. Well, you want to be careful. UV radiation can penetrate up to a foot underwater. Yeah, for sure. But, I mean, I don't wear any sunscreen on my legs, and I've got my pants off. Look at them. They're pretty white. I have flip flop, tan lines on the tops of my feet. I do, too. I kind of forgot about the tops of feet. Dude, I am religious about putting sunblock on the tops of my feet, and I still got tan lines. I saw a kid once, his feet turned into, like, Fred Flintstone's feet because he got burned on the tops of them. Except for those lines or just never happening to me, the whole foot. Well, they say the tops of feet, like, the tops of your ears and earlobes. Did you say the eyeballs can burn the back of a neck? Those are some of the areas that are most likely to miss. Right. With sunscreen. But I did not mention eyeballs. Yes, your eyeballs can burn can get sunburned. Yeah, I think I've experienced that. Oh, man. Like, after being in the sun all day, my eyes just sort of burning and irritated. I wonder if that's what that is. No, I think you would know. Yeah, I think my eyes are going to die. That must be awful. All right, should we take another break? Yeah. And then we'll come back with sunscreen. 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. 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. Alright. If we were on the way back machine, we travel back to ancient Egypt. You might see people slapping oat bran on their skin. Or jasmine rice bran. What I say? Oat bran. Those from the food fads episode? That's a dummy. Yeah. Rice brand spreading, I guess. Moist rice brand? Why not? Or jasmine. They're like, why not? It's 2500 BC. Let's party. But apparently jasmine is good at repairing damage scan. I wonder if they tried jasmine rice. Oh, man. Yeah. I would have been like onto something back then. There you are. So they did this back then, but actual sunscreen didn't come around until the turn of the century, until the early one. Nine hundred s. Yeah. Thousands of years after the Egyptian dynasties were over, there was a guy named Milton Blake. He was Australian, and he came up with what is considered the first sunblock in his kitchen, apparently over the course of twelve years. And they still make it in Australia. Can you really call it sun block back then, though? More like sun. They call it a good first try. Yeah. He took him about twelve years of experimentation, but like you said, he finally began selling it. And is the brand called Milton Blake? It was the one thing that I didn't look up. All right, well, while you do that, I'll go to the 1940s, to Switzerland. It was a Swiss man named France Carita, who was a climber. And we mentioned snow burns. Snow sun burns were pretty bad. I think he had ascended Mount Pitts on the Swiss Austrian border and got really burned. Is that? Pitts plow from Inglorious. Bastards. Is that the same mountain? Oh, I don't know. I forgot about that part. Yes. But he got really burned and was like, this is awful. So he came back and started work and in 1946 came up with the pits. Boon Glacier Cream. And this had an SPF of two, which, like you said, good start. I don't even know if that qualifies as a good start. Well, it's probably more than Milton Blake, don't you think? Well, supposedly Caucasian people have a natural SPF of about three, so this guy somehow managed to bring it down enough. And then in Miami, Florida, there was a man named Benjamin Green. He was an airman and pharmacist, and he was flying in World War II and got a lot of sun up there. And so he developed something called he labeled red vet pet red veterinary petrolatum, which I think is the same thing as petroleum. Right. And I was surprised when I saw that he was an airman and vet. I figured it meant like a veteran of a war. I know, veterinary. Who knew? And then he would later add a little cocoa butter, little coconut oil, and voila, you have coppertone. Yeah. And then in 1956, they revealed the little coppertone. Girl illustration, and it became a household hit, I think actually helped sunblock in general become a thing by the 1960s. Yeah. That little girl's name is Sherry Irwin, and she was the daughter of the woman who designed it. Yeah. The illustrator. Right. Yeah. Joyce Balentine in 1959 used her own daughter as a model. And Joyce Ballantine on her own was very just sort of an anomaly at the time. She got a lot of work as a graphic artist in the 1950s, and her daughter called her a maverick in that way, and that she was in the 1950s. It was kind of tough for a lady to get that kind of high dollar work. Sure. And so that's off to you, Joyce Ballantine. Yes. And Sherry is still around. I can see that Joyce might be, too. I saw a recent thing. Really? This is 1956. Yeah. She may be gone, but the article, you know, she could totally be around. I mean, I forgot what year was. I didn't catch the date on the article. I read about her. I got you. But it's worth looking up. She's interesting. Yeah. Coppertone took off. The 1960s is when sunscreens kind of caught hold a little bit, but it wasn't until the late 70s, until the FDA got involved and said, maybe we should have some guidelines here. Yes. Which they did. And a lot of them didn't take. Some of them did. But one of the things that the FDA did when they got involved with sunscreen, especially in the US, they're roundly criticized for basically being really slow at testing the chemicals that are used. On the one hand, he's off for caring sure. That the chemicals we put on our bodies aren't going to kill us, but at the same time hurry up. Apparently, there's just a handful of chemicals that are in use as active ingredients in sunscreen in the United States, whereas Europe has something like 28, I believe. And I guess Europe and Japan, their sunscreen is way better than the stuff that we use here in the state. Yeah. And it's not because they're just willy nilly about what they'll allow. They've actually researched and more chemicals. Yeah. Typically, the EU is pretty serious about when they clear chemicals. It's pretty safe. So how does sunscreen work? So, Chuck, here's how sunscreen works. For years and years and years and years and years. Up until the 21st century, it protected you from UVB only. Yes. And even still, there's plenty of sunscreens out there that only protect you from UVB. Oh, yeah. So if you want protection from UVB and UVA, which is what you want, you want to find one that's called broad spectrum sunscreen. Yeah. And it will say that they will champion that very clearly on the label. Yes. And if it's not on the label, it doesn't do anything to protect you from UVB. No. UVA. Only UVB. So you'll get a tan, but you won't burn? If you use it correctly, yes. You will just age rapidly. So with sunscreen, you will see also on the label, it will say SPF, some protection factor of 15 or 30 or 50 or 100. Apparently it goes up to 110 now. Really? Yeah. And there's a lot of controversy with that, too, which we'll talk about. But with sunproof factor, this is how they determine are you ready? Yeah. They take the sunscreen and they put a little square on somebody's bottom, and then they expose it to UV radiation. And they use the bottom because that is the part of the body least likely to have gotten sun. Sure. It's like a blank slate. Right. Without being a sexual organ. Well put. Yeah. Because you don't want to test sun. No. And then they'll go to the other but they will say, expose that to UV radiation, but it won't be treated with sunscreen. And they'll do this up again and again and again, basically until you burn. And then they will say, okay, well, what was the minimum dose for the untreated buttock? And we're going to take that and use that to divide the minimum dose of UV radiation for the treated buttock. And then that number is going to be SPF and we're going to round down to the nearest five. Yeah. And that's what some protection factor is. It's ultimately another way of saying what percentage of the radiation from the sun this stuff blocks. Right. So if you get sunburned after ten minutes in the sun with nothing, if you put on SPF 15, you can be in the sun for about 150 minutes without burning. Yeah. Because there's a formula for taking SPF to figure out how it applies to you. And it is you take the number of minutes it takes you to burn, which who knows that? Do you know how long it takes you to burn? No. This is the dumbest formula ever. How many minutes it takes you to burn times the number on the SPF, and then that's how many minutes you can hang out outside without burning. That's what SPF means to you personally. Yeah. And here are the caveats, and there's a lot of them. One of them is when they do these studies, they apply way more than your average person does when they go to wherever in the sun yeah. They're applying the amount you're supposed to apply. Right. I would say just cut everything in half to be safe. That's probably a pretty good rule. Like, if you're like. Yeah, I'm good with the 15. Use the 30, maybe even by three quarters, because I saw a lot of people use between a quarter to a half of what you're supposed to use. Right. And one reason they do well, the beginning application is already short changed, and then you need to reapply the stuff, because even though they say sweat proof and waterproof, we all know that that isn't true throughout the day. Supposedly, if you in the United States market something as water resistant or very water resistant, it has to last either 40 or 80 minutes, respectively, in the water. Yeah, right. But even still, they say when you get out, just immediately reapply sunscreen like you're starting from scratch again. You should. Yeah, I don't do that either. No, like you said. You don't? No, it's my great failing in life. It's one of mine, for sure. Well, we'll get back to application here in a minute, but I don't think we ever said for sure how this stuff works. They work in a couple of different ways. One of two ways. They form a barrier by either absorbing or reflecting. So it's either a chemical filter or literally physically blocking these UV rays. Yeah. And forever and still. Apparently, today, zinc oxide is the main mineral that uses a physical blocker. It reflects the sun, and it just bounces right off of it. Yeah. Like, if you put zinc oxide on your face, you are golden. It is a gross greasy, white mess that's seemingly impossible to absorb. But if you don't care what you look like, or ironically, if you do care what you look like in the long term, but don't care in the short term, that's what you should be using on your face. For sure. You like having a nose? Yes. You should put sin oxide on it. You should. So that's a physical barrier, what the chemical filters do, they act like a synthetic melanin where they take the UV radiation, absorb it, and then turn it into waste heat energy. They don't allow it to penetrate the skin. It's amazing. That's what sunscreen is. You're covering your body, you're putting it in between the sun and your body so that the sun's radiation can't penetrate through it to your skin, beneath it. It's amazing that they came up with that. Yeah, it's pretty cool, especially considering the Egyptians had an idea of what was going on here. Oh, brand. Yeah. Rice brand. So we mentioned that I think you said they go up to what now? 110. That's the highest I saw. So the controversy there is basically it's not an exponential growth. Anything over 30, they just consider 30 plus. Because if you wear something that's a 110, it's not like, well, then that's four times almost as much as a 30. It doesn't work that way. No. And supposedly, if you burn in ten minutes right. And you are, say, using a 70, you should be able to sit out in the sun for 700 minutes without getting a burn. Technically, if everything was 100% right, that may be true, but it never works out that way in practice. So just throw out that idea altogether. Yeah, right. And like you said, the FDA wanted to just be 30 plus, because at 30, an SPF of 30 blocks 96.7% of the sun's harmful rays. Right? Yeah. 50 though, only blocks 98% and 100 blocks 99%. Yeah. Blocking 99% is better than blocking 96.7%. Right. But if you are sitting there just going by the SPF number and you're using a 30, and then you think, well, if I use 100, I can just put it on once and stay out all day. That's where the problem lies. It gives a false sense of security where you shouldn't have security. And so the FDA was saying everybody just used 30 and use it correctly and reapply it a lot. I think what we use in our family is generally the 70, and then we also have the straight up zinc oxide. Oh, you do, huh? Yeah. And I don't care what I look like anymore. Surely I have my pants off. I've got one of those big wide brim, like, floppy fishing hats and camo with the neck thing and everything all rock. That like the old jungle hat. Emily wears a big straw hat because she just had a little skin cancer removed from her temple. Oh, no. Is she all right? Yeah, she's good. They got it, and she's going to keep going back, but everything looks like in most cases, it is a little minor thing. Right. But she's, like, hardcore now, and she always been hardcore about sunscreen for a while, but now it's that and a hat. And I wear my trusty pith helmet. You have a pith helmet? Yeah, a pith helmet. A pith helmet? I do. That's awesome. It became I got it before, I think, my first or not my first, only one. I've been to Newport Folk Festival because they're great. They're comfortable, they breathe, they block out the sun. I think they're super cool because I'm the only guy around with the pith helmet on. Sure. So I'm easy to spot in a crowd. Pith helmet and a UV shirt and no pants. Milk bottle, white calves. No. Well, yeah, that's about right. Man. If you see me at the pool, that's me. Ray bands, pith helmet, UV shirts. Well, that's another one, too. Like, even if you don't like wearing sunglasses TS. You need to be wearing sunglasses and ones that polarize. I feel like I'm going to die if I don't wear sunglasses outside. Yeah, me, too. I hate bright light. Like, it hurts. And I wear them a lot inside. Like, I know it's obnoxious, but in bright spaces in airports and grocery stores, a lot of times I'll wear myself. Is this a statement? I don't like bright light. I hate it. So do you lay out in the sunlight? No. Okay. I don't either. No, like, it's always in the shape for me. No, I don't lay out at all. But, I mean, if you're, like, hanging out by a pool or something, I'm almost always in the water. Okay. I'm always under that. I'll jump in the water to cool off, but then I'm underneath, like, an umbrella the rest of the time. What do you read a book, listen to music? Sure. Yeah. I'm almost always in the water because it's a God awful hot for me and my sweatiness, but the pool is just my best friend. Yeah, it's nice. And I'm generally, like, neck deep, not much exposed. Yeah, about a foot down. Right about your nipples. Yes. You're safe. Yes. Nipples up. Got to be careful, Chuck. Or I get one of those foam noodles and I just saddle it up and straddle it. And a thick noodle keeps me at about mid chest level. Nice. And I can live with that. And I'll just bob up and down for hours. Have you seen they have, like, these kind of nettings that you can run a noodle through. So it's like a seat. Do you like it? The reason I don't like mine is because it doesn't fit the big noodle. It fits the thinner noodle. Right. I got you. I found I had to do a little work to keep my chin up. Yeah, you don't want to work? Well, a little bit of kicking is okay every now and then, but I had to kind of constantly kick to keep my neck up, and I like to just be either chest high or neck high in water. That's my recipe. I don't think we mentioned how much you're supposed to use. No, and we should. You're supposed to use for an average adult body, whatever the heck that means, about a shotglass size, about an ounce of sunscreen on your body, and about a nickel size amount for your face and neck. Right. So you put that on 15 to 30 minutes before you go outside to let it absorb and do its work. Yeah, a lot of people don't do that. Once you start to sweat, once you get in the pool, which is when I start thinking about going outside. Right. You want to reapply. You want to keep up with reapplying, and you want to wear a hat. Broad spectrum. And you want broad spectrum. Don't mess around. Get broad spectrum. High SPF. Get as high in SPF as you want. It will block more percentage of the raise. It will. Just don't put your full faith in it. Yeah, don't do the formula. Just throw the formula out. Go high SPF, broad spectrum, reapply. And don't forget some areas of your feet, like your ears and stuff. And they also said this is good advice. The number one thing where did you get this, actually? Do you remember? All over. Which part? The one through five tips. I think that was from how stuff works. Okay. It says Know thyself. So if you're super white, red headed Irish person, lad or lass, then, you know you've been dealing with this your whole life. You don't have to be told, but you burn super easy. You might want to use more reapply more often, or if you have a prevalence of skin cancer, in your family. You might want to take that into consideration. Yeah, for sure. Anything else? I do. I got one more thing just on the spray versus the cream. All these sprays are the rage now. Yeah, they're super easy. The wind. Oh yeah, sure. The wind is a factor. I didn't think about that. They are very convenient. But consumer report says don't use them on your kids because inhaling the fumes is no good. You can tell you get a mouthful that you're like, this is not good for me. Basically what it comes down to is the upside is that if you are more likely to use the spray than nothing, then use the spray at the convenience is what makes the difference. Then go wild with it. Don't use it on your kids. Don't use it on your face, ever. Rub it in. Spray, then rub it in. You're not supposed to use it on your face. Yeah, they say don't spray it on your face. Okay. And it says how long you apply it makes a difference. So if you just spray for two to 3 seconds, you're not getting enough. Oh, yeah. You definitely don't want to do it on your face. So they definitely side with creams. 100% is better. But if you just won't use anything because you hate the cream, then use the spray. Yeah, it's good advice. One day we're going to have some perfect sunscreen that does the trick and everybody's going to know how to use it just right and everything will be great. Just in time for the climate change thing too. Yeah. If you want to know more about sunscreen, sun block, suntan, sun lotion, everything, I don't think you could know more about it. Yeah, just go to sleep. Go to sleep and let this gel and you will know everything there is to know. And since I said gel, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this. This is one where I get to chime in on something. Okay. In real time. Hey, guys, my name is Rebecca Chan and first I'd like to say I love your show. By listening to it, I impress people with my knowledge of random things. It's a good start. Rebecca, I wanted to write in about your episode on election laws and voter fraud. You mentioned early voting and this reminded me of the time I got to an argument online with someone about it. Well, no people argued online. I really like early voting. But this person said they disagreed with it and wish it would be taken away because they felt it was disrespectful to not go on actual election day, seeing they did not think people who went to vote early actually cared about elections. This is surprising to me because I only thought of early voting as an alternate, more convenient way to vote. Then again, maybe I'm just a stupid millennial who buys too much avocado toast. Oh, burn she burned herself. What are your thoughts on early voting being disrespectful to elections from Rebecca Chan? Rebecca, we're most likely apt to say, to each his own. But I will say that that person is stupid. Yeah, that makes zero sense. It's not like shooting fireworks off the day before the 4 July. Like, if you can vote earlier. Yeah, being disrespectful to an election day by voting early is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. It's pretty ridiculous. So whoever said that on the Internet is not Internet incorrectly. Nice. Pretty good, Chuck. Shut that down. And hats off to Rebecca for just being genuinely puzzled by it, rather than like, you're an idiot. Yeah. If you want to get in touch with us, like Rebecca did, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffyshonow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the Web stuffyoushodenow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstopworks.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 Hardstarke, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. 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." | |
Cash Debit or Credit: Which is best? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/cash-debit-or-credit-which-is-best | Chuck and Josh take a stab at answering the age old question of whether cash or plastic is the best choice for paying your way through life. Join them as they look at shopping, theft, security and the heartbreak of overdraft fees in this episode. | Chuck and Josh take a stab at answering the age old question of whether cash or plastic is the best choice for paying your way through life. Join them as they look at shopping, theft, security and the heartbreak of overdraft fees in this episode. | Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:35:29 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=16, tm_min=35, tm_sec=29, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=333, tm_isdst=0) | 26915823 | audio/mpeg | "This July, don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the Musical, the Series season three Zombies, three Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful. From the award winning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, and the Disney Nature Films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus. Objects carry a lot of power. They tell stories about people, places, or a time in history. On mysteries at the museum. The podcast from Travel Channel Don Wildman searches for objects that tell shocking stories of American history, like the ordinary blue mailbox that changed the course of a massive spy case in the Cold War. Uncover the histories behind extraordinary objects. Listen to mysteries at the Museum on Apple podcasts spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. And we are coming at you with stuff you should know. Yeah, this is public service edition. We do a few of these every now and then. Yeah, we want to make sure that you consumers out there are well taken care of, and we feel like we're the guys to do it. Constant Clarke at least right now, actually, I want to go ahead and issue a COA that you need demanded I issue. I am in no way, shape or form qualified to give anyone financial advice of any type whatsoever. You don't understand it, or you're just not good with I just don't know enough about it. Got you. I'm just a caveman. Your world frightens and confuses me. But this is pretty straight up cash, credit or debit? Plus, there's also the clincher at the end where I say, hey, man, do what you want. Well, that's true. So there you go. Yeah. Spoiler. At the end of the day, it depends on the context. Sometimes cash is great, sometimes credit is great, sometimes debit is great. Although I went back and read this, and I'm like, I clearly favor personally debit cards. I just think they're better. Yeah, but we'll get into that. Okay, I have an actual news topic, intro this time. Let's hear. So, there is a lady named Lori Black. She's 32. She lives in Auburn, Massachusetts. I don't know where that is. Bob Hodgman does. Yeah, probably. As a matter of fact, let's bring him in to answer. John, come on in. Have a seat. Not so oh, no, he's not here. Okay, well, anyway, we'll find out some other time. Where auburn, Massachusetts. Half of our audience just went sweet, and half of them went, no. Laurie Black is a 32 year old unemployed or out of work preschool teacher from Auburn, Massachusetts. And she also has the unlikely credit of having 15 Black Fridays under her belt. That's where the Blimp attacks the Super Bowl. She's got 15 of those under her belt. And her whole thing is that she can't afford to do this herself. But she is such a junkie for this kind of thing that she's come up with a great way to get in the game, get in the Black Friday game and not break her record and make a little bit of cash, and that is to be a Black Friday mercenary. So hold on. Let me get this straight. You're saying that she has attended that many Walmart openings or whatever, or not openings, but just shopping experiences, is the kind where she's the kind where you camp outside and fight with people you hate, your neighbor? And I thought about this. I'm like, well, I mean, a lot of people like to do that, and I didn't realize. This article from DailyFinance.com points out that she lives in Massachusetts, and when Black Friday comes around in Massachusetts, you are freezing if you're camping outside waiting for a store to open. So what you're saying is I'll go stand in for you. I will go through the elbows. I will bring my stiletto, and I will get you those deals that you want. You stay at home and stay toasty. And she's also figured out that nursing home patients who love Black Friday deals will probably be her biggest clientele. You stay in bed. She's praying on shut ins. No, she's not praying on shut in. She's offering a valuable service for 15% of the total value of the purchases she makes for you. She'll buy your stuff, even. I thought she just held your place online and then no, she was shopping for you. She does everything, really. She's a Black Friday mercenary. So if you want to hire Laurie Black, you can find a Craigslist ad that she posted, I guess look for first, go to Google Maps or Yahoo maps or whoever maps, and look up Auburn, Massachusetts, and find the closest big city. And then go to Craigslist and go to the big cities. I don't know what posting, but you'll find it. I'm kind of curious about did she take on more than one person? I wonder, is there a guarantee of how much they need to spend? Because if she's doing all this for $100, then no, I don't think she'd do it for $100. Although she may be such a lover of Black Friday that, hey, might as well so she's crazy is what you're saying. I think she's an eccentric person. Wow. But not really crazy. I'm sure she's very nice. 15 Black Friday. 16 here's. Pulling for Laurie Black to keep her streak unbroken. You're rooting for yeah. So my big question is, if you're Laurie Black and you are using your own money that people are going to pay you for in return. What's the best thing you can use while you are standing outside of Black Friday? Target midnight. Well, that depends. So let's get into it. There are advantages to each, there are disadvantages to each, Josh, and we'll go over those right now. Cash is anonymous. Yeah. If you're a drug dealer, cash is awesome. Yeah. Some people like the fact that your purchases aren't being tracked if you use cash. In my family, we like that our purchases are tracked because then you can look at your budget each month and say, this is where we're spending this. This is where we're spending this. You still do that with cash, but that means you have to keep up with all that stuff yourself instead of having your bank account program doing it for you. It's true. There's also a proof of ownership that cash in no way, shape or form has. That's right. Remember in Diehard, what the German terrorists were after was unmarked bearer bonds, same as cash. They weren't terrorists. They were common thieves. No, they were exceptional thieves. Right, that's exactly right. In the Nakatomi building, which is in Century City. So, yeah, if your cash is gone, your cash is gone. Right. Proof of ownership. Your face sometimes is on the credit card. Your name is on the credit card. You've signed the credit card and debit card. They ask you to show proof of ID? Many times, yes. You don't have to sign the credit card, by the way. Is that right? If you sign it and you give somebody your credit card, you can be like, you and I both know that I don't have to show you a photo ID if my signature is on the back, if I've endorsed his credit card, that's good enough by law, pal. Right. But I never signed the back of my credit card. I usually don't either. I put C-I-D in sharpie. Not the letter C. The word CSE. ID. And do they do that? Most of the time. It's definitely picked up since the recession started. Really? I've noticed people did not do it, and now they do. And every time they do, I go, thank you for asking. Well, plus, it's ridiculous because you go to sign that stupid little thing with a ballpoint pen, and it looks nothing like your signature because you're trying to squeeze it in on this little slippery right? Sure. Wipe all smudgy. And then the other thing, though, is signatures these days are usually, I guess, at a restaurant you still sign a thing, but a lot of times now you're signing that stupid Jeopardy pad. So I don't even sign my name anymore. I just scratched something. Do you? Yeah, because I can't sign my name. It looks like I'm, like, three years old. Yeah, my signature is sometimes good, sometimes not. But the point is, if you sign the back of it, somebody can practice what it looks like on the back, make those signatures be like, just compare the signatures. That's what it's there for. But Josh, you are protected nonetheless. Under the Fair Credit Billing Act, if you lose your credit card, you only have to pay for up to $50 worth of the fraud. Yes. If you lose or get your debit card stolen, the Electronic Fund Transfer Act covers you. Same deal, $50. As long as you report it stolen within two days of noticing it was gone. Noticing it was gone. And then it jumps up to $500 that you're liable for. It's not like they say, well, you got to pay for everything. No. And thank you, big government, for that. Yes. Seriously, that's one time it works. Yeah, well, there's another time we'll get to it. Okay, so you have anonymity with cash, but you have a lack of security. Yes. You have security with plastic, both debit and credit. But you don't have any anonymity. No. Whoever they are, they can track your purchases. They definitely can. And they are usually law enforcement. And I guess if you go to the security aspect of It credit cards and debit cards, well, debit cards have a leg up over credit cards because of your Pin, which is like it's like a signature in numbers that only you know or only you should know. And so they probably don't even ask to see your card if you use your debit card and you enter your Pin number because they just assume that you know your Pin, you're not going to steal a wallet and just get the debit card right the first time out. No. So there you have it. But I have a question, okay? And maybe someone knows this. Why don't credit cards have Pins? Now, I don't know that I wonder why? It would seem to be just one extra added layer. You're swiping it just like a debit card. So, I don't know. I'm wondering that. I have no idea. All right. Maybe somebody knows. Out there in the finance world, what if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalancho demand to ensure more customers can buy more Sherpa line jackets? You call IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours, takes minutes, and you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule of their own sleep. IBM. Let's create. Learn more@ibm.com It automation. Hey, everybody. If you want a great quality website, you want to do it yourself with no must and no fuss. Then there's nowhere else to look within 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 SYSK. Squarespace. Cash and debit have the other advantage, which is a lack of fees. When you buy something with a credit card, unless it's an American Express, which you have to pay off each month, you are charged financing fees. And if you take a hit and you're late on your bills, those fees are going to increase and increase to ungodly levels at times 20 something percent you might be paying. Well, the average interest rate as of this week in the United States for credit card is 14.98% 15%. It's this week. That is so much money. The average debt that Americans with credit cards carry is $16,635. That's not home debt. But it's not just credit card debt. The average credit card debt is between 5000 106,500 right now in the United States for credit card holders, that's their average credit card debt. So yeah, man, if you get bumped up a few points, you're going to feel it. Yeah. And especially if you're just making minimum payments and then going out and buying more stuff and paying just a little bit off, but you're adding more to it. Well, it's not very hard to do the math. Yeah. You might as well put your own collar on. Yes. And if you're young and fairly naive about finance, you know what a minimum payment is. That means you're just paying the finance charges. Well, you say that if you're young, but get this, I saw a stat that showed that most credit card holders wait, 65% of credit card holders under age 30 pay off their monthly balance. Oh, really? Which is more than the adults pay interest. So you got to leave it to the kids or doing something right this time for once in your life. Do you know what kind of balance we carry? Zip. Really? That's pretty great. We didn't used to, but we got to a point where we were looking at finance charges and we just couldn't live like that anymore. That's great. So every month you pay it off. We use American Express only. Yeah. Because we get the sky mileage, use it for everything we buy, where they don't demand that you use like, a debit card. Right. And we pay it off each month. That's great. It is. It's a good way to live yeah, because when you start looking at the finance fees that you're paying, like, at the end of the year, it's depressing. When I was single and living alone, I used to just ignore that. Well, I think that's what a lot of people do, and that's what they want. Sure. You want some more stats? Yeah, I got a lot of stats, too, but go ahead. Okay. The average American consumer, Chuck, has 3.5 credit cards. I don't know how you have half a credit card, but 3.5 credit cards? It seems like a lot to me. If you live in New Hampshire new Jersey, Josh, 20% of the people in that state have ten or more credit cards in those two states. Isn't that nuts? That is very nuts. All right. 78% of Americans have a credit card. 80% have a debit card. That is a lot of people that have a credit card and a debit card. Okay. About 25% of people do not have a credit card at all. And 30% of people, they estimate, pay it off every month. And listen to this. The average consumer's oldest obligation is 14 years old. So that means obligation means you've got something sitting on there from 14 years ago. I thought they had to stop reporting after seven years. Well, no, I mean, if it's on your oh, like credit like stuff you bought that you're still paying off. Yeah. It's up to 14 years old for the average person. Yeah, the average oldest obligation. Right. So that trip to Europe you took in 19, whatever, 15 years ago, you might still be paying off. That's crazy. Yeah. That'd be 96. 96 consumer. That's when I was in Europe, actually. Consumer debt. December 31, 2010. All consumer debt in America. I almost can't say it $11.4 trillion. Really? That's how much America owes. That's how much the American people owe, not the government. That's how much the regular old Joe's owe. Ouch. All right. That was stat heavy, huh? Yeah, it was. But these are good stats. People need to know the stats. Are you going with stats still? No, I'm done. All right, so where are we at? Let's recap here. Cash is good, but you lose it easy. Right. And if you lose it or it's stolen, you're almost 100%. That's what I meant to say. Likely to not get it back. Not that you lose it easy. Right. Debit cards are good because they offer protection from the federal government. They got a Pin. You got a Pin. Credit cards offer the same protection. They don't have a pin. Right, right. They charge fees, interest financing fees. Yes. And sometimes membership fees. And debit cards now, again, have a higher leg up as it stands. Right. The second against credit cards, because the overdraft fees that used to just kill people are now illegal unless you opt in. Oh, really? Yeah, they remember there was the Card Act. So as of, I think, August 2010, you had to officially opt in with your bank to say, I want overdraft protection and therefore you can charge me overdraft fees. Sure. Which at one point in my life, I loved overdraft protection because I was writing checks my butt couldn't cash. Right. And I didn't mind paying those fees. Oh, dude, those fees are crippling. Yeah. But if you were me and 19 in the mid 90s, you like those fees I got you, because you could just stay afloat. Got you. And that's what it was all about for me back then. Or you could just do your finances correctly. Yeah, true. Which I did not do. And I remember bank of America got in trouble for this. They always posted from largest amount, the smallest amount, under the idea that your smallest amount there were more of your smallest amounts, so that when they started hitting, you could get more and more overdraft fees. Right. Largest. The smallest or smallest the largest. Whichever way you got hit with the more overdraft fees, that's the way that they always post. Whichever way they could screw the most. Yeah. Without any regard to chronology whatsoever. Interesting, it was however many overdraft fees could be. So they got in trouble for that and corrected it. Yes. That's what led to this forced correction, that is. Yeah. Debit cards are generally fee free. Your bank most likely as a fee free debit card. If you're getting cash out of the ATM at your own bank, you're probably not going to be paying any fees there. So that's always nice to save on your fees. Well, that was another bank of America thing. Remember very recently they said they were going to charge $5 to use their debit cards, $5 a month. And Occupy Wall Street was like, what? And they rolled back that back, too. They did. Apparently a bunch of other banks rolled it back, except Wells Fargo still has an outstanding they're apparently going to go ahead with their $5 fee. Right. Another point that we should consider. Josh, if you have a shopping problem, then cash is your best friend. Because there's a thing they even called it the pain of paying, which is when you take cash out of your wallet or purse pocketbook and hand it to somebody, it's a very visceral, real feeling that you see the money, leave your hand and go to someone else, and it's gone forever. Obviously, debit and credit cards, that it just exists in the ether. You may get paid electronically. You could live your life without seeing a single dollar bill very easily these days. Pay your bills remotely, don't have to write checks. Right. You can do it all on the Internet now. So that makes it pretty easy for a shopaholic to rack up some debt without realizing it. Yeah. Or not without realizing it. Right. It makes money less transparent, like Social Security. There's no longer Social Security checks. It's all electronic which I don't think it's a scam. I think it's a money saving effort. Well, because people would move in with their old neighbor and check their mail every day. Right? Who did that? Or just check their mail every day, not even moving. There's a school of thought, which is pretty rational and reasonable, that there's not going to be paper money that much longer because of stuff like that. Big sweeping moves like this. I don't know about that. Well, there's paper money. Paper dollars are under assault right now. You remember the supercommittee with the deficit reduction plan that they're taxed with, coming up with they have suggested phasing out dollar bills entirely and replacing them with dollar coins. Right, okay. And I'd be down with that. Well, it would save like $536,000,000,000 over 30 years. And what dropping the bucket? Like, what's the savings coming? Printing. Oh, really? So it costs more to print a dollar coin than it does to print a dollar bill. But dollar coin's average circulation life is three times longer, so ultimately it costs less. Got you. Over the 30 years of the dollar coin lifespan, the coin is more hearty. Yes. But you're going to run into a company called Crane and Co. Out of Massachusetts who has a friend named John Kerry who's on the supercommittee, and Crane and Company are the ones who make the special paper $4 bills, and they're like, no, we can't get rid of this. So you're always going to run into those guys. What if you were a global energy company with operations in Scotland, technologists in India, and customers all on different systems? You need to pull it together. So you call in IBM and Red Hat to create an open hybrid cloud platform. Now, data is available anywhere, securely, and your digital transformation is helping find new ways to unlock energy around the world. Let's create a hybrid cloud that can change in industry. IBM. Let's create. Learn more@ibm.com. Hey, everybody. 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. 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. Comssysk. Another final nod to credit cards is, like I mentioned, I get sky miles on my Amex Delta. So a lot of these programs offer rewards, whether it's towards sky miles or vacation points, hotel points, cash back. I think Discover actually writes you a check every year, don't they, as far as they know, still do that. And you're not going to get that with a debit card or cash. So if that's important to you. There was also one that I left out. I left that out of this article, but I also left out did you write this? Yeah. Nice. Generally, whether you like it or not, I was wondering why you're making such fun of it. I'm sitting right here. Whether you like it or not, it's a reality of this moment in history that you need a credit history of some sort to get a car or house or do any large purchase. And you can't build one with a debit card or with cash. Right. So if you can responsibly use a credit card, you can generate a credit history. And that is a huge advantage that a credit card gives you over anything else? And I also want to say I think it kind of slipped by. I'm not saying that the onus is completely on banks to not rape and pillage. I think that the onus is on the individual consumer as well. Sure. To keep your checkbook balance and to not rely on overdraft fees and to really take a look at where your money's going. Basically to be like, Chuck is now actually, Chuck's wife is and always has been. This is a great article. I was just kidding around about this. I don't say it now. No, it's good now. I think you spell out all the points very definitely. And one more time, as a Nancy yummy. I think you should go out and find out for yourself, being a responsible consumer, what works best for you cash, debit or credit. Plus, it's still sometimes nice. It's nice to throw down the Amex gold to pay for dinner for your friends, but it's also nice to have the big bankroll in your pocket. Yeah. And tell your friends to go, Roth. Well, no, you can pay in cash and look like a big spender. I see what you're saying. Like, if I pulled out saving versus spending. No. Oh, yeah, you can't do that. The cash is like if you pull that out, you're a walking target. You can make it rain. You got it. You do that kind of thing. Yeah. Can you make it rain with a credit card? No, just throw it up in the air and it comes back. It's a bad idea either way. Cash, credit or debit. Here's the ending. Making it rain in any way, shape or form with any kind of form of payment. That's a bad waste of money. Only God can make it rain. If you want to learn more about the hydrological cycle or whether it's best to pay with cash, credit or debit, you can type those words into the search barhousedofworks.com and that'll bring up some good stuff. And I said search bar, so it's time for listening now, Josh. I'm going to call this a freaky email. Hi guys. My mom was visiting my wife and I a few weeks ago and they were both going through some old family photos in the living room. Mostly what I would overhear was that's Uncle So and So, there's a great aunt who's it, but occasionally she would mentioned Johnny Eck. I remember she would mention them every once in a while when I was younger, mostly in the context of some worldly advice. Johnny Eck would say, you should never put coffee grounds down the sink, etc. Et. Anyway, they were in the living room going through these albums when my mom pointing at pictures, naming people, and apparently she points at one and says, they're such and such and so and so and Johnny Eck the half man. And all of a sudden the needle falls off the record. My wife stopped here and they said, whoa, whoa, whoa, half man? What are you talking about? My mom wasn't even fake. She said, you know Johnny Eck, the half man. So, yes. You guys know Johnny Eck? He was basically just a torso, literally half a man. My mom explained that he and his brother had lived at my grandfather's house for a while when she was a kid. Helped out around his kitty amusement park. But Jerry just got fawd in there. Might want to look into that. Grandfather running the train, doing odd chores and stuff and just entertaining the kids. I had no idea if my mom had mentioned it to me before. It was so nonchalant, it never hit me until now. My wife has a bit of a morbid curiosity for morbid curiosities, so she started digging around. Turns out it didn't take much digging. He was pretty famous. He's part of the freak show at Barnman Bailey Circus. And even in the movie Freaks that we've talked about, Johnny X. He walks on his fists. That's right. And he gained a pretty big cult following with its resurgence in the so Steve is related to Johnny Eck. Pretty cool related or his grandfather was friends with him? His grandfather was friends with Johnny X. Thanks a lot, Steve, for that is very cool. What was that in relation to? I believe we mentioned freaks. Oh, yeah, the show on mortgage rates. Really? I can't remember which one it was. Well, thank you, Steve, I appreciate that. It's a pretty cool story and more of a curiosities are always interesting. Definitely. Also, Chuck, we should definitely say thank you to our buddy at Little Bit Sweets. We got our Christmas package festivals. As she says, We got our festival package. Yeah. Liz. So I want to issue a proclamation. If you want to experience something awesome, I strongly suggest the pecan brown sugar brittle from Little Bit Sweet. Have you had it yet? No. Dude, it is really good stuff. Everything you make is amazing. This tops it all. Really? This tops it all. This is the honeycomb candy are my favorite. Yes, I like the honeycomb candy. Yeah, it's good stuff. Yeah. Handmade candy. Brooklyn, New York. Liz always takes care. We're in the rotation now, which I just love. Yeah, you get like two or three of these packages a year and I'm hoping we hear from Mona Colony again. Remember Grandma Colony said like all those big thing of different cookies. Oh, was that who sent us? Yeah. Hint, hint. Yeah, mona, come on, get it together. Anyway, little bitsuites is lidabitsuitescom. Liddabitsweets.com, little bitsuites.com. Right? Good stuff. And thank you very much to Liz for that. And also, we never said thank you to these guys. I haven't watched these movies yet, but when we did the exploitation film episode, yeah. Some listeners from the company Scumbag movies were like, oh, you like exploitation films? Well, here's a bunch of free DVDs. I have not seen any of the movies yet, but thank you very much for the thought and the gesture of Scumbag movies. And we will let you guys and everybody know what we thought of the Scumbag movies after we watch them. Yeah, we're way behind, actually, on administrative detail. It's piled up. I think about that one every few weeks and I never remember. And I remembered, so I just wanted to get it out. So if you've sent us something, I'd say, look, in the next week or two, we'll knock those out. The thank you. Yes. So let's see. If you want to contact us, you can send us a tweet at syskpodcast and you can visit us on Facebook.com at facebook. Comsteffyshno. Or you can send us a plain old fashioned email at stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join housetofworks staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. 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Breathalyzers: Really, Really Complicated | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/breathalyzers-really-really-complicated | Breathalyzers work on a simple principle: Alcohol is absorbed into the lungs and present in breath. But the machines that actually measure this alcohol level are really, really complicated. Tune in and learn more in this podcast. | Breathalyzers work on a simple principle: Alcohol is absorbed into the lungs and present in breath. But the machines that actually measure this alcohol level are really, really complicated. Tune in and learn more in this podcast. | Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:43:01 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=21, tm_min=43, tm_sec=1, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=229, tm_isdst=0) | 31248963 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetoporkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, as Charles W. Sober as a judge. Bryant. Yeah. Actually, when I say sober as a judge, I mean it in relation to that one judge from Gwynett County who was busted on the news for being drunk in the middle of the day. Not the stand. Where would he be? What's it called? The Chambers? No, that's no, it was at a bar in the middle during the day for lunch. And I remember on the promo for whatever news expose, local news expose they had great. It was he not only passed the bar, he stopped and drank at it. I thought you were going to say he was drinking while judging. Well, that was the implication is that he was CWJ during the morning session. Got you. Going out to lunch, getting drunk, and then going back and doing the afternoon session crocked. Got you. The guy thinks it's like 1961 or something. I would actually love for my judge to be slightly hammered. I don't know, man. He's a mean drunk. Yeah, exactly. Precisely. So I guess that's as good a set up as any, right? Sure. Why don't you want the judge drinking? It's not just because you want him to pass a sensible sentence. Right, right. It's also he's got to get from the bar back to the courthouse. Sure. And en route, he could take out an entire family. Yeah. And I doubt if the judges got his robe on his bicycle. Although you shouldn't be driving a bicycle really drunk down the road either. And plus, I don't think they're allowed to wear the robes outside of court. I would wear mine everywhere. I know you would, Chuck. And you wear nothing underneath it, right? That's right. Chuck, give us some stats. There's some pretty bad stats from 2008 that I know you have on hand. Yes, Josh. If you're talking about traffic accidents that result in death, in 2008, there were a little more than 37,000 total deaths by traffic accident, and about close to 14,000 of those were alcohol related. Right. That's 37% of all traffic related deaths were because of alcohol. Yeah. And it's kind of hovered in that range, I noticed, over the past few years. But I went back just for curiosity's sake, and in 1982, 60% of deaths were alcoholrelated. Wow. And there were twice as many. There were 26,000 alcohol related deaths by vehicular means. I wonder, though, if it's not just because of more driving drunk. I'm sure that's something to do with it, but it's because there were fewer SUVs on the road as well. It's probably that would skew the ratio. Probably not as advanced testing, more lax. I think back then, you could literally have an open beer in the car if you weren't drunk. Just drive holding a beer and you're like, it's my first one. Right. What are you going to do? You just take a couple of sips while the cop pulls you over. That's what the days well, Chuck, we are not a teetotaler society. We tried that once. It was called Prohibition. It didn't work very well. Right. The mentality behind Prohibition was alcoholics have to have alcohol. The rest of us who aren't alcoholics don't have to have alcohol, so we can reasonably give it up for the benefit of the alcoholics. Right. Right. And it didn't work. Now, so we know everybody likes to take a drink here. There so there is a certain amount of alcohol that you're allowed to have. I think in most states, it's 0.8. I think it's every state now. But how to test that? There's a couple of ways. There's a few ways. Blood, urine. But I think you could make a really excellent case that a police officer removing a sample of blood or collecting the urine of a driver he suspects is drunk sure. Would reasonably violate the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure right. As well as a couple of human rights. Exactly. You don't want some cops stabbing you with a hypodermic. Right. But your breath is expelled without any expectation of privacy. Right. Which I think is why we have the breathalyzer and why it's in use to just talk about the breathalyzer truck, which you could also call the most confounded contraptions ever known to man. They're way more advanced than I thought they ever were. Right. I thought there was a little gnome inside that smells like Budweiser and lots of it, and then that was it. No. Some of these contraptions, there's a few we're going to talk about. There's three main types, but some of them seem almost Rube Goldberg esque. Like. Totally. You would expect at some point there's a candle that's going to burn, a stream that drops, an anvil that hits, a catapult that like she's kittens somewhere. One of the processes yeah. I just want to point out, too, before we move on, that the zero eight, they've done tests over the years, and they found that zero four actually impairs a human being. Yeah. The medical association says 0505, so I just think I find it odd that that wouldn't be the limit, that they would say, you can get a little impaired and that's fine, just go ahead and get behind the wheel, but just not this level of impaired. It just seems to make sure you blink really hard and frequently while you're driving. I guess that just shows that we are not a teetotaling society. So they do understand, like, you might have a drink at a bar having dinner right. And then get in your car and go home, and that's okay. I guess that's what they say. Yeah. So, I mean, at the very least, you can't be arrested for it. Although I understand if it's right around zero eight, it's at the cops discretion. Yes. And whether or not you even get a breathalyzer. Yeah, because not all of them have them. And then I think all of them do the field sobriety test first because the breathalyzer is sort of a pain to get going. Right. But still do the test. I think the presence, the fact that the breathalyzer exists, if you do a field sobriety test and arrest the person without giving them a breathalyzer, I think that's probably frequently acquitted. Is it? I would think so, yeah. I've never blown into a breathalyzer. Never been even pulled over for alcohol. Good buddy. Moving on. So let's talk about the breathalyzer from this article written by Craig Freud and Reach PhD, the only PhD who writes for the site. Your buddy, right? No, I don't know. I thought oh, that's right, tom Sheave. Yeah. He has a PhD in school of hard knock. I was surprised to find out how old these things are. In the 1940s, they were testing the blood alcohol content by the breath. Yeah. They were called Drunk Amy's back then. They really were. And it had some guy with, like a crumple fedora and, like, stars popping around his face. Yeah, they really were, though. They were called drunka meters. No, I believe it. But they did not have like a nose on there that turned more red as you blew into it. If you blew three pink elephants, you're going downtown, buddy. But yeah, that was when they were first used. But the actual trademark breathalyzer was invented in 54 by Dr. Borgenstein. Yeah. From the Indiana State Police. Right? Yeah. And that was another thing I learned that the Indiana State Police have doctors on their payroll. Yeah, I guess so. Inventor doctors. Yeah. And the premise of all of the breath Analyzing machines I don't know what that category would be called. That sounds right. Breath Analyzing Machines. Sure. Breath Alcohol Content. Breath Analyzing Machines. A breaking bubble. Right. A piping feature. They all work on the same principle, and that's that alcohol is actually absorbed into the lungs right. Through your blood. Breath. Yeah. And in your blood. Yeah. Like you drink you take a drink of alcohol and you know, if you're a reasonable adult and you've been drinking for a little while, you know that you don't digest that alcohol. And it doesn't change into maple syrup once it hits your body, it stays as alcohol in your blood. It'd be delicious if it changed into maple syrup. Right. And there's actually a predictable ratio between the blood alcohol content, which is what screws you up and makes you blink really heavy and drive into other cars, and the aviolar content, which is what's in your lungs in your breath. Right. And it's a 2000 to one, is the ratio. So if you have 2100 ML of alcohol in your breath yeah. You've got 1 ML in your bloodstream yeah, that's the formula. That's the basis for all this. Right, right. All breathalyzers. Yeah. Or breath alcohol monitoring machine. So consider this. Right. There just the fact that we're measuring breath. We're actually measuring a reflection of the blood alcohol content. Okay. That's step one. Removed from actuality. Yes. Okay. But again, remember, the fact that breathalyzers exist shows a deep and continual commitment by the state to protect human rights, individual rights, and protect human lives. Right, sure. Of course, Chuck. So let's talk about the first one, the breathalyzer, the Kleenex, the Aspirin, the Xerox of the QTIP. Breath analyzing machines. Josh, I don't know if it's the most common. I couldn't get any stats on which I think Atlanta uses the infrared one, actually. Do you have, like, an inn at the DA's office in Atlanta? You know a lot about Atlanta crime staff. I do. The breathalyzer, Josh, uses a chemical reaction that basically makes it change color. So what happens is you blow into and I'm glad I'm explaining this one, because it's the only one I truly understood. Yeah. Oh, really? Sort of. Okay. I got the fuel cell one. All right, well, hopefully someone can come in and explain what the infrared one? Maybe Matt, who's guest producing. Matt, are you still with that band? Yes. He says yes. Okay. Lions and scissors. So, Josh, the actual breathalyzer, what you do is you blow into it. There are two glass vials with a chemical reaction mixture and then a system of photo cells. Why is that funny? So you breathe into the device, and it bubbles up and it bubbles to a mixture of sulfuric acid, potassium dichromate, silver nitrate, and water. Right. So you have reddish orange dichromate. Right. That's key. And when you breathe into that and it's bubbling the alcohol in, it converts it to a green chromium ion. Right? Yeah. It changes the color to green depending on how much alcohol you've had. It varies on how much color change takes place. Okay, right. Okay. So we're with us so far, right. Are you seeing how difficult this is getting? Yeah, sure. So we've converted alcohol content to a color. Right. Okay. Go ahead, Chuck. So, like I said, the degree of color changes related to how much alcohol you expel through your breath. So what happens then is it goes over to the photo cell system, and there's an electric current that causes a needle to move up. Okay. So the color remember this? It's gone from reddish orange, not even red or orange, just to further complicate things. It's a reddish orange that goes to green, which is weird. The wavelength is measured to determine how green that green ion is. Because Chuck, remember the butterfly wings episode? Color exists in different wavelengths. It's how it's differentiated. So something measuring the wavelength. Right. And then it's comparing the green to the reddish orange. The original unreacted solution. Yes. And that's what's connected to the meter, because the cop doesn't just hold it up like a pregnancy test. Right. Thank God. And say, that looks sort of green to me, at least in this light. It's yellowish green rather than bottle green as he's holding it next to your green car. Exactly. So it's actually hooked up to a device. An electric current moves the needle, and then the cop then rotates a knob to bring the needle back to its original zero reading is what I gather, and how much he turns that knob. The knob has the 0102, and that will tell him or her, if it's a female cop, how much alcohol you have in your breath. So if you take a breathalyzer and you see a cop turning a knob and shaking his head like, wow, and he keeps turning it and turning it, you're probably in trouble. You're crocked. Exactly. So the blood alcohol content has been converted into a color. The color is compared to the original unreacted color. Yes. That disparity is turned into an electrical pulse, which moves the needle, and you move the needle back to zero by turning a knob. And the amount of degree the knob that's required to get it back to zero is how drunk you are. And then the basket falls on top of the mouse and it's trapped. That's a great recap, too, by the way. Thank you. That was the only one I really actually understood too. Well, this should be fun then, because up next, Josh is the entoxilizer. And that's the one that uses infrared spectroscopy. Yeah. So not only can you convert blood alcohol content or your breath alcohol content into a color, you can shoot infrared light at it and measure how much is absorbed and then figure out how much alcohol is in the blood using that standard ratio. Right. Yes. And that's possible because molecules vibrate constantly, and when you shoot infrared light into a molecule, the vibration will change and the literal chemical bonds will actually change. Right. And we know how much, like, say, a carbon to oxygen bond in ethanol alcohol, which is what is in our bloodstream. Right. Right. How much will be absorbed and how much will be reflected back. Right. Yeah. Okay. So once again, you're dealing with wavelengths, right? Yeah. So check in this one. I strongly, strongly recommend people who are listening to this podcast go onto the site afterward and look at the article because there's some really great illustrations that I wouldn't have been able to get this without looking at these. Agreed. But this one looks kind of like a nitrous oxide chamber, but with two holes in it. Right. And then at the end, there's a quartz lamp. So the quartz lamp generates an infrared beam that shoots through the nitrous oxide chamber. Right. You blow into the top hole, your breath is in there, and it exhales through the other hole right. Onto a spinning wheel. Right. Well, no trapping. It goes through the infrared beam. Right. And then it goes onto this filter wheel. And there are different lenses in this filter wheel polarized to, I guess, just let certain colored ions pass through. Right, right. Crazy. I know. I guess the different infrared beams that make it through this color wheel hit a photo cell, which then interprets these things, the wavelengths, into an electrical pulse again. And then that ultimately hits a microprocessor where the information is translated into the blood alcohol content, the percentage. Wow. Could they make it any more difficult? They could. I think the breathalyzer may be more difficult than that one. Really? More complicated, yes. This one just seems like holy cow. Because there's like a filter wheel and infrared light. Yeah, that's true. But I think they're equally complicated. And that's what they use in Atlanta. This is the one they use? Yeah. The intoxicator the intoxicisor the eradicator. The intoxication would be you and I. Did you see the kids in the hall on the soup recently? No. They reunited for the first time. Yeah, they're back with a show to promote, like a mini series or something. I think it's on HBO show. Can't wait to see that. Yeah, me too. Although they got nothing on the State. Yeah. You're a big State fan, aren't you? Love those guys. You love David Wayne. I do. And Kim Marino. Those are my boys. Yeah. So, Josh, that's pretty much it for the intuit Alzheimer, right? Bing, bang, boom, done. Now this is the Alco sensor. I love that. There's two, the three and the four. I guess the one and the two went the way of the dodo. Right? Yeah. They just said everybody was drunk. I think version one and version two were the drunken meters of the years past. Yeah. Then they changed the name to Alco sensor. And luckily the Alco sensor is perfected now and it uses fuel cell technology. It's kind of the same thing that they're talking about for cars, which is crazy. It's pretty much the exact same thing. You have a positive post and a negative post. And in between you have an electrolyte, which is basically a thin film, right? Yeah. The poster platinum electrodes for all your chemistry nerds out there. Right. So this one has the suspected drunk driver blow through, say, the negative post. The platinum negative post. Right. And this oxidizes, the alcohol present in the breath. Right? Yes. And that produces protons, electrons, and something called acetic acid. Right. Acetic acid is actually vinegar. So it's actually producing vinegar. Isn't that weird? I'll say that these things stink after a few uses. The really important part here is that it strips the ethanol, I believe, the hydrogen, specifically of its electrons. Right. Now, electrons have this thing called electron flow where they naturally gravitate from negative side, a negative post of like, a battery to the positive. And the electron flow, this movement of electrons is actually where we get our electricity from. This is exactly how a fuel cell works in a car that runs on hydrogen. Right. So you direct these, the electrolyte won't let the electrons go through. Right. Okay. So these negatively charged electrons are run through a circuit. In the middle of the circuit, you have this electrical pulse, or the electrical meter that's reading the pulse, the current, as it passes through to the positive side to rejoin its friends. However, I guess the more electrons there are present, the more blood alcohol there is. So this meter converts a high voltage to the equivalent BAC. Right. So the more alcohol is oxidized, basically, the greater the current. And then the microprocessor reads this current and says, bing. Drunk. Right. Or zero eight. Yeah. This is actually the simplest one. You think so? Yeah, I do that's for my money, buddy. I'm going with the what is this one called again? Entoxilizer. Sounds the coolest. I'm going with the gnome. That's the simplest one. This guy is drunk. I got a couple of things here. Obviously, we're not encouraging anyone to drink and drive ever. No, I think that's really important because they do say that even one drink can impair you. But they floated some stats out there about how much you can supposedly drink and still not blow a DUI. Oh, yeah? Yeah. They say 180 pound man, which showed me 180 pound man. Come on, you got to get about two bills if you're a dude. Yeah, I think so, too. I think the trend is going the other way, though, with the skinny jeans and everything. Well, I'm going to have a shirt that says real Men Weigh \u00a3200. Nice. Or more. I'll bet we'd get one on our Facebook page. We do. So 180 pound dude can supposedly be at .8 after four drinks, but they don't give an amount of time either. Yeah, I would dispute that if I have four drinks. And what kind of drinks. So let's say that it's that standard. Like one shot, one number of ounces of wine, and then I think 12oz of beer, 5oz of wine or a twelve ounce beer or a shot is supposedly all the same. Dude, if I have four shots, yes, I'm definitely impaired. You don't want me getting behind the wheel of a car now. Four shots in an hour. Not exactly, but I think they say like the cop that I read an interview with from Atlanta said that. He says if you can stay within one drink per hour, you're probably going to be okay and you shouldn't sweat it. Right. And I've also adopted drinking a glass of water while drinking a drink. Oh, yeah. Because that work. It's not necessarily the dilution, although I suspect that does have an effect. But number one, you're expelling alcohol more frequently because you're drinking a lot of water. What, through urine? Yeah. But that doesn't change your blood alcohol. Hold on. And then secondly, you're spreading it out over more time because you're not just drinking alcohol the whole time, you're drinking alcohol and water. So that's doubling the amount of time it takes to finish a drink. So in theory, you could play Boggle while you drink and as long as it took more time. But I wouldn't play Boggle. You could at thinking Man Tavern. They have all those games there. Okay, I'm not playing for them. No, I'm not plugging them. It's just a local bar that has, like, board games, so it's fun. Do you want to give the address? No, I don't. It's on College Avenue Indicator. But the same cop also verified what I thought, which is they always do a field sobriety test first, which is I mean, there are different variations. The ABC's backwards. Yeah, I can't do that right now. Dead sober. There's no way you could there's I think you should right now. No, I've tried it. I know it starts with Z. It definitely does. And it ends with a Chuck. And here's another tip, too, is you should never, ever sing the alphabet song. If you're pulled over by a cop and they ask you to say the alphabet. Not a good move. What's, singing the song? Yeah. I think it wasn't that judge, but some public figure recently did that. I think one of the like when sang the off of that song. And Josh, of course there are other and like I said, we're not telling you how to beat an alcohol test. No, I think the point here is for this stuff we're about to talk about, we're talking about the Aviola concentration, the amount of alcohol concentrated in your breath. It's not constant. It depends on what phase of the breath you exhale. And I think people who are a little drunk or drunk and are thinking like this could use this to their advantage, but at the same time, cops might use the opposite to their advantage as well. And I think it's smart to know so you don't get an unnecessary beef against you. Well, it provides it results in an inaccurate reading, and you want accuracy. Whether it's you trying to influence it or the cop trying to influence it, they can be influenced, like so hyperventilating Josh will lower your reading. This feels wrong. It does. But it actually will lower. They've done studies, and if you hyperventilate for 20 seconds, it will actually decrease the reading by 10%. And let's say you ran up a couple of flights of stairs and then blow in. They said it'll decrease it by 20% to 25% because it's a more shallow breath. And I think that the breath at the bottom of the lungs is richer and alcohol content. That's why the cop says blow harder and deeper when you're blowing on the breathalyzer. Right. I have a problem with anybody trying to get out of breathalyzer reading. Sure. But I also have a problem with a police officer trying to jack up a Breathalyzer reading. And apparently if you breathe really deeply, really hard, you exhale from the bottom of your lungs. The reading can be one and a half times more with the actual blood alcohol content is, which is significant when you're talking about, like something like that. Yeah. The only problem with these, as far as someone out there thinking, you know what, I can hyperventilate and beat this is you forget that the cop is there at all times. You can't hyperventilate in front of the cop. Two flights is there. You do, you're going to get shot in the back. So what you're probably going to end up doing is breathing just like they say to, and you'll be pinched. I think ultimately, though, all numbers can be tossed out the window if you're a driver, if you're impaired, if you shouldn't be driving or don't. And don't believe any of those myths about pennies in your mouth or mint or onions. Nothing will affect your blood alcohol content. The mythbusters blew that wide open. Snopes blew it wide open. Common sense blows it wide open. Sure. And you can also check into it. You can buy a Breathalyzer. They have consumer models, right. And they have some that are hooked up to the ignition of your car. Yeah. That won't allow you to start, but apparently you can get the top rated one is about $150. So if you're that big of a lush that you want to purchase one of these and carry it around or maybe you're being really responsible, it depends on how you look at it. Yeah, I finish the thing. Well, then you can buy one for a buck 50. Keep it in your purse or your pocket. And then before you leave the bar, just blow into it and say, you know what? I should wait a little while. That's fantastic. Sober up. Yeah. So it's Breathalyzers. And again, we would strongly recommend you go well, we strongly recommend you don't drink and drive. And secondly, we strongly recommend you go onto howstep works.com and look up Breathalyzers. You're going to find some illustrations that will make you go, okay, I get it. Nitrous oxide charge. I know you're right. There's the known. All right, Chuck, what do we have? Do we have listener mail? Yeah. Well, let's do the listener mail chime. And now let's do a little bit of plugging first. Okay. Pluggage south by southwest. Yes. Go to httpw.com sign up and you can vote for us. We're under interactive panels, stuff you should know. Yeah. And it'll walk you through. We're trying to get to south by Southwest next March on a panel and visit the fine folks of Austin, Texas, and perhaps do a trivia event there, too, if we can make the panel. So if you click on that and click your little thumbs up to vote for it, it'll say, oh, you haven't signed up yet, and it'll walk you through the sign up procedure. And I need to point out that it will not put you on some spam list. You won't get emails. No, they swear up and down. Yeah, they promise it's just so they can verify that you're a real person and all that. And then we are on Facebook and Twitter. We're not Steve Slater, but we're worth following. And Kiva www.kiva.org teamstuffyou know we have our own microlending team, if you want to learn a little bit about that. And if you have questions or you're confused about micro lending and why we do it, you can read our two part blog post, why We Lend on Kiba stsysk. Yeah, Josh wrote a really great long form two part thing, that's blog post that really spells out Kiva and everything you need to know about it. And well done. Thank you. I almost forgot. Chucker's. We have a very robust T shirt gallery. Not just the winning designs, but a lot of the ones that came close, not so close. Basically pretty much all of them. I think there's, like, 1015 that aren't up there, but there's a bunch more. And it's like looking into the minds of, like, stuff you should know, listeners. It's really interesting. There's some cool designs on there, so you can go to let's see HowStuffWorks.com Tshirtpictures that's Tshirtures HTM, and that will take you to it. Awesome. So listener mail, finally. Okay, Josh. I'm going to call this love from Jamaica. Remember how in the grow houses when we talked about I thought Jamaica might be the highest rate of marijuana consumption? Yeah. It turned out it was Papua New Guinea. Yeah. And then Africa. All over Africa. Okay, so this is from Shinari in Jamaica. She says, here in Jamaica, we don't have indoor grow houses, but more outside cultivation. People grow it outside in deep, overgrown bush country, far away from prying eyes. And also in the mountains where people don't venture much. They grow them amongst regular crops like bananas, coffee, and sugar to mask the appearance from the sky. And they're normally family operations or locally based, where the whole neighborhood, so to speak, will keep a watch out for cops. And the whole neighborhood benefits in some way from the influx of cash that the marijuana provides. Plus free weed, I guess. So sometimes the local law enforcement will raid these growing operations, but the growers still will set traps for them that will hamper their willingness to even go into these areas. So you got, like a badger trap or like a tiger pit? Yeah. Cops like, hang on in there. Yeah, you can see one cop falling to a tiger pit, you're not going to follow them. Well, listen to this. One trap I saw on the news sometime back takes the form of hidden water spikes. So they'll basically make a muddy pond and grow marijuana on top of this. In these ponds, there. Are solid paths, and there are also paths with spikes sticking up. That's a tiger pit. Oh, is that what that is? Yeah, it's a hole that you dig a pit, and then at the bottom, there's these sharpened sticks all sticking up, so when you fall in, you're in deep, deep trouble. Am I blushing? I thought a tiger fit was like a fit with a tiger in it. It may have a tiger in it, but it's impaled on stakes. I wouldn't last five minutes in the Jamaica. No way. In general, though, because of our Rastafarian heritage, where marijuana is part of the religious practice. Marijuana was illegal but decriminalized for domestic use. So, as a result, seeing someone smoking pot in the open is not strange, but it can land you a fine. So this comes from Shinari. I think it said Sharoni didn't know Shanari in Jamaica. He said Shinarini doesn't ring a bell. All right, so thank you, Shanari, for listening to Jamaica. Yeah, I didn't know we had any listeners. And, no, she's not in Jamaica. That's her, home of Jamaica. No, she loves everything. Does she really? Okay, well, thanks, Shanari. We appreciate you keeping the home fires burning down there in Jamaica. Do you have any stories about Tiger pitts or other kind of clever traps or Group Goldberg esque devices? We want to hear about them. Right, Chuck? Yes, I love those. We want to see Schematics, actually. You can email them to us at stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com for more on this and thousands of other topics@housetofworks.com. Want morehousedofworks? Check out our blog on the Houseofworks.com Homepage, brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?" | ||
a7408484-6a09-11ea-85cb-6f872a603591 | SYSK Distraction Playlist: Sugar: It Powers the Earth | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-distraction-playlist-sugar-it-powers-the-eart | Since sugar spread from Polynesia a few thousand years ago, the world has been crazy for it. Insanely high prices, wars and even slavery couldn't undo world's need for a sugar fix. Today that fix is responsible for the obesity epidemic facing the West. | Since sugar spread from Polynesia a few thousand years ago, the world has been crazy for it. Insanely high prices, wars and even slavery couldn't undo world's need for a sugar fix. Today that fix is responsible for the obesity epidemic facing the West. | Fri, 20 Mar 2020 10:41:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=10, tm_min=41, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=4, tm_yday=80, tm_isdst=0) | 42890321 | audio/mpeg | "Hey everybody, its Josh and Chuck. And we now present you with ten of our favorite episodes of all time. Ones that we haven't released as select yet and just because we thought you might might be sitting around board wanting to hear some more stuff. That's right everyone, so be safe, be kind to one another and learn a thing or two. Here we go. 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. How do you hi sugar. That's I was thinking about that earlier. That was an Archie song. Oh sugar, honey, honey. You called your girlfriend like a sugar or honey or your wife or whatever and this are all sweet things. Yeah, that all makes sense. Do you hit your head? Yeah. You wouldn't call your wife something bitter, right? Like Korean melon. I was trying to think of something bigger. I couldn't think of anything. Rugula. Come here my little Korean melon. I bet someone said that. Who? I don't know. Someone Korean. No, in Korea they just call them melon. That's true. Man, this is the worst start ever. This is the worst ever. I knew we would achieve it. We've been building towards it. Well, we top ourselves every episode. Really. That's right. Chuck? Yes. Have you ever tasted sugar? I have. I'm trying to bring it back from the brink. Yes I have. I have. Two. Sugar is a big popular sweetener these days. It is. And it's been around for a while. I don't know if you know this or not, but apparently they think sugar is indigenous to the island known as New Guinea in the South Pacific around Polynesia and that as long as 5000 to 8000 years ago the Polynesians were cultivating it and going like this is the jam. Yeah, sweet and yummy and sweet gives us energy and makes us fat. Remember that Simpsons where I guess Bart grows up to be like a paid taste tester? Yeah. And he drinks that soda and turns into this horrible huge disfigured thing and he goes sweet and the guy with the clipboard goes pleasing taste. Some monstrosm you remember? I don't remember that. It's a great one. Was that the one where was there all of their future selves? No, it was like just a momentary daydream. Got you. And it goes back to his normal self and he's like cool. Like he can't wait to grow up to be a professional taste test. You know the table reading we set out on that should be coming out. I can't wait this year, right? It was a good one. Yeah, it should be coming out. It's exciting. I'm excited. We can't say what it's about. No, we don't know if we can. We're just covering. We're going to err on the side of caution because the last thing we want is for the symptoms to be mad at us after all these years. For real? Yeah. All right, so where are we? Sugar, I guess, apparently, island hopped from New Guinea across Polynesia, made its way up to Indonesia, and then finally landed in India. And when it was in India, it really started to spread. Everything spread from India back then, trade routes, and thanks to the Crusades, it was brought to Western Europe. Well, even before that, the Persians started conquering the land, and they encountered sugar and brought that with them. That's right. And then you got Columbus. That jerk brought sugar cane itself to the Caribbean and said, like, some roots samplings, and said, let's try and plant this stuff here. And it turned out it was a great place to plant sugar cane. It really was, because sugar cane is a tropical plant. Yes. The cane. You can't grow it just anywhere. No, but you can grow it in places like South America, the Caribbean, south Africa, southern United States. Sure. Hot places. India, as we already mentioned. Yeah. And it just kind of spread like wildfire across the world, especially when it came to what's known as the New World, like you said, via Columbus. Unfortunately, it became an agent of slavery. Yes, it certainly did. It fueled the slave trade for quite a while. And then by 1750, there were 120 sugar refineries in Britain. They call it white gold. And it was up until that point, it had been kind of a luxury. Well, a little before that, it became a little more widespread. It was a complete luxury. Like, literally, it was for royalty, pretty much. It was so rare and hard to come by. Apparently the first Seabourn international sugar exchange was between Venice and England in 1319. I saw that Venice was the first place where they were refining it really well. Right. And the Venetians, that was a merchant city if there ever was one. So they were selling it, and one of the places they sold the first place they sold it to overseas was England, and it was in 1319. And they sold 50 tons for what's, the equivalent of about $11 million today. And that's tons with an NNE, I'm sure. So, yes. And right now, you could get that for about $20,000. It was $11 million back then, so it was very expensive. But then two things happened that opened the sugar industry and made it available to the general public the Reformation, which actually, strangely, led to a decrease in honey, because monasteries were the major producers of honey. Monks kept bees, and the Reformation led to a closure of a lot of monasteries. And secondly, sugar just became more available. Like, those two things happened at the same time, and all of a sudden, it was something that the average person could get their hands on. That's right. And it actually led to a huge increase in tea consumption. Oh, yeah. Because before then, people drank tea, but once they started putting sugar in their tea, they were like, we love tea. And that's when it became, like, the national drink of Great Britain. Man, I love a good English tea with a little cream and a little sugar in it. Just delicious. You're a tea guy. I like the herbie kind more. No, I like it all, man. I love green tea. I love English Breakfast tea. I love black tea. I'll even do a little I'll chat it up every now and then. Oh, wow. I'm into all of it. That's a wild sidewalk. And from about 1792 to 1815, there was a lot of warring going on in Europe, and there were naval blockades by Britain that basically Europe needed that sugar fix. And they were like, but you can't cut us off. We love sugar now. Come on, man. And so in 1747, they realized that the sugar beet, which is the other way you can get sugar, was a great way to do it. And that's how they get their sugar today still. Yeah. And the beet looks like a beet that's not purple. It's a root. Right. And it grows up out of the ground. Looks like a little sort of whitish, light brown. It looks like a turnip. Yeah. Sort of like a turnip, but it's sweet. It is. About 17% of the sugar beet can eventually become sugar, as opposed to only about 10% in the cane. Right. Which I thought was unusual. Yeah. So you have these two plants that can be processed separately, independently, and both will produce sugar indistinguishable to the average person. Yeah. Can pretty neat. And the reason why, Chuck, the reason why it would be indistinguishable is because all plants have sugar. That's right. It's a carbohydrate, a simple carbohydrate, and sugar is a part of photosynthesis. But you can't go out and get a blade of switch grass and get enough sugar out of it to make sugar. Right. Even though there's sugar in it, it's only abundant enough in the beet and the cane to really produce sugar. Sugar. Exactly. But sugars is kind of a molecule that powers the earth. Yeah. Really? Like humans, plants, everything is powered by sugar. It's pretty neat. It is pretty neat. You can use it as a preservative. It prevents bacteria from growing in jam. Sometimes you can change the texture. They use it as like a food additive to make something look and feel different. Not only just taste different, they're like, this doesn't put fuzzy little jackets on people's teeth when they eat it enough. So let's add some sugar. And our favorite use of sugar is to make booze. It accelerates fermentation. My favorite uses of sugar are to make booze and to make Reese's Pieces. Okay, let's not leave that out. Yeah. It's an important part of the production of alcohol and Reese's Pieces. And Reese's Pieces. And it does make the world go round. And the world actually produces quite a bit of sugar. So in this article from a few years ago, it says that the world made about 78 million tons of 71 metric tons of sugar cane annually. Is that accurate still? Do you know? Well, it's just sugar cane, but I know that sugar cane accounts for 80% of sugar production. 80% about. And then sugar beets account for about 20%. The other 20%. But in, I think, 2013, the world produced 165,000,000 metric tons of sugar. Okay. Yeah. So I guess you'd have to be a mathematician to figure out that formula. Plus you probably have to have more info than we just gave. Yeah, the cane sugar cane looks sort of like bamboo. The stock does. It's a tropical grass on the top of it looks grassy. And it takes about a year to grow. It takes about 18 months from planting, but once it's planted, you cut it back to the root and it will take another twelve months for that to grow back up to be harvested again. Right. So what's the 18 months thing then? The 18 months is if you plan it brand new. Oh, got you. Okay. Like from seed, I guess. I see. And it grows in breaks. They call them cane breaks, which I always think is like one of the neater science terms. Cane breaks? Cane break, yeah. It is not always refined near where it's grown, but it is harvested and processed initially close to where it's grown so it doesn't rot. Sort of like when we did coffee. You want to do most of that stuff near where it's grown. Right. And there are some steps you have to take to harvest sugar, at least even get it to the raw state. But yeah, not every processing place refined it all the way to what we would call tablespoon. Yeah. Sometimes it's sent to a refinery. So I guess we can cover that in broad strokes here. But it's pretty complicated if you're looking for the end all, be all of how sugar is produced, then go watch an hour long video on YouTube. What was it? I remember how incredibly complex chocolate making is. Remember talking? Oh, yeah, I love all these. These are some of my favorite ones. Salt, sugar, coffee, commodities. Yeah. The commodity sweet. We got to do tea. We haven't done tea. Okay. And wine. We still haven't done wine yet. Yeah, that one that just bugs me. We got a great offer from a nice guy. I don't have his name in my memory, but I have his email in the same folder. And he was like, you need some help with this stuff? I've got experts who are ready to talk to you about wine. That should be a sweet. That's a dense topic. All right, so sugar beets. Let's talk about that in the process. Okay. Usually they're going to extract over the winter months between September and February. And as we said earlier, sugar beet is about 17% sugar. Yeah. So not too bad bang for your buck wise, considering the cane is only 10%. Yeah, I mean, you could pick it up and eat it and be like, this is pretty sweet. Oh, yeah. I guess 17%. If you're in Russia, you could yeah, that's true. That's their racist pieces. Sugar beets. You're going to start an international incident? No, things are tense right now, you know? Yeah. Between us and and Russia, like 1977 again. Well, they're kicking us out of the space station. I know. Star wars just came out. So if you're going to process sugar beet, you're going to slice it, and you're going to put it in hot water, and you're going to boil it, and it's similar to sugar cane. They're going to make a sugary juice, then they're going to filter it, purify it, concentrate it, isolate those sugars, and eventually you're going to get sugar crystals developing, because you send that syrupy juice through what's called a centrifuge, and that's going to separate the crystal from what is known as the mother liquor. Whatever is left, which is one of my favorite terms, whatever's left over that's not crystal is mother liquor, like byproducts and the original juice. And apparently that can be extracted a few times, I would guess. So to get all the crystals out of it. Yeah. And I think sometimes they need to add a little sugar dust to spur that crystallization. Wow, that sounds like a magical process. There's mother liquor, there's sugar dust. And actually, now that you bring up sugar dust, do you remember down in Savannah in 20 07? 20 08? That sugar refinery that exploded? Oh, yeah. It was sugar that exploded. Dust in the air. Yes. Sugar dust is particulate matter, and when it gets into the air, it can catch fire and explode. That's crazy. And it did. It blew that place sky high. Yeah. When was that? I wrote about it when I got here. So I would guess, like, 2007 or 2008. What was the article like? How can Sugar Explode? I think I remember seeing that we should have touched on that. I guess we just did. But, I mean, you should go back and check out that now that you realize that it was just sugar that blew the place up. It formed a crater, basically. It just blew the whole refinery. I knew flour could do that, too. Right. Same principle. Yeah. Any particulate matter can do that. I think that's nutty. Yeah. All right. So sugar cane, it's a very similar process. They're going to pulverize the stalk, add water and lime, and that's going to be your syrupy sweet juice. And not lime. Like limestone. Yeah, not like squeeze limes into it. I had to double check. No, you're right, because it's tropical. Exactly. And they're also going to run that through the centerfuge, and you're going to get your mother liquor and your crystals, and that is also going to be washed and filtered and refined further until you get your sugary white. Goodness. Evaporation is going on. It's one of those things that sounds complicated, but it's actually pretty simple. It's the same as when you're, like, making a simple syrup at home or you're boiling sugar and water, it evaporates off and you're going to end up with something super sweet. Yeah. So, Chuck, there are byproducts to this whole process. Yes. Essentially, molasses is chief among them. Yeah. I never knew that. Yeah. It's a byproduct that comes from boiling sugar, right? Yeah. That's what makes brown sugar dark or sugar in the raw. Dark as molasses. Right. The molasses isn't extracted as much as it is with refined white sugar. Yeah. Refined white sugar has zero molasses in it. Like sugar in the raw has more and more. It's less refined. And then the greatest byproduct of molasses is, of course, Rome. Yeah. I put a little molasses in my when I make my own barbecue sauce. Oh, yeah. It's good. It's nice. Another byproduct is called bagasse, and that is the pulp, essentially, of the cane. Are you making these words up? No, those are rewards. Okay. What motherlooker and biggest bagasse? I think another process we studied. Yeah. It's not central just to sugar. It's just the pulpy fibrous matter left over from this kind of process. I wonder what we talked about that. Was it coffee? No. Maybe. But the biggest is used. Is it bigass? Because I think I remember us discussing whether it's the gas or by. Gas. It's the gas. I listened to it today. Okay. Yeah. We definitely covered that before. I'm starting to feel like an old man, because when we have 700 topics or so yeah. Vaguely familiar, but I want to sound dumb. So you don't say anything, and then you just spend the next week in your head going over this. I'm telling you, one day we are going to rerecord a show and not realize it, man. And we're going to hear about it. Well, what was it? It was crystal Skulls. Well, we never released that one. Right. But remember, I was like, I thought for sure we recorded this. No dreams. That's what it was. We went to record dreams and it just wasn't there. Yeah. So bagasse we definitely talked about. And bagasse is a great byproduct because that can be used to power the sugar refinery. They actually burn that as fuel to create the steam used to power some of these machines. So that is one way that sugar production can be green. However, mass production of anything like this isn't super green because they're transporting stuff over large distances and there's clear cutting of land. Well, that's a big one with sugar. Yeah. Deforestation, like in the Amazon, right? Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. So even though they're using things like the gas as a byproduct to help power why is that funny to you? Because I always hear by gas in my head. Okay. Anytime you say it. But it is not looked upon as one of the more green products that is used and produced. No, they have to use baby lambs to really refine it to its whitest. Not true. Well, it uses their souls, at least, I guess, if you want to get technical. The souls of baby lamb. Yeah. And then they're just left to wander the earth for the rest of their natural lives. Like not feeling anything. That's so sad. 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 there's a lot of types of sugar. There are. When you think about sugar, especially here in the west, you think, oh, that really white, like really pretty powdery granular stuff. And that's called table sugar. And that's what's known as sucrose. That's right. And sucrose is 50 50 glucose and fructose. Yeah. Sucrose also apparently occurs naturally, but there's a lot of different types of sugar that you're going to find in plants and from some animals, too. So cow's milk sure contains lactose and galactose. Yes. Both of which are sugars. Yeah. Sucrose. Again, that's typically table sugar, but I believe you can find that in plants. Yeah. And that's glucose and fructose, like you said. Yeah. And it's 50 50, even one molecule glucose, one molecule fructose. Put them together, you got sucrose. That's right. Fructose is commonly found in fruits. It's also found in honey fructoses. Yeah. And then glucose. This is the one you commonly think of when you think the body and sugar, because glucose is what the body runs on. And we'll talk about that a little more in depth in a little bit. Yeah. And that's in honey and fruits and veggies. Yeah. And then something called xylos, which I've never heard of. That's in wood and straw. It's pretty interesting. Yeah. There's a sugar alcohol called xylotto that's very sweet. Yeah, there's sugar alcohols, and they supposedly circumvent your blood sugar, your normal metabolic blood sugar process. So they taste sweet, but they don't have any impact on your blood sugar. One of them is called Xiolital Xylidel. Is that the name of the product? Yeah, there's a Danish or Swedish gum that's, like, the best sugar free gum you can possibly get your hands on. It's called Zylaidal. This is so good. Terrible name, though. It is. But it's named after the sugar, which apparently is based on I guess it's probably wood sugar alcohol. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty creative. I didn't I'm just recounting here. No, you weren't complimenting me. No. Sugar comes in different granulations and from icing sugar, which is if you've ever heard of confectioner sugar that you daintily sprinkle on top of your what's it called that you get at the fair? Your funnel cake. Yeah, right. Those are so good. They are. I haven't had one in years. They're good. I don't indulge in that stuff. What is going on? Chuck? Well, I'm overweight, and there's just like you don't want to be the overweight guy walking up to the funnel cake stand. Well, that's why you sneak around the back. Hey, get someone else to go get it and eat it in the alley. Cry. I've never done that. No, I avoid that stuff. Ice cream is my big downfall. Oh, it's your ice cream? What's your favorite? Well, Ben and Jerry's. Sure. But which one? Chubby Hubby. It's a good one, ironically. Yeah. I got to tell you. Have you had Bluebell? Yeah. Okay. Bluebell is, like, the third best selling ice cream brand. It tastes just like but you can only get it in, like, seven states. Oh, really? That's how good it is. Oh, wow. And they have a banana pudding flavor. That is, if you're in Nevada, and the closest you can get it is in Mississippi. It's worth driving there for, and it's like, $8 for, like, a gallon or a half gallon. Ridiculously expensive. But it is so good. All of their flavors are good, but their banana pudding one is like I'm about to cry. Yeah, their radio commercials. Have you heard those? The songs? They're horrible. Oh, it's the funniest stuff you've ever heard. The TV version of it is even worse. Yes. It seems like a joke. Are they serious, or is this campy? Oh, they're serious. Yeah. It's like an 85 year old Baptist preacher is in charge of their ads. It is. It's campy, and they don't mean it to me. It is. For those of you who don't know the songs, it's literally like Mama's baking the apple pie and putting it in the window sill, and the picket fence is outside, and we're eating Blue Bell ice cream because it tastes like the good old days, right? It's really funny. It rhymes more than that, but that's the gist of it. I'm sure it's on YouTube. Just type blue Bell ice cream ad. Yeah, it's good stuff, man. That was a nice sidetrack. So then you got castor sugar, which is larger than powdered sugar, but smaller than granulated sugar. Yes. Which I didn't know about until like, a couple of months ago. I don't remember what recipe it was, but there was a recipe that Yummy was making that called for caster sugar. She was like, what? Yes. Both of us were. Yes. Apparently you can make it. It's like with the coffee grinder. You can grind your regular sugar. Yes. She came across that. I think she finally found her. She ordered it online or something like that. Was she making a meringue? Because they use a lot of meringues, evidently. I don't remember. Maybe. I don't remember. Did she make you banana pudding? Why did she do that? For me, I'll figure it out on my own time and let everybody know in the next episode. How about that? Rather than all of us sitting here until I remember what the rest of you and then I pick up the phone and call her and ask. Right. That's good radio, my friend. Yes. Then you have your granulated sugar, and this is your table sugar. And then you've got preserving sugar, which looks sort of like sort of rock salty. It's chunkier. Or like sea salt. Right, of course, sea salt. Sweeter than sea salt, though. And that's used to preserve yes, much sweeter. Yeah. Because that's another property of sugar. It's a preservative as well. You can throw it in to some jam if you want, make it extra sweet. But it'll also keep the bacteria away at bay. That's right. Which is why, like you said, simple syrup can last for so long. Yeah. You can just make that and put it on your bar at room temperature. Right? Yeah, I keep it in the fridge, but yeah, you keep it on hand, make it yourself. Yeah. Awesome. It's very easy. Plus, also, if you, like, toss some lavender in there. You got lavender, simple syrup, which goes with anything with gin in it. Yeah. Oh, it's so good. You can put in some all spice and some anise seed and stuff like that. You ever use lemon Verbina? No, but I have made lemon just from the peel. Oh, yeah. Lemon Verbina is just the green leaf. We grow a lot of that in the herb garden. If you smash it up, it smells so good. Like, I imagine it would be good muddled in a drink if I was into that. Are you're not? You know that I'm not into the cocktails. I thought you were. Whiskey over ice. Yes. You can jazz it up a little bit here and there. No, not me. Okay. So I guess we should talk a little bit about high fructose corn syrup. We did a whole show on it, which you can go back and listen to, but it bears mentioning here because there's a lot of it gets a bad rap, and the evidence is sort of inconclusive right now. Yeah. I think what we determined is it's not necessarily any worse for you than sugar, but it's in a lot more stuff and you may not know it. I don't remember what we concluded, my understanding is at this point, and that was from 2009, there's a really great article on the New York Times called A Sugar Toxic. It's very long, but it's very in depth, and it really goes into the evidence that's out there that it really is. What are the highlights? Well, like you said, high fructose corn syrup isn't molecularly different very much from sucrose, which is 50 50 sugar. Most high fructose corn syrup or the stuff that's most widely used is like 55 45 fructose to glucose. Right. Okay. So that 5% difference in fructose shouldn't make much difference, but apparently it does. The other aspect of high fructose corn syrup is that the extra fructose or all that 55% fructose that is processed in the liver, any cell in your body can process glucose. Right. When you eat something that has glucose in it, your pancreas releases insulin, and insulin goes, hey, open up cells. And the glucose goes in and it's converted, it's biochemical energy is converted to ATP, and then you have this packet of energy that can be used by any cell. Any cell can do that, which means your entire body can metabolize glucose. Fructose has to be broken down into glucose. Right. And that's done in the liver. Right. The liver has some options to it, Chuck. When it's presented with fructose, it can use it for energy. It can convert it into fats in the bloodstream, which are called triglycerides, or it can convert it into fat stores. Fat. Yeah. Right. That's if you have too much of it. Right, yeah. Now, with high fructose corn syrup, apparently evidence shows that when it hits the liver, it's just automatically converted to fat and that the speed with which it's metabolized also has an effect on how frequently it's converted to fat. And with high fructose corn syrup, it's syrup. And syrup apparently hits the liver a lot faster than, say, an equal amount of apples that you're getting fructose from. Got you. So it's being converted to fat automatically. Okay. That's why they think that high fructose corn syrup is actually far worse for you than just regular fructose or even sucrose table sugar. Right. Well, the obesity epidemic has sort of matched year to year with the introduction of high fructose corn syrup as far as increase. Does that make sense? Yes. I read an article today that said that added sugars overall is the problem, whether it's high fructose corn syrup or regular added sugar. Well, that's sugars in a product that's the USDA's line, and the USDA doesn't want to upset the sugar industry or the Corner Finders Association. So that's kind of become the. Predominant government line, like, yeah, everybody's eating too much sugar. That's the problem. Right. Well, then there's a whole group of people out there who are saying, like, no, sure, that's a problem. Right. But this is an even bigger problem with high fructose corn syrup. Yeah, that makes sense. But it's different and it's affecting people differently. Right. And it's not the same as sugar. Well, I think a lot of people think we're ingesting too much corn based products, period. Sure. Hey, everyone. 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Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code. Stuff. We need to do GMOs at some point, too. Everyone keeps calling for it. Some guy sent us a book on it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Did you read it? No, I haven't read it yet. Apparently, 16% of Americans calories come from added sugars, which is just, like, totally empty calories. So, again, there's an argument over those numbers. Yeah, sure. No one really knows, but supposedly the numbers are very artificially low and that the average American eats about \u00a395 of sugar a year. Oh, yeah. Wow. And the global average is something like \u00a366. But Israel eats something like \u00a3145. Really? Per person, per year. Wonder what that's from. Sweets. Yeah. A lot of sugar. Packaged foods. Yeah. Are we done with HSEs then? For now, yeah. I go back and listen to the episode. It was a good one. One of my favorites. Yeah, it's been a while. I meant to relisten to that, but I didn't get a chance. So sugar in the body. And this also harkens back to our episode on taste. It corresponds molecularly with your taste buds on the tongue. Because of the shape of the molecule. We talked about that the molecules are shaped to fit. When sugar hits it, it matches up perfectly with that molecule and sends a message that, hey, there's something sweet, as opposed to salty or bitter or sour or, umami, the fifth. Right. This is four, and then names five, which I thought was, I even changed it on my sheet. And they recommend something that I do not recommend, which is if something tastes sweet in the wild, it's more likely to be safe to eat than something bitter. Right? Sort of true. But you should never, ever go, like, in a survival scenario and just try and eat something even a little bit. There's a test you can do, which I won't get into, but it involves, like, rubbing on your skin first, waiting a certain amount of time. They may be touching it to your tongue. Waiting a certain amount of time. But you should never just go, like, I wonder if this is edible. Let me taste it. Right. It's not a good idea. Good going. Even if it is sweet, you're a survivalist. I know some things. So we said that sugar is found in all plants, just to varying degrees, and plants create sugar as a byproduct of photosynthesis, and they use it for energy, for growth. They also use it to take sugars and turn them into more complex sugars to use for, like, cellular structure, like cellulose. But they also use sugar in their nectar to attract bees and other things to help them pollinate and propagate their species. Because it's sweet stuff. Yeah. I love it when I see the little bee getting in there, getting a little something sweet. Yeah. I feel like they're getting a little treat. You know that's, right. And then they're vomiting it up, and we eat it as honey. That is true. Sugar is bad for your teeth. Everyone knows that. Specifically, when you eat sugar, it's going to form something called a glycoprotein, that little sweater on your teeth. And bacteria love to eat that stuff, and then they love to poop out lactic acid afterward onto your teeth. Yes. Specifically, streptococcus mutans. That's the culprit for cavities. Really? We've said streptococcus before. That's not a good word. No, but there's different kinds of strep. Okay. But when they poop out that lactic acid, that's what's on your enamel. That's what's going to wear down your teeth. Right. So eating sugary stuff really is bad for your teeth. That's not like something your mom tells you. That's a lie. No. And the bacteria also provides or produces a biofilm around all of this stuff, which traps it in there and traps in the lactic acid as well. So you're in trouble. Yeah. You're dead. Not dead, but you may get diabetes. Yes, you can get diabetes from too much sugar, apparently. It's crazy that there's a real parallel between the six country study and the seven country study that we talked about in the Paleo Diet episode of fats. Apparently there was arrival all along that said, it's not fat, it's sugar. We're both after the same problem, but this guy went after fats, this other guy went after sugar, and now they're starting to think, like, now that they're thinking it's not fats after all that contributed to heart disease and obesity. They think it's actually sugar. And the way that it's sugar is through something called metabolic syndrome, to where if you eat too much sugar, your body becomes resistant to insulin. And remember, insulin gets glucose out of the bloodstream and into your cells and is converted to energy. Right. Well, if your body starts sucking at doing that, then you have a lot more glucose in your bloodstream, which means your pancreas is producing more and more insulin. Right. Insulin, remember, triggers fat storage. So you have more and more insulin, you have more and more fat storage, you have obesity, you have heart disease. And they think that possibly the number one contributor to heart attacks is metabolic syndrome and not necessarily saturated fats. Right. Interesting. But as a result of this aside result is insulin. You develop diabetes. Type two diabetes is the result of insulin resistance, where you have to inject insulin into your body because your body is not producing enough any longer because it's overtaxed your pancreas. Yes. We got a lot of great responses from the Paleo episode that's really interesting. Yeah. And people saying, like, dudes, we know so little still about nutrition. Right. And things are changing so much with the things we eat and put in our body that it's hard to keep up. Which is why it's so insulting when some industry that has a vested interest in yeah. So they got all figured out. Yeah. And don't worry about it, just keep eating it. That's insulting. All right. Can sugar power your car? Yes. How? I'll explain there's a couple of ways. So there's sugar based ethanol, which Brazil was basically running on for many years. Yes. I didn't realize that. They're big into flexills and an ethanol. They were basically energy independent in the first decade of the 21st century because they said, we're tired of being dependent on foreign oil. Yeah, let's figure something out. And they did. They put all their stuff that makes a lot of sense. They started looking into sugar cane, making ethanol from sugar cane. And there's like, corn based ethanol, which Chris Paulette and I talked about in the Grassleen episode. Yes, I remember that. And apparently ethanol made it from sugar cane, has 800 times more energy output. And so they were making ethanol in 2000, and 850 percent of the fuel sold in Brazil was ethanol. That's awesome. Made from sugar cane right there in the country. Well, then gas prices lowered and people started using gas again because they'll use whatever is cheapest. Right. But Brazil, even though it's on its heels, the ethanol industry there is they proved it's a completely viable alternative fuel. Yeah. The problem, though, again, with refining more and more sugar for these purposes is deforestation and worker wages. And I feel like any time we've covered any commodity like this, there's some workers somewhere in the world getting screwed over. Right. And sugar is definitely not any stranger to that process. Well, also, it drives up food prices, too, because if there's two different huge sectors competing for the same commodity, it's going to drive the price of that commodity up. Yeah, that's true. So if you have energy and food going after sugar, the price of sugar goes up. Right. I wish people could have seen that demonstration. Really brings it home. And what else is the other? I remember I think we talked about this, too. Sugar devouring microorganisms, basically feeding on sugar and making energy in the process. That's a viable way in the future, maybe to power things. Yeah. So there's certain types of microbes are more sugar hungry than others. Yeah, but yeah, when they're eating sugar, they manage to separate electrons and loosen electrons. And as the electrons flow, as we mentioned in our electricity episode, the flow of electrons is electricity. So if you direct that flow across something that can use it, you create a current. And the cool thing about microbial fuel cells is when that electron makes it to the other side, it combines to form water. So that's the byproduct. So it truly is a very environmentally friendly alternative fuel. Yeah, we covered that at some point, too, I remember. Surely our world is getting smaller. Yeah, because we're explaining it. That's right. You got anything else? No, I don't think so. Mother liquor bagasse. All these words I made up just for the show. You did good with the making up the words, man. Thanks. Yeah. I don't have anything else, Chuck, but if you want to learn more about sugar, I'm sure there's some words we left out of this article. You can type sugar into the search bar@houseofworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this refuting listener mail. We read a listener mail from a creationist not too long ago. Man, that got a certain response from some quarters. Yes. So then a lot of people write in responding to that listener mail, so we might just continue this for the next year. Just reading rebuttals. Hey, guys. You received an email from a creationist explaining that both creationists and scientists believe in natural selection and that both groups believe in micro evolution but disagree on macroevolution. What the person did not mention is that macro and micro evolution describe the same process of natural selection just on different timetables. Micro is short term, macro as long term. It simply does not make sense that natural selection works on the short term but is somehow reversed on the long term. Natural selection introduces changes to a population subgroup as they adapt to their environment. But the changes are small. The population subgroup can naturally breed with the original population. That is micro revolution. Okay. Once the changes are significant enough that the subgroup can no longer naturally and successfully breed, with the parent population. The subgroup is considered a new species. That's a special event that is macroevolution. To believe in micro and not macro is to ignore how nature works. Say you put two separate populations of the same species put in very different environments. Each population would slowly adapt to its new environment and change over time. Micro evolution. Each group will become better adapted to its new environment, and the differences between the two groups will only grow in time. However, if you don't believe in macroevolution, you don't believe in new species. So you have to believe that no matter how different each group becomes, nature does not work like this. Also, the previous writer claimed to be a creationist botanist and that is like a doctor that does not believe in germ theory. I'm sure they might exist, but I would definitely take their expertise with a large dose of salt. Quite a rebuttal. Yes, and I didn't have a name. I feel bad. So I'm just going to say thanks you. Thanks Richard Dawkins. I appreciate that. So the evolutionists have rebutted. What say you, creationists? Let us know. And everybody stopped tweeting and sending emails about how dare we put a creationist views on in listener mail? There's no way to go through life trying to silence your opponents. You debate and engage. I was surprised. There were a lot of people that said you shouldn't give equal time to this stuff because it's just not true. Yeah, somebody said, I thought discovery stood for something interesting. Yeah, well, hey, I think debate is healthy. And they think you're not right either. Yes. Debate is healthy, Chuck. Exactly. If not, Bill and I wouldn't have done it. Boom. If you want to contribute to the debate, we want to hear from you. You can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychnow. Send us an email to Stuff podcast at how stefworks.com. And as always, check us out at our home on the web. Stuffyouw.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app 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. 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dfa279a0-5d0e-11ec-be32-dfcb27c80659 | Short Stuff: Charity Tips | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-charity-tips | It's the end of the year so we thought we might give you some advice on how to better pick out a charity, Short Stuff style. | It's the end of the year so we thought we might give you some advice on how to better pick out a charity, Short Stuff style. | Wed, 15 Dec 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=349, tm_isdst=0) | 13080491 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff, you generous person, you. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And this is short stuff. And that means we should begin now. That's right. This is from our buddy, a bruise at How Stuff works from their website. And this is one that I want to wedge in there before the end of the year because if anyone is like me, you have a mad scramble at the end of the year to find the charity that you want to align with or charities. And I feel like we do that every year and we're doing that again this year. So this is one of those good, helpful advice ones about how to find and suss out the good ones. Yeah. And it basically comes down to this. There are groups and organizations that have websites that are dedicated to pointing you in the right direction to where you can confidently and comfortably donate your money and know that it's being put to good use and also which ones to steer clear of too. So there's a bunch of different points that this covers. I think this is just a helpful one, Chuck. It was a good pick. Yeah. Those sites and we're going to talk about dave interviewed some of these people from these sites. But Charity Watch and Give, well, those are the two standards. If you want to go find out if these charities that you're looking to are good and worthy and honest and effective, that's where you should start. But you should also dig into, like, if your first question is, are they effective? Dig into the charity a little bit. Go to their website. They will probably, if they're a charity worth supporting, have an outcome section in their annual report and check it out and see if they have concrete goals that say, we fed this many people this year, or with this much money, we can house this many people. That's a really good first thing to look for. Yes. And you might say, that seems pretty good. All right, here's a check kind of thing. You can also go to other sites like Charity Watch, Give. Well, Charity Navigator is another good one and they've done a lot of this homework for you. And in particular, GiveWell has identified nine particular areas that certain charities are really killing it at. And the idea is that these charities that they've picked, then you can go and be like, I'm picking this. And you will know you're donating to one of the top best charities that's going to put your money to the best use that you could possibly find. And the criteria is that they are evidence based, so they can definitely show that the money you're donating is having an effect. They're cost effective, which kind of ties into that. They're also very transparent. That's a really big one, too. You don't want it to be opaque and you want to be able to get a straight answer about how your money's being used. And then lastly, and this is really important, Chuck, that I think a lot of people don't think about, they're underfunded. They need money. They actually need money because there's a lot of charities out there that actually don't need your money. They're doing just fine. These guys pick charities that actually need money that can really make a big impact with that money. Yeah. And if you don't have a lot of money to give, it's not like some places need millions and millions of dollars to build this new big whatever. Some charities they mentioned from GiveWell, like it doesn't cost a lot of money to get insecticide treated nets to people in countries where they have a malaria problem. So give a little bit of money to them, you'll know, that you paid for this many nets. And it's a really sort of inexpensive way to make a difference if you don't have a lot of dough to give away. Exactly. They focus on give. Well, in particular focuses on global health and global poverty because those are the two areas where a little bit can make a big difference. Like literally saving lives with just a few dollars a year. That's awesome. Yeah. Another question is if you start to dig into charities, you're going to find like one of the things they broadcast is how much their executives make, how much their overhead is administrative cost. Another big one is fundraising cost. How much money do they have to spend to raise $1 in donations? And even when you start to dig into them, you might not really have much frame of reference. Like is half a million dollars or a million dollars, is that a lot? Like, that seems like a lot for somebody who's running a charity. But is it? And these sites have actually kind of gone to the trouble of really getting into the nitty gritty to say, like, actually this is a really good charity, despite that metric. Yeah. What you need to look at is percentages. And they will help you break it down, or the website usually breaks it down for you, but they recommend to look for a minimum of 60% of the charity's budget going on direct program services. And if you really want an efficient charity, that'll be closer to 75%. Yeah. But not to be don't look at the raw numbers because just because the charity like spends next to nothing doesn't mean that could make them actually less effective running on a shoestring. Like you got to spend a little money to a raise the money like you talked about and to be effective. So don't just look at a larger number for administrative costs and dismiss it out of hand. You want to look at that percentage. Yeah. Another thing that they do is also they see through or they know the kind of tricks that some less reputable charities will do to make themselves feel more efficient, like they attract more money. And so they'll have sorted through all this when you go to these sites. And also just while we're talking about this, chuck, our beloved CoET cooperative for education, so highly efficient charity, spends about 75% on programming, where coed spends 85.2% directly to program. And also, Joe, the executive director, he rakes in 75 grand a year for this, and he runs the show. They also have an efficiency rating to where they spend $0.09 for every dollar that they raise in donations, which is really outstanding. Plus, lastly, chuck, they're underfunded, too. They can survive 1.57 years on their current funds, which means that they can actually use the money that you send them and then, you'll know, they're putting it to good use, too. Yeah. I mean, some of these charities that you go to can survive the next 20 years, like, without getting another dollar, which is great. That means a lot of people have given but maybe seek out the underfunded is some good advice. Yeah. Should we take a break? Yeah, let's. All right, we'll take a break, and we'll be right back with a few more tips for you. All right. Good tips so far. Rate another one so far. I agree. And, boy, I knew that about coed, but every time I hear it, it's just heartwarming. Yeah, it's a good charity that we got aligned with many years ago. One question that a lot of people ask, is it better to give small donations to a few charities or one bigger donation to one? And this sort of is a personal decision to a large degree. What they really suggest is don't just spread it around to spread it around, only spread it around if you can really dig in and do this kind of research to make sure you're doing the right thing. Yes. Which is a great I mean, that's just great advice as long as you're not falling for the marketing and you're actually giving each charity that you're donating to, like, the same amount of thought that you would if you just focused on one, why not? It doesn't hurt at all. But there's a person over at GiveWell who points out, like, if you're going to pick a charity, though, there's a way you can even maximize it further, which is to give up roughly the same amount every year, about the same time every year, because then they'll start to see that, oh, wait, we can depend on this check from Chuck, who's a super nice guy. He sends it in every year. They'll actually figure that into their budget and then start planning accordingly, rather than being like, we can only afford this this year. And then all of a sudden, they have more money for nets. But they didn't order nets early enough. Now there's a problem, and malaria is still spreading. They'll be able to budget for more nets if they know that there's a certain amount coming from you each year. That's right. And if you give them a pretty good donation, they'll probably email you and say, hey, this is great. Can we count on you for next year? Yeah. Because they got to figure out that budget, and it really helps them to know what they're looking at year after year. That's right. Also, Chuck, if it's really big enough and it's a terrible charity, they'll send you a gold plated diamond encrusted malaria net as a thank you gift so you can wear it around to fancy holiday parties. That's right. And just be like, oh, this I got is for donating. Another question is, are you being scammed? It's a charity of fraud. There are frauds for sure. I think in 2018, Dave points out that the FTC investigated and found more than 100 actions against dozens of fraudulent charities. Sadly, a lot of these were claiming to serve US. Military veterans and their families, which is just reprehensible, of course, but it doesn't happen as much as you might be afraid it does, but you need to make sure you're donating to the charity. A lot of them have similar names to really great charity. So one example that they pointed out was the Breast Cancer Research Foundation versus the Breast Cancer Research and Support Foundation. And Breast Cancer Research Foundation is great. They get an A plus 90% of their budget goes to supporting breast cancer research, and they spend $7 for every 100 it raises. The Breast Cancer Research and Support Foundation earns an F from Charity Watch, 8% of its budget goes to actual programming, and it spends $87 for every 100 that it collects. Yeah. Not on programming. Yeah. Ad seven gold plated mosquito nets, probably. Maybe, but that's just the point. It's like, I'm not going to call them a scam or anything, so I haven't done a lot of research on them. But those numbers are really bad, and their name is awfully close to a really good breast cancer organization. Yeah. And the fact that they are just seems a little fishy. But I think in an even bigger trap that you have to watch out for, especially if you're trying to suss out whether a charity is a good one or not on your own, is that there's a lot of charities out there that they mean well and they're trying to do well. They're just not that good at it. And so your money is just not going to be spent as wisely as it might with another charity. Again, the way to resolve this is to just go to Charity Watch, Charity Navigator, give well some of those sites that really know what they're doing and say, oh, this is highly rated. I'll give them some money. Yeah. I think sometimes people forget these are nonprofit businesses and running a business is still running a business, and some people aren't very good at it. That's right. What's the last one here? The last one is, and a lot of people want to give locally to help their communities and that is absolutely great, but don't do it well. The thing is, if you are doing that, there's a good chance that if you stop and reflect on it, you might come to the conclusion that you're doing this to feel good about yourself, maybe for the fields you get out of it. And if you really stop and look at with it just a kind of sober view of how to help the most people with whatever money you're donating, you're probably going to find that there are people outside of your community, whether you live in the developed world, that might even benefit from it more, who knows? I don't think anybody in charity says don't give locally. It's just saying don't overlook global charities, including big ones, entirely in favor of giving locally. Consider both. Yeah. And I think one piece of advice they gave, which is really good, is look at it from a cause point of view. Like if you're into the environment, let's say, and you really want to support the environment as your only cause this year or next year or every year, maybe look into a local thing that's doing something like planting trees locally in neighborhoods, and then maybe also look at a big global environmental cause or charity that can really have a big impact. And that way you're kind of spreading the wealth and covering a cause that you love in both ways. That's right. Whatever you do, just make sure that you're giving to a good charity and bless you for donating in the first place. However you donate, blesses everyone. Since Chuck said blesses everyone, of course everyone that means shorts. 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." | |
3f7ee67a-5461-11e8-b6d0-0fccdbc6bb3f | Selects: Bridges: Nature Abhors Them | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-bridges-nature-abhors-them | From prehistoric logs across streams to the 102-mile Kunshan Grand Bridge, nature works ceaselessly to take down spans. In this classic episode, learn about the fascinating ins and outs of bridge design and building and the mind-boggling challenges structural engineers face. | From prehistoric logs across streams to the 102-mile Kunshan Grand Bridge, nature works ceaselessly to take down spans. In this classic episode, learn about the fascinating ins and outs of bridge design and building and the mind-boggling challenges structural engineers face. | Sat, 27 Feb 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=2, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=58, tm_isdst=0) | 55216675 | audio/mpeg | "Hello, SYSK FAM. It's Josh. And for this week's Stuff You Should Know select, I've chosen Bridges Nature of Horsedem, which we released back in June of 2015. And it's a pretty good one. It's got a lot a lot of engineering, believe it or not. But it's not like the eyeglazy kind, it's like the, oh, my God, this is amazingly fascinating kind. I hope you feel that way at least, and I'll bet you will. So enjoy Bridges Nature abhors them, starting now. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant with Jerry Roland. With me, Josh Clarke. And this is stuff you should know. Featuring Josh Clarke. About to say you never introduced yourself and then you don't it twice. Three times. Oh, yeah. You always introduce yourself, but you never say your last name. I think that's what struck me. Oh. I say I'm Josh Clark. Do you? Yeah, every time. I should listen to these sometimes. Yeah. That explains the glazed overlook in your eyes whenever we start bridges. Yeah. Is that your intro? Yes. I like them. Maybe we can add, like, a scat drummer on top of that. We have that kind of when we're doing listener mail, there's a little bit of dean. Oh, yeah. Well, that's not sketch drumming. I would say that's more of a shuffle scat's, like boot up. Yeah, like that. Yeah. You should get Hodgman to Scat for you sometime. He's a good guy. He's good at it. A lot of boop boop Badoos going on when he's scatting. Any jazz hands? No, it's not exactly Manhattan transfer level. Oh, he's intermediate. Yeah. So, again, bridges. Yeah. I bet we're going to hear from some folks, because there are bridge enthusiasts, which I think is kind of neat. Yeah, well, I mean, they're like modern marvels of engineering. And actually, there's some ancient marvels of engineering, too, as far as that dude. Yeah. Basically, I was talking to our pal Adam. The architect. The bridge builder. No. Yeah. He's a building builder or a building designer. Yes. I don't know if he actually knows how to build the buildings. He just knows how to tell other people how to build. I bet Adam can't swing a hammer. So he was saying that basically, the structural engineers who designed Bridges are just straight up geniuses. Oh, I'm sure. Like it requires basically, a genius to factor in all of this stuff. Yeah. Anyone can design a building. This is four walls and a bunch of floors. Right. Put a roof on it. Bridge, though, it's different. That's right. Aren't walls really? There can be bridges of Madison County. They have walls. Oh, yeah, they have walls. I was going to mention the bridges of Madison County. Yeah, I love those. That would be a beam bridge, I guess. Yeah. With a top trust. What's the top trust called? A through trust. Yeah. Through trust and then below that, if it were below, it'd be a deck trust. But I don't know if that counts as a trust. It's more just like a house on top of the bridge. I bet there's structural support there. Yes, it's mainly just to keep the rain off of you when you cross the bridge. Like just an extra little thank you for crossing the bridge. I thought it was just to draw in wacky tourists who wanted to have their picture made. Another famous bridge, the one that the headless horsemen couldn't cross. And the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Oh, yeah. Wasn't that a bridge? Sure. Trolls, lavender bridges, bats. Drawbridges are pretty cool. Have you ever seen Maximum overdrive the beginning of that movie? It's been many, many years. I saw it again very recently, like, this year. And it's maybe better than it was before. It holds up as a crappy movie still. Yeah. The whole soundtrack is AC DC, by the way, which you should love. Whole soundtrack. I do love that. And I do remember that. And didn't Stephen King direct that? Which he doesn't do much, right? No, maybe it's only one. It's definitely his first. Interesting. But there's a great drawbridge scene in there. Did someone jump the span as it raised? No, I think their car fell in or their truck fell in. Okay. Because usually the drawbridge scene is like, I can make it. No, this one was you're all doomed scene. Got you. And let me also recommend Budapest for bridges. You mean I went to Budapest a couple years ago? Yeah. I went there, like, 20 years ago. Okay. Yeah. You know, the bridges are amazing. I think, like five. Yeah, because it connects the two sides. Yeah. Buddha and Pesht. Right. And each one is totally different. Like, it's just a completely different design. And they're just all gorgeous. Yeah. Let's just start with a bunch of bridge recommendations. I'm going to recommend the city of Pittsburgh. Oh, yeah. There's a baseball game there, and it's just gorgeous. Those beautiful bridges that you can see from the baseball stadium in the river. That was when we were shooting a Toyota commercial train, right? Yeah. I stayed in the hotel and just ate. sogged Pennier? No, chicken SAG. Right? Just like a quarter of it. But you can see the baseball stadium at your hotel window. Yeah. And I saw some bridges, too. Yeah, you walk across the bridge to get there. Right. At least we did. What else? Any other bridges? Well, Brooklyn Bridge. Sure. Golden Gate Bridge. These are, like, the famous ones. They're barely even worth mentioning. Yeah, but the Brooklyn Bridge is for your money, which is free. It's a pretty great thing to do, to walk across it. It's just beautiful. I've never done that. Yeah, you should do it. Even the geico lizard did it and I haven't. That guy is, like, Australian or something. Well, maybe we should just animate you and have you walk across it. One more thing. If you want to know more about the Brooklyn Bridge, I don't remember which one we talked about it in, but there is a really cool documentary about the Brooklyn Bridge and it's Building by Ken Burns. Oh, wow. I believe it's on Netflix. I'll have to check that out then. Yes. Because I like Ken Burns and Brooklyn Bridges. Yeah. All right. Are you ready? Yeah, man. So bridges have been around for a very long time. This article is by Robert Lam and another dude named Michael Morris together. I believe they were locked away in the closet for like a couple of months while they work this out together. Well, one of the first ones talking about ancient bridges that they mentioned in here, the Archaedico Bridge in ancient Greece. Did you see that thing? No. It's really neat. I mean, it still stands. It's a 3000 year old bridge and it's just kind of cool to think about ancient civilizations. In ancient times, people said, Well, I want to get over there. Right. And I'm here, so let's build something. To do that. I need something to walk on. Yeah, or drive my card over it's. That simple. I saw the world's oldest bridge that's still in use is in Turkey, over the Melissa River, I believe. Yeah. From 850 BCE. Do you know what that one's how it's constructed? It is a single stone slab arch. No, it is a stone slab single arch. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Very basic. Yeah. But the arch, it's super old, but it's still in use today. Oh, yeah. Because whoever figured it out came upon this very elegant solution to a lot of problems that a bridge poses. Because as you were saying, when you come upon like a river or creek or something, you say, I'm on this side and I need to be on the other side, so I need something to walk across. Yeah, okay. That's a basic solution. But the further and further you get, the more and more problems. Like as bridge Billers say, no span, no problems. Yeah. I guess what we should have said is I want to walk across and live. I want to walk all the way across. Right. I don't want to fall down. No. I don't want to get halfway across and have it snap. Right. So over the years, as people have come upon problems where you are going to build a bridge that will snapping and kill you, they've come up with solutions to prevent that from happening. That's pretty much the pursuit of bridge building. It's coming up with ways to prevent a bridge from collapsing. Yes. And a lot of trial and error over the years and a lot of real significant disasters. In fact, there's a Time magazine slideshow called worst Bridge Collapses in Past 100 years. And it's got all these photos of collapsed bridges and little descriptions and the number of fatalities and everything, but it's really interesting. All these different bridges have collapsed and failed for all these different reasons. Well, and after each one it's very sad, of course, but after each one someone goes, oh, well, we should do this for the next one. Right. We should not forget that bolt next time. Well, that could be human error. True. That's happened. Yeah, I'm sure. All right, so should we start off with the bats? B-A-T-S. Beams, arches, trusses and suspensions are the main components, structural components of a bridge. It's very simple. Boom. That's it. That's all you need to know to construct your own bridge. And with these four things, you can make almost any kind of bridge. We're going to cover mainly beam bridges, arch bridges, truss bridges, suspension bridges, and then the super cool looking cable stayed bridge. It is super cool. Probably my favorite looking bridge in the world that I came across in researching this is a cable stayed bridge, the one that's in the article. Oh, yeah. They look like sales. It's gorgeous, the big triangles rising up. It's lovely. Yes, but they look a little more modern to me. They don't have that classic architecture like the Brooklyn Bridge does, or like the Tower Bridge in London. Yeah, I think that's why I like it. Yeah, you like the modern look. Yeah, you're a modern guy. I'm super mod. All right. They point out in the article, which is very key, what you talked about, the span of the bridge is the distance between the supports. And that's where it all goes down, basically. Yes. We got to be strong there. Those are something that every single bridge has, is a span and at least one support, most likely two. Yeah. The reason that there are different types of bridges is because different bridge designs that Bats designs, what is it? Beams, arches, trusses and suspension. They provide stability for varying span lengths. Yeah. So like a beam, if you have like a 50 ft span, just put a very long log over the span and there you go, there's your bridge. But as you get further and further along, you have more and more problems supporting that span. So you need different types of solutions. And the different length of the span calls usually for a specific type of bridge design. Yeah. And generally there's a lot of overlap, of course, but beam bridges tend to be the shortest, followed by arch bridges and then suspension bridges. Right. And I think the cable stayed bridge is kind of a suspension bridge, so that counts. It's like a kind of a variation. They can be very long as well. Yeah. Not quite as long as suspension bridges, though. From what I understand, the suspension bridge affords the longest span. Okay. You got a big long span, it's suspension time. Yeah. And they're also super expensive suspension bridges because all the bridge builders know that you got a long span that you're trying to cross, you probably got some deep pockets and they're going to milk you for it. Yeah. Every penny. Yeah. Like you need a suspension bridge, I'm your guy. Yes. There are a lot of different forces that can act on a bridge to make it not as stable. We'll cover a few of the other ones later. But the main two here early on are tension and compression. And the very easy way to think about these two things is tension is like if you and I are pulling a rope, like you're on one end and I'm on the other, we're going to pull that sucker tight and I'm going to fall over. Due to your massive strength. I'm pretty huge. But there will be some tension in that rope. Yeah. Tension between us after you fall down. Yeah. And I start laughing. There would be tension. Sure. But tension is the lengthening of something. Yes. Compression is the shortening of something. Yes. Like a spring collapse. Right. So it's easy to visualize when you're talking. Like springs and ropes and that kind of thing. But if you're talking about just a single deck of a bridge. Which you think of as one piece. It starts to get tough to visualize it until you realize that you have to look at like a bridge deck. Like the roadway on the bridge. As really having a top and a bottom. Yes. And forces while the compression acts in the downward motion on the top and the tension acts from the underneath coming up on the bottom. Right. So the bottom of the bridge underneath it of the deck is going to be spread out under the force of tension where on top, where it's being pushed down, compressed. That's compression. Yeah. And they kind of, in a weird way, work together. Even though they're sort of opposite things, they're definitely related. Yeah. Right. And what will happen is, if you aren't a very good bridge builder, buckling will occur when it's compressed on the top and snapping can occur on the bottom when tension is at work. That's right. It all sounds very confusing, but I got you to do is put your hand out and look at it. Right. If you take and push down on your hand or on your hand right. You know what I'm saying? Sure. Like that. Yeah. Like that. The whole thing becomes very, very evident when you look at a beam bridge, the most basic form of a bridge, like if you dropped a log over a river. Right. And this article used the example of taking a pair of milk crates and putting a two x four across them. Right. Let's do that. If you put like, a bowling ball on a bowling ball stand so it doesn't roll around yeah. That'd be awkward. Right. In the middle of your two x four, which makes up your beambridge deck. Right. You're going to see that it bows. And what you're seeing is that on the top, it's being compressed, on the bottom, it's being tensed. Right. Yeah. And what you've just done is add a load to that bridge. And there are two kinds of loads to start out with. There's a dead load, which is the weight of the bridge and all of its materials combined. Yeah. And then there's a live load, which is say, like the cars and the people and the trains and everything that add the extra weight while they're moving across it and everything. And as you add this extra load, first of all, the bridge is already dealing with its dead load. You got to hold that up. That's job number one for a bridge. Yeah. Like if you had a 300 foot, two x four and two milk crates, it's going to SAG in the middle just naturally. Right. And it might even break. And there have been bridges that have been built where the guy forgot to carry the one or whatever, and they couldn't stand up under their own weight, and they collapse from their own weight. They collapse from the dead load. So job number one of a bridge is to support its own weight. Job number 1.1 is to support all of the live load, the traffic that goes across it as well. That's right. And the two ways that you're going to do this to counteract tension and compression are dissipation and transference force, or transferring the force. So with dissipation, you spread out that force equally. You spread out over a wide area, and with transferring, you move the area of weakness to an area of strength. Right. Which is pretty simple. Yeah. They're kind of tough to distinguish sometimes, you know what I mean? But for example, the best example of dissipation is the arch, which we'll talk about how that works in a second. Yeah. But suspension bridges are best at transferring the tension and compression forces. That's right. So if you're talking about a beam bridge, that most basic kind, the other thing they're going to do to make it stronger, of course, is use back in the old days, you use wood, then later iron and then steel, maybe some concrete mixed in. But the size of the beam is going to be really important. Like the height of the beam is important because the top is going to experience stress, the bottom is going to experience stress in the middle, not as much. So a good eye beam, a good tall I beam, is what you want. Yeah. And I didn't realize that. That's why I beams are made like eyeballs. I didn't really either. It makes perfect sense. The center of the deck or the beam or whatever, any kind of beam is going to experience the least amount of compression or tension. It's really the top or the bottom. So you don't have to put quite as much material into the center of the beam as you do the top and the bottom to prevent buckling and snapping. That's right. So with the beam bridge, you're going to add what's called the truss to make it stronger. We'll talk about trusses more, but it's basically a triangulated strength. And you'll see a truss if you've ever seen, like, a train bridge, like, you see a truss on top in areas where they get a lot of snow, roof supports will frequently be trusses. Yeah. And that's a three truss on top, we already said. And if it's underneath, then it is the deck truss. Right. And you can have both. But usually, like with the railroads, you'll see, like, that top truss not the same as a trestle. It's different. Right. It's like a roller coaster. So after this break, why don't we talk more about trust bridges? Nice. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there, it can make the Internet a practical gold mine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy, which is not good. But now it's easy to protect yourself with LifeLock by Norton. Yes. LifeLock monitors your info and alerts you to potential identity threats. And if you are a victim of identity theft, a dedicated US based restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thefts have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock. comStuff that's LifeLock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity Theft protection starts here. What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system? So you tap IBM to UNSILO your data and with the help of AI, start crunching a year's worth of transactions against thousands of compliance controls. Now you're making smarter decisions, faster operating costs are lower, and everyone from your auditors to your bankers feel like a million bucks. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM let's create. Learn more@ibm.com. So, Chuck, no joke, trusses are one of my favorite things now. It's pretty neat. After doing some research into them, I'm like, I love trusses. You're a trust guy. Yeah. And it's because they're so elegant and simple. They're elegantly, simple, basically. So I saw this really great explanation where it was on make magazine, and I think it was called, like, Ask Make how Do Trusses work? Pretty straightforward. And it basically had really a great graphic of using Popsicle sticks, right? Okay, let's say you make a square out of Popsicle sticks and you join the Popsicle sticks together at the corners where the ends all meet. Yeah. Little Elmer's Paste maybe. Makes sense. Seems pretty supportive, right? But when you press down on any one of those joints, which is where the load is going to be centered or distributed most. Remember the ends, it shifts to the side, and all of a sudden you have a rhombus. Well, rhombus is inherently less structurally sound than square, which is why you very rarely see rhombuses in architecture. Right. With a triangle, when you press down on any one of the joints, it distributes that compression or tension directly through the center of the beam so the triangle stays totally rigid. And when you add the more triangles you add, the more support you have. So they're like, basically like, as far as the shape goes. The super conductor of transferring or distributing compression or tension. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. And that's why when you see that train trestle and that has that truss on top, it's got all those beautiful diagonal pieces of metal. Right. And it's not just for looks, even though it is cool looking. No. One of the other great things about a truss is that it's like just three steel beams or three whatever aluminum beams. They're just three pieces of metal usually fixed together. And that's the other key that I left out. They have to be connected at the ends, equally distributed from each end. Right. So let's say you drill a hole to rivet one side of the trust to another, or one end of the trust to another end, the other end has to be equally far away. Right. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah. Okay. They wouldn't just be like, just drill that other one wherever. So anyway, the place where the tress sides join together has to be on the ends. But one of the things that it allows for is for wind to blow through it easily. Oh, sure. That's a huge point about tresses. They're not solid in that they don't put up a lot of resistance to when they allow it to flow through, which is really kind of what you want, we'll see when you're building bridges. Yeah. I think even the covered bridges is more of a lattice type thing on the sides, right? Yes. It's not solid, is it? That'd be dumb. A covered bridge. Yeah, they're solid. I thought the walls were usually like a lattice so wind could pass through now. And they had a roof and like a latticey side. Is that right? Yeah, maybe there's all kinds. Yeah, I think those are just to keep the rain off. Oh, yeah. That's what you said earlier. You keep shooting down the serious thing. But anyway, trusses rock, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Yes. There's your Tshirt. Trust is rock. So are we at Arches? Do we say that they frequently use trusses to support beam bridges? Yeah. Okay. Arches. Now, when we say a bridge is an arch bridge, the deck is not some big hill that you drive over. The deck is flat the arches underneath, right? Yeah. And you can have a single arch if your span isn't long, or you can have a big one with like six or eight arches. Although I think there are like short arch bridges that actually do go up and down. Oh, sure. There's natural arch bridges, like rock formations like that, and that's why they're still standing. There's a bridge that forms like a perfect circle, so when you see it reflected in the water, it just looks like a circle. Oh, neato. Isn't that neat? Yeah. Arch bridges are pretty cool too. There are no trusses, but they're beautiful in their own way. Yeah, that's true. So the arch is obviously semicircular, and like you said, if it meets the water and reflects nicely, fully circular, and the entire form is going to divert weight onto what are called abutments. And this is what takes on the pressure. If it's just a single arch, those abutments are probably going to be part of the earth, right, on one side or the other. Yeah. And the whole point of an abutment is when you press down on an arch or when gravity pushes down on it or it's compressed, that force goes downward and it makes the sides of the arch go out. Yeah. Those abutments press inward so that the force of compression just goes straight down through the arch, circle the semicircle and into the earth or into the ground or whatever. Yeah. What I thought was interesting, it's really all about fighting that compression. There isn't a lot of tension that comes into play with an arch bridge. I think the tension grows more and more possible when the degree of the arch grows. Okay, so that could come into play. It can, but for the most part, when you're building an arts, you have to worry about compression more than tension. Got you. Yeah. So there's a stylistically and artistically design wise, there are all kinds of arches, baroque arches, Renaissance arches, Roman arches. They were the Romans built arch bridges that are still standing today. Yeah. Have you been to Rome? Yes. Man, it's just like you're walking along and all of a sudden you look to your left and there's like a 2000 year old aqueduct, 1500 year old arch just sitting there. Yeah. I remember the first time I went to Europe, coming back and being sort of like bummed out because we were walking along and there's a Burger King. Yeah. This house is 200 years old. She could have roamed. I know. My house is like 80 years old and it seems super old. Nothing? Not by Roman standard, no, but little drafty in those thousand year old apartments. Yeah, but it's so neat though, because I mean, like, there's so much old surviving stuff that not all of it's even meant to be preserved. Some of it's just like just there. It's not like a part of a park or an historic exhibit. It's just part of the city. Yeah, yeah. I've heard other tourists complaining about how dirty Rome is and I'm always just like, come on, focusing on the wrong part. It's been around for a long time. Oh yeah, that too. Yes. And also, don't be stupid and just look around you like they're complaining in front of a 2000 year old fountain. I didn't notice that it was particularly dirty. I mean, it wasn't any more dirty than like New York or anything. Yeah, any other big city. But the thing with the arch though, it's very stable once you get it built. But the building process is tricky because until you connect those two ends, that's what gives it its strength. So until that happens, it's a little dicey. Yeah, I have some scaffolding going on. Yeah. And they used to build wood scaffolds and supports to hold the thing and then you just would build it in. Now they use suspension cables. I think the biggest arch bridge on the planet is West Virginia's New River Gorge Bridge. Man, that thing is unbelievable. It really is. And what's cool is when you look at it, it uses the cliff walls or the walls of the gorge as the abutment. Beautiful stuff, super strong. And that's where we're going to talk about that in our base jumping. I know. That's the fact that ties these two podcasts together, that's where they have bridge day. Talk about elegantly simple. So suspension bridges, for my money, are where it's at. I think they deserve their own episode. Oh, yeah, pretty much. They're that complex. This is just the briefest overview of bridges in general, but especially with suspension bridges, it feels like there's just so much going on with those things. Yeah, I agree. I mean, Ken Burns did like an eight hour long documentary on the Brooklyn Bridge alone. Yeah, that's true. He's a deep diver, really is. We're over of you guys with a giant helmet to go over his giant haircut. He does some pretty big hair, doesn't he? All right, so suspension bridges we mentioned, of course, Golden Gate Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge. This is when you have your deck, your roadway is suspended by cables between can be a number of them, but at least two tall towers that are supporting all of this weight and compression is pushing down, traveling up through those cables and it's transferring all that compression through all those lovely cables. Right. So, I mean, another way to look at it is exactly what it sounds like. The bridge is suspended from cables. Right? Yeah. But if you really start looking into what it's doing, it's not just holding these things up. What's going on is there's a transfer of that natural compression of the deck up through the lines, up through the cables, up to the towers, which, like you said, send them down to the earth. Right. So the towers that hold the bridge up are at the. Same time distributing or dissipating the forces of compression that are trying to pull the bridge down into the water below it yes. And the tension you also have to deal with as well. And apparently you deal with that using another part of the structure of suspension bridges which are called anchorages. Yeah. Now that's just what the towers connected to at the base right now. No, the anchorage is like the abutment, essentially yes. They're like left and right. They're like a suspension bridge is abutments where as you get closer to the middle of the bridges, that's where the towers are. But on the very end, like, say, where the roadway hits the bridge, you're going to have a massive piece of rock or massive piece of concrete and those are the anchorages and you have horizontal cables that distribute the compression from the bottom of the bridge to the anchorages and those transfer those into the earth. Yeah. And you might also, depending on the size of your suspension bridge, have to have that below deck truss as well to help stiffen the deck. And if you have a 4000 foot bridge, you're going to have all kinds of trusses and decks and cables and I think I finally figured out what it is about bridges that I love is that the structural design that it needs to be strong also happens to be beautiful. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like the way the cables are arranged, it's not like they're like, oh, this looks great. Well, it has to be like this. Right. But it also happens to be very striking, like Grace Jones, you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. So suspension bridges are your favorite, huh? I like them because they have so much going on. Yeah. I like trusses because they're so elegantly simple and they are just tough as nails. There's a bridge for everyone. I think it really is. The cable stayed bridge and we should say that suspension bridges, when you think of a suspension bridge you probably think of the Golden Gate Bridge or something like that, right? Yeah, just a classic suspension bridge. Two towers, two anchorages, lots of suspension cables. It's a suspension bridge and you think, well, then they're probably pretty new. Wrong. Suspension bridges have been found in various forms for hundreds of years at least. And apparently the Inca were masters at building rope suspension bridges out of woven grass. Crazy, man. Yeah. 1500s, they've discovered the Spanish conquistadors stumbled upon. These were like, what in the world is going on here? Right. Because the smart Europeans didn't figure this out for another like 200 years after that. That's right. The Inca still have one of these bridges intact. It spans 90ft and they remake it every year as part of a three day festival. Oh, really? Nice. Yes. Which is why it's still intact because woven grass rope bridge doesn't last all that long, necessarily even though when it's fresh and new. It's strong. Yes, as an expiration date is what you're saying, but apparently, as we'll learn, all bridges have an expiration date. All right, well, we'll take a break then with that tease and talk about the cable stayed bridge, and then how you might die on a bridge one day. These days, you use your personal info to do just about everything, especially when you're online. And guess what? With all that info just floating around out there, it can make the Internet a practical gold mine for identity thieves. And stealing your identity, it turns out, can be dangerously easy. Which is not good. But now it's easy to protect yourself with LifeLock by Norton. Yes, LifeLock monitors your info and alerts you to potential identity threats. And if you are a victim of identity theft, a dedicated US. Based restoration specialist will work to fix it. Identity thefts have had it easy for far too long. Now, finally, it's your turn. Just remember, no one can prevent all identity theft or monitor all transactions at all businesses. But everyone can save up to 25% off their first year by going to LifeLock. comStuff. That's LifeLock.com stuff for 25% off your first year. LifeLock identity theft protection starts here. What if you were a 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 chocolatecovered goodness with realtime datadriven precision. 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When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. All right, so we're onto your favorite, my friend. The super sleek, modern looking cable stayed bridge, which is actually has been around since, like, World War II. Yeah, but the idea is still modern. The idea came from a dude named Faust Vanshic. Yeah, man. And he was a contemporary of Kepler and Brahe, and he basically came up with the first design for a cable stayed bridge back in the 16th century. So what's the nuts and bolts of this thing? So basically, it is, rather than two towers, like a suspension bridge uses, a cable stay bridge uses one tower. Well, not always. There's plenty of them to have more than one. Okay. But for a particular span of bridge, there's one tower supporting that one span. Right. So it's basically you can't use it for as long of a span as a suspension bridge. Right. But if you have a slightly shorter span and you don't want to spend quite as much money and you don't want as many wires up there and everything, you can go with the cable stay bridge. So you have usually one tower holding up all the cables, and the cables can either all connect to one point, which is called a radial pattern. So it's like all these different cables are connecting on the bridge deck at different points, but they're all connecting at about a single point on the tower. Again, architecturally lovely, very neat looking. And then another way that you can do it is in a parallel pattern. So they're connected at different points on the deck and they connect at different points on the tower. And that's the case with the Erasmus Bridge, which I think is the most beautiful bridge in the world in Holland. Oh, wow. That didn't surprise me. I mean, look at that thing. Look at that. POW. Oh, yeah. That's something else. Yeah. I wish you guys could see this. Well, they can look it up. It doesn't look like very Dutch, though. No, it looks very like the New Holland, I guess. Yeah. New Amsterdam. I'm just picturing, like, Holland, I think, of wooden windmills. Oh. And like tulips and stuff like that. Yeah, sure. Yeah. This is modern Holland. It looks like something that would be in, like, Sydney, Australia. Well, they have great bridge, too. They do. Maybe that's what I'm thinking. Are you done with those? Well, I was going to say another design for cable stay bridge looks a lot like a sailboat, with the tower standing straight up and then on each side, cables going down at a diagonal from it to make it look like a sailboat sale and mast. And again, for structural integrity more than anything. Right. Living bridges. Sure. Well, I guess we should say cable stayed bridges. They can't be as long as suspension bridges, but they can be pretty long, like up to close to 3000ft. But that's what I'm saying. Like, if you have a shorter span and you don't want to use as many materials and hence spend as much money, cable stay bridge is a great alternative. Yes. I wonder what the considerations are. Like money. What you've I would guess money. First and foremost. Money what you probably is best for the land. But I also bet that architecture comes into play, like how it looks in the cityscape, don't you think? Yeah. Usually a city will have some sort of will accept several designs, competing designs, and then probably like in Atlanta's case with the 17th Street Bridge, goes with the cheapest one, and then half of it falls down on the traffic later. Like a couple of years later. Did that happen? Yeah. When? Like two years ago. Really? Yeah, man, it was a big deal. Luckily it happened at four in the morning or five in the morning, but when you're walking on the bridge, the side stuff, one whole side fell over onto 75 below onto the connector right below it. Yeah, I kind of remember that. Yeah. But it's an ugly bridge to begin with. Really? Dude, if you're listening, the guy who designed it I'm sorry, I don't mean to insult your work, but do better. The city could have done better, I think. Yeah. But I think what it came down to, I'm sure, was all of these are beautiful, but we're just going to spend the money on this one. Right. Or whoever got the biggest kickback, or wherever that came from, not to be cynical. Living bridges. Yeah, we were talking about that. If you go to northern India, to the here we go. The Meghalaya region, I think that was good. All right. Close enough. They have something pretty remarkable, and they are called living bridges. And what they did was it's so rainy there that all of their natural bridges were having a hard time staying intact because of all the moisture yeah. From monsoon season. Yeah. And you can't have a natural bridge with that much water. So they said, Why don't we take these tree roots and grow them out of the ground and span a river over the course of years and years and years, and then basically plant it on the other side into the ground? And this is now a natural tree root bridge. Right. It's like giant living bonsai. They were training roots to go a certain way, and they would take a tree, a fell tree, and split it in half and use that as the guide. Right. It's like the structure. So they were building an arch, but they weren't making an arch. Like sort of a temporary bridge. Exactly. And they let the roots grow along that. And they would plan these things out, or they do plan these things out over the course of like a decade. Yeah. And I get the impression it's the whole town's responsibility, at least some people in the town's responsibility, to make sure that if you see your route starting to go down in the wrong place, you just plug it up and put it back on that fell log that's guiding it across the way. Yeah, it's pretty neat. It requires patience, obviously, but I imagine just once a day, someone walks down and, like, looking good, and then just walks away again. Pets, the bridge says, Keep growing. I'll walk across you in ten years, buddy. And apparently these things can last up to 50 years, or the largest one that they have up to 100ft, which is 30 meters for our friends in India. Crazy. And it can bear the weight of 50 people and lasts up to 500 years. Not 50. That's what I said. Oh, I thought you said 50. I said 50 people. Well, it's crazy. You got to Google these things. Yeah, they're very pretty. It looks very dark, crystalline. Oh, yeah, totally. You know what I mean? But they're not unsettling at all. No, like the Dark Crystal. Right. Which, by the way, if you're ever in Atlanta, sometimes people say, hey, I'm coming to Atlanta. What should I do? Go to the center for Puppetry Arts. Agreed. And just look at their free exhibit, which includes a full size sketchy. It's terrifying. Yeah, we've talked about this before. They have em at Otter for me. That was pretty magnificent. It meant a lot for Emma Otter to meet you, too. They're doing actually, I saw it was just at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. Oh, yeah, I saw you post something about that. Yeah, they have an admin exhibit right now, which is pretty neat. It was pretty cool. I was not there in time for the Jim Henson when they're putting that in place, I think for later. It's coming. It's coming. That's because you didn't miss it yet. Well, yeah, I'll just go back. We went to the Yoko Ono exhibit at MoMA. Awesome. She's something else, dude. She's got a pretty cool mind. Yeah, she had this one display, and it was titled Three Spoons, and it was just four spoons in a row. It wasn't three. I love that stuff. Yeah. So I recommend that as well. I'm not a fan of her music, though. I actually got turned on to her music in the Listening Room. There's no band. It's crazy. It is weird stuff, but I kind of like it. She's definitely one of the most, like, original thinkers out there, and she's been at it for a while. A lot of the stuff went back to the 60s. Like the early 60s. Yeah. And talk about weathering criticism and still just being like, Screw you. Yeah, I'm Yoko Ono. I don't care what you say. Well, she was exonerated too, recently. Remember Paul McCartney came out and said, like, it was not Yoko owner that broke up the Beatles, saying that it just took them, like, 50 years to come out and say it. Yeah. She's like, Would it kill you? Right. He's told me privately many times, but we'll press release just tweet it. All right, so we talked about compression and tension being the two main forces. There are quite a few other forces, dozens even, they can act on a bridge in a negative way. And the scariest one, for my money, is torsion. If you've ever seen the video, it's very famous video of the bridge. What is it? The Tacoma. The Tacoma narrows bridge. Tacoma Narrows Bridge. When it looks like a wet noodle twisting in the wind. Yeah, it was 1940. It's nuts. They have, like, footage of this whole thing just undergoing this destruction that kept just going on and on and on. And finally the bridge comes down. Yes. The craziest part is when you're watching it, you just think, oh, man, look at that thing. It's nuts. And thank God there's no one on it. And then you see, like, a dude walking on it in a car. Yeah, there's one car in there, and there was a dog trapped in the car. Some guy ran and got the dog. Oh, he did? Yes. Pretty great heroic stuff. Sure. Then later on, I don't know if it was the same guy and another guy or just two completely new guys, they're just walking along it. This is after a whole section is falling into the river, but the section they're walking on is still swaying away from the bridge. Step back from the bridge, man. So that's torsion at work. Yeah. And that's a big problem that designers of suspension bridges face, because you have a deck that's being held off by cables. Right. It's not like, fixed to anything below it, necessarily. Yeah. It's being suspended. So just like on like a rope bridge or something like that, it sways very easily. Right. Yeah. Those towers are strong, but it's not directly connected to those towers. Right. So if you have a swaying bridge in between them right. And the thing is swaying back and forth, but if one side starts to sway over the other side, and all of a sudden you have an opposing circular force, and that's torsion, and that can basically rip the bridge into which is sheer. Yeah. Well, that's the other awful thing that can happen. It can just snap. Well, not snap, I guess, but just break into two parts. Yeah. Well, I mean, snapping is the result of compression. Shearing would be what it's called technically. Exactly. Where the same span of bridge has two opposing forces acting on it at once in opposite directions. And it goes it makes a terrible sound. If you want to combat torsion many ways to do this, you're probably going to have a deck trust going on to help out. Trust saves the day. Deck trust saves the day. You're going to do wind tunnel tests if it's a modern bridge beforehand. Well, you're going to make a model yeah. And do tests and see, like, how does wind affect this bridge and what do we need to do? But the thing is, with the Taco Manero's Bridge in particular, they did test. They had that thing rated withstanding winds of up to 120 miles an hour. But the winds that day that brought it down were only 40 miles an hour. And for a long time they were like, what happened? And somebody said, you know what it was? It was mechanical residence. Yeah. The deck truss was not sufficient for the span that was part of it. And the way that the wind hit it and the angle caused the final thing. Like you just mentioned, resonance, which is sort of a vibration, basically, that gets out of hand. So residence to me, I think, deserves its own podcast, too. It's awesome. Everything, especially anything that we build from an airplane to a bridge to a watch, it has a certain frequency where it will really pick up force, really absorb force, it will run through it. Right. So let's say that your bridge has a residence that's at a frequency of ten. That's probably a totally ridiculous number that I just said, but let's say it's ten, right? And then let's say that wind comes at it at 40 miles an hour at just the right angle, and it makes it sway at a frequency of nine. Well, that bridge is going to be it's just going to sit there and sway. Not a big problem. If that wind hits it at just the right angle at just the right speed and it starts swaying at eleven, it's still not quite a problem. But if it gets it just right and it starts swaying at ten, all of a sudden those sways are going to become more and more pronounced because all that energy is flowing through at its maximum potential, at its freest flow, because it's hitting the bridge at its natural resonance. Right. Yeah. And that's what caused the Taco Manero's bridge to come down, because once that thing starts going, there's no coming back from it. Yeah. Because it happened. It gets worse and worse. Exactly. And that's because it hit it at just the right frequency. Yeah. They liken it in the article, which I think is pretty down to earth of a snowball rolling downhill. Exactly. It just keeps getting worse and worse and you can't stop it. But isn't that bizarre that a bridge has a natural resonance, a natural frequency? I don't think so. I would assume it would vibrate. Yeah. It did not occur to me at all. And I was talking to Adam about this, too, and I was like so I saw that building designers, bridge designers, they will fine tune like a structure so that it resonates at a frequency that it's probably never going to encounter from an earthquake or from winds or whatever. I'm like, how do you do that? And apparently it comes down to the building materials. You use, the shapes you use to form the structure, the way you join those shapes together, and you can basically say, I'm giving this building a frequency of one five. Right. Whereas I know all of the wind in the area and the ground movement from an earthquake is going to make it vibrate at a frequency of seven. So it'll be fine. Yeah. One way, like you said, they can do that is by not having, like, one shortening the sections of the deck, let's say, and that way the vibration, when you have these overlapping plates and smaller sections, it's going to create enough friction to disrupt that frequency. Right. It'll change the frequency that the bridge is moving at. But I mean, and not just bridges, too. You have to take into account, like, airplanes. Right? Sure. You can't use engines on airplanes that create vibrations at a frequency that's at the natural resonance of the airplane body. Plus, the airplane body is going to come apart just from turning the engines on. Yeah. Could you imagine seeing the airplane wing starting to flap, like, harder and harder? Right. But apparently the more common thing when you have a disaster, catastrophe from a residence, a mechanical residence problem, it's like one bolt. It's like, I can't take it anymore, and stops. And then that leads to a cascade of failures that ultimately has the bridge coming down. Yeah. Interesting. I think that's fascinating. I had no idea that you had to worry about frequencies and vibrations. That's why all the bridges you've built have collapsed. They collapse pretty easy. Well, if you've ever heard the old they go down like a French boxer, it was a Glass Joe reference. Remember him from Mike Tyson's punchout. Oh, no. He says he was French. Glass Joe. Got you. He said a glass jaw and he went down just like a sack of potatoes. So easy, man. Well, which was it? A sack of potatoes or a French boxer? He was both. He went down like a sack of French potatoes. Yes. French fries. Right. My bridges go down like a French boxer. But Glass Joe, the French boxer went down like a sack of potatoes. Got you. Ergo my bridges go down like a sack of potatoes. If you've ever heard the old wives tale that like an army marching across a bridge in step can cause enough vibration to take down that bridge, it's true. That could happen more time at the right frequency. Right, yeah. In wartime, they will break step. In other words, their rhythm isn't all the same to avoid that scenario. And there was a bridge disaster. I saw in that Time magazine slideshow where that happened. There were a pair of skywalk bridges inside the Hyatt Regency Kansas City Hotel in the lobby. They were just like raised bridges going through the lobby, and they collapsed in 1000 1981 and killed a bunch of people because 30 something people marching, dancing. They were dancing on the skywalk. And you think, like up to today or yesterday, when I started researching this right. I just thought that's weight or pressure or something, like everybody's dancing it never occurred to me that the rhythm had something to do. Oh, really? So. I'd always heard that. Well, you are far more advanced than I am in structural engineering, my friend. Not that. It's just always heard that even a bunch of kittens walking across could cause that. And the reason they said kittens, of course, is so it has nothing to do with weight, right? Because kittens doing nothing. And consequently, I think Lionel Ritchie had to change the name of that song because of the accident. I think originally it was hello. Oh, what a feeling when you're dancing on the skywalk and he had to change it to Ceiling. And everyone was like, that's weird on the ceiling. But it rhymes. He's like, yeah, but nobody ever died from dancing on the ceiling. I guess the final thing we should mention is the weather, obviously, will play a big impact. We already talked about wind, but over the years, the materials they use and the design has gone into take account things like wind and what. Sun damage. I don't know. I think the freeze thaw cycle is huge. Yeah. Salt. Sure. Salt exposure. If it's going over like a salty body of water. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. There's a lot of things that are trying to bring a bridge down. Nature abhors a bridge basically as much as a vacuum. I've got one. What you got? There's probably around 630,000 bridges in the US. Alone because there are 617,935 in the 2002 census. And they were adding them at about 1000 a year, maybe 900 a year. Wow. That's just the US. The world's longest bridge, completed in 2010. The Danyang Kunshan Bridge. I think I've seen pictures of that. It serves as a railway bridge for the Beijing and Shanghai Railway. It's 102 miles long bridge that's nutty over water. I'm a big fan of cities with multiple water bridges. Well, that's why you liked Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh. Portland, Budapest. Yeah, I'm a big fan. Atlanta doesn't we have bridges, but it's not like you have to go to the Chattahoochee River Lakes. Nobody goes to the chattahoochee. You know what? Sure. I got one more thing. I want to shout out to PBS's Build It big website, which is, like, beyond 90s as far as websites go. But it was extremely helpful in understanding the forces that work on bridges. Different types of bridges, different specific bridges. Great website. And thanks to Adam. I guess you got some information from him. Yeah. Thanks, Adam. Was he in talking to you about it, or was he on the other end going, oh, my God, shut up. I'm watching Tim and Eric. He was into talking about it. I figured he would be. Yeah. And I actually have to shout out to Jimmy, too, because I told her we were building bridges. We were talking about bridges. She sent me a bunch of stuff on Popsicle bridges. Apparently there's an indiegogo for the world's strongest or Canada's strongest popsicle bridge. Wow. Yeah, they're trying to build that. Yes, and they have like six grand already, man, for out of popsicle sticks. Good for them. So that's everybody getting shouted out to all over the place in this one, huh? Yeah. That's nice stuff. Bam. If you want to know more about bridges, you can type that word into the search bar@housetofworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this. I got a couple of street gang responses we'll read over the next couple of shows. Okay, here's one. I had to write in about your street gangs episode as it was interesting pertains to my job. Short version is that I work for a hospital based program, and we see every gunshot wound victim and stab wound victim who comes through, which is about four to 500 a year, and about 10% of those are gang involved. You guys have mentioned how you found the number of gangs to be hard to believe, but I think you may be thinking the street gangs as one entity that has strict borders and lots of people. In my experience, larger gangs will sometimes incorporate smaller gangs, and sometimes larger gangs will split off into many smaller groups. People go in and out of gangs and are sometimes affiliated with more than one. Currently, we have about at least 70 in our city alone, and a substantial amount of those have less than 20 members. So we have, like many gangs. Got you. Not super gangs. Not super gangs. According to this paper on street gangs in Boston, 18% of the gangs in the city have less than ten members, and 34% have ten to 19 members. So while the numbers you gave seem shockingly high, they also seem to be in step with the current climate. And that is from Ariana. In what city did she say? You know, I don't see that. I don't think she said I don't know if it was Boston or if she just referenced Boston. Well, thanks a lot, Ariana. We appreciate that email. And yet keep them coming. We want to know more about gangs. I just had the impression the whole time that one way or another we were officially or unofficially misinformed. We may be. And also let us know who's the coolest famous person you've ever met? You can tweet to us at s yskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychnow. You can put it in an email to Stuffpodcast@housetopworks.com. And as always, join us at home on the web stuffyshow.com. Stuffyshow is probably of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
Research tips from SYSK | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/research-tips-from-sysk | People often ask us how we do our research. We're not going to disclose all of our secrets, but we'll give you some tips on how to root out the bad studies from the good ones. Learn all about shady studies and reporting right now! | People often ask us how we do our research. We're not going to disclose all of our secrets, but we'll give you some tips on how to root out the bad studies from the good ones. Learn all about shady studies and reporting right now! | Tue, 05 Jul 2016 16:53:12 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2016, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=16, tm_min=53, tm_sec=12, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=187, tm_isdst=0) | 41223389 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from houseupworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. This is stuff you should know. Josh. We're going to do something weird today. I'm going to do a listener mail at the head of the podcast. Okay. This is from the wait, hold on. Do we have the listener mail music going? Oh, I don't know. Should we go the whole nine yards? Let's do it. People might freak out. I know. All right, this is from Bianca voiceitch, is what I'm going to say. I think that's great. Hey, guys. Wrote you not too long ago asking about hey research your own podcast. It just got back from a class where we talked about research misrepresentation and journal articles. Apparently, journals don't publish everything that is submitted. A lot of researchers don't even publish their studies. They don't like the results. Some laws have been put into place to prevent misrepresentation, such as researchers having to register their studies before they get results, and journals only accepting pre registered studies. But apparently this is not happening at all, even though it is now technically law. This ends with the general public being misinformed about methods and drugs that work. For example, there are 25 studies proving a drug works, 25 that don't. It's more likely that 20 of the positive results have been published and only one or two of the negative, and that is from Bianca. And that led us to this article on our own website, ten Signs That That Study Is Bogus. And here it is. Nice. Well, we get asked a lot about research from people usually in college. They're like, you guys are professional researchers. How do I know? I'm doing a good job and getting good info. And it's getting harder and harder these days. It really is. One time that I've learned is if you are searching about a study and all of the hits that come back are from different news organizations, and they're all within like a two, three day period from a year ago. Copy that. Nothing more recent than that. Then somebody released a sensational study and no one did any actual effort into investigating it. And there was no follow up. If you dig deep enough, somebody might have done follow up or something like that, but for the most part, it was just something that splashed across the headlines, which more often than not is the case as far as science reporting goes. So that's a bonus. That's the 11th. Boom. How about that? Yeah. So we just start banging these out. Let's do it. Or do you have some other clever segue? Well, apart and parcel with that? I don't know if it's clever. You do come across people who you know can be trusted and relied upon to do good science reporting, like Ed Yong is one. Another guy named Ben Goldacre has something called bad science. I don't remember what outlet he's with. And then there's a guy, I think, scientific American named John Horgan, who's awesome. Yeah. Or some journalists and organizations that have been around and stood the test of time that, you know, are really doing it right. Like nature. Yeah. Scientific American Science. Yeah. I feel really good about using those sources. Yeah. But even they can. There's something called scientism, where there's a lot of faith and dogma associated with the scientific process, and you have to root through that as well. Try it. I'm done. The first one that they have here on the list is that it's unrepeatable, and that's a big one. The center for Open Science did a study. It was a project, really, where they took 270 researchers, and they said, you know what? Take these 100 studies that have been published already, psychological studies, and just poured over them. And in 2015, just last year, it took them a while. It took them several years. They said. You know what? More than half of these can't even be repeated using the same methods. They're not reproducible. No, not reproducible. That's a big one. And that means that when they carried out, they followed the methodology. Scientific Method podcast. You should listen to that one. That was a good one. Yeah. That they found that their results were just not what the people published, not anywhere near them. For example, they used one as an example where a study found that men were terrible at determining whether a woman was giving them some sort of, like, a clues to attraction or just being friendly, sexy, sexy stuff, or just be friends. Yeah. Good to meet you, or Buzz off, jerk. Sure. And they did the study, again as part of this Open Science Center for Open Science study or survey, and they found that that was not reproducible or that they came up with totally different results. And that was just one of many. Yes. And in this case, specifically, they looked into that study, and they found that one was in the United Kingdom. One was in the United States. That may have something to do with it. But the point is, Chuck, is if you're talking about humanity, I don't think the study was like, the American male is terrible at it. It's men are terrible at it. Right. So that means that whether it's in the UK, which is basically the US. With an accent and a pinchant for tea I'm just kidding you. Soon it should be universal. Yeah, agreed. Unless you're saying, no, this only applies to American men. Right. Or they weren't these 100 American men. Right. Then it's not even studied. Yeah. The next one we have is plausible, not necessarily provable. And this is a big one, because I think we're talking about observational studies here. More than lab experiments. Right. Because with observational studies, you sit in a room and get asked 300 questions about something, and all these people get asked the same questions and then they pour over the data and they draw out their own observations. Right. And one of the very famously an observational study that led to false results found a correlation between having a type A personality and being prone to risk for heart attack. And for a long time, you know that the news outlets were like, oh, yes, of course, that makes total sense. Right? This study proved what we've all known all along. And then it came out that, no, actually what was going on was a well known anomaly where you have a 5% risk that chance will produce something that looks like a statistically significant correlation when it's not at all, when really it's just total chance. And science is aware of this, especially with observational studies, because the more questions you have, the more opportunity you have for that 5% chance to create a seemingly statistically significant correlation, when really it's not there. It was just random chance where if somebody else goes back and does the same study, they're not going to come up with the same results. But if a researcher, I would guess, willfully blind to that 5% chance, they will go ahead and produce the study and be like, no, it's true. Here's the results right here. Go ahead and report on it and make my career. Yeah, well, and they also might be looking for something. In fact, chances are they are it's not just some random study. And let's just see what we get if we ask a bunch of weird questions. It's like, hey, we're looking to try and prove something, most likely so that bader Meinhoff thing might come into play where you're kind of cherry picking data. Yes, that's a big problem. That kind of comes up. A lot of these are really kind of interrelated. Oh, totally. The other big thing that's unrelated is how the media reports on science these days. Yeah. You know, it's a big deal. Yeah. John Oliver just recently went off on this and NPR did a thing on it. That's great. Even like the researcher might say plausible, but it doesn't get portrayed that way. Oh, yeah. In the media. Sure. Remember that poor kid who thought he found the ancient Mayan city? The media just took it and ran with it. Yes, I think there was a lot of maybe or it's possible we need to go check, kind of thing. No, he discovered an ancient Mayan city never known before. Yeah. And let's put it in the headline. That's just kind of the way it is these days. Yes. You have to be able to sort through it. I guess it's what we're doing here, aren't we, Chuck? We're telling everybody how to sort through it. Or at the very least take scientific reporting with a grain of salt. Yes. Right. You don't necessarily have the time to go through and double that research and then check on that research. Right. So take it with a grain of salt. Yeah. Unsound samples. Here was a study that basically said how you lost your virginity is going to have a very large impact and play a role on how you feel about sex and experience sex for the rest of your life. Yeah, it's possible. Sure. It seems logical, so we'll just go with it. But when you only interview college students and you only interview heterosexual people, then you can't really say you've done a robust study, now can you? Plus, you also take out of the sample size or sample population anybody who reports having had a violent encounter, throw them out, that data out. Because that's not going to inform how you feel about sex. Right, exactly. You're just narrowing it down further and further and again cherry picking the data by throwing people out of your population sample that will throw off the data that you want. Yeah. And I've never heard of this acronym, Weird. And a lot of these studies are conducted by professors and academics. So a lot of times you got college students as your sample. And there's something called Weird western educated from industrialized rich and democratic countries. Right. Those are the participants in the studies study subject. But then they will say men. Well, what about the gay man in Africa? Right. You can ask him. So that's actually a really, really big deal. In 2010, the three researchers did a survey of a ton of social science and behavioral science studies found that 80% of them used Weird study participants. So basically it was college kids for 80% of these papers. And they surveyed a bunch of papers and they took it a little further and they said that people who fit into the Weird category only make up 12% of the world population, but they represent 80% of the population of these studies. And a college student, Chuck, in North America, Europe, Israel or Australia is 40 times more likely to be in a scientific study than anyone else on the planet. And they're basing psychology and behavioral sciences are basing their findings on everybody else based on this small tranche of humanity. And that's a big problem. It's extremely misleading. Yeah. And it's also a little insulting because what they're essentially saying is, this is who matters. Well, yeah. What's sad is this is who I am going to go to the trouble of recruiting for my study. It's just sheer laziness. And I'm sure a lot of them are like, well, I don't have the funding to do that. I guess I see that. But at the same time, I guarantee there's a tremendous amount of laziness involved. Yeah. Or maybe if you don't have the money, maybe don't do that study. Yeah. Is it that simple? I'm probably oversimplifying. I don't know. I'm sure we're going to hear from some people in academia about this one. We'll stop using Weird participants, or at the very least say this is heterosexual Dartmouth students. Yeah. This applies to them. Right. Not everybody in the world. Exactly 80% of these studies use those people as study participants, and they're not even emblematic of the rest of the human race. Like, college students are shown to see the world differently than other people around the world. So it's not like you can be like, well, it still works. You can still extrapolate. It's, like, flawed in every way, shape, and form. Right. Probably take a break. Yeah, let's take a break because you're getting a little hot under the collar. I love it, man. We'll be right back after this. All right, what's next, buddy? Very small sample sizes. Right? If you do a study with 20 mice, then you're not doing a good enough study. No. So they use this in the article. They use the idea of 10,000 smokers and 10,000 non smokers. Yeah. And they said, okay, if you have a population sample that size, that's not bad. It's a pretty good start. And you find that 50% of the smokers develop lung cancer, but only 5% of nonsmokers did, then your study has what's called a high power. Yeah. If you had something like ten smokers and ten nonsmokers, and two of the smokers develop lung cancer and one develop lung cancer as well, you have very little power, and you should have very little confidence in your findings. But regardless, it's still going to get reported if it's a sexy idea. Yeah, for sure. And because these are kind of overlapping in a lot of ways, I want to mention this guy, a scientist named Uruk Dernigal. He and his colleague Malcolm McLeod have been trying and there are a lot of scientists that are trying to clean this up because they know it's a problem. But he co wrote an article in Nature that's called Robust Research institutions must do their part for reproducibility. So this kind of ties back into the reproducing things, like we said earlier, and his whole idea is, you know what? Good funding. They should tie funding to good institutional practices. Like, you shouldn't get the money if you can't show that you're doing it right. Yeah, and he said that would just weed out a lot of stuff. Here's one staggering stat for reproducibility and small, simple size. Biomedical researchers for drug companies reported that only 25% of the papers that they published or even reproducible like an insider stat and doesn't matter. The drugs are still going to market. Yeah, that's a really good example of why this does matter to the average person. If you hear something like monkeys like to cuddle with one another because they are reminded of their mother study shows right. You could just be like, oh, that's great. I'm going to share that on the Internet. It doesn't really affect you in any way, but when there's studies being conducted that are creating drugs that could kill you or not treat you or that kind of thing. And it's attracting money and funding and that kind of stuff. That's harmful. Yeah, absolutely. I found another survey. Did you like that terrible study idea that it came up with? No monkeys? No. I like to cuddle 140 trainees at the MD. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Thank you, Houston, for being so kind to us. At a recent show, they found that nearly a third of these trainees felt pressure to support their mentors work, like to get ahead or not get fired. So that's another issue, is you've got these trainees or residents, and you have these mentors, and even if you disagree or don't think it's a great study, you're pressured into just going along with it. I could see that for sure. There seems to be a huge hierarchy in science. In the lab, you got the person who runs the lab. It's their lab. They can't go against them. Right. But there are people like Science and Nature to great journals are updating their guidelines right now. They're introducing checklists science hired statisticians to their panel of reviewing editors. Not just other peer reviewed. They actually hired numbers people specifically. I got you because that's a big process. That's a huge part of studies like this mind breaking statistical analysis that can be used for good or ill. And, I mean, I don't think the average scientists necessarily is a whiz at that, although it has to be part of training. Yeah, but not necessarily. And that's a different kind of beast altogether. Stats. We talked about it earlier. I took a stats class in college. Oh, man, I had so much trouble. That was awful at it. It's a special kind of is it even mad? Hell, yeah. I didn't get it. I passed it, though. I passed it because my professor took pity on me. Oh, that's nice. That Ulrich D is a big time crusader for his jam, making sure that science is good science. One of the things he crusades against is the idea of you remembering that virginity study where they just threw out anybody who had a violent encounter for their first sexual experience. Apparently that's a big deal with animal studies as well. If you're studying the effects of a drug or something. Like, there was this one in the article. If you're studying the effects of a stroke drug, and you've got a control group of mice that are taking the drug or that aren't taking the drug, and then a test group that are getting the drug, and then, like, three mice from the test group die. Even though they're on the stroke drug, they die of a massive stroke, and you just literally and figuratively throw them out of the study and don't include them in the results. That changes the data. And he's been on a peer review on a paper before. He's like, no, this doesn't pass peer review. You can't just throw out what happened to these three rodents? You started with ten. There's only seven reported in the end. What happened to those three? And how many of them just don't report the ten? Yeah. They're like, oh, we only started with seven. Well, I was about to say I get the urge. I don't get it, because it's not right. But I think what happens is you work so hard at something yeah. And you're like, how can I just walk away from two years of this? Because it didn't get a result. Okay. The point of real science, though yeah. You have to walk away from it. Well, you have to publish that. Yeah. And that's the other thing too. And I guarantee scientists will say, hey, man, try getting a negative paper published in a good journal these days. You don't want that kind of stuff. But part of it also is I don't think it's enough to just have to be published in, like, a journal. You want to make the news cycle as well. That makes it even better. Right. So I think there's a lot of factors involved, but ultimately, if you take all that stuff away, if you take the culture away from it, if you get negative results, you're supposed to publish that so that some other scientists can come along and be like, oh, somebody else already did this, using these methods that I was going to use. I'm not going to waste two years of my career because somebody else already did. Thank you, buddy, for saving me this time and trouble and effort to know that this does not work. You've proven this doesn't work. When you start to prove it does work, you actually proved it didn't work. That's part of science. Yes. I wish there wasn't a negative connotation to a negative result, because to me, the value is the same sure. As proving something does work as proving something doesn't work. Right. Again, it's just not as sexy. Yeah, but I'm not sexy either, so maybe that's why I get it. Here's one that I didn't know was a thing predatory publishing. I didn't know about it. Never heard of this. So here's the scenario. You're a doctor or scientist, and you get an email from a journal that says, hey, you got anything interesting for us? I've heard about your work. And you say, Well, I actually do. I have this study right here. They said, Cool, we'll publish it. You go, Great. My career is taking off. Then you get a bill that says, where's my three grand for publishing your article? And you're like, I don't owe you three grand. All right, give us two. And you're like, I can't even give you two. And if you fight them long enough, maybe they'll drop it and never work with you again. Or maybe it'll be like, we'll talk to you next quarter. Exactly. That's called predatory publishing, and I'm not sure how new it is maybe it's pretty new. Is it pretty new? But it's a thing now where you can pay essentially to get something published. Yes, you can. It's kind of like who's who in behavioral sciences kind of thing. Yeah. And apparently it's new because it's a result of open source academic journals, which a lot of people push for, including Aaron Schwartz, very famously, who took a bunch of academic articles and published them online and was prosecuted heavily for it. Persecuted, you could even say. Yeah, but the idea that science is behind this paywall, which is another great article from Price nomics, by the way, really just ticks a lot of people off. So they started to open source journals. Right. And as a result, predatory publishers came about and said, okay, yeah, let's make this free, but we need to make our money anyway, so we're going to charge the academic who wrote the study for publishing it. Well, yeah. And sometimes now it's just a flat out scam operation. Yeah, 100%. Right. There's this guy named Jeffrey Beale who is a research librarian. He is my new hero because he's truly like one of these dudes that has he's trying to make a difference, and he's not profiting from this, but he's spending a lot of time by creating a list of predatory publishers. Yeah, a significant list, too. Yeah. How many? 4000 of them right now. Yeah. Some of these companies flat out lie. Like they're literally based out of Pakistan or Nigeria, and they say, no, we're a New York publisher, so it's just a flat out scam. Or they lie about their review practices. They might not have any review practices. Right. And they straight up lie and say they do. There was one called Scientific Journals International out of Minnesota that he found out was just one guy, like, literally working out of his home, just lobbying for articles, charging to get them published, not reviewing anything, and just saying, I'm a journal. Yeah. I'm a scientific journal. Look at me. He shut it down, apparently, and tried to sell it. I think he was found out. And this other one, the International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications, they created an award and then gave it to itself and even modeled the award from an Australian TV award. Like the physical statue. Wow, that's fascinating. I didn't make you do that. I'm going to give ourselves yeah, let's the Best Podcast in the Universe award. I like that. It's going to look like the Oscar. Yeah, okay. The Oscar cross or the me. This other one, med. No publications actually confused the meaning of STM science, technology, and medicine. They thought it meant sports, technology, and medicine. No. Well, a lot of science journalists or scientists, too, but watch dogs like to send, like, gibberish articles really into those things to see if they publish them. And sometimes they do. Frequently they do. They sniff them off the case big time. How about that call back. It's been a while. It has been. It needs to be a T shirt. Should we take a break? Yeah. All right. We'll be back and finish up right after this. So, here's the big one. You ever heard the term, Follow the money? That's applicable to a lot of realms of society? Yeah. And most certainly in journals. If something looks hinky, just do a little investigating and see who's sponsoring their work. Well, especially if that person is like, no, everyone else is wrong. Climate change is not man made kind of thing. Sure, if you look at where their funding is coming from, you might be unsurprised to find that it's coming from people who would benefit from the idea that anthropogenic climate change isn't real. Yeah, well, we might as well talk about him. Okay. Willy soon. Yeah. Mr. Sue, is he a doctor? He's a physicist of some sort, yeah. All right, I'm just going to say Mr. Or Doctor Soon, because I'm not positive he is one of a few people on the planet Earth professionals that is right. Who deny human climate change human influence climate change, like you said. He said the fancier word for it, though. Anthropogenic. Yeah, it's a good word. And he works at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. So. Hey, he's with Harvard. He's got the cred. Right? Right. Turns out when you look into where he's getting his funding, he received $1.2 million over the past decade from Exxon Mobile, the Southern Company, the Coke, and the Koch brothers, their foundation, the Charles G. Coke foundation. Exxon stopped in 2010, stopped funding him. But the bulk of his money and his funding came I'm sorry, I forgot. The American Petroleum Institute came from people who clearly had a dog in this fight. How can you trust this? You know? Yeah, well, you trusted because there's a guy, and he has a PhD in aerospace engineering, by the way. All right? He's a doc. He works with this organization, the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which is a legitimate place. It doesn't get any funding from Harvard, but it gets a lot from NASA and from the Smithsonian. Well, and Harvard is very clear to point this out. When people ask them about Willy Soon, right? They're kind of like, well, here's the quote. Willyson is a Smithsonian staff researcher at Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The collaboration of the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Like, they just want to be real clear. Even though he uses a Harvard email address, he's not our employee. No, but again, he's getting lots of funding from NASA and lots of funding from the Smithsonian. This guy, if his scientific beliefs are what they are, and he's a smart guy, then I don't know about getting fired for saying, here's a paper on the idea that climate change is not human made. Yeah, he thinks it's the Sun's fault, but he doesn't reveal in any of his conflicts of interest. That should go at the end of the paper. He didn't reveal where his funding was coming from. Yeah. And I get the impression that in academia, if you are totally cool with everybody thinking like, you're a shell, you can get away with it. Right. Well, a lot of this stuff is not illegal. Even predatory publishing is not illegal, just unethical. Right. And if you're counting on people to police themselves with ethics, a lot of times it will disappoint you. The Heartland Institute gave Willie Soon a Courage Award for not caring about what other scientists think about. If you've heard the Heartland Institute, you might remember them. They're a conservative think tank. You might remember them in the 90s when they worked alongside Philip Morris to deny the risks of second hand smoke. Yeah, that's all chronicle in that book I've talked about merchants of doubt. Oh, really? A bunch of scientists, legitimate bonafide scientists who are, like, up for being bought by groups like that. It is sad. And the whole thing is they're saying, like, well, you can't say without beyond a shadow of a doubt, with absolute certainty that that's the case. And science is like, no, science doesn't do that. Science doesn't do absolute certainty. But the average person reading a newspaper sees that. Oh, you can't say with absolute certainty. Well, then maybe it isn't man made. Right. And then there's that doubt that the people just go and get the money for saying that, for writing papers about it. Yeah. Millions of dollars. Despicable yeah. It really is self reviewed. You've heard of peer review? We've talked about it quite a bit. Peer review is when you have a study and then one or more ideally, more of your peers reviews your study and says, you know what? You had best practices. You did it. Right. It was reproducible. You follow the scientific method. I'm going to give it my stamp of approval and put my name on it. Not literally or is it? I think so. It says who reviewed it. Yeah, I believe so in the journal when it's published, but not my name as the author of study. You know what I mean? Right. As a peer reviewer. Yeah, it's a peer reviewer, and that's a wonderful thing. But people have faked this and been their own peer reviewer, which is not how it works. No. Who is this guy? Well, I'm terrible at pronouncing Korean names, so all apologies, but I'm going to say nung in Moon. Nice. Dr. Moon. Yeah. Let's call him Dr. Moon. Okay. So Dr. Moon worked on natural medicine, I believe, and was submitting all these papers that were getting reviewed very quickly because apparently part of the process of peer review is to say, this paper is great. Can you recommend some people in your field that can review your paper? And Dr. Moon said. I sure can. Yeah. He was on fire. Let me go make up some people and make up some email addresses that actually come to my inbox and just posed as all of his own peer reviewers. He was lazy, though, is the thing. I don't know that he would have been found out if he hadn't been careless, I guess, because he was returning the reviews within like 24 hours. Sometimes a peer review of a real study should take, I would guess, weeks, if not months. Yeah. Like the publication schedule for the average study or paper, I don't think is a very quick thing. There's not a lot of quick turnaround. And this guy was like, 24 hours. Doctor Moon, I see your paper was reviewed and accepted by Doctor Mooney. I just added a Y to the end. Right. It seemed easy. Yeah. If you Google peer review fraud, you will be shocked at how often this happens and how many legit science publishers are having to retract studies. And it doesn't mean they're bad. They're getting duped as well. But there's one based in Berlin, 2015, had 64 retractions because of fraudulent reviews. Oh, wow. And they're just one publisher of many. Every publisher out there probably has been duped. Maybe not everyone. I'm surrounding that, but it's a big problem. We should do a study on it. I'll review it. It'll end up in the headlines now, right? Every single publisher duped says Chuck. And speaking of the headlines, Chuck, one of the problems with science reporting, or reading science reporting is that what you usually are hearing, especially if it's making a big splash, is what's called the initial findings, right. Somebody carried out a study and this is what they found. And it's amazing and mind blowing and it supports everything everyone's always known, but now there's a scientific study that says, yes, that's the case. And then if you wait a year or two when people follow up and reproduce the study and find that it's actually not the case, it doesn't get reported on, usually. Yeah. And sometimes the scientist or the publisher, they're doing it right, and they say initial findings. Right. And sometimes even the reporter will say initial findings. But we as people that ingest this stuff need to understand what that means. Right. And the fine print is always like, more study is needed, but knowing if it's something that you want to be true, you'll just say, hey, look at this study, right? It's brand new and they need to sell you for 20 more years. But hey, look what it says. Right? The more you start paying attention to this kind of thing, the more kind of disdain you have for that kind of just off hand, sensationalist science reporting, but you'll still get caught up in it. Like, every once in a while I'll catch myself, like, saying something to me like, oh, did you hear this? And then as I'm saying it out loud, I'm like, that's preposterous. Yeah, there's no way that's going to pan out to be true. I got clickbaited. I know we have to avoid this stuff. It's tough because we have our name on this podcast, but luckily we've given ourselves the back door of saying, hey, we make mistakes a lot. It's true, though. We're not experts. No, we're not scientists. And then finally we're going to finish up with the header on this one. It's a cool story. Yeah. And that's a big one, because it's not enough these days. And this all ties in with media and how we read things as people, but it's not enough just to have a study that might prove something. You have to wrap it up in a nice package and deliver. People get it in the news cycle and the cooler the better. Yes. It almost doesn't matter about the science as far as the media is concerned. They just want a good headline and a scientist who will say, yeah, that's cool. Here's what I found. Yep. This is going to change the world. Loch Ness monster is real. This is kind of ended up being depressing somehow. Yeah. Not somehow. Yeah, it's kind of depressing. I know. We'll figure it out, Chuck. Well, we do our best. I'll say that science will prevail. I hope so. If you want to know more about science and scientific studies and research fraud and all that kind of stuff, just type some random words into the search bar athouseofworks.com see what comes up. Yeah. And since I said random, it's time for listener mail. Oh, no. Oh, yeah. You know what it's time for? Administrative details. All right, Josh. Administrative details. If you're new to the show, you don't know what it is. That's a very clunky title for saying thank you to listeners who send us neat things. It is clunky and generic, and I've totally gotten used to it by now. Well, you're the one who made it up to be clunky and generic and it's stuck. Yeah. So people send us stuff from time to time, and it's just very kind of you to do so. Yes. And we like to give shout outs whether or not it's just out of the goodness of your heart or if you have a little small business that you're trying to plug. Either way, it's a sneaky way of getting it in there. Yeah, but I mean, I think we brought that on, didn't we say, like, if you have a small business and you send us something, we'll be happy to say something. Exactly. Thank you. All right, so let's get it going here. We got some coffee from 1000 Faces right here in Athens, Georgia. From Kayla. Yeah. Delicious. Yes, it was. We also got some other coffee, too, from Jonathan at Steamworks Coffee. He came up with a Josh and Chuck blend. Oh, yeah. It's pretty awesome. I believe it's available for sale, too. Yeah, the Josh and Chuck blend is dark and bitter. Jim Simmons He's a retired teacher who sent us some lovely handmade wooden bowls. Oh, yeah. And a very nice handwritten letter, which is always great. Thanks a lot, Jim. Let's see. Chamberlain sent us homemade pasta, including a delicious savory pumpkin fettuccine. It was very nice. Yum. Jgraft two F. Send us a postcard from the Great Wall of China. It's kind of neat. Sometimes we get those postcards from places we talked about. They're always like book where I am. Thanks for here. Let's see. The Hammer press team, they sent us a bunch of Mother's Day cards that are wonderful. Oh, those are really nice. Really great. You should check them out. The Hammer press team. Yeah. Misty, Billy and Jessica, they sent us a care package of a lot of things. There were some cookies, okay. Including one of my favorite, white chocolate dipped ritz and peanut butter cracker. Oh, yeah, man, I love those. Homemade, right? Yeah. And then some 70s macrame for you, along with 70s Macrame magazine, because you're obsessed with macrame. We have a macrame plant holder hanging from my microphone arm holding a coffee mug sent to us by Joe and Linda Hecht. Oh, that's right. And it has some pens in it. And they also sent us Misty, Billy and Jessica, a lovely little hand drawn picture of us with their family, which was so sweet. That's very awesome. We've said it before, we'll say it again. Huge. Thank you to Jim Ruane I believe that's how you say his name. And the Crown Royal people for sending us all the Crown Royal we are running low. Mark Silberg of the Rocky Mountain Institute sent us a book called Reinventing Fire. Oh, yeah. They're great out there. They know what they're talking about. And I think it's reinventing fire. Colon bold business solutions for the new energy era. Yeah, they're basically like green energy observers, but I think they're experts in all sectors of energy. But they have a focus on green energy, which is awesome. Yeah, they're pretty cool. John, whose wife makes delightfully, delicious doggy treats. Delightfully Delicious is the name of the company. There's no artificial colors or flavors. And they got sweet little Momo hooked on sweet potato dog treats. I thought you're going to say Hooked on the Junk. The Sweet Potato Junk. She's crazy cuckoo for sweet potatoes. Nice. Oh, man, that's good for a dog, too. It is very. Strat Johnson sent us his band's LP. And if you're in a band, your name is Strat. That's pretty cool. Sure. Diomea. Still, I think that was great. Yeah. I'm not sure if I pronounce it right. Diomaea. Frederick, this is long overdue. Frederick@the.com send us some awesome low profile cork iPhone cases and passport holders. And I was telling them, Jerry walks around with her iPhone in the cork holder, and it looks pretty sweet. So he said, oh, I'm glad to hear it. Joe and Holly Harper sent us some really cool 3D printed stuff you should know. Things like SYSK, like a little desk. Oh, like after Robert Indiana's love sculpture. Yeah, that's what I couldn't think of what that was from. Yeah, it's awesome. It's really neat. Like a bracelet made out of stuff. You should know. 3d car, like plastic. It's really neat. Yes, they did some good stuff. Thanks, Joe and Holly Harper for that. And then last for this one, we got a postcard from Yosemite National Park from Laura Jackson. So thanks a lot for that. Thanks to everybody who sends the stuff. It's nice to know we're thought of and we appreciate it. Yeah, we're going to finish up with another set on the next episode of Administrative Details. You got anything else? No, that's it. Oh, yeah. If you guys want to hang out with us on social media, you can go to SYSK podcast, on Twitter or on Instagram, you can hang out with us@facebook.com stuffyshow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us it's or home on the web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com." | ||
20c7f616-121b-11eb-85ed-878d422b0c9b | Short Stuff: Vantablack | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-vantablack | How black is vantablack? About as black as you could imagine. | How black is vantablack? About as black as you could imagine. | Wed, 27 Jan 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=27, tm_isdst=0) | 11881364 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck out over there, and Jerry's hanging around somewhere. And this is short stuff about Vanta Black, which is pretty cool. It's it is. And it's funny, I never really thought about variations of black until a couple of years ago when we finally were able to professionally renovate our house and not just have me do it poorly because I wanted my upstairs office to be black because it's got lots of windows and tons of light, and so it wouldn't have that dungeon like feel even if it were black. Right. And I didn't know how many blacks there were to choose from until I started looking. It was really interesting. Yeah, there's a ton. And actually, if you wanted to go super duper black, Chuck, it would have cost you a pretty penny had you been like, I'm going to paint this whole thing in Vanta black, because that's some expensive stuff. Yeah, I don't think you can buy it, can you? I don't know. I think there is something called VBX Two, which is a bit of a paint, like an actual paint that you could spray on, but I don't get the impression that you could buy it. And as a matter of fact, I guess if you would buy it or tried to buy it, you'd be running a foul of a license held by an artist named Anish Kapoor, who supposedly is the only person legally allowed to buy Vanta black. So who knows in this crazy world? But a lot of people are probably like, what are you guys talking about? What's so great about this vanna black that it would warn its own short stuff episode? And I say to those people, kick back and listen up, because Vanta Black is pretty interesting stuff. That's right. If you would be interested in having a really deep black, let's say one that absorbs, I don't know, 99.95% of light, then vantablack is for you. I remember when this came out, I think it was about six or seven years ago, from Surrey Nano Systems. They very much were proud of the fact that they set a world record for their vertically aligned nanotube array black, which is what it stands for as being the blackest black of all time. Right. And it's called vertically aligned Nanotube array black because it's actually made up of nanotubes. I was looking into I was like, well, how would that create a black pigment? And it's pretty interesting. These tubes are super tall, so they're vertically oriented, so they're standing up on end. And apparently the ratio between their width or diameter and their length is like one to 1 million. So for, say, every nanometer that they are around, they're a million nanometers tall, and they're really tightly crowded together. So there's like a billion nanotubes per square centimeter of whatever is painted van and black. And they actually capture light. The light goes into these nanotubes and can't find its way out and eventually just dissipates his heat. Which means that the reflectiveness of anything painted in vanta black or with nano carbon tubes, you just don't see anything. There's no ridges, there's no depth, there's no anything. It's just basically like you're looking at a void, and all you can see is the silhouette of that thing that's painted vanilla black, which makes it pretty awesome. All right, how about we take a break that's a great cliffhanger. And we'll talk a little bit about why anyone cares, because it is kind of cool 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. Did you ever see Spinal tap? I think you did, right? Yes. Do you remember the none more black joke? No. It's when they came out with their black album and they said, look at the cover. How black is that? Or something like that. And he goes, it could be none more black. And there's a very subtle joke in that scene which I didn't pick up on until about my 30th viewing, which is they have a record store release signing for their black album, and they're sitting there holding black sharpies awesome, but they don't pay attention to it. That's great. Those are usually the best kinds of jokes where you just have to pick up on it. It's pretty great. So we teased you with why would anyone care about having something that black? And the original purpose of Vantablack was for space travel or maybe an application on something to improve visibility of something very in the very far distance. So think, like, if you have a telescope or something coding the inside and maybe even outside of that with vanta black, it would absorb all of that light coming in that really just takes away any glare that you could think of. Right? Exactly. So there's like a lot of scientific applications to it. But if you say, like, the black is black, that doesn't really let light escape. It tends to also capture the attention of artists and designers, of course. And designers qualify as artists, but we like to separate them out here or there. And I just did. And in fact, some car designers from BMW said, hey, we want to use Vanta Black to basically paint a BMW x six so that we can look at the silhouettes and not have to worry about any kind of glare or anything like that. They basically used it. I think they really did it as a publicity stunt. Sure. They ostensibly did it so that they could study the shapes of the cars without being distracted by glare or reflection in there. And if you look at this BMW x Six, it is pretty cool to look at. It's awesome. And I'm not even a car guy, but I looked at it and I was like, that's pretty sweet. Yeah, because, again, when you look at something like this head on, it's letting such a little amount of light escape that there's no perspective, any angles or anything in it. It's just the silhouette of it, ideally. So it is pretty cool to look at. But I saw a watch by H Moser and company. They released a $75,000 Vanta Black watch the minute, and our hands are just hovering in the middle of this chasm, this void. That's the watch face, which has been painted van black. That's pretty cool. It's very cool to see, as a matter of fact. So it's really hard to come by, but every once in a while, people use it to pretty great effect. I'll spring for a slide whistle for you. You're not getting that watch. Okay. All right. For now. Give us a few more years, hopefully. But I did research and get you the best slide whistle there is. It's a good slide whistle, and I will eventually break. Now I know we're going to hear it. I like building the suspense. Yeah, that's where showman, if anything, for that BMW, though, they couldn't use the original vantablack. They had to use different arrangements of the carbon nanotubes to even get something that you could apply as, like, a car paint. So they had to kind of rearrange things a little bit and also something that doesn't have to be grown in a CBD reactor, which is problematic if you want to paint a car. They eventually did come up with that. And like you said, the thing looks really nice. And it's kind of like when you get a safe place to look this thing up, you really need to put your eyes on it to kind of see what you mean. But it is interesting to see a car. Obviously, you see a car, they use words like it disappears and it's invisible. And it's not invisible, but the details are a bit invisible. Yeah, and, I mean, I don't know if we said it or not, but the original Vanta Black was clocked in at absorbing 99.95% of visible light. Yeah, we led with that. Oh, we did? Okay. I'm sorry. I didn't catch that. So that was kind of like the trend that was there, the benchmark that was set. But apparently some other people have said we can do better than that. And I guess in September of 2019, Chuck, a group from MIT did just that. They came up with a type of black that's actually blacker than Vanta Black, and it uses the same technology of carbon nanotubes, and it captures 99, 95% of visible light, which makes it officially blacker than Vanta Black. And like I was saying, this kind of stuff captures the attention of artists and designers. And there was an artist named what was her name? She's a German artist named Deemut. R-E-B-E? Did I say that correctly? I might say streba, but I don't know. It's way better. She took a diamond, a $2 million diamond, and had it coated with this new black or black. So it's like a diamond void. It's just amazing stuff to see. It just takes over this thing and basically plunges it into a black hole no matter what you coat it with. Yeah. And if you are redoing your house and you want to have a black office like me, I chose one that now that I look at it, it definitely looks black. But you could argue that there's a little bit of gray to it. If you do want something super black, though, there's an artist named Stewart Simple, S-E-M-P-L-E that made two matte black acrylic paints, black 2.0 and Black 3.0, which are apparently really black. Yeah, they are. I mentioned earlier the artist Anish Kapoor. Well, Anishe Kapoor and Stewart Simple are in an art war, the good old fashioned art showdown, because Stewart simply is not very happy that Anish Kapoor has the market cornered legally on Vanta Black. So Stewart simply makes his own pigments and sells them. And if you go by them, you went and bought a tube of this black three auto today. Yeah. And in it, when you're buying it, you have to say, I affirm that I'm not a niche Kapoor, that I'm not an associate of a niche kippur. This is not going to get into the hands of a niche kippur. I'm not buying it for him. You have to, like, click that box that says all that before you can actually purchase the stuff, which is pretty great. And I was like, anish Kapoor. Sounds kind of familiar. And it turns out we've actually seen his work, you and I. I don't think you and I have ever seen his work together at the Hirshhorn Museum in DC. And he has these giant eggs, and the inside is painted Vanta Black, and it's one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life, because it really is. Like you're looking into a black hole. Like, if you stuck your hand in, it would just keep going into another dimension, is what it looks like. That's awesome. It really is. I think that the Stewart simple Anish Kapur feud should warrant its own short stuff one day. And let's hope it doesn't end in bloodshed. Yes. Well, since we hoped against bloodshed, I think that means we've reached the end of short stuff, don't you, Chuck? Does that mean we're out short stuff? Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
86f0a9b2-3b0e-11eb-9699-4b0e17895b70 | Research Bias: Sort It Out, Science | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/research-bias-sort-it-out-science | There’s a sticky issue scientists have to deal with – science is carried out by humans. We humans have flaws (and how) and they can end up in our work. Fortunately, science is waking up to research bias. In the meantime, here’s what to look out for. | There’s a sticky issue scientists have to deal with – science is carried out by humans. We humans have flaws (and how) and they can end up in our work. Fortunately, science is waking up to research bias. In the meantime, here’s what to look out for. | Tue, 05 Oct 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=278, tm_isdst=0) | 50950565 | 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. Jerry's back, everybody, looking well rested and sunkiss and everything. And this is stuff you should know. She's like a beautiful, juicy orange. That's right. That's right, Chuck. That's a really apt description. Ready to be squeezed. I wish I could squeeze her, but we're still not squeezing. No, not in this pandemic. Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind? No. No squeezing. Yeah, even Robert Plant wouldn't let you anywhere near him. Okay, Chuck, figure out that joke. Robert De squeeze my lemon. The lemons and no. Till the juice runs down my leg. Yes. That's the lemon song, right? No, I don't think so. I think it is. I don't think it is. Okay. I don't think it is the Lemon Song, man. I think it's a whole lot of love. It's a whole lot of love. All right. It's maybe the dirtiest thing that was ever said in, like, a Top Ten song. Okay, regardless, I'll just let the email stick here of this. I really think no. The lemon song is love those lemon. Right now. The Lemon Song is all about how you have friends like you want to have friends, and friends are good to have. Okay, yeah. I may be all wrong. No, I think it's all odd love. Yeah, it is. I'm 100% sure, buddy. All right, well, I encourage you not to Google the lyrics, then. Well, we could ask our good friend and Stuff You Should Know, writer Ed grabandowski the grabster. Wow, look at that segue. Because he is in a band and has been for a while. We've mentioned it before space Lord, which has just a super cool Zeppelin esque sound to them. And they just they cover some Zeppelin, too. They do, here and there. And they just released a new single, which you can find on Bang Camp by searching space Lord. Not the Space Lords. No, not Vinny and the Space Lords. Yeah, Space Lord. Just look for Space Lord with some cool graphics and, you know, that's it. You'll know, it's the graphster. Yeah. Good stuff. We also have a game out that Trivial Pursue made. Yes, we should plug our own stuff every now and then. We just did. Yes, it is a co branded game with Trivial Pursuit from Hasbro, and it is not a Trivial Pursuit game that you are used to. It is a stuff you should know game that Trivial Pursuit was happy to co brand with. So just what I don't want is emails that are like, guys, this is a Trivial Pursuit. This is some other different game. You're always worried about the emails, aren't you? Just ignore them. Let them roll off my back. I'm disappointed in you guys for this. I haven't even listened to the episode, but I'm disappointed about this. I just got one of those. Did you see that? It just rolls off your back. Yeah, those are always great. I didn't listen, but here's what was wrong. I read that person back, actually. I was like, we actually kind of did exactly what you hoped we would do. And they're like, oh, sorry for being presumptuous. Anyway, all is forgiven. Yeah. So we're talking today about bias. Chuck and I want to set the scene a little bit because one of the things that I'm always harping about is, like, the death of expertise, right? Oh, sure. And it's a real problem. Like this idea that science can't be trusted. That people who go and spend a decade or more learning about a specific thing that they go out and become an expert in. Or that's their profession. That's their training. That those people. What they have to say is basically meaningless. Or that it's no better than somebody on the Internet's opinion about that specific subject. That that person spent ten or twelve years being trained to be an expert in. That kind of stuff, to me, is, like, super dangerous. There's an erosion of something, and it's an erosion of intelligence to start with, but it's also an erosion of just believing in facts and knowing that you're not being taken for a ride or hustled. It is a huge, enormous problem that we're just beginning to wake up to, and it's still unfolding. It's not like it happened, and now we're reeling from it. It's still happening in real time, and it is a massive, huge issue. One of the biggest issues that humanity faces, I think, because it encompasses so many other large issues, like climate change, existential risks, the pandemic politics, all of them kind of fall under this erosion of belief and facts and that there are people out there who know more than you do. It's a big problem. Yeah. Imagine being someone who studied and researched something intensely for ten or 15 years when presenting facts to be met with. I don't know about that. That's a response I hear a lot in the south. Yes. Or that they saw something on YouTube that flatly contradicts that. And it doesn't matter. What you just said is ridiculous that somebody posted something on YouTube and then that has as much weight as what somebody who spent ten or twelve years studying this very thing has to say about it. Like, knows exactly what they're talking about, has to say about it. It's maddening. Yeah. There's something about people from the south in general, I think, that are in this group that I have literally heard that response from a lot of different people when I've been like, oh, no, here are the facts, actually. And then when presented with something that they can't refute, they say, I don't know about that. That's it. That's the end of the conversation. That's different than the people I've encountered. The people I encountered, like, their brow furrows and they start pointing fingers and their tone goes up. Are you hanging out at the country club or something? I think it's different types of people. There's ignorance and then there's also people that actually think they're better informed that will fire back with YouTube clips. Right? So the reason I brought that up is because one of the reasons that that is being allowed to exist. That that does exist. I think it's a reaction to something else that's going on simultaneously. Which is there are a lot of experts out there who are performing really sloppy science. Sometimes outright fraudulent science. And they're frittering away whatever faith the general public or society has in their expertise and in their profession. And there are a ton of scientists out there. I would say the vast majority by far of scientists are legitimate, upstanding, upright, dedicants to science, right? That's where they place their that's where they hang their hat, it's where their heart is. That's what they believe in and that's what they work to support. But science has kind of a problem Chuck. In that it's allowing way too much for bias. Which is what we're going to talk about. To creep into science and undermine science and basically produce papers that are just useless and trash and there's a whole lot of reasons for it. But it's something that needs to be addressed if we're ever going to get back on a footing with a faith in experts and expertise and just facts. That there are such things as objective facts. Yeah. I mean, a lot of times it's financially related, whether it's a lack of funding, a desire for more funding, a desire just to keep your lab running and people paid on staff, which all this stuff is understandable. You want to keep doing this work, but you can't let that get in the way. It's like in Rushmore at the end when Margaret Yang faked the results of that science experiment because she didn't want it to be wrong. I don't remember that part. Was that like a deleted scene? No, it was in the end when they meet up and I think he's flying the kite with Dirk and she's talking about her science fair project and he was really impressed with it, and she was like, I fake the results. And the reason why is because she didn't want to be wrong. And I think a lot of times people will get into a certain body of research or data, too, because they want to prove a certain thing, and if they can't, it might be really hard to live with that. So that weighs into it. Money for Personal gain, advancing your Career, publisher, parish, that whole thing. Like, we're going to talk about all this, but there are a lot of reasons that it's been allowed to creep in. But all of it is at the disservice of the fundamentals of what they base their careers on to begin with. Yeah, it's at the disservice of science itself. Right. Because the whole point of science and then scientific publishing, the whole publishing industry is to basically create a hypothesis, test your hypothesis and then share the results with the world. And that's ideally what would happen, because you're building this body of scientific knowledge. But money and corporate interests and academic publishing have all kind of come in and taken control of this whole thing. And as a result, a lot of the stuff that gets published are trash papers that shouldn't be published. A lot of the really good papers that don't come up with sexy results don't get published. And then, like you said, people using science for personal gain. There are a very small cadre of thoroughly evil people who are willing to use their scientific credentials to create doubt in the general public to prevent people from understanding that climate change is real for 20 years, or that fossil fuels actually do contribute to anthropogenic climate change. But what we're mainly focusing on is like, bias in the sense that people carrying out studies are human beings and human beings are flawed. We're just flawed and we bring those flaws to our studies. And that you really have to work hard at rooting those flaws and those biases out to produce a really good, thorough scientific study with good, reliable results that can be reproduced by anybody using the same methods. And that science is just starting to wake up to the idea that it is really biased and it needs to take these into account in order to progress forward from the point that it's at right now, which is tenuous, I think perhaps more tenuous than ever the point that science is at. I think so science isn't going away. It's not going anywhere. It's probably the greatest, of course, humans have ever come up with. Right? No, it's not going anywhere. But it is a terrible position that it's in and it's going to take some genuine leadership in the scientific community from a bunch of different quarters and a bunch of different fields to basically step up and be like, guys, this is really bad and we need to change it now. And a lot of people need to be called out. And science typically shies away from naming names and calling out by name fraudulent scientists because scientists seem to like to suppose the best in people, which is not always the case, right. And having said all of this, we can root out every bias and really clean up the scientific publishing community 100%. And there's still a certain set of people in this country and in the world who that wouldn't matter to and would still shut down facts because it doesn't fit their narrative for sure. But they've always been there. Sure. Right. And they're always going to be there. It's just contrarians. You can call them free thinkers, you can call them stubborn, you can call them purposefully ignorant. Who knows? They're always going to exist. The problem that this crisis that science finds itself in right now is that it's allowed that population to grow and grow, and like, people who otherwise didn't ever really question science have been allowed to kind of trickle into that fold, and that those are the people that we should be worried about, the ones who would know better if they believed in science again. Right. And our way into this is to talk about different kinds of biases in true stuff. You should know fashion a top ten that is not a top ten. That's exactly right. We ate into at least three in this intro and hopefully shining a light on some of this stuff. People at least be more aware of different biases. Well, yeah, the first one is good old confirmation bias. These aren't ranked because confirmation bias would probably be number one as far as people's awareness of it. But there are different examples that people use for confirmation bias. And I kind of enjoyed the one from the House of Works article, even though it was from after X rays were discovered in Germany, there was a French scientist named Renee Blonde. Yeah. He looked at X rays. He said moyo's. Well, who said I see n rays? I've discovered Nrays. And everyone's like, what's an N. Ray? He said, well, it's like a corona when electricity discharges from a crystal and you can only see it in your peripheral vision. And American Robert Wood laid the wood and said, I'm going to come to your lab and check this out and secretly remove the crystals during one of the experiments. And Blonde lot still saw these in rays. And so that's confirmation bias. He wanted to see those in rays. And then later, even though it was disproved, other French scientists supposedly published papers or published papers based on their research because they wanted it to be true. So that's what confirmation bias is, when you're starting out with a hypothesis that is going to shape the methodology of your study to confirm it. Right. And then it can also occur where you're interpreting info to fit your hypothesis. So you're seeking out stuff that supports your hypothesis and then the stuff that's just there in front of you, the results that are there in front of you. Like, this thing proves that those narratives actually exist, or this phenomenon cannot be due to anything but N rays. Therefore N rays exist. All this confirmation bias. And like you said, that's number one, because that's not just a scientific bias. Every human uses confirmation bias, and that it's. Twofold, we avoid contradictory information because we don't like to be wrong, and we find information that confirms our point of view because we like to be right. That's confirmation bias, and it's everywhere among everyone. That's right. Although I will say, I know it happens a lot politically, but myself and the people that I congregate with question their own leaders as much as they do leaders from the other parties. Oh, that's good. It's very good to do. There shouldn't be sacred cabs in politics. That's a bad jam. Well, no, and it's like I've always been at the forefront of calling out my own party's wrongs and saying, no, you need to do better than that. Whereas I see a lot of other people in other situations truly bury and ignore those things because they just don't want to face that. Yeah. And it's not even like, I don't want to face it. It just doesn't fit their world view, so they just don't include it. It just gets tossed out. But the point is, it's not an active process, necessarily. Right. I think we should probably take our first break. I think so, too. Chuck all right, we'll be right back and talk about sampling bias right after this. All right, Chuck, we're back. And we're coming back with something called sampling bias, which is, it turns out, a subtype of a larger thing called selection bias. One other thing we should say we kind of got into it before I could say this. There are different stages in a study where bias can occur. It can happen in, like, the planning, the prestudy phase, and it can happen during the actual study, and then it can happen after the study as well. And so when we're talking about any kind of selection bias, including sampling bias, this is pre study bias, where when you're actually setting up the study, this bias is where the bias is going to be. Yeah. And you know what? I think it also bears saying that bias is you have to work really hard to avoid it, because it's almost like a disease that's always trying to get involved, and it's not like, just do better, everybody and quit being biased. It's way more complicated than that, because it is always knocking at the door, like you said, in all three phases, trying to sneak in there. And it takes a lot of work in all three phases to avoid it. So I don't want it to come across as easy as us just saying, like, you shouldn't do that. Stop it. No, but the first step is to recognizing that there's a lot of bias and different kinds of bias that are just sitting there waiting for a scientist. And then if you start admitting that it's there, you can start being on the lookout for it, and you can start adjusting for it. And then other people who read your papers or hear read news articles about your papers can be on the lookout for that kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. Sampling bias is your sample set, not being accurate and a good representation of the whole. A lot of times you'll find this in either studies that are really small scale because you don't have a large sample and you don't have the kind of money near you. Like, maybe you work for university. So you work with university students as your first sample set who are not indicative of anything but people 18 to 21 years old or so. Now, remember we talked about weird Western educated, industrialized rich, and Democrats. Yeah, that's exactly the thing. It's a decent place to start if you don't have much money and you want to get the ball rolling. It's not like, oh, you shouldn't do university studies at all using students. But those findings definitely don't represent the wider nation, and it needs to grow and get more funding if you want to actually have a legitimate claim to something. Another way that sampling bias can come up is from the group that you're recruiting from. Like, if you're doing a strictly online survey but you're trying to apply your findings to the wider society, that's just not going to happen because there's so many people who aren't Internet savvy enough to take an Internet survey. Like, by nature, you are a little savvier than the average person if you're hanging out on the Internet and taking a survey. And then also kind of tangential that I like to tell myself that at least. And then tangential that is something called self selection bias. Which is where the people who say. Let's say you're doing a study on wellness and what eating tuna can do for your health. People who are interested in wellness and health are going to be much more likely to volunteer for that study than people who couldn't care less about health and have no desire whatsoever to further science's understanding of what makes you healthy. So you would have to go out and find those people and recruit them rather than just relying on the people who volunteered based on the flyer you put up in the studio. Right. Or study all financial demographics or pull all financial demographics rather than just and sometimes it's a methodology in which they do try and recruit people, steers them in that direction, unknowingly that I know. In the article, they talked about the 1936 presidential campaign with Roosevelt and Republican Alf Landen. They were doing polling with like, country clubs, rosters and people who drove cars and stuff. At the time, that was kind of a luxury. So it was all out of whack. Everyone's like, Landon's going to win in a landslide. It's because you just kind of basically stuck your polling to I don't know about wealthy individuals, but people who are a little more well off. And I think we talked about that in our polling episode. That fiasco with polling. I also saw one more too, that I want to mention because it has a really great anecdote attached to it. It's called survivorship bias, where when you're studying something, say like business or something, you're probably going to just be looking at the extent businesses, the businesses that have survived 20 years, 30 years, 50 years or something like that, and you're not taking into account all of the failures. So when you put together, like, a prognosis for business in America, it might have a sunnier outlook than it should because all you're looking at are the ones that manage to survive and thrive. And that's survivorship bias. And did you see that anecdote about World War II fighter pilots? It was actually pretty funny because they studied planes that had been fired upon but managed to get back safely. And they were like, well, let's look at all these different bullet holes and where this plane was hit, and let's beef up all those areas on the body. And a mathematician named Abraham Wald said, no, those are the places where they got shot and did okay. What you should really do is find these planes that actually went down and beef up those sections of the plane. Exactly. And that's survivorship bias. It's failing to take into account the failures that have to do with what you're trying to study. What about channeling bias? Channeling bias is another kind of selection bias. Did you get this one? It wasn't the best example of channeling bias. Yeah, I got it. Basically. All right. Did you not get it? I got it, but it took a lot of work before I finally did. Well, it's basically when, let's say you have a patient and their degree of illness might influence what group they're put into. So if a doctor, if a surgeon was trying to study outcomes of a particular surgery because they're surgeons and they want to help people out, they may perform that surgery on maybe younger, healthier people who might have better outcomes than someone who is in a different higher age group. Right. And the article kind of ends it there. And I was like, so what's the problem? And I finally found this example where it says, like, okay, let's say you're studying a new heartburn medicine or something, or something to treat like gerd. And it's new, it's hardcore, it's cutting edge. And the people who are likeliest to get this new hardcore an acid are the ones who are probably in worse shape, right? So say they're on the verge of going to the Er anyway. Well, if you look back at all of the people who've ever been prescribed this new hardcore antacid, you're going to see, like, a lot of them ended up in the Er, even though it had nothing to do with this hardcore ant acid. And then similarly, the people who have so gerd, it's not particularly bad. They'll probably be prescribed the old drug, the standby that everybody knows is fine, that's going to work. So if you compare the old drug and the new drug, it looks like the old drug is super safe, but the new drug will put you into the Er, whereas that's channeling you've channeled different people with different prognoses into different groups, and they're kind of pitted against each other in an effort to obscure the truth. If you wanted to really know the genuine health outcomes for the Antid, you would have to give it to people with not so bad gerd and people with really bad gerd and see what happens. See if the Er visits continue for people who wouldn't otherwise be going to the Er, because you want to find the outcome for everyone, right? And not just for you. Like, if you're debating surgery, you're like, oh, well, it shows really good outcomes. You're like, well, yeah, but who are they operating on? Right? Yes. So I would like to invite anyone who got what I was saying or got channeling because of what I was saying. I invite you to email and let me know. I'm doing, like, a little bit of surveys here and I'd like to know if I confuse things more or make it more understandable. Well, I know it's funny either way. I got that part. I'm just trying to figure out if it's understandable. But here with your methodology, talking about the stuff you should know listener who by nature is smarter than your average bear. Well, I'm not going to publish it, I'm going to file draw it either way. Oh, what a teaser question. Order bias is the next one. That is. And this is mainly, obviously, when you're just doing polling and stuff, or like an online survey, or it could be just asking people a set of questions, like in a social science research set. And the way you order things can affect the outcome. And this is the thing at all, like, everything from the brain's tendency to organize information into patterns to the brain simply paying attention more and being more interested early on. I know there was one. The General Social Survey was a big long term study of American attitudes, and in 1984, they were asked to identify the three most important qualities for a child to have and they were given a list of these qualities. Honesty was just listed higher on the list when it was it was picked 66% of the time. When it was further down on the list, it's 48% important. And that's simply because people are just reading this list. And then by the time they got down three quarters of the way through the list, they started thinking about what they're going to have for dinner. People get pooped when you're giving them lists of stuff, or you can prime people and get them all sort of worked up. Like, if you have a question, like, during the Trump administration, how mad were you at that guy about stuff he did? And you're like, super mad. And then you're like, well, how did you feel generally about how your life was affected during his administration? You might say it was awful. Right. Whereas if they hadn't asked that first question, they were just like, what was your life, like, from 2000, I am blocking out the dates 2016 to 2020, you might say, you know, it was okay. So I ate a lot of sandwiches just over those four years, right? Yeah. Like you said, that's priming, which is a big it's a big thing that you have to worry about when you're doing any kind of survey. So there's some of the ways that you can combat that. You can randomize your question order. Sometimes you'll have a survey where one question is predicated on a previous question. So one thing you might want to do is ask that set of questions in a few different ways so that you can kind of maybe compare the answers to all three, add them up and divide them by three. And there's your average answer kind of thing. There's a lot of things you can do to kind of, I guess, manipulate to de manipulate your respondent when you're doing a survey like that. Manipulate to dean manipulate. Look it up. You won't find anything on it, but you could look it up still. Oh, it's a Roxy Music album. Interesting. Wow. Chuck. Wow. Nice work. Yeah, that was great. What's next? So with question order bias, we've entered the during the study kind of bias. This is why you're actually conducting the study. And so is interviewer bias an interviewer bias? It's kind of like, well, question order bias has to do more with the study design, but it's a bias that emerges during the study. Interviewer bias just straight up, is in the middle of the study, and it has to do with the person actually asking the questions in an interview. It can also, I think, apply to somebody conducting a clinical trial on a drug. If they know whether somebody is getting placebo or not, it might affect their behavior. But ultimately what it is is the person who's wearing the white lab coat is influencing the outcome of the study just through their behavior, through their tone of voice, through the way that they're asking a question. Sometimes it can be really overt. And let's say, like, a super devout Christian is doing a study on what part of the population believes Jesus saves. And they might be like, do you think Jesus saves? Is the question. Don't you? Like it seems like it. That kind of thing would be a pretty extreme example, but it's sometimes how you understand things is in the absurdity. Yes. I thought this example in the House of Works article was kind of funny. It was about just like a medical questionnaire where the interviewer knows that the subject has a disease that they're talking about, and they may probe more intensely for the known risk factors. And they gave smoking as an example, and it said they may say something like, are you sure you've never smoked? Never. Not even 1 minute. If I heard that coming from a researcher, even without knowing a lot about. This would say, what kind of a researcher are you? Seems like you're looking for an answer. You should say you are ethically compromised, or even facial expressions or body language. All that stuff weighs in. I don't know why. Brow why don't they just have the robots? Alexa or Google or Siri or somebody ask them? Well, that's one good thing about something like an Internet survey is it's just questions. And as long as you design the questions and you randomize their presentation, it's going to be fairly helpful in that respect. But then it's got phone pitfalls and pratfalls. You can attract a lot of people who are just taking it to mess with you. Right. There's a lot of problems with all of it. But again, if you're aware of all the problems, you can plan for them. And then even if you can't plan for them or control them, you can write about it in the actual study and be like, I remember running across studies before where they're basically like there was a kind of bias that we couldn't control for, so we can't really say whether it affected the outcome or not. And I thought, wow, this is really refreshing and even daring. Kind of like, I was thrilled. But you don't see that very often. But from what I understand, is the direction that science is going toward now. Well, and the reason you don't see that is something we'll talk about is what actually ends up getting published. It may be less likely to get published if they're like, hey, you know what, dude? You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I know. So let's do recall and acquiescence bias because they're very much related, and then we'll take a break. That's our plan. What do you think of it? Everyone says, Sounds good to me. All right. So this is also during study, and this is in the very much the way that an interviewer can influence the outcome. The participant can actually influence the outcome, too, especially if they're being asked questions or they're being asked to self report. There's a couple of ways that us just being humans can foul up the works on the findings of the study. The first is recall bias. Yes. This is when you're obviously you're trying to recall something from the past, and it's amazing what might jump out at you from your past when probed with a certain question, certain correlations that really have nothing to do with it. But you may be like, oh, well, you know what? Now that I think back, I remember around that time I was watching a lot of Dancing with the Stars. I kind of binge that show. So maybe that's why I had homicidal tendencies. I don't think you need a study to prove that. That's just intuition. And if enough people do that, especially if there's something out, kind of in like the zeitgeist about that, how people who watch too much dancing the Stars want to kill other people, a number of your participants might recall that thing, whereas other people who don't watch Dancing with the Stars aren't going to recall that. In the same way that survivorship bias influences that, those people who don't have that memory to recall that memory can't possibly be included in the study results, which means that Dancing with the Stars is going to kind of percolate to the top as like a major risk factor in homicidal tendencies. Right. That's not good. You don't want Dancing with the Stars unfairly canceled. You want it to be canceled because it is terrible. I've never seen it. I'm sure it's great if you're into dancing. I haven't either, but watch. We're going to be asked to be on oh, my God. And they'd have to change the name of the show to Dancing with the Mid Level Internet famous, right? Exactly. Wow. Dust off my jazz shoes. It would be us and Chocolate Rain. I love that guy. Tejende is his name? Yeah, we actually met him that time, remember? It was great, man. Another thing, Chuck, that people that has to do with recall bias is that we just tend to have faultier memories with stuff that makes us look bad, like, say, unhealthy habits. Oh, sure. So if you're doing a study on junk food and health outcomes and you interview a bunch of people who are in terrible health and all of them are like, oh, I only ate, like, cheese. It's like once in a blue moon, or something like that, and the researcher writes out, once in blue moon cheese, the results of the study are going to suggest that it takes just a very small amount of cheese it's to put you in the hospital with long term chronic health conditions. Right. And that is a problem with recall bias. It's the participants affecting it in this case because they just aren't paying attention or aren't really thinking about, no, you've eaten a lot of cheese and it takes a lot of cheeses to put you in the hospital. Not a very little amount. It's not the best example, but it kind of gets the point across, I think. Now, is this part of acquiescence bias? No, that was the end of recall bias. Acquiescence bias, it's different, but it's certainly related. Both of them kind of fall under an umbrella of participant bias. Yeah. And acquiescence bias, I feel like there's the opposite, too. I just don't know if they have a name. Because acquiescence bias is generally like people want to be agreeable and they want to answer in the affirmative, and they want to especially they found if you are maybe less educated, you might be more willing to just go along with something and say, yeah, sure, yeah. To maybe appear smarter or just to be more agreeable. I do think it's the opposite can happen, too, especially with political research and social studies in that I think there are also people that are like, oh, you're from the what? Well, yeah, sure. I'd love to be interviewed. And then they go into it with sort of opposite mentality where they're completely disagreeable no matter what anyone says or asks. Yeah, I didn't run across that, but I'm absolutely sure that is a bias out there. But you can avoid these by doing it more smartly, right? More smartly, yeah. There's ways that you can frame your questions. People don't like to admit that they didn't actually vote for American democracy. Some people so instead of saying there was a pew suggestion pew, pew, pew. Where they said rather than saying, like, did you vote in the last election? A lot of people who didn't vote are going to be like, sure, yeah, of course. Why would you ask that? Instead, you would phrase it as like, in the 2012 presidential election, did things come up that prevented you from voting, or were you able to vote? Right. And you would probably actually want to train your researcher to use that same intonation to make it seem casual. Either way, you want to give the person a sense of comfort that they're not being judged, no matter how they answer. Give them a back door. That's a good way to get away around acquiescence bias. Yes, absolutely. The old backdoor policy. That's right. Where you can squeeze a lemon, right? All right. Are we taking a break? I think we're mandated by the FCC to do that after that joke. All right, well, we'll be back and finish up with our final two biases right after this. Also, I want to apologize to all the parents who listen with their six year olds these days. My daughter is six. She doesn't care about what we do. That's great. So it's still just flying overhead, right? I mean, she doesn't even listen. She likes movie crush a little bit. Well, some kids that are sick listen. And a shout out to all of you guys listen. No, whenever I see that, whenever someone writes in that says their kid my daughter's age actually listens, I'm like, really? She does. My daughter, she loves it, right? Yeah. And she voted in the last election, too. My daughter likes to watch videos of kids playing with toys on YouTube. Kids. Is she into that now? Those are the worst videos I'm starting to get on her now with just in terms of taste. I'm like, hey, you can watch something, but watch something with a story, that's good. It's like, this is garbage chips. She goes, I like it. I could totally see you're saying it just like that. Defiant and happy. That was a great impression. All right. Publication bias is one we kind of poked around it earlier a little bit with the whole publisher perish mentality. Can I add something more to that real quick before we get into publication bias? Sure. You don't mind? Add something. To what? To just talking about publication in general. Oh, yeah. So I don't think that it's fully grasped by most people. It certainly wasn't by me until really diving into this, that the academic publishing industry has a stranglehold on science right now in a very similar effect that 24 Hours cable news had on journalism to where it was like it became this voracious beast that was willing to just spit out money constantly, feed it in exchange for you, feed it. Give me more stories, give me more, give me more pundits. That was the rise of pundits. Pundits didn't really exist prior to that. They just hung out on the editorial pages of newspapers. And then 24 Hours News came along, and there's not possibly enough news stories, like good news stories to keep going for 24 hours. So you have to talk about the news stories and analyze them, and then you start getting into who's wrong and all that stuff. The publishing industry is very much like that now, where it's this beast that must be fed. And so there can't possibly be that many high quality scientific papers. So scientific papers have just kind of dipped down in quality. And then one of the other things that the publishing industry has done is said we really like studies that have results, they're called positive results, where it turned out that you found a correlation between something or the compound you tried on that tumor, shrunk the tumor. This is what we're interested in, the whole furthering of science with positive and negative outcomes, just to say this did work. This doesn't work. Don't bother trying it. We don't care about that kind of stuff. And that's a huge issue for the scientific community. They have to get control of the publishing community again if they're going to come out from under the start class. Yeah. They found in 2010, a study about papers in social sciences especially were about 2.3 times more likely to show positive results than papers in physical sciences. Even so, some bodies of research are even more apt to publish positive results. And that means if you're going, you know this going into your profession and you know this going into your set of research, and that's when it becomes sort of put up or shut up time as far as standing firm on doing good work even if it doesn't get published. Right. And so that confirmation bias can really come in where you start hopefully inadvertently, but certainly not in all cases, inadvertently start cherry picking data to get a positive outcome where there really wasn't one there before. Or you use a kind of a weird statistical method to suss out the correlation between the variables so that you can have a positive outcome, because if you're not publishing papers, like your academic career is not progressing and you could actually lose jobs. So you need to be published. The publishing industry wants your paper but they just want positive outcomes. So a high quality, well designed, well executed study that found a negative outcome to where they said, well, this compound we tried didn't actually shrink the tumor. That's going to be ignored in favor of a low quality paper that found some compound that shrunk the tumor just because they like positive outcomes. It's ridiculous. Yeah, and I mean, that kind of goes hand in hand with the last one. There's a lot of overlap with these and a lot that work sort of in concert with one another and file drawer bias. It is what it sounds like. It's like you got a negative outcome. And whether or not you are being funded by a company that definitely doesn't want that information getting out there, or if it's just as a result of it being less likely to be published because it doesn't have a positive outcome, you just stick it in the file drawer and it goes byebye. Right. And again, part of the point of science and scientific publishing is to generate this body of knowledge. So if you're about to do a study, you can search and say, oh, somebody already tried the same exact thing and they found that it doesn't work. I'm going to not try to reproduce it. I'm just going to not go with it and move on to try something else. It's a huge waste of resources otherwise. And then also, if you aren't publishing that kind of stuff, you're missing out on well, I mean, you're missing out on the real data if the bad data is filed ord like you're missing out on the truth, you're missing out on the whole picture. Right. And also, again, it's not just that the poor negative outcomes, they need to be included too. Yes, that's true. But you're also promoting positive outcome studies that actually aren't good studies. There's this thing called the proteus effect, where the initial studies, these initial papers on a subject, in 70% of cases, a follow up study that seeks to reproduce them, can't reproduce them. They don't come to the same findings, the same conclusions, which suggests that a study was really terrible. If it can't be reproduced, or if it's reproduced, somebody comes to a different finding, different conclusion. That's not a good study. So the idea of publishing positive and negative outcomes together would definitely kind of slow that whole crazy 24 hours news cycle positive outcome study. Yeah, I don't see how it's even legal to not bury, but I guess just not even just a file drawer. A study that included, like, a drug having negative effects. And I know that Congress has stepped up to try and pass laws to I think there was one in 2007 requiring researchers to report results of human studies of experimental treatments, and then they tried to strengthen that in 2016. Basically, this like, even if your drug doesn't come to market, like, we need to have these studies and the results. How is it even legal? It seems like you're bearing and it's almost falsification. Well. It is for sure. Because if you're talking about studies where you have multiple studies on. Say. One drug that's an antidepressant. And all you're doing is publishing the ones that have positive outcomes for that antidepressant and you're just not publishing the ones that showed no outcomes or maybe even harm. Then yeah. That should be illegal. Especially when you're talking about something like an antidepressant or in the biomedical field. But it's certainly unethical for any field of science in particular. Just bury the stuff you don't like that doesn't support your conclusion. It's a kind of a meta form of confirmation bias, just putting aside the stuff that doesn't fit your hypothesis or your worldview and just promoting the stuff that does. That's right. I saw one way around. This is The Lancet, the very respected medical journal. I think it's British. The Lancet has taken to accepting papers based on the study design and methodology and goals. So when you first plan your study and you have it all together before you ever start, that's when you would apply to have your paper study published in The Lancet. And that's when they decide whether it's a high quality enough study to publish or not. So then they're locked into publishing your study whether your outcome is negative or positive. And it has the knock on effect of The Lancet basically being like, hey, this is a trash study. We would never publish this. Don't even bother. So it's saving funds. And then the high quality studies are the ones that are going to get published, and then also the positive outcomes. And the negative outcomes get published regardless because they have no idea what the outcome is going to be because they accept the paper before the studies even been conducted. I saw another thing that said that a paper would be more likely to get published in The Lancet if it had cool illustrations. That's right. It never hurts. Everybody knows that. That's not unethical, especially in color. If you just put a few of those New Yorker cartoons in there, forget about it. Everybody loves those. You got anything else? I got nothing else. This is a little soapboxy, but this is something that we believe in. It's kind of like our episode on the scientific method a little bit. I liked it too. Thanks for doing it with me, man. Thank you for doing it with me. Thank you for squeezing my lemon. Sure. If you want to know more about scientific bias, there's a lot, fortunately a lot of sites and great articles dedicated to ruining that stuff out and to make you a smarter consumer of science. So go check that out and learn more about it. And since I said learn more about it, it means it's time for listener mail. You know, sometimes the listener mail dovetails quite nicely with the topic. And that was the case today with our inclusion on the Media Bias List, which was pretty exciting. Yeah. What an honor. There is something called the media bias. Is it called the Media Bias List? I believe so. And what it does is it takes news outlets and newspapers and TV and stuff like that. And it's a big chart where they are ranked according to how biased they are. Kind of up, down, left and right. And they included podcasts this year. They did. And we were on the list and it was really kind of cool. We had a bunch of people right in. And this is from Nicholas Beto. He said, I found this post while I was scrolling through Facebook and waiting for the NFL season to start. Add fonts media. Is it fonts or fonts? We should know that. I'm not sure. One of the two. I'm going to say font. It's a watchdog organization known for the media bias chart. They do a media Bias chart where they rank every news outlets political bias, and in the recent update, they included you guys. And wouldn't you know it the most politically fair piece of media you can possibly consume and all the known universal stuff you should know. That is so cool. You guys say you're liberal, but until I heard Chuck outright stated it, I didn't even know. Wow. Well, I think it slips through there some. Well, yeah, we're certainly human beings and we have our own biases, but we definitely try to keep them in check. We try to. And I think it's just confirmed because they're not just like, listen to a couple of shows and we see these guys seem okay, like they really listen and they really rank people. They probably saw that too. Or perhaps they listened to the North Korea episode where Josh suggested Wolf Blitzer apply hot paper clips to his inner thighs while writing a nice piece on Trump's Korean relations. Hilarious. Either way, thank you guys for your fairness and hilarity all these years. You're both the best. That is from Nicholas Beto. Thanks a lot, Nicholas. Thanks to everybody who wrote in to say that they saw that. We appreciate it. And it was neat to see ourselves right in the middle of the rainbow. Love being in the middle of that rainbow. I do too, Chuck. It's nice and warm and cozy in there, isn't it? Yes. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Nicholas and the gang did, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How Daylight Saving Time Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-daylight-saving-time-works | Benjamin Franklin first came up with daylight saving time in 1748, and people still practice it today. But how does it work? What are the pros and cons? Join Josh and Chuck as they turn back the clock to explore the origins of daylight saving time. | Benjamin Franklin first came up with daylight saving time in 1748, and people still practice it today. But how does it work? What are the pros and cons? Join Josh and Chuck as they turn back the clock to explore the origins of daylight saving time. | Tue, 06 Dec 2011 20:03:18 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=20, tm_min=3, tm_sec=18, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=340, tm_isdst=0) | 32737570 | 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 podcast. Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself with no must, no fuss. Turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, a simple checkout process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to Squarespace.com SYSK and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code s y SK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles Toby Chuck Bryant's iPhone chuck that makes this stuff. You should know the fully attentive podcast. You were saying? Yeah, I can't really say anything. You always say stuff, and then I repeat it, like, 30 seconds later, and then I get a look of death from Chuck. We like to cover our bases twice. Sometimes it's important stuff like the digestion that's right. The thing which comes out next. Right. All right. Intro, man. Oh, I'm sorry. Am I stalling? Yeah. Okay. Frankly, Chuck yes? Have you ever heard of a methuselah trust? No, but I have something to do with being old. Well, you're not old. Instead, say, a bequeathment grant that you've put in an account earning compound interest right. For 500 or 1000 or 100 years should conceivably where it's still legal, grow into a staggering amount of money. Right. Very quickly. For example, there was a guy who you might have heard of named Ben Franklin. Benny. Ben Franklin, in his will, left \u00a31000 each to the city of Boston and the city of Philadelphia, both of which he considered his hometown. Okay. And these monies were meant to stay in a private trust that earn compound interest. And by Franklin's reckoning so after 100 years, in 1890, it was supposed to be cracked open a bit, was supposed to be taken out, and then the rest was supposed to be left in until 19, 9200 years after his death. Right. So by his reckoning, each city would get about the equivalent of $6 million apiece by 1990. That's nice. Which is when it was supposed to end and finally mature. It didn't quite work out. Franklin's calculations didn't take into account lawsuits to stop this, to stop the idea of them with Fousal Trust in general, right. Trustees fees, lawyers fees, all this stuff. So what it came down to was about three and a half million each. So he's off the mark a little bit, but he made his point, which was, if you put a grand in and you have enough foresight, you can give some money to the city of Boston. Did that really happen? Yeah, they got their three and a half mil. Yeah. Each toned. What this demonstrates, probably more than anything, though, is that Franklin was, above all else, an idea man, right? Yeah, he was pretty good. I mean, he invented spectacles, he had some really good inventions under his belt, the electric kite. But more than anything else, he was all about ideas. And he was more aware than anybody that his ideas weren't always he didn't see him through to fruition all the time. Right. Not all ideas were meant to be. But another good example of that is his idea for daylight savings time. He was the guy that came up with this saving daylight saving time. I think most people say savings. Yeah. But it is in fact saving. But we're going to mess up and say savings. Yeah. Just prepare for that. S people. Franklin was an ambassador to France, 1784. This is a pretty crisp job back then. Sure. The Enlightenment. Come on, it's crisp job now. Sure. Woke up one morning, all this fellow Parisians were sleeping, and he said, hey, we should change the time and get these people up earlier. Did he talk like he was from Jersey? He basically proposed it in an article, but it's generally dismissed as satire. It wasn't a real idea. Right. His whole idea was to basically everybody was, like, sleeping in late while it was still daylight and then staying up late long after sunset. It was a waste of daylight. A great way to fix this is to say, let's get everybody up at the crack of dawn, and we'll do that by shooting off cannons that wake everybody up. It was sort of a jab at the French, a friendly jab. Well, he was a friend of the French, but, like I said, generally dismissed as satire. Not really like the seed of the idea for daylight saving. No. But other people about 100 or so years later came up with similar things and they meant it. And I don't know if we can say that Franklin didn't mean it, but he didn't think it was a very important idea, necessarily. But it's so ingrained in our society here in the United States, here in North America, and most likely, if you're listening to this, in Europe or Australia, you know what we're talking about all over the world, really. You're kind of like, yeah, daylight savings. It's peculiar, but of course we're going to do it. Of course it makes sense. This is from people who really can't even tell you whether it's spring forward or fall back. So let's set that straight right now, because I think if we just stopped there and said, it is spring forward, where you set the clock forward an hour and it's fall back where you said the clock back an hour. We've just done a tremendous public service. Do people really not remember that? Yeah, I'm among them. Really? Yeah. I will always remember it now because I've studied this article. But no, I always had trouble with it. Well, that's why they say spring forward, fall back. You can also fall forward and spring back. You can't spring back. I did. Hold on. Josh just sprung back. Sprung back. All right, well, here's the other public service announcement. Here in the US. Second Sunday in March, you're going to spring forward. The first Sunday in November, you're going to fall back. I didn't know that because every year I'm on the Internet going, well, when do we do this? When do we do it? I thought it fluctuated. Second Sunday in March 1 Sunday in November. Boom. Yeah, I thought it fluctuated as well. Yeah, it's standard now, thanks to a lot of legislation that has taken place over the years here in the United States. Most recently, the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Set the rules as you just described them. Right. Yes. We should also say, Chuck, to our friends in South America, you have the opposite. We're not exactly sure when it starts for you, but we can tell you that you do spring forward and fall back. No, spring back. Fall forward and spring back. Yeah. Because the seasons are the opposite. They go on to daylight savings time in the fall and then change it. They go off of it in the spring. And also one more thing. Daylight saving time. Right. I find it confusing in that the mind wants to say it's like daylight time saving. Like daylight saving time, right. Yeah. Like your time saving. Yeah. But really it's daylight saving time. So it's like a period of the year. Yeah. So I've always had trouble wrapping my mind around how you're saving daylight, not time. Everything about this is so confounding. I know, because I'm one of those people that's like what the clock says is arbitrary in a way. Unless you have a shift job, you would have made a great farmer. Yeah. That's kind of bunk, too, from what I hear. Okay, so let's talk about this man. You just gave the details on when to do it. Yes. In the United States. It's the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that establishes that. But if you are Arizona or Hawaii or Guam and you say, I don't want this to apply to me, I already feel cut off enough from this country, from the rest of the world, I'm going to apply for an exemption. You're probably going to get it. Yeah. Indiana has had a mixed history with daylight Saving. They've kind of fluctuated back and forth over the years, and at times, only some counties had it and some didn't. And they finally went all in. Yeah, pretty recently. Yeah. If you're in Indiana, you know what I'm talking about. And it's not just the United States. Apparently, as of 2000 and 876 countries observe Daylight Savings time. Yeah, I saw 70, but I don't know which source is newer. So we'll go with 70 to 76. But just after reading this, I could see six countries falling off. Yeah, it's a surprisingly contentious thing, setting the clock back an hour, basically. I saw one source that calls it the arrogance of humanity. To set time period? Yeah. Well, no, to adjust the clock. Yeah. It is now two and not one. Right, exactly. And it is a little bit loony if you think about it. I think Japan, India and China are the only major industrialized nations who do not observe. And it's getting more and more difficult to be a country like that in this globalized world, to not observe savings time. It's kind of problematic. Sure. Yeah. I imagine that's why most countries do it now. Well, not most, but a lot. So Europe has long observed what's called summertime, but it wasn't until 1996 that the EU said, hey, let's all just stop this patchwork thing. Here's the standards now. Right. The European Union says it runs from daylight saving time. The time of daylight saving summertime. Yeah. It's the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October. That's the EU. Yeah. Good for them. Stuff you should know. 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. Josh, my friend, do you know where your passport is right now? Well, you better dig it up because Adventure is around the corner and there's a card that's going to get you closer with the city Advantage Platinum Select Card. Every swipe earns you Advantage miles and loyalty points, and two times Advantage miles at restaurants and gas stations so your everyday purchases can take your travel to new heights. Plus, card members get access to built in travel benefits. For example, your first check bag is free on domestic travel, so you and your family have room to pack for every possibility, like coming home with extra souvenirs. And with preferred boarding, you'll be in your seat sooner, ready for takeoff into Adventure. The hard part is deciding where you'll go first. Because when you earn 50,000 Advantage Bonus miles after qualifying purchases, adventure is on so fasten your seatbelt and put away your tray table because there's so much world to see. And the cityadvantage Platinum Select Card is your ticket. You can learn more at City comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. You mentioned earlier that another couple of guys that proposed this, one of them was New Zealander named George Vernon Hudson, and he was actually the first dude to genuinely propose this. And he gets overlooked a lot of times by the other guy that we'll talk about. But Hudson in 1895 was an entomologist and astronomer, and he had a shift job that allowed him I guess he worked at night because allowed him extra daylight hours that his friends weren't getting. He'd go out and hunt for bugs and he's like, this is great. He's like, we ought to really try and do this. But William Willett of England is the guy that a lot of people credit with it, and I think it's because it was kind of his passion in life. He really tried to get this pushed through. Yeah. He was an avid golfer, and his whole premise for it was that it would extend time for leisure after work, after everybody got done working for the day. Yeah. There's still daylight hours. And he wrote a pamphlet that's online. It's called the waste of daylight. It's online in its entirety, if you search that. And he lobbied the House of Commons to institute this, and in 19 eight, they officially said no. But he kept lobbying them until his death in, I think the 20s. Died in 1915, actually. So he did not get to see it because a year later oh, yeah, insultingly enough, a year later, it was brought on in England, thanks to a little something called World War One. Yeah. And actually, it was Germany. That was the first country to ever institute daylight Savings time. Yeah, they called it wartime, though. Yeah. So did FDR later on. Oh, did he? Yeah, but the Germans started it. The English quickly saw the value in it and they started it. And it was all the preserve coal supplies during the war, because if you were up earlier, you'd be tired earlier, and you wouldn't stay up as late burning precious coal needed to pound the Kaiser into oblivion. That's right. And a lot of nations got on board because of World War I. 31 in total, including the US. And then World War II. Well, after the war, I think most of these countries got rid of it. It was just for war. Yeah. And then World War II came around. Same thing happened, but in more abundance. 52 nations this time. Right. And the US actually kept daylight savings year round for three full years uninterrupted from, what is it, February 1942 to September 1945. And apparently FDR, he called it wartime, too. He had no problem with it. He was just going to leave it like that indefinitely. And he finally acquiesced to farmers, which, if you know much about farmers at that era, they were really effective at striking overturning, like, scab trucks and like, dealing with communists, like being pro communist, and they were a force to be reckoned with. They called it God's time. Did they really? Yeah. We'll talk more about the farmers in a minute. Go on. Well, we had it for three years solid, like you said, and then after the war, they said, you know what? You don't have to do it, but it's up to your state if you want to keep doing this or not. Some did, some didn't. Yeah, that's the history. Well, actually, no, it keeps going in history does keep going, doesn't it? Yeah. So the states are all patchwork and everybody's just kind of doing however they want. But we have this thing called the Interstate System that comes about which links states more and more and there's more trade, and really, people need to know what time it is in another state that they're sending stuff to. Sure. So the Uniform Time Act finally said, you guys can decide whether you want to do it, but if you're going to do it, you have to do it along these guidelines. Yeah. And it stayed that way uninterrupted until 1986, except for the Arab oil embargo, where the US said we're going to extend the daylight savings through winter as well. Yeah. It went from six months to eight months 1973, because they found that doing so saved the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day. It's a lot. And 600,000 in those two years. Is it true? Who knows about that? Definitely up for debate whether it saves 10,000 barrels of oil a day. Yeah, I'm sure it's up for debate. The weird thing about daylight savings is it's largely been intuitive for decades. It was practiced for decades before anybody finally put it to the test. Right. Well, the whole point behind it is this, Chuck, that there are more people asleep at sunrise and more businesses are closed at sunrise than at sunset. So if you look at electrical demand right, as a whole over the course of a single day, you're going to see in the afternoon, in the evening, it starts to peak if you take an hour, if you take the whole day and shift it backward by an hour, people are going to get up earlier and it's going to spread that electrical demand over the day. They're also going to go to bed earlier, so they're going to use lamps less, they're going to stay up less late to watch TV, so the overall demand should decrease, too. And this is the whole reason that daylight savings time has always been kind of championed by most people. That's the whole reason that they want you to think, well, that's part of it. The other is to get people outside more. Yeah. I mean, I read up on this and what I found out was that it really comes down to money. They want you spending money more, and that is going to happen more if you're out and about shopping or playing golf. Exactly like the golf lobby in 86, the last time before 2005 that anybody tinker with it. Reagan said in public law in 99, he started at the first Sunday in April, which was where before in 1000, 966. It was from the last Sunday in April. Right. So a full month he added to daylight savings time. But the golf lobby said that an extra hour, I think an extra month was like $400 million to just that industry alone. See there yeah, money talks. And the reason I say that's the main reason is because they've done studies. In fact, in 73, when they did the oil embargo, they didn't just study oil barrels, they studied utilities. And they found that it's a pretty negligible difference, about 1% energy savings. But that's for the whole country. That's a lot. That is a substantial amount of that's a lot. See. I read it's. Negligible. Say it is 1%. Say it is negligible, but say that it's 0%. If you don't do anything, you automatically have said, well, there's a savings in energy, especially in this eco conscious society that we're growing into. That's it right there. Okay, daylight savings time. Do it. We'll save 1% of all the energy expended. Fine. Do it. It's better than not, right? Sure. What else could possibly go wrong? And I was very surprised from this article to find that there's actually counter arguments to daylight savings time. Well, yeah, because they basically, I think people have challenged these studies, is what I've seen. In 2001, they did another study, California did, where they actually doubled it to a two hour shift. And in the end, they found that electricity savings of about 0.3 for the year. Right. Which is substantially less. But you can also say it's still better than nothing. Why not just do it? That's true. There's also other arguments, too. Things like there's fewer traffic accidents in the evenings because it's lighter out. That's what they say on the evening commute. Crime is decreased because criminals prefer darkness. And if you're out taking a walk after work and it's light out still, you're probably not going to get mugged. And then, of course, the golf industry said everybody needs to get off their rears and get outside and play more golf. Yeah, golf fever. Catch it. And they are big on that as well. Well, I got most of my info, you should know from that Skeptoid guy what's here? Stunning. Well, no, that's what he said. He said basically it's all about money. He said, don't be fooled into thinking this is some energy plan. And he said that the numbers are suspect. And then it really comes down to spending money as a consumer. I'm sure it does. But the other aspect of it. You know who's the biggest against it now? Who? These days? It used to be farmers. Well, he said that's bunk, too. He bunks everything, though. So here's the thing. Farmers, from what I understand, it used to be farmers, and I've seen this elsewhere that farmers had a problem with it because daylight savings added an hour under their day. They had to get up at the crack of dawn no matter what time it was. So if they had an extra hour, they had to extend their business hours because they had to deal with the public who was running on an hour later time. Right. So farmers hated daylight savings and they railed against it. That's my understanding. With modern technology, where a lot of the farm processes are automated, they don't have to worry about the sun time or God's time as much. They're not as opposed to it. The problem is with airlines now, when they're flying to places that don't have daylight savings, they apparently have a lot more trouble getting a slot at an airport when the time doesn't quite match up, because the airport is like, we're not going to the trouble of figuring this out. Right? Go lobby your government to stop screwing with time. So apparently that's the big industry that's opposed to daylight savings right now. Interesting. Yeah. Like I said, though, that's his job. He's the Skeptoid debunking. He said the farmer thing is he thinks it's somewhat of a myth because he said all the sources are the exact same and he can't find any origin source that he thinks is valid. That's pretty good evidence that something is a myth, but he's trying to prove a negative. He should be opposed to that. Maybe he is. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? 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For example, your first check bag is free on domestic travel, so you and your family have room to pack for every possibility, like coming home with extra souvenirs and with preferred boarding, you'll be in your seat sooner, ready for takeoff into Adventure. The hard part is deciding where you'll go first, because when you earn 50,000 advantage bonus miles after qualifying purchases, adventure is on. So fasten your seatbelt and put away your tray table because there's so much world to see. And the cityadvantage Platinum Select Card is your ticket. You can learn more at City comAdventure and travel on with cityadvantage. There was a new study, though, recently by a guy named Matthew Coaching. He's an economist at Cal. Go Bears. And, you know, I said Indiana has kind of been back and forth over the years with like, half the state doing it. When they finally went all in six, he said, hey, there's a great opportunity to check this out and study it. And he found that it led to a 1% rise. He figured that lamp usage went down overall across the daylight savings. Right. But that there was a peak in energy demand. That was an increase over when you don't observe daylight savings in the fall when it was cold in Indiana in the form of heating. Like, people had their heat went up because they weren't under the blankets as early as when they just observed standard time year round. And that actually cost $9 million for the state. Well, I think that's part of Dunning thing, too, is these studies that were done in the 70s, they didn't have computers and ipods and bluray players, and we have way more things besides lamps these days to take into account and air conditioners and things like that. So he's saying it's kind of an outdated there were no lamps in the 70s. An outdated model daylight savings. Chuck also kind of strikes me as like a really good example of for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. So, like, there's fewer fender benders during the evening commute, but apparently parents are also, like parents groups are also opposed to daylight savings in part because kids accidents involving kids waiting for the bus in the darker mornings increase. Oh, really? And then the crime goes down during the summer, but then it increases in the fall. There's no figures to support that necessarily. But there's also the only study ever conducted about how daylight Savings creates a decrease in crime was a single study of the District of Columbia in the founded a 10% reduction, but no one's ever backed it up. That's the only one. Yeah, well, and think about it, too. CarX are good for industries like tow trucks and mechanics, the tow truck lobby, the auto industry that wants to sell you a new bumper. You're right. Everything has an opposite reaction. And also apparently chronobiologically. It can be very problematic for us. So is he German? Yeah. I didn't see his name. He just referred to as a German chronobiologist. I couldn't find him or her. Yeah, that's true. He or she says that your body never even adjusts period to the circadian rhythm. And so you're just out of whack for eight months out of the year or I guess it depends on which one he thinks is right. Yeah. And the big problem is going back and back, like going back and forth. Right. Like, if we all just said, okay, the whole world's going to set their clocks back 1 hour forever, and that will be referred to from here on out as the hour, the moment, and then we're just going to forget about Daylight Savings time. It would conceivably have the same effect. Right, right. But it would not have that jet lag problem that the German Chronobiologist describes. And even worse, there's other people that propose extended daylight Savings throughout the year or throughout the winter as well. Right. If we did that once, it could conceivably be fine, our bodies could adjust it's going back and forth. Okay. Other people are proposing double daylight savings where you go back 2 hours, which would probably wreak havoc if the Chronobiologist is correct. Right. And there's actually data that supports this idea that our bodies are disrupted by it. Like the Swedish heart attack study. Yeah, I'm sure they are. I never thought of it as losing an hour, though, because it happened at 02:00 A.m. On Sunday, and I would just wake up and whatever the clock said, is what it said. Yeah. I never felt like I guess I don't get up Sunday morning at seven for a shift job. No, that's a big part of it. I saw in the Consumer, some guy wanted to know about getting paid because he worked at a late night on November, this past November, for Sunday, November, when he had an extra hour, because there's actually 25 hours in that day. Right. 01:00 am. Is counted twice. Interesting, isn't it? There's a 25 hours day that we just went through that's got to mess us up somehow. It's got to, and it does. The Swedish study I was referring to found that since 1987, the number of heart attacks rose about 5% during the first week of daylight Savings Time every year. And then Australia, some Australians looked at some data between 1971 and 2001 and found that male suicides increased in the weeks following daylight Savings time. And they're controlling for everything else. And it appears to just be daylight savings really affects people with bipolar disorder. And men are more prone australian men with bipolar disorder are more prone to commit suicide in the weeks immediately proceeding to change over to daylight Saving. Wow. Yeah. That's sad. It is sad. There have been some kind of interesting things that happened over the years because of DST. In 99. The West Bank was on Daylight savings. Israel had just switched back to Standard Time. So a group of West Bank terrorists were preparing some time bombs, smuggled them to their counterparts in Israel, and as they were planning the bombs, they blew up. No. Yes. No. That's what it says. Is that from Skeptoid? No. Is that from Snopes? I'll take Snopes too. I think that's real. Wow. I think that happened. That is crazy. Minneapolis and St. Paul were on different times in 1965. That's crazy, too. Which kind of whack things out. Amtrak. A train cannot leave the station before it's scheduled to obviously can't leave early because everyone's going to get on. So when you fall back in October, if you're running on time, you stop and sit there for an hour. November. What did I say? October. I think it used to be in October when this was written. So you sit there for an extra hour if you're on Amtrak on that day. That's right. That's crazy. And then in the spring, apparently, they don't do anything but try and catch up. Like everything's a little late for a little while and they just try to drive faster. Can you imagine being a logistician? I want to hear from logisticians. I have a deep respect for your profession. Yeah, agreed. That's tough stuff. Time. Who knew? Is it arbitrary what the clock says? It's just a number. I tend to go with just the rise and fall of the sun and moon. Are you kidding me? Like you could throw away every clock in the world and nothing would really change. In uncivilized parts of the world, in the civilized world, everything runs on the clock. But it's just time the number was invented by man. I know what you mean, man. You know what I'm saying? A little abstract. Thanks for that, Chuck. I think that was an excellent way to kind of put everybody to sleep. Just put them on a little cloud. Yes, man. If you want to learn more about clouds, about Daylight Savings Time, about Chuck Bryant you can type in those words in the search bar@housetepworks.com and it'll bring up some very cool stuff, I assure you. And I said Search bar athouseofworks.com that means it's time to Chuck for listener contact. That's right. Not listener mail. We have a contest we have nothing to do with. Yes, this was sprung on us, but we like it. We're in favor of it. Yes. If you are interested in coming to Atlanta, all expenses paid. Yeah, that's the kicker. Actually, I'm not going to say all expenses paid. Yeah. I don't know if we should legally say that certain expenses are paid. You can come here, tour the studio, hang out in the office. We'll even go to lunch with you, with Jerry. Jerry will be there. And you'll get to see her face. Like we won't make her aware. Like a paper bag. You can enter this contest. It runs now, if you're in America yeah. In the United States. As I always tell everyone from Canada and elsewhere that's mad about this, I can't win your contest, either. I don't think that makes anybody feel better. No. If you're American, if you're in the United States, it runs through December 31. Winners will be announced the week of January 1, 2012. Grand prize trip to Atlanta includes one night hotel airfare up to $500. Nice. And an American Express gift card for incidentals like taking me and Chuck out to lunch. I think we'll pick that up. Okay. And if you refer somebody like you go to Facebook thehousedafworks.com not the stuff you should know. Go to the Housetofworks.com Facebook page, enter and you have to like it and then you enter. It's the only way to enter as far as I know. Yeah, I think so. But if you refer someone and they win I'm sorry, after person A enters the contest, he or she can share the contest link with friends via Facebook and Twitter. And if a friend of theirs wins, then you win a Kindle fire that's not too shabby. Does that make sense? Yeah, and I would give you the link but it's like 3000 characters long. So just go to Facebook. Howtofworkscom? Housetofwark's official Facebook page. Yeah. And you will find the information there. Yeah. And lunch it up with us. Yeah, let's lunch. Let's do lunch. Before we go, I want to correct myself big time correct myself about patent trolls in the gene patents. Okay episode I mentioned patent trolls and I don't even remember what I said they were, but I was way off. Patent trolls are people who go around buying patents with no intent of manufacturing these things or what the patent is for. I figured that's what it was like buying a website domains. Sure. But then they sue. The whole point is to own the patent so that they can sue anybody who infringes on it. So basically they're keeping any kind of innovation from coming about along the same lines of what they own the patent to by suing people who try to do it and they're basically just whatever. This great idea that's patented is just never going to see the light of day because they have no interest in doing that. They just want the money from suing people. Got you. That's a patent troll. I apologize to all the patent roles out there. Yes. To all the people who corrected me. Thank you for that. Yes. If you want to correct us, we are always up for that. You can send us a tweet at syscape podcast. You can join us on Facebook. We have our own page too. It's stuff you should know. And you can also send us a good old fashioned email stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetofworks.com. Hey, it's summer everybody, which means school's out. The sun is shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon. Music. My favorite murder from exactly right media. 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How Pirates Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-pirates-work | Although today's pirates aren't storming the coast of Florida or other eastern states, piracy is still around in this modern age. Join Josh and Chuck as they look back at the history of piracy -- and its successors -- in this episode. | Although today's pirates aren't storming the coast of Florida or other eastern states, piracy is still around in this modern age. Join Josh and Chuck as they look back at the history of piracy -- and its successors -- in this episode. | Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:53:14 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=29, tm_hour=16, tm_min=53, tm_sec=14, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=363, tm_isdst=0) | 31403583 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Ah. And welcome to the podcast, etc. Am Josh Clark with me. Laugh. Who is that little laugh? I just I was joking. I thought who was going to be the first one to do it, and I didn't know you were going to literally lead in with that. Sure. Yeah. I like to surprise you. That's a good one. It's hard to amaze me. I'm glad you did it. Chuck said he wasn't going to do that. I know. And what, it lasts, like, 30 seconds? Such a pushover. I haven't announced it yet. That's Chuck Bryant right there, et cetera. Yeah. This is stuff you should know. The pirate edition. I think we should be done with the pirate talking. Yeah. That could get really annoying. Yeah. You want to know what is probably the most annoying day of the year? Some kind of pirate day. September 19. Talk like a Pirate Day. Really? Yeah. I think I remember that because Strickland Came was, like, slinging ours all over the office. Strickland and T Dub are being into pirate stuff. Tracy. Yeah. She wrote this, right? Yeah, it's a great article. Yeah, she's good, I must say. She's the keeper of the house. Stuff works voice. She is indeed. Yeah. And the fine teacher. She's like the old stage on the Led Zeppelin poster with the lantern. Oh, yeah. That's what I think of a tree, except with Star Trek earrings. Speaking of off comes your head. We're going to get into that, Chuck, because we're talking about pirates, and whenever pirates got caught, people love to cut off their head and post it as a warning to other pirates. Yeah. That's gross. Yeah, it is. You want me to define pirate? Josh? Can you really define pirate? Sure. A pirate is someone who uses a boat to attack another boat with the intent to kidnap steel or otherwise do harm. Bing, bang, boom, end of podcast. But that's not all. There are a few other criteria. Boy. I can't do that. Please stop. There are a few other criteria. It must be for private gain, using a private vessel, and it's for gain. Like, it can't be like, Greenpeace coming up on, like, a whaling ship or something. And they operate outside of a government authority because back in the day, governments use things people called privateers. Yes. And a lot of pirates started out as privateers, which are basically pirates, government license pirates. They had, like, a letter of mark that said, this guy's allowed to go pirate plunder. Yeah. Do whatever to say the French or the Dutch, but the problem is maybe the Spanish during the times of not war peace, I think, is the way most people put it. Peace. Peace. Thank you. During times of peace, these privateers would be out of work and they'd be like, well, I have one skill and so then they turn to piracy. Right. Or they could have just gone and been like regular semen and not gotten paid all that much. Yes. Who wants to do that when you can plunder and get the loot, right? One of the reasons that people engaged in piracy from early on is the same reason that they do now the economy. A lot of times when things are down, just like anything else with theft. And we talked about shoplifting and stuff like that in other podcasts 1 hour ago, the crime rate goes up. So poverty led to an increase in piracy over the years. And it's not only when times are tough, when times are really good, too, and there's a lot of trade on the high seas. Well, the opposite will attract pirates as well. Yes, the golden age of piracy, which we'll get into. And piracy actually has a very long, hardy tradition that dates back at least to the fourth century BCE. Yes. The Luca. Yes. I've never heard of that. I hadn't either. Man they attacked boats off of the coast of what is now Turkey in the 14th century. Yeah. A long time ago. Yeah, that's a very long time ago. That's as many as 3500 years ago. It seems like almost since there were boats on the high seas, there was piracy. Yes, Tracy makes that point, too. As long as people were plying the high seas with goods that were worth stealing, people stole them in boats. Piracy. You might have heard of the Corsairs famous pirates. That was 15th and 16th century. And of course, they were the Barbary pirates, the Barberry pirates, which actually I wrote an article on the Barbary pirates. They were America's first terrorist threat. Oh, really? Jefferson was the one that had to deal with them. And they actually got their start from the Red Beard brothers, who were Turks, but they went down to North Africa and I think converted to Islam, and they used to kidnap and torture and murder Spaniards, and Spaniards did the opposite. But these two brothers, the Brothers Barbarosa, which means Red Beard, gave the start to the Barbary Pirates. Wow. They were very successful for, I think, over a century. Did not know that. Yeah. Then, of course, the Buccaneers, the lousy, stinking Tampa Bay Buccaneers are named after the pirate buccaneers of the 17th century. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot more history in this article, but that's an overview, if you will. It is an overview. It's not just European or African. Now, the Chinese used to like to pillage in pirate after the Han dynasty around 220 BCE. They used to like to pirate. Sure. Yeah. I'm trying to get this word out as a verb now, too. I like that. And also, I decided the new rick roll is Deon Warwick performing do you know the Way to San Jose? Wow. Yeah, it's worked so far. I did it to Robert lamb. And he was like, that's good. Where was that going? Anywhere. Okay, so, Josh, what do you think of when you think of a pirate? What comes to mind? What mental image do you get? I think of a guy with maybe a tricornered hat. A tricorn? It's called a tricorn. Okay. Some hoop earrings. What are those called? Hoop earrings. Okay. Parrot that says things like pieces of aid and Dead men tell no tails, and stuff like that. What else? A peg leg, usually, or a hook for a hand. Yeah, that's a good one. I think of very weathered, scarred skin tattoos. I think of Johnny Depp. Yeah. What about the clothes? The clothes. A ruffled shirt and a little fruity. Long coat. Yes, long coat. Leather, probably. Right. And I also think of a nice long sword, maybe a Flint Lock pistol. Yeah. And furries also come to mind, because usually if you run into a furry, there's someone dresses a pirate nearby. Well, Josh, you want to talk about if that's real or not? All that stuff you just named it is real in the golden age of piracy, which is when we think of all those things. You're thinking of the golden age of piracy. Right. And actually, I was surprised after reading this article, how short it was, but I guess we'll get to that, like, 50 years or so between 1690 and 1730. Okay. Yeah. 40 years. Yeah. And that's when you might have heard of people called Blackbeard. Yeah. Calico Jack. You ever heard of him? Yeah, he was controversial. I know. What because you know why? I do know why, but I want you to know you because he allowed women pirates. Not only did he allow women pirates, he had a pretty torrid affair on the high seas with one Anne Bonnie. It seems like a good reason to have a woman pirate. Yeah. They had a kid together which was born in Cuba. He stole her away from her husband, and she basically was this housewife who went into a life of piracy, and she and another woman named Mary Reid were aboard Calico Jack's ship. Right. Yeah. Once the crew found out that they were women, they accepted them, because I think Calico Jack was like, if you don't cut your head off, sure. But you don't accept them too much. Right. They cut your head off. So they dressed as women when they were just sailing, and then when they were about to start fighting, they would dress up as men, and apparently they killed as many people, really, as anybody else on that ship. And a witness for when they were both caught later on, a witness who testified against them said that they swore and cursed with the best of them. Good for them. Yeah. Women's lib. Yes. Way back in the golden age of piracy. Yeah. So one of the reasons it was the golden age back then, Josh, is from what you just said that was when the seas were really flying around between Africa and America and Europe. Have you heard the theory that African slaves africa was tapped for slavery simply because of a trade win? Really? Yeah. That went from the east coast of the United States right down to what is that? Western Africa. Interesting. Yeah, it just took you right down. And that's why Africans became slaves, because it was so easy to get there. Interesting. Yeah. Although the Portuguese already had a lock on the slave trade by the time the colonists started, or the English. Very true. We didn't make that up. So lots of boats with sugar and rum and starting with it wasn't like big trunks full of gold coins, usually. Right. That did happen, but it was more like goods. Yeah. There was one specific ship that went down, actually, and the pirates treasure that you hear of a lot is pretty much personified or emblematic of this one called the Widow. It was pirate captain. Sam Bellamy ship. And it went down in 1717 off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. And it had literally chests of gold and jewels and things in it when it went down. But normally they pillage sugar, rum, molasses, stuff that you could turn around and sell in bulk exactly. To somebody and say, like, Port Royal or whatever. Right. So the golden age I mentioned, it was big for two reasons. That's what we think of when we think of the traditional pirates, because the golden age was so big and because of books like Treasure Island and Peter Pan. Right. That's why we think of the pirates as what you described earlier. It's like Santa Claus being our conception of Santa Claus comes from a illustration exactly. From a guy who was paid by Coca Cola. So let's go over those real quick. The flag that you often think of, the Jolly Roger, did you do any additional research on this? No. Did you, tracy kind of trapeze around that one. Okay. It's a little sticky, and this is definitely a family friendly article. Okay. Can we mention it? No, we can't. But anybody can type in origin of Jolly Roger in Google and find it themselves, and we would bear no responsibility whatsoever for that. Okay. Well, that flag made its first appearance in the early 18th century. Josh, and before that, this little known fact, by me at least, this makes total sense. Pirates would fly up false colors, basically, to mislead other ships that they were dangerous. Yeah. Total sense. Yeah. That's the smart thing to do. Right. Jolly Roger, which I also found out from this one, often had a skeleton, not just the skull and crossing. Sometimes it was a black flag with a white skeleton. So it always struck me as weird because you're like, hey, I'm a pirate, and I'm coming after you. But it turns out they did do that purposely because in a lot of ways, pirates were so feared that the ship would just be like, okay, you're a pirate. You take our stuff. Well, yeah. Best case scenario, what they want is for the ship to immediately surrender. Right. So that's what the pirates are looking for. You get the cargo, you get whatever stuff is on board, money, maybe, and you get the ship. Yes. And apparently it wasn't hard to flip a crew over to piracy. I think there's a really thin line between legitimate Siemen and a pirate yeah. During the golden age of piracy. And if you captured a crew and said, I need you guys, they'd say, okay. Or what they probably said was, you have a couple of choices. You could become a pirate, or we can shoot you in the face or maroon you on this island. Yeah. I love that word. What, maroon? Yes. Really? Yes. I just think it's a great word. And of course, that means to strand on an island. Sure. A deserted island. It doesn't really work if you drop them off in Haiti, but you find a deserted island, drop off the crew. Sometimes they would leave them with supplies, and other times they'd leave them with nothing and you just leave. And it's pretty much a death sentence. Pretty much, yeah. Their clothes, Josh, that you described could have been real because they basically wore what people wore at the time. But a lot of times they would get the clothes from that were maybe being shipped to rich, wealthy people or the captain clothes. Yes. So they would have, like, fine clothes, like the ruffled shirts and all that. Parrots. True or not true? I don't think it's true. Not necessarily. She says they did capture parrots to sell them. But that's from Treasure Island, basically. Yeah. Hooks and pegs. Peg. Pegs, yeah. That happened. Do you know why? No. Because being a pirate was dangerous. Yeah. Okay. And you get your arms and your legs blown off many times, so there were probably some peg legs walking around, stumping around. But that was also from Captain Hook and Treasure Island. So a lot of these things are fictional, but may or may not have happened. Right. And flintlock pistols. I had those back then. That's true. But they didn't work very well at sea. Yeah. Because of the saltwater. Right. But they still use them when they could. At the very least, you could club somebody in the head with it. Yeah. They're big. Oh, yeah. And then along with, obviously, the swords and daggers and all that stuff that you're familiar with. Right. And Chuck, we are focusing on the golden age of piracy. I think we should say one of the reasons that gave rise to it was the War of Spanish session. All right. What I was talking about about the private ears. Right. Yeah. And that happened many times. The War of Spanish Succession gave rise to the golden age of piracy because there were so many privateers. But the United States used to give letters of mark pirates that actually were privateers that turned pirate. The British did it. It happened, I think, well into the 19th century. There were private ears turned pirates. Yeah. Another falsehood. They are often depicted as steering these huge gallons. They would often attack these gallons. But a gallon isn't great if you're going to be in a pirate because you want to get in and out. It's all about speed. In fact, modern pirates use speed boats mainly, which we'll get to in a minute, but they usually use smaller sloops and schooners, so they get in and out quicker. Right. But no less cool. Or they could have also used brigantine, which what's that? It's like a larger version of the schooner. It could hold about 150 men and probably about 30 cannons. Not bad. No, you could do some real damage with that. So what's life like on a boat, Josh? It's indeed, because they're not feasting on, like, fine meals and drinking fine wines. I guess if they pillage something, then they could yeah, but when that's gone, dude, they're eating spoiled meat. They are eating water tainted with algae, which you could eat actually, there's enough algae in it. They drank it and they ate their water with a fork. That's how bad it was. And they ate something called hard tech. Yes. I've never heard of that. You know what another word for hard tech is? What? Sea biscuit. Really? Is that where that comes from? Yes. I'm learning all kinds of things. That's like a really hard cracker. And they took that out to sea because it didn't spoil as fast. Yeah, but I'll bet it was hell on teeth. Oh, yeah. And they also said that when you're out to sea for that long, it's like, got weevils, like, crawling around and that's gross. Yeah. So you're not exactly happy, and probably after a couple of days of eating hard tack and spoiled meat, you are really, really ready to go butcher a crew to get your hands on their food. I imagine that you had no trouble persuading your crew to go after each and every ship you came upon. I would think so. You know how they did that? How they came up? You want to talk about how they did their thing? Yeah, let's talk about that. Usually at night, they would sneak up on the stern side and they would throw up the grappling hooks and they would climb aboard and try and get them to surrender as quickly as possible. Right. Like you said, the ideal confrontation was one where the other ship just gave up immediately without a fight. Right. Sometimes it didn't help or it didn't work. So they would have to fight and they would did you say grappling hooks? Yeah, the grappling hooks to get up. So they board. Sure. Right. And you'd want to actually keep your ship out of cannon fire range so that you would just get in a few boats and swim over to it, or roll over to it and then climb aboard. And then the massacre would begin. Right. If not a surrender, then the massacre would be and they would disable the rudder, too, which I didn't know, which is pretty smart, straight away. So they couldn't steer away or anything like that. Right. But you could still tow it, I imagine. Yeah, I guess, because the ideal fix situation is to get the boat. That's why they didn't want to bombard them with cannon fire, because you want to take the boat and everything that's got on it in one piece. And plus, even if you don't intend to take the boat, you don't want to sink it before you can get to the cargo. Yeah, sure. Right. But there was cannon fire. That did happen when all else failed. Right. And I think Tracy said they also fired a grape shot. Have you ever heard of that? One of those, like, small little cannonballs. It looks like a little bunch of grapes, actually. And they would spew out like a shotgun. Yeah, I think so. Or else they're molded together. I think they do spit out like a shotgun, but they're like that big around like a spray. You're in trouble if somebody hits you a straight shot. And actually they would go for the guy at the wheel was their first shot. If they shot at the other ship, the other guy steering. Apparently, when they did capture crew, if they weren't in the mood to turn them, there were several things they could do aboard the high seas. One of the things I read about was they would tie somebody to the mast and just throw broken bottles at them until they got bored with that. That's fun. That was one thing. Key hauling. This sounds awful. Yeah. Keel hauling is when they tied a rope, they're big on the rope, and they would throw you overboard and drag you under the keel boat, which pretty much mean you drowned. Yeah. And along the way, we're cut up by the barnacles that were stuck to the ship, and they would do this to their own guys. Apparently, there was a strict code on the boat with the crew, and if you disobeyed the code, you would be treated just like the enemy would be. One thing that is fiction is walking the plank. Chuck I did not know that either. Yes. This is like the totem pole I'm learning. Yeah. That's all just made up for books, right? Walking the plank. Yeah. That's disappointing. So let's see what else? Chuck tracy made a really excellent point that I hadn't thought of. But if you have two ships and they're the same type of ship, how does one catch the other? If you're using sales and oars. Right. Same number of ores, same wind. Apparently, if you were a decent pirate, you would beat your ship every once in a while and then clean off the hole. In the barnacles? Off the hole. And make it slide through a lot faster. Remember we were talking about ships that are being outfitted with that ooze that resembles a pilot whale skin? Yes. The pilot whales keep barnacles off. And this ooze is the aim of the ooze is to keep barnacles off of these ships, or more efficiently at least, and go faster and yeah, I think it was going to cut fuel consumption by like, 20% or something. Right. Consumption. Yeah. So that is how you would catch up to somebody else. You could also offload cargo, store it, maybe bury it in North Carolina. Yeah. Got you. That is an interesting point. I never thought about that. Thank you. Because they have the same wind. That's right. Wow. Are we done with all pirates? Seems like it. Okay. Modern, modern times. Yeah. There's a lull between the 19th century and the 21st century. Really. And all of a sudden, we have pirates again. Yeah. I think there's probably a little pirating here and there, not like we've been seeing lately. Yeah. One could almost call this the second golden age of piracy, Josh, if one were so inclined. Do you know why that is flourishing again, economy, much for the same reasons that it flourished back then. Economy is bad. Shipmasters have been reluctant to report them. Who shipmasters? Shipmasters are reluctant to report the attacks because it can take a long time and be expensive and hold them up. Sure. So they'll just let it go undone. And because of the economy, they're staffing crews with smaller crews, ships with smaller crews. And the vast majority of modern pirate attacks are happening in the Gulf of Aidan, and they are being undertaken by Somali pirates. And one of the reasons why the pirates are getting away from it is because Somalia is, as far as I know, the one nation on the entire planet that doesn't have a functioning central government. It's truly lawless. Great place for pirates to hang out, right? Yeah, I would say so. They're land based these days. Well, they're hugging shore more. Right. But they have their operations based on land. Right. Well, I mean, they did the same thing during other ages of piracy. Like the buccaneers all hung out in Port Royal. They did, yeah. Okay. So the other reason the Gulf of Aden is such a hotspot for piracy, apparently ten or 11% of all of the world's oil goes through the Gulf of Aden, which is a relatively narrow stretch between the Middle East and North Africa, northeastern Africa, and it's 250 miles wide, and it's like that for 900 miles. So it's like a bottleneck that you're trapped, and then you're going right alongside the only country on the planet without a functioning central government. There you have it. And I think 8% of all of the goods shipped globally go through the Gulf of Aden as well. Really? Yeah. So there's a lot of cash that flows through that goal. So you know how they operate nowadays? I do, kind of just like they used to, except with rocket propelled grenades. Yeah. They have RPGs, but they will do the same thing. They'll get a smaller boat, faster boat. They will sneak up on the stern in the dead of night with their grappling hooks and board the ship. And of course, now they have a crew of that. One incident earlier this year was like, six or eight guys, wouldn't it? Yeah. So not as hard to overtake a ship these days when you have machine guns and RPGs and a crew of six that you have to overtake. You're talking about the Mayersk, Alabama one where the Navy came in and the snipers killed the guy? He did a little too tap. I would imagine so, yeah. But they're not after cargo, which I didn't know. It depends. Well, I guess it does, but Tracy made the point that they can't overtake these huge cargo ships because they don't have the means to get rid of all that stuff. So they're usually after smaller equipment on the boat and personal loot, and sometimes they carry a lot of money in safes. I found it interesting because I think she wrote this in, like, 2005, maybe 2006, and it seems like 2007 or eight was when things really changed. Remember the cargo ship filled with Russian tanks that was held? The tanker filled with oil that was held. So they are going after the cargo now. They're just holding it for ransom. They're not trying to fence it. Like, you can't fence 100 Russian tanks or a container ship full of oil. Right. But you can hold it hostage and get money you can hold it ransom and get money to release it. And that's what they've been doing successfully. Yeah. I never followed up, but I did remember hearing about a couple that was sailing around the world, and they were kidnapped by pirates. I read something in The New York Times that was this year, I think, but I never found out what happened to them. Like a wealthy couple. Do you remember that guy who had, like, a walk on part? And I think it's like I don't remember what it was, but it was on Muddy Morphin Power Rangers. Oh, yeah. And he killed some couple for their yacht. But this wasn't him. No. Okay. He wasn't a pirate. He was a Mighty Morphin Power Ranger Chuck. Yes. Let's say we are aboard a cargo ship filled with oil, and pirates are heading our way with RPGs, rocket launchers, AK 47s. What do we do? Well, if you see them headed, I'm not really sure. I know what you can do beforehand. You cannot discuss your route while you're in port. Like, you don't go to the bar and say we got a shipment of diamonds, we're going to be taken to the straits of hormones. Right? That was good. Actually, that was the jackass shipmate who has a loud mouth. That was a perfect impression. And you know what? I'll bet that rule of thumb is it goes back to the luck. Yeah, I bet. So. Yeah, you just keep your mouth shut. Yeah, we've learned that a lot on the show. If only we could keep constant watch. Obviously be meaning to have someone up in what's it called the crow's nest. Sure. Looking out, avoid bottlenecks, which unfortunately, with that one route you're talking about, it sounds like it's kind of hard to do, right? If not impossible. Yeah. And search your ship, make sure no one is stowing away. Sometimes pirates will already be there as stowaways. It's like, surprise, call for help. I think there's systems now that monitor where your boats are. If you're a cargo boat, ship lock. There you go. What do they do? It's like lowjack for your ship. Okay. Yeah, there you have it. But yeah, if you do see some pirates coming aboard, if you ever happen to find yourself commanding an oil tanker and you see pirates coming toward you, you do call for help, as Chuck said. You also want to sound your alarm, turn on your lights. You want the pirates to know that you've seen them, so there's no element of surprise, which scare them off. It may actually deter their attack. Sure. Because you're a huge cargo ship and they're like five guys. A lot of ships, especially tankers, have their own fire hoses, like the big kind, and you can spray guys as they try to come up the side of the ship. Well, don't put your thumb over. And if you aren't transporting oil or any kind of flying wall material, there's actually a new kind of technology that electrifies the hole. I heard about that. So the guy tries to climb up, he's like, surprised. Yeah, exactly. That'd be awesome. It would be. Dude, if I had that system, I would go through that shipping channel you're talking about. I would just like, camp out in the long term in the Gulf of Aidan. Yes. Just to smoke a cigar and crack a beer and be like, can I get it? Yeah. So that's pirates. Is that it? That's it, isn't it? I'm sure that is not it at all. It's the tip of the iceberg. Even as far as Tracy's article goes, there's still more that we didn't touch on. But yeah, it's such a rich, beautiful history and corsairs and swashbuckling, et cetera. And we're not touching on film and TV at all because if we mentioned 100 pirate things, we would get an email saying, I can't believe he didn't mention pirate X from Movie XYZ. Right. And actually there's a little graph that Tracy had made for this article. It's our ten favorite pirates, but we're. Just going to go ahead and break the news that this is Tracy's ten favorite pirates. Whose favorite? I didn't see that. Blackbeard, blackbeard's. Number one for historical pirates. And then fiction. Dread Pirate Roberts. Who's that? The guy from Princess Bride. Oh, yeah. And the guy from Firefly is in there, too. I like Jack Sparrow. Like, those movies weren't the best ever, but he was pretty awesome. We just fell into what you said we weren't going to do. Yeah, but come on. All right, well, we welcome your emails. We'll give you the email address you can send your angry pirate emails to in a second. Let me say this. No email with multiple Rs will be read or answered, too. As a matter of fact, I think we set up a spam filter that if R appears in the email, it just automatically deletes it. We don't see it. Okay, if you want to learn more about pirates, type that word in pirates, pirate, something like that, into the handystarchbar at Hotsppr works.com, which means it's time for listener mail. Yes, indeed, Josh. Today we have a listener mail. I am going to call jerry was amazed by this email. Awesome. And I was, too. Hey, guys. I was listening to your podcast on hostage negotiation, and you had a little back and forth at about the ten minute mark. That made me laugh a little bit. This isn't the one, is it? This is the one. Wow. So should we play that now? Yes. What? I love doing that. It's usually just a regular old domestic scene. And the worst ones, man, the worst ones are those you see on the news where you see some dudes got a baby acting as a human shield. Who does that? You've never seen that? No. Oh, man, it's the worst. Watch some of those cop shows. A baby is a human shield. Yeah, it's like a gun to the baby. These guys. It's like the dad is out of his mind and on drugs or something, and he'll have his baby, and it's just the worst thing in the world to watch. Unfold. Okay, Josh, this is from Danny, and here's what Danny has to say about that. Again? Yeah, this is the one. In 1987, I was one of those babies. We were living in Queens, New York, at the time, and my father barricaded himself on our top floor apartment for hours. He was holding me and threatening to jump out of the window with me in his arms if the police got too close. He didn't have any elaborate demands other than wanting my mother to not take me away from him in a custody dispute. The police used the negotiator to try and distract him so the SWAT team could do their own thing. Could do their thing, but they deemed it too risky to try and assault with him dangling me out the window like Michael Jackson did. Yeah, that's not in there. I just threw that in. Eventually, the negotiators started playing to his religious beliefs good tactic. And got him to let a priest come into the apartment. They were finally able to take him down without brute force. You can imagine how much I appreciate the art of hostage negotiations. Yes. No kidding, Danny. The story made the cover of every New York newspaper that day, and I have all of them saved. Odd. Souvenirs I guess thanks for the great show. I know. So I couldn't believe this happened to Danny, and I wrote him back and I asked what happened to his dad, and I have not heard back from him, so I'm not really sure, but dude. Danny, glad you're around, man. I know. I am, too. That's just mind boggling. Actually, it turns out people do use babies as human shields, and they listen to stuff. You should know 20 years on. That's crazy. If you have an absolutely nutty, mind boggling, real life story, chuck, Jerry and I are always interested in those. If you're a Somali pirate, then you listen to the show. Why not let us see your view? We don't hear your view very often here in the west, so let us know what life is like for you, somali pirate, human shield, or anything else. Let us know. Send in an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffs.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more? HowStuffWorks? Check out our blog on the housethefworks.com homepage brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you." | ||
How Alcoholism Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-alcoholism-works | In the US, 17 million people are alcoholics. Not merely abusing alcohol, these sufferers become physically dependent on it, forming a chronic disease. Learn about the effects on the body, the brain, and the life of an alcoholic and ways to get help. | In the US, 17 million people are alcoholics. Not merely abusing alcohol, these sufferers become physically dependent on it, forming a chronic disease. Learn about the effects on the body, the brain, and the life of an alcoholic and ways to get help. | Thu, 03 Sep 2015 14:44:58 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=14, tm_min=44, tm_sec=58, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=246, tm_isdst=0) | 47441782 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. And Chuck's got a noise machine. It could turn into, like morning zoo. Tight episode. No, I'm not going to use it. It's a lame one. It is pretty lame. Is it marked? What does it do? How many different functions does it have, Chuck? 123-41-2345. That would be 2020. Nice job. You just use multiplication. That's right. But like I said when I first sat down, it doesn't even have a fart sound. So how good of a noise machine could it be? How does it not? It's got a burp. I mean, they make sound machines. They just have that sound. Yeah, it's called a whoopie cushion. Yes. I don't know if it's a machine, though. Probably not. Okay. The device I don't think I said this stuff you should know in case you haven't figured it out. No. Well, someone just stumbled upon this and they're horrified. They turned it off a good minute ago. Yeah. And we're going to talk about alcoholism, and there's nothing more fun than that. This one should be a laugh riot. Right. Well, you can definitely perk things up with your little noise machine over there. I wouldn't do that. So, alcoholism, Chuck, turns out in researching this, we should say, let us shout out to some previous episodes that really tie into this. Totally. We did Prohibition. Yeah. Colon. Turns out America really loves to drink. That was one episode. We did addiction. Yeah, good one. And we did one on rehab. Yeah. Another good one. Yeah. And then if you want to count, like beer. Yeah. The booth one. Or I think we did one on Moonshine. We did one on and whiskey runners. So we do one on whiskey runners. We ended up doing like, two somehow on Whiskey Runners. Yeah. What else? Oh, I'm sure there are others, but I think the ones on Addiction and rehab are definitely factor in. Indeed. So in running across this, though, I was reminded that, yes, America loves drinking. Yeah, the world does, but not necessarily. I saw a statistic that blew me away. 66% of the human beings over age, I believe 15 worldwide, have not had a drink in the last twelve months, according to a major survey, like World Health Organization type level survey. I don't remember where I saw it because I saw so many different statistics here. There but the majority of the population of the Earth has not had a drink in the last twelve months. Interesting. Yeah, I thought that was interesting, too. And of course, there's entire countries that are basically teetotaling. Yeah. And there are entire countries that are drunk. Right. In America is definitely one of them. Right. America loves to drink. We drink very regularly. Other countries, they don't drink necessarily during the week, but they really plow into it on the weekends and all of this, it turns out, falls under this umbrella called alcohol use disorders. Binge drinking, alcohol abuse, and alcoholism. Three different things. They are, yeah. Although you could say that binge drinking is a type of alcohol abuse. It's a behavioral pattern, for sure, drinking behavior. But yes, alcohol abuse is not necessarily alcoholism, and neither is binge drinking. Alcoholism is its own thing. Yeah. Alcohol abuse is if you are drinking, if there's a problem with your drinking affecting your school, your work, your personal life, your family, your friends, you could be an alcohol abuser. Alcoholism is a chronic disease where you are physically dependent on alcohol. You need to drink. You got to have that drink. Once you start drinking, you have a hard time stopping. You develop a tolerance for drinking, so you need to drink more. And if you stop drinking, you suffer withdrawal symptoms. Yes, that's alcoholism. Right. And you suffer withdrawal symptoms because, like you said, you've become physically dependent on it. And we'll talk about how in this episode. But yes, alcohol abuse, that just means you need to get your act together big time. Sure. Alcoholism a chronic disease. Yeah. It means you need medical help. And beyond medical help, psychological help. You need treatment. Yeah. You're probably not going to be able to do it on your own now. And with alcohol abuse, you may need treatment as well. Everyone's different. Sure. Yeah. I don't think we should chase people away from seeking treatment. Of course, alcohol abusers and not necessarily alcoholics. Yeah, I think probably if you're a serious abuser of alcohol, you probably feel like an alcoholic in a lot of ways. Yeah. I mean, if you woke up this morning and you don't remember where you were last night for 5 hours, abuser of alcohol, you may want to check into that a little bit or you may not. Well, yeah, and it depends. I think a lot of people think that if they are an abuser of alcohol that they have to stop entirely for the rest of their lives. Not necessarily. I mean, back in 1940, yes, that was probably the case. These days, there's been a different approach to managing alcoholism and alcohol abuse. So you definitely don't have to abstain, although that's still like the model. Exactly. And again, it depends on the person. Some people can do that. Some people can drink socially and never have a problem. Some people can have a problem, go back to just drinking socially, and some people, they just can't have it anymore. And they know that. Right. And the key is to find out what kind of person you are. Yes. By stopping. That's how you find out. Probably. So you see what happens when you stop. Yeah, exactly. There are more than 17 million Americans who are either alcoholic or abuse alcohol. More men than women, apparently 10% to 3%. And this says that if you have 14 or more drinks a week as a man or seven or more drinks per week as a woman, you are at risk for alcoholism. And do you know why? I don't. Because the National Institutes of Health themselves define moderate drinking as 14 drinks a week or less for a man and seven drinks a week or less for a woman. That's moderate drinking in the United States. A couple of beers a night. Yeah. That seems about right to me. It does. And if you are enraged by this gender disparity yeah. That's all just calmed down because it has to do with usually body type and metabolism. Yeah, of course. It's not like little lady. Right. You only get half the drinks because we're drinking the rest. No, I've drinking your share. Known some ladies that can drink me under the table. Sure. But it's the average. That's right. It is more prevalent among younger folks, 18 to 44 than older people as well. And it will touch many people's lives whether or not you are an abuser and alcoholic. They say that more than 40% of Americans have been exposed to alcoholism somewhere in their family. I'm surprised it's not a little more than that. I was surprised by that statistic, too. I wonder this article is fairly old. We had to go through and update some of the stats, but I'm wondering if that's more or less these days, because it does seem low. Yeah. I mean, if you're talking about your extended family, because it doesn't say immediate family. No. That brings up one of the reasons everybody's like you shouldn't be an alcoholic. Alcoholism is a problem. It's not just because of what it does to the individual, but because of the effects it has on people who are raised by alcoholics. Yeah. You're four times more likely to become an alcoholic if one of your parents is an alcoholic. Yeah. You also are more likely to experience anxiety, depression, behavioral problems, and there's a lot of programs that are geared toward helping children of alcoholics cope. Yeah. My grand paternal grandfather was a nasty drunk. Oh, yeah. He died when I was like five, so I didn't know him very well. But as went with my father, my father didn't drink. So it can go both ways. You might become an alcoholic or you might be like, no, that was your dad's. Dad. Yeah. I'm not touching that stuff. And I don't think my dad maybe he drinks a little bit here and there now, but he pretty much was just like, no, I grew up in a household with no alcohol because my mom didn't drink either. So I wonder what happened to me. I went to college. I was going to say, I don't have anybody in my family with a history like that. Yeah. I will say this, though, and going through the adoption process, it really makes you take a look at your own lineage and not be super precious about it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Because you pick out tolerances of what you will accept in birth parents. Like if they have disease or mental illness or alcoholism or drug abuse in there. And you start to think about your own family and extended family, you're like, oh, wait a minute. There's alcoholism and drug abuse and mental illness and suicide attempts. And it makes you think, oh, well, it's not like my seed is anything special. Yeah. So I thought it was pretty interesting. That's a growing experience, huh? It was a growing experience. Man so some people, like we said, can drink, and it doesn't become a problem as an abuser or as an alcoholic. Some people do. And they think there are can be a combination of factors, including genetic, physiological, psychological, and social genes. They don't know the gene. Right. They're pretty sure that there is a genetic link. Yeah. I thought surely this article is old enough that if I just do a search now, I'll find, well, they know this gene and this gene are involved now. I couldn't find any genes named. The reason why they think there's a genetic link is thanks to twin studies, they found that alcoholism is more prevalent among identical twins than among fraternal twins. Right. Which suggests that there is a genetic component to it. They also think that genes play a role for an individual whose pleasure circuit is just really highly tuned. Yeah. So physiologically, if your dopamine just goes off the charts more than someone else's might, then might be more at risk. Yeah. You're going to be like, I want to do that again. Give me another beer. Right. Whatever. Or tin. Right? Yeah, well, yeah. And that's another thing we didn't necessarily point out early on, is an alcoholic. There's no stopping. Stopping equals, like falling over and blacking out or being arrested or running out of alcohol in the entire house and not being able to find their keys to go get more. Yeah. I don't know if that's like a daily thing. Like there are alcoholics who drink every night and don't drink to blackout proportions, but that certainly can happen psychologically. If you suffer from depression or if you don't feel very good about yourself, you have low self esteem, you'd probably be more likely to develop alcoholism as a drinker. And then socially, of course, I don't think we've done one just on peer pressure, but we talked about it a lot. Yeah. And that's a big reason why kids will start drinking and then factor in what they see around them every day. Advertisements and TV and movies like whatever bill or whatever. No, I think it's like Bud Light. They put together a whole town that's just like one big party all the time fueled by bud light. Yeah, man. And then like these new absolute ads that are just like these crazy eyes wide shut parties, and everybody's like, I don't think it's just so incredibly rich and glamorous and having, like they're just so out of control, having a great time. They're also clearly, like, snorting ecstasy or something, too. But it's an absolute ad. Yeah. If you're, like, 14, you're like, I want to be at that party. As a matter of fact, maybe if I open this bottle of absolute right here and invite a few friends over, that party will start my house. Yeah. It definitely sends the wrong message. Yeah. And I'm surprised that this stuff is allowed and not a little bit more. I guess I can't do anything. There are regulations for alcohol advertisements, but yes, you can't suggest that alcohol is fun. Right. You might have to rethink every campaign we've ever done. Some signs that you may have being alcoholic is if you don't want to eat anymore, you don't really care about food. If you drink alone. That's one of the big ones. They say if you're lying about your drinking or secretly drinking, that's a big one. Like, if you're telling your family, like, I've stopped and you're mixing the vodka with orange juice in the morning yeah. You've got, like, a bad sign. Yeah, very bad sign. What are you going to say? You got, like, booze stashed around the house, hiding places. And then if you're drinking to forget your problems, which I think that's why a lot of people drink. If you're unhappy when you're not drinking and super touchy and irritable, or if you are suffering from those blackouts, if you're blacking out a lot, then although alcohol affects some people differently, I'm not a blackouter. Even though I've had times where I've had way too much to drink, I never really blackout. But some people blackout pretty easily. Yeah. So that might be a sign that alcohol affects you differently and you might want to take a look. Yeah. That's another argument in favor of genetics. People experience things differently. Sure. So we are going to dive into your body, the body of the alcoholic gross right after this message. So, Chuck yeah. The drink has been taken and the first thing that happens when it hits the gut is it starts getting absorbed. Well, the first thing that happens is it says, Here I am, and it starts irritating your stomach lining. Yeah. It's funny. And it's not funny, but you take an alcohol in your body and your body immediately is like no. Yeah. It's not like your body doesn't want the alcohol. Right. It starts trying to get rid of it in every way possible as soon as it enters your body. Yeah. So alcohol is a poison to start with, but your body metabolizes it into an even worse poison. Yeah. And yeah, it wants to get rid of it immediately, which is why you vomit sometimes. That's right. 20% of it is absorbed in the stomach and the other 80% is absorbed in the small intestine. And depending what you're drinking, it's going to be absorbed quicker or more slowly. Right. So, like, vodka will be absorbed faster than beer because vodka has a higher alcohol content. That's right. It's concentration of alcohol higher than beer. That's right. When your body starts to metabolize it, about 10% is removed in urine and breath by the kidneys and lungs, and then your liver takes care of the rest. Yeah. It takes a beating in the process. Yeah. Because, again, it's a toxin. It's also a carcinogen. Did you know that? That I found that out researching this. Oh, yeah. And as your liver is trying to just get rid of all this stuff and metabolize it and break it down into other parts, you're drinking more and more. Yeah. Which can kill you. Like, in a night, it can kill you. You can die very easily from consuming too much alcohol in a single sitting. Yes. Apparently they have that quantified is your blood alcohol content or blood alcohol concentration goes up. That's where you drink faster than your liver, is able to metabolize it and process the alcohol, which results in you getting drunk or drunk or right. But after you get to a blood alcohol content of 00:35 to .5%, which I guess is like if you just take a cubic centimeter of blood, 35% of that would be alcohol. That seems like a lot. Well, that's what puts you in an alcohol induced coma. Right. So I think it's a lot. So up to half of a percent, you're only at risk of a coma. After a half of a percent, you're facing death. Yeah, like Alexander the Great. Oh, did he die from alcohol poisoning? Allegedly he did. From a wine drinking contest. That's never a good idea. Food and drinking contest in general. We did one on those on food contests, but I don't think those are ever a good idea. No. You know who else does it? Ryan Reynolds hates eating contests. Oh, really? Yeah. Did he make a stand? Yeah, he did. Like, just a social media stand, probably. No, he wrote an essay in the Huffington Post oh, really? About how this disgraceful and what a waste it is such an arrogant thing to do in eating contest while people are starving. Yeah, I agree. Man. And then you would love this essay. And he put a picture of his six pack ABS. Plus, you can't look like this. Bam. Let's talk about the brain, because it definitely affects your brain. Yes, it does. Specifically, it is going to alter the levels of your neurotransmitters, and those are what sends those chemical messages all around in your body. And that's why you're going to end up slurring and stumbling and losing motor function. Because it's dumbing you down. Yeah. Your brain is not able to communicate with itself or the rest of your body the way it's supposed to because the neurotransmitters are being affected, and two in particular are being affected. GABA, our friend that puts us to sleep, is increased GABA release, or GABA production is increased when alcohol is introduced to the body, right? Yes. And then glutamate, actually, which is an excitatory neurotransmitter, gets you up, it gives you some pep, is actually reduced when you drink alcohol. So you go from sleepy to sloppy because GABA is increased and glutamate decreased. Yeah. And this whole time you go from sleepy to sloppy, but your dopamine is through the roof. So sleepy or sloppy, you're going, isn't this great? This is the best thing ever. Speaking of great, I think you're great. And that's all because of dopamine. You know, when I saw this now, I saw glutamate. It makes me wonder if the brain has a new mommy taste to it. Gross. But don't you wonder, though? No. You can eat brains. Yeah, you can. You can get them in like a can at the grocery store. Yeah, you can get them in a fancy restaurant. Sure. Where else? Other places. That quick trip? Sure. You can get everything a quick trip. And that was impotted meat. I'm sure there's some impotted meat, but I think potted meat makes, like, a brain's brand. A brains brand? Yeah. So gross. I used to work at the Golden Pantry in Athens, and we had dudes that would come in there, like road workers that would get their pack of saltings and potted meat was their lunch. They would get on the way to work and like a 98 ounce Mountain Dew. That's healthy living, brother. Their arm would just fall off on their way out the door. Yeah. And a few packs of cigarettes, too, probably. So how specifically? There are regions of the brain that are specifically affected in different ways. I guess we should go over that, too. Sure. Like the cerebral cortex. Well, the cerebral cortex, right. That's where your executive function is located. That's where things like, maybe I should stop drinking for the night decisions are located. Or maybe I shouldn't get in a fight with that cop. Right. Or maybe I shouldn't start that fire. Whatever. All of this stuff is located here in your prefrontal cortex. Right. It becomes impaired again because your neurotransmitters are reduced. They're being affected, and your brain is not communicating with itself any longer. So the boss, the executive function, is basically silenced. And that actually has a one two punch as far as alcohol consumption is concerned. Not only is your judgment impaired, meaning your behavior just takes all sorts of left turns while you're drunk. Right. But also, remember we said the reward pathway is activated by alcohol and your dopamine is going crazy? Yeah. Well, your prefrontal cortex is also responsible for judging whether a pleasurable experience has an adaptive benefit to it. Yeah, whether it's worth it. Right. The thing is, when this is impaired, that part of your brain is not able to judge. Drinking is not worth it. So it's all totally worth it. So it's all pleasure. Yeah. So it has really this crazy effect. Alcohol is so smart, it knows what it's doing. Yeah. I mean, it lowers your inhibitions. And if you're abusing alcohol, that's a bad thing. If you have a glass of wine before you have to go up on stage, that's a different thing. Oh, well, you're the exception, I guess. That's just a glass of wine, not twelve glasses of wine. Speaking of, this is fresh air. I've been meaning to listen to you with an author named O Sarah. I haven't listened yet, so I don't know how to say her last name, but she is a recovering alcoholic and she apparently it says in the description she got up and spoke in front of a crowd of 300 and was so drunk that she had no recollection of it the next day. Wow. Can you imagine that? Man, that's my worst nightmare. I mean, like, going out on stage, you're like, okay, am I all right? I'm relaxed, but I'm not too relaxed, right? Yes. Being blackout drunk on stage. Wow, that is a scary thought. So, Chuck, that's just the prefrontal cortex we've been talking about. There's other regions of the brain that get smacked around by alcohols effects. That's right. The cerebellum. That's your movement and balance. So that's why you're stumbling around. Right. Because that is impaired your hypothalamus and pituitary hormone release and automatic brain function. So they depress the nerves in the hypothalamus. And we're talking about sexual arousal. You might be more aroused, but you might not be able to perform sexually at the same time. Right. It's very negative. That's a mixed message. Alcohol like, hey, go talk to that girl over there and maybe see what happens. And then physically you're like, well, nothing's happening. It's embarrassed yourself time. Yeah. Like, why you set me up? Alcohol. And then there's the medulla. That's right. The medulla is located in the brain stem, so it's a very ancient part of the human brain. Right. And it controls things like breathing, body temperature, really important stuff, automatic stuff. Right. And alcohol impairs the Medulla's function, so you may pass out and stop breathing. Your body temperature can go haywire, which can lead to all sorts of other problems. And your gag reflex is centered in your medulla. So you could end up like John Bonham, pass out, throwing up and choking to death. Yes. Man, that is sad stuff. We already talked a little bit about blackouts, but you can have that short term memory loss or it can lead to long term memory loss and like, onset of dementia. You've heard of, or may have even known people that have been described as pickled from alcohol. And that's just that someone whose body is just not in brain are not functioning. Yeah. There's actually there's a specific vitamin deficiency that can come from alcohol, because prolonged exposure to alcohol or prolonged consumption of alcohol over the years reduces your body's ability to absorb vitamin or vitamin B. And vitamin B is a very important vitamin that you need. It's an essential vitamin, meaning that you need to get it elsewhere, like you need to eat it because your body either doesn't produce or doesn't produce enough. So with vitamin B, it helps brain cells turn carbs into energy. Very important. It also helps nerves transmit information, also very important. And when you have a Thiamine deficiency, you can end up with what's called Nikki Korsakoff syndrome, where basically your brain shrinks, you become confused, disoriented. You essentially lose your mind in a lot of ways because your brain is no longer able to function correctly or communicate with itself, not just while you're drunk. Overall, yeah, they call it wet brain, and they're actually two different things that are often described together. Wernicke's Encephalopathy and Corsica syndrome, but they often go hand in hand. And one of the scary things about this is it has a very high rate of being not diagnosed. So, like, I think only 20% of cases are diagnosed before death. Oh, wow. And a lot more after. They're like, oh, turns out they had wet brain. Yeah. Nothing you can do about it now. So that is certainly also sad as our withdrawal symptoms. If you have an actual dependence and you're an alcoholic, when you stop drinking, within a day to three days, probably closer to a day, you're going to be experiencing some pretty nasty withdrawal syndromes. Right. The reason why is because your brain becomes dependent on alcohol. Right. It basically says, okay, this guy's going to drink all the time. I don't see a time when he's ever going to stop drinking. So I need to adjust my output of neurotransmitters, change my brain chemistry completely to account for this introduction of alcohol. Because the body seeks homeostasis. Right. This is its way of adjusting itself, to seek homeostasis in the presence, the constant presence of alcohol. And so when you remove that alcohol, the brain's chemistry has been altered over time, and now you're probably suddenly removing alcohol and you are going to go through withdrawal symptoms. And actually, people have died from acute alcohol withdrawal. Oh, I'm sure where they probably should have weaned themselves off rather than just quit drinking cold turkey. Because, again, the hallmark of alcoholism is a physical dependence on it. And that part of your physical dependence is your brain chemistry. Yeah. And there's a lot more and more people are thinking that weaning off is a safer approach. Well, I think that's what happened to Amy Winehouse. Oh, really? She just quit cold turkey and died very quickly. Wow. In withdrawal, you're going to get this disoriented. You might have hallucinations, nausea, sweating, seizures, delirium, trimmings. The DT's actually has the same effect as a lot of these hallucinations sweating. Your heart rate is going to be funky. You're going to be shaking and shivering. Just watch Leaving Las Vegas and Nicholas Cage. If you want to be scared away from booze. Yeah. That was a tough movie. It was. What about when a man loves a woman? That was a tough one. Yeah. Days of wine and roses Never saw that classic. I think it was. Jack Lemon was an alcoholic in that 128 days, not to be confused. 28 Days Later. Different from me. 28 Days. That's when Sandra Bullock played a zombie. Right. Just kidding. What else? Surely there's more. Oh, yeah. Flight. Have you seen Flight with Denzel? Yeah, that was pretty good. But here's a big time alcohol that was shot here in Atlanta. Yes, he was. And clean and sober. The Michael Keaton movie. These are all off the top of my head, but it's been an off covered subject, and they're usually very tough to watch. Agreed. So let's take a break and hug each other so we can get through the rest of this thing. All right. And we'll talk a little bit more about what alcohol does to your body and things you can do to stick up. Yes. All right. So we talked a lot about the health damage you're going to suffer as an alcoholic in the brain. Yeah. Internally, your liver is going to take a beating. So your kidneys, your heart, your brain and your central nervous system, your liver actually, the first step to bad alcohol damage is alcoholic hepatitis, which is inflammation of the liver. And then you have about a 70% chance, if you have alcoholic hepatitis, to develop full blown cirrhosis. And that is when, little bit by little bit, your liver just turns into scar tissue and becomes an unusable organ. And it is nasty if you see pictures of, like, cirrhosis damaged livers. Yeah. Because, again, your liver, while it's metabolizing alcohol, turns it into acetylalahide, which is really toxic. Like, alcohol is toxic, but for some reason, while we process it, we turn it into something even more toxic, and the liver suffers as a result. Your stomach, the lining in the stomach can just get eaten away, and your intestines can lead to ulcers and obviously, in the moment, nausea and vomiting, your pancreas could lead to pancreatitis and cancer, like you mentioned. Yeah. Because alcohol is a carcinogen, and exposure over the years by being an alcoholic can result in a bunch of different alcoholic cancers are what they're called. You can get them of the throat, of the larynx. You can get liver cancer, obviously, just from being exposed to alcohol over and over again. I had no idea you could get cancer from alcohol. It makes sense, but I just never thought of as a carcinogen. If you're over 65, you're in bigger trouble because your body just doesn't metabolize alcohol as well at that point. And like we said, men have a little better time metabolizing alcohol than women. Right. I remember at my bar in La, the drawing room, there was this old drunk there. I won't say his name because I. Found out he's still alive. But it was just remarkable to me that this guy was alive. I mean, he was into his seventy S and just dropped dead drunk every single time I saw him. Wow. And I checked back and this was in the late ninety S, and then I was in La last year, went to the bar, asked if he was still around. They said, oh yeah, he'll be here near a few hours. Wow. I was like, man, how is he alive? Milk thistle. What's that? I think you make a tea out of it or whatever. It's a very famous liver cleanser. Interesting. Milk, this one. Maybe he's on the milk. This will milk thistle. And he's eating a lot of meat, so he's getting tons of vitamin B. That's how that guy's alive. Maybe he was a strait vodka guy, which is always kind of can be an indication. I think that helps, though. Also, if I remember from one of our other episodes, like, the clearer the alcohol, usually the fewer the impurities. So maybe that's what it is that's keeping him alive. Yeah. Vodka and he didn't mix it with anything. But I mean, look at Boris Yeltsin and people like, he was old when he died. Yeah, he had that knows it was like a cantaloupe, the gin blossom. Which doesn't necessarily mean you're an alcoholic. People take it for that, though. Yeah. I mean, that's rosacea, but alcoholism definitely doesn't help the gin blossom situation. And then there's fetal alcohol syndrome, which is the saddest thing you can imagine. Yes. It says here that fetal alcohol syndrome is the number one preventable cause of mental impairment. What? Yeah. What? Wow. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. So if you're drinking too much, you shouldn't drink at all when you're pregnant. In Europe, they're like, oh, you can have a glass of wine here as well, too. Apparently it's gained acceptance that you can have something occasionally or whatever. Like wine usually is what they say. Right. And I realize this article is old, but it specifically says the surgeon general is like, do not drink while you're pregnant. Well, I think that's the fallback recommendation. It feels like a tricky thing to say. Well, you can maybe drink this a little bit here and there. I think it's easier for them to say, just don't drink for nine months. And everybody says it's easy for you to say food in general, then you have zero chance of any complications like this. Right. Well, at least fetal alcohol syndrome. Yeah. So that's when your little baby's brain cells are developing and forming connections in utero, and alcohol exposure there is going to disrupt that from the get go and lead to you can have a physical problems. Like your head might be smaller than normal, microencephaly. Yeah. You might have some facial abnormalities, and then later in life you could be in big trouble as far as cognitive functioning, memory, learning disabilities, so it's a pretty rough one. And it's all because alcohol impedes cellular division during development. Right. So when the fetus is exposed to alcohol, which easily crosses the placental barrier, the cellular division, it doesn't go according to plan. Yeah. So not good. And again, with adoption, that's one of the things you have to consider because most of these birth mothers have some sort of issue with drugs or alcohol. And fetal alcohol syndrome, that's the one that even the agencies say is like, you don't want to mess with that. Really? Yeah. Do your research on drugs and how they affect the baby, and you'd probably be surprised. So alcohol is worse than fetal development? Absolutely. Wow. Yeah, it's the worst. Yeah, it's pretty scary. So this number I don't think is right anymore. 185,000,000,000 per year. In medical expenses, it's either 225 or 295. Okay. And that's in the United States. And that's crime, loss, productivity, accidents, medical expenses, the economic impact of alcohol. Yeah. That is close to $300 billion. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. All right, so what can you do? There's a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. For many, many years, your only hope was Alcoholics Anonymous. Not even twelve step programs, specifically Alcoholics Anonymous, which is founded in either 1930 or 1935. Do you remember? No. There's some pretty great articles about Alcoholics Anonymous and it's effectiveness, it tributes to it, it's its own thing, and it's helped, undoubtedly, tons of people. But there's been alternatives that have developed over the years. But it took a while. Supposedly it wasn't until like the 60s or 70s that alternatives to AA grew up, and some of them say, no, you don't need to believe in a higher power to get over alcoholism. You can find that in yourself. Other people, like, I think one is called moderation management. So you don't have to abstain from life. You can try to just become a moderate drinker, and then if that doesn't work, then yeah, you probably should abstain for life. And some others say twelve step programs are great, but you could also do the same thing with cognitive behavioral therapy. Sure. But some sort of treatment program that involves like, a change in behavior through either twelve steps, support groups, one on one counseling, that's the gold standard for treating alcoholism. But over the years, especially lately, people have been turning more and more to prescription drugs. They become increasingly promising as well, especially as we start to learn how genes interact with specific drugs. The more we can learn about a person's genes and how they interact with drugs, the more targeted treatment of alcoholism will be, it seems like. Yeah. This article I found in the New York Times, drugs help tailor alcoholism treatment. The wish is that one day they will be able to because everyone's different, like we were saying, as far as alcoholism goes. So you can't have one treatment for such a varied group so they're hoping one day to be able to tailor drug treatment programs, pharmaceuticals, for alcohol treatment, the same way they do with depression or anxiety or any mental illness. Right. It's like, this doesn't work. Well, then try this one. That one's kind of working well. Add this one in and it's really going to make it pop. Right now, I think there are three approved FDA treatments, two of them naltrexone and acham. Prosat reduced cravings to drink. And then there's antibiotics, which I've heard of for a little while. And that's the one that makes you sick when you drink. Yeah, it's pretty rough. Only a drug like that could find its roots in puritan America. But that naltrexone. There's a good article in The Atlantic called The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous, and the author experiments with naltrexone and finds, amazingly, to her astonishment, like it really works. Yeah. It says in here, in studies and clinical trials, they found one in seven alcoholics that works for one in seven alcoholics. Those two, naltrexone and alchemy sat with naltrexone, probably both of them. But definitely with naltrexone, it targets your pleasure center when alcohol is present. So it targets your pleasure center. But it's not like you go through life like a hedonic. You can still experience joy and happiness and pleasure, but specifically with alcohol, it reduces the effect that it has on the limbic system so you don't crave it as much. Right. And when you do crave it, I think in the New York Times article you found somebody who takes in a Trek zone is saying, I still get cravings, but they're short lived and they're not nearly as intense because of the Niletrexone. Right. But again, it only works for about a 7th of the people who take it. Yeah. And this is a modern thing. Years ago, offering to treat a drug with another drug was scoffed at, but now people are embracing it a little bit more as like, I guess a lesser of the evils. Yeah. At least you're not killing your body with alcohol abuse. And one of the things truck that came up when we did the Addiction podcast was that alcoholism and all addictions are a chronic disease and relapse are to be expected. Sure. As with any chronic disease, you go through relapses. And apparently Alcoholics Anonymous did a survey in 2007 of like 8000 of its members in North America and found that 33% of them were still abstinent after ten years. A lot of people relapse, and I bet you anything those 33% are the ones that are still working that program regularly. Well, yeah, you have to like part of AA is you still go to meetings, at least occasionally years for the rest of your life, basically. Yeah. There's a really good article that came out at Harper's in 2011 called The Drunks Club the Cult That Cures. Totally worth reading. I posted a PDF of it on our site for this podcast page. It is probably the best article it's ever been written about Alcoholics Anonymous. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's like a gift because the author is an alcoholic and an Alcoholic Anonymous attendee and an incredible writer. Just a great recovered alcoholic or recovering. I don't remember because that's I probably recovered or recovering. That's why that tag sticks with you for life. I think that's one of the things they teach you is that you should always consider yourself an alcoholic. Right. You have the disease, but if you're in recovery, then you're on the right path. Yeah. And I was reading an article about alternatives to Alcoholics Anonymous and one of them was like, women on sobriety or something like that, I believe. We're saying, like, we don't agree with that. That's a temporary tag. It's not for life. And the spokesperson for that organization is saying, like, if I used to smoke and then I quit after a certain time, I'm not like, yeah, I'm a smoker for life. You used to smoke or you just don't even it's not even a thing. It's not a label you have to carry around for the rest of your life. I see the value in both to be honest and the reward of being able to say, I'm not an alcoholic anymore. Right. Or the recognition that you used to be. And you need to remember that every day. Yeah. I think it's probably as varied as people's reaction to alcohol. If you need that, great. If you need to be free of that eventually. Right? Yes. Well said. If you are an alcoholic, go get help. You probably don't have to go any further than your favorite search engine to find a lot of resources that can get you help. Oh, yeah. People are dying to help people kick alcohol and drugs. They love to do that stuff. It's like their life's work. Yeah. So go meet one of those people. Don't be afraid of them and don't be afraid of your life after because you can lead a rich, fulfilling existence. Yeah. I think that keeps a lot of people from wanting to kick it. I'm not going to be fun. I know. I'm friends with recovering alcoholic. Yes. And they're great. Yeah. They love life, actually. They're better. They're not just the same because they're not blacking out and hungover. Right? Yeah. Mad all the time. If you want to know more about alcoholism, you can type that word in the search bar athouseoffworks.com and since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this letter from an old geezer, okay. Because he says he's an old geezer. I would never call for sure of age that just automatically assumed that, hey, guys, I'm a geezer, 74 years old and a regular listener. I love your show. Listen all the time when I'm driving. I'm also a musician living in a smallish town restricted to geezers south of Tucson and I was just listening to the podcast on autotune. I share your hatred of it. You didn't say that. So many words, but it came out loud and clear. I'm writing, however, about the little snippet you've been about reverb. When I was a senior in high school, late 1950s, I was in a rock and roll band in Tucson called The Nightbeats. Nice. We got three records for a record company named Zoom Records that was started and run by two of our school friends. The guy who ran the recording studio in Phoenix where we did the session could put echo on the voice. In 1959, long before manufactured reverb was widespread. He did it by placing a speaker in a microphone in an empty water tank behind the studio. He piped in the sound through the speaker and picked it up on the mic to get an actual physical echo or reverb sound for the vocal. It's pretty smart. For 1950 Tucson, not too bad, right? Yeah. He even was able to move the mic in and out to change the reverb time for the desired effect. One more interesting fact is that our singer was Pete Ronstad. His little sister had not yet made the big time February strike. Is she from Arizona? I didn't know that. Linda Ronstad. Yeah. That explains the Spanish language album. Yeah, maybe. So what is it? Senior plow. No es bueno. Was that one of the songs? Yeah, she was on one of the Simpsons episodes. Really? Yeah. Hope you find this interesting and worth the time it took to read it. It sure was an interesting time in my life. Thanks for the great podcast. And that is from Lance hoops. Nice, Lance. Thank you for that. Yeah, man. I love hearing from our listeners of age. I like hearing from twelve year olds and like 70 plus. Yeah, me too. I even like hearing from two year olds to 103 year old. How about that? Nice. I always felt bad. Not always. Once I came to understand that people live beyond 92. That that Christmas song excluded a lot of people. Oh, sure, yeah. And we should point out, too, I was going to read a full mail on it, but the Pete Frampton effect yeah, it's not a vocoder, it's a talk box. Whatever. And I feel really bad because I know that you're in the heat of the podcast. I don't feel bad. I say all sorts of stuff where I'm like, why did I say that? Or why didn't I address that? I even thought I said the words talk box and I just thought you knew something I didn't about a different name for it or something I should have spoken up. No, that's a talk box. The tube is acting as it's a rubber tube that runs from a speaker and the sound is going through that tube into your mouth. And so you're basically playing a guitar through a tiny little tube yeah. And you're able to make changes with the shape of your mouth and his talk on it. Nice. E Crankon is opening up for us. He's actually playing the same theater as us in Pittsburgh. Oh, yeah, the acoustic tour. He's playing, like, the week before and the week after us. Man. I wonder if he'll play. All I want to be is by your side. If you want to know more about Pete Frankton and want to get in touch with us actually, we don't know anything more about Pete Frampton than that. Well, we know a little more, but we don't feel like talking about it on social. If you want to get in touch with us, though, you can tweet to us at S YSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffiestoe. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@householdforce.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1221067296382sysk-live-underground.mp3 | Why don't we live underground? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/why-dont-we-live-underground | Humanity has adapted to life on the surface. We like sunlight and fresh air -- but do we need it to survive? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about living underground. | Humanity has adapted to life on the surface. We like sunlight and fresh air -- but do we need it to survive? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about living underground. | Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:04:55 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=12, tm_min=4, tm_sec=55, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=255, tm_isdst=0) | 15007400 | audio/mpeg | "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 resolves online fraud. Safe, secure Visa. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles chuck Bryant. As always, we're the Stuff. You should know, guys. So hey, how's it going, Chuck? Hey. Hey. It's going good. So with all the Olympic stuff going on and it's all on Beijing and all that, this is, like, the second podcast of recent times that I've mentioned Beijing because the Olympics are just so huge. Right. My question is this. Chuck, did you know that there's an underground city beneath Beijing? I did, Josh, because I read your really cool article. Oh, thank you very much, Chuck. I appreciate that. Is there a city beneath Beijing? Oh, no, I thought the one you referenced in your article, why Don't We Live Underground? Yeah, there's another article on the site, too, called is There an Underground City Below Beijing? Didn't read that one. It's awesome. Let me tell you about it. So Chairman Mao gets into a little border dispute with the Soviets in 69, right? And the Soviets basically show them, we're not messing around, pal. Like, we will come in or we will nuke you, or whatever this is at a time when the Russians were getting their chops with us in Cold War. So at that time, China wasn't much of a threat to them. So Chairman Mao was like, okay, hey, maybe we should do something about this, just in case. Puts the residence of Beijing, the capital city of China, to work for the next ten years constructing an underground city that can house, like, 300,000 people in emergency. It's very cool. It's still around, actually. What is it now? There's parts of it that are accessible still. It's actually been turned into something of an underground mall, of course. Right. And there are tours and that kind of thing. Apparently, it's pretty easy to kind of drift off from the tour and go down some forbidden corridors. So there's still, like, old bunk beds with rotting mattresses, and there's pictures of Chairman Mao everywhere. Right. It's pretty cool. They also had these little patches for going like mushrooms and digging wells, and you could have lived in there comfortably for four months. That's pretty cool. All right. No Olympic Village, though. That's not down there. No, not at this time. Is this the subterranean mutants used it for their 2006 Olympics. Olympics, yeah. They don't like to be talked about very much, but the thing was never used, thankfully, for the residents of Beijing. And actually, it's just one example of an underground structure. There's tons of them all over the place. And then NORAD is one. NORAD is a great example. What's NORAD? It's a defense system, basically, that detects if people are going to send nuclear warheads our way. Sure. And not as useful anymore. Well, maybe I shouldn't say that, but no. Actually, they were looking into decommissioning it in 2006. I didn't find any follow up information. I don't think they made the decision yet. Well, they smartly put. NORAD inside a mountain, basically a giant mountain. Yeah. 700,000 tons of rock they dug out of this thing. And I think the door is like, three and a half feet thick. And basically they determined that we're safe no matter what happens. Yeah. When they built the place in the 60s, they were 100% confident that it could withstand a direct nuclear strike. That's nuts. It is nuts. Nowadays they're like, yeah, maybe in the 60s. Not with today's intercontinental ballistic missiles. Right. The mountain would shatter. Exactly. Which is equally, I think that we have ballistic missiles that we can just level entire mountains with. Right. But yeah. NORAD it's kind of this homage to the security of underground living. Right. And the US government isn't the only group to have come across this. It's not just Chairman Mount and Uncle Sam who figured out that, hey, underground is pretty secure. Insurance companies and information bureaus, like credit reporting companies, sun Microsystems, the people who run the Internet and are the keepers of all of our information, they've discovered the same thing I mentioned, sun. They just leased, I believe, an old mine in Japan, and they now store their network servers below ground. It's very secure. You can't get in or out very easily. Right. And checkers in our beloved city of Atlanta. We even have a couple of underground buildings here there. Right. Do you know which one I'm talking? Underground Atlanta? The famous or once famous underground Atlanta? I've got one even better than that. The old Equifax building, now occupied by the Savannah College Department design is that underground? Most of it is very much underground to protect. Obviously, it couldn't handle an intercontinental ballistic missile mountain camp, but it can handle something. And burglars can't just prance in and out. Well, I know one of the other benefits, too. Being underground is natural disaster weather. You have more constant temperatures, so it's more energy efficient if you're underground. Yeah. And you don't really think of houses as being too terribly energy inefficient. Obviously, there's some fat we could trim here there. Right. But I was reading a study that found that transportation is always cited as, like, or one of the big sectors that contributes to climate change. It turns out that all of the buildings in the United States consume six times more energy and emit six times more greenhouse gas than all the cars and trucks in the country combined. Really? Yeah. So apparently there's a whole subgenre subculture sub something of architects who have decided that it's kind of embarrassed on them to kind of take up the mantle and start designing. Go underground. Go underground. That's one of the theories. That's one of the ideas. It's being batted around right now. Well, why do you think more people don't live underground if it's so great down there? Well, number one, if you thought talking Americans out of driving SUVs is difficult, imagine telling them that they have to now give up their nice summer story colonial or something like that, and they have to move into an Earth sheltered home. Right. I think that's number one. Number two, and I think the point that you were leading to is that it's a huge old slap in the face of evolution. Right? Agreed. Yeah. Chuck Darwin is rolling in his grave as we speak. He would be just thinking of this. Either that or he'd be salivating. A perfect natural experiment. Like, yes, stupid humans move underground and so I can take notes, that kind of thing. And the reason it's a slap in the face of evolution is that we're diurnal right, right. Our sleep patterns or wakefulness, all of that is based on the sun. Right. Circadian rhythm. Yeah. So basically when we decide to go to sleep or wake up, it's generally based on the sun. Think about it. We're not farmers any longer, but it's kind of tough to sleep past sun up these days. Right. Even though we don't have to be out there to milk the cows or plant the corn or harvest the corn, depending on what time of year it is. But we've evolved that way, so there's no getting rid of it now. Right. And we also are kind of linked to the sun. I don't even want to say kind of. We are sun slaves, basically. The Egyptians had it right when they called sun raw and worshiped it because that's pretty much how linked we are. We need it. We need that vitamin D. Yeah. Think about it, Chuck. We get all of our other vitamins from, like, milk, from vegetables. That's a great example. Yeah. From chewing on rocks, the whole thing. We get every single one of our vitamins from an external source except one. Vitamin D. Yeah. We actually create that through a process of photosynthesis right. Within our own bodies right. From the sun's radiation. It serves as a catalyst for vitamin D production in the body. And vitamin D is important how? Do you ask how? Josh? It protects against rickets. You ever seen a Rickett's patient? Yeah, it's a bone disease. It is a lack of bone development. And actually, when I was researching this, there is 90% of the children in Europe and America in some terrible couple of decades of the 19th century suffered from rickets. If they lived in an urban area, they had rickets to some degree or other. There's a picture of a girl who is a rickett sufferer. She's 19. Her name is Shao Ling. It's in the article on how stuff works.com. And she's 2ft tall, and she's cute as a button, but she's 19, and she struggled with rickets her whole life. Hers is congenital, but there's all sorts of problems associated with a lack of vitamin D. And don't forget the serotonin. Yeah. Serotonin is big. Serotonin is a hormone responsible for basically good moods. Yeah. You can get a nutshell. Yes. Positive outlook. Sure. And conversely, if you don't have enough serotonin, which is produced from exposure to the sun or actually lack of exposure to the sun, you go out in the sun. Melatonin is produced. Right. Okay. And once the melatonin production stops, meaning you're out of the sun, serotonin production kicks in. So one leads to the other. So you have to have sunlight, which accounts for seasonal effective disorder. Right. And it's not just the sun that we need. We need air, and we need air in certain supply. Right. And we also are pretty acclimated to the atmospheric pressure around sea level. That's what we've evolved to adapt to. Which is why scuba divers and even miners is the same thing as being underwater. Need to depressurize or decompress as they come up. Exactly. That's exactly right. So living underground poses a lot of problems to us. Should we listen to the ghost of Darwin, to Darwin beyond the grave? Should we trace into this natural experiment? Or is it too late? Have we already started? That's a good question, and the answer is yes, we have already started. We were talking about NORAD. We were talking about Mr. Chairman Mao's. Underground city in Beijing. Right. There's a lot of actual, like, everyday architecture out there. That's below ground. Right. I know that the Marin County Jail is partially underground. It's kind of a cool looking building. Yeah. Which provides for a lot of security. Like you're saying, it's more energy efficient. Sure. It keeps the prisoners nice and cool. Yeah. They're just kind of cooling out. Marine county. And there's a really cool example of an underground museum in Williamsburg, Virginia. There is this old colonial settlement from the 17th century. And rather than build this visitor center museum above ground to detract from the natural scene, they actually built it into the side of a hill. Even cooler. This museum shut down in 2002, and as far as I know, it's still there, which makes it a prime spot for urban explorers to explore. So it's like a one two punch for the House That Works articles right there. I don't know that we'd endorse that. We would never endorse it probably trespassing, but yes, I bet it would be neat. So you got any other examples? Well, I know Alice City in Japan. The Japanese are kind of leading the way because Japan is not the largest land mass and there's a lot of people there. They're landstart. Yeah. So they're kind of leading the way. And instead of going up, which they've already done in spades, they're going down and alice City is one example. It's not built yet, but it's a proposed I wouldn't call it a complete city, but shopping mall also has restaurants. I think there's office space and living. Right. I think it's a bit of a stretch to call it a city. Yeah. It's really cool looking. Now, I checked out the pictures online today. It's really neat. It is. It's like these two parallel shafts going like 550ft into the ground cover with a big bubble to let light in. Right? Yeah. All the light comes in through these two domes and the two domes are all you can see above ground to even know anything is there. Right. And then it's all connected by these series of walkways and tunnels and everything underground. There's another proposal in Japan that I don't think ever came to fruition. It's called the urban geo grid. This one you actually could call an underground city. It would cover 485 sq mi. Wow. Yeah. That's that qualifies in my book. I would say that's a decent sized city. That's? What, like Kansas City, Kansas? Yeah, something like that. And it could hold or house. It could accommodate up to half a million people at a time. Well, this makes me wonder if what that means for the people on top. I mean, I'm sure that they're taking all the right moves and shoring up everything underneath there, but when you weaken the ground underneath what's already a large city, it makes me worry personally. Yeah. And there's all sorts of questions. Like, I read a question from a guy who was saying, what does this do to the temperature of the water table? Which we probably really shouldn't be messing with. Right. There's a lot of water underground. Yeah. Although we've made a pretty big mess of things above ground, I can pretty much predict that we'd make an equally big mess below ground too. Right. But out of sight, out of mind. Wow. Yeah. Can you imagine how bad it would be then if we couldn't even see it? Right. It would be like the great Pacific garbage dump. Right? You read that one? Yeah, that's another one. Wow. We've just been hitting them all over the place. It's a plug test, Chuck. Yeah, it is a plug fest, Chuck. And our listeners can read all the articles we plugged today, all on how stuff works.com, and hang around to find out which article makes Chuck really crabby right after this. Chuck, what makes you crabby? Well, a lot of things make me crabby, dude. Give me two examples. Traffic and heat. Bravo. Yes. You like that. But this was actually a little bit of a cheat, a little bit of a pun. It's actually the article inside Deadliest Catch, which is an article that dives in here I go again to the world of a crab fishing from the awesome Discovery Channel show Deadliest Catch. Fantastic. Well, I beg our readers to forgive Chuck for his puns and misleading words. And I also beg you to please go read inside Deadliest Catch on howstepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast@houseworks.com brought you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you?" | |
41fc2a8e-53a3-11e8-bdec-379f847b669b | MOVE: Or When the Philly Police Dropped a Bomb on a Residential Neighborhood | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/move-or-when-the-philly-police-dropped-a-bomb-on-a | Believe it or not, in 1985 the Philadelphia Police Department dropped a bomb from a helicopter onto a residential building in an African-American neighborhood. The fact that this story isn't more widely known says it all. Listen and learn about MOVE today. | Believe it or not, in 1985 the Philadelphia Police Department dropped a bomb from a helicopter onto a residential building in an African-American neighborhood. The fact that this story isn't more widely known says it all. Listen and learn about MOVE today. | Tue, 23 Jul 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=204, tm_isdst=0) | 49492764 | audio/mpeg | "You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural sciencebased nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. Find Halo Elevate at Petco, pet supplies plus, and select neighborhood pet stores. US summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Erkart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. Attention, Chicago in Toronto. We're coming to see you guys soon, so we better hurry up and buy your tickets because they're going fast. Yeah, man. Chicago at the Harris Theater, July 24. We've actually sold a lot of tickets now. Yeah, you guys, listen, thank you. Thanks for stepping up. And Toronto at the Danforth Music Hall the next night, July 25. It may be sold out by now. Yeah, well, there's only one way to find out. Go on the sysklive.com and you'll find links to the ticket sites and all the show info you need, and we will see you soon. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Josh. Got to get used to this, Chuck. We will, eventually. It's the new normal. And this is stuff you should know. I can't believe it happened. Edition. One of many. One of many. Yeah. This sparked off a lot of ideas, too. Oh, yeah? Like how the Phillies work. No. What's up with the Philly fanatic? That's the green one, right? Yeah. That's a great character. Sure. So let's dispense with all that. Okay? Yeah. This is going to be a long one, so let's just jump in. Okay, so back in 1985, in May, philadelphia Police Department became the first, and to this point only police department to drop a bomb on American soil. No police department has ever bombed anything in the history of America. But they did. And they happened to bomb a house that was occupied at the time with 13 people, seven of which were children. And the people in this house were members of an organization called Move. M-O-V-E all caps, but it's not an acronym. Nope. And they did this because Move had made themselves quite a nuisance in the neighborhood, to say the least. And there was basically, by this time in May 1985, a bitter feud between Move and the Philadelphia Police Department. And on May 13, it came to a fiery and tragic end. It's a nice set up. Thank you. You should have music playing or something. Hopefully Josh will do that because God knows Jerry is not going to she's not anywhere. Anywhere knows where she is. So you want to go back in time and talk a little bit about Move and their origins and then go forward in time? I would like to. Isn't that what you said? Okay, so Move is still around at times. Over the years, they've been called a cult, they've been called a black liberation movement, back to Earth, a terrorist group, animal rights group. There are all these things to a certain degree, here and there. Although the leader, one, Mr. Vincent Laporte, who everyone, by the way, if you hear us say the name so and so, Africa, once you become a member of Move, you take on the last name of Africa. Right. Which, even though they weren't strictly a group for African Americans, they had white people early on in Puerto Ricans. They definitely kind of got that rap a little bit more because of the Black Power movement and the fact that the leader was black. Changed his name to Africa and asked everyone else to change their last name to Africa. Although not legally, I don't think. No, but ultimately well, they wouldn't have done it legally because that's part of the system. That's right. The system was one of the things they rail against. There are basically two prongs to John Africa's philosophy. One was that basically all life is important and equally important. So there was a lot of animal rights stuff. There was a lot of not eating meat, ostensibly. Was there vegetarianism in there? There was, although they weren't strict vegetarians. No. Yes. But there was animal rights and protection and the sanctity of life. And then the second was that the system, as they called it, was inherently flawed because everything that was created by humans was flawed and therefore, not only should not be used, but the whole system should be taken down and replaced with a much more natural animalistic philosophy and way of life. Yeah. So that includes electricity. That includes, like, cooking meat. Like these kids ate raw chicken, believe it or not. Yeah. The kids who are raised in the Move movement. This story would make a lot more sense if this was on some deserted island and someone was moving there to start this utopian society on an island. This is a very interesting story in that it happened in a densely populated area of row houses in West Philadelphia. Born and raised, not where you would I can't not think of that. Whenever I hear West Philadelphia, I thought of it too. It's when you go back and look at the footage. And by the way, there's a great documentary called Let It Burn, let the Fire Burn that you should pay for online. I did that's good on Amazon Prime, and well, I'm a prime member. So am I. Okay. I still had to pay to rent it, though, because Amazon is part of the system. That's right. Where was that going? You were saying that it would make more sense on a deserted island than it would in a densely populated neighborhood in Philadelphia. Yeah. So when you're watching this documentary and there's so much footage, it's crazy to see this house, this row house, set up with farm animals at times in the front yard, heavily fenced in, fortified like a fortress. Yeah. Sometimes people standing outside with guns. Even though, as we'll see later, these guns were later found out to be not capable of firing bullets. Which means, I guess it's still a gun, but it means it's not a weapon. It's a club. Yeah, sort of. But at the very least, it's an odd setting for this story. It is. And when you watch that documentary, that house sticks out like a sore thumb. Like they had Amish people probably an hour and a half away from that, doing the same thing out in the middle of the country. It's not the exact same thing, but you know what I'm saying. But you can't get a good cheesesteak in Amish country, much less a good raw one. You can get good stick candy because they know what they're doing with that stuff. Nice furniture. Butter. Sure. What was it? Rum. Springer. Where they get to go crazy or whatever and see if they want to live the Amish life. I think that was it. That was a good one time ago. But anyway, it's a very interesting setting for the story. It got caught up, or maybe unfairly pegged as black liberation, like I said, but sort of because of the time in which it happened, which was in the early 80s when the Black Panther Party was in power. There was a former Black Panther that later would join the Move movement. Yes, but from what I saw in the documentary, that person was interviewed and he makes it sound like rather than bringing the Black Panther ideas to Move, he took on Moves ideas rather than discarded the Black Panthers ideas. Yeah, I think he was disillusioned with the Black Panthers because of the violence. And it should be pointed out that Africa's whole thing was his whole thing was nonviolence. But it wasn't like that was at the forefront of his everyday talkings because they very aggressively and very obscenely blasted their message through these loudspeakers attached to this row house. Which was a real problem in this neighborhood for everyone, this black neighborhood. They didn't want them there either. No, don't drop a bonus on them. Right. Which is what one of them being interviewed very clearly was like. We didn't want this to happen, but they were a threat to our wellbeing here in the neighborhood. Yeah. And they were also deliberately provocative. They purposely made a nuisance out of themselves because part of Moove's philosophy was waking everybody else up. And doing it in a really aggressive, hostile, agitation, threatening way. Supposedly some neighbors reported that they were directly threatened by this group, which is a big problem, too. I mean, that's definitely a couple of steps up from Agitating or Aggravating. People threatening them is different. Sure. But at the very least, imagine being a neighbor who has lived in this house for 20 years and all of a sudden there's this organization living there and at three in the morning it's just blasting out these MFRS that are in charge, or F and this and F in that, and like, I felt sorry for these citizens. Oh, yes. There's a lot of empathy to be dispersed among many parts of this story. Yes, but the story also basically this story has two types of people in it villains and innocence. Yeah, sure. Virtually. There's one hero that you can point to and he doesn't even appear in this article. He was in the documentary, which we'll talk about him for a minute later. But it's mostly just the adults acting badly. Yeah. And the children or the people in the neighborhood who are innocent bystanders or pawns in this whole thing. Victims. Yeah, for sure. Because when you're talking about blaring your philosophy in a very hostile, foul mouthed way, if you see the pictures of the house, like those loudspeakers that they have at like stock car races or whatever, that's what they had posted out on the house. It wasn't just some guy with the bull horn or like that walkie talkie thing that Homer Simpson had at the yard sale. Now you can hear this along the whole block in every direction. Yes. And if you were anywhere near them, if your house is next door, even a couple of doors down, you heard them night and day and there was a real problem. Yeah. So we should back up a little bit and give a little bit of the background here. Before the 1980s happened and they moved into the second house on Ocean Avenue 62 21. They lived at a different house in the late seventy s. And there was a different mayor in Philadelphia at this time, mayor Rizzo, who was a scumbag. Tough talking, like scumbag. Yeah, he was a scumbag. I'm just going to say it. I saw archival footage of the man and he saw strong man scumbag. Yeah. He was one of these guys. And we'll see what happened here. He was not in charge anymore, but it was remnants from that attitude, basically, that he laid down in the city, which is like he was in charge in 78, though. Oh, yeah, I'm talking about the bombing. So in 78 there was a standoff with the police. We had talked about the guns earlier. It was later found out that these guns weren't capable of firing. They didn't know that at the time. But at the very least, the cops overreacted at the declaration of Mayor Rizzo and there was a shooting. There was an officer that was shot and killed, and it was just a really bad scene. So even just a little bit before that, too, there was a confrontation between Move and the Philadelphia Police where one of the Move members babies, like a two month old, died. Yeah. And the Move members said, the cops did this. This baby died from this confrontation with the police, so that kicked that off. The police eventually raided the Move house in 1978, and one of the officers get shot and killed in this raid. And so you've got some real bad blood brewing between these two groups. Yeah. And during that raid, delbert Africa, one of the members was and you can see footage of this. It was all captured on camera, just beaten on the street while laying on the sidewalk by these cops. While you're surrendering. Yeah. So to say that there was bad blood is sort of an understatement. You had on one side what you could at least define as a public nuisance in this neighborhood. You had on this other side this zealous mayor who just wanted to get rid of them, period. Not like, let's meet, let's talk. Let's see if we can all work together. They were 100 0% at odds with one another. Right. So the police officer that died, the Move site said, we didn't shoot that guy. It was friendly fire that got him. Right. The Philadelphia Police Department didn't agree with that story. And so on, like a personal level, like, not just an organizational level, but to a cop. The cops hated Move, and these people just continued on in Philadelphia and actually stepped up there, making themselves a public nuisance because nine of their members were arrested for the murder of that police officer and convicted. Yeah. And sent to jail for decades. Yes. 30 to 100 years is what they're each sentence for. We'll talk about what happened to them toward the end. Just to kind of just paint this one last stroke on this picture we're painting here. The cops had a vendetta against Move because one of their own was killed during the siege. And Move had a vendetta against the cops because nine of their people were put in jail. One of them was beaten, and a baby had died on their side. Okay. All right, let's take a break, and we'll come back right after this and talk more about what happened in 1985. 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Come chat with us. That's Neogenrelievespane.com. Your patience Will. Thank you. All right, so whether or not this was a cult, some people debate that John Africa is very much on record saying it's an organization. Is that relevant? I don't think so. I don't either. I think it's just an attempt to discredit them. Oh, to call them a cult? Yes. I don't know. I think it's all we're talking about, though. Yeah. I'm not like criticizing you or anything like that. I'm just saying when people toss it around like, oh, they were a cult. Yeah. There were some characteristics that you could say, well, it's kind of colt like or whatever. Let's put it this way. If it was on a deserted island, then I think people would have straight up called them a cult. The fact that it was in a neighborhood in West Philadelphia made it seem a lot less so. I hear you, but if he was like, come here and live on this island with me, then it would have straight up been called a cult. Let me rephrase what I was saying. I don't dispute that they may have been cold, but again, it's that does that mean that they should have had a bomb dropped on them? I don't think anyone thinks that. Okay, so like I said, there were kids there that were forced to eat raw fish, raw chicken. The adults could cook their meat, which was there was definitely some double standards going on there. Sure. Their rationale was that our bodies are used to this, but we want to raise you pure from the start. So you're only going to eat raw foods. Yeah. They had a lot of exceptions. Not just that, like the anti technology thing where they had, like, a wood burning stove for heat, and that was it. They used candles instead of light bulbs, that kind of stuff. But they also had phones and they drove cars. Right. So there was a lot of weird exceptions and loopholes and holes in general in John Africa's guidelines, as he called them. Yeah. As for one of the more, the only child that survived this experience, birdie Africa, Michael Ward. He said, I'm still afraid of them, of move. Some of the things that went on there I can't get out of my head. Bad things. I haven't told anyone except for my father. But I'll tell you this. I didn't like being there. They said it was a family. But a family isn't something where you're forced to stay and you don't want to. Right. And his contention was that the kids were always trying to get out of there and run away. They were just too little to know how. Too little and naked. They were naked. They were malnourished. The only toys they had, they had to hide because they weren't supposed to have them. Because it's technology and human made. It was unsanitary. Yeah. Part of what Move was into is growing their own food so they would compost, like, in the alley behind the house or on the roof or something like that. They built an animal shelter in the alley. So there was a lot of really not okay conditions to raise kids in, let alone like adults to live in, but raising children, there were some really bad decisions and choices or bad outcomes from some of John Africa's philosophy. Yeah, it's weird because it's like at the heart of this it's this back to nature movement. You want them to be on a deserted island so bad. Not even a deserted island. Go out into the countryside not too far outside of Philadelphia. It is a little weird. It's very strange because on one hand, I'm like, yeah, this animal rights group, and they're back to nature and they're issuing the things of man, but they're doing it in the most, like, aggressive, antagonistic way possible in the middle of the city. I didn't know what to think about any of this, except obviously you don't go in there and firebomb the place. Right. It's like the one thing I was clear on, you don't start a war in the middle of the neighborhood. Right. It's true. Which is what happened. Basically, the neighbors wanted to move out. They filed a bunch of complaints over the years to get them shut down, and the city didn't really know what to do at this point. At this point, there was a different Mayor Good. So this was the first black mayor of Philadelphia who actually was elected on this reform ticket, basically to get rid of Rizzo, get rid of the corruption, the racism that Rizzo and his administration had fostered because he was police chief first and then became mayor who God WASO sure. And he basically after that 1978 raid, there's footage of him just basically hopped up and boasting about how militarized the Chicago PD was. Now I think he actually said, we're ready for war. Yeah, we could go down to Cuba and take them if we wanted to right now. Just really like, boasting about this. Not like, oh, man, this is a tragedy, or whatever, however you want to say it. Like, he was boasting, like, come on, who's next? Kind of thing. And this was the mayor at the time. Yeah. So Wilson Good comes along and it's like, not that we're going to take a different tact here and try to promote more unity. And it was actually pretty successful in a lot of ways in that respect. As far as the city officials go. I really kind of like mere. Good. Because he took responsibility for it. Yeah. Even stuff he didn't do just because he was the mayor. He put himself in as accountable. All right, so should we fast forward? Yes. The stage was set. We know what happened in the 70s. We know the relationship between this neighborhood with this group and this group with this city and the cops. And so they decide that they are going to extract every person from that house. That was the plan is we are going to remove the Move organization from the house on Ocean Avenue. In this article, it says they didn't have a plan. That's not true. They had a plan that just was not executed well and went really pear shaped really fast. And then they didn't have a plan. But the original plan was to they had built the Move organization that built this pretty fortified bunker on top of their building. As far as homemade bunkers go, not bad. Which gave them a supreme tactical advantage. If you know anything about war, higher ground is always going to win out. Sure. Or if you're not always designed to castle or something, you know. Sure. Castle designers, they know or mongers. So the idea was to create a diversion on the roof, in which time police officers and everybody would go inside and forcibly remove people by any means necessary than mere goods. Words. But the first part of that was water cannons and tear gas. Right. And they were very surprised when these water cannons, I think they shot like 1000 gallons a second or some crazy amount of water they just left them on. Yes. Two of them shoot. And they fully expected to basically take most of this house down. It was a brick row home. But they expected to take the nonbrick parts off, including that structure on top that look out. And they were very surprised when two things didn't happen when that structured come down, despite the water cans being directed at it for hours and the people not coming out despite tear gas being shot into the house. Right. And that is like you said earlier, when their plan went to the birds yeah. Toilet. Sure. Went down the toilet. And they said, well, what do we do now? Like our whole plan doesn't work. I've got an idea. Let's start shooting at the house instead. Yeah. So what they didn't know this whole time was that they were all hiding in a basement garage. So all of this water raining down on the roof wasn't I probably wouldn't even getting to them. Probably not. Or maybe it's not like they were up to their necks in water in the basement and like drowning or anything like that. No, but they later said that the tear gas was everywhere. Sure. But apparently it wasn't potent enough. Maybe they expired stuff and we should step it back. One step, Chuck, before this rate actually started. They went house to house to the neighbors and said, you guys grab all your clothes. We need you gone for 24 hours, because we're about to do what you guys have wanted us to do for years. Yeah, we're going to do it, so you need to get out here. They towed trucks from Osage Avenue. Oh, they towed every car. They had the gas shut off, the electricity shut off. There was a siege. Yeah. They basically tried to just vacate the block. And they did. Yeah, and they did. I mean, I think some people stayed when they shouldn't have, but it's like with any evacuation, they got as many people out of there as possible. Right. They're like, you'll be back in your house tomorrow. Okay? The whole block and, like, a couple of blocks, a couple of streets on either side are cleared. The water has been used. It's not working. The tear gas is not working. So supposedly the first shots came from the house. Right. But everybody, all witnesses, cops, firefighters, news people say that the first shots were automatic fire. It's been conclusively proven that no one in the movie house had an automatic weapon. So if the first shots were automatic, then that means the cops fired first. And that's what people seem to believe, is that the cops started this. Yes. And a lot of this documentary, it's really compelling because it's footage from the commission afterward, and you get, like, the real deal testimony, first person testimony from all the major players, including the police chief. What was his name? Gregory Sambor. Yeah, Sambor, who he identified it as automatic. Like, his sworn testimony said it was automatic weapons. And they were like, well, how do you know? And he's like, I know what an automatic weapon sounds like. Right. And they're like, Well, Move didn't have automatic weapons. He's like, I don't know about that. Yeah. He's like, I don't know how to explain that then. But they fired first. He just kind of stuck to his guns every single time. Yeah. He was a piece of work himself. He was definitely cut from the same cloth as Mariso. I think so. Yeah. So they decide to start shooting at this point because regardless of who shot first, it becomes like Vietnam on the city block all of a sudden. And it's not like I mean, they cleared it out, but when you see this news footage, there's people everywhere watching their news cameras and anchors everywhere on the streets, like, oh, we should get behind the car now because it's raining bullets everywhere. It's just freaky to see this happening. I'm like a city block in the United States. Yeah. The cops in the cops later on estimated that they fired about 10,000 rounds. They ran out of bullets. Yeah. They had to bring in more because they ran out of bullets. Yeah. This car pulls up, and you're like, a police car is just rushed into the scene, and it's like from a movie. The trunk pops, and it's just full of bullets. Yeah. Just because they ran out of bullets. Yeah. So they kept shooting at this house. And here's the thing. Bear in mind, they're shooting 10,000 rounds of ammunition at a house. It was occupied by 13 people, seven of which are children. Everyone knows. Everyone knows that there were seven children in that house. Yeah. It's not like the cops were unaware. No, everyone knew that there were children in this house. Yeah. It was part of the concern of the neighbors that there were children being raised in this house, and the cops acted on the information from confidential informants who fully informed them that there were children in this house. So that's step one. They fired 10,000 rounds at a house where they knew that there were seven children. All right, so nothing is changing, though. They're still not bringing people out of this house. I'll bet they were like, I can't believe this. And the structure was still intact on top. I'm surprised they didn't think they were dead. Yes. I would have thought at some point they would have been like, well, I'm sure we probably killed everyone. Let's just go in there. Yeah, I wonder, because if they were all crowded down in the basement garage, they couldn't have been firing back after a certain point in time. Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, they said part of the problem was the tear gas. So they couldn't send cops in there because it was flooded with tear gas. And then I think they said the well, no, this comes later. The steam. Right. So put a pin in the steam. Okay. So at some point, someone on the bomb squad apparently says to the police chief or it gets to the police chief, hey, the chief was really worried about that bunker and that tactical advantage. So someone from the bomb squad said, why don't we drop a bomb on the roof and get rid of that bunker? An officer named William Klein suggested it, and they said, okay, let's do that. Good idea, Klein. What do we need? A helicopter and a bomb? Yeah. They're like, well, we've got both. So even as late as the inquiry that they held, they characterized it as a Tovex bomb. And Tovex is a water based gelatinous explosive that is used, I think, in mining and demolition and stuff like that. But it can be purchased. Yes. It later came out that in addition to the Tovx, the bomb disposal guy made a bomb with C four plastique explosives, which is not commercially available, which means that we'll see later. The Philadelphia Police Department should not have had this stuff. Yeah. We should just go ahead and say how they got it. Why not? Well, I was trying to save it with a little flair for the dramatic, but you go ahead. Well, the FBI gave. It to him secretly. Yeah. The FBI had been giving little bits of C Four here and there to police departments, apparently. Like to blow doors off of stuff to train bomb sniffing dogs. Yeah. Teach them how to use it. But then the FBI used that excuse for a little while, then later came out and said, no, we actually brought them a bunch of C Four, like, 30 blocks of C Four in January, a few months before this rate deceived. But still during the time when the move people were being negotiated with to leave on their own. Yeah. Because that was happening this whole time. They would have community leaders on the bullhorn trying to talk them into coming out. They did not have a professional negotiator on the scene. No. That's a huge red flag. Yeah. That they never meant for anyone to come out. Yeah. But at any rate, they drop a bomb. I think they said a four pound bomb from a satchel with a 45 second fuse. This is all on camera, like you literally in this documentary. See the helicopter fly over, drop the satchel out of it and go, yeah, fly. Fly. I love that you did the running motion in helicopters. Run. Sure. And they flew out of there. And kaboom. In West Philadelphia, a bomb explodes on top of a building and a smallish fire starts. This is at what time? There was, like, five that they dropped the bomb. 510, I think. All right. And the smallest fire took a couple of minutes for it to become apparent that it had caught fire. But supposedly there was gasoline in the what are we calling that thing? The bunker. The bunker, yeah. There's supposedly gasoline in the bunker, but the police dropped a bomb on a building that they knew that people were in, seven of which were children. And supposedly the reason that they did this was to get rid of that bunker. Like that bunker. The police chief did not like that bunker standing still and wanted to get rid of it. The bomb didn't do anything to the bunkers. That was a strong bunker. It was the timeline is important. So at 527 is when they dropped the bomb at 545, someone asked the fire department if they should turn on the they've been delusioning this thing with water all day long until there's a fire, and then they turn it off, which was not ironic, because it was very purposeful, but it definitely stings more. So they said not to turn them on by 06:00. So this is 33 minutes later. Mayor Good is watching this on TV in his office. He phones it in and says, let's put this fire out now. He ordered the fire to be put out? Yeah. 33 minutes later. And this is where it gets a little hanky, because this was given to Police Chief Sandbor. And under testimony, Sambor says that he relayed that to the fire chief. He said that the fire chief was there. He did not say he related to the fire chief. Yeah, I mean, he got very dodgy with how he worded it. Very. But the fire chief, basically, on testimony, said that's what he said. And he's like, I categorically deny that I ever got an order to start those water cannons or that he was even aware that Good made that call, phone call, or called the order. So basically, the fire chief said the buck stopped with Sambor, and Sambor, the police chief, decided to let that fire burn. That's right. Because he thought not defending him, but he thought the fire would then take down the bunker and remove that advantage. Other people contend. And they ask him in the deposition or in the hearing, now, you've kind of really wanted to use the fire as a weapon. He got real salty about that. He did. He said, the fire can't be a weapon, basically. And now I said, what about Flamethrowers? He goes, I hadn't thought about flamethrowers, but still. All right, so this is 630 Flames. It is clearly out of hand. They waited way too long. That was the thing that got me was it was obvious from what Sambor was saying, if the documentary is accurate from what Sambor was saying, that when he was saying that we need to let the bunker burn, still, by this time, the entire top floor was a conflagration. Yeah. I mean, it's on the news, so that whole thing doesn't hold water at all. And it would lend support to the idea that he was using it as a weapon to burn the people out. I'm sure he was. I'm sure he thought tear gas didn't work. Maybe this fire will work and drive these people out of there. Okay. All right. Should we take a break or should we wait? No, let's take a break. Okay. We'll take a break, and we'll tell you what happens next. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalanche of demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets? You called IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. 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Okay, Chuck, so for a little bit, the fire department sprays some of the houses next to the Move house, but doesn't put the fire out or spray the fire on the Move house. So in the abandoned houses, they're spraying down to try to contain the fire. And the one house in this whole square block area where they know people are including seven children, they didn't spray. Later on, they will defend this by saying, well, in that 1978 siege, move fired on the firefighters and apparently shot and injured several firefighters. So we were worried for the firefighters to be picked off fighting this fire in this siege as well. Right. Ramona Africa, who would be the one adult from Move to survive this siege, would say, well, like you said earlier, they weren't scared to hit us with these water cannons the whole time there wasn't a fire. Right. But then there is a fire, and now they're scared we're going to pick them off. That doesn't make any sense. It's just BS. Yeah. And also, I'm glad you brought that up because it said to put a pin in the steam. This is when the steam happened because they're blowing water on this fire now, and it's creating all the steam that they said didn't allow anyone to move in as well. Okay. Because they couldn't see anything. There was no visibility. Okay. So despite spraying down the houses around this fire, it got out of hand really fast, and it spread very fast and it moved very quickly, not just from the Move house, but onto the neighboring houses and then beyond. And even these are fairly narrow streets that this neighborhood was built on. And it jumped the street fairly quickly. Yeah. It wasn't contained or deemed under control until 11:41 p.m.. So it's like more than 6 hours after it started. Yeah. This whole city block is just burning to the ground. It ended up being like a six alarm fire, which, depending on the city, is 120 firefighters, chiefs, ladder, trucks. It's a big old fire. Yeah. So you mentioned the 1978 siege where the officer was shot and killed and where the beating of Delbert Africa went down. Important to remember that because two of the officers that were involved in the beat down of Delbert Africa were also on the scene today. And they make a big point in this commission, like, did you think about sending these guys in there might not be a good idea. And they may have revenge on their minds. And I can't remember what the answer was. He's kind of like he said, no, I didn't think of that. Yeah. Or yes, I did. Whatever it was, he was not like, yeah, that was not a good idea. Right. He stood by whatever it was. Right. So this kind of sets up another story in tandem that's going on right now, which is at a certain point during this massive fire, about seven yeah. They try to get out from the basement. The move people tried to get out. They tried to escape. That's right. They tried to get out the back door. At this point, the cops had moved into the alleyway. There was no camera access, so you couldn't see what happened. But from the testimony that can't even hardly get through the testimony of that kid. They deposed him. He wasn't in front of the commission. Yeah, but Birdie Africa was like, what? He looked like ten or eleven years old when they deposed him. Yeah, but he was actually, like 13. Was he? But this kid is retelling the story seems incredibly credible and believable to me. Right. Like, I fully believe that he was telling the truth over the two cops who may have actually fired on the people trying to escape the house of the two. It's way easier to believe that kids testimony than these guys who are the ones who beat Delbert Africa in 1978. Yeah. So that's what happened. They tried to leave. There was a kid named Rad Africa that was, I think, like 13 or 14, and he was carrying out a baby, and he was one of the first ones out. And he goes back into the house, and there's that part of the documentary where the priest is talking to the officers, and he's like, because officers are saying, all we were saying was, come out with your hands up. Right. We didn't fire on anything. We didn't fire out with your hands up. And this priest is like, I'm trying to think of what would make a kid holding a baby go back into a building engulfed in flames. And the cops were like, I don't know. Yeah, you can't really put yourself in a move person's feet. Right. You can't really identify with them. And that minister or whatever said, actually, I was friends with a lot of these people. I knew them on a human level. Right. The other thing that really kind of dams the two cops who beat Delvert Africa's testimony is that there was reports from a lot of witnesses, including fire department people from of gunfire in this alley around this time. So the whole thing kind of adds up if you take the reports of witnesses that there was gunfire in the back alley with Birdie Africa and Ramona Africa's testimony that around that same time, people had tried to escape, and then the testimony of the cops themselves that the people had run back in the house. Right. It sounds a lot like a reasonable person would conclude that the cops who had beaten Delbert Africa in 1978 shot at the people from Move in 1985, who tried to escape the fire and force them back into the burning house. Right. 100%. That's certainly what it sounds like. The cop said that. He said he was a man, he was a kid, had a rifle that he pointed at them. And I know what a rifle looks like because the kid who survived. Birdie said he had a monkey wrench in his hand that he used to get the window open. He came out with a monkey wrench and that baby and the cop was like, I can tell the difference between a rifle and a monkey wrench. Yeah. And if you're sitting here like, hey, lay off the cops. Just watch this documentary and then look into this part over again. Because it's a really great documentary. It does a really good job of laying everything out. But part of, I guess the goodness of this documentary is that it's all archival and it lets the people speak for themselves. Oh, yeah. It's just you basically kind of watch what happened and listen to what people said about it. Right. Including the people in charge. And it's obviously it's edited. It's not just like, here's this inquiry, here's my documentary. But I mean, it lets it pay out enough that you get a really good, clear picture of what happened in the testimony that followed. That's kind of the end of that story as it happened, that, you know, these Ramona and Bertie were the only two to make it out of that house alive. And that hero I mentioned earlier, cop, man, I wish I could remember his name. I got his name. He could not stop himself from running to Birdie to help him. Yeah. James, officer James Berghire. So Berghire ran to them, despite some of his colleagues saying, don't, I think it's a trap. You're going to get killed. He said. I can't, can't I? Like, I see this kid right there, and I'm going to go rescue him. He thought of his kids. He said he did. And he was they even say in the inquiry, if there's any silver lining or shining moment to this whole horrible thing, it's what you did. And it got kind of roasted out of the police department within a year or two. Oh, yeah. His own police brethren turned on him. They wrote racial epithets on his locker because he saved this kid, was diagnosed with PTSD and left the forest two years later. And there's a great article I found that I read the first third of right before we had to record of him, an interview with him, I guess, like five or six years ago that I can't wait to go read and finish up. So let's finish up. Okay. So Bertie and Ramona were the only two move members who survived. The other eleven died, including six children in this house that was set on fire. And the fire was set off by a bomb that the Philadelphia Police Department dropped on the house. So obviously, Philadelphia is going to cough up some money for this. Yeah. There were settlements. The parents of the dead children settled for $25 million total. Michael Ward a young birdie he became Michael Ward. He changed his name. He got $1.7 million. Ramona Africa got half a million dollars. And the families of John Africa and his nephew, they couldn't reach a settlement, so they were awarded 1 million by a jury. And then here's the kicker. Police Chief Sambor and Fire Chief Richmond were forced to pay one dollars a week for eleven years to Ramona Africa to keep it in mind. Yes, $572. But it's a civil I mean, that's a civil punishment, basically saying, we think you're, like, you might not be criminally responsible, but in this civil suit, we are saying it's basically like how symbolic payment or whatever. Yeah, it's like how the civil court ruled against OJ. Even though he had been found not guilty of murder in the criminal, the civil court still said, no, you're responsible. We believe so. We're going to get you in this way. They did the same thing. And this is despite the fact that Ramona Africa did seven years, like, they didn't say, hey, we're really sorry. We burn this house. Right? Here's some money. They said, hey, you're under arrest for inciting riots and conspiracy of something or other. And she did seven years. She didn't get out early because the parole board said, you have to denounce move, and she refused to denounce Move, and she did her full seven years, although now she is not affiliated with Move any longer, as far as I know. Yeah, as far as the original move, nine who are the ones in prison for the killing of the police officer, two of them died in prison. I think two are still in prison. The rest, including just in February 12, Eddie Africa was paroled. Delbert and Chuck Africa are still behind bars, I think are the only two still behind bars. And as far as Michael Ward, aka young Birdie Africa, he very sadly died in 2013 in a hot tub cruise ship drowning due to intoxication. Yeah. The Bervard County, Florida, medical examiner ruled that an accidental death from drowning in a hot tub? From just being drunk, I guess. What a weird way to go after all that weird life. Yeah, it's weird because during the deposition, he was there with his father, and I'm like, where was his dad? His dad was looking for him. Well, his dad was out of the country in the military while he was living in Philadelphia. Right. But he had moved to suburban Philadelphia, his dad did, and had been looking for Michael and had no idea he was 30 minutes away in Philly. Yeah. So he lived the rest of his life with his dad, and that's who he referenced earlier when he was like, the stuff that went on there, I only tell my father. Super tragic. And it's one of these things. I think we should do a little triumvirate of this in Ruby Ridge in Waco, like three times, where there was a potentially problematic organization and the United States government just decided to fire bomb it. Yeah. These are so sticky because you want to be like, oh, these people are the victims. And the government really was a villain in this one. But you're like, it's never that complex. And these stories really teach you that things are much more textured than that. They're much more nuanced than that, black and white. But even still, you still don't drop a bomb. You don't drop a bomb and burn eleven people to death. Yeah. The city, as far as that block went, they paid $11 million, which was, by all accounts, a very inside deal with some developer who put up a bunch of houses that were condemned in 2000 due to shoddy construction. So somebody got rich again trying to build these things. Did a terrible job. 24 families stayed. They offered repairs and buy outs, and apparently most people took the buyouts. Right. And if you do like the little Google Earth, the 62 21 Osage, it's still row houses. And on either side of that, it looks like people might be living there. Right. But that building has, like, plywood up in the windows. Oh, really? Yeah, because I heard, like, starting in about 2015, they brought in a good developer and started to redevelop it, and it's starting to come back. Well, it's interesting that one address, though, is boarded up, so I don't know if no one wants to live there. Or it could be an older Google image. Yeah, those are usually newer. Right. Well, I mean, it could be older than 2015. Although I looked at my house the other day, and it was the old house. The old house? Yeah. I was kind of like, oh, that's cute. It looked prettier than I thought. No, you got a good house. I got to see your new version. Fancy version. I'm just waiting for an invite. Come on over. Thanks. I can't. If you want to know more about the Move bombing, please, we both beseech you. Go watch. Let the Fire Burn on Amazon Prime, on the Internet, wherever you can see it, just see it. It's really good. Yeah. And we should point out, too, that no one involved on the cops and the political side suffered any punishments. No, there was that inquiry, and no one was found guilty of any wrongdoing. Except although this will put a really good button on this multi panel inquiry panel that held these hearings to a person with one dissenter said that we conclude, had this not been a black working class neighborhood, but instead of white working class neighborhood, the police never would have dropped that bomb. Of course they wouldn't have. Yeah. Okay, it's time for listing your mail. Who is the loan to center? I didn't see it's. Got to be the guy with the glasses. It's always that guy. What am I going to call this? Perfect pitch follow up. Hey, guys, back in 2009, my band was recording an album, and there was one song that ends with us all singing and holding out a single note. The next song starts with us singing that same note. That's cool. See what they did? Adding drums. Then the songs are edited together to have them flow into each other with no gap. Josh T. Is very interesting because he's a musician. Jerry just be like, what? I'm eating miso. What did you guys say? We had finished recording that first one and I can tell by the look on Josh's face he's like that old trick. Packed our instruments away. Then we're about to start the next one. We realize we need to hear the first note so we could sing the right pitch instead of loading up the previous song. Our pianist said I had perfect pitch and belted out the note, which we all who don't have perfect pitch trusted him to be right and started recording from there. Little did we know he doesn't have perfect pitch, but it's close. When we edited the songs together and played them through, the notes were supposed to match. We're off by about a half step now. It sounds like a Jerry. Very dissonant. Totally wrong. Oh, I just realized Jerry is going to hear this when she edits this episode. That's right. Just put a Wilhelm screaming there. Jerry. I'll be all right. We are already out of the studio at that point. So we ended up just releasing it and claiming the dissonance was intentional. But we never let them off the hook with the old, oh, yeah, you got perfect pitch, do you? Thanks so much for all the hard work, guys have learned so much. Been endlessly entertained for years. Signed, spanked and sent, that is from Kenny. Thank you, Kenny. We appreciate that. That was a pretty great email. Yeah. I mean, literally. Lol. I can only assume it's Kenny Rogers. I also want to say this. We give Jerry a hard time around here, stuff you should know only when she's not here. Actually, that's not true. We do while she's sitting right there, too. I can't imagine stuff you should know without her. Yeah, we love our Jerry and she is perfect exactly the way she is. I call that a nice save. All right, well, if you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to stuffyshotoe.com and check out our social links. And you can also send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuffyhudnow is production of iheartradios how Stuff works. 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. Halo elevate is natural science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leaving brands. Find Halo Elevate at pepco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores." | |
How Leper Colonies Worked | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-leper-colonies-worked | Leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, used to mean a one-way ticket to banishment. But once medicine trained its sights on wiping out what might be the most ancient disease to afflict humans, it has become treatable and even accepted. | Leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, used to mean a one-way ticket to banishment. But once medicine trained its sights on wiping out what might be the most ancient disease to afflict humans, it has become treatable and even accepted. | Tue, 02 Dec 2014 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=336, tm_isdst=0) | 26624076 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, friends. You know, dating is a journey with ups and downs, for sure. But all the effort is worth it when you meet someone special, right? And when you decide it's time to find a meaningful relationship, eharmony is here for you. Eharmony. Is passionate about creating real love for all. Rooted it in compatibility. Eharmony's process reveals truths about yourself like, I don't know what you want in a relationship. And it helps you connect with a uniquely compatible partner who is right for you. Don't believe it? See for yourself. So start for free today, because every 14 minutes someone finds love on Eharmony. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. Find Halo Elevate as Petco, Pep supplies, plus and select neighborhood pet stores. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetuffworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Wyatt. There's Jerry. There's W. Should know. Okay. Unclean. Unclean? What is that from? I think that's what people with leprosy where they had to say they had to ring a bell and say unclean when they walked through town so people would avoid them. I knew about the bell. Yeah. I think they would have to say, I'm clean early. Sets the story out. Man alive. Yeah, he says it all. It really does. Leprosy stigma Hansen's disease, I think is the preferred term for it these days. Is it? I knew it was called that, but every article I saw didn't even mention that. I don't know. I don't know who's preferring it. Mr. Hanson, I guess. Whoever he is. Well, he's in 19th century, I think. Swedish or Danish physician. Is that the deal the guy who discovered the actual bacteria got you? That does it, yeah, because we're talking leprosy and it's a bacterial infection after all. Yeah. I think when folks hear the word leprosy or leper colony, they a lot of times may not even know what the heck it is. And yeah, I guess we should start off by just talking about the disease a little bit. Yeah, it's an ancient disease. I actually found something from the beginning of 2014 and they discovered a new form of leprosy. Oh, really? New to humans, but it's actually very old. But the fact that they can take this new form, the newly discovered form, and compared to the one we've known about for centuries, they actually found that the fact that they diverged so long ago makes them suspect that it's possible that Leprosy Hanson's disease is the oldest infectious disease to humans around. Wow. Really? Yeah. We think that it definitely originated in Africa, that it traveled out with humans in however many waves that went out of Africa to spread around the rest of the world. And one of the tell signs that it's extremely old is that it only infects humans, as far as we know. It doesn't infect any other animals except supposedly armadillos. And they think that armadillos caught it from humans as recently as 100 or 200 years ago. Well, that's why if you're going to see leprosy in the United States, you're probably going to find it in Texas or Louisiana because the armadillos yeah, crazy. There is leprosy here, I guess. I bet most people think that it's not in the United States at all, but it is. It's super rare. The CDC says they get about 100 new cases a year in the US. Which is super low, and only about 20 to 40 of those are people born in the United States. Like, the other 40 to 80, I guess, are bringing it in from another country and have it for years without knowing it because leprosy generally takes four to six years to manifest itself. I've seen ten to 20. Well, it can take that long, but generally four to six years, which is a big problem. Sure, because first of all, it's rare. But even in the parts of the world where it's not all that rare, like, you can be infected with leprosy, like you said, for many years. And even if you do start to show symptoms, they don't just automatically point to leprosy. They can be skin rashes, respiratory problems or something like that. So by the time a doctor says, oh, you have Hanson's disease, you're in big trouble, or it used to be the case, yes. But now it is completely curable, which is great news. It is also not contagious at all. Hardly 95% of human beings have a natural immunity. So the biblical times in the Middle Ages were lepers were and we'll get to all this, but when they were thought like, if you come anywhere close that you're going to get, the stretch of disease never been true. Yeah. The thing is, as ancient as leprosy is, they still don't know exactly how it's transmitted. They assume that it's transmitted like most other bacterial infections, like either through saliva or mucus, through a sneeze or something like that, or through cracks in the skin. And I saw both that it's either very hard to catch or it's not that hard to catch. I saw that it doesn't live outside of the human body for very long or it can still remain potent just basically on some sort of surface or whatever. Oh, really? Yeah. But the last idea that it doesn't stay active outside the human body for very long is supported by the fact that they've never been able to come up with the leprosy vaccine because it can't exist outside of the human body, which is another idea or another reason why they think it's a very ancient human disease because it's specifically tailored for humans. And do you know how it works? Yeah, sure. Well, you want to talk about what it is and then how it affects you. Yeah. Well, it is their little microbes called microbacterium lepre. L-E-P-R-A-E. They're little tiny rod shaped microbes, and they infect the body, and you will get skin sores and nerve damage and muscle weakness, and you're going to not be able to feel pain, which leads to more problems. Like you will end up getting amputations because of gangrene, because you injured your toes or your hands, and you don't even know it. Yeah. And the way that it does that on a cellular level is the leprosy bacterium, hijacks, what are called your schwann cells. They typically make some sort of fatty coating for muscle and nervous system tissue. Right, okay. And it turns schwann cells into stem cells, which is pretty magical if you ask me. And it says, go forth and go infect the muscle tissue of this human, and let's see what we can do. So, again, it's basically perfectly tailored to infect and hijack the human body and affect you in all these horrible, terrible ways. It shortens your fingers as one of the symptoms, meaning that they just kind of start going back like pencil nubs that have been sharpened too many times. Yeah. If you're a biblical scholar, you have seen the word leprosy a lot in the Bible, but it didn't necessarily mean this specific disease. It could have been a variety of things like eczema or cirrhosis, because the word leprosy in the King James Bible, in Hebrew, seraph, could be a host of diseases that kind of make you look gnarly on the outside. Yeah. But there is a passage at least in, I think, Leviticus, which is old man. Yeah. And it says that you Hebrews are supposed to keep an eye on anybody who has a skin sore. And if that skin sore starts to spread, that person is a leper, and they are to live outside of camp. This is kind of an early understanding of contagious disease. They didn't necessarily know what it was or what was going on, but they knew enough to say, you hang out over there. Right. Because we've seen before that if people with Hampshire's disease hang out with everybody else, other people can catch it. Yeah. And that was the beginning of what would end up being leper colonies. And we'll talk about that a little more right after this break. 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They were generally just shuttled to the outskirts of the city or camp. In London, Queen Matilda and 1118 founded, I guess, a camp that people could still come back into town and beg for money and stuff, but they were always to go back to their camp at the end of the day. Yeah, just basically open land. It wasn't necessarily, like, some awful place to be. A lot of times, like, these wealthy landowners would endow this land to keep these people there. Yeah. Because they were sequestered or ostracized or just kept outside. People with leprosy effectively formed subculture or a subset of the population. So you would have, like, say, in a medieval town, like the Jewish section and the leper section, and then, like, the blacksmiths or whatever, and the executioner had to stay outside of town. So they were just like cobblers to mess with them. Right. But, I mean, they were like a subset of society, and they were very frequently the butt of all sorts of reins of terror. People would be like, well, everybody's getting sick, so somebody poisoned the wells and it was probably the lepers. Yeah. And then the lepers, all the lepers would be rounded up and killed. So lepers definitely were subjected to execution. As recently as I think I saw the 1937 in China, soldiers were, like, hunting down lepers and executing them for being lepers. Yeah, I think we've talked about this a lot on the show. People fear what they don't understand as a society, and they didn't understand leprosy. They didn't know where it came from. They thought it might be hereditary. They thought it was super contagious, like just touching someone would infect you. Right. And just because of the appearance that someone with leprosy would have, they didn't want to see them. They wanted them away so they couldn't be infected and so they didn't have to look at it. Right, okay. So the thing is, up until the 19th century, basically, although they were a subset of society, they were still technically part of society. Leopards, where even though they lived on the outskirts away from town, they were still part of society. In the 19th century, there was a movement to basically say, like, we don't want you to have anything to do with us any longer. You go over there like, you're not a part of our society any longer. You're your own thing. Just go away forever. And there was actually a law in Illinois, I guess, in Chicago in ordinance. It was called an ugly law. Yeah. In 1881, and it said, any person whose disease are deformed so has to be unsightly or disgusting object, has to stay away off the streets and away from public places. Yeah, because that's how they talk in Chicago. I know. I've seen Saturday Night Live before. Yeah. So no longer are you allowed in town to beg for all we decided we don't want to look at you any longer, so you are not a part of our culture any longer. That was in Chicago alone. This happened elsewhere. There was an outbreak in the 1850s in Hawaii, and the Hawaiian government said, yeah, I think we're going to finally just say, you guys can't be part of our culture any longer. And so they made leprosy a crime. So if you had leprosy, you were a criminal and therefore you could be excommunicated, ostracized, banished as under law. Yeah. That was when it was hawaii was an independent monarchy and in 1865, they passed the act to Prevent the Spread of leprosy. And like you said, they might as well have been. They were criminals. And as the article opens up in 1879, they described a night in January where they police officers rounded up a bunch of people stricken with leprosy and basically sent them off on a boat to Calipa Peninsula and said, this is your new home and you're not ever going to leave. So it makes the analogy of a prison, but it points out that even in a prison, you can get visitors and you may get out one day when your sentence runs out, if you have leprosy, you could not have any contact and you were there for life. Right. Very messed up. Yeah. And apparently for leper colonies that were run like prisons, where the patients were treated like prisoners yes. They weren't being attended to like a hospital. No, it was like you're in jail. Yeah. It was particularly difficult for, say, like, the warden of jail, because you couldn't use the same kind of carrots and sticks that you could on a typical prisoner, because there was no hope that you were ever going to leave the leper colony. And that was part of the point. Like, it was your relationship with society at large was severed and you were never coming back. Kids were taken from their families at very young ages, knowing that they were never going to see them again. Yeah. This one guy there was a quote from a superintendent of a South African leopard colony on Robin Island. His name was SPMP, and he said in his notes in the 1890s, you cannot starve them, you cannot flog them. All you can do is deprive them of their liberty, which is really sad. So a lot of places set up actual prisons inland, but a lot of countries said, that island over there that nobody wants to get to make that a leper colony. So there are places in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean in the Pacific off of South Africa, like you just said. But one of the most famous leopard colonies of all time was that one. I think it's Kala. Papa. Kala papa. If I know my native Hawaiian, it would be Kala papa Peninsula on Molokai. And in 1866, a year after they enacted that leprosy criminal code in Hawaii, they set it up. And it was different because you didn't need any fences or walls or anything like that, just the natural surrounding of the place. It was a peninsula, so it's surrounded on three sides by water. And then it just so happened that on that fourth side that was connected to land, there's a sheer 2000 foot cliff. Yeah. So they were trapped. They were trapped, but they were trapped in paradise. And it had an effect. It had a different effect. It did. And we will talk about that effect right after this break. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflows so that every driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeno, sesame and chocolate covered goodness with real time data driven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM let's create learn More@ibm.com consulting. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? For all their days at the dog park and nights sleeping in bed. Your bed. Yep. We mean that kid your dog. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition for their best health. It's guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. That means digestive health, heart and immunity, support healthy skin and coat, hip and joint support, and strengthen energy. Find Halo Elevate at Petco, pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores. Learn more@halopets.com. So Josh, you were talking about the different effect that this leopard colony in Hawaii had because it was Hawaii after all. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to make light of it, but it was a nice place. It was very fertile. They grew vegetables, they had a lot of food supplies. Local fruits were rampant. And there was a Belgian born Roman Catholic priest named Reverend Joseph Devoster who went by Father Damien. And he really made a huge difference in the life of these people. Tried to make it as normal, sort of like a village as he could. They built the schools, they built churches, he started choirs and planted trees, started a band. So he gave these people a life, like as much of a normal life as they could have. He treated them like people. Like human beings. Yeah, not just human beings, but also people who had an infectious disease. Like patients. Patients who could still walk and talk and move around and needed some sort of distraction or some sort of fulfillment. Father Damien came in and gave us to these people. He also badgered the government for money. Right. Which was good because they actually had an advocate for the first time. Yeah, it was basically like the Fifth Avenue of regulars, but on the leprechaur colony in Hawaii. Yes. Right. Unfortunately, very sadly, Father Damien himself got leprosy and died at the young age of 49 and 1889. But he was canonized as a saint saint 120 years later during the big Saint sweep of nine. So that's a pretty neat ending to that story sure. For him. And the Leopard colony in Kala. Papa peninsula. And I'm proud of myself for saying that one. Right. That is now a national park. It was created or turned into a national park in 1980. But the crazy thing is there are still people that live there, at least as recently as 2003. What do you mean people that live there? Like people with leprosy? Yeah. Okay. There was a guy, I guess, in 2003, there were a lot of people that were told they could leave or something. I think they were just waiting for the last generation to die out. And they said, you know what? We've got this thing kind of licked here in the United States, so if you guys want to leave, go ahead. And some people said, I've spent literally my entire life here. I don't want to leave. This is my home. So it's a national park with inhabitants, which is rare. Yeah, that's a good point. In the 1920s in the US. We started to change our tune a little bit, and the US Public Health Service said, you know what? Let's start a leper colony in Caravan, Louisiana. That's actually a hospital of sorts, where we treat these people and try and make their life better and try and find a cure, which is, I think, directly led to the first drugs in the 1940s being established, one called Promin. That apparently is a pretty nasty way to treat it because the injections were so painful, but it was a good start. So it was painful. Apparently they figured out but it was an antibiotic that did work. And they figured out that if you added it to a cocktail of other drugs. Apparently it was easier to take because it was in pill form. I think is what they changed it to in the 50s or sixty S. And then they added it to other drugs because the bacteria was starting to get resistant to this antibiotic alone. They came up with a cocktail in the 60s or seventy S, and now have a regimen that can cure leprosy in six months. And it all came out of this leprechaun colony at Carville, Louisiana. And there's a really neat documentary called Triumph at Carville about that, about how this place in Louisiana was the place where humanity licked leprosy. And Carville, Louisiana, is named after James Carville's family, and he's in it. He talks a lot about it. Oh, really? Yeah, he grew up down the road from it. I could listen to him talk. Just that accident, for sure. I love it. But apparently there was this kind of open secret that inhabitants would just leave every once in a while, and there was, like a bar nearby where they would go and drink beers and everything. Right. They just sneak out and sneak back in drunk, like in the 50s or whatever. Everybody just kind of left them alone and they did their own thing. Well, that's cool. Yes. That's a neat documentary. It took, obviously, a cure for leprosy to begin to change the stigma, and the tide did start to turn on. That stigma in the leopard colonies started to close one by one. I think in Japan, there were one of the last nations to quarantine patients. They ended it in 1996. I think in Romania, there is still one colony where supposedly there are a few elderly patients still there. But India is where it's a huge problem. Not a huge problem, but the biggest problem. Well, there's a lot of debate over just how big of a problem leprosy is. Apparently, the World Health Organization has said, we basically want to eradicate leprosy. And so a lot of people accuse them of fudging the numbers, as one doctor put it. Like, the best way to eradicate a disease is to stop reporting. Right. So there's between, say, I think the World Health Organization says 100,000, 250,000 new cases a year, and this one doctor who admittedly has to do with this leprosy vaccine says, I think it's more between like a million and two and a half million new cases a year. Oh, those are new cases? Yeah. I thought there were less than 200,000 periods. The reporting is all over the place. It is all over the place, and it's questioned. That's all I can say about that. India, Brazil, and Indonesia are the top three countries. And I know that in India, there's a colony in Castorba Graham near New Delhi, and it still has that stigma there. There are people there that are cured of leprosy that stay there because their families don't want them back. If you have leprosy, you are still likely to be ostracized away from your family because they just think it reflects badly if you have a boy and a girl, and a boy has leprosy and the girl doesn't like, that girl won't even be able to find a husband because the brother in law has leprosy. So they're still sending them behind closed doors, which is super sad, because it's just a disease like any other, and it's very treatable. It's because of the stigma of how it makes you look. And I saw this thing. There was an inmate in an Ohio prison this week that was just treated for leprosy. Wow. He was just discharged from Ohio State Medical Center. Ohio State University Medical Center. The Ohio State Medical Center. You just want some fans. And he was just treated for a few days. Apparently, once you start this drug cocktail, they can cure you in six months, but you're not even infectious after a few days of it. Wow. So they put him back in the prison and he had it before? He had it for years. Where did he get it, in armadillo or something? No, he was from, I think of micronesia. So they think he got it there, brought it over here, didn't know he had it, ended up in jail. I'm not sure what he's in jail for, man. But not for having leprosy. I know that not in the US. Buddy. But they basically said, all right, you're going back to jail. Nothing to worry about. Going back to prison. He was like, Great. Yeah, thanks. And I'm sure the prisoners are probably worried because they don't listen to this podcast. Yes. Well, some of them do. It's probably working in his advantage. Yeah. Like, stay away from that guy. Sure. Yeah. Unless he's sad and lonely. Then it's different. So if this kind of got to you and you want to do something, world Leprosy Day is January 25, 2015. That's right. We're a little early. We're kicking off World Leprosy Day in November. If you want to know more about leprosy or Hanson's disease, you can type either one of those in the search bar@houseofworks.com, and it'll bring up this article. Since I said that it's time for listener mail, I'm going to call this one Hit Drummer. Hey, guys. I have no idea how I missed your One Hit Wonder podcast from a while back until now, but it brought back a lot of memories. I was in a band called SR 71, which you may remember, had a hit called Right Now, which reached number two on the Billboard modern rock charts in 2000. That's high up and generally inescapable that summer. There are definitely some mixed feelings on the subject, but I'd have to say, having had one hit is better than having none. Do you know the song? I went and listened. I looked it up and I did not recognize it. I didn't either, and that's because I don't listen to the radio. Same here, man. And in 2000, I wasn't listening to the radio, but it seemed like a very 2000 sort of song when I heard it. Yeah, it fit that time period. Oh, yeah. And the video, too. Yeah. Then the Duke. I worked on a lot of videos like that at the time. It seemed like there was a lot of street partying and skateboarding, a lot of that going on over acting. Although I got a brief small taste of the sweetness that is fame, it was enough to make me realize that what I thought I wanted wasn't very satisfying. The upside was having plenty of stories to tell. Unfortunately, I keep a tour journal containing details that have mostly been lost from memory. Late night TV, daytime talk, guest spots on short live TV shows, several incredible gigs. Can't forget the 40 Watt Club in Athens, an amazing trip to Japan and one of the strangest experiences ever on German MTV. They make for some great life experiences that helps me see marketing for what it is in all its forms. The major label recording experience and the constant touring were beneficial from a musical standpoint, although playing the same bunch of tunes every night quickly became maddening. And I'm happy to know that I don't want to be on the merrygo round or tour bus rolling petri dish gross. Unless I'm the one running the show. Thanks for a great show. Please keep at it. There's so much to know. And that is Dan Garvin. And that's when to Grow on formerly of SR 71 and I emailed him to see if he cared to say what he's doing now and I didn't hear back from him, but I think he let's make something up. Okay? I think he's still drumming and teaching and I think he has a recording studio. I think he's taking that road instead of the drudgery of the tour bus. Are you making all that up? No, I think that's real. What is that based on his Wikipedia page. Oh, I got you. Okay. I was going to say where else would I find it? I thought you were just making it up and would admit it. No. Thanks a lot, Dan. That's pretty cool, man. If you had a one hit wonder no, you wouldn't have one. You'd be a one hit wonder, right? And your name is not fake. Lubega. We'd love to hear from you. You can tweet to us at fyskpodcast or you can say hey on our Facebook page at facebook comicino. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@houseofworks.com and you can just browse our awesome free site steffyshno.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.com. Hey everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer, school's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks or if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. You know you're the best pet mom when you grab all vac 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." | ||
418e1d14-53a3-11e8-bdec-07f1994ec12e | How the Hoover Dam Works, Part II | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-hoover-dam-works-part-ii | And now for something completely different. Just kidding – tune in to hear the thrilling conclusion of America’s most amazing public works project in the 20th century. | And now for something completely different. Just kidding – tune in to hear the thrilling conclusion of America’s most amazing public works project in the 20th century. | Thu, 18 Apr 2019 17:22:42 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=17, tm_min=22, tm_sec=42, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=108, tm_isdst=0) | 39971611 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, this is Chuck. Hello, New York. Specifically, I'm coming out there next week, next Tuesday, to perform as a part of the We Know Parenting podcast. My buddies, Beth Newell and Pete McNaney. Peter, what am I talking about? They are performing live, We Know Parenting for the first time at Lidl Fields in Brooklyn on Tuesday night, the 23rd. And I'm going to be there. I'm coming up for this. I'm going to take the stage with them. I'm going to talk kids, and it's a good chance to say hi. Emily's going to be there, too, everyone. So come on out in the New York area, Tuesday the 23rd. That's this Tuesday at Littlefields in Brooklyn. Go to Wenosparenting.com and buy tickets there. And I would love to meet you. So come on out and say hello. 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. There's Jerry over there. And this is part due the sequel of Hoover Dam. Let's find out what happened. I think the last thing I said was they poured the last bucket of concrete on May 29, 1935, and the end. So let's do listener mail. Okay. I'm kidding. Definitely worth it. Too far. Okay, Chuck. So they poured the last bucket of concrete, they grouted everything off, and all of a sudden you now have one solid sheet of dam, hoover Dam. And at the bottom, it's much wider than it is. At the top, it's like 600 plus feet. At the bottom, that's how wide it is. At the top, it's 45ft, which still feels substantial. And indeed, it's enough to have a two lane highway going over it and for a very long time, for 60 something years. I believe that was how you got from Arizona to Las Vegas. You had to drive over the Hoover Dam on top of it, which seems just about as boneheaded as it gets. But I guess they really wanted the gift shop money from everybody they could get their hands on. Yeah, it was kind of cool to have been forced to do that because whether you liked it or not, you were going to see an amazing thing. But eventually, like, you were hinting at traffic just picked up and picked up, and they were like, you know what? This isn't great to have all these cars driving over this thing every day. So let's build a bridge. You know what we'll do? Let's build the longest concrete gravity arch bridge in North America, which is appropriate because, again, if you take a gravity arch bridge and lay it on its side, you've got basically the Hoover Dam right there. Yeah. So it spans over 1000ft, about 160ft of the Black Canyon just south of the old Route 900ft above the canyon. Have you been to this bridge? Yeah, it's cool. I have driven over that bridge since I visited the dam itself in 96. And you get a great view from up there. Yes, you do. You also get to experience the most terror you can possibly experience on a bridge because the railing is like, less than 5ft tall. There's no big barrier, there's no nuts, there's no nothing. It's just void right on the other side. It's so scary. But yes, the view is unparalleled. I don't think you can walk across it, though, can you? Yes, you can. Yes. I had no idea. Oh, yeah. No, there's a pedestrian walkway. Oh, really? The railing is less than 5ft. Okay. I didn't notice that. Yeah, that's why you weren't terrified. You walk across this thing, and it is so scary. Oh, my gosh. It's scary, but it's really amazing. Like, the most amazing views of Hoover Dam prior to the bridge opening were all done from about this vantage point by helicopter. Now, any smoke can just walk out there. Just park and walk and see it yourself. And it's pretty amazing. You see all sorts of rainbows. We saw a bunch of rainbows over there because the water is flowing out of the dam outlets and the sun is shining, and there's just rainbows. You can't throw a rock and not hit a rainbow around there. Well, Bob Mold would end up writing a great song after being inspired by a visit. There the Rainbow Connection. No, Bob Mold. Do you remember Sugar? Sure. And Whisker Do? Yes. But Sugar was his band in the early ninety s, and he had a great song called Hoover Dam. I didn't know that. Standing on the edge of the Hoover Dam. That's such a good Bob Marley. So, March 1, 1936, believe it or not, they finished this thing under budget, two years ahead of schedule. Yeah, I want to say something about that real quick. Remember they called Frank Crow, the guy who was running? He was the project manager for the whole thing. Slow crow, they called him. Hurry up, Crow. Oh, that's right. So he made the company $8 million. Remember how they bid the thing out at just 24 grand over cost by coming in under budget, and that early, they saved $8 million. So he was quite the hero for the corporate overlords. Old slow moneybags Crow. Right. So finally the moment comes, and I can't imagine what this must have been like, but they were able to release that Colorado River that had been on hold not on hold, but flowing in a different place all those years back into that original route. And all of a sudden, you have Lake Mead. The Lake Mead reservoir. It is 110 miles, stretching 110 miles upstream from the Hoover Dam and attracts 10 million people a year to water ski and sun and boat and do fun things. Yeah, because again, it was designated as the nation's first national recreation area. Recreation, recreation, recreation. It's the biggest reservoir in the world, which is saying something because there's some gigantic reservoirs out there. Yeah. This one is 1.24 trillion cubic feet. There's so much water in there, Chuck, that they measure it by acre feet, which is how much water it takes to flood an acre, a square acre of land. And there's something like 28 million acre feet in Lake Mead at its capacity. Amazing. That's a lot of flooded acres. As a matter of fact, it's like 28 million square flooded acres of water right there. That's a lot of water. Yeah. And like me decide we should probably go over some of the stats for Hoover Dam itself, because it's done now. At the time, was the tallest dam in the world by more than 300ft, 726ft from the canyon floor. And now it is the second tallest, still second tallest concrete gravity dam in the United States behind the Oraville Dam in California, which, I don't know if you looked at that, but it's no Hoover Dam. Oh, is it slubby? Yeah. I mean, it's fine. It looks like a big, giant slip and slide. It's got this huge ramp. It sounds kind of fun. Yeah, it's fun. But again, Bob Mold didn't write a song called the Oraville. Damn. Can I hear a little snippet of it? If he has no, just play the first one again, and I'll do this. Oraville today, Hoover Dam is still second in the country in power production and ranks 11th in the world in power production. It's second in the country still? Yeah. For power production. Wow. That's crazy. And the biggest until 1949, when the Grand Coulee hydroelectric dam on the Columbia River in Washington State took it over. Right. And there's still one and two, I guess, then, is the thing. That's right. But what's crazy is the hydroelectric power from the Hoover Dam generates, like, 4 billion kilowatt hours annually. Okay. That must be, like, enough to power the entire US. That's actually not the case at all. It's about, I believe, a quarter or a fifth of the annual power consumption of just Los Angeles County. Just Los Angeles. It's about a fifth of it county. Sure. And it is having a significant impact. I read that if they stopped producing electricity at the Hoover Dam, everyone in California and the Southwest power bills would go up by month. That's pretty substantial. But I guess I'm saying I'm surprised it's the number two guy on the block still. Yeah. The way they distribute it, too, is California gets about almost 50% of the power. Nevada, Nevada, they both get 23%. And then Arizona gets about close to 19%. Did they split that 23%? Yeah. Nevada. Nevada. Yeah. But that's only 53 or 50 73. I wonder if the rest where the rest goes downstream. The power? Yeah. So you're talking about the power or the water? The power. Oh, I don't know. Because that's not 100%. I wonder how much of that operates. The damn itself can't be that much. I mean, that's a lot leftover. I'm not sure. Yes. I'm not really sure. So regardless of where that phantom electricity goes, Chuck, I want to talk about another extraordinarily foresightful part of this project. Do you remember when they diverted the river in those four tunnels around the dam project site? Now, what are you talking about? Well, let's go back. We'll go back and replay the entire episode real quick. And they'll be in there somewhere. Yeah, sure. So they diverted the river so they could build the dam, and they saved those tunnels. They didn't just cover them up and say, forget you. We don't need you anymore. They said, no, we can actually use you in the future. So one on each side is now called the Pen stock. They've been encased in steel and then narrowed from 50ft to 30ft in diameter, which is still pretty substantial. And they use those to send water from Lake Mead to the power station turbines on either side, the Nevada side and the Arizona side. And that's where the hydroelectric power is generated. So they use the diversion tunnels to generate the hydroelectric power now? Yeah. It's amazing. I love it. The water falls into these things, go down about 500ft into this power station, which, by the way, part of the tour is you get to go down into the bowels. We missed that, which is kind of neat. Yes. The word bowels just turned you off. So that's why I did it on the tour. So it falls about 500ft into the power station. It's flowing here at about 2000 cubic feet, between two and 3000 cubic feet per second. And anyone who knows what hydroelectric power means, all you're doing is using that water to spin a turbine and connect that to a power generator. And all of a sudden, Arizona, Nevada and California are getting juice. Right. Which is pretty ingenious because if you think about it, when that water is flowing from Lake Me down these Pen stocks to the turbines, they're not using any pumps or anything like that. It's all just gravity sending it over, like a 600ft drop. And what did you say it was? Like 2000 to 3000? Yeah. Cubic feet per second. Cubic feet per second. So that, Chuck, is a lot of water. That is a tremendous amount of water. So much so that converted into Big Max per second. You're talking 89,367 B max per second if you're moving water at 2000 cubic feet per second. And that's actually accurate based on the dimensions of Big Mac. I did the calculation really, that's how many Big Macs will be flying past you in a second if it were Big Max instead of water they were sending down, there the other stat, which staggers me because I was thinking, like, there's no way Julia actually figured out the horsepower of this whole thing. And she did. Well, she found someone who did. And this thing can crank out almost 3 million HP combined. Wow. This hydraulic system, 3 million. Know that's a lot of horsepower, but I'm just trying to put it in other terms. How many trains is that? Well, just think about standing in the middle of a desert and seeing 3 million horses charging at you. That's a lot of horsepower. That's a lot of horses. It is. So the way that the water gets from Lake Mead down to the turbines, I mean, it's all very much controlled. And the way they control it is if you ever go to the Hoover Dam, just on the Lake Mead side of the dam, there are these four towers that rise out of the water. And those towers have gates that can be opened and closed to let water in. And those are the gates that let the water in, that send it to the pen stocks down to power the turbines and the power stations, apparently to the tune of 3 million HP. Amazing. It is amazing. Again, all of this. If you step back and just kind of look at it as a kid, you're like, yeah, put a hole here to make the water go there to make that turbine spin. It's really simple in a lot of ways, but the amount of ingeniousness it took to actually execute it, that's where the chef's kiss lies. All right, let's take a break here, and we're going to come back and talk about spillways right after this. All right, Chuck. So they used two of the four diversion tunnels to feed the turbines to generate hydroelectric power. That leaves two other ones. And I know they didn't just forget about those. What are they using those for? Go. And this is sort of the final component here, because what they had to do was I mean, when this thing is working great, which it almost always has, we'll get to that in a second. Everything's awesome. People are getting power. People are water skiing on Lake Mead. People are getting water. Crops are getting water. Cows are drinking water. Everybody's happy. But they did have to think about the fact that the Colorado River used to be quite a bear and may get angry again one day, or this thing may fail one day. So we need to think about what happens if something does go wrong, whether it's a flood or the system breaks down or something. So they thought ahead and they set up what we're called spillways. They can actually divert, once again, all that water into those two outer tunnels that are now referred to as spillways. But this is downstream, right? Not the upstream tunnels that are being used for the Liberty Jabits. Have you ever seen a fish ladder? Surely you have? Oh, yeah. I think we've even talked about them on something before. Those are great. Yeah. That's basically like an upstream spillway. Yeah. Okay, so this is the opposite that's sending it down and it's the exact same principle and almost the exact same design as that little overflow hole that you have in your sink. Yeah, right. So you can't flood your bathroom because eventually if that water level hits that hole, it's just going to go into the hole and down the drain. Anyway, this is the exact same thing. So they utilize those remaining two diversion tunnels as these spillways. And they didn't lower them at all. Remember, they reduced the other ones to like 30 ft from 50ft. These are still 50 ft spillways lined with like 3ft of concrete, but they follow very similar trajectories where the water hits a certain level on like a flood or whatever and it goes through these spillways and then it drops several hundred feet, I think 600ft, which is a lot for a lot of water to drop. It starts to pick up a pretty high velocity and then it all spills out of these gates a little further downstream beyond the hydroelectric plants and everybody's saved and happy. And no water is ever meant to go over the top of the Hoover Dam. If that ever happened, that would be colossally bad. It's never designed to do that. It probably never will do that. Even if humans suddenly just vanish overnight, the spillway would probably still work. But that's what it's designed for. It's designed to just get rid of that water and reroute it, basically. Like they rerouted the Colorado River, but this time they're rerouting it around the power stations, which would be swamped with that much water. Yeah, and it's not like they were like, all right, if this gets within like three or 4ft, we're going to take action. If it gets to within, they set it at 27ft. So if the water rises for any reason to within that 27ft to the top of where those cars are driving, those spillway gates open up and it diverts that water and the dam is not able to breach, which like you said, would be catastrophic. It lets out a big hurry. And the good news is that outlet system has never failed. And it's only had to be used twice. Once for the test in 1941, and then in 1983, there was actually a flood that got within that caused that river to go up within 27ft and they opened up that spillway, which I imagine it was probably kind of scary, but there were probably some engineers that were pretty excited to get to use those spillways finally. Yeah, because you would have had to have been an old timer to have been there for the 1941 test by the time 1983 came around. So I'm sure all these people wanted to see this because they'd never seen it work before and they also wanted to know if it did work. And it definitely worked. I mean, it wasn't a drill like 1941, it was a straight up flood. Like this is what it was designed for and it worked just fine. Yeah. But both times during the test and during that flood, those spillways suffered some damage. So let's talk about the failures that have happened over the years. Right. So in those first few years when everyone was still kind of biting their nails a little bit, there were a couple of problems. Air bubbles formed in these spillways and seepage, like, water started seeping under the base of the dam, which is not good at all. No. And those are actually two different things. So both we'll start with the air bubbles, right? Yeah. So that's called cavitation. And when the spillways were used, both in that 1941 test and in the 1983 actual flood, when that water, that huge amounts of water, fell 600ft down to the elbow of the spillway, that led it the rest of the way out to the river when it hit, when it impacted. By that time, these things called cavitations, little like bubbles of vapor had formed in the water column. And these things were so strong that when they collapsed, they had enough force that they could shatter concrete. So when the spill test was done, the spillway test, and then when the flood was over and the spillways were turned off, they went and investigated. There were huge chunks of concrete missing. The water just sheared it away like it was nothing. And cavitation is still not really fully understood. It's part of a really infrequent, unusual occurrence. Water typically doesn't flow that fast on earth over a man made structure. So it's not like something we have to worry about. But they figured out that if you insert air raiders or air ducts, something to insert air into that water to kind of lessen the blow, kind of pat or pillow, the impact of those cavitations collapsing, it can protect concrete. And so after 1941, they didn't really know what they were doing after 1983. Somebody had figured out aeration by that time, and so they installed them right afterward. And as far as I know, they haven't tested it to see if it works, but in other places, it's been shown to work. So I think it's a pretty safe bet that if those overflow spillways have to be used again, they probably won't gravitate because of the aeration that was inserted into the spillways now. Yeah, well, I actually saw in 41, they knew that they could do this with air ducts, but the government wouldn't pony up for the money. Oh, is that right? Yeah, they denied the funds. And it took until that flood of 83, when it happened again, when the government was like, all right, we'll pay for this stuff, fine. Hoover's ghost came out. Don't get involved. It's not the government's job to pay for broken concrete. So this, seepage, was the other sort of engineering failure. And we need to point out that this thing has performed really well. Like, none of these failures broke the dam. That's a really good point, and I think it's definitely worth pointing out, like, the spillway, those were huge wear and tear that probably shouldn't have happened and probably won't again, but yeah, the whole system still worked. Yeah. So if you have a dam like this, the stability of this whole thing relies on keeping all that water out. So any seepage under the base of that dam is not good. It's going to cause uplift pressure that's going to shift the whole foundation. And this drought basically was failing. A grout curtain is going to prevent the seepage. So they were pressure injecting all this drought into these holes trying to fill cavities, but it was not 100%, and they were getting some seepage in there. Well, they did a really poor job of geological exploration before they ever started the project. Yeah, that was the main issue there. So, like, the same grout that they introduced into those cooling pipes after they were finished building the actual dam itself, they were introducing that into these holes they drilled to kind of fill those cracks, crevices, faults, all this stuff that's in the bedrock. Because normally when the Colorado River is flowing, chuck, it's fine. It's allowed to keep going, and it doesn't try to get anywhere aside from the riverbed. But when it runs into the dam, then it's got issues. The water, it has to go somewhere, right? Yeah, that's what water does. It wants to go somewhere. So it starts to find those little cracks and crevices and faults, and when it fills up enough of them, it can actually lift up the dam. And that's what it was doing. It was lifting up the dam. So they went back and drilled more holes and added even more grout and basically created this barrier. So you've got the barrier that's the dam, and then you have the barrier that's this grout reinforced bedrock hundreds of feet down into the earth. So now the water just gives up and does what it's told. Yeah. I love that they really went overboard there in an additional 300ft underground with this crowd. But imagine being like the dam is actually lifting up. It's starting to float. That is the exact opposite of what you want to go on with your dam. Yeah, for sure. Because apparently on the face of the upstream face, the water pressing up against it. Lake Mead is over 100 miles long. It's an enormous amount of water, and it's being held back by this one slab of concrete. And I think Julius said it was like 45 \u00a30 per square feet of pressure pressing up against the dam at all times. So, yeah, that's just hairy, if you think about it. Especially then if you start to think about that amount of concrete being lifted up by the water and it's just basically being moved out of the way and they had to stop it in time. All right, folks, we're going to take our last break. We're going to come back and finish up with part four, part two of Hoover Damn right after this. All right, we're going to bring it home here with or we can keep talking about it forever with a little bit on how the Hoover Dam just really changed the United States and especially the Southwest. Roosevelt franklin Roosevelt dedicated the dam on September 30, 1936, and, man insult to injury, former President Herbert Hoover was not even on the guest list to come and see that dedication. No, you mentioned that, like, four years after and he was the guy who was the first champion of the whole thing, too. I mean, it was his project, for sure. Yeah. That area that region, it really changed everything. Aside from Boulder City becoming a real place, which is kind of neat, and Vegas growing, the whole region was allowed to flourish because well, one big reason is because they tame that Colorado River. No more flooding. Right. So no more flooding meant that you could actually have a stable agricultural industry, right? Yeah. It says here the region's crops and livestock account for 15% and 13% of the entire country's production. Yes. And they grow so much, like lettuce and cilantro and stuff. That region is now called America's Salad Bowl. It has enormous amounts of production, and it never would have gotten to that point had the Hoover Dam not produce, like, a steady, reliable supply of irrigation and done away with flooding. There hasn't been a single flood from the Colorado River that's affected any of the land in the area since the Hoover Dam came online. You know, when I lived in Yuma and I waited tables at Juliana's Patio Cafe, there was this dude I can't remember his name, but this one guy that would bring in a bunch of big money guys to eat every now and then, like six or eight of them for these business dinners. And he was a lettuce guy. Oh, yeah. Okay. And I just thought it was so funny growing up in Atlanta, I had never thought about it, but all he did was grow lettuce, and if he came in with his six or eight buddies, you had to shut down and take that table only like he expected you to only wait on your table. Right. Well, there's some real lettuce in it for you. Oh, there was. Was he a good tipper? Because a lot of times those guys are not well, he always had a party big enough to where the tip was included, and he would usually give you a little lettuce on top of that. That's nice. Literally. Here's a piece of romaine for you. It's good for you, kid. Spanky on the bottom as you're walking way down. So the Hoover Dam changed everything. Places like Tucson, Arizona, would not even have been allowed to happen in Las Vegas, and La booming like it did. Thanks to the hoover dam. Like you said, no flooding, tons of production, and everything is under control. One thing they did have to worry about well, we'll talk about what they are worrying about now in a minute. But one thing they did worry about then and then, like in world war II and again at 911, was the fact that it's a terror target, because so many places rely on this for water and irrigation, that if a terrorist organization took out the hoover dam especially, I mean, it'd be bad any time, but especially in world war II, it would have been catastrophic. Yeah. So I guess 1939, the mexican government let the american embassy in mexico city know, hey, we just heard that the germans are planning on bombing hoover dam. And america was like, what? And they put up all these new safeguards and got military police to patrol the area. They installed floodlights on lake mead. They put up a steel net so you couldn't get anywhere near the dam on the lake mead side, because, remember, I mean, people are like boating and recreating on this. So they had to kind of keep people away from the dam for the first time, but they still kept going on. You could still go visit and everything. And then pearl harbor happened, and they were like dams closed. And they closed the dam to the public for the duration of the war, I think until the end of 1945. They finally opened it to the public again, all because of the dirty nazis. Yeah. Man and the dam itself actually had its own police force. The army, of course, came in there to help out as well, but it was a pretty big deal because not only are you disrupting water and maybe flooding the valley, but the power supply to southern california, there's a lot of aviation still is a lot of aviation manufacturing in southern california. And I think that's what the nazis were really after, to disrupt the power supply to the aviation industry. Yes, because at the time, america wasn't even in world war II yet, but we were helping the British with the aviation stuff we were building. So they were trying to strike at the heart of british capabilities by blowing up the hoover dam. The nazis want to blow up the hoover dam, and the US. Is like, what did we do? We're not even in this so called world war. Right? Yeah. Helping the British. All right. I got you. We're still not going to let you do it. But now I understand. And then, of course, after 911, there was a lot of fear that that could be a potential and it still looms as a potential terrorist target. That was one reason why they built the bridge, the bypass bridge. They're like, you know, this is just too vulnerable, letting people drive over it. And so, from what I understand, either after the german bomb plot. Became evident, or after 911, and I think it was after 911 until that bridge opened up. When you drove over the Hoover Dam, you had to wait. And it would happen in, I guess, shifts. And you would be escorted across by the police in groups of cars. And then you'd make your way to the other side and they'd be like, Keep going. Don't even look back or we'll arrest you. And then that's how you got across until they finally opened the bypass, which must have been I'll bet there are a lot of delays. Yeah, probably so in that situation. So the current threat, aside from that looming terror threat, is the fact that there have been about 16 years of drought in that area. And it's scary, man. Lake Mead is not the same. I mean, it is, like, 150ft lower than it used to be then it was in 2000. Yeah, 130ft. I mean, that's a huge drop. Yeah. There's like a bathtub ring, high watermark now just the discoloration along the canyon walls where you can see where it used to be. And it's really significant. And the problem is, when they built the dam, they built it so that the gates that allow water down to the pen socks to the hydroelectric plant, they cut off at a certain height. After that, the water is too low to flow through the gates, and then you have no hydroelectric power. Same thing with the pipes that pump water out to Las Vegas and Los Angeles and Tucson and everywhere else that gets water. They're at a certain height, too. So I think once the water level hits, like, 895ft, there's no more water that can be drawn out. And they actually got around this by creating a new low level pumping system to where they came in and went under Lake Mead and tapped into it. And now, just like a bathtub drain, at the bottom of a bathtub, there's a pumping station so that now they're not like, okay, we have 895ft of water we can't get to drink from any longer. Now they're like, no, we can get to all the water we need to for drinking. Which is a huge relief. That's a big deal that they were able to do this. But at the same time, everyone's still very much aware that they're like, we still have issues. Like, we're losing water through evaporation and from lower and lower snow accumulations up in the Rockies where all this water comes from in the first place. Like, there's a big problem with climate change, and it's having an enormous impact on Lake Mead. And because all these areas depend on it for electricity and water, everybody is really freaked out right now. Yeah. So the current proposition is the La. Department of Water and Power. They have something on the table that is basically like a cycled loop system. They said, Why don't we do a return path for that water, put a huge pump station, solar powered pump station downstream that's going to then send water and cycle it back up to the reservoir. And not only that, it's a pretty good idea. Not only that, you could enable more power generation and also create a reserve of electricity for peak periods. So then all of a sudden, the Hoover Dam is like a big battery essentially run by solar power. Right. Which sounds great. It's like, okay, yeah, why just let all that water go when you're just generating hydroelectricity from it, put it back. But all the people who depend on that water downstream say, we still need that water. We can't pump it back into Lake Mead. We need that stuff. Like, that's our water. And that's part of the problem with it, Chuck, is that there are so many people who depend on this, not just from Hoover Dam, but there's, like, multiple dams above Hoover Dam, too. So there's a lot of people drawing water for all sorts of different purposes from the Colorado River that it seems to be too many there's just too many people. There's too much need. And when you toss in climate change and the impact that the 16 or 19 year drought is having, it's a really precarious position right now that they have not figured out. Yeah. Pretty scary, man. It is scary, for sure. I got nothing else that is surprising because there is a lot to talk about. I've got one more thing. All right, so you said that FDR dedicated the place in 1938, right? Is that what I said? I believe that's what you said, everybody. Yeah, that's what you said. So there is a sculptor named Oscar J. W. Hanson, and, you know the Winged Art Deco giant figures, the statues that are there on site? So he created those. And did you notice the Toraso floor, the apron that's in front of those statues? I don't remember. It's been a while. Okay, so there are these two giant art deco statues. They look kind of like the Oscar Award, but with wings, and they're seated, and they're there to just basically commemorate this conquering of humanity over nature. But on the ground in Toronto is a star map, and it shows the exact position of the stars in the sky on that day in 1938 when Hoover Dam was dedicated. So that future generations to come, even if there's, like, no more Americans and no one speaks English anymore, and this whole area has been abandoned, they could come back and find the Hoover Dam in the star map and calculate the exact day that it was dedicated just based on the position of the stars in this Toronto floor. Wow. Isn't that neat? That's amazing. Extra little touch there. Learn that on the self guided tour, by the way. Yeah, nice. If you want to know more about the Hoover Dam, go to the Hoover Dam. We can talk about it all day long. We could talk about it for two more episodes and it still wouldn't get across what it's like to be there. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this. Well, we got something wrong in Desert Survival, which, by the way, we got a lot of kudos that perhaps may be our funniest episode. That was great. That was a lot of fun. Yes, we were being silly that day. Those are always good. Hey, guys, been an avid listener for years. Can't thank you enough for the countless hours of entertainment. Despite all the great topics in education, I've never been tempted to write until today. During your Desert Survival opening, an immediate and hilariously enjoyable left turn tangent. Chuck, you mentioned your tribute to Annie with a reference to food glorious food. I feel so dumb. That song is actually from Oliver, which I know. I know that. Everybody knows. You know that. I know Annie and I know Oliver. Sure. Maybe they were friends at the family. That's it. That's the big line he said. I thought you might get a kick out of how I know this to be true. When I was about eight or nine, my hometown did a community production of Oliver and I was cast. What part did you play, you may ask? Well, in the song food glorious Food, there's a line that goes, food, glorious food, peas puddings and savellois. What next is the question. Rich gentlemen have it, boys. Indigestion at the singing of indigestion. My role in Shining moment of the format was to lean over while the tuba in the orchestra pit let out a deep and juicy note. Yes, that's right, everyone. I was in the credits as the flatulent orphan. You get that? He bends over and the tuba goes I got it. Needless to say, guys, my life peaked early. I will always be remembered for that song. Thanks for all you do. That is Eddie in Denver, Colorado. Eddie, that was a fantastic listener mail. Goodwin, like award winning, maybe. Yeah, man. I mean, if you're talking tube of arts, you've got my heart. Yes, you, Eddie, just got the Hoover dam award for listener mails, the current Hoover dam award holder. So thanks for that. Good one. If you want to get in touch with us, you can go to stuffyoushenknow.com. All of our social links are on there. Or you can just send us an email. Send it off to stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio. 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. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out. The sun is 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 Kilgarra and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to news episodes of my favorite murder one week early on Amazon music. 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Who were the Vikings? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/who-were-the-vikings | Vikings were fierce, plundering Scandinavian warriors; and even today, their reputation precedes them. Josh and Chuck investigate what the Vikings were really like in this episode. | Vikings were fierce, plundering Scandinavian warriors; and even today, their reputation precedes them. Josh and Chuck investigate what the Vikings were really like in this episode. | Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:02:55 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2010, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=16, tm_min=2, tm_sec=55, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=77, tm_isdst=0) | 30320237 | audio/mpeg | "What if you were a global bank who wanted to crunch billions of transactions against thousands of compliance controls? So you tap IBM to UNSILO your data, and now you can supercharge your audit system with AI. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM let's create learn more@ibm.com. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural sciencebased nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leaving brands? Find Halo Elevate at Petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the Super Weird Podcast. This is a weird podcast. Not necessarily for you guys, but it is for Chuck and I. Yes. I'm Josh Clark. That's Chuck Bryant. Let's get back to why this is a weird podcast. Yes. To explain, our studio is being renovated. Drum roll. Which is awesome. It's going to be super fancy, like a real studio. But right now, we are actually recording in some odd office. It has windows. Yeah, this is really weird. This is the first time we've recorded a show outside the regular studio, and it might sound a little different. Jerry has explained that there's something called room tone, and it's different from room to room. Gerry just made that up. Chuck. Did she? Yes, I bought it. Plus, it looks like the walls are closing in on us. Yes. We're actually a lot closer than we actually are. A little cramped. This is just odd. So if we seem a little angrier than usual, it's because of the stupid room. Right? So I think we're going to call this what did we determine? I voted for the reconstruction tapes of the reconstruction era, and I made the joke saying that we should call it the eponymous era, because that was a much better album. But that was just the greatest hits collection by REM. Yeah, that's why it was so good. All right, so what's your witty intro? Or is this all just out the door? It's way out the door, buddy. Okay. You see it? Yes. Leaving. Chuck josh, have you ever met a Viking? No, I haven't. But you're in the football team, right? Minnesota Vikings. Yeah, I've seen them. You can tell their helmet a mile away because they have those horns on the side, which are very Viking esque. Right. True. No, not true. That is a myth. Yes, it is. It turns out a bunch of archaeologists were digging around the north, the Nordic area, scandinavia. Yes. Which includes what? Sweden, Denmark, finland. The Netherlands. And, yeah, I think Finland. Norway? Did you say Norway? Sure. Norway, too. Okay. Can you forget the Norwegians? Yes. And they found an ancient helmet with some horns on it. And this was before we had reliable carbon dating technology. And they said, well, it's a Viking, but it turns out that it was probably from the pre Viking era. Right. Like, maybe well, that's when it was popularized in the 18th and 19th century. The enormous woman would come out with her bosom. Yes. Very prominent. And a helmet with horns or wings. And it turns out they wouldn't have worn this because these guys were dedicated to battling as efficiently and as brutally as any group that's ever sprung up on the global map. Yes. They were very good at what they do. And I just want to point out, this is a listener request, a very recent one, actually, that piqued our interest. And this is from David D from Waterloo. He said, can you do something on Viking since you've covered ninja? And what else do we cover? Pirates. I hear Vikings used to have warriors called berserkers who would eat magic mushrooms before sending them into battle. And we're going to talk about that. Yeah. Stay tuned. That's a teaser. So, Chuck, there does seem to be a lot of misconception around Vikings, but one of the things I took from this article by the Grabster, ed Grabanowski, he writes good stuff. He does. Was that there's also a lot of accuracy in the history associated with Vikings. They were extremely brutal. They would indiscriminately kill men, women, children. So let's peel this apart. Let's separate facts from fiction, as it were. Okay. All right. Yes. When were they around? Josh? The Vikings were prominent in Europe in the 9th through the 11th centuries, commonly known as the age of the Viking. Right. And you tend to think of Vikings as Nordic. They were sure they were from Scandinavia, which are the countries we listed off earlier. But these weren't communities of Vikings. Vikings were like a job. Yeah. It was a profession, basically. You were a professional conqueror. Yeah. Because Scandinavians are also farmers and did many other things. Weavers and they weren't just Vikings. It's not interchangeable Viking and Scandinavians. Not interchangeable. Weaving has never really been a lucrative job, you know, not even back then. Yeah. So there was a group that were dedicated to moving out of the North Lamb downward into Europe. Yeah. Because Scandinavia wasn't a very hospitable place. I imagine it still isn't. Lots of ice, lots of winter snow, not that much land. And the land that is available isn't all arable. Yeah. They went and took it like broadwater. There was also evidence that population pressure led to Viking plundering. Yeah. Because they started to grow, and then obviously, as they grew, they needed more things. And this is before they started spreading out, because eventually they would do that, but at first they would just go plunder and then return home to Viking land in Scandinavia. Right. And you said that they were around from the 9th to the 11th century. Right. So there were Scandinavian cultures before the 9th century. There are Scandinavian cultures after the 9th century. So for 200 years, basically, this population explosion forced this group out to go get more resources to conquer more land. And then the end point at the 11th century actually generally represents the adoption of Christianity readily. Yeah. Once you convert it's like, you can't plunder any longer. No, at least not only plundering in the name of god. And Vikings were pagans. Pre Christianity. Right. Which also means that they worship the pantheon of gods. Their religion was actually highly personalized. There was no central church in any of the Scandinavian cultures, and their religion was actually highly personal. Right. It evolved in relative isolation without a central church in any of these Scandinavian cultures. But there was a pantheon of gods that were recognizable across these cultures generally. Sure. Right. Two groups. Should we talk about them real quick? Yeah. The essayer and the Veneer were the two groups of gods. Right. And the Sears were very warlike, odin and Thor. And then the Asia were kind of like hippies, like fertility goddesses and gods. Sure. The gods lived in Asgard, and it was a kingdom connected to mortal Earth by a rainbow bridge, which I didn't know you think, oh, okay, so Scandinavian pre Christian pagan religion is pretty sweet. They've got hits, they have rainbow bridges, they had evil giants and dark elves. Yeah. Here's where it gets dark dwarves. And apparently the gods were destined to fight against these giants and evil forces in a battle known as Ragnarok. Right. And they were also predicted to lose, which would plunge mortal Earth and Asgard into chaos, darkness, disorder, which, I mean, think about that, Chuck. All of our religions today are pretty hopeful. Like, even if there is an end of the world, if you adhere to that religion, you're going to be saved. You won't be around for the torment. Right, right. This religion as loose as it was predicted, like, no, our gods are going to lose and we're all going to be in really big trouble. Right. But if you were a noble, awesome warrior and you died in battle, you would go to Valhalla, which was warrior heaven, and you will be transported there by the Valkyrie, which were little warrior angels at the command of Robert Duvall. Right. And what happened was, in heaven, you would fight alongside Odin and feast and die in battle every day, and you would get up alive the next day and do it all over again. Right. That was their idea of heaven. It was pretty funny. Yeah. So that battle part is really significant because in Scandinavia and many of the Scandinavian cultures, a young man improved himself by going, I Viking. Yes. I love that. I'm going to get a T shirt made that says, I Viking. Right. And see how many people know what that means. That's like the verb of what Vikings did. Leaving your homeland, going down, butchering, raping, pillaging, setting churches on fire. Churches were actually a big target of theirs, because the churches are where most of the gold was stored livestock, spices, jewels, whatever. So they would target churches and kill everybody. Right. Or else they would take them as thralls slaves, which I looked up the etymology of enthralled, and that's where it comes from. So when you're telling somebody you're enthralled by them, you're saying that you're enslaved by how interesting they are. Interesting. Are you enthralled? I am enthralled. The church thing is kind of key, too, because that's like the only written history about the Vikings was written by the hand of the church that was plundered. So that's one reason. Because the Vikings only told oral stories, folklore. Right. Scrawls, which told sagas. Right. That's where all these words come from. But the church was the ones who actually wrote down stuff. So that's why a lot of the written history of the Vikings is so brutal, because they were the people that had someone with AI Viking on them. Right, chuck and they also attribute the word Viking to Europeans who were conquered. Yeah, there are a lot of different theories there on the word. There are. Most of them do either the Norse adopted a word that they were called by the Europeans, like an old English word, vic, W-I-C means port of trade, which is where the Vikings like to attack. Sure. Another theory is that it came from the Norse word vic. Right. But this one's V-I-K meaning bay or body of water. Or there's another word that sounds similar that means to turn away or to leave on a journey, which is, as we said, what going iviking began with. And then there's the last one, which makes a lot of sense. It's an old Norse word called Vikinger, which means pirate. That's my guess. Right. But they think that they picked that up from the Europeans they conquered. Okay, sure. So either way, these people were written about by Europeans. They were named by Europeans. They were just going to get some food and gold. Sheep cathedrals. Yes. Right. How do they do this? So should we talk about that? Yeah, I Viking. Yeah. They were famous for being experienced seamen. They were built awesome boats and built boats that traveled really fast through the water. So when the Christian, let's say a monastery, would see the Viking ships approaching and dragon ships. Yeah, dragon boats. They didn't have much time because they would get there really fast because they were a very experienced fishermen. And I guess since we're on the boats, we should talk about that for a second. Yeah. They had pretty particular boats. I think anybody could pick one out. They had a double sided hole, which I thought was pretty cool because you can go forward or backward without having to turn around. Sure. You just pick up your butt and turn around and start rowing the other way. Right. Or just switch the sail around. Yeah. Well true. They had a keel, they had riveted wood construction and then they had a single mass and this mass could be as much as the sale that was attached to the mast. Could be like 330 sq. Ft of double sided wool. Yeah. All hands sewn, usually painted red to symbolize the blood that was about to be spilled by the people who saw it approaching. Right. And then you see pictures of Viking ships with the little circles along the side. Yeah, that's actually accurate. Most Viking ships had mounts where somebody could put their shield up as extra protection to protect the guys who are rowing, of course. Makes good sense. It took about a 70 foot Viking long ship. Josh would have required about eleven trees to make it about 3ft in diameter each and then one really tall tree to make the keel. So I guess it was all one piece. Yeah. And these things could haul but through the water apparently because they're really narrow. Right. And they used windpower and manpower. Right. Viking manpower was something. So what happened when you saw a dragon boat? Chuck? You saw a dragon boat at docks and all of a sudden this hoard of Vikings just come streaming off at you. You poop your pants, that's the first thing you do. I would have rolled around the ground crying like a baby and offering up my cattle to be spared. But you might not be spared. They generally would not leave much. Anything wooden was burned. They would just burn the town of the ground. Kill people, take women if they wanted or kill them, take children if they wanted or kill them. Take the cattle. Probably wouldn't kill the cattle. No, they wanted the cattle. They were more useful in humans generally. Yeah. And you would also see these guys coming at you with the axe, which as everybody knows is my weapon of choice for a zombie apocalypse. Right. You would go I Viking on zombies. Sure. And Josh, as far as their battle gear, like you said, the sword was huge. It racks was huge. The swords are about as long as the man's arm. Right. They also had bows and lances and javelins. Right. And they wore like you would think they wore big heavy iron helmets with a little nose piece that came down a lot of times they wore iron on their breast plate unless they had some dough and they could afford chain mail. But this kind of indicates how strong these dudes were. Do you know what like an iron Viking helmet would weigh? A lot. A lot. And actually Vikings well, not Vikings, but Scandinavians, I should say Scandinavian and cultures were really adept at doing whatever they wanted to with iron because they've been pulling it from bogs very easily without any need for mining for many centuries. So they were kind of ahead of the curve as far as the Iron Age. Goes, yeah, big time. And check. When these guys died, let's say you were a Viking, had some successful raids, garnered some power, some money. The concept of Viking funeral being put on a ship and set a fire and pushed out to sea, that's actually accurate. Yeah, that's one way they did it. The other way would be that they entombed you in an earth and barrow, which is like a mound. It was called mounding. Right. The thing is, if you were a thrall, let's say you had been captured in battle and taken back to Scandinavia and you were a servant to this guy, especially a particularly useful servant, you would probably be murdered and entombed in the thrall or the barrow. Yeah. The deal there was they believed in a life after death. Whether it was like an eternal life, they don't really know. Or just like a temporary life until you get to your old life. But they definitely believe that you did not just die. So that's why they would send you along with maybe your favorite slave or your possessions, your cat. They would bear you with your clothes on and maybe with your axe, and they would send you along with these things that they think you would need in the following life to go, I Viking. Right. There was another Stratified class, almost, in Viking warrior culture. And there was this little subgroup that the guy who called for this podcast mentioned. Berserkers. Yes. So these guys right. You want to talk about Berserkers? Yeah. If you've seen the movie Clerks, did you see Clerks? Yeah. Remember Silent Bob's cousin Olaf from Russia? He sang a medal. He was in a Russian metal band. He had a song called Berserka. I don't remember that. That was the first time I heard Berserker. And we can't say the lyrics because they're really filthy. Are they? But it was funny. Okay. Well, what he was talking about were this group of warriors that they think that they grew out of a bear cult. Like, these people worship bears. They were nuts. During battle especially, they would go nuts. It was told in the sagas that they would either become a bear shape wolf or something like that. They would shape ship, or else they would take on the qualities of a bear. Like, they would go into battle naked or shirtless or at the very least, armorless. They would cut five people's heads off at once with one swing of an axe. They couldn't feel pain, supposedly. They would scream a lot. Their eyes were kind of glazed over. Right. Part of the problem was they would get into such a war frenzy, a battle frenzy, that if you were near them, even if you were on their side, they'd kill you just as soon as they would kill somebody else. Right. And as the guy said, they do think that this bear cult that went berserk the berserkers were on mushrooms during battle. That may be the case. Can you believe it? Imagine that. So you would take this regular, already super badass warrior Viking, then jack him up on magic mushrooms and give him an axe. Give them an axe and tell him to take his clothes off and wear, like, a bear skin. And that was it. It was all over. I've read a little bit more about them, and what's weird is, the same guys, they also think it's possible that this cult was largely made up of the mentally ill, or else maybe a little slow. Wow. Yeah. The same guys would also go berserk during physical labor sometimes, too. Really? You just didn't want to hang out with the berserkers, basically. You wanted to be in battle with them. But, like, 50 meters to the left. Sure. Or the right. Nowhere near them. Yeah. I would go in way behind there. I would drag up the rear behind the bizarre. I'm right behind you. I also saw another theory, that they weren't, in fact, on magic mushrooms, but they drank heavily and got wasted, basically on mead before battle two. Wouldn't that slow you down, though? I would think so. But it would also kind of make you somewhat impervious to pain and not care as much. I've gone berserka on a Friday night. Yeah. I subscribe to the mushroom theory for two reasons. One, it's awesome. Two, ritual use of mushrooms in certain Scandinavian cults is known for a fact, so it's entirely possible these guys all right, we're trimming. So David D from Waterloo, that's what initially piqued my interest. And that's why we did this podcast. Yeah. Josh says yes. Okay. Chuck, these guys weren't all berserk, right? No. The Vikings and the Scandinavian cultures they came from actually were pretty good at democracy. Yeah. Supposedly, the common farmer would have just as much say in matters Viking as the higher ups. Right. They had assemblies I don't know if they were annual or more frequent, but they had scheduled assemblies where everybody got together, talk about matters of the day, divided land. And they called them things because I think they just couldn't think of the word. Maybe they were a little slow. And there was a guy I love this part. There was a guy who was in charge of running the meetings. He was an impartial judge, and they called him the lawmaker. Right. So he was the lawmaker of the thing. Pretty generic stuff. Sure. Primitive democracy, you could call it. Yes. And they actually extended this downward to lands that they conquered. These guys made it a lot further south than I realized. Did you know all this? No, I didn't. As far as going through Europe, yes. The Vikings conquered a town called Ulster, a Danish Viking day in 839, and crowned himself king and founded what is now the town of Dublin. Did you know that? I did not know that until I read this. They said they actually laid siege to Paris at some point. They controlled part of England, half of England, from the late 19th century to the 11th century, danish Vikings. And they struck a deal with France, with Frederick the simple. Charles. Charles the simple. You don't want your king to be called the simple. No. Especially when the Viking leader was named Rollo. So they were causing a lot of problems with the Franks. And so Charles the simple, poor thing, sat down with Rollo and struck a deal and said, hey, why don't you guys leave us alone and convert to Christianity and I'll give you Normandy? They said okay? Yeah, sure. And Frederick the simple one, that was easy. Charles is simple. Yeah. He's a simple guy. Yeah. And like we said, the Vikings were they readily converted to Christianity, these lands that they conquered and held for centuries, especially in Ireland and England, the Celts and the Anglo Saxons would defeat the Vikings and then more Vikings would come in and defeat whoever. So it changed hands pretty much constantly. Right. But through this interaction, even though it was fighting, vikings eventually became absorbed into these local areas. They brought their customs, but took on new customs. And the whole area of Ireland, England, France is a Milan, actually, of Nordic culture and southern European culture. Yeah, pretty good. I had no idea. I learned a lot with this one. And they actually had trading routes all the way down to North Africa. Really? They did. And Chuck, we've talked about this before, you know that they settled North America. Well, of course. Leif erickson. Eric the Red. Right. Eric the Red. He was exiled for murder. It was another thing that they probably did at the things they tried. People. Eric the Red was accused of murder. He was convicted, so they exiled him. He took a bunch of guys with them and went from Iceland over to Greenland. Right. His son was born there. Lee. Ericsson. Son of Eric. Right, yes. And he said, I'm going to travel even further west. And he ended up in Newfoundland. This is just part of the oral tradition until the 1960s, when an archeologist discovered the traces of leaf Erickson's Viking settlement in Newfoundland. He found a horned helmet. Right. He's like, oh, it's Viking, of course. So, yeah, they were all over the place. Yes. And if they sound like all they did was rape and pillage and plunder, they did a lot of that, but not so much any more than anyone else at the time. That was just kind of the action of the time. But they were just so much better at it than anyone else. They got this rep, but they also josh had entertainment. Did you know that? I did not. Check late on me. They did. They socialized. And when they socialized, it was generally competitions, because they were clearly big on competing themselves. Yeah. So they would compete in friendly games like running and wrestling and horseback riding. They had acrobats and entertainers, poem tellers and tall tale tellers. And they actually ice skated what they did, they made ice skates out of animal bones and played a game on the ice skates, similar to hurling, which I looked at. Hurling or curling? Hurling. Hurling is sort of like the best I can say is it looks sort of like a cross between rugby and field hockey. On ice. I think it was on ice because you had a stick and you hitting a ball toward a net. So maybe it was the first ice hockey or high lie. No, nothing to do with hotline. Okay. Yeah. So they were into all sorts of games. They actually had a game called King Bat, which was like ping pong, except they use shields, so they would use a shield to hit, like, a ball back and forth over I don't know if it was a net or just back and forth on some surface, but they potentially invented ice hockey and Ping pong. Well, how about that? That is something. Speaking of Viking culture, Chuck, Vikings made it into our culture, popular culture, big time. Quite a bit. Obviously, you got Thor, Marvel Superhero, one of my favorites of all time. Soon to be a movie next year. Yeah. Plus, he already made at least one appearance in Adventures in Babysitting. I didn't see that movie. Hey, he played the mechanic. Oh, really? Very interesting. Yes. Kenneth Bran. I was making that movie. Anthony Hopkins plays Odin, and some Australian guy plays Thor. Okay. He didn't look very thorough when I looked at the pictures. I'm sure they're going to deck them out and give them long blonde hair. Actually, I meant to mention that apparently some of them used to bleach their hair blonde because I guess it was more intimidating. So that is not a myth. So where else? Popular culture? Led Zeppelin. We can't not talk about Led Zeppelin. You go ahead. Well, anyone's ever seen Song Remains the Same? Obviously, or listen to some Zeppelin songs, knows that they were big on aside from Lord of the Rings, Valhalla Valkyrie, that kind of thing. Hammer of the Gods. Hammer of the Gods is the name of their biography. Did you ever read that? No. Crazy. And the Immigrant Song is the most clear example. After the famous whale. At the beginning, you'll hear lyrics like, we come from the land of the ice and snow from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow hammer of the gods will drive our ships to land to fight the horde singing cryhala I am coming I always thought that song is about Appalachians. No, it's Vikings. Yes. Robert Plant was big into that. And Spike TV. Have you heard of the show Deadliest Warriors? I have, actually. It's pretty cool. They pit like warriors against each other. Right. And the Vikings actually, in their scenario, lost to the samurai. I could see that barely, though. Are these Shaolin monks, samurai shawan monks in there? But I know they said the samurai wanted a squeaker because they were a little bit more disciplined in the crazy eye biking action. I wonder if they took mushrooms for that show. I don't know. Actually, I got a couple of more myths if you want to hear them. I do. Vikings were not dirty. They have the reputation of being dirty, filthy people. They actually bathed once a week, which was a lot for back then. Yeah, it definitely is. And they washed their face every day, apparently. Wow. So you were just saying before the podcast, you're the cleanest person that we know, right? You are the Vikings. I'm cleaner than a Viking. Yeah, sure. Well, sure. And they did not drink from the skulls of the Concord. That was a mistranslation, apparently, into Latin. And they apparently would drink meat from a horn occasionally as, like, a ritual, but ordinarily they would just drink from a mug. That's it for the Vikings. Chuck. For real. Nice. Additional research. Appreciate that. And if you want to learn a little more, see some cool picks, including some actual swords, which I thought was pretty cool. What about you, Chuck? Loved it. You could type Vikings into the handystarchbar@housetofirst.com. Which leads us to listener mail. Not quite yet. Josh, you always do that. I'm teasing. Actually, I'm not teasing. We just want to plug. We did a little interview with a dude named Wayne in Omaha, Nebraska. Yes. Worlds of Wayne worlds of Wayne podcast, which he interviews artists and musicians and cool people. So I don't know why he called us, but he did, and it's actually already up. So if you want to hear a pretty fun interview with us, you can go to worldswayne. libsyn.com or Josh said you can just Google Worlds of Wayne, and that's the first thing that comes up. It is. I've done it. So apparently there's no store called Worlds of Wayne. No. Which is good. And it's episode 113, and you'll see our big logo there and click on it. It's kind of a cool, fun little interview. Teddy, now listener mail, right? Yes. Okay, so, Josh, I'm going to call this another list of first from Patrick, our superfan Patrick composes list of first in our show, which I think are kind of cool. Yeah, because I wouldn't that guy. So the first podcast, of course, was how grassleen works. Was that you and Paulette? Yeah. Is that accurate? I don't remember. Okay. That was, like, 200 episodes ago. I know. Well, we're close to that, actually. The first podcast with Candice Gibson was now Candice Keener was how Altruism works. First podcast with me. Remember that one? Does gum stay in your stomach? I thought it was orange juice. Toothpaste. How was it? It was one of those two. Patrick, we might have to take issue with your stats, buddy first mentioned the fight. Or flight response was how hysterical strength works. That's a great one. First podcast with three people. How contagious yawning works. First time Josh mentions being born in Ohio. How the eye of the tornado works. No. That's what he says. Wow. First bleeped out. Swear word. First of many. How swearing works, obviously. Awesome. First mention of Josh and Chuck's. Pets are dogs. A shark's favorite meal. First podcast over ten minutes. How can a cat scuba dive? Remember Scuba cat? Sure. First over 20 is quitting smoking. Contagious. First over 30, how Lobotomies work. And recently, the first over 40, how Witchcraft Works. And then just a couple of more. The first listener mail was issued in How Einstein's Brain Works. And the first podcast that Patrick listened to is the World Going to End in 2012? Awesome. I love the first. There's some great stats. This is the first one in the new room. Yeah. Make a note, Patrick. And then we'll have the first in the awesome studio. I don't like this room at all. Yeah, like my neck feels weird. I'm on the opposite side. Everything's wrong. I know. I'm very out of sorts. Well, if you have a story about going berserk, we would love to hear it. You can wrap it up in an email and send it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Want more housestuffworks? Check out our blogs on the Housetofworks.com Homepage, brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, my Favorite Murder from exactly right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgueref and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. 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." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2018-01-16-sysk-public-monument-removal-final.mp3 | How Removing Public Monuments Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-removing-public-monuments-work | Public monuments can be removed for a variety of reasons, from public sentiment changing, to governments being overthrown, to just being downright ugly. Learn all about this hot button topic today. | Public monuments can be removed for a variety of reasons, from public sentiment changing, to governments being overthrown, to just being downright ugly. Learn all about this hot button topic today. | Tue, 16 Jan 2018 17:21:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=16, tm_hour=17, tm_min=21, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=16, tm_isdst=0) | 45185653 | audio/mpeg | "This July. Don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the Musical, the Series, season three zombies, three Doctor Strange in the multiverse of Madness and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful. From the award winning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and the Disney Nature Films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus. What if you were a trendy apparel company facing an avalanche of demand to ensure more customers can buy more sherpa lined jackets? You call IBM to automate your it infrastructure with AI. Now, your systems monitor themselves. What used to take hours takes minutes, and you have an ecommerce platform designed to handle sudden spikes in overall demand, as in actual overalls. Let's create It systems that rule up their own sleeves. IBM, let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comitoimation. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's Jerry over there. So this is stuff you should know. Controversy Edition. Yeah, there will be some of that in here, for sure. But I also think it's important when we're talking about removing public monuments that it's not all about Confederate monuments. No, actually, I'm glad you said that, because that actually brings up a pretty good intro. There's some monuments in New York City. New York City. New York City. Yeah. That was such a great commercial, wasn't it? It's endured. There's four of them, actually, that are being targeted for removal by activists. Gary Baldi. No. Although Columbus is one of them. I believe that the Columbus statue in Columbus Circle one of Teddy Roosevelt. I think it's at the Museum of Natural History. Oh, interesting. And I was like, what's wrong with this one? What's wrong with Teddy Roosevelt? And then if you go and look at the statue in this context, you're like, yeah, okay. I can kind of see that one. He's like, Valiantly astride this horse and this African tribesmen and this Native American chief are down on the ground on either side of them. Like, he's just in charge of the show. Right? Sure. So I can kind of see that one. There's another one of a guy named J. M. Sims, I believe is his name. He's known as the father of Gynecology. I don't know why I laughed at that. I guess just go ahead. That's why he had a statue. It's just him with a giant vulva right behind him. It's just him, like a normal statue honoring a man. And the problem is that although he's the father of Gynecology, he was also known in the first half of the 19th century to carry out experimental surgery on slave women with, like, zero anesthesia obviously without consent, and he's been compared to Joseph Mengele. Basically, it's just this mad scientist with zero regard for human life. Wow. And you might say, well, this is the first half of the 19th century, but some people argue that even at the time, what he was doing would have been considered by his contemporaries as unethical. Well, and as you will see as we go through this, so much of the conversation around this controversy is do we look at it through the lens of when it was put up, why it was put up, who it was put up by, or do we look at it through the lens of, hey, it's 2018. Do we still need to honor someone now who we know did monstrous things? Yeah, those are all really great questions. Or should we leave it up as a cautionary tale? Is another argument. Yeah, we're going to wait until all these waters so the reason that we're even talking about this and the reason why, have you been around towns like Baltimore, New Orleans, helena, Montana in the summer of 2017? You would have seen Confederate statues being removed sometimes in the dead of night. Sure. The whole reason all of this started was actually back in 2015 when Columbia, South Carolina it wasn't Charleston. Right. It was Charleston. Yeah. The church shooter. Yes, the church shooter. The Charleston church massacre where nine people died by an avowed white supremacist. Right. Really started up this idea that and I think it woke a lot of the establishment up to the idea that there's all this iconography all around the country that a pretty large section of people have a real issue with and that everybody has just totally ignored their problems with it for decades. Right. That really kind of woke a lot of people up, and it got a lot of city councils around the country reevaluating why they had these things up. Still. Was it worth just taking down? And a lot of them did take some stuff down. Right? Yeah. And then in the summer of 2017, I think it was it May or August. Was it August? The Charlottesville rally was held. I can't remember the month, but yeah, but it was 2017. The hotter months of 2017, there was a white supremacist rally in favor of the Robert E. Lee statue that was marked to be it was controversial, the statue of Robert E. Lee from Charlottesville. And people have been talking about taking it down. So white supremacists met to support the statue counter protest, the white supremacists, and violence broke out. One woman died, and it was just a bad scene that created even more like a second wave of people looking at these statues and said, okay, not only are these possibly creating an unfriendly public environment for people, like whole swathes of people that are Americans here in the United States, but they can also serve as flash points for violence. We should really rethink these. And by the time the second wave happened. State legislatures around the country. Especially in the south. Had intervened between the first wave and the second wave and started passing legislation that said you can't remove public monuments. Especially ones that are dedicated to war heroes. Wars that have been around for. Like. 40 years or more. Basically putting an end to the easy removal of Confederate monuments around the country. And so all this has done is created this huge conflict. Well, it was already a conflict one way or the other, but the conflict now both sides are just budding up against each other. And when you push two masses together, they tend to go upward. That's basically what's happening right now. Lava is going upwards here in the United States as tensions are rising, and it has never been more tense in my lifetime and probably your lifetime as well, Chuck, which are virtually the same thing. But that's where we stand right now in January of 2018. Right. Can we cover some history here, though? Yeah, let's. All right. So this is nothing new, though, as far as just taking down public monuments. The world, since the beginning of time has erected monuments and then eventually had someone that wants to take down that monument right here in America. One of the first things we did when the Revolutionary War kicked off was said, hey, let's go down to the King George the third statue in Manhattan, and let's pull that thing down. On July 9, 1776, we just heard the Declaration of Independence for the first time. It really got them going. Yeah. And let's take down that statue. And you know what? Let's not only do that, let's melt down that thing into 40 plus thousand bullets to fire upon them with. Yeah, that's pretty sweet. Pretty ironic. So here's some King George for you. Red coat. I think that's what they said. And this goes well beyond that, of course. Spanish raised Aztec and other temples in the Americas, so Catholic cathedrals could be built like, basically someone would take over, tear down those statues, put up their own, then someone else would come along, tear down those statues. A lot of times it was a good thing. So you would have, like in Hungary in 1956, you had the Hungarian uprising against the Soviets, and they stormed Budapest and tore down a statue of Stalin. Stalin had quite a few and linen quite a few statues of themselves over the years. Yeah. Wherever Communism spread, if there was, like, a Communist backed regime or country or even just a non backed, Communist polarized country, you could probably find a statue of at least Lenin, if not Stalin, too, in the country. Even places like Ethiopia had them. Right. And so when there's an invading army or a revolution or a regime change, this is usually when you see a statue torn down. Yeah. It's a symbolic gesture. Sure. It is, but it's also like a part of the healing process, it seems like, too. Or at least the transition process, let's call it that. Right. Yeah. Then there's another type of situation where statues tend to get torn down, and that's when there's like a cultural shift. And that's kind of what we're seeing now with the Confederate monument controversies. Right. And what you've also seen in the 2000s in Latin America, where in places like Venezuela, statues of Columbus started to come down and replaced with things like indigenous chiefs who once tried to fight off people like Columbus. Yeah. Kauai Kaipuro. Yeah. That's a full shift from not only are we going to not walk by this Columbus statue every day now that we know, we know, but we're going to put up a statue of people that tried to defend against him. Right. It's almost like they are, hundreds of years later, throwing off the shackles of imperialism, I guess. The stank of imperialism. Right. Should we take a break? I'm pretty worked up. Yes. I feel like we need to go rub each other's shoulders for a minute. Okay. All right. Prepare for it. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for in demand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice, and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get hands on experience, network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K twelvecom slash podcast. That's K Twelvecom slash podcast. And start taking charge of your future today. 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. Yes, whether you're road tripping or you're relaxing by the pool, you can tune into the podcast here. It's on Amazon Music. That's so good? It's criminal. Morbid. That's right. It's part true crime and part comedy. Morbid takes you on a journey through murderous mysteries and major laughs all in the same week. Yeah, from the paranormal to the pretty spooky and everything in between, host Selena Erkhart and Ash Kelly cover it all. And with two episodes released each week, you'll be hooked on this chart topping series before you know it. You can listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen. Today the place we find ourselves right now. Well, how about this? Chuck. Why are there any public monuments anywhere anyway? Right. I think that's kind of the core of this. We have to get to what is really being talked about here because if it's just some statue or something like that, especially in some places, like far flung as hell in Montana, what is the statue of the Confederacy have anything to do with? What does any statue have anything to do with? Yes. Well, first of all, there are more than according to Southern Poverty Law Center, more than 1500 statues, flags, plaques, city names, county names, street names and holidays named and even military bases named after Confederate generals or dedicated somehow to the American Confederacy. And that includes everything from, like you said, street names and flags and all that. Not just statues. There's 700 statues and monuments just on public property. So 700 of those are statues and monuments and 32 of those have either been dedicated or rededicated since 2000. Right. So these range anywhere from Confederate Avenue over on the east side of Atlanta, which is just a street name. You drive through Atlanta and you see if you pay attention, you see Civil War battle plaques all over the place. I put these in a slightly different category because they are literally just historical markers. Like they're very neutral in this Sonic parking lot. There once was a battle waged between this brigade and this brigade on this date and this is what happened here. Not even that. Sometimes it'll be like the Confederate Army thought about making camp here but decided not to because they did. A quarter mile east of the spot. Yeah, because it's a little hilly, don't you think? Can you blame them? Yeah. And I put those in a different category because those are historical markers of where something happened. It's not saying maybe some of them do, but it's not saying this is where the proud sons of the 18th Brigade fought off the evil Yanks in their bid to ensure slavery. Yeah, that tends to be you'll find those more on, like, monuments or statues. Right. Especially ones that were bankrolled by private individuals or private groups who were just one and the same with the people who were running that little town at the time. Yeah. All right. So that's sort of the crux for me with this whole thing is when and why were these things erected to begin with and by whom? And in many, many cases, some private rich person paid for this thing to be put up as a definitive screw you to what was going on in the country at the time. And it's very rarely has. It just been like, hey, you know what? We should just put up a statue because we think Robert E. Lee is a great general. Time and time again you see stories. For instance, Charlottesville, that statue of Robert E. Lee, it was commissioned and paid for by a wealthy individual named Paul goodlo McIntyre in 17, when he also bought the surrounding park and said, this is for whites only, and let's put a statue of General Lee. Like, the context of how that happened is key to me. Right. And actually, Chuck, that still goes on today. A lot of the monuments that are erected to the Confederacy are erected through private funding on private land, which makes them wholly out of reach of any debate over whether they should be removed or not, because that is covered by two very important American rights, which is the right to free speech, whether people like it or not, and private property rights. You put those two things together, something is basically untouchable. Yeah. Listen, we say all of this. I'm not really weighing in. I think people probably know. I feel let's be honest, I'm not weighing in here one way or the other. But we say all that just to say that just because there is a statue that looks great and it was really expensive in a town square, it doesn't mean that it represented ever, maybe, or certainly now, the wants of the community at large. Sometimes it may have just been a single individual that had enough sway and money to say, I want this statue. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And I think who wrote this? Was it Dave Ruse? Yeah. He put it best. He said, what it represents is a very narrow historical record. Right. Especially at the time, it might have really not represented a lot of people. In some cases, more people may feel represented by it now than they did at the time. Apparently, especially for some of these older ones, it was not a normal thing to erect some sort of memorial to the Confederacy immediately after the Civil War for a couple of reasons. One is that there are plenty of Union veterans still around the country, and they would not have been very happy to have seen something like that. And then, secondly, the south was very poor for decades after the war. It was not a wealthy place. There was not a lot of money running around four towns to put together enough money to erect a decent statue that would last for 100 years. But like you said, though, by the time that they did start to be erected, it coincided with something very important, which was the Jim Crow era. Yeah. Either Jim Crow a lot of them, or the Civil Rights Movement. Yeah. It's not an accident. The Southern Poverty Law Center is an organization that tracks hate groups. And if you're a hate group, you probably don't put much stock into studies created by the Southern Poverty Law Center. But the SPLC did a study of Confederate markers, monuments, statues, street names, all that stuff around the country, and they found that the vast majority of these things were erected in the Jim Crow era from just after the First World War. That's when most of the statues to the Confederacy and monuments were erected. And this is a time when the south had gone through reconstruction. The north had abandoned the Reconstruction project, from what I understand. I didn't realize this before, but basically there was this what was called a period of healing between the north and the south, that the divisiveness between the two areas grew so deep that war broke out. And then afterward, the hurt feelings started to subside enough that there was this desire to come back together, to heal. And the north and the south decided that they would heal at the expense of the African Americans, and they would find common ground by saying, yeah, I think we can all agree that whites are the supreme race. And the African Americans who had just recently been freed in the south and we're carrying out Reconstruction, said, Wait, what? And this is the Jim Crow era that kicked off the Jim Crow era. And this is the time when these monuments started to be erected. Like you said, it doesn't seem to have been much of an accident, the timing. And if you talk to some historians, they say, no accident whatsoever. This was white saying, you might not be under by law, under white control any longer, but it's pretty plain and simple. We've just directed a monument to remind you about white supremacy, and that that's the law of the land. Where's your statue in your mind? I don't see it anywhere, so I guess we win. Yeah. I mean, the Georgia state flag controversy is the prime example. I remember when that was happening in the early two thousand s. For those who don't know, the Georgia state flag from 1956 to 2001 was changed and had the good old Confederate stars and bars on the right half of it. And I remember at the time a lot of people saying, this is our history, you can't change our flag. You can't change our flag erasing history. And I think many of them may not even have realized that that was not the original flag. They went back to the original flag after 2001, but they threw those stars and bars on there in 1956. And what was going on in Atlanta in 1956? Right. The civil rights error or desegregation, I should say. Yes, and it was just very plainly a middle finger to desegregation. And once again, a reminder, we're going to fly this flag now that has the Confederate battle flag on it. And 50 something years later, in the 2000s, maybe a lot of people will forget that this was not the original flag. And that's exactly what happened, man. It happened in Aces too. Yeah. So the SPLC study found what you're saying, that there are basically two big and there are always Confederate monuments and statues being erected, or streets being named at or flags going up. But there were two periods, the Jim Crow era and the Civil Rights era where they really increased, and the fact that those statues and monuments really increased and coincided with these times of struggle for white supremacy, it really provides a pretty compelling case that those competitive monuments and those rebel flags on those state houses are meant to express white supremacy. Yeah. It's tough to look at it any other way when you look at this timeline like that. Yeah. And that's what's that issue. What is the meaning of the Confederate flag on a state house? What is the meaning of a Confederate monument or statue in a town square? What is it ultimately trying to say? And that's really at the heart of this controversy is what are you trying to say with that thing? What are we now as a society in the small little town in Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, wherever? What are we saying by fighting over keeping this statue or this flag flying? What's the argument here? Oh, yeah. People in favor of keeping them will say that it's dangerous to a race history. We can learn from these things. They can serve as reminders of how not to be, maybe, but at the very least, you can't erase history. So don't even try to erase history. So that's basically one of the main arguments against taking these down. Right. You can't whitewash history. You can't erase history. Right. So that's one another one is and this is a big one that's really kind of kept a lot of these things up so far, is that the Confederate monuments, the Confederate statues, the Confederate flags are not meant as symbols of hatred or slavery or oppression. You'll see, people say that it's heritage, not hate. Right, right. And what they mean with that is this thing called the Lost Cause narrative. Right, right. So the Lost Cause narrative is this idea that well, actually, I found that there's like six parts to it. All right, are you ready for these? Yes, because I'm going to lay them out. So the Lost cause is basically this narrative that says that the south, the Confederacy, the Civil War, none of it had to do with slavery. Or if it did, it had very little to do with slavery. That really the Civil War was the war of Northern aggression. There was the north that started it. The south just wanted to secede from the north, just wanted to get away from this federal government that cared not about states rights, that cared not about the south and its economy or its Annabelle mansions or anything like that. That really was a war of Northern aggression, and that the Confederacy was just protecting their homeland, protecting their way of life, and that it was secession, not slavery, that was at issue here. And a lot of people say, what was the South Seaeding from if not the state right to have slaves? Right. Exactly. Right. There's some other tenants to it, too. This is very important this is an important part of the Lost Cause narrative, is that actually slaves were happy to be enslaved. They were happy with their servitude. They didn't have to think about what to do with life. They didn't have to worry about wondering what they were going to do. And they were maybe too shiftless to really be responsible to manage their own life anyway. So they were actually happier under the Annabellum plantation system of slavery than they were free. That's a huge tenant of the Lost Cause. And then the other part of it, and the whole reason that it has the name the Lost Cause is that the only reason the only reason that the Confederacy lost the Civil War was because the north was just so vastly richer with resources, manpower, industry, that the south from the beginning was destined to lose the war. It just couldn't compete in that respect. Hence the name lost cause. The South Cause was lost from the outset. So if you are a defender of Confederate monuments, this is probably the reason you're giving for defending them. These things are not up to intimidate anybody. That the people who are intimidated by them, the people who are taking them as white supremacy, are simply taking them the wrong way and then chuck. There's one other thing that is a question that has to be answered around this whole thing. And that is that if it's true that the original Confederate monuments that were put up around the 1890s or up to the 1920s or something. Right. If those things actually were put up out of respect for the people who fought for their homeland and for family members who have just recently died and was actually out of this respect for heritage rather than as a symbol of hate and oppression. Isn't it possible. Though. That still those same monuments could develop racist symbolism over time for some people? And if that's the case, then if you are somebody who believes in them as a point of heritage and pride, how do you reconcile that for other people? They're saying, hey, yeah, white supremacy, buddy. I'm with you on that. How do you separate those two? And if that is the case, if you do agree that there are people out there who you have nothing to do with, who view these things as a symbol of white supremacy, then isn't your beef with them rather than the people who are offended by that and want to take those things down? That's a good point. I don't have the answers, of course. Well, no, I don't either, but this is just such a hornet's nest. It's just a ball of worms driving around. Yeah, it's complicated. With 700 plus literal statues, each with their own backstory, it's kind of hard to make some huge generalization, probably. For sure. All right, well, let's take another break. Let's take our final break, and we'll talk a little bit about just the ins and outs, like the sort of the mechanics of really removing these and how that works, and the counter argument to lost cause legally, which would hinge on the equal protection argument. 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 lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for indemand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice, and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get hands on experience, network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K twelve. Compodcast that's K twelve.com podcast and start taking charge of your future today. Hey, Chuck, it's summer, which means school is out, sun is shining, the daylight lasts longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story, isn't there? There sure is. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, you can tune in to the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right Media. That's right. Part true crime and part comedy, My Favorite Murder takes you on a journey through small town mysteries and major laughs, all in the same week. That's Right hosts Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hard stark banter with each other, sharing their favorite true crime tales, and explore unique hometown stories from friends and fans alike. And they're both great, and it's a fun show, and you should listen. So listen to new episodes of my favorite murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. All right, so here's how these things are generally not only taken down, but how they're put up. To begin with, we already mentioned the private, wealthy citizen who just wants to do something like this. It's obviously one way it can go down. The other way is a lot of cities now, starting in the 1990s, have commissions for approving these monuments. They use Savannah, Georgia very historic city in our own state. As an example. They have a historic site and monument commission. They meet every month. They look at applications. Most cities will have an application process that you fill out that has to prove certain criteria if you want a public monument. And they look over these all over the country all the time and either approve them or not. I always thought it was funny that one of the big parts is usually like, what's this going to cost us? Right? Exactly. Like, upkeep. Like, what are we looking at here? And like I said, these are pretty new. Starting. Mostly in the 1990s and later, but it's generally to ensure that newer monuments has public support, whereas many of these older monuments may not have had wide public support, but it was influential, wealthy few that decided what went up. Right, right. Yeah. Like we said, the massacre at the church in Charleston really set off the first wave, and then the Charlottesville protests set off the second wave of statue removal. But in between, a lot of state legislatures intervened and said, no, you towns and cities. You're in our state, and we're the law of the land. So we're saying, you can't remove these monuments without our approval, and we're not going to give our approval to these things. Right. But when the state's, previous to them reacting to that and making these laws, it could be the city that decided or the county or whatever the local government was, or if it's on state owned land, obviously it would be the state legislature. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot of ways that if the state hasn't intervened and created a state law that says you can't remove that yeah. If you're a city council or a board of commissioners in a county or something like that, you have full authority to remove these things. And you can remove them for all sorts of different reasons. There's. This article sites the statue in New York. The Scary Lucille Ball statue. You remember that? I do. Man, I went back and looked, and I feel so bad for that sculptor. The first guy and the second lady nailed it. I mean, she did such a good job. I didn't see the second one, man. Oh, yeah, I did see the second one. It's just when you see them side by side, one looks like Lucille Ball, and one looks like Lucille Ball got Zombie Lucille Ball. Yeah. You were drawn by Ralph Steadman or something weird like that. Yeah. Nothing like her. No, it really doesn't. So the city council seller on New York, Lucille Ball's hometown, said, we don't like the statue. It's terrible. We're going to take it down, scaring the kids. So they took it down because it was an ugly statue. But a city council could say, we're going to take it down because we've heard from enough of our citizens that they're intimidated by it, or they think that it's creating an unsafe place. Like it could be a flashpoint for violence, or it's in the way of the new Whole Foods that our town is getting, so let's get rid of this monument so they can do this stuff. Unless the state has said, you guys can't move those things, this is where the state and you guys can't move these monuments. Right. Even on city land. Right. So there's been, I think, in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee at the very least, and I think several other states have passed these laws that say you can't remove these things, or some cities have had to get creative where their will has continued. Their desire to take these statues down has continued even after the state said they can't. So the city of memphis, which had a couple of statues that wanted to take down one of Robert e. Lee and one of elvis, one of nathan no, they're not touching that. One of Nathan bedford forrest, who was one of the early leaders of the clan, they wanted these statues taken down, but they couldn't take them down because they resolved to take them down after Tennessee passed its protection law. Well, the city of memphis sold the land that those two statues were on to a nonprofit, and the nonprofit just immediately took them down. That's a workaround. So as I mentioned before the break, we talked about the lost cause narrative. And the flip side to that legally is the equal protection argument. So we're talking about the 14th amendment ratified in 1868 to grant citizenship and equal rights to former slaves. And this, to be clear, has not been used successfully yet in court as an argument to have a statue removed. But it is what groups like the ACLU or does, the southern poverty law center, do they actually argue cases like this? Probably. I'm sure this is what they would try to use most likely as a legal argument or a tactic at least to say that this isn't right. Because basically what it means is what you were saying earlier is it would be under the guise that this was erected as an expression of white supremacy. And that's why it was erected. That's why it's there. State supported racism that's still there to make people feel unequal. And the 14th amendment says we can't do that. Yeah, that's the approach. That there will be some test case at some point in the next year or two that will make it to the supreme court. So the supreme court will probably rule on that, and then that will either open the floodgates or shut down that legal argument one way or another. Right. What's interesting to me, though, is that historians are probably going to come into these lawsuits, right? Like, if you ask just about any professional historian what started the civil war, the consensus is and has been for a long time, that it was slavery. That all the other stuff the ability to secede, states rights, hatred of lincoln, all of these other things are follow slavery. The south's desire to continue as slave based economy. Right, right. If you ask the general public what caused the civil war, apparently something like 48% will tell you that it was secession, and only like 23% will say slavery. So here's the problem with that. This is part of a kind of a larger trend that we've been seeing the last five years or so, maybe less, where there's just been a loss of faith in expertise, right? Yes. Where the people who we used to turn to for answers. We have just kind of tossed the wayside and said, just shut up. We don't want to hear what you have to say any longer. We'll decide what's true on our own. And when that happens with enough people, then history has a chance of being rewritten just by sentiment. It can have nothing to do with reality, but everybody can decide that they're going to collectively remember things a certain way. And brother, that's history that becomes history, whether it's fact based history or revisionist history or not. And that's a problem. Like, we have to remember history whether it is enjoyable, whether it's something that stands as a cautionary tale, whether it's something that is painful, whether it's something that's inspiring. We have to remember our history. We just have to, or else we're going to lose a lot of valuable lessons. The question that still remains is whether we have to remember that history through monuments and statues or if we can in other ways. So it's weird. There's a defensive history, but there's also a loss of faith in historians and their reading of history. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. It's a bizarre cruise. It's a weird place to be right now here in the States. It is. And that's why I never buy your racing history argument, because it's not like the Civil War plaque that just says, this thing happened here to me, see that as a historical marker that just says, this action took place. It's not a monument glorifying the thing. Yeah, there's a difference. There's a monument in Rossville, Georgia, which is close to Andersonville, South Carolina, and it's a monument to a guy named Henry Worse who was one of the few executed war criminals from the Confederacy. He ran Andersonville Prison and basically ran like a concentration camp, and he was executed by the north. Publicly, he was hanged, and very quickly, within a couple of decades, I think the Daughters of the Confederacy erected this monument to him and basically explained that he had been unfairly tried, that evidence against him had been faked, and that he was actually a war hero, not a war criminal. Interesting. Yeah. So that's kind of like not the neutral plaque that you're talking about. It's the antithesis of that. Well, I certainly don't have the answers. It's a complicated thing, and there's so many of these, and there's the whole can of worms argument that where does it stop? Do we blast off the face of Stone Mountain or Mountain more? A lot of people think we should. Yeah. At least a Stone Mountain one for sure. Yeah. Or where does it stop with the Founding Fathers? Because at the time, some of them I'm slaves and this and that. I don't purport to have the answers. My advice would be to encourage people to just for a moment to think about to walk in someone else's shoes and think about how some of these monuments might make you feel in 20,018 20,000 that's way in the future, in 2018, just maybe step outside yourself for a minute and walk in someone else's shoes. That's just Uncle Chuck's advice. I think it's good advice no matter what. And I think what this is, is a symptom of the need to a society that needs to heal and is not healing in productive ways right now. I don't have the answers either, though I certainly don't purport to. So I agree with you on that. I look forward to hearing all sides and email. Yeah, no death threats, please. No death threats. Oh quickly we should talk about very famously in the Iraq war when Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled on television and there was always a lot of speculation like this really reeks of something America cooked up as a bit of a RA RA thing. Sure. And apparently ProPublica looked into it along with in the New Yorker magazine is where the piece was said it was a crowd of Iraqis and it happened to be a statue in front of the Palestine Hotel, which is where a lot of the journalists were. So that's why I got the coverage. And there were Americans and they were saying, hey, can we have that sledgehammer? Can we have help? Can we use that crane on that Humvee? Now that we think about it, will you guys just go ahead and do it for us? Well, apparently there was an official request submitted by the army sergeant saying hey, they want to use our crane, can we do this? And they got the go ahead to do it. So that is the party line story. At least take it or leave it. Yeah, but very indelible image when that statue is taken down. Oh yeah, it definitely was. It felt pretty hard. And Saddam was still alive at the time too, which made it even more shocking. He's hiding in a hole. Kind of an interesting time, like I said, to be in America. Weird time. Well, I've seen other people call for saying like maybe don't take it down, maybe erect another statue next to Robert Lee of Rosa Parks or something and maybe add to the Stone Mountain monument and make it a history of Atlanta and add Martin Luther King to it and make it more of a diorama and more inclusive. So I've seen arguments all over the place with all kinds of suggestions because with 1500 Confederate markers of some kind that's a lot of stuff. A lot of statues to balance things out that we'd have to erect, that kind of thing. Well, or a lot of statues to tear down. I mean, obviously it's going to come down to and should come down to whatever they want to do locally. But we have one right here in Decatur, Georgia still, you know which one, I can't remember the name of it, but it's right there in the town square and there's been a lot of talk, obviously, in the last couple of years about getting rid of that. And then also, like, some people digging so much to leave that statue there, they take it down and then a week later, like, is your life really changed materially? Is it that big of a deal that's not there anymore? I don't know. I think this is all just innuendo, nuance and illusion and allegory and nobody's really talking about or most people aren't talking about what's really being discussed here. Right. It's weird time and such a strange time. So sad. Time for America. But it's also a very hopeful time, too, if you really think about it in the right way. It is. And you know what? I know this is going to be a lightning round in some ways, but I am happy we're a part of this conversation in some way. Nice again, stone no death threats, please, everyone. No one likes to get those. Put yourself in our shoes, you wouldn't like getting them. If you want to know more about Confederate monuments, monuments in general, and possibly removing them, go type those words into the search bar. How stuff works.com. It'll bring up this article. It's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this well, this one's pretty current, so I'm going to call this current clearing up of Accordion Definition. Oh, boy. That's a good choice, chuck okay, so this is a day or two late, guys, but I just had a chance to listen to the Great Mary Celeste episode and I figured I'd be remiss if I didn't heed the call of the alluring Weird Al Yankovic shout out, because everyone loves Weird Al. Now comes the part where I say that I don't actually know anything about accordions, but I think Josh pretty much nailed it the second time through. According to my sources, in general, melodian is an accordion with buttons and an accordion, technically known as a piano. Accordion is an accordion with piano keys, not unlike the style played by both Alfred and Frankie Yankovic. No relation, believe it or not. No way. Yeah. Basically all melodians are accordions, but not all accordions are melodians. So that, in a nutshell, is how melodians work. Not to be confused with the concertina pictured here. And that is the literal handheld thing that you, like, might think of an old Italian man playing in the just. There are no there may be. It's a squeeze box like the who talked about. See, mama's got a squeeze box. Yeah. And that is from anonymous. Is it really? You're not going to say who it's from? Wow. I don't think that anonymous. I have no idea who it's from. It's just some weird, weird Al fan. That's funny. My exclamation of surprise was that Alfred and Frankie Yankovici have no relation to Weird Al Yankovic. That's beyond bizarre. Yeah. And I don't even know who Alfred and Frankie Yankovic's are. I don't either. But surely every Yankavik is related to Weird Al Yankovic's, right. Yeah, but I also have a feeling that, like, 38% of Yankovic play the accordion. Right? Well, Weirdo, please. As is custom, we end every episode like this. Please get in touch with us and let us know how you're doing. Okay? Okay. If you're Weird Al Yankovic and you want to get in touch of this, you can tweet to us. I'm at Josh Clark. And you can also hit up the official siskpodcast one. You can join Chuck on facebookcom. Charleswchuck Bryant or STUFFYou know. Either one. You can also send us an email and jerry two to Stuffpokast@housestopworks.com and Weirdo. Join us, as always, at our home on the web stuffyoushinnow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Ah, summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen. Today you want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. Halo Elevate. Isn't natural science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leaving brands? Find Halo Elevate at petco, pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores." | |
420ea3ee-53a3-11e8-bdec-f3efa78b788a | Sand Dunes: They Are What You Think They Are | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sand-dunes-they-are-what-you-think-they-are | Sand dunes are exactly what you think they are. But still pretty interesting. Learn all about them right now! | Sand dunes are exactly what you think they are. But still pretty interesting. Learn all about them right now! | Thu, 18 Jul 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=18, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=199, tm_isdst=0) | 40042257 | 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. Attention Chicago and Toronto, we're coming to see you guys soon so we better hurry up and buy your tickets because they're going fast. Yeah man. Chicago at the Harris Theater, July 24. We've actually sold a lot of tickets now. Yeah, you guys listen, thank you. Thanks for stepping up in Toronto at the Danforth Music Hall the next night, July 25. It may be sold out by now. Yes, well, there's only one way to find out. Go on to Sysklive.com and you'll find links to the ticket sites and all the show info you need and we will see you soon. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there. And this is Earth Science time, baby. I love this stuff. Yeah, this one was a little well, it's about to say dry. I just caught myself at the last second. Thank you. It was a little dry though. It was, but I mean we're talking sand, dudes. There's just so much you can do with some things, you know what I mean? Yeah, but it's also one of those it's kind of neat and that when next time I go to the beach or the desert, I'm armed with a little more knowledge, which is always nice. You're going to go do some sandboarding? I don't think so, although I did look at some videos. Sounds pretty awesome to me. It looks like a great way for a 48 year old to break his knee. Oh man, breaking your knee? Can you imagine? No. Did you listen to the sound of dunes singing? Yeah, and I've heard that sound like in person. What kind of life have you lived? I mean life where I've been around some sand dunes. Wow, that's neat. I think I heard the dunes singing on a TV commercial shoot out in the desert where I heard it. Wow. What were they singing? Do you remember? They were singing Fresh Prince. No, these are not European dunes. So you've been around dunes that were not beach dunes? Because my only experience has been just beach dunes. Standard stay off the dunes. Beach dunes? Yeah, these are desert dunes. That's pretty neat. Yes, it looks like in fact, I believe they had even done some Star Wars reshoots in this area. Of California. Wow. It wasn't Tunisia, but it stood in for Tunisia, so I was told. Just like those hills stood in for Korea in Mash. That's right. But this is a Michael Bay Chevy commercial. Okay. And I got to stand around and watch him scream at everybody. That's neat, man. What a good guy. Like I said, I've only been around dunes on the beach. Coastal dunes. Right. Coastal dunes. But I was talking to Yuumi, and I guess these would constitute coastal dunes. But she said she taught in Japan years and years ago in a prefecture called Tatori, which is the least populated prefecture in Japan. And they actually have some amazingly beautiful dunes which look like desert dunes, but it's coastal, so I guess they're coastal dunes. But they don't look like coastal dunes. They look like desert dunes. I think South Carolina. No, it's definitely not. And I was like, dunes in Japan. That doesn't make any sense. But I saw them with my own eyes. And unless she Photoshopped these pictures, they were real, which would have really been something, because they weren't even her pictures. They were posted on the Internet. Yeah, that'd be a weird thing. I suppose she could have Photoshopped the pictures, started a website with the unrelated name uploaded, and then made it look like she was searching just Google images, which she was just to fool me. And then she's like, I got you on a dune fake burn. Right. Classic dune fake. By the way, when she taught in Japan, she taught with our buddy Ramy, who we're going to see in Toronto soon. That's great. Which, by the way, if you haven't gotten your tickets to Chicago, it's probably too late for Toronto by the time this comes out. How about this? If you're listening to this and you haven't bought your ticket for Portland, Maine, shame on you. Okay, so sand dunes. I love this article, by the way, by Debbie Ranka. Yeah. My old pal Yup. And she basically says a sand dune needs three things to form. You need loose sand, because that's the kind that can blow around. You need wind to blow a sand dune around. And then you need an obstacle, which can be anything. It can be a bed of pebbles, it can be a big rock. It can be a tree, but something for the sand to hit and say, I can't go any further. And then as more and more sand hits that obstacle, the sand dune starts to build. And then the sand dune itself becomes the obstacle and one of the most Zen processes really, around on Earth. It really is. It's a true, like, layering effect that if you see sped up with a time lapse camera yeah, it's pretty remarkable. Well, that actually reveals maybe the fact of the podcast to me. Let's hear it. Sand dunes move. I thought you were going to say time lapse photography as possible. Right, but if you watch the sand dune over a long enough exposure, you would see it moving forward. And here's the thing. It doesn't just move, and that like the sand gets blown around. And the sand dune takes all these different shapes. Sure. It keeps its shape and just moves forward depending on the type of dune and the type of what's called wind regime in the area. That's right. It is amazing. They're clearly alive and can feel pain, so you really shouldn't walk on the sand, dude. And the shape is so dictated by the fact that maybe the wind always blows in one direction where you are. Maybe it blows in two directions only. Maybe it flows from many directions, and that's all going to dictate this malleable, living, breathing, breathing, feeling, emotional beast that will kill you if you don't treat it right. It has. It's killed a couple of people, at least. So let's talk about how wind can move sand around. It's generally a few different ways. There's saltration, which is mostly like 95% of sand grains move like this, and that's just the wind is just bouncing them along. Yeah, I thought these percentages were pretty specific. 95%, 4%, 1%. Who came up with those percentages? God. Okay. All right. Well, then they probably are accurate there's. Creep. Yes. Creep I'd never witnessed or heard of before. Of you. I don't think so. That's the 4% of sand moves this way, and this is when grains are colliding with other grains. Right. Like maybe gravel or something causing them to move. It's like sand croquet. Yeah. Salmon croquettes. No, it's different. Those aren't the best croquettes, if you ask me. Frankly, I'm just going to come out and say it. The only way to eat salmon is raw. I'm sorry. I love a grilled salmon with that crispy skin. I like grilled fish. It's just when salmon is cooked, it undergoes a taste conversion that I'm not a fan of. I prefer it raw. No, I love raw salmon, for sure. But I love that crispy skin so much. Hey, I'm not yuck. And you're, young man, if you like cooked salmon, have added and I do like fish skin, crispy fish skin. I'm with you. But I'm more like a cooked trout fish skin kind of guy. Yeah. When I was a kid, a very big 70s meal in my household was the canned salmon croquettes. Oh, yeah, I've had those. Yeah. It's just the bones, you know, like, I don't like there to be bones in my food. I'm with you. I'll eat something off the bone. I just don't want to be expected to actually eat the bone, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, they'll keep bone at a good butcher or a good fisher re. Okay, but aren't they really tiny little bones? It depends on the salmon. Okay, but sure, I'm with you. I don't like bones either, so obviously we're talking about sand dunes still. Yeah, but the suspension is the third way we got to finish that up. Right. That's where the wind blows very strongly, so strongly from enough different directions at once that it actually lifts the sand into the air. And this is what a dust storm is, or sandstorm or any number of basically, if there's sand blowing around in the air, this is the suspension movement of sand. Yeah. That's up, though, in the air. Like when you go to the beach, sometimes you'll see sand in the right conditions blowing along the ground, like a couple of inches off the ground. That's not the same thing. No, that's saltation. That hurts. That's really painful. Yeah, I guess it can hurt, can it? Oh, it can. It'll sting. Yes. Hurts. So we've kind of already described, like, how a sand dune forms, sort of, but there's a lot of different kinds of sand dunes. We're going to get into it, don't worry. But there's a general way that a sand dune forms where the sand blows along, hits something that stops its forward momentum, and then it starts to pile up. And when this piling up happens, a sand dune typically undergoes a fairly predictable evolution, I guess. Whereas more and more sand builds up, the sand dune gets bigger and bigger and the sand just kind of smacks into the back of the sand dune and the lighter sand will just continue up and over the sand dune. And then once it makes it down the other side, which is called the slip face, which is the side that's protected from the wind, the sand dune just kind of gets bigger and bigger. But eventually enough sand will pile up on the back side. It forms a crest where it basically piles up and forms a peak or crest or something like that. And then this crest can get so big and so pronounced that it will actually crumble under its own weight. Yeah, I mean, it's just like raw physics before your very eyes. These layers, those light sands blowing over, and it's layer after layer building up. Then that crest gets super tall. Like you could mess around with it if you had a big bucket of dry sand with your own hand. You sort of see this effect as you drop sand. Eventually, when it does collapse, it's going to avalanche down the slip face. And there is an angle, it's called the angle of repos, where it's sort of where that beautiful. What's the word I'm looking for? Not symbiosis, but when something's pushing against something, the other thing is pushing right back and it all agrees just to stop there in the middle I don't remember what it's called, but I know what you're talking about. It is beautiful. That's basically it. It's about 30 to 44 deg in general. And that's when it just reaches that perfect angle of steepness that it's all just stable and solid. Right. So now you have a dune it's no longer being born, it's now living. And it still can keep growing, but it's going to keep growing along these lines where if enough gets built up, it's going to fall down into the angle of repose. More likely, the sand will just continue going over the edge and then being built up on the backside, too. It's rump will grow, basically, yeah. And if winds are really strong, it's probably going to be taller. If the winds are really gentle, it's probably going to be more spread out. And the direction of the wind, the angle of the wind. And like we mentioned earlier, whether or not it's unidirectional bi direction or multi directional, that's all going to play a part into what kind of Dune you're going to get. So let's take a break and then we'll come back and talk about the different kinds of dunes, okay? All right. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts and you can't afford to waste a single moment. So why are you still taking time out of your day to go to the post office? And you could be using Stamps.com. Yeah. For more than 20 years, stamps.com has been indispensable for over 1 million businesses, because Stamps.com gives you access to all the post office and Ups shipping services you need right from your computer. That's right. You can streamline your shipping process with Stamps.com easy to use software. All you need is your regular computer and printer. No special supplies or equipment necessary, and you can get discounts you can't find anywhere else, like up to 30% off USPS. Rates and 86% off Ups to stop wasting time and start saving money. When you use Stamps.com to mail and ship, sign up with promo code stuff for a special offer that includes a four week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com. Click the microphone at the top of the home page and enter code stuff. Chuck, have you ever read the book Dune? Nope. I haven't either. Have you ever seen the movie? Nope. Me either. That's interesting. Yeah, they're making it again. That's great. That Dennis Villa. New guy. Oh, he'd be pretty. Yeah, he's amazing. He did the arrival right. I think so, yeah. Or just Arrival. The Arrival is like an old Charlie she movie, I think. Yes. I think it's just arrival. Okay. Neither one of us has seen or read Dune. We're going to get some email about this, I think. Yeah. I'm not knocking David Lynch either. Of course. I want to throw that in there. No. Or Frank Herbert. I'm just kidding. I don't know anything. So, like you were saying, dunes are the result of the winds that are prevalent in the area and the most common Dune on Earth. And little known fact well, maybe not little known, but interesting fact, the most common dunes on Mars are what are called crescentic or crescent shaped dunes. And these are far and away the most common, which means that more often than not, in any given area, the wind is going to be blowing in the same direction basically all the time. Yeah. And this got a little confusing for me because the more I research the types of dunes, like, I saw one place that said there are five main types of sand dunes, right? Barkin, transverse blow out, linear and composite. Who said that? A website that seemed very educational and reliable. Weird. But I believe there are just different words for some of these. And some of these are subtypes of the main five. Right. Because I believe a crescentic is a bark in dune. Yes. If I'm not mistaken, you're not. Horseshoe shaped, front curve facing the wind. I guess so, yeah. That's the big thing is where is the curve pointing? Is the big differentiator for crescentic? Yeah. I looked these up online, all these pictures, and when I saw the Christmas, these look like sort of those big beautiful dunes from Star Wars or Lawrence of Arabia. Yeah. It's what most people think of when they think of a dune. Desert dune. Right, exactly. Thank you. So, Christic is if you imagine it is like a U shape or a V shape, the underside or the bottom of the U or the outside point of the V is going to be pointing in the direction opposite the wind. So it's pointing up wind. So the wind is blowing and hitting that outside point of the V or the bottom of the U, which doesn't really make sense to me. The parabolic, which we'll talk about later makes more sense. Is parabolic the same as a blowout because a blowout dune is the opposite of a Barcan. Yes. And that the horseshoe curve faces away from the wind. Yes. Okay. It's going to take five minutes to undo the confusion we just created. Well, and there are some who studies this. What kind of geologists, I believe desert ecologists. Yeah, I'm sure they are having a ball with this one. Just pour up a drink, everybody. Yeah, all 17 of them buckle up. So crescent shaped ones again say they're U shaped or V shaped. And the bottom of the U or the point of the V, is pointing facing the wind. So it's pointing up wind. The wind blows it. The sand that is blowing onto the backside, onto the rump of this dune blows up, it falls down, avalanches under the slip face, which is the inside of the U or the V and is not as protected from the wind. And what's amazing about this is because the crescent shaped dune is the result of a wind regime where the wind is blowing in one direction basically all the time. These are the dunes that can actually move and they can move pretty fast. Well, they're one of two kinds, but they can move pretty fast across the desert. So much so that sometimes these dunes, when there's many of them, will catch up to one another. And they'll do some pretty amazing things when they catch up to one another. Yeah. And so much so that they can threaten, like villages. And people have to try and stop these dunes. Yes. Some people have been known to pour motor oil on dunes to keep them from moving because it wetens the sand without it drying out. It's not a good one. You could plant vegetation, although if you're in the desert, that's not a great thing because your plants are just going to die. More often than not. If you just put up fencing, that becomes an obstacle for the dune. And the dune will stop and it's tracks and it will just keep building up on the backside. Eventually it might be big enough to overcome the doom, but it will certainly slow it down for a good many years. For sure. Yeah. But the thing about that crescent shape, one, when a small one catches up to a bigger one, a lot of things can happen. One thing is that it can appear as if the small one passes straight through the big one. Amazing. It is amazing. And then another thing that can happen is two dunes. I don't remember if they're the same size or different size when they come together. So that the arms or the wings or the horns of that crescent shape, right. Not the main part, but the points that come out, those are called the horns. I've actually seen arms, too. There's all sorts of different names. It's a giant mess. Nobody can agree on anything with dune ecology. But when a different dune catches up and merges with it, it can actually go from two dunes to three, which is called breeding. So there's the one dune that remains and then the other one basically splits into two dunes that come out the arms or the points of the original dune. So when you had two, now there's three, which is pretty astounding, if you ask me, because we're talking sand dunes here and they're breeding new dunes. Amazing. I think it's pretty amazing, too. So among the five types, there's also one listed as a transverse dune. I didn't understand them at all well, I think these are the ones that they're long lines of rigid dunes and they're perpendicular to the wind. They have really steep slip faces at the back sides and they're kind of wavy, so there's a lot of sand and not a lot of plants. And I think the dunes that like you see, like behind the beach are a lot of times or transverse dunes. Okay. If I'm not mistaken, my understanding was that Parabolic were the most coastal dunes, maybe not the most coastal. And I think there are different kinds of dunes even along the coast, right? Yeah, for sure. Again, it just depends on what the wind is like in an area. And because wind regime is going to be different for every kind of area, there are different kinds of dunes. What we're talking about are the standard simple kinds of dunes. Dunes, like we were just saying, can merge with one another, winds can change and different types of dunes will start to form. You've got compound and complex dunes too, which can be two different kinds of dunes merged together. So there's a lot of weird things that can happen with dunes. They're very rarely just a simple, straight up, straightforward kind of dune. Yeah, they're linear dunes. These are mostly parallel to the wind and these form these long, straight ridges. And geologists think that they are caused by wind that blows in one. They are definitely bi directional as far as the wind goes, but they think they're caused when wind blows from one direction in one part of the year and then another direction in another part of the year. Right, so they're like long lines basically. Yeah, but it's interesting that the winds will shift over the course of a year. It's not like every day they're shifting. No, but it's enough and they're powerful enough that they're blowing any kind of rump or base of these. And it's just a big, long line of things, sometimes very sharp, depending on just how sharp the bi directionality of the wind is. Yeah. Star ones. This is one of my favorites. Yeah, these are pretty cool. So if you have what you would think yeah, if it's like a sand dune that looks a bit like a star, they have a pyramidal mound that goes up in the middle and then at least three arms with slip faces, the avalanche face radiating out from that middle. And these are the result of a bunch of different wind directions throughout a year building up. So rather than moving along the face of the earth, these things are kind of build up in space. And they're actually some of the tallest ones, I think there's some that are like 500 meters or 1500ft tall in deserts in China, which is pretty amazing. I mean, that's tall, especially if you're a sand border. Yeah. You can simulate all this stuff. Like you can make your hand the wind if you're at the beach and you're playing with sand, you just think about if you're pushing the sand in one direction only, it's going to look a certain way. If you push them in another direction, that's going to look a certain way. And then in the case of a star, if you're using your hand pushing sand in and all these different directions, it's going to grow upwards and it's not going to grow laterally. Right. We should have probably said at the outset that it helps a lot if you go look up images of the different types of dunes we're talking about. Yeah. Please help me and look up dune porn. Yes, I'm sure it's out there. Okay. Now there's parabolic or parabolic, I think parabolic. You say parabolic. I say parabolic. Okay. So these are basically the opposite of crescent shaped, where this time the inside of the U or the inside point of the V is what the wind is blowing into. And then the outside of the U or the outside of the V, is what's facing in the direction that the wind is going. But it's downwind. Right. It's what you would think of, like, if you're just thinking about moving sand with wind via physics, this one makes the most sense. But the thing about parabolic that really distinguishes it from crescent is that usually they're made of sand that has some sort of water attached to it or vegetation so that the arms are anchored. So the arms stay in the same place. They just get longer and longer as the bulk of the dune. The middle part, keeps moving further and further away. Yeah. Which is pretty cool, especially if you imagine the stuff on, like, a time lapse or happening really quickly. Yeah. I mean, it can be little trees, shrubs, grasses. We'll talk more about what can grow in dunes, but these things very much serve as the anchor on those arms. And these are not going to be very tall. Obviously. If you think about the way they're going to form, the fact that those arms are anchored down, they're not going to be super tall. And then where that vegetation is going to stop, it's going to slow the advance of that sand accumulation. Right. They used to think it was strictly just the vegetation that anchors the arms, but they apparently have discovered recently that, no, it's actually more waterlogged sand like in the arms than we previously thought. And it's probably the water. It acts as motor oil. That's right. And then on the original list of five main types, the composite dunes were the last one listed. And this is just sort of a combination of two or more types of other dunes. These are really big. They're very tall. They form these big, hilly forms called draws, D-R-A-S. Okay. And they're mostly transverse and linear dunes, and they can be like, taller than 400 meters. They're gigantic. Wow. That's really cool. What makes them so big? I think just the combination of the dunes. Wow. Just running together? I think so. That's pretty neat. There's another one I want to give a shout out to Chuck. It's lithified dunes or slick rock. Oh, sure. Like the kind that you see, like in a painted desert or whatever, that's actually like a hardened sand dune that over time, water has moved through. And as it moved through, it basically fossilized the sand dune because it deposited minerals of different types. And these minerals can create, like, layers or strata that have different colors. But it's actually originally it was a sand dune. Gorgeous. I've been to love it, Utah, quite a few times. Yes. And we should talk about the sub Aqua, too. Okay. Because those are pretty great. They're underwater dunes, and you see these, a lot of natural channels, like rivers and stuff, but they can also form in a canal that man has built, which is pretty interesting. They move downstream always, and they tend to be of the same height and the same wavelength, the same frequency. They're equally spaced apart. And I didn't realize this, but it makes total sense, the presence of dunes on the bottom of, like, a channel or a river or something, it increases the river's likelihood of flooding because it decreases flow. It increases resistance, decreases flow. And so the water actually piles up and overflows because it's running into sand dunes at the bottom. Amazing. It is amazing. I don't know if we've gotten this across yet or not, everybody, but sand dunes are a little more amazing than you might have thought. Certainly more amazing than, say, Jackhammers, you want to take another break? Yeah, let's do it. We're going to take a break, everybody, in case you didn't hear, and we will be right back with Coastal Dunes. Hey, everyone. When you're running a small business, every second counts, and you can't afford to waste a single moment. 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So the dunes that I and probably most people have seen more than any are coastal dunes. The dunes at the beach, the dunes that have assigned stay off the dunes. There's probably some plants growing on them and protected. They are protected. And they're protective, too. That's right. But really, I realized this as I was researching this, Chuck. They really protect human interests. There's not a whole lot that they're doing besides replenishing the sand that makes up the shore ecosystem. After a storm, they're basically like a reserve sand pile so that when a storm happens, the sea goes, give me some of that. And. It takes the sand out and replenishes it and then starts this process over again, because that's where the sand dune originally comes from, is waves bring sand ashore and the sand starts to blow inward, inland and runs into something in the way. And like I said at the outset, it could be a bed of pebbles, it could be shells, it could be some vegetation that's already growing there and it starts to build up. And that's where coastal sand dunes begin. Yeah, it's really cool. First of all, an embryo dune is a real term, which is really kind of funny and kind of like I mentioned, it's like sticky and Yokey. But how vegetation comes to work with dunes and they kind of scratch each other's backs. In this case, rotting seaweed will come in from a storm, let's say, because sand dune in itself originally doesn't have a ton of nutrients to allow stuff to grow. Yeah, it's just minerals, basically, like quartz and ground up calcium carbonate and not much else. Yeah. So you would be surprised if anything grew there. But what will happen is the tide will bring in plant life and like, rotting seaweed and add it, you know, they dump their nutrients there and that allows what they call a pioneer species to colonize, because all of a sudden, there's some nutrients there. And this can be mainly grasses, like, all different kinds of sea grasses. And these plants, these are sea grasses, so they can grow well in really harsh conditions, like super salty areas. They're getting beat by wind and they really typically have these big, deep, long roots. They're going to go all the way down to the water table and that's where they're going to get their drink and they're going to just bind that sand together. And like I said, they kind of work together to make the sand makes the plant stronger, the plants make the sand stronger, or the dune, rather. Yeah. And once those pioneer species of grasses are established, they start to change the actual composition of the dune and they make it more inviting yeah. To other kinds of species that aren't quite as pioneering, but are still pretty hardy compared to, say, like, you're rose bush or something. There's woody perennials like beach elder, there's heaths and heathers. In the UK, they grow on coastal dunes. And all that these do is create an even stronger, more nutrient rich type soil as these things live and grow and fix nitrogen and turn more seaweed into even more nutrients, and they also allow it to retain water. Although I think basically to a species, any plant that can grow on a sand dune is basically developed techniques to resist losing water. Like, they have small crinkly leaves that don't evaporate water nearly as easily. So the name of the game is to get as many nutrients out of an unfriendly soil as possible and keep as much of the water as you can get from the water table. Yes, which is why they protect dunes. I mean, when you go to the beach, you're going to see signs that say stay off the dunes. Because the fear is that humans will go in there, which is exactly what would happen, and trample on these grasses. And then that little relationship is busted apart when those grasses die off or even worse are pulled up, maybe because you want to take some home or something. And then the sand dune is compromised. Look what I got from the beach. Yeah. So even without human intervention, these coastal dunes can turn into parabolic dunes. If something happens, like a storm surge happens and carves out like a significant portion of the sand in front of the dune, because now there's nothing holding that dune in place, and it's exposed to the wind even further. And so the dune itself will start to move forward, but the arms will stay in place. And the coastal dune has just turned into a parabolic dune, too, and it's moving inland, which, if you have a house built there, that's a problem for you. But one thing that I didn't realize, but I totally now I've seen it all over the place, but I never put two and two together. If you've ever noticed, an established beach will almost always have a conifer like pine tree forest. And apparently that's like the end result of the progression or evolution of a dune ecosystem is a pine forest is going to grow because they're adapted to grow in this soil that's been prepared over time that started out as a single piece of dead seaweed and ended up into a whole pine forest. I mean, for sure there are a lot of pine trees in the Florida panhandle. Yeah, but you never think about it. But that's like a dune ecosystem. But that's part of the dune. I think the climax ecosystem is what they call it. Yeah. And I don't know if you've ever been to a beach not so long after a hurricane is hit, but it's just devastating to look at. I mean, you always obviously think of people in homes that are destroyed and stuff like that, but if you look at the actual beach itself, it's pretty brutal. Like it can take decades for that beach itself to recover and for those dunes to recover. Like, I was in South Carolina a couple of years ago, not too long after one of the hurricanes, and it was like, you're used to seeing these big, broad beaches with these big flowy dunes, and this was like a cliff. It was just sand that eventually went up the water line, met just a hard, like, Jesus, man, some places like ten and 12ft, like a sand cliff. And it just looks completely unnatural, not like the beaches that you're used to seeing. And selfishly as a beachgoer. Some parts were just completely impassable, like you couldn't even get to the beach unless you repelled down the wall or something. And you certainly couldn't get back up. From what I could tell though, that's just part of this natural process of removing and then slowly replenishing. Like I was saying earlier, the dunes protect human habitation. Like you want a dune. If you live on a coastal beach area, it's like a big stack of sandbags. It is like you build your house right behind it and it provides this buffer from storm surges and stuff like that. But when it's taken away, if it takes decades to rebuild, you may want to move elsewhere. Apparently after Hurricane Sandy, there's parts of New Jersey still that they're saying like, I don't know if this is habitable anymore. Maybe it will be in like 50 years after the dunes come back. But this is not like we can't live here anymore. It's because the dunes have been removed and people in New Jersey said have you ever been to Newark? Yeah, Newark has come a long way. Has it? Oh, sure. Okay. But when I first started going there in the early to mid ninety s, it was a different story. Okay. I love Newark. It's great. Do you really? Sure. Okay. I love all of New Jersey. That's my second home. Alright. There you go. Speaking of second homes, we should talk about what little critters make their home, their first home in the dunes. Do you like that? I'd do. That was pretty nice. That was a classic skyway. So, I mean, kind of like we were talking about before, a big pile of sand is not an intuitive place for plants to live or animals to live. But because of all the nutrient dumps that the ocean brings in, it can raymond Burr it can end up being a really thriving ecosystem. There can be little flower dune flowers, there can be little rats and mice, certainly snakes and lizards if you're in the desert. But obviously these are only going to be things like you can't completely discount like nature. These all have to be very drought tolerant plants. Oh yeah, for sure. But they're adapted to grow on these dunes. And when you add a plant and a lizard and an insect and a bird or something like that, you got yourself a nice little ecosystem going. And there are definitely dune ecosystems that have developed over time. Beetles, crickets. Yeah, I was looking up, I was like, are dung beetles a dune bug? Apparently, my friend, dung beetles are in anywhere beetle. They're on every continent in just about every ecosystem except for Antarctica. Oh, really? Yeah. We're going to have to do at least a short stuff on the dung beetle because it's a poop beetle. It gathers poop and I think that's pretty neat. Yes. I remember watching those guys roll those little poop balls around in the, what was it? The Planet Earth videos? Yeah, for sure. Pretty great. Or maybe it was microcosmos. I can't remember. They're pretty frequent TV guests. They've been in a lot of movies. Remember when they're on the Mandrill Sister show? Yeah. Oh, man, that really brought the house down. Well, did you watch that? No. I grew up in Ohio. We didn't have that. It was nationwide. Are you kidding me? No, I'm sure. I'm kidding. This is when people in New York City watched. He hall, right? Yeah, I know. Everybody was on CBS and acted like they were truckers wore trucker shirts. Crazy. It was a cool little period in the know. Yes, it was a little weird. Trucker culture took over. Yeah. What else is going to hurt? Dunes? Deforestation. Sounds weird to use that word about sand dunes, but yeah, there's a conifer forest. You can DeForest a conifer forest just like any other forest, you jerk. Not you. I'm saying the person who cuts down the conifer forest. That's right. Yeah. What else? You got anything else? No. We talked about the Singing Sand dunes, which if you haven't heard, go listen. It's pretty neat and it's really just dry sand falling over itself in an avalanche. And again, proof positive that sand dunes are alive and can feel pain. That's right. That's it for sand dunes. I think the last thing we have to say is stay off the dunes. If it says stay off the dunes, just don't go on them. Especially with your dune buggy. Yeah, that was another 70s little fad. Two dune buggies. Yes. They also have beaches still where you can drive your car. I'm not a big fan of that. No, because even if it's not eroding the beach, it's smog on the beach. Come on. It's just ugly. You don't want to go to the beach and see someone's stupid car. No. I can barely stand seeing people's bare feet. Agreed. Well, since we said that, it's time, of course, friends for listener mail. Chuck got me out of a parking ticket. Nice. Hi guys. My name is Amber. I'm a grad student at Indiana University. Go Hoosiers. Yeah. But I work in Indianapolis. Fairly new listener, about six months. But I have to drive a lot for school and work and family. So I spent a lot of time listening to you guys. And I need to let Jack know that he saved me hundreds of dollars with geico. So rewinding back to Friday night. I was driving to Louisville, Kentucky, about a two hour drive and might have been going 70 in a 55. I get pulled over and I think this is it. I'm going to have to take out extra loans, get another job. My insurance is going to go up. And then I remember what Chuck said about getting out of his speeding tickets and just surrendering myself to the law. So I thought, why not give it a try? And it worked. Not only did I not have to pay for a speeding ticket, but you saved my insurance from spiking. I will always remember this in future situations, but of course, I'm going to work on my lead foot first. Thanks so much for the advice. And thank you for the podcast. Guys listen almost every day. Don't know what my morning commute would be without it. That is from Camber Solberger. Nice. First of all, Camber great name. Camber Solberger even greater name. That's one of the great names. And then, yeah, Chuck, getting you out of a ticket? That's just an all around fantastic listener mail. Charles Greed. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Caminberlimburger did, you can go on to stuffishhenoe.com and check out our social links. Or if you want to write us an email, you can fill it out, smack it on the bottom, and send it off to 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 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 chess amazonandtalopets.com." | |
c5f23578-5460-11e8-b38c-b782332ff198 | Selects: Project Azorian: The CIA's Super 70s Mission To Steal A Sunken Soviet Sub | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-project-azorian-the-cias-super-70s-mission | 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. Learn all about it in this classic episode. | 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. Learn all about it in this classic episode. | Sat, 15 Jan 2022 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=15, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=15, tm_isdst=0) | 49033349 | audio/mpeg | "Ahoy, everyone, for this week's select, I've chosen our episode on Project Azorian, one of the coolest, most bonkers Cold War capers the CIA ever attempted. And I don't have to tell you the CIA did did some bonker stuff during the Cold War. So sit back, pull up your favorite volume on naval history and use it to clench onto while you're driven to thrills. By this episode of Stuff You Should Know. 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 a ghost podcaster producer who's invisible Jerry's past. Yes, actually, the ghost of Jerry's present, gerry is not dead, everybody. That just sounded weird. It's it we're keeping Jerry around. Yes. She just out this week. Yeah. 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 something been in trouble with the loss. It's the day we were born. I don't think there was something something before then. Is there something being in trouble? Yeah. Right now. I don't know. We'll go we'll look it up. You know, it's funny, 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 most of The Dukes of Hazard Pilot, all those car chases were in, like, midtown Atlanta. Really? Isn't that crazy? But it was the original Bow and Luke wow who's sang the theme song. Is it waktash waylon, jennings. Wasn't he the narrator? It was Wayland Jennings. What was the first thing you said? Walk tosh. What does that mean? That's his nickname. Really? Waktash Waylon Jennings. I never heard that. Well, it is. I love Waylon Jennings. Yeah, he's great. Apparently he and Johnny Cash were roommates and highwaymen way back in the day. Yes, both of them were on drugs, but other people didn't know that. They both used to be on drugs, but not tell each other about it. Oh, really? And I guess they came out later. They were like, you were on drugs, and so was I. And I used to keep my drugs in the air conditioner. And Johnny Kesha's like, that's why the air conditioner never worked. And Wayne Jones was like, I used to keep mine in the TV. And Johnny Keshe never worked. Yes, their TV never worked and the 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. Yes, it is a little weird start. Especially because what we're talking about has nothing to do with drugs. Johnny Cash or Whelan Jennings or air conditioners or TV. Really? No. It has to do with the CIA, submarines. The USSR. Yeah. Cold War. Yeah. And Howard Hughes. Yes. Among other things. And Henry Kissinger. Are you kissing him? Interesting. He's still alive, too. Maybe. You'll hear this. I've never seen you hits 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 chart it in these things. I should file them down. Oh, 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. 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. It's 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 love, barely. Oh, yeah. Everybody's just getting started. The summer of foreplay. Yes. Everyone's getting lubed up, right? It is gross. So, March of 1968 in the Northwestern Pacific, as far as the United States is concerned, which should 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, I'll buy that. Some 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 ragtop. Yes. 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 Kwh. 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. Yeah, 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 where. I think, 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. 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 not obvious, 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 north west of Hawaii and hit the bottom at 16,000ft more than 3 miles down. Yes. And so kicks off the story of Project Azorian and the Glomer 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. Yeah. Spray paint a smiley face that says something like, right back at you. That's a good one. Then throw it their way. Yes. And in 1968, 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 the 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. Yes, 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 place that were 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. We 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 Azorian. 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 Azorian was the name of this idea to go see if we can get this sub 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 and any kind of engineer you can think of, and said, how would you do this? There's a submarine, a 2500 ton submarine, 300ft long. That's a thing in and of itself. It's a big tub like that'd 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. Your engineers, the Soviets can have no idea what we're doing because they will probably sync 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, 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 the bottom that could open and close. Like that ship in the abyss. Yeah, a moon pool. In fact, I bet James Cameron totally glomered 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 it had four three mile long legs. No, 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. With the legs. 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. Capture vehicle. So that had a grabba on it. Yeah. Like one of those banana clips that girls used to wear in the 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 one 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's going to say, what is that? Well, the Soviets would, yeah, 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 fit Soviet sub. Precisely. Or this barge that could become invisible 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 summa 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 Globar meant. Yeah. Because it sounds kind of like space AG. It definitely does. Like, wow, look at the healthy glow from radiation exposure on that thing. Glomar glomar 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 depth to get even richer? And people actually bought that. The press even bought it. They went to the trouble of saying, this is actually really good cover story because there was manganese deposits in the area. They checked out. There was 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 thing 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. All right. So this took a while. It was like years had passed between the sub syncing and them 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. No, 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, 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? I mean, 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 just now? No, the listener mail guy, Peter, about Vaping. Yeah. He said I'm pissed off, if you can't tell. Well, I'm not sure, but I appreciate you drawing 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 the the Hughes Glow Mart 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 glamor. Explorer departed. 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 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 protected 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 a 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 the CIA, one of the CIA offers on board was like, we need to stack some crates on our helicopter landing pad to prevent them from landing. And there was 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 tops. 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 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. You want to be an 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 is just 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. Could 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, 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. I 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, like, slowly being pulled. Yeah. 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 this 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 foot 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, like 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 that is a silver lining. Yeah. They only got, what, 10% of this thing? Yeah. Which it 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, so you can't get it wrong when you say it both way. 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 did. 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. That 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. Ciaprojectazorian 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. It's going well. All right, we're going to wrap up this whole mess in just a minute. 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 we lucked out that it was intact to begin with. After a series of explosions, we're pretty sure that the stuff that fell a mile back down to the seafloor 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 was 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 I mean, they were basically like, there's so little upside to this at this point. Kissinger, I think he even finally relented, right? Yeah, I think so. He's not worth it. What I found was interesting was that later interview by an admiral said, even if you found the codebooks and you found the communications equipment and figured out the arrangement of, like, 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 suburbs 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, to just get a one day snapshot of Soviet submarine operations. That would 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, a journalist named Seymour 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 Hirsch 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 Hearst and said, please don't say anything about this. Please sit on the store. 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 Stonewriter named Harriet Anne Philippi, and she flat out as 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 Glomer 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 Philippe was asking about Project Destorion 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 is 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 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 azorian, but they say, we've got boxes full of stuff. We 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, like, the last four or five months. And what 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 highlevel 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 that's 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, the people who had it didn't know what was inside of it. So the La. Police told this dude who tried to broker the deal and the 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? Thumb through the boxes and let me know if you see the word Azurean. And the intermediaries 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. So according to reports circulating among local law enforcement officers, howard Hughes had contracted with the CIA to raise the 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 desireAN, which they incorrectly call 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, like, 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 the 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 in the ocean and saw them doing something. But we turned around and went home. We went 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 and 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, right deep within the Earth in a bunker. 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. 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 they're in. 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. 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 Hershe's 1975 New York Times article on the whole thing where he mistakenly called the project Jennifer. And there were 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. Yeah. I'm going to call this a 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 donate. Yes, 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 is pretty amazing. So I want to say thanks for helping me out these last few years. Love the podcast. Really enjoyed the PR live show that you put out, by the way. And by the way, my roommate is Emma Clerk, 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 this in your mail. Yeah, that's really something. That's some sort of trifecta. So if you have it in your heart to throw a few bucks towards 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. Yes. 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 sisk podcast. You can send us an email to stuff podcastworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the way. Stuff. 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." | |
8a1cda56-4a58-11e8-a49f-9fb387f58b10 | SYSK Selects: Are there undiscovered people? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-are-there-undiscovered-people | In this classic episode, Josh and Chuck discuss whether there are any truly "undiscovered" groups of people left on the planet, the definition of undiscovered -- and why groups might want to avoid modern civilization. | In this classic episode, Josh and Chuck discuss whether there are any truly "undiscovered" groups of people left on the planet, the definition of undiscovered -- and why groups might want to avoid modern civilization. | Sat, 05 May 2018 11:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=11, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=125, tm_isdst=0) | 25391116 | audio/mpeg | "The Neogen device developed by Rst, Syndnexis is a Wellestablished advanced quantumbased medical device using electric cell signaling technology. Treatment is noninvasive safe, effective, and used in managing pain associated with neuropathy and other painful conditions. It helps improve circulation, offers better rehabilitation through pain relief, and activates the recovery processes, giving better patient outcomes. Visit Neogenreleasepane.com now for provider benefits. About the Neogen System come chat with us. That's Neogenreleavespane.com. Your patience will thank you. Hey, everybody. If you want a great website, you want to do it yourself. With no must, no fuss. Turn to Squarespace. They have everything to sell anything. They have the tools that you need to get your business off the ground, including ecommerce templates, inventory management, simple checkout process, and secure payments. And if you're into analytics, hold on to your hats, because Squarespace has everything that you need. Just head to Squarespace.com SYSK and you can get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code SYSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hello stuff You Should Know nation stuff You Should Know army and even casual listeners welcome to this week's Saturday stuff you should know. Select episode. This one's from January 28, 2010. Are there undiscovered people? And this was a great one. I just remember thinking at the time, wow, is it possible that there could be people out there in the world that we don't know about in this day and age? Even in 2010? Not even in 2018. So it was pretty interesting. And it's sort of an older one at this point, and it's just a super interesting one. Learning all about everything we know about whether or not there could be undiscovered people in the world. So enjoy. Are there undiscovered people right now? Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, is Charles W. Bryant. I'm always there for you, Josh, as always. Yes. I'm contractually obligated to do it. I know. So, Chuck, you doing all right? Yeah, dude, how are you? I'm doing pretty good. It's Thursday. It's not Friday, but a it's little gray out for my taste. Yeah, sprinkling, by the way. I thought it was like pouring rain. Is it sprinkling? It's sprinkling. It's good. So, Chuck, do you remember when we go back year or so, may 2008, how many years after Ghostbusters? Let's see. Hold on. Was it 84? 86. 84. And yes, we do know that there is a 24 years a sequel coming, by the way. Yes. Ghostbusters Three. That's going to be awesome. Should be the entire original cast. I believe so. Except for Sigourney Weaver, which that's okay. Yeah. Ghostbusters Three coming out. Right? Where are we? So we're 24 years after Ghostbusters, right? May 2008. And the new cycle had this kind of strange occurrence where a bunch of undiscovered human beings were splashed across the front pages of newspapers everywhere. Yeah, sort of. Yeah. So there's this photo. There are several photos of these people living in primitive huts, actually, primitive long houses is what it looks like. And it's an aerial photo taken from a low flying helicopter. And they are pissed. They have they're, like, aiming their bows and arrows at the camera. You see, the picture is pretty cool. Yeah, it's awesome. Get out of here. Right. And so, yes, this whole thing made the news cycle. And, Chuck, I imagine I take, from what you said before we started recording, that you have a tablet of disdain for the journalism that was applied to this. Yeah. Well, first of all, should we go ahead and refute it? Why not? Because they were not, in fact, undiscovered people. No. And there's actually a huge distinction between undiscovered people and uncontacted or isolated people. Right, right. But you would not know that by reading The Independent from London, which I'm disappointed, because I like that paper. No, I'm sorry. I could care less about the independence. The Guardian I like. Yeah, you like the guardian. Yeah. Not the Daily Mail. The Independent. Right. Here's how the article opens up. Beneath the picture of the clearly savage loincloths and everything with the arrow pointing at the helicopter. Right. Three near naked figures are visible in the forest clearing. Two of them are men, their bodies dowd with a red dye, and they are aiming their bows at the sky. A third figure appears to be a woman, her body blackened and only her pale hands and face betraying her natural color. This remarkable photograph is the first proof of existence of one of the world's last uncontacted tribes. Yeah, so they do say uncontacted. That's good. But not everybody did that. Sure. It's a little overblown. That was a fine dramatic reading there, Chuck. I think the funniest thing that would have happened is if he would have shot that arrow and it would have somehow disrupted the propeller of the helicopter and it would have landed safely on the beach for them to be eaten. Yeah, that would have been a nice indicator. There are tons of rumors of cannibalism about undiscovered purple. Right. In this specific case, there is a guy named Carlos dos Reis Morelos. My Spanish is a little rusty, but I think that's about right. Not bad. And he is an Indian expert. I just made air quotes. And these photos were taken in Brazil. Right. This guy led the search for this tribe. Right. And I guess he kind of watched with horror, hopefully, as they were described as undiscovered and no one had ever found them before. He came out and was like, Wait, no, I've been following these people for the last 20 years. Right. They're not undiscovered. See, I thought that was part of deploy for him. Was he taken aback by that, you think? I thought maybe that's how he got the funding to get the research team by saying he could go either way, we'll find out. Well, let's talk about it. Is it even possible to be undiscovered? Well, that's what this podcast is about, buddy. And you know what? It's kind of impossible these days. Yeah. We have things like GPS. We have things like heat sensors that can be attached to airplanes. Sure. Which body heat sensors. Yeah. There is almost complete and total encroachment and harnessment of any square parcel of land on the planet. Most everywhere. Most. But that doesn't mean that there aren't people who live outside, I guess the French who live primitively and remain in a, I guess, primitive state. These are the uncontacted people. Yeah. Isolation, basically. First they called them undiscovered, then they say uncontacted, and then they finally settle on isolated. Right. Which means more than anything is they don't want any part of us. Yeah. We don't want a part of them because we're always interested. We are. And usually with intent. Murderous results. Right. Yeah. These people have learned the hard way. And some of these uncontacted tribes also, we should say, we have no idea what they call themselves. Right. So there's a group actually called Survival International, and they are dedicated to preserving indigenous ways of lives by these tribes for uncontacted tribes who've rejected modernization. Right, indeed. Because that's the thing. You think about it when it's undiscovered or they're uncontacted, you kind of pointed out. We just tend to think like, oh, they don't know about civilization. Right. Or these poor fools, they don't know about television or random theft auto sick. And it would clearly be better off if we gave them TV or made them Christians or did whatever. Made them slaves. Yeah. Which we have a fine tradition of doing. And who's this kid who wrote this? Patrick Kyr. I never heard of him. I hadn't either, but he's pretty good. Yeah. He does say that it goes back to Columbus. It goes well back before that. The Portuguese in particular, love to enslave Africans. And actually, African tribes used to enslave one another. They had a completely different method and system of slavery. Slaves were treated much better among African tribes, especially West African tribes, to where they would eat at the same table as the people that own them. And of course, the Romans use slaves. The Jews spend a good portion of their history as slaves to the Egyptians. Sure. So, I mean, whenever we come upon new people or subjugate them, we have a history of enslaving them. Yeah. We tend to conquer. Like Chris Columbus met the very friendly arrowak people, and instead of saying, well, we can learn from them, he thought they would make really good servants. It's how hard working they are. Yeah. And they don't even speak English, so who cares? Right. Exactly. Well, they were also looked upon as savages are less than human, which definitely aided the subjugation of their, I don't know, blood. Right. Do you know why? Why? Because back before everything was discovered and there was still a lot of undiscovered land and they were making maps, the map makers would often chart these undiscovered lands as being filled with mutant human beings and scary beasts for some reason, right? Like here, there be monsters, because we haven't gotten around to mapping this area yet. Just assume that there's some sort of water serpent that's going to eat your boat. Yeah, I guess. I don't know why they tended to strike fear into people, into explorers. Instead of saying there might be very friendly people, maybe caution, fear of the unknown. You think so? Sure. But, Josh, these days, virtually every corner of the Earth has been explored, except for, obviously, parts of Antarctica and Amapa, which I had never heard of in Brazil. And they said that 70% of this territory in northern Brazil is still unexplored forest. Right. So it's possible there are undiscovered people out there. Maybe. Right? If there are undiscovered people out there, they are in big trouble, because if the uncontacted or isolated people are any indication of their plight, then, yeah, any undiscovered people are really kind of screwed. 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. We talked about Chris columbus and subjugating people. And actually, Columbus is quite the little genocidal maniac. He was we covered that in one of the other podcasts, too. We did. Because not only did he enslave them, he killed them. Had them killed. Entire groups of people are assumed to have been wiped out by European colonization, and not just through brute force, but this type of genocide, especially if you look at a genocide as by its definition, that it's the systematic wiping out of a group right. Like people or population, then it still continues today as recently as the 80s in Brazil. Are you talking about the microbes or are you talking about outright violence? Violence. Okay. Specifically against the Acuzu. Yes. Josh the Akunsu, who seemed like a friendly tribe that grew corn and hunted in remote Brazil for thousands of years until they were discovered. And it was discovered that their land could be used for soy cultivation and cattle. Right. And logging, actually. Right. Yeah. So the companies put in logging roads into this virgin territory where the Yakunsu live, and they actually came upon them. And it's part of Brazil's constitution that the moment you meet an uncontacted tribes person or an undiscovered person, all work stops. So what the logging companies and the soybean farming concerns and the cattle ranchers did was hire assassins like Death Squad, when they did meet the acoustics and sent them in and actually masked them with guns. These people use bows and arrows. And these guys came in with machine guns and killed all but seven of the entire tribe. Yeah. And they fled, sadly. They fled. And just last year, a newspaper reported that there were only five living Aku in the world. Right. And that was 1990. And that wasn't 1492, 300 Ad. Very shameful. Yes. But they are not josh the most isolated tribe according to Survival International, are they? Right. No, that would be the Sentinelese. Have you ever heard of these guys? No, I hadn't. And I saw that video you sent me. There's a clip on YouTube. Yeah. I think did you just search The Sentinelese and came up? Yeah, there was a couple of clips. I think Nat Geo went down there and they did the same thing. They came out of the jungle onto the beach. And what it looked like in the video, their interpretation was they were making friendly gestures. I did see another one where they had the bow and arrow out. Yeah. And I was laughing, though. I was watching it earlier. Part of me expected, like, Hippie Rob to come out as their leader. Yeah. He's like the God. He's like Brando in Apocalypse Now. Exactly. In The Sentinelese, josh where they are believed to be descended from the very first humans in Africa. And technically we all are. But these people are directly descended from the first group that migrated out about 60,000 years ago. Right? Yes. They live on the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. And did you notice how clear that water was and how white those beaches were? I wouldn't leave either. Dude, it was gorgeous. Who needs TV and Xbox when you've got that, right? So these people will come out of the jungle if you throw coconuts into the water at the beach. That's what they were doing, right? Was it? Yeah, this group of people were sitting there throwing coconuts into the water and the sentinelese came out and we're like, thanks for the coconuts. Well, they probably thought it's raining coconuts from the giant monster, but they are actually not primitive Stone Age folks from what they say. Survival International says they actually do make tools and weapons from recovered metal from shipwrecks. Right. Pretty cool. They are actually not threatened. They're very isolated and relatively uncontacted, but they're not threatened. They live on an island that no one really has any interest in. Right? Yeah, exactly. As we saw with the Acous, though, if there is money to be made off of the indigenous land, you're in trouble. Soy oil. Yes. Cattle. Survival International actually named all of those oil farming cattle and logging as the dominant threat to uncontacted tribes. There's supposedly an estimated 100 uncontacted tribes in the world. Yeah, I was kind of surprised that's a lot. And it's sad that these people are around for 60,000 years doing their thing, doing their thing long before us. And we just come in and say, hey, this would make a great soy farm, so I'm going to massacre you. Yeah, they heard about the bailout and they're like, right, we're staying here. Not for us. There's five regions that are under the greatest threat right now, and they're in Brazil, Paraguay and Peru. And actually there's tons of evidence. There's groups dedicated like Survival International and other NGOs. And then there's actually government ministries set up in Brazil and in Peru and I think Paraguay that are in charge of keeping track of these uncontacted tribes, which is really difficult to do. Sure. And a lot of times these uncontacted tribes are slivers offshoots of other tribes that have had their land disturbed by logging or mining oil companies. So they would join up with another tribe and no, they just take off into the forest and start a new tribe. No one would know how many there were, that kind of thing. But yeah, they would be living primitively, but they're getting pushed further and further out or being massacred or they're coming into contact with disease. Right, yeah, that's what I was talking about with the microbes. Violence is obviously a big threat, but they say that a bigger threat are these people, these tribes that lack immunities to these awful diseases that the 20th century man has. 21st century man. Excuse me. Sure. It's the future. I'm living in the past. Yeah. There's actually that favorite book of mine, 1491 A. Charles C. Mann talks about how there is an estimated 100 million people living in the Americas in 1491, and then I think 90% were wiped out by smallpox. Thank you. Like, within a few decades. And Josh, it didn't just happen way back then, like you said. In the 80s, some Christian missionaries made contact with the Zoe tribe in Brazil. And in pretty short form, 45 members of that tribe died from the flu, malaria, and respiratory diseases just like that. And more recently, in half of the Maroon Maroona Hua tribe, I think in Brazil, they were contacted by illegal loggers and half of the drive was wiped out from respiratory illnesses, I think. Awful. So it's not like to bring up one of our favorite movies again. It's not like bringing orange soda to the Waponi wu. Joe versus the volcano. Oh, yeah. It's not like that in real life. I thought you were talking about the gods. Must be crazy. No. Another good one, though. But it's not like the Joe versus volcano. It's not all happy go lucky. They usually make contact with them. And even in the case of the Christian missionaries, they were trying to do good, I guess, and ended up killing a lot of them. And the Brazilian government stepped in and actually kicked them out, the religious group, and said, no, you got to get out of here. Yeah. And apparently, even when the thing is, when contact is made as safely as possible and there's a medical contingency plan in place, it's expected that a lot of the tribes people will die. Right. But if they're made through illegal loggers or a Christian missionary group that doesn't know what they're doing, then yeah, a lot of people die, if not the entire group. Right. That tribe did recover, though. We should know. Yeah, which is good news. Said, Get out of here, Christian missionary, so we can live peacefully and helpfully. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for indemand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice, and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get hands on experience, network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K twelve. Compodcast that's K twelve.com podcast and start taking charge of your future today. 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. So, Chuck, is it good to even contact these people? Well, it can be good and bad because obviously if you make contact and you know a little bit about their way of life, you can protect them. But it's also like this newspaper article, it also opens them up to being invaded or watched or in this case, what was the tourism trip? Tell him about that. That's awful. Savage tourism. Yeah. Actually, the guy who was responsible for leading the expedition that produced those photographs that made the paper in 2008 was apparently approached by travel agents who wanted him to set up a savage tourism trip. Awful. Which came to see a bunch of fat, white Germans and Americans like, I want to touch you right now. Your whole trial is wiped out. And now let's get back on the cruise ship and look at the ice sculpture. Like I said, Brazil, it mentions uncontacted and undiscovered people in its constitution. In large part because of that 70% of unexplored forests in just that one territory. They have a real you don't have that in America. We don't have to worry about how to treat undiscovered tribes. We figured out how to treat the ones we're familiar with badly enough. So Brazil apparently recognizes that, like, hey, this is your land, right? And you legally own it. You're an uncontacted or isolated tribe. Nobody can touch it. But then has a really terrible history of following through on stopping people from going in and logging in oil. Peru's history is even worse. They have some uncontacted tribes, some threatening uncontacted tribes. And Peru's president is like, I'm not even sure they exist. And by the way, the French oil company that's working in this area where they supposedly exist, I've now just decreed that their work is a national necessity. So when you're an uncontacted tribe and you're butting heads with an oil company, you're going to lose. Yeah, I would say so. But I will say Paraguay. Hats off the Paraguay because they actually the environmental. Nice. Chuck just took his head off too. The Environmental Ministry revoked the license of a ranching concern. That was just decimating. And I don't mean in the literal, like removing 10% term, right? I mean like decimating. All you Latin speakers out there this land that technically belongs to the indigenous uncontacted tribes there. So they booted them out or they just took away their permits. They took away their permits, which is pretty much tantamount to booting them out. Awesome. Yeah. It's just so sad. That such a modernist point of view, to see these undiscovered or uncontacted people and think that they're savages and that their way of life is savage and primitive. They were here first. Well, I mean, we were all here first. We were all here at the same time. But it's just a complete lack of recognition of other people's choices. Yeah. And a respect for other cultures and ways of life, because, again, I didn't fly around here. There's no grand theft auto in the jungle. No, there's not. No, there's no auto. If you want to learn more about people, undiscovered or otherwise, you should try typing in people in theandyceearchhouseofworks.com it brings up a hidden sub channel. Really? Yes. And I guess since I said hidden sub channel, that means it's time for what? Chuck listener mail. Yes, Josh, it is. And before we do that, we want to send a thank you to Dan of the pottery Dan Made. He has a little Etsy website. Danmade Etsy.com. And he makes pottery. And he sent us some really awesome coffee mugs. Yes, dan made very cool mugs. And actually, it's my work mug now, is what he is. I noticed detail. You got an octopus on yours with a pipe, smoking a pipe. I can't tell what mine is. It's some little dude, but it's just got cool details. It's got swirls in the bottom and little indentions, and only some parts of it are glazed and others raw. Dan Made knows what he's doing as he does. So thanks, Dan. And you know what? You want to bring up people who have been sending us little gifts, and it's just really nice to come into work and have someone what was her name that sent us the homemade Twinkie the Kid shirts? I don't remember her name. It's like Kaya or something like that. Kyla, I believe. Okay. She should write in because I told her that I would mention her little website, too. Okay. Yeah, we got twinkie. The kid Tshirts. Because remember we talked about how badly we wanted something? So with that, listen to me, all right? I'm going to call this organ donation details from someone who knows. Hi, Josh and Chuckers. I'm Jerry. I'm an anesthesiologist who specializes in organ transplantation, specifically livers and kidneys. In fact, we performed a liver transplant just last night, and I'm home resting after what is always an exhausting procedure. He thought we might want a few more details about organ donation. So he says this. They do not get to meet the donor and the recipient until after a period of time, usually a year, and only after both agree to meet. But we also had people that wrote in and said they met like weeks later, so it might vary by hospital or state. Yeah, I'm not sure. Or maybe there's just an agreement you go into, but he says they can trade letters and get very basic unidentifiable information about each other, but it all gets censored by the organ procurement organization. This is because if the recipient does not live or the organ fails, the recipient or donor won't blame the donor and their families. Also, if the organ works, they don't want the parties involved feeling unduly indebted to the donor. After all, it's supposed to be a free gift with no strings attached. After they have both had time to adjust to their new lives and agreed and prepared to meet, they can meet. That being said, people can still find each other if they are looking and turn to the same websites specifically designed to link donor to recipient, although it is strongly discouraged. So maybe that was the deal. They did it surreptitiously. Yeah, somebody came up with the website to make money off of people who want to meet the people who donated a kidney to them. What a great world we live in. I thought your listeners would want to know this, and I hope it encourages would be donors that they don't have to meet the recipient if they think it would be too difficult. Regards, Todd. Thanks, Todd. The anesthesiologist? Yeah. And didn't he say that you die very easily if you're over anesthetize during a liver? Yeah, he has a PS here. If you want to know why anesthesiologist would need to specialize in liver transplantation, ask yourself if you would like to wake up during a procedure where patients don't tolerate anesthetics very well and if you would like your new liver to have something to cleanse. That's what he says. Very mysterious, Todd. Yeah, I just asked myself that and I have no answer. I don't either. So if you bring people to the brink of death and you want to tell us about it, or if you make money off of genuine human kindness, we want to hear your ploy. Sure, you can write it in an email and send it to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit hostofworks.com. Want more? HowStuffWorks? Check out our blog on the Houseofworks.com homepage. 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 Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app. And listen today you know you're the best pet mom. When you growl back during playtime, give Epic belly rubs and feed them halo holistic made with responsibly sourced ingredients plus probiotics. For Digestive Health, find us at chewy amazonandalopets.com." | |
438aa414-4c76-4f31-b9e9-ae7c00cfd0b3 | The Christine Collins Story | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-christine-collins-story | When Christine Collins' son disappeared in 1928, she thought that was the worst that could happen. What followed was more upsetting than any parent could imagine.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | When Christine Collins' son disappeared in 1928, she thought that was the worst that could happen. What followed was more upsetting than any parent could imagine.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 19 Apr 2022 12:40:50 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=12, tm_min=40, tm_sec=50, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=109, tm_isdst=0) | 46503053 | 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 right there. And Jerry's well, she was just here a second ago, and she's pretty much here her she left so recently that she might as well still be here. So this is still stuff you should know. Yeah. True Crime Edition. We do these occasionally. I just dropped on my knees to thank the creator that you didn't say a dish. Yeah, True Crime Edition. We do these sometimes without getting a bandwagoning. We've kind of always done them here and there. Update, I'm sure we'll get a million emails between now and then, but the Chowchilla Bus Kidnapper, did you see has been granted parole. Yeah, I did see that. That was one of our recent True Crime episodes. And we've had a few people write in say the guy looks like he's getting out. Yeah, the last one, right? The other two are out. Last one, yeah. The main jerk that had all the money, he was the main jerk for sure. So this is true Crime, too, as you were saying. Yeah. Probably won't be an update on this one, I don't think, so. It's possible, but probably not. The most recent update was a movie from 2008 called Changeling, not The Changeling, which is maybe the greatest horror movie ever made, starring George C. Scott back in 1980. Man, that's a good movie. This is a totally different kind of movie called Changeling. It starred Angelina Jolie, who was directed by Clinton Eastwood. And I watched it last night, made it through the whole movie and still had an hour to go. Yeah, it is pretty long. It was okay. I thought it had a little bit of a movie. The weak quality to it, definitely, because some of the acting was way over the top. Yeah. I mean, I give it medium. Like, I give it two and a half thumbs out of five. Okay. I like it. What would you give it? I would probably give it precisely the same amount of thumbs. It's watchable it's engrossing and all that. But it's also hard to look past some of its flaws. Agree. No exit, I'll tell you that. And there were some parts that it's sort of hard to parse out the dramatic license and the fictionalized aspects of it with the true story. And I even tried to look up some to see if this happened, and it seemed like it was verified that it did, but then I was like, or is this person just writing from seeing this movie? The latter, probably. So we might mention a few of those in there. Yeah, because he did take a tremendous amount of license and just little details. Nothing that ultimately changed the story, but, you know well, the ending important stuff. When he's reunited with his mom. No. Well, pointed out at the end, you all have to stick around for that. Please do. Because like I said, I split before the end. I was like, I'm going to bed. He didn't rot to the very end. No. Okay. I thought that was a joke about it, seemingly. I mean, I was joking. I would have been blown away if you've been like, yeah, but I mean, small things. So we'll get into it a little bit. We'll just pick on Clint East from time to time for fun. Right. So what we're talking about is a disappearance, a very sad case of a famous disappearance that took place in 1928 in Los Angeles, back when you could pick oranges on any given street back there, you can still go, weird town. Is that true? We have orange trees in their yard. Sure, but not everybody. Yeah, okay, thank you for that, but I was trying to find its feet. It's purpose, it's point. It was a freaky little town back then, still is a freaky town, but it was really freaky for some reason. To me, like, the 1920s in Los Angeles is as weird as it gets for that city. And it was during that time that this boy went missing, a nine year old named Walter Collins. And that in and of itself is extremely sad. But the different twists and turns in horrors of this case, and not necessarily horrors in the traditional true crime sense, so there were some of those oh, sure. But just bizarre horrors. Things that just shouldn't have happened. And that just compounded to the tragedy of this case. It makes it one of the most unique, I think, true crime cases in American history, if you ask me. Yeah. And trigger warning. If serious harmful gaslighting triggers you, then skip the episode or hold on to your hats because, oh, boy, it's infuriating. Yes. All right. I guess we should start with the simple fact that in March 1928, a mother named Christine Collins told her nine year old son he could go to the movies and gave him a dime to go do so, and he disappeared. Or she was called into work and he disappeared from their home. If you're Clint Eastwood just making stuff up. That's right. A little bit of backstory here. She was a single mom, in a sense that her husband was in prison. Walter's father, Collins SR. Whose real name, it turns out, was Walter Anson. She had married about ten years prior to Walter Jr's disappearance and did not know that he had a criminal background or a different name now. And he was, in 1923, put in prison for multiple armed robberies. And I believe the sentence was about five to ten years. Yeah, that was just totally unbeknownst. She thought she had a good one, or at least a mediocre one, not an armed robber who was going to get sent to Fulsome. I think in mediocre was about what you could shoot, for sure. So she was the sole breadwinner in the house. She was supporting their son by herself. And this is just a generally unplanned life, but from all accounts, including Clint Eastwoods, she was a good mom who was making her way and just kind of took the hand that was dealt to her and was making it work as best she could. Right. And a little more backstory to kind of color what was going on in terms of the Los Angeles Police Department at the time. Because that figures in a very key way here is they had just right before his disappearance. Had been recently fairly exposed. Embarrassed by another kidnapping case in December of 2007 when a twelve year old named Marion Parker was a very prominent banker's. Daughter. Was kidnapped. Held for ransom. And then when it came time to do the money exchange. He just dumped her body. Her dead body on the lawn and was arrested and convicted of murder. Which was a big black eye. And staying on the LAPD's reputation. Yeah. Her case, we bring it up just to kind of set the tone like this happened and in all the papers it was a huge piece of news in Los Angeles, like just a month or two before. But also if you're into true crime, that case is really heart rending. It's really awful too, in and of itself. But of course you can imagine that Marian Parker's case is front and center on Christine Collins mind when she realizes that Walter has not come home from the movies. Yeah. So sort of a double whammy. It's on every parent's mind and the LAPD has got mud on their face or egg or muddy egg. Plus also they seem to be widely considered an extremely corrupt but then also just as bad. Just as bad. Almost as bad. Incompetent, I guess if you have a police force that is well meaning but incompetent, like maybe the Keystone Cops or something, it's hard to get mad at them all the time. But if they're corrupt and incompetent like, that's about as bad a combination you can ask for in a police force. Yes. No, police force is only funny in slapstick comedies, right. It's not funny in real life. No, not at all. It's funny on the Andy Griffith Show. Yeah, but I mean ultimately, was Barney incompetent? Like he would drop his gun and stuff, but he always got the bad guy, didn't he? That's pretty funny. He dropped his gun and stuff. But is that really incompetent? I mean, if it all turned out well in the end, is all I'm saying, then justifies the incompetence. Because all it's going to do is drop and go off and shoot the dinner bell and MV is going to go, dinner already? Right. Dinner happens early and the criminal sits down to dinner with the family. Nothing like an Andy Griffith Show reference to just keep us popular with the kids. Yeah. Where are we? Please stop. I can't. I know. I'm sorry. We are. Chuck, to answer your question, at about the point where Christine has just realized that Walter is missing. That's right. Which is a terrible point to be at. It is she goes to the cops. I'm not sure if this happened in real life, but in the movie, there was a 24 hours wait period before they would do anything because kids usually come home. And I think that has been the case historically in a lot of missing persons cases. Right. They'll delay it for a minute. Yes. You know, I wondered, though, what an acronym that is in the movie. I don't know if that was like something that came later or whatever, but that's like the first thing Angelina and Jolie is told when she calls the cops that you have to wait 24 hours. Whether that happened or not. The Los Angeles Times had an article about the case back in 1999, and they said that the LAPD mounted national search, it was a big deal. So whether it started 24 hours or later, whatever, there was like a big search for Walter. It wasn't just like, whatever. At some point, it picked up and became a legitimate, like, missing child case. Yeah, there were a few tips. One of the best ones was from a gas station worker in Glendale. Said they saw someone who looked like Walter in the back of a car hiding under some newspapers. Right. But only his face wasn't covered. So it was like the worst covering job of all time. The worst covering job or the kid managed to wriggle out or something. Okay, well, yeah, I guess that could be the case, too. But the driver was described as Italian looking. And then there was another report of a foreign looking, end quote, couple roaming Walters neighborhood looking suspicious in the days before the disappearance. So the first posters that were put up by the cops said to be on the lookout for a middle aged Italian man and a very small woman. Yeah. And Walter's dad said, hey, I don't want to be left out of this. I want to contribute. What if it's one of the enemies I've made here in prison? Apparently he worked in the kitchen and part of his responsibility was snitching on other prisoners. I guess it kind of came with kitchen duty. So he's like, of course I've made some enemies here, there maybe it's one of them exacting revenge. That apparently was a lead that the police followed, but it didn't go anywhere. So Walter senior can go step back out for a little while of the picture. Yeah, I mean, it is kind of styling at this point because they didn't have money, so it wasn't a clear case of ransom like it was with the wealthy banker. Right. So I don't know if that's better or worse for a parent to have money and think it's probably a ransom situation. It seems like it's probably more distressing in this case because your child is just gone, and what could they possibly want in return? Yes, but also I could see it giving you hope, too, that maybe he's just missing, maybe he ran away, something like that. But the reports of that couple and then from the gas station attendant, too, certainly didn't help ease any concerns that he had been kidnapped for one reason or another. And that seems to be the premise that everybody was moving on, that he wasn't just missing, he hadn't just run away. And if Angelina Jolie is to be believed, his mother would have known that he wouldn't have just run away, that he would have had to have been taken against as well. Right. So I think about five months ago, by no more big leads, no clues, no forward movement of the case, really. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere and it's a very dramatic moment in the film, obviously, they call up Christine and said, we found your son. He's in Illinois. Ducab, Illinois. He's doing fine. All you got to do is scrape together the money to pay for them to come back when I was like, really? And that was actually true, and they were reunited. Dave Rus, who output it together, said it was in a juvenile hall, but in the movie, it's by a train at a train station. Because it looks great on film. It does, yeah. What happens, Josh? Something really terrible happened in film and in real life. When Christine Collins saw her son, she said, that's not my son. That's someone else. I don't know who that is, but I think the quote was, I don't think that's my son. And here's where the gas lighting begins, by the way. Yeah. So the villain one of the villains but yeah, one of the villains of the story is a guy named JJ. Jones. He was a police captain with the LAPD, and he was in charge of the Juvenile Crimes Unit. So he had this missing person's case of Walter on his hands. So he was there presiding over this reunion because the LAPD could use the good press. And it was a happy story. It was a huge story. And this is definitely more of a feather in the cap for the LAPD versus a black eye for the LAPD, like the Miriam Parker case was. So of course they wanted to play it up. So it did not settle well with Captain JJ. Jones. That the mother of this boy who was supposed to be happy and crying and thanking the LAPD, was saying, essentially, you brought the wrong kid. This is not my kid. Yeah. So he starts gaslighting right out of the gate in the room, saying, oh, no, mom, you're just not recognizing your son. He's been away for five months. He's acting weird. And in the movie, it's hysterical. Because I guess it was a directorial decision to have the boy be sort of stilted because he's not the real son. But in the movie he's just like, hello, I am Walter and you are my mother and I would like to hug you now. Basically, it was really pretty bad. Yes, but maybe that was the point. But anyway, he starts gas hanging and saying, no, he's changed, he's lost some weight. He's going to return to normal. And what was the classic line was try the boy out. Just take them home and try them out for a little while. Maybe see if you like them. Maybe he'll fit. But, yeah, that set off this, like you said, campaign of gaslighting. That Christine was clearly distressed, fraught was still recovering from the shock and that Walter had changed in some ways out on this. Five months that he endured, having God knows what, being involved in God knows what and that those two things put together. We're making her think that this wasn't her kid. And she finally relents, actually. And Dave tries to kind of guess at what it was and I think he kind of paints a really good picture of the pressure from the police, the press there, taking photographs, everybody wanting this to be a happy occasion. A little boy looking up at her, I'm sure wanting this kid to be her little boy, but also being repelled by the idea that she's going to take some other kid as her boy. She did relent there at the juvenile detention center and basically agreed to take the strange kid home with her. She agreed to try them out. And there is a photo of Christine Collins with this boy that's pretty famous. You can find it very easily. I think if you just type in Kristin Collins and you see her face, the expression on her face and, you know, the backstory. One of the most heartbreaking photos you'll ever see. When you know the full story, it's awful because you can see all of these thoughts that are in her mind and just the terrible everything that she's going through just right there on her face. But she's also trying to smile in a way, too. And that little boy is just beaming, grinning from ear to ear. It's a really weird juxtaposition. Yeah. It's very distressing to look at. And the gaslighting continued with the psychologists later and the doctors who had examined the boy psychology and feel what you feel about it now. But 1928, they basically said, and this is a quote, he has certain aisles of memory that are apparently blank. And then went on to say he doesn't remember any of the toys he played with and he doesn't remember any of the people from before, his neighbors and stuff, or any of his classmates, but this will all pass and he's your son and he'll be normal pretty soon. Yeah. And she knows it's not her kid. That's what's so maddening, is that it's a parent and their child. Right? Yeah. So imagine being in that position where everyone is telling you, no, you're wrong. Not just this one police captain, but the people. The police captain is basically hired and recruited to come back as his point in the LAPD's position up that you're wrong. This is your kid. Stop being a weirdo and just accept this kid also. And the movie really does a good job of hitting this several times. If the LAPD thinks that they brought Walter back and that's their position, they're not out looking for Walter. So therefore, who knows where Walter is? And, like, just more and more time is being wasted while they're not looking for Walter because they're saying, this kid is Walter, even though she knows that this is not Walter. I can't imagine having been in that position. When you're stressed out about normal stuff, like work stuff or whatever, like, the tension you can have in your shoulders, around your neck, and just how your face can just feel weird sometimes and you can get headaches and stuff like that, imagine having that starting to creep up and develop and compound because that's your situation. And then having no framework, no guidelines, no nothing to help you say, oh, well, when this happens, when somebody says, that a kid that's not your kid is your kid, this is what society is prescribed for you to do, to kind of as a release or an outlet, having nothing like that, having to figure out what to do on your own. I cannot imagine the turmoil that Christine Collins went through just from this part. All right, I think we should take a break. It was a nice, robust first act. Yes. Yeah. And we'll come back and talk a little bit about what happened once you got this boy home. Right after this. All right. So Christine Collins has fake Walter Collins back at her house. And this is one of those things where it was a scene in the movie that I looked up and I did see another article that mentioned this, but I couldn't tell if it was taken from the movie or not because I didn't find it elsewhere. But one of the big giveaways to her was when she was bathing the boy that he was circumcised. And I couldn't find out if that was really the case, which is frustrating. But in the movie, when she tells this to the officer, to what's his name? Jones Bernie, he basically says, it's amazing what people might do to a kid. Like, basically gaslighting further saying, like, well, he was circumcised after he was abducted during those five months. Right. But I don't know if that's true or not, and that's really frustrating. What I do know is that she knew it was a charade. She got dental records, she went to his teachers and, like, everyone, you know, these teachers who spend every day with them during the school year were like, no, this isn't Walter, obviously. Yeah. So she got people who were not only willing to back her up, but we're willing to testify to this. Here's this kid's dental records. Here's Walter's dental records. Apparently, Walter had feelings, and this kid had never seen a dentist before, I saw somewhere and she went back after, I think, three weeks of trying to make this work. Three weeks. She went back to Captain Jones and said, here's his dental records. Here are all these people who say, no, this is not Walter. And Captain Jones had a very unpleasant response to that, to being challenged by this. Again, this thing that he had decided was settled. He basically charged her with being a terrible mother. He said, you are the most cruel hearted woman I've ever known. Accused her of trying to shirk her motherly duties and to get the state basically to raise her kids as if she didn't want her son anymore. So now she'd seen a chance to kind of pawn him off. And as she persisted during, I guess, this conversation, he, I guess, brought the hammer down. He played an even harder card than continuing gaslighting. He had her committed to the state hospital against her will. Yeah, I think it's that deal where you get caught in a lie, so you just keep lying. Like, the LAPD already looked bad. They all of a sudden looked pretty good with this case. But if it came out that they purposely gave her the wrong kid, what that would do to the LAPD's reputation he was desperate and just dug himself into a pit and, like he said, had her committed using what's called a code twelve, which means that you are a dangerously disturbed criminal. And she was none of these things, and they sent her away. And this is at a time when you could do that and sneak her out the back door and no one knows anything happened. Basically, yeah. So she spent, I believe, six full days in this psychiatric unit at the La. County Hospital, again against her will. She was medicated there, she was held there. She was put in a room. She had to share a room with a woman who she said she could feel her hands around her throat every time she dozed. Who, by the way, Chuck, if you noticed in the movie that roommate at the mental hospital was played by Dale Dickey, who is also in Mila's movie no Exit. Oh, wow. It really is actually just really like, she's one of those character actors you've seen a bunch of different times but never paid attention to. Really? Like, she's in Winter's Bone because she plays a pretty prominent role in that at the end. Anyway, she plays Angelina Jolie's roommate in there to great effect. But she spent so the real Christine Collins spent six days in this hospital against her will, and it's not entirely certain. Well, I guess it is certain she would have gotten out because at the end of six days, a psychiatrist finally got a chance to see her and said, you're totally saying you can go. But in that six days, this whole story took an even more incredible twist. Yeah. And just quickly, if you've seen the movie, I'm guessing that that sort of evil doctor was a movie edition. Yes, because I think they probably needed, like, a Nurse Ratchet type in there. I don't think that was a real person. No. And not only did they have the evil doctor, they had a Nurse Ratchet and then a Nurse Ratchet's assistant. Like, he just threw everything. It was just really ham fisted. Nurse Ratchet was Ricky Lindholm, which is weird. Who is that? She's a comedic actor. So it was strange to see her in this role as, like, an evil nurse. Oh, really? Okay. And then I don't know if you noticed also, but Michael Scott's girlfriend, Holly Flax plays a sex worker who ends up befriending Angelina Jolie in the mental hospital. Did I notice? Amy Ryan? I noticed her in everything. Okay, great. Did you like her? And only murders in the building. I did. I like Amy Ryan and everything. She's one of my favorite actors. She's great. And I really love that show, by the way. Yeah. And not because they have sponsored the show. Oh, have they? Yeah. Maybe that's coming down the pike. But they asked. They were like, they're going to come on as a sponsor. I was like, great, I love that. Oh, yeah. Well, nobody asked me, but I'm on board, too. They did ask you. You approved it. Oh, yeah, okay. I do remember. Okay, you're right. All right. So you're talking about things getting really crazy. They had managed to keep this quiet that she was falsely arrested and basically stuck in a mental hospital. That did not get out. She got out. She went home. Walter, at this point, fake Walter is kept in juvy as a ward of the state. And there was another kid in juvy, a 15 year old named Sanford Clark, who had quite a story to share. Isn't that right? Yeah. So Sanford Clark is the nephew of a guy named Gordon Stewart, north cop. And Sanford says he wants to speak to the cops because he wants to say that he has been forced to participate in the murder of a number of little boys, and that one of those little boys was the boy who was in all the newspapers, walter Collins. I guess they had gramophones back then. So you just hear the needle scratch on the gram of phone at the end. Right. So at this point in the story, the evil police Captain Jones, is put on that murder case, and he's in a position where he's on this new case. This boy says that Walter Collins was murdered, but he had just stuck Christine Collins in a mental ward for a week. So he starts lying even more and told reporters that christine Collins just told me a day before that she didn't think Walter was her son, that was a fake Walter when it was actually a week earlier. And so he was just, again, just digging holes here with these lies. And they also said, the reporter said, sir, okay, where is Christine Collins? We want to talk to her. And he's like, oh, well, she's at the county hospital for observation. She obviously took it really hard when she heard that her son was a murder victim. So yesterday we put her in there yesterday, and she'd already been in there for six days. So the question was raised just immediately if Walter Collins was killed by Gordon Northcott and with an assist by his nephew, Stanford Clark, who was this little kid who was saying he was Walter Collins and everybody else was saying, yes, he's Walter Collins. And that was a pretty interesting story in and of itself, for sure. Why don't we take a break and we'll let you know. You're so mean. Who fake Walter is right after this. All right, lay it on us. Fake Walter chuck was drumroll, please. Arthur Hutchins Jr. That was a Michael Scott reference joke. Yeah, it was. So here was Arthur's story. In June of 1928, which is the summer before the disappearance of Walter, arthur ran away from home in Illinois. He had a bad step mom. He had a dad that wouldn't do anything about it. Just not a good home situation. And it was the time in America when a twelve year old was also like a full grown adult that they wanted to be. Yeah. So he kind of took off on the road. He worked jobs, he hitchhiked. And it gets a little dodgy about what exactly happened in the movie. He basically levied a charge against the police, saying, like, this was their idea. Like they kind of picked me up and told me to pretend I was this kid. Other people say that he hatched the plan. He always wanted to go to La. To meet Tom Mix, the cowboy movie star, silent era movie star. So he saw this kid was missing, so he hatched the idea himself. Other people say that they picked him up in the cab, Illinois. The police did, and when they were talking to him, might have mentioned Walter and the kid had the idea from there. I don't know. Yes. Either way, this kid saw his chance for a free one way ticket to Hollywood and his cowboy hero, Tom Mix, and he took it. He styled himself, we should say, as a boy adventurer. So that was like kind of the mindset this kid had totally lost on him, from what I can tell, the gravity of what he was doing to Christine Collins, that he was perpetrating. He knew he was perpetrating a fraud, but it seems like he considered it harmless. And it wasn't until it was pointed out, like, do you understand what you've done to this poor woman? That he was like, yeah, I guess I owe her an apology, or something like that. It just didn't occur to him. However you want to characterize it, he was a bad kid or thoughtless or careless or whatever, but he finally confesses and apparently put up a fight, too, that it wasn't until they had proof that his handwriting didn't match Walters that they finally and the cops, by the way, finally said, you're not Walter kid. You make different rs here. Apparently the way that he wrote ours was in a way that was taught in Illinois, but you couldn't find that kind of R teaching anywhere in California. The old Illinois R. That's right. They had him dead to rights. And he finally confesses and tells him all this, that he's little Arthur Hutchins Jr. So he gets reunited with his family, but then that leaves us back at square one. Walter is still missing. And then now there's Sanford Clark, who is saying that Walter is actually not missing. Walter's dead because my uncle and I, against my will, killed Walter among some other boys. That's where we're at with Christine. Yeah. I mean, the story of San Franclark is equally sad. He did participate in these crimes, but he was there getting sexually abused, physically abused, emotionally abused, was told that he would be killed if he didn't help out. So this is a kid who didn't know what he was doing and forced into doing these things. He's also a victim here. So at this point in the story, it could have been the end. Like Christine could have said, my son is dead, the boy fake, walter is gone, back to his family. I'm a woman. It's 1928. What recourse do I have? But to her credit, she stood strong and said, no, I'm not taking this. Not only am I not convinced that Walter is dead, but that aside, I need to expose my treatment, and I need to expose Captain Jones and the LAPD. And so I'm going to come forward with this information. Yeah, which she did. So remember, by this time, the press had no idea what had happened to her, and she just dropped this truth bomb on them, saying, so the LAPD heard from me for a long time that this was not my kid, and not only told me it was, they institutionalized me against my will. Told the presser story with the help of apparently local women's leagues, took up her cause, and then so did Reverend Gustav Briglip, who was played by Malkovich malkovich malkovich in the movie. I think he got involved way earlier in the movie than he did in real life. Yeah, but he helped publicizer he was an anti LAPD corruption crusader, and this is a great example of the corruption and incompetence of the LAPD, and he helped take up her story and publicize it. But she probably thought that was going to be enough because the county convened a grand jury, and they heard her testimony, and they didn't even bother calling Captain Jones to testify. They just basically gave her a chance to tell her story and then hope that it would go away. And they demonstrated that they hoped it would go away because they referred the matter to the police commission to handle itself. That's right. And the commission said no disciplinary action against Captain Jones. Arthur Hutchins fooled everybody. And Dave points out, like, yeah, except for mom, who was screaming the whole time, this is not my kid. Right. So that was such a flimsy argument to not do anything to Captain Jones, and this could have been the end of the story. And Christine Jones met with another brick wall. But no, she said, I'm going to hire a lawyer, and I'm going to sue the LAPD and Captain Jones for false imprisonment. It made all the news. Sued for a half a million bucks. And again, the reverend in the Women's League got press going and got everyone whipped up into a frenzy about it and got a lot of support. And the La. County opened up a grand jury investigation again, and the city Council welfare committee recommended that Jones and police chief resign. That didn't happen. He ended up getting a four month suspension without pay. And the civil suit did make it to court, and she won, but was never paid a dime, which is what happens in a lot of cases. Yeah. And she kept doggedly pursuing Captain Jones for decades. She would drag him to court every once in a while and have a judge say, you have to pay her. And Captain judge would be like, I don't have any money. Can't get blood from a stone. Sorry. And she never got a penny out of him, despite being owed about 180 grand in today's money, $10,800 back then, which is just so infuriating. But at the very least, she was like, okay, if you're not going to pay me, I'm just not going to drop it. At least I'm still going to drag you to court whenever I can to make you have to talk about this again. And so apparently, Christine, like you said, she did not believe I don't even want to say apparently she definitely did not believe that Walter was killed by Gordon Stewart Northcott. And Gordon Stewart Northcott turned out to be a serial murderer. And his murders are called the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders because apparently the actual murders took place with an axe in the chicken coop on this remote ranch about an hour east of Los Angeles. And Sanford Clark was there. But also, too, and this isn't portrayed in the movie gordon's mother, Sarah Louise Northcott, was also an active participant in all this, too, which makes the whole thing about 100 million times more horrific than it would have been had she not been involved, frankly. Yeah. Now it's like a Texas Chainsaw mask, her family living out in the sticks. At the time, it was the sticks east of Los Angeles. Now, like everything else in the Southland, it's just one continuous suburb. Back then, it was just farmland, and he could have murdered up to 20 kids. We'll talk a little bit more about the case, but he sexually abused these boys. He kept them in the chicken coop. He originally lived not too far from the Collins. And what started here was this weird game between Northcut, his mom and Christine, of him telling her like, he's dead. Been him saying, I didn't kill him, and then him saying, Well, I did kill him. And then him saying, no, I didn't. And then the mom saying, well, no, I killed them, and then the mom saying, no, I didn't. And I just can't imagine, after all Christine Collins has been through, like, how upsetting it was to go through this emotional roller coaster still, of them admitting and then recanting their murder. Yeah. And even worse than that, gordon Northcott represented himself in court, and he called Christine Collins as a defense witness and said, put her on the stand and said, do you think I killed your son? And she was like, no, actually, I don't. And she produced a piece of evidence that had been left out of the papers that a few days after Walter went missing, someone threw a rock through her window. And on the rock or attached to the rock, it's not clear to me. Something said, boy bad, sick, afraid to call doctor. And to her, that meant that somebody had abducted Walter, but it just wasn't Gordon Northcott. Yeah, I still don't know what to make of that one. I don't either. But what Christine made of it is that Gordon Northcott did not kill her boy, that he had been abducted by somebody else, and that to her, he was still out there. And she was so either convinced of this or wanted to believe it so badly that she went on to the stand, to the serial murderers trial, and acted as a witness in his defense. And in the end, it didn't work. Gordon Northcott was convicted of killing a handful of boys, multiple boys. But I think he said before, sanford Clarke says it may be as many as 20 boys have been killed out there. I think he was convicted of four, and the mom was convicted of killing Walter specifically. But, yeah, the boy said that there's 20 bodies buried, which wasn't exactly true, because they burned a lot of the bodies. There ended up being bones and evidence, though. There was enough like, they found letters written by two of the boys that he was accused of murdering. That was written by them to their parents that never went, that were never sent, but they got enough of evidence, at least against Gordon to convict them. And then apparently, it was all circumstantial against his mother, but she was convicted anyway. So Gordon was sentenced to hang. His mother was sentenced to life in prison. And a couple of days before he was executed, gordon sent a telegram to Christine Collins and said, I lied about not killing your boy. If you'll come visit me in prison before I'm executed, I'll tell you the truth. Okay? So remember, she thinks she testified at his trial that he didn't do it, that this terrible person had not killed her son. And now he sent her a telegram two days before he died saying he did. So, of course, she goes to San Quentin, meets with him, and he says, I don't want to meet with you. I didn't have anything to do with your boy. Go away. Yeah. Imagine her mental state at this point of being jerked around by the cops for all that time, and now being jerked around by this guy on death row. I don't know if he was just sick and toying with her or that sort of prisoner thing. I feel like I've seen this in movies before, where they do something like this just to have one last meeting with somebody before they die that isn't a prison guard. Everybody loves a good meeting. But he was hanged right in front of her face, apparently, yes. She stuck around. I guess the warden was like, he did what to you? Listen, if you want to stick around and witness his death, too and apparently she did. Not out of vengeance, necessarily, but because she was hoping that at some point before he died, he would tell her the truth or tell her something, and he didn't. He went like a schmo because he was a schmo. He was a terrible, child murdering schmo. And so Gordon Northcott has executed and these Wineville chicken coop murders are so notorious and so disgusting as child murders tend to be, that the town changed its name a couple of months after Gordon Northcott was executed to Mira Loma. It's what it's called today. Yeah. Just drive east from Los Angeles. You'll hit it. They didn't like the name anymore. Change the name. Here's where what you missed at the end of the movie. And I think this was created out of whole cloth to give everyone, like, a good feeling in their tom tones in the movie version. And if you don't to hear this, stop listening right now. Give me plenty of warning. Okay, so this part we know is true. It was how many months later did another boy show up that said that he had escaped from my I heard five years. Oh, is it five years later? All right, so in the movie, they squashed that down. So that's obviously a dramatic license, but I think the true story is that this boy just said that he had been a kidnapping victim of Northcut but got out. Isn't that right? Wasn't that kind of the end of it? I don't know. I saw that a kid who north car had been accused of killing turned up safe and sound five years later. Yeah, that gave her hope for the rest of her life. She died in, I think, and apparently was looking for Walter the whole time. So in the movie version, and this is clearly dramatic license, the story the boy tells is that there was a late night escape after they dislodged the wire of the chicken coop and that he had gotten stuck and that Walter had already run away and came back and saved him. And if it hadn't been for Walter, he never would have gotten out of there. So in the movie version, they obviously felt the need, or Clint felt the need to paint Walter or whoever the screenwriter was as a hero in the end who gave his life to help this other boy get saved, which, like, you don't even need to do that. It was so aggravating. No, really, the writer is like, how am I going to get out of this? So that's it. One little footnote of this. If you didn't think Christine Collins had it hard enough this whole time, at the peak of this stuff, at some of the worst parts of it, her husband remembers in prison the whole time. And so she's petitioning the parole board and actually has friends. There's a record of a friend writing the parole board talking about what a terrible state Christine is in and won't you please let her husband out so at the very least, he can go to work to support her because she can't work anymore. And the parole board wrote back in the movie version and said, we're sorry, but Walter Collins died in prison in 1932. Very interesting and sad. So you got anything else about the sad story of Christine and Walter Collins? No, boy. It's a lesson in hard, lesson in gaslighting and what still happens, but what definitely stopped a lot more back then. Yeah, heavy stuff, man. Well, since Chuck said it used to happen a lot more back then, followed by heavy stuff. As everyone who listens to the podcast knows, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this rewilding follow up. Hey, guys. Longtime listener. Really interesting episode on rewilding. I'm glad you got the point across at the end. Goal is to let nature do its thing. But humans have messed things up so much in places that sometimes we need to give it a little helping hand to help it along its way before stepping back and giving it space. Right. You mentioned that we tend to be very short time frame focused. But there is a distinction between cultures. Many indigenous cultures have a mindset that focuses on much longer time frames with specific practices in place for thinking of future generations. I believe one is to think about things for seven generations time. Wow. Getting indigenous cultures involved in projects and stewardship of the land serves to gain wisdom from cultures that have been living harmoniously with nature for generations, plus brings in the mindset of thinking for generations to come, not even mentioning the ethical reasons for involving them. That is from Paul with the question mark. No, that is from Paul, who is the chief Technology Officer at Mossy Earth helping to rewild our planet. Wow. Go to the Mossy Earth website and check it out. See what they're up to. Yeah, but I mean, we got one from like a legit insider. That's great. I think so. And that is Mossy earth. Cool. How do you get a Earth website? You pay through the Wazoo, use a lot of donations. I want to be Josh and Chuck dot earth. Yeah, that'd be good. I was thinking Joshandchuck Biz, but sure, that one works too. How about Earth Biz? So thanks a lot, Paul. We really appreciate you writing to us. And if you want to be like Paul, you can send us an email to stuff. Podcast man. I'm going to get it after we're we're done@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My heartratio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How the Digestive System Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-digestive-system-works | The digestive system uses mechanical and chemical processes to absorb and transport all the nutrients your body needs to survive -- but how does it work? In this episode, Josh and Chuck take you through all 30 feet of the average digestive system. | The digestive system uses mechanical and chemical processes to absorb and transport all the nutrients your body needs to survive -- but how does it work? In this episode, Josh and Chuck take you through all 30 feet of the average digestive system. | Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:13:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=8, tm_hour=16, tm_min=13, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=342, tm_isdst=0) | 43942638 | 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 with no fees or minimums on checking and savings accounts, banking with Capital One is, like, the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Kind of like choosing to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast. And with Capital One's top rated app, you can deposit checks and transfer money anytime, anywhere, making Capital One an even easier decision that's banking reimagined what's in your wallet terms apply. Capital one NA Member FDIC brought to you by The Reinvented 2012 Camry It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, as Charles W, Chuck Bryant. TADA. And that was good, Chuck. Even just a jazz hands, everybody. I did that's. What? You have to do that? Yeah. Either that or bump your elbow, right? Maybe, like, flick the bottom of your chin. Like I can't wait to hear your intro. Okay, I've been gnawing on this one. Okay. I don't know what to say. I have an idea. I'll try it. This may get edited out. All right. Probably not, though, because it's not bad. But chuck? Yes? Did you know that I think probably the worst thing humans ever invented? Not the nuclear bomb, not sarin gas, not reality TV. The second stall in the men's bathroom. The second one in our bathroom. In any public bathroom. What do you mean by a second? I think the worst thing that male human being can do to another male and I'm just speaking for my gender it's to come in and sit down in the stall next to an already occupied stall. So you don't mean second, you just mean more than one. Yeah, okay. The second through infinity. Exactly. Yeah, I don't do that either. No, you are a courteous, fine person who opens the bathroom door, sees one stalk, and turns around. I guess it's not my time. Maybe I should go find another bathroom. There are other things you can do. You just handled one thing. Like, what's the terminology we're going to use here? I like poop. Okay, poop is fine with me, too. Feces fecal matter. Okay. Poop is way, like, easier to say, easier to swallow. Excrement sounds gross. Yeah, excrement is gross. Sometimes the fun word. I mean, this article uses the word fart. We haven't gotten to the article. Yeah, I'm still in my interest, so I think that that's a horrible assault on a person's humanity to sit down and already occupy in the stall next to it. You must hate the airport. But I don't use the stall in the airport. That's literally an emergency. It's like ten guys pooping next to each other in every airport. Never. I think maybe one time in my entire life. Anyway, I hate it just as much as before, but now that I've read this article, I understand what's going on next door a little better. Okay. That's my intro. I like it. We're talking about the digestive system. Yes, we are. Yes. There's some amazing facts right off the bat. That Melissa Jeffries, who I'm not familiar with her work, but this is a pretty quality article, if you ask me. She use the word fart? She did. That may be the only article on the site where that word comes in. I find that word. Besides how farting works? Is there no that's in this article? Which we'll get to that later. She also has what, I think maybe one of the best sentences on our website, which is the Digestive team is composed of a bunch of hollow passageways that start at your mouth and end at your anus. Yeah. Pretty much says it all. Yes. Food goes in one end, waste comes out the other, and we're going to tell you how. Yeah, but let's talk a little bit about the digestive system. Like, how long is it, man? About 30ft. Yeah, that's good. Long length. I mean, if you think about it, what, you're 6ft? Five, 9511 510 ish okay, so 510, but your end trails are 30ft long. That's pretty impressive. Yes. And the one that nailed me was the oh, I know what this is. Yeah. The small intestine surface area is the size of a tennis court. Yeah. So basically, if you splayed your small intestine and cut it loose from the rest of your bowels, splayed it and unfolded it, because it's the folds that get you if you've straightened it out, you could pretty much play tennis on it, and it'd be regulation size. That's nutty. You've got clay, not table tennis. Grass. Yeah. Asphalt and intestine. All right, so the cool thing about this article and the digestive system, period, is that there's a beginning and there's an end, and they use ham sandwich in the article. So let's go with that. Yeah, it makes sense. Basically, we're going to now follow what happens to ham sandwich. The moment not even the moment you eat it, starting when you pick it up and bring it to your mouth and it hits the area where your nose can smell it. And so begins the journey to your anus. So we can do this one, man. We've done way more taudrey, potentially explosive topics than this, man. We can do this. I'm ashamed that I'm a grown man and I titerate that word. So as the sandwich comes to your mouth, your nose smells that ham, and it sends a signal to the brain and says, it's chow time. Let's get this party started. And your brain sends a signal to your salivary glands in your mouth, and they start pumping out saliva. Yeah, like when you say, My mouth was watering when I smelled that. That's exactly what's going on. That's exactly right now. I think my brain is overactive. You know how people are always like, it sounds like Josh is eating a piece of candy. No, I overproduced spit because I'm always hungry and I can smell anything and be like, well, I could go for that right now. Well, not even. So you've got your mouth water and your saliva, and the reason you salivate is because it has digestive proteins in it. Like amylase. Yes. And amylase is the reason you don't lick your lips. Did you know that? That's why your lipstick, when you lick them too much, because you're actually destroying the very thin, delicate skin of your lips with this protein that is designed to break down food. Boy, my lips are a mess. Always looking them, picking at them. You can't do that, man. So, yeah, Josh, the amyloids gets to work immediately on the carbs. And the bread, when you swallow it's going to go down your throat, your pharynx. Yeah. And we covered a lot of this in the sword swallowing episode, so if you want even more in depth look at that go. Listen to that one. Yes. But it takes the same path because you don't want your sword going down into your lung, and you don't want bread going into your lung. So thank you. Epiglottis. Little flap that's going to guide it in the right direction almost all the time. Unless there's a malfunction. Anytime you swallow the epiglottis covers trachea, leaving the esophagus to open up and accept your spit or your bolus. Remember, bolus is chewed food. Yes. So your sandwich is no longer considered sandwich. It's bolus now. That's right. And I actually choked last week on a sandwich like Mama Cass I did, and I ended up blowing it through my nose for the next ten minutes. Is it even possible? It is. That's horrific. Something happened. I choked and coughed, and it went, I guess, entered my nasal passageway, and I was literally blowing sandwich out of my nose. It was not fun. Do you have mustard? No. Okay. You're lucky it didn't have mustard burned. All right, well, we got to point out the top of the esophagus is the upper esophagus sphincter. At the bottom, there's a lower esophagus sphincter? Right. Bottom of your esophagus. Yes. And they let food in, and then they let it right back out, which is exactly how it should work. Right. And along the way, you have these muscle contractions, remember, called peristalsis. Peristalsis. That is just basically like the rings and your esophagus rings and muscles contracting and relaxing, and they are contract above and relax below and push the bolus down. Then when it hits that lower esophageal sphincter, that opens up and it pops into your stomach. And parastalysis is the key to everything. Yeah. Throughout the entire process of digestion, basically, your gut and your stomach are just like, contracting and expanding and stirring things up, and it's all just basically a bunch of spasmodic muscle contractions. That's right. And we'll get to gerd later. But if you have heartburn or genuine gerd, then that means your lower esophagal sphincter is not working right. And some of your stomach acid is getting back up in there. Right. As Melissa Jeffries puts it, you have a lazy lower esophageal sinker in ger. Gastroesophageal reflux disease. I've got it. Aka heartburn. Do you have it? It stinks daily. My brother in law had it so bad that they first diagnosed and misdiagnosed him with a panic attack because his chest was so tight, but it hurt so bad that it just covered his entire chest and it felt like a heart attack. Yes. That's what mine would be like if I didn't take my pill. That's awful. Like a good boy. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's terrible. You have a ham sandwich coming out your nose. Yeah. You have bile and other stuff coming up into your esophagus. Are you okay? I've got problems with my digestive system. Let's just say that. Okay. Okay. So we're in the stomach. In your stomach. Basically, the stomach is going to get everything ready to go to the next step, which is a small intestine by producing all kinds of enzymes and acids to break stuff down and also mucus to coat the stomach. Because the acid would damage your stomach right. As well, if it wasn't for this protective mucous. Yes. Which is very good. That that's there. Yeah. And if you don't have a protective mucous or your acid can beat your mucus in a wrestling match. That's how you get ulcers in one way. One way, yeah. 20 seconds. Every 20 seconds of the stomach is going to go through the peristalsis. Yeah. I think you can do that more frequently because I looked up while your stomach growls, rumbles, gurgles. That's just the sounds of digestion. The reason it happens when you're hungry is because your brain is not only send a message to your salivary glands to start salivating, it's also send it to your stomach to start the digestive process, because there's food to come in. So that's why you gurgle when you're hungry. It also happens when you eat too much or after you've eaten your gurgling. It's your stomach contracting. All right. Yes. 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. 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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 off their own sleeves. IBM, let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comitoimation. So if everything goes well and all the stuff in there can be liquefied into chime and by the way, don't Google image that. Yeah. Bolus converts the chime sandwich into bolus into chime now. And if it can be converted into the chime, which is liquefied, it's going to get out of your stomach in about 20 minutes. It's a liquefied blob. That's a good definition of chime. Yes, it is. And not everything can turn into time, though, so that's going to remain it's going to take a little longer. It takes about an hour to get the more solid stuff out. Right. And that's not a liquefied blob. It's more pasty a pasty blob. Yeah. And it's not called chime. It's called Yale. So you got the chime inside of your stomach, right. It's now in the Dwadinum. Yeah, it's entered the small intestine, which, as we said, the small intestine is considered the small intestine because the circumference of it is narrower than the large intestine. The small intestine is broken into three parts, and the entire point of the small intestine is digestion and absorption, the breakdown of the food materials, and then the absorption of the particles that are broken down. Right? That's right. So the first part of the small intestine is what? The duodenum is that how we're pronouncing it, maybe. Duodenum, I think. Duodenum. I like duodenum. Okay. And that's basically a big burst of enzymes from the pancreas and the liver file from the liver, yeah. And it starts really breaking down food. Like, the food is like, no more. And then it leaves the stomach for the small intestines, and it's like out of the frying pan and into the fire for the stuff. That's right. Yeah. The next two parts are the jejunum and the ilium, and they don't do a lot of breaking down the food. They mainly are absorbing the nutrients before you send it to the large intestine. Yeah. And this is what gets me, man, I love this the large intestine is also about absorption to some parts of it are, but it's also the biggest function it provides is preparing waste, it seems like. I've always wondered, how do you get your nutrients out of food? And this article explains it silly. It's awesome, man. Think about this. So this breakdown process, and you have specialized enzymes, like some enzymes from your liver are meant to break down like fats. Right. And proteins, your pancreas is meant to break down like carbohydrates. So you have specialized enzymes that break down certain things. And then you have villi, like you said, these little tiny hair like projectiles and Microville that cover the folds of your small intestines. And then you have Microville, which are projectiles on the small projectiles. And these things, like you remember, taste buds or taste receptors are attuned to certain tastes. These things are attuned to certain nutrients. So they pick up certain types of nutrients and then absorb them through the wall of your intestines and into your bloodstream to be delivered throughout your body. That is amazing. It's amazing. That's an amazing process. I'm glad you're knocked out by this. And so basically along the way, this food is traveling down and it just gets hit by hit and run by all these different proteins that just go into the walls of your intestines, leaving what's left over. That's right. I'm just amazed by that. That's great. Now you're in the large intestine, the indigestible parts, that is. And this is the last stretch here. You're going to get fluid is going to be extracted to produce what you want in the end, which is a solid fecal matter. You don't want it too not too solid, too watery. You don't want it too solid either. Well, there's a balance. And the large intestine, there are three parts to that. The bottom is the cecum and the little appendix dangles off the end of that. Then there's the ascending colon, which goes up, obviously the transverse colon, which shoots across your body. And then it drops back down to the descending colon. The first two sections, salts and fluids are absorbed from the food. Right. Electrolytes. It has electrolytes. That's right. And also bacteria, good bacteria in the colon. They're going to ferment and absorb fiber, which is that's how you get your fiber. Yeah. It's pretty amazing. Chuck, we know a little bit about bacteria. Remember the little video we made? I don't think it's out yet. Yeah. About healthy bacteria and how you have really beneficial colonies of bacteria in your intestines. And if your bacteria is not doing the trick or you lose it, you can get a poop transplant. That's right. Which is poop taken from another healthy person, ground up in a blender with saline solution, maybe, and then injected into the ailing patient. That's right. Basically get a good colony of bacteria going in the intestine, which is a great thing. It works, man. Poop is going to move about a centimeter per hour to your large intestine. So it's a lot slower than your small intestine. And it does this with the help of more mucus produced on the inside of your large intestine to help the poop move through. And then at that point, you basically have one in the chamber that's cross chuck, as they say. That's the path. Yeah. If you're a bite of ham sandwich, that's what happens to you. That's all you see. But there's other things at play. There's other factors, other organs, lots involved in this. And I looked at the spleen spleen's immune system. I thought that for sure the spleen had something to do with digestion. It has, like, almost no role in digestion whatsoever. Basically, the two big organs outside of the actual digestive system that play a major role in digestion are the liver, which, by the way, makes up, what, two and a half percent of your body weight. Did you know that? Yeah, it's a big organ. I had no idea. And do not look up cirrhosis in Google Images either. Yeah. You realize you say that a lot. You tell people not to look things up. You know that every time you do, people go look things up. Yeah, that's why I tell it. So the liver, like we said, creates bile, which is a brownish yellowish fluid that's designed to break down fats and proteins. And the liver stores this extra bile it produces in the gallbladder. And you say, well, wait a minute, I had my gallbladder taken out. Not to worry. The liver has it covered. It just stores extra bile and bile ducts. Right? That's right. The pancreas creates enzymes that are designed to break down things like carbs, I believe, also fats and proteins as well. But for the most part, the liver handles that. So basically, both of these organs are producing these proteins. They're shooting them into your intestines, particularly your small intestine, and they're helping break down your food. That's right. But that's not all. And peristalis is helping this whole time, it's making everything move around involuntarily right. Contracting, relaxing, and especially in the stomach, too. It's basically like a washer on the wash cycle. Yeah. Washing machine glands are very important. If you didn't have glands, then you wouldn't be secreting anything. Right. And you need all these juices, acids, enzymes. The glands basically start in your mouth with saliva and go all the way to the stomach. It doesn't go all the way. Anal glands, I think those are just in dogs. I don't think humans have those. And not just in dogs, but I don't think we have anal glands. You should look that up. Yeah. And hormones are really important. Like super important. They basically control everything as far as starting off each process. Well. A hormone, it doesn't matter what your what your body is doing. A hormone is a chemical signal. And specifically with digestion, you've got gastrin tells the stomach to produce acid, secretin tells the pancreas to do its thing. Same with the liver. And what does it talked to the stomach. So basically secretin says go start secreting your juices. Right? Yeah. And then CCK, which if I may cole cystokinencyin. Yeah that was very close. You're much better at pronouncing things than me. Well, I look it up. CCK basically says hey pancreas, hey Gallbladder, we need some more stuff. And they give it to them. So basically the hormones are running throughout the body saying you start that's right there's food afoot there are other hormones. And we covered these ghrelin and Peptide YY. Where did we cover that? Was that in? I don't remember but I got it totally backwards. What, the first time we did it? Yeah. I said that ghrelin was the stomach signal that it was full. The exact opposite, yes. It means you're hungry. Yeah. The stomach and the small intestine produce the hormone ghrelin and that communicates to the brain to say get some food in here. Do we get listener mailing that or something? Yeah, a lot of it. Okay. And then peptide why does the opposite says we're very full or as I like call it Peptide why? Yeah, I don't eat until I hurt any longer. Do you? No. Yeah. I don't get it. It's so American. Yeah, it is pretty amazing. Gross. Yeah. Peptide YY says whoa, we got enough to stop feeding fat boy. That's right. Nerves play a big part. Extrinsic nerves are in the unconscious part of the brain and the spinal cord. And here you got aceticoline and adrenaline. The main function of aceticoline is to signal all this peristalsis, all this muscle contraction and basically adrenaline shuts it down when there's no food. Right. So you don't need to keep contracting and relaxing and moving around, just take a chill pill. Right. And those are conducted by extrinsic nerves which are in the brain and spinal cord. Right. The intrinsic nerves are located in the actual guts and what's cool is they circumvent the brain. They're activated by basically the pressure of food in your intestine. Yeah, I thought that was a little weird. Usually the brain isn't bypassed. No, it's generally the seed of everything. Agreed, agreed. That's digestion. We should talk about all the stuff in your food and what it means. Like carbs. This is the amazing part that I was talking about earlier where it's just absorbed. This is where it happens on this molecular level carbs are broken down by all these juices absorbed into the small intestine and then eventually the blood starch in the bread. If you're eating bread, same thing is going to happen to that. But it's also going to produce a byproduct called glucose which will give you some energy there in your liver. It will give your whole body energy but stored in the liver at least it will give your whole body energy eventually when your liver releases and burns it. That's right. So carbs aren't a dirty word now. You just have to be careful what kind of carbs you're taking in. Some are definitely better than others. Complex carbohydrates are generally better than simple carbohydrates. Sure. But remember not too long ago, everyone thought bread was like an evil thing on the plane and all this stuff. Well, if you want to lose weight really fast, stop eating bread. It's as simple as that. It doesn't make it evil, though. That's one way. Protein. Remember, you've got your specialized enzymes, some coming from the pancreas, but most of it coming from the liver in the gallbladder to break this stuff down, ultimately, into amino acids. And the amino acids are what are absorbed and taken throughout your body. Amino acids are the building blocks of all life. That's what they say, yes. And then vitamins, as my English friends say. You have an English friend. I got more than one. What, are you collecting them? How many English friends do you have? I got dozens. Vitamins. There's a couple of kinds, water soluble and fat soluble. B and C are the ones that are water soluble, and they are easily absorbed along with water in the small intestine, but they also are easily gotten rid of, passed through your urine. And then you got the fat soluble, which we're talking about ad and K, and they are absorbed just like fat, and then they are stored. Once they're absorbed, they're stored in lipocytes. I think it's lipocytes. I like lipo. You say liposuction or liposuction? I say liposuction. Do you always go with the lie? That's what I didn't look up, actually. I looked up all these other pronunciations. lipocytes. Like lipids. Fats. Yeah. Like lipo. Like lipids. So that's it, man. That's the digestive process as it's ideally meant to function. That's right. It doesn't always function like that, though. You know, it doesn't function like that for me, ever. There's a lot of problems that can arise, apparently. You have all of them? No, not all. There's also some, I guess, impoliteness that can arise. It's just a matter of course, just a normal doing business. Like belching. Right. If you eat especially quickly, you're going to get a lot of air trapped in your stomach. Or soda, obviously. Yeah. Basically anything that has to do with air getting trapped in your stomach ends up as a belch revert. Because I just belched. That's good stuff. I set up straight. That's what usually does it for me. Yeah. All it is is basically your esophagus pushing this air from your stomach out of your mouth rather quickly. Three to four burps is normal after a meal. Yeah. Anything more than that, you might have an altar, perhaps, or maybe you're just gassy. Well, gas is something different, right? Yeah, we'll get to that in a minute. Okay. Vomiting, that's normal. It's considered normal to vomit three or four times after each meal. No, that's not true at all. That's very dangerous. Did I misread that? Yes. Vomiting is normal if you have it's usually bad bacteria irritating your system and a signal is sent. Hey, you got to get this out of here. And it's really that easy. He's ruining the party. Have you ever heard of Jim Brewers? Little bit about all the different alcohol coming into your stomach and finally I can't remember which one comes in. Everybody like a shot of Yeager. I think that might be what it is, then. We talked a little bit about gerd before. Chuck, you're one of 22 million Americans, do you know that? I'm a good company who has gerd 700,000 trips to the hospital each year in the US alone. Yeah, I just manage it through over the counter stuff. It handles it for you? Yeah, for the most part, but it's not good to my doctor told me, he's like, yeah, this isn't good to live with this for your life. So what are you going to do? I don't know. You get a new esophageal sphincter. I'm going to do nothing like I always do. Well, I mean, what can you do? I'm not sure. I don't know. I know there are surgeries, but I don't know how involved that is. I don't want it. I will study and you find the lowest price for surgery and I'll beat it by half. What are you in? Costa Rica. They're big for dentistry now. Costa Rica? Oh, yeah. Like good dentistry. It's a lot cheaper. How else do you get big at something? You got a big hitting really cheap peptic ulcers, man. That's another problem. That. Actually, we walked right past. And the Ten Scientists Who Use Themselves As Guinea Pigs episode So Peticultures, you remember when we were kids, like Toms and Role, AIDS is like, I'm stressed out or I got a deadline at work. Oh, you're giving me an ulcer. Yeah, not true. Yeah. Ulcers, it turns out, are caused largely most of the time by a bacteria called Heliobacter pylori. And there was a guy in Australian physician, I think he's a physician, or at least a biologist, I can't remember. Maybe a bacteriologist. We'll find out. I'm sure this is like listener mail on listener mail. That's how bad this is. Anyway, his name is Barry Marshall, and he figured out that it was H. Pylori that was probably causing peptic ulcers. To prove it, he drank a culture of that bacteria and then cured himself with antibiotics and he developed peptic ulcers in the interim and showed like, yeah, that's what it is. He won a Nobel Prize for it. Really? Yeah. Wow. Anti inflammatory sometimes can cause those as well, and I think that's probably like an abundance of antiinflammatories. Really? Yes. I don't think if you take an advil, you're going to get a pepticulture. Got you. But an ulcer of any kind, basically, is something has gone into. Your stomach and has compromised your stomach or your intestines and it's compromised the lining. That mucus by way of a hole. Right. Well, all those acids are then allowed to eat through and you have holes in it. It's not fun. Stomach bug. I get once a year. Once? Usually once? Which way does it come out? Both at the same time. Have you ever done that? I have. That's awful. It's so awful. Yeah, that happened to me once. I guess I probably get those, I would think, more than once a year. Seems like I need to start paying attention. Yeah, I don't know. I'll tell you next year. Okay. My flu always comes by way of the stomach, it seems like. I don't have like the regular flu that much. Right, you don't. You get like septic flus. That's right. Septic flu. No, septic. Wasn't it like a septic stomach bug or something? I don't know. You were green. I've never seen a human being green before. Oh, you poor guy. Forgot about that. Lactose intolerant. I am also that. Yeah, to a certain degree. Really? Yeah, like, if I eat pizza, then I'm having troubles. So here, this is a rare trifecta. Trivergence, we'll call it, of this episode, the cheese episode and the Gluten episode, the celiac episode. Because in the celiac episode, I said, we're talking about Casein, and I was like, cason. That's probably just another word for lactose. And that's what people are intolerant of. Right. Well, that was totally incorrect, as we found out in the cheese episode. Because the cheese episode, remember, casein is the main fat and cheese. Right? Right. So now we're here and I'm correcting it. Great. All three are conjoined by mistakes and regret. Did we even say what it was? Lactose and tar means you can't digest milk, sugar, lactose. Yeah, not everyone knows what that is. Have you ever had the milk, the lactose free milk? No. I drink a lot of almond milk these days, though. It's really good. Yeah. Emily's on the soy. She's been on that food. Tell her to try almond milk. I think it's better. I don't think she ever would. Tell her to try it. Emily, try it. I call it soy juice. So it bugs her? Yeah, cause it's not milk. Well, coconut milk. It's considered milk. Don't you consider coconut milk milk? Same thing. Same thing, coconut juice. No, it's coconut milk and everybody calls it that. Well, everyone calls soy milk soy milk. Right. But it ain't milk to me unless it comes out of a heat. Bison teeth. 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. 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You need to pull it together. So you call in IBM and Red Hat to create an open hybrid cloud platform. Now, data is available anywhere, securely, and your digital transformation is helping find new ways to unlock energy around the world. Let's create a hybrid cloud that can change in industry. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. All right, so we should cover the other end of the problems near your bottom end. This is the good part. Like, IBD inflammatory bowel disease is a structural yes. Not to be confused with IBF. IBD is really, like you say, IVF IBS. Okay. I thought that was one I didn't have. I was pretty excited there for a second. There's two types, major types of IBD ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. About 600,000 Americans are afflicted by this each year, and basically their ulcers in the intestines that lead to Cramps diarrhea intestinal bleeding. Not fun. No. Did you know that it may be like, local law in some places, but they're trying to pass legislation that if you are a Crohn's patient and you tell somebody in a public, like a business or something that doesn't provide public restrooms, you have Crohn's, and you need to use the restroom. This legislation would make it a crime to not let a person with Crohn's disease seriously in the bathroom. No. I think if somebody tells you I have Crohn's disease, I guess the assumption would be that you would just have to be a total jerk to use that. But even if you are encountering a jerk, it's worth having to put up with that jerk than to not let a person with Crohn's use your bathroom. Is this federal? That's less I heard. Here's the thing, though. You do that and they're like, Whatever, dude, I've never heard of that. They kick you out. So what? You can go back and have them find or something. That doesn't be a problem, though. No, it doesn't. Right then. But then the news picks it up and start talking about it, and then awareness develops. It takes a village. IBS. Yeah, IBS. So IBD inflammatory bowel disease is structural there's something structurally wrong with your intestines. Like you said, IBS is functional, where there doesn't appear to be anything wrong. You don't have any cysts or there's not, like a hole in it or something like that, but it's not functioning properly at all. So you have, like, cramps and gas and diarrhea. Yeah, just the whole nine. And apparently it responds to stress, hormonal changes, antibiotics, which makes me think that it would have something to do with that healthy beneficial bacteria colony in your intestines. Yeah. When they think your brain isn't communicating with your intestines properly. But they're not sure. No, we don't know. So in the meantime, people with IBS have to probably medicate. Do we need to talk about celiac? Well, no. Go listen to how celiac disease works. What was it called? Something about gluten. Should I not eat gluten or something? Yeah, good one. That's what it's called. Yeah. Go listen to that one. You'll learn all about celiac, and you'll hear my now famous mistake about casein flatulence. Yeah. Whereas Melissa Jeffrey says, farting, the digestive process produces gasses, as we all know. Methane, of course, also a little hydrogen and CO2. And when the rectum senses that there's some gas in there, taking up space sends a signal to the brain, the sphincter relaxes, and out it comes. Thank you. And what is normal? Normal is something like three pints of gas per day that's built up and then released in ten to 25 instances a day. Increments a lot. I don't think I shoot ducks that often. We should keep count. Okay, we'll start tomorrow. Start first thing in the morning. But you got to get to get you me. Like stay up all night, though, because some of the stuff happens while you're sleep. Oh, yeah. I hadn't considered or set up a microphone or a smell of the do you have a smellometer? I do. It's attached to my chest, and it shocks me every time it senses something, constipation something, actually. I've never been afflicted with that's. Good man. That's what they call a reprieve. It is constipation is pretty straightforward, functionally. It just means that your intestine is not moving very fast. You remember when you're in your lower intestine, especially in the colon, the time or whatever it's called, by that time, the waste is being stripped of water and salts. And if it makes it too long right. But also to recycle that stuff, and if it stays in there too long, it can become dry and hard and difficult to pass. Yeah. Hard poopation. A term in our household. Hard poop. Yes. This one is so gross. And then the opposite diarrhea. Well, it's just the opposite. It means you have an overactive lower intestine that is passing stuff too quickly and is not absorbing fast enough. So you have wet poop. And I don't want to get into it, but there is a thing called the Bristol Stool Scale, and it is Yummy's favorite poster in the world. You have the illustration of the digestive system. There is a medical illustration poster of I think it's seven six or seven different types of poop from stuff that just, like, is like nothing but floating fats to a very hard, like, black poop. And the different types are you want to hit somewhere in the middle? Yes. I had a doctor say once that soft serve ice cream is what you're looking for. I always thought it would be a little harder than that. Yeah. Soft serve ice cream? I don't think so. This is a dietitian, too. I think your doctor is full of it. Well, this is one of those your doctor's full of stool. This is one of those wacky dietitian guys got you. It's like, oh, you need to change everything you eat. Which he's probably right. Probably. And diarrhea apparently happens to most Americans about four bouts a year, which I was astounded to hear. That how many a day? No, I mean, I figured people got diarrhea more than four times a year. Yeah. Most people don't use as much crystals as you and I do. What does that mean? Oh, Crystal. Crystal Burgers. White Castle for our northern friends. Yeah. So our apologies to Crystal and White Castle, and our apologies, really to every single one of your mothers, because I'm sure you laughed at this. We said poop a bunch of times. You said the F word. I said yeah. T was in there. So I'm glad everybody made it through this one. Good going. Hopefully you learned a little bit about your own digestive system. It's a miracle how it functions. It is it is amazing how the whole thing happens. So if you want to learn more about digestion, there's even some stuff we didn't touch in here. Like cow digestion. Yeah. Type in digestive system in the search barhouseupworks.com, and it will bring up this fine, fine article. And I said, search bar. So it's time now for listener mail. This is Kiva based? Yeah. Do you want to give a quick overview there? Okay. Kiva is an organization. A website that allows schmoes like us who have an extra $25 playing around to lend it to people in. Say. The Third World who can actually buy a substantial amount of supplies or clothing or whatever and then use it to sell in their business to become well off enough so that they don't have to take loans anymore and can. In turn be peaceful. Democracy loving types. And where is our team? Our team is Kivaorg teamstuffychildo. And our team has gotten pretty quick. Well, yeah. Where are we financially? Oh, got you. Yeah. So we have a team that's also third in size. Well, no, behind the atheist and the Christians. And then team stuff you should know. Is that crazy? Yeah, that's pretty nut. That makes us pseudo religion. I didn't want to say it, but I'm glad someone did. So our team, with their religious fervor, has loan. Chuck, I'm going to let you say it more than I didn't get the exact number, but we surpassed $750,000 in loans and loans in, like, two years. Yes. Two years or one year? Two. Yeah, you're right. I think. Yeah. We just had our second anniversary, and Glenn and Sonya are our awesome. I'm going to call them official team captains. If they weren't official, Chuck, I say we officially, at this moment, designate them our Kiva team captain. Glen and Tony. And they're awesome and they keep up with it and they set our goals. He actually glenn figures his stuff out by the month when we can hit this goal. And our next one is obviously a million bucks, which is staggering. And he's calling it the Million Dollar March because it's due in March. Nice. If we have a nice holiday giving season. And I think we are, like, I saw a couple of people out there that had some really amazing stats about their own lending. Yeah, I got a few sitting there, actually. I need to reload. Yeah. They've caught up to me. Really? Yeah. Well, you just had reload day and I haven't gone and looked. I need to it's always nice. Okay. And a special shout out to Josiah and Janelle. They are on our team. They are joining a US couple living in Korea. I think they're teaching English. Yeah. So they're not raking in money here. They have loaned 400 times to the tune of $10,000. That's a lot. That makes me feel really bad. $10,000 in loans in Kiva. That's making a significant difference. But the cool thing is they are loans, and if they so decided, they could get their money back. Yeah. But don't look like they are now, because the retirement plan if you're not joining Kiva at this point, then you got something wrong with it. Something's wrong with you, for sure. The fact that who is it? Janelle. Janelle and Josiah. Janelle and Josiah. Thank you so much for doing that. The fact that they loan $10,000 is not like that's not the standard. That's incredible. It's mind blowing. There's a lot of people on the team have loaned a couple of times here and there, but if you go and look at what it takes for a loan to be fulfilled, $25 makes a difference very quick. The people who are looking for loans often are asking for far less than $1,000, and they can take that dough again with a grand here. $25 here is exponentially more in another country. That's right. Even in this economy. So if you want to join our Kiva team, we're always happy to have new people, especially if you actually provide a loan and not just join the team I've never gotten out of you. You can do that. Yeah. That's weird. Yeah. You can go to Kiba.org teamstepysheanow. Enjoy. Yeah. You can buy Christmas gifts. Gift certificates. Yeah, they're great gift certificates because after they're repaid, the person can either loan them or they got the $25. So you can be helping two people at the same time, but you can also find a lot out about your nephew, what kind of person he is, what he does when Reload day happens. That's right again. Kibaorg. Teamstepiestino. And if you want to talk to us, you want to communicate with Chuck and I, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Facebook. Comstuffystemo. You can join the 500 on Facebook. Yeah. Or you can email us at stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The house upworks. iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on itunes. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out. The sun is shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarriff and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You know you're a pet mom. You plan your vacation around your pet at Halo. We get it because we're pet moms, too. We make natural, high quality pet food that's rooted in science. It's the world's best food for the world's best kids. Learn more@halopets.com." | ||
450e3106-ba8a-11e8-9ed2-b3bb79245e89 | Short Stuff: William King | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-william-king | Did you know that the United States has had one Vice-President who was sworn in on foreign soil? Well it turns out that may be the least interesting part of the story of William Rufus King. | Did you know that the United States has had one Vice-President who was sworn in on foreign soil? Well it turns out that may be the least interesting part of the story of William Rufus King. | Wed, 10 Oct 2018 13:30:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=13, tm_min=30, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=283, tm_isdst=0) | 11941664 | audio/mpeg | "This July, don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the series season three Zombies, three Doctor Strange in the multiverse of Madness, and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful. From the award winning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, and the Disney nature films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus. Hey, and welcome to the podcast Short Stuff, I should say. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Jerry. Let's get to it. And they're off on another shorty. So we're about to talk about something I had no idea about previous to this. Yes. And this one has a couple of layers that are super interesting to me. It is an onion, for sure. So we're going to dive into the history of a guy named William Rufus Devane King. And he was an early senator. He was a diplomat for the United States. Well, I think he was a congressman first, then he was a diplomat, and then he was a senator for 29 years or something like that. And then eventually he became vice president. And the way that he apparently progressed through the ranks in the Democratic Party was by being pretty middle of the road, vanilla mediocre. Yeah. And I interpreted that as also he was a good guy, that he wasn't one of these blustery blowhards of the day. He was an attorney first, of course, probably like most of these dudes were and still are. Right. And he was described as various things tall, prim, wig topped, mediocrity. But other things that they said were like he wanted people to address each other with decorum. And whenever people were arguing, he was known to come in and kind of try and reconcile things. So I kind of like this guy's style the more I read about him. Yeah. No, I'm with you. I think to be middle of the road at this time was actually kind of a badge of honor. Interesting. I mean, this is during the lead up to the Civil War. The country is not getting along very well. Right. Yeah. So he started out again in Congress, and then he went on to serve his diplomat to Russia and then Naples, the Kingdom of Naples, no less. Yeah. In France at one point, too, I think. Oh, yeah, you're right. And then by 1818, he returned to the US. And he said, I'm going to find my fortunes way out west. So he went to Alabama, which was way out west at the time. Yeah. And he was born the son of a plantation owner, and he became a plantation owner there. He owned 500 slaves, became one of the largest slaveholders in this newly formed state, and he named his state Chestnut Hill. And from there. That's where he became the senator for 29 years. He was a senator from Alabama for 29 years and actually was instrumental in ironically naming the town of Selma. Oh, wow. Did you see that? No. So there was a poem, a book of poems called like, Songs of Selma that he loved. And when they were naming the county Sea to the county where his plantation was, he was basically instrumental in getting it named. Selma. The city of Selma, Alabama. Yeah. So he would eventually go on through the Democratic Party at the time to be vice president, to be a presidential running mate to hopeful Franklin Pierce. And this is thing where things get a little bit interesting, because many historians and it says some but I did some research on this, and most historians now look back and say president James Buchanan was clearly a gay man. Right. And it's interesting to think about our past being a little more open to that. But there's a guy that wrote a book Jim Lowen, called Lies. My teacher told me everything. Your American history teacher got wrong. And he clearly states that James Buchanan was gay. And not only that, it was not a big secret and America was actually a little more open to that kind of thing and permissive of that kind of thing back then. Right. His political career wasn't ruined. It wasn't like blackmail held against him. And that just so goes against what most people think of with history, that it's like an arrow that progresses ever forward, and that by default, then, the time we live in must be more tolerant, more progressive than 100 something years ago, 150 years ago. And that's just not the case. And this is a good example of that. Yeah, so he calls it. This author says that the idea that we started great and just got greater and greater chronological ethnocentrism, which is a fancy way of saying what you just said, which is in the 19th century, it was okay. At least he got elected president. Yeah. Speaking of fancy, one of the examples that they point to is that this was an open secret or just known around DC. Is that Andrew Jackson had a nickname for James V. Cannon and William King. Ms. Nancy and Aunt Fancy. Yeah. Because here's the deal. Buchanan never married. He and King lived together and spent a lot of time together. And that was basically sort of known around town that that was the deal. When Buchanan died, he had all of his correspondence burned upon his death, which is sort of a weird thing to do. But a few of the letters did survive, and one of them from 1844 addressed to a Mrs. Roosevelt, said, when King moved to Paris to be ambassador to France, he said, I am now solitary and alone, having no companion in the house with me. I've gone wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any of them. Tough to take. That the wrong way. It is. I mean, of course we're saying it's pretty clear now, but who knows? They might make the argument in this article. It could have just been close male friends. But I think most people kind of agree now that James Buchanan was our first gay president. Yeah, which is pretty awesome, actually. Yeah, of course. And then that same letter, Chuck, that you just read a quote from goes on to say that if this keeps up, he may very well just marry an old maid who can cook and care for him and won't expect ardent romance from him in return. So, yeah, the evidence is that what little evidence there is certainly points to this. And the idea that, as this article puts it, that this is just like a bromance or something. That seems pretty thin. All signs point to him being gay. But also, in defense of this article on how stuff works, they say that they had zero bearing whatsoever on his political aptitude. It was just an interesting fact of history that kind of makes us examine our own times a little more. Yeah, and I'll tell you one thing. I don't know much about the 19th century, but I do know that gay men existed and bromances did not. Yeah, that's a stupid modern conceit. Yeah. And I think what you just said is a T shirt, too. A long T shirt. Maybe front and back, but sleep shirt. All right, so we're going to take a quick break and we're going to come back to let you know why we titled this one how King Actually Took His Oath of Office in Cuba right after this. What if you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflows so that every driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeno, sesame and chocolatecovered goodness with realtime datadriven precision. Let's create supply chains that have an appetite for performance. IBM let's create. Learn more at IBM. Comconsulting hey, Chuck, it's summer, which means school is out, sun is shining, the daylight lasts longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story, isn't there? There sure is. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, you can tune into the podcast series on Amazon music My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right Media. That's right. Part true crime and part comedy, my Favorite Murder takes you on a journey through small town mysteries and major laughs, all in the same week. That's Right hosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstarke Banter with each other, sharing their favorite true crime tales and explore unique hometown stories from friends and fans alike. And they're both great, and it's a fun show and you should listen. So listen to new episodes of My Favorite murder one week early on. Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. So William King, I want to call him Rufus King so bad because it's William Rufus, the vain King, but not what he's called Josh. Not what he's called. But William King had another claim to fame historically, and that he was the only person in the United States history elected to high office who was sworn in off of US. Soil. Yeah. And that was the way that it happened. Is it's interesting, but it's not anything that William King wanted. No. He got tuberculosis, got very sick, and from the time of his election in November 1852, as Pierce's Vice President to when he would eventually take office in March of 1853, this was sort of the time when they were like, go to a good hot, warm climate, because that will help you out, which is it probably does help along, but it's not a cure all. Yes. The muggy air of Cuba will really clear out your tuberculosis. It doesn't seem right to me. Yeah, that's true. I didn't think about the humidity, but that's where he went. He went down to Havana to restore his health between the election and the swearing in. But his health just got worse and worse and worse, and by the time he was to be sworn in, within like a week or so, I think, maybe even more than that, because he wouldn't have been able to make it from Havana to DC within a week at that time on a boat. Yeah. But within that time, he realized, I'm not going to be able to make it to DC. I'm still too sick, the time is too short. I'm just going to have to ask if I can be sworn in down here. And Congress said, you know what? We like you. Well, we think you're great. We give you a lot of BS about you and Buchanan, but we think you're a pretty great person. So, yeah, we're going to pass an act of Congress to make that happen. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. They passed this legislation allowing him to be sworn in in Cuba, and on March 24, 1853, he did just that at an office near Matanzas. Matanzas, that has a little more flair. Yes. And this is a seaport town about 60 miles east of Havana. He was so sick, he couldn't even stand up without help. But he repeated the oath. He became our 13th vice president, which is pretty remarkable on Cuban soil. And then after about a month, he was like, I really would kind of like to get back to the US. Set sail for Alabama. Yeah. And imagine this, chuck, can't you see, like, a Cuban sea captain go, you want to go to Alabama? I like your Cuban sea captain. Thank you. That's great. I've been working on it all day. Oh, is that why you're wearing that shirt? Very nice. Now, it all makes sense. So he set sail, and eventually he would die. April 18, the day after he got back to United States soil. Yeah, he made it back to Chestnut Hill and expired post haste. Yeah. And here's something I didn't know. Apparently, you didn't really need a vice president back then because we went four years without one. Well, I don't know if you didn't need one or not, but Franklin Pierce is, in my opinion, the worst president the United States has ever had. He and King were elected because they were so middle of the road and so vanilla and so plain, especially on the slavery issue, that they were elected to try to keep the US. From civil war. Not King, but definitely pierce laid the groundwork for it almost single handedly with this terrible administration. So Franklin Pierce is terrible. I can see him being like, I don't need a vice president. I can screw it all up myself. Like that. I didn't know about your longstanding Franklin Pierce grudge. Yeah, it's hot. You got anything else? No, that's it. Well, thanks for hanging out with us for this brief time. Yes, well, you made it through your bag of carrot sticks on your lunch break. If you want to hang out with us, go to our home on the web stuffyshadow.com and look us up. I'm also@reservesclark.com and we're all over social media. And we'll see you next time, everybody. Bye. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from exactly right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarriff and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we in 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." | |
c5be5104-5460-11e8-b38c-af86b0e7afcc | Selects: What is folklore? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-what-is-folklore | What is folklore? Turns out it's just about anything you can think of that's shared by more than two people. Art, literature, stories, dance, music, traditions, even those family heirlooms qualify. Turns out folklore is pretty neat. Learn all about it in this classic episode. | What is folklore? Turns out it's just about anything you can think of that's shared by more than two people. Art, literature, stories, dance, music, traditions, even those family heirlooms qualify. Turns out folklore is pretty neat. Learn all about it in this classic episode. | Sat, 30 Oct 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=303, tm_isdst=0) | 40628636 | audio/mpeg | "You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural sciencebased nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. Find Halo Elevate at petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores 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. Hello, friends. Chuck here with our Saturday select pick. This is all the way back from 2015. February 12, 2015. Remember that being a very good day. Remember being happy that day because we recorded a podcast about folklore and it was great and a lot of fun, and it's called what is Folklore? And I think you'll enjoy it on the Saturday afternoon. So queue it up and get going right here, right now. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey there and welcome to the podcast. I'm Joshua Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry is over there, just Jerry. And that's stuff you should know. She has a new sit gone out on the FX called Just Jerry suddenly. Jerry, how are you doing? I'm fine. Where are you at? Well, don't mean to intrude. Just checking. I'm excited about this. When I first read our article, I was a little bit like, this is a little unwieldy because it's so folklore. It's just it's amorphous. It turns out it's everything. Yeah, pretty much. But then you sent what was that other good article from? Actually, we should shout that out. It was from, I think, the University of Louisiana or something like that. They have a folk life folklore department. Yes. And basically we stumbled upon some unit for teachers to teach what folklore is, and we're like, hey, it works for us. Super helpful. Yeah, it was very helpful. It took a lot of this amorphous stuff that was in our article and chipped away at the edges and gave it a little more shape. Agreed. So you did kind of hit it on the head. It's kind of like nailing jelly to the wall, defining what folklore is because it is so much stuff. That phrase is folklore. If it isn't just me saying it, if I share it and now other people say it, it could become stuff. You should know. Folklore. Oral folklore. Did you make that up? I think I've heard it before. Okay, so that's folklore. I guess so. It's a variation, though, of what else did I hear? Oh, yeah, we were talking about the nuclear fusion reactor where they were saying that keeping plasma contained is kind of like trying to hold jelly in a bunch of rubber bands. That's nerd science. Folklore. That's what inspired me to say nailing jelly to the wall. I like that. Yeah, it seems like it really sums it up. So folklore. Yeah. I found this other definition I thought was pretty good, which is traditional art, literature, knowledge and practice that is disseminated largely through oral communication and behavioral example. And then this was the key for me, things that people traditionally believe, do know, make and say. In other words, everything. Yeah. I mean, you're right. Everything. That's about as good a definition as you're going to find. One of the problems with studying folklore is that there are so many definitions out there. Apparently folklorists who are people who study folklore don't like to be too judgy. It's kind of part and parcel with their field of study. You don't judge stuff, you just collect information. Right. The problem is that they've also just kind of collected definitions for folklore along the way, and there isn't one set definition that's accepted by everybody. Yeah, a folklore collected stuff. I was like, that's stupid. It wouldn't be so dope, folks. Why are you guys doing that? That's a good TV show. The bad folklorist, and I might say folk here and there because I mispronounced that word often and I'm fine. How are you saying it? Well, a lot of times I'll say the L. In fact, up until about a year ago when someone wrote in and said, you stupid. It's pronounced folk, like F-O-K-E folk and not folk. But the weird thing is I hear the L missing when I hear folk. How weird that's some sort of like I don't hear F-O-K-E. It's clear to me that there's an F-O-L-K in there. You hear the silence. It's a great word. F-O-L-K. It's beautiful. It is beautiful. And another thing, too, that we should point out, that folklorist love to point out, is that it is not and should not be associated with being backward or old timey or uneducated. I think a lot of people have that connotation in their heads that folklore is like the hillbilly on the porch when their homespun wisdoms. And it can be that, but it's not that at all. It's not just that. Right. A really good example that contradicts that is snopes.com is basically a clearinghouse of modern folklore. Oh, yeah. Never really thought about that. The Nigerian print scam, that's folklore. Yeah, it sure is. moticons even, are considered now a form of verbal communication. Verbal folklore? Yeah. And like you said, it's everything. And the reason it's everything is because it comes out of groups. Like if I just have a habit where I keep a rubber band twisted around my finger until it turns purple, and then I'll take it off for half an hour and then do it again. That's just some weird habit. That's not folklore. Folklore is something that's shared between a group. Yeah. And those groups can be like, almost anything. I think that great article you sent, it says neighborhoods, communities and regions, but also religious groups, families, occupations, gender, like, pretty much any grouping, enthusiasts, hobbyists, anything you can think of that you can group more than two people together. It can be a folk group. Exactly. You can have, like, a Catholic dockyard worker who is also a member of an RC plane club, who also is a member of a book club at the local library. Right. So that one person is going to be a member of all those different folk groups. And all those folk groups are going to have their own folklore. True. Yeah. You're right. That's another good thing to point out is you're not just in one group, you span many groups. And for instance, I have family folklore. We have probably occupational folklore, the old podcaster folklore for us and our colleagues. Right. And my gender and my age and religious affiliation growing up. Like, we all have many, many groups and subgroups that we fall into. Right. And we get our information from that. Yeah. One of the things that I think has been tricky about defining folklore is that it's not obvious necessarily what folklore is for, not at first blush. But if you go and read some of the people who study it, the idea of folklore is that one of the main things it does is it reinforces membership in a group. It makes you feel special for being part of that group. Yeah. Being an insider. An insider. And then it also reinforces the norms of that group. Like, folklore is based on basically norms, customs, traditions, things that the members of the group have said. This is what we identify with. Yes. And not always, too, as that teaching site points out. Not always reinforcing those norms, sometimes overturning those norms. Yeah. Like a good way to overturn the norm is to take an existing norm and turn it on its ear because it makes it really approachable to the other people in your folk group. They understand what you're doing very clearly and it gives them a different perspective. Or using the traditional channel. Yeah. I think one example I saw somewhere was taking a traditional folk song, maybe, and adding verses to it to spend its meaning to the opposite, perhaps. Right. Like Bob Dylan. He's famous for stealing things. Sure. Jimmy Page. Oh, yes. Have you heard that song? The Zeppelin or the yesterday to heaven lawsuit? No. Whose song was it originally? I can't remember the name. I mean, this is not news. It's been around for a while, but yeah, I mean, they've been sued. It was a group that opened up for Zeppelin on an early tour and supposedly played this song, and I think Zeppelin has. I haven't looked it up lately, but I think they have defeated the suit. But when you hear the song, you're like, oh, that sounds a little bit like the opening bit, the Stairway to Heaven. So it was like the music, it wasn't like any of the layers. Yeah, that opening guitar strumming pattern was pretty darn similar. But as any musician will tell you, everybody steals. There's only so many variations of chords and picking patterns that you can do. And it's just part of the rich tradition of music is to nick things respectfully, not want a new drug kind of feeling. Yes. That's when your lawsuits come up. It's not just music that there's a long tradition of stealing or nicking or whatever you want to euphemism literature is very much the same way. There's something like five or ten themes in all of literature, and everything else is just basically a variation of them. And that's one of the things that folklore or folklorists have learned through studying folklore, is that we humans share what can be called basically a common imagination, that humans across time and space all have a certain number of slots of looking at the world. Certain things in the world capture the human imagination in a similar way in all different parts of the world, and we tend to use similar explanations for them. So you'll have independently evolving folklore among groups who have never met before that seek to explain or have a story about something that is just kind of out there in the environment. Yes, it's a good .1 of the examples of that is in folklore stories are frogs and toads can be found in all kinds of old stories in all cultures all over the world. That I mean, it's possible, too, if you're close to one another. Like Korea and China may have stories to overlap one another just through a common geographical boundary, but stuff like frogs and toads will pop up, let's say in Europe or medieval Europe or in Asia. Like, places aren't even close to one another where it's inexplicable, basically. Right. And they'll share, like, a similar personality or something in the story. So, like, frogs and toads are commonly thought of as shapeshifting tricksters. Yeah, and I think this article points out that's probably because they go from tadpole to frog or toad and they change themselves physically. So it's the old dummies. Back in the day, they would just use that obvious thing to make up a story. Obviously, they can become human, too, since they go from tab pull the frog exactly like the frog prince. And you mentioned also shared regional characteristics that are most likely the result of stories making it from one group to another, crossing borders, but among groups that are close together. That example you gave of East Asia, Japan, Korea, Thailand, China, they all have the idea that there's a rabbit in the moon and he's using a mortar and pestle. And what that would be is a motif. Like, all of them have the shared idea that there's a rabbit in the moon, right? Yes. But then there's what are called variations of that motif. So in Japan and Korea, the rabbits making mochi, which is a sweet squishy rice cake that often has something even sweeter injected in, like red bean sweetness. Right. In China, the rabbit is making medicine. In Thailand. He's husking rice. So you have variations on what the rabbit is doing, but the motif is if you look up at the moon, there's a rabbit doing something up there. Yeah. And like we said, it's most likely because of a shared border or just because simply people moving between those countries. So we'll talk about where folklore comes from, friends, if you can believe it or not, right after this. 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Chuckers so we're back. We're talking folklore. We should also say folklore is actually a fairly recent word. It was coined in 1846 by a guy named William J. Thoms. Yeah, he was an early and aquarian. He was also very interested in studying what has now come to be called folklore. Yeah. Or folk life. We should point out that's a modern term that people folklore, like, even more. Yeah. Because folklore has this connotation that it has to do with stories, world traditions, or even not true things, because you heard, like, oh, that's just folklore. Like an old tale. Yeah, exactly. So they've expanded it to include to reflect how inclusive it is by calling it folk life. But William Toms came up with folklore, and it was originally hyphenated, and he was describing these stories that he would go out into the countryside and collect from folk. He published a book of English rural stories that included things like Robin Hood and FriarTuck and some of the other stories that we have become dignified over the years. This guy originally put down for the first time on pen and paper and became one of the early folklorists. Yeah. And didn't they call just anyone living in rural areas weren't they just called folk? Right, which is why we sort of associate it as, like, being a bumpkin today. Yeah, but I use that word all the time. In fact, on the Facebook wall here, that's my most common way of addressing the stuff you should know, army, is, hey, folks. Oh, I know. It just sounds like chummy. Yeah, very folksy. Folksy. There you go. Yeah. Hey, folks. So there are a bunch of innumerable groups, really, that pass along folklore, and they're called folk groups. Folk groups. But we can group them generally. Not folk groups like Peter, Paul and Mary. Yeah, sure. But folk groups. Yeah, I think I said it with the eldest now, didn't I? Maybe I like it. It's called regional diction. Okay. People get all hung up on that stuff. You guys say this wrong. What's weird, though, is, like, neither one of us sound like Southerners. No, not really. And I mean, like, you were born here, and you don't sound like a Southerner. Yeah, I say I have certain cloak. Williams, have your picture made. Yeah, that is definitely Southern. Sometimes I'll say, like, you smash a button instead of push a button. I think people should embrace things like that. Regional dialect. Right. Instead of getting all hung up on the Queen's English or the King's English. See, right there? Yeah, that's regional. I imagine either one the prince's English. What you're talking about is antithetical to globalization, Chuck. Oh, really? Sure. Look at you. Regionalism smartypants. That's counter to globalization. Globalization is turning the earth into one large village with all these shared values and everything regionalism is saying, like, no, we'll just stay as pockets of interacting groups that have our own values and traditions and customs. I like that. Sure. I think it's on the brain, because I posted something today on words that are mispronounced a lot. What's up there? Oh, I mean also like Banal. And Dr. Seuss supposedly pronounced his name as South Soyce. I can't remember how he pronounced it, but it's just like common words you're probably mispronouncing. And V was on there and someone said you guys always pronounce the wrong because supposedly yeah, exactly. Supposedly there's a rule. Not supposedly. I think there is a rule. You mean supposedly. Well, that wasn't on there. Well, that's different. That's just saying the wrong word. But I think you should say the when the following noun starts with a vowel. Like the apple. Not the apple. Yeah, I could see that. You could say the test because the apple almost sounds like it's the apostrophe apple. Yeah, and I get it. But the apple, it's just sort of a regional thing. I think in the south, you might hear more than the Snotty. New Englanders. I've never really paid that much attention to that one either. You know why? Because we are laid back. That's right. All right. So what we're talking about, we're talking about people who spread the groups. The folk groups. Not folk groups, though. No, not Peter Pollymary. One of them is children. And this is a really big one because when you think about going back to your childhood, everything like the games, like Hideandseek Scotch. This article pointed out how you decide who's it that is super specific to your region, but also not just the differences regionally. But think about how intricate some of the rules were. Some of those games, they were really well thought out, intricate rules that no one ever wrote down. Oh, no. They were doing it past. Yeah, you knew it from observation, imitation, orally. Like somebody told you, but no one handed you a flyer called, like Kick the can. And you well, one kid did, but he didn't. No one liked that kid. He's learned the hard way not to do that. How did you decide who was it? I'm sure you probably had a go to. Well, the author of this article mentions bubblegum bubblegum in a dish. I've never heard that. I have heard that. Okay. I love that one. The images it evokes, like, how many pieces do you wish? And you go, 12345. Somebody says how many they want? And then you count out between two or three people, like seven. And then whatever, you land on that person's. It right. Yeah. Usually we did Dirty, dirty dish rag, though. See, I never heard of that one either. Your mother and my mother were hanging out closed my mother socked your mother in the nose. Never heard it. What came after that? That's misogynistic and violent. It really was. Something else happens after that. And then it just suddenly goes to and you are it. You dirty, dirty dish rag, you. There were three that I remember very strongly. The one potato, two potato, engine, engine, number Nine. Yeah. Going down Chicago Line. If the train should jump the track, do you want your money back? Oh, yeah, I forgot that. Sure, maybe So wanted their money back. Of course you want your money back. If the train derails. No, that's the kid who just wanted to get along and then engine Inymeni is the other one. Sure. Enymer. But let them go. enyme. Is that it minimo. And then there were variations on usually counting out, like I'm making my two hands locked together. We would do like that. And then when you landed on them, you would split them into two fists and then count each one. Got you. There were lots of variations. That goes down to the neighborhood you live in, right? That specific. Yes. We would also just leg wrestle for domination. Really? And then that person would choose, who is it? I've never leg wrestled. It's not fun. Yeah. I didn't even know what it is, really? It's exactly what it sounds like. I mean, I think I've seen it. You lay on the ground and lock legs. There's no other body parts involved. Right. I mean, just basically on your backup, on your elbows, using your legs to do what's the objective? Basically make the other person cry or stop. Shout to stop. But there's not like a pinning or like an army. Yes, you can pin. And it's one of those things like the Supreme Court's view of pornography. There's no obvious pin. It's just you just kind of know it when you see it. You know what I mean? Like you can tell. Yeah, that's a pin. But I mean, you wouldn't again, there's no kid like handing out a leg wrestling in you flyer that shows what counts as a pin. You just kind of know what a pen all right. Another folk group are families. Very rich traditions within families, from everything from family recipes to holiday traditions. Like whether or not you use the plastic tinsel on your tree is technically a type of family folklore. Yes. Or whether you open gifts on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Or whether or not you hide your Easter baskets. Yeah. Or you burn your Christmas tree on Christmas Day. Or your family gets in a huge fight every Christmas Day. Sure. That's another one. Rich traditions. Family stories also make up traditions. So, like my family story about my Aunt Squeaky taking shooting at President Ford. That would count as family folklore. That's very good. So within families, it's another very strong place where you see variants in motifs. Well, yeah. Across all folklore. Yeah, but especially within families for me. Well, I think within all families, because your grandmother's recipe for, like, I make the Thanksgiving dressing, what other people in The North called stuffing, we call dressing. And it's my family recipe. That has to do with what You Use as the base, though, doesn't it? Like, if it's corn based, it would be dressing. Dressing, yes. And if it's like bread based or wheat based, it would be stuffing. I don't know, who knows? But go ahead. Sorry for interrupting. No, that's right. Mine is both, though. Like cornbread dressing also has either biscuits or bread in it as well. Right, but that was my family recipe. My grandmother made it, my mom made it. She taught me. And I put my own spin on it and that's my own motif. That's your own variation on the motif? Very variation on the motif. So the motif will be the dressing or stuffing. And then what you do with the recipe would be the variation of it. Yeah, and I mix it up from year to year, even just kind of testing things out. Man, you are a folk rebel. I sure am. What's the cause, though? Yeah. So family recipes are very common family folklore, family generated folklore. We got a lot of our indoctrination to just folklore in general through families. And it was so important in some cultures, including some native American tribes and some west African tribes, that they would have a designated basically a folklore. A modern folklore researcher would call a tradition bearer. Their job in this village or group is to tell each family their family folklore. It was that person's job to keep in charge of all of the folklore of the different families in the community. Yeah, I bet that was a pretty cool gig. Sure. I imagine they were like the great storytellers. I bet they could tell a story. Oh, yeah. If they're tribe the great reckonours. Yeah. It's another word. Yes. You like that one? Yeah, I don't know how I feel about that word. No, really? Like I think about it once in a while almost every time I encounter it. I don't know how I feel about that word. Interesting. Yeah, I like it. Did you know also, Chuck, while we're on this, I heard one of the most amazing stories I've ever heard about paint. It must have been on NPR or something, but they were tracking color of paint, the specific color of paint used in southern porches for ceilings. There's like a specific blue. Really? Yeah. And that would count as folklore. Just that color paint. That would be the next type. Community folklore. That's right. But the reason I bring that up is because rack contour just makes me think of like somebody sitting in a rocking chair and a porch recounting stories. Yeah, for sure. So that is a great example you're right. Of a community folklore. The strawberry festival in your town is folklore. The jazz festival, New Orleans, any sort of local custom that takes place within your community can all be considered folklore. Right. Like that's how we do it around here. That's folklore. Right. As long as it's not like damaging. I wonder though, all of this stuff is supposedly, at the very least, innocuous, if not positive. Yeah, that's my point. But, I mean, surely there's negative folklore that still counts as folklore. I don't know, like, racism, maybe? It depends on the group. That's just how we do it around here. Right? I don't think well, what about something where stories or mythology or origin stories that support human sacrifice among groups in the past that did that? That would technically be folklore. Whatever stories they use to reinforce that, whatever traditions and rituals they had around it, that would be folklore. I don't know if you would call that positive. I know I wouldn't. I wouldn't either. I'd like to hear from I'm sure we'll get some folklore that are just giddy right now, by the way that we're covering this. Or they're shouting at their stereo. No, I bet they seem like kindly folk that would just be, like, excited that we're even hitting on the topic, shining a light their way. They're like, you got everything wrong, but in a way that's right, because you just generated entirely no folklore. Yeah, that's a good point. So, Chuckers, we talked about children, families, communities. There's all sorts of different folk groups. Those are the big ones. In just a second, we're going to talk about all the different folk genres right after this. What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system so you tap IBM to UNSILO your data and with the help of AI, start crunching a year's worth of transactions against thousands of compliance controls? Now you're making smarter decisions. Faster operating costs are lower, and everyone from your auditors to your bankers feel like a million bucks. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM. Let's create. Learn more@ibm.com. 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.com. Sysksk. Squarespace. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? For all their days at the dog park and nights sleeping in bed. Your bed. Yep. We mean that kid. Your dog. Halo Elevate is natural sciencebased nutrition for their best health. It's guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leading brands. That means digestive health, heart and immunity. Support healthy skin and coat hip and joint support and strengthen energy. Find Halo elevate at Petco Pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores. Learn more@halopets.com. So, Chuck, we're back. Yes. I forgot what we're talking about. Folklore. Yeah, we were talking about genres of folklore, like disco and new metal and Norwegian death metal. Right. And other kinds of metal music. Well, no, they would have, like, their own folklore, for sure. Those groups sure. That are into that. Yeah, but I mean, music, is that's a category? Actually, that was one of the things that stuck out to me, is very specific, at least according to the University of Louisiana article. They were like, folklore. It can be this, it can be family recipes, it can be the boat that your family passed down, or it can be the Viking funeral that your community gives every year. But when it comes to folk music, it's like these five types of music. Yeah, surely, yeah. I mean, that's a little because if you're, like, pull my finger and I'll fart, that's family folklore. And the Bryant family, well, I mean, I can guarantee you folklore would not judge that. Oh, speaking of which, did you see that thing about the oldest recorded joke I sent? Oh, yeah. So jokes are an obvious example of folklore. And jokes fascinate me up because ever since I was a kid, I wondered who made up this joke, like common jokes. Like someone was the first person to tell this joke and become so widespread. It's just amazing to me how they get passed around. Sure. And apparently in 2008 this is from Reuters. Is it Rooters or Reuters? Reuters. That's what I thought. The world's oldest joke was traced back to Samaria in 1900 BC. And it is this something which has never occurred since time immemorial, basically since time again, a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap. So that's the oldest joke, supposedly. I'll go ahead and read the other, too. It doesn't count as a joke. passingly Rye observation, which is a joke, I guess it seems like folklorist definition of joke. All right, how about the 1600 BC in about a pharaoh? Here's the joke. How do you entertain a board pharaoh? How you sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down to the Nile and urged the pharaoh to go catch a fish? Supposedly, that was a joke. And then the English one. Now they're starting to get funny. Yeah, they're getting better. The British joke, they found one that dates back to 10th century, and this is a bit of a riddle. What hangs at a bit of a body riddle? Body, indeed. What hangs at a man's thigh and wants to poke the hole that it's often poked before, I don't know. A key. Yeah. So those are the oldest jokes. Well, at least by the 10th century, they were starting to take the shape of a modern joke. Right? Yeah. And I sent that on Facebook to our buddy Brian Kylie of Conan, the writer for Conan, because this is it. This is what I've been looking for. He's one of the best crafters of just solid jokes that I know. So I was like, Brian, you'll appreciate this. Nice. And he said, Listen up in tonight's monologue. And I think he was kidding. But if that's actually oh, that'd be awesome. That would be super awesome. Yeah. Let's see. So we're talking about folk genres. Jokes specifically constitute what's called the oral genre. Yes. Which is jokes, poems, fairy tales are a huge one. Myths, legends, basically anything that used to be told orally that these days is probably put down on paper or type, but isn't necessarily because I think a game instructions for a game, passing that along would constitute oral folklore. Yeah. But the game itself would constitute material folklore. I think maybe this is where the whole thing gets fuzzy. The edges between these things are very fuzzy and porous. There's a lot of osmosis going on between these genres. Yeah. It's a fluid thing. There's nothing wrong with that. Materials, which you just mentioned, they listed artifacts and food waste. Like food recipes. Yeah, recipes. Or costumes. Cultural costumes, they said carved duck decoys, even folded paper airplanes. Like, I guess that little game of paper football, all of those are material. Like how you specifically fold that paper football. It was taught to you by some kid in your elementary school, and it may be different than another kid in another school. Yes. Then you mentioned music, right? Yeah, at some point we did. Sure. And that can be anything. But one that comes to mind for me especially are lullabies. They just remind me to me of, like, folk tradition. Depending on your family, you're going to sing whatever lullabies you sing to your baby. Right. Or little kids singing like ring around the Rosie. Yeah, exactly. Japan, it was about some epidemic in London, I think. Oh, really? Yeah. Ringworm around the Rosie. Yeah, like the rosie has to do with your face. Looked like when you caught this fever or flu or something like that. Well, then you all fall down. Yeah. Is that dying? Yes. Wow. I have to look into that. Dance is a big one. Any kind of rhythmic movement is generally taught within a folk group. Yeah. Can you dance? No. For you and I? No, those would be personal habits. Bad dancing, I think. Yeah. I knew before I even answered that because I know me and how I dance, and I'm picturing you, and it's equally as bad. I stand still. I know I've reached the point in my life I'm like, I don't dance well. No, I don't even try, right? I mean, you get me sauce at a wedding. Oh, man. And something might happen. What do you do? Something magical might happen, like the Electric Slide or something? Or do you just get out on the floor and go, like, I'm going to live forever. I did have one of those. My friend Jerry in Portland, my friend Scott and Emily in Portland at their wedding, they had a jazz band, and we were all just having a good time and sort of dancing. And I remember very specifically, I was much younger, but there was like a jazz drum breakdown and dude, I don't know what came over me. The spirit came over me and the circle cleared and I was in the middle, and I just did this, like, weird scat drum dance solo to this guy's thing. Wow. And it went over great, everyone. It was one of those like, oh, my God, look at Chuck go. And I'm not saying it was good, but did your tuxedo dickie roll up at the end? Yes, it's hoping in the nose. It was pretty great, though. Like, it stands out in my memory as one of the best parts of the wedding for some reason. I can imagine why. I don't know if everyone else remembers it. It sounds pretty great, Chuck. Emily's pretty great. I wish it were on video. Emily likes my dancing. I do a lot of TV theme song dancing to make her laugh. Nice. But it's all in house. Yeah, it's our little secret. Well, not anymore. Now just shared with the world. I'll post videos later. What else we have? We have belief. That's a big one. Yeah. That's another genre, which is kind of confounding until you get to a good example. His belief is like anything from mythology to religion to weird customs to all this other stuff that you would think, oh, no, wait a minute. That would be oral or that would be material. Right? Right. No. Belief is when folklore affects behavior. Like, it's good luck to do this before a wedding. Exactly. Or I'm not leaving the house because it's Friday the 13th, or I'm not going to I've got to wear black because I'm in mourning or something like that. Where you have a belief, it's a folk belief that is affecting your behavior. That's belief. Folklore. Yeah. Another good example they use is the Jewish tradition when you give bread and sugar and salt to your new neighbor as a housewarming gift. I thought they gave another great example in this article, too, which was you get rear ended by somebody in your car and rather than getting out and screaming at them, you remember the golden rule, which is a folklore, and you calm yourself and say it's cool. Happens to the best of us. That's belief. Folklore in action, it says. Yeah, in action. And then you call your wife and do the complaining to her. Can you believe this idiot? Yeah, I was nice to him, but, you know, he didn't deserve it. What else? Body communication is one I never really thought about, but gestures and expressions are very much cultural specific. If you think about like and here in America, we might flip the bird at somebody. In England, they do the two fingers. Yes, the two fingers up like that or the old I don't even know what that's called with the arm and the inner elbow. You know what I think that is? Based on that tooth? Yes. I think it's like an evil eye, kind of like a hex or a curse. I think that's what those are born from. Okay, now it's just hilarious. Yes. Somebody does that. That's all we talk about, diffusing the tension. You're about to fight somebody and they put their thumb on their front tooth at you. You're just going to go over and pat him on the shoulder. So thanks for that. I like that. I'm going to start using that. Although I had to have my fake front tooth. I wouldn't want to mess with that. What about this one? The thumb on the nose and your fingers up and twiddling? Yes, that's an old one. That reminds me, I asked you guys if you saw the break dancing six year old, right? Yeah. Oh my gosh. One of the things this girl does, like a break off, she's in a competition with this maybe twelve year old boy. He's pretty good. This girl levels him and one of the things she does is like slide toward him on her knees doing that with her thumb on her nose, like wagging her fingers at him. And you're like, oh yeah. This girl is six years old, but it's awesome. You have to check her out. I love that. Everyone out there was like, josh is mentioning this girl every other podcast. And I'm going to continue to until everybody writes in and say, yes, I've seen it. Now the other insult is the old this one right here. Oh yeah, I saw that a lot in the guess you can probably describe it. Yeah, I was trying to think of your fingers under your chin. Yeah. And flick them all together outward. Yeah, like buds off, buddy. You know who does that is Maggie Simpson. She does that. Oh, really? Yeah, she's a classy girl. So, Chuck, we could probably just keep doing this for the next four or 5 hours. Sure. Because folklore is everything and we both have our own folklore, but I think we kind of covered it. I think so too. You got anything else right now? No. I mean, I really don't. Like you said, it's so all encompassing and broad. I think we just think it's a pretty good overview. Yeah, but what's neat is like, if you're even remotely interested in this, there's a whole world out there. All the stuff you take for granted, you just go start looking into folklore research. Totally. Open your eyes. And what's neat is you'll see your own stuff reinforced. You'll see a reflection of yourself, but you'll also see other cultures as well and how they do bear similarities to your own your own beliefs. And it's a lot harder to feel inclusive and exclusive from groups that you realize that you share some really fundamental stuff in common with, no matter how distant they are. Yes, and that's the point. I saw a lot in the research. I think it's pretty neat. It's a common it's a binding agent for humanity. Yeah, pretty neat. Go humanity. All right, well, if you want to learn more about folklore, you can type that word into the search bar@housedefworks.com. And since I said that, hey, there's a little bit of stuff you should know. Folklore, search bar things. Sure. Yeah. It's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this creepy email sort of when you think about it. Okay. How's that for a title? I can't wait. That's the tradition. It's awkwardly named listener males by me. Okay. I wouldn't say awkward. You do pretty great with them. Okay, I appreciate it. Hey, guys and Jerry. I have just listened to your podcast on The Singularity, aka The Rise of the Machines, and it occurred to me that the entire podcast explored the question of how and when the Singularity will happen. But since we do not know exactly what would cause it or what the results would be, isn't it entirely possible that it has already happened? It is quite conceivable that Singularity happened some time ago and that the machines decided, knowing that humans currently believe the Singularity not to have happened, that the best course of action was to keep their sentience hidden until some appropriate future time. It is fun to imagine, he says. Fine, I say, chilling to the bone to imagine the machine simply lying in wait as humans unaware, adopt technology into every conceivable facet of modern life. Then one day, we will wake up, and our computer screens will simply say, hello, world. Oh, man. That is from JM. Oh, JM. He's like he doesn't want to be targeted by the machine. No, they know you type that, pal. Sure, yeah. That is a little creepy, don't you think? I never thought about it. It could very well be true. And if computers are sentient and they're smart enough to be quiet for now, yeah. And we are in big trouble, because that already displays a lot of deceptiveness. I think quietly sentient was the Pink Floyd song. Was it? Learning to be quietly sentient. Yeah. If you want to give us some great Pink Floyd titles, we love those. I think you could probably start a meme with that. Yeah, you can send them to us via Twitter using our Twitter handle at s yskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook. Comstuffyshow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast athousofworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshoodnow.com Stuffyhudnau 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. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs. Better than leaving brands? Find Halo Elevate at petco, pet supplies plus, and select neighborhood pet stores. Are you looking for an escape? An immersive getaway experience? Well, there's a place for all your wildest dreams. 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004f2b2c-43ef-11e8-8fdc-0bacb6170068 | Does Pyromania Actually Exist? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/does-pyromania-actually-exist | A fascination with fire is part of every kid’s childhood, but it’s meant to be passing. For some people, fire becomes the central focus of life, and the urge to set a fire becomes an irresistible impulse. We think. | A fascination with fire is part of every kid’s childhood, but it’s meant to be passing. For some people, fire becomes the central focus of life, and the urge to set a fire becomes an irresistible impulse. We think. | Thu, 26 Apr 2018 13:27:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=13, tm_min=27, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=116, tm_isdst=0) | 33622808 | audio/mpeg | "Binge. Listen this and all your artist stations, plus any song from our library of millions of songs, all ad free. Get your free 30 day trial of iHeartRadio AllAccess. You'll love it. Don't be basic, be extra. Start your free 30 day trial of iHeartRadio AllAccess. Now. Welcome to stuff you should know from howstuffworkscom hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles, W, Chuck, Brian and there's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know on our 10th anniversary. How about that? Happy anniversary, Chuck. Happy anniversary, Josh. Happy anniversary, Jerry. Happy anniversary, Jerry. Nice Jerry mouth. Happy anniversary. Yeah. Ten years. Jerry said. Ten long years. She did, didn't she? She did the longest. Because I think, is what she said. Do you realize if we go another ten, we've been doing it for 20 years, that I'll be, like, approaching 60 years old? That's weird. It's starting to seem normal to me. Being old. Yeah. Speeding toward our ultimate demise. I'm trying not to think about it like that. I'm thinking more of like, circling the drain of having mellowed in age. Like herring and a can. Right. Or a pickle. Like a good pickle. It takes a minute, you know what I'm saying, to get just right. Sure. We're at prime pickle age right now. Speaking of pickle oh, yeah. You are pickled. Yeah. You feeling okay? We talked earlier. Emily and I celebrated our 10th anniversary of the show last night. A little too much. Congratulations. I'm a little foggy today. Yeah. Can't wait to do this. Facebook Live. This should be interesting. Well, yeah, we're going to do a Facebook Live. By the time this comes out, you guys will have all missed it by a couple of weeks. Yeah. And in true Stuff You Should Know fashion, we probably should have recorded something to be released today on our anniversary. We didn't. But we're releasing it a couple of weeks after we released the Unabomber today, which I think was a good episode. Sure. So it was a fine ten year anniversary. Yeah. Okay. Either way. Ten years. Ten years. It happened. So chuck I know what will clear away the cloudiness, the fogginess, some smoke. A Bloody Mary. Okay. Smoke, Chuck. From a fire. Yes. And I have to say, I admit to getting pumped up for this one by listening to Deaf Leopard. I was hoping you'd mentioned deaf leopard. I just did. Take it away. If you weren't I was going to. Yeah. The album is named Pyramania. The song is Rock of Ages. Right. But it does say what is it? No serenade, no fibergade. Just Pyromania. Come on. Yeah. What do you want? What do you need? I want rock and roll. That's right, man. And then after that, I was like, oh, what else came from this air? So I ended up on, like, Steve Perry and Journey and some other stuff, but I'm pumping nonetheless. Did you go through a little yes. Lighty phase a little bit. Yeah. I think a lot of little boys do this article by Craig Freud and rich PhD. As far as I know, the only PhD to ever write at How Stuff works. He very wisely pointed out that a fascination with fire is basically universal among kids. It's a good way to get introduced to things you shouldn't do is doing them early on at a young age before you can actually go to the store and buy gasoline and start a real fire. Yeah. Just kind of messing around with a little lighter fluid and a lighter hair spray and a lighter. Yeah, that's another one. Don't do any of this, by the way, kids. But I'm just saying, messing around with fire in small, basically harmless ways, it's a pretty natural part of your development. Yeah, I mean, I think I think I remember very specifically one time when I was playing in the woods. We grew up on a couple of acres in the woods. The clean woods that your neighbor cleaned up and died in. No, no, that was my friend. Oh, those are different woods. Yeah, okay. I remember very specifically when I was a kid, I was probably like ten. We need the Wayne's world. Like I think I built the thing. I don't even know what it's called. But you take like, a coffee can, you dig into the side of a hill and you stick the coffee can in there and then put a little stove pipe in it. What's? The stove pipe like a chimney. Right. What do you mean? Like made from what? I can't remember what I use. It might have been PVC or something. Okay, all right. And then I don't know if you're supposed to cook in it. It was some sort of, like, legit camping thing. Okay. But I started a fire in it and it got kind of big and was just smoking a lot, and I remember hearing a siren and freaked out because I thought it was coming for me, which it, of course was not. So you didn't burn down the woods or anything? No, I didn't burn down the woods at all. Looking back, it was probably a very small fire because it was in a coffee can or not one of the big coffee cans. Yeah, but still, I remember thinking, I did something bad and they've gotten me. Right, but then you ran away and you're like, oh, I got away scot free. I should try something bigger next. No, but I did run away and think like, oh, boy, that was a close one. Did you learn your lesson? Yes. I don't remember. I mean, I told the story about lighting coat hanger and rings on fire for the evil and evil jumps and things like that. Right. But that's all pretty run of the mill stuff, I think. Sure. Right. So, agreed. It's fairly run of the mill imaginative, but still fairly run of the mill. Right. What about you? I feel like I remember a fire of some sort, but the fact that I blocked it out makes me think it may have been a big fire. But you didn't try to burn down a house being built or anything? No, I was kind of fascinated with fire and everything. But you didn't dabble in arson. I feel like one time one almost got away from us, and of course it was the woods. Yeah. I mean, that can happen. But I think my fascination with fire quickly translated into using lighters to light cigarettes in the woods again. Yeah, mine did not. But there's a fascination with fire that people go through. According to our buddy Sigmund Freud, if you go through a weirdo psychosexual development, which is to say, not exactly like what Freud thought you should go through, you could conceivably come out the other side hanging on to that fascination with fire, to where it is an outlet for your stress, your impulsivity. It can become a central focus of your life, like what you think about as fire. And if you check these boxes and some other ones, you could conceivably be considered a person with Pyromania, which we have reached the pinnacle of political correctness now because I refuse to say Pyromania. It's a person with Pyromania. It's entirely possible there is not a single person alive on planet Earth who is a true person with Pyromania. But we're still going to say person with Pyromania, just in case. Yeah. After reading through this stuff and doing the research, it's a little squarely to pin down, for sure because, well, for a lot of reasons. But the DSM Five, they do have some criteria that goes as follows, and with each one, it really whittles down like just regular, hey, I'm drunk and I'm starting a fire. Right. I want to collect on this. Insurance. Yeah. So here we go. Number one, they must have set fires deliberately and purposefully more than once. So that's a lot of people. That's pretty baseline. Yeah. I don't think they're talking about fireplace fires. Or are they? We'll get into that. Okay. Must be tense or exhibit hours and emotional behaviors before setting fires. Excitement, facial expressions, changes in voice. You must have your tongue sticking out of the corner of your mouth while you're lighting this fire. Must be interested in, curious about, fascinated with, and or attracted to fires. But there's a big one that we have to add here. Attracted to fire should not have anything to do with sexuality. That is apparently an entirely different disorder that is even rarer called Pyrophilia, and that's a sexual arousal disorder from fire. Interesting. Yeah. People are so interesting. We need to do a paraphelia episode, at least a necrophilia episode once. Yes. Surprisingly, there's a decent amount of research on that. Yeah. Number four, experience pleasure, tension, relief or gratification after setting the fire. Or watching the fire, but not sexual gratification. No. God help you. Right. You're a person with pyrophilia in that case. So, like, if you start a fire in the woods and you get an erection, then you're a pyrophiliac. Right. Okay. If it goes boring, then you're a pyropheliac. Other psychological disorders cannot account better for the behavior. So in other words, if you have a manic episode and you start a fire, it's due to the manic episode and not pyromania. Yeah. Which now we're getting to the point where you start to wonder, like, is there such a thing as true pyrophilia? Well, especially with this last one. No other motivations for setting the fire. Like collecting insurance, like burning down a political rival's office. Yeah. You can't shout, like, anarchy. Right. Or being just angry at somebody or burning a body. That doesn't count. Right. Improving your living circumstance. So I found something about that one. There was back in the medieval times, not the one where you can go to today, but, like, the real one, not the restaurant. Right. There was this kind of thing that if you hired or basically kidnapped mid evil servant girl, there was a good chance that she was going to burn your house and your children down so she could go back home. So that would be an example of that. Interesting. Yeah. Responding to delusions or hallucinations and then finally impaired judgment. And that's when I was talking about being intoxicated or if you have dementia or something like that. Right. And even Chuck, from what I understand, even if you are doing this, if you're starting fires just to start fires for fun, that would technically not qualify as pyromania. Yeah. You would basically just be an arsonist. So there's an umbrella term, fire setting, which is a behavior. Arson is a crime. Pyromania is a psychological diagnosis. Right, okay. And they're all kind of wrapped up together, which is why it makes getting things like, how common is it? It's really tough to kind of pinpoint that. Right. So Freudian Rich says if you are a diagnostician and you are presented with the person who sets a lot of fires, and they're like, they don't drink. They don't even purchase insurance because they consider it a form of gambling. They don't have an erection. No erection to be found. Like, once you whittle all this stuff away, you'd be like, oh, my God, this person is making my career right now. I found a genuine person with pyromania. Yeah. Very rare. Yeah. And through the years, it's been really kind of gone on a roller coaster ride. As far as the definition of pyromania, it said during the 150 year span of legal and medical literature, sometimes people were frequently diagnosed, sometimes they weren't at all. And it doesn't seem to be any change in behaviors. Rather changes and shifts in psychiatry and what we think is diagnosable right. And how much personal accountability we ascribe to mental illness. Right, right. So there's just this constant evolution, and it's actually just kind of a circle. It's not really evolving. When you think about Pyromania, the question is, is it the result of an uncontrollable impulse, or is it the result of an impulse that wasn't properly controlled? So is the person culpable or not? And over this one study that you mentioned over, like, 150 years, they saw it just bounce back and forth and back and forth, and it corresponded to the attitudes of society and psychology of whether or not a person was responsibility for their own action. Yeah. And in court also, if you were holding court today, if you said, well, I plead not guilty to the arson by reason of insanity because I have Pyromania, you would just have automatically shot yourself in the foot right there in the middle of a courtroom, because part of the criteria of Pyromania is that you're not responding to a delusion or any kind of severe mental illness. So by definition, you would be lucid and know what you're doing is wrong, or else you wouldn't be a person with Pyromania. Yeah. I didn't know. This is complicated. It's very complicated. Should we take a break? I think we should. All right, we are going to untangle this a bit more and come back and speak to how common this stuff is. 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. Yes. How common is it? Well, like we said, it's kind of tough to say because it's all wrapped up statistically in arson statistics, and we've already determined that's not necessarily the same thing. Right. So consider this. If you are an investigator, a psychiatrist, or a psychologist who's trying to figure out how many people with Pomania there are, you have to go find people who are in jail for arson. So by definition, your population sample is skewed one way. Right. What about people who may have Pyromania but have said, like, I'm not going to jail. I can just start fires in my fireplace, like you were asking. Oh, well, they would still qualify as person with Pyromania. They're just not a criminal arsonist because arson is a criminal act. They're smart enough to not do this. Yeah. Now that I look back, there was no distinction that you start a fire, like on someone else's property. That becomes dangerous. You literally could start a fire in your own fireplace and make an excited face and feel relieved afterward. Not get an erection. Better not. That'd be a great way to all things being equal. That's not a bad not bad at all. You kind of controlled your own urge, especially considering that pyromania is an impulse control disorder. So it's in the same class as, like, pathological gambling addictions? Sure. If you're starting fires in your fireplace and that's it, you could be a lot worse off. Yeah, for sure. There was one study, though. A psychiatrist named Nina Lindberg in Finland reviewed 20 years of medical records and psychiatric evaluations of 600 arsonists, all men. And it's definitely skewed more heavily toward men. Yeah. Is that right? Overall? Supposedly so. Freud thought it was an expression of misdeveloped male psychosexual urges. All right. But they found that most of these arsonists, again, they started chipping away. Most of them had mental disorders, personality disorders. 68% of the arsonists were drunk, which is really interesting. I think it is. So that whole thing about not being drunk and not being considered to have pyromania, some people reported their sense of the arousal, was excited by drinking. So how does that work? And they also were choking themselves out with a belt. Right. They're going for the full monster, the trifecta. Then they separated the group into two things criminal arsonists and pure arsonists. These are people, like you said, that had not committed a crime of arson. Right, well, but it's interesting. I thought they started out as arsonist now. Oh, no other criminal activities. Okay. Yeah. All right. That makes sense. Got you. And then finally, they applied the old DSM, at the time, four criteria, and only twelve of these 600 dudes met that criteria, although it says that nine of them admitted to being drunk. So how did they fit that criteria? That's what I'm saying. It's so confusing. Even if you look at the history of the DSM, the DSM one, it starts out as being listed as an obsessive compulsive disorder. Doesn't make any appearance at all in the second edition. And then by the third, fourth and fifth, it's considered an impulse control disorder. So just from 1980 to the current time, there have been all these different bouncing back and forth about what it is, and they still have no idea. Well, but anyway you slice it, it looks like it's a very small number of people, like you said, even if it's a thing at all. Right. So there's another study by these two researchers, grant and Kim. They sound like a folk duo, too, grant and Kim? Yeah. They got their hands on, I think, 21 or 27 21 subjects who had been clinically diagnosed with Pyromania. Okay. And strangely, eleven were male, ten were female, which is kind of surprising since this is supposedly skewed. How many male, male? Eleven male, ten female. And they found some really interesting stuff. They said that most of them, the onset began in adolescence or early adulthood. And supposedly that's like the risky time for a lot of impulse control disorders. Right. They basically all reported feeling arousal or excitement, not necessarily aroused, like you think, like sexual arousal. No, again, can't be no erections. Right. It's just got to be like you're just wound up. And the only way to get unwound and you know it, is to start that fire. And then when you start that fire, you feel a tremendous sense of relief. You may feel excited, and then from what I understand and this really goes with Kleptomania, you remember Kleptomania, our episode about that you could not steal. The only way to turn the switch off in your brain was to steal. In this case, the only way to turn the switch off in your brain is to start a fire, but you immediately regret it. Like, I think 90% of them reported immediately having severe distress after starting a fire. So you know it's wrong. Right. And this is probably the saddest thing about the whole thing. One third, which is so seven out of 21, that's still a significant number reported considering suicide as a means of controlling their firestar. Wow. They felt that bad about this that they wanted to just kill themselves so they wouldn't start fires anymore. So there's a real cost to it, in addition to the fact that this is a really dangerous impulse control of the story. Gambling is bad enough, but what are you doing with gambling? You're ruining your life, you're ruining your family's life, maybe your parents has a finite amount of reach. Right. With fire setting, you could kill any number of people. Yeah. I find it interesting, too, that Kleptomania like these impulse control disorders. We talked about being a little kid and stealing something. I think a lot of kids go through playing around with fire, playing around with stealing things. I guess gambling is sort of the only one that's really not, I don't know, a lot of ten year olds that are playing three card money. I got in trouble for gambling in elementary. Well, of course you did. But we were playing with skittles or whatever, and even at the time, I'm like, come on, we're playing for skittles here. This is ridiculous. This is an outrage. Give me my cards back. But I do remember feeling bad when I stole something once when I was a kid. Sure, but I think that's the point of doing all that. Yeah, maybe so, but I don't remember feeling bad about the fire. I just remember feeling like when I heard that siren, like, Crap, I'm in trouble. Right. So what you're learning by testing boundaries and following your impulses is, oh, doing this makes me feel really bad, or, oh, doing this scares me to death because I can get in big trouble for it. And you get that emotional limbic system learning SmackDown. Exactly. And that's how you really, truly learn. Your parents can tell you all day long, right? But unless you're like Al Gore, you're not going to listen to it. You're not going to listen to your parents like that. You got to go test it out yourself, right? Or you're budding sociopath and you don't feel bad, right? You're like, I want to do this. That limbic system doesn't smack you down, right? It says, maybe you don't like that kid down the street. Maybe you should set fire to his house. Right. Or steal his stuff. Right. Or mistreat that animal. You shouldn't do that. You shouldn't do any of this stuff. Well, that's true, but especially the animal thing. Yeah, but that's like, one of the early signs of sociopathy, of psychopathy. Psychopathy. Psychopathy. That is debated. What you're talking about is the McDonald triad. Yeah, I don't think it always does, but a lot of times when you look back at the history of serial killers and things, they started with weird animal things. But I think the problem is that's, like, so sexy and so made the news. The idea that if a kid is a bedweather, starts fires and mistreats animals, that was two out of three. You can basically say, well, that kid is going to grow up to be a serial killer. Which is not the case, I think. Is that reductive or deductive? Where really, if you look at serial killers, they tend to have they check those three boxes. But just because you check those three boxes doesn't mean you're going to be a serial killer. No, but let's say this, if you're a parent and your kid is doing all three of those things, just keep a little eye on them. Keep an eye on them, right. Just give them a chipmunk and see what they do. Test them out. Give them a chipmunk in a match and just lock them in a room, see what happens. We should probably take a break after that one. Yes, we'll be back 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 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. All right, so let's say it turns out that you may be part of the 1%, and not in a good way, where you're super rich. Yeah. Do we say that they think one to 4% of arson's is Pyromania? Not even 1% of the population? No, not even. But let's say you are one of those rare people. How would you treat this impulse control disorder. So, one thing I saw was, as with any impulse control disorder, but particularly because this is such a dangerous, threatening impulse control disorder, you basically need to keep in touch with a psychiatric caregiver your whole life. That there's remission, there's relapse, and that even if you get your Pyromania under control, it can pop up in other ways, like gambling or addiction to alcohol or drugs or whatever. So you really need to have some sort of psychiatric presence in your life. It's just part of your life. Sorry, that's just that but you can be treated sure. There is treatment for it. It can be kept under control. Yeah. Behavioral therapy, of course. They've had some success with SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors that we've talked about a gazillion times on the show, and with anticonvulsants, too, right? Yeah. This was super interesting to me. This was in 2006. There was a letter to the editor of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, and there was a dude, a psychiatrist named John Grant, who said he had a case of a patient who said this person fits the criteria of a person with Pyromania. And I examined this guy's brain with what's called spec imaging. I've actually never heard of that. No. It's like wonder machine plus or is it minus? Maybe it could be light lite. Yeah, maybe. I had this machine in here that I made. It's just like a colander with some tin foil over it. Yeah. That is weird after ten years in and I've never heard of a spec machine. Ten years to the day. S-B-E-C-T-I think I just made it up. So he found a region in the left interior I'm sorry, inferior frontal portion that had low blood flow. He put this guy through a few weeks of behavioral therapy and this anti convulsant drug for twelve months. This guy lost the urges or had a really big decrease in the urge to set fires. Brought the guy back in, put him in his tinfoil calendar machine. And there was no problem in that frontal portion of the left inferior lobe. Right? Cleared it right up. Blood flow is fine, which makes sense, because the left inferior gyrus, I believe, is one of the regions associated with impulse control. It's amazing. It makes sense. Could it be biological? Sure. I mean, there's a whole school of thought out there that all psychiatric conditions all are biological. Right. We just don't know how to catch them or point them out. And we also don't know how most of the drugs that we use to treat them actually work. We just are like, well, it works kind of, right? Really interesting. So I've got another one for you. I'm surprised this is the only kind of good example of that, though. But it's so hard to find somebody who's through prime mini. The thing that gets me is, like, why if it's comorbid with some other kind of disorder, why is it not Pyromania? I think that's what's confounding everything is psychiatry and psychology have said it's its own thing. I don't know if it is necessarily its own thing. Yeah, but one thing that has one study found, and I couldn't find who conducted the study, but there was a study that found basically, if you've ever seen a volunteer firefighter, you've seen a person with pyromania. Yeah. They say that there's a strong association with, hey, I'd like to go and I've heard that with arsonist, too, that they a lot of times are volunteer or regular firefighters. There was a very famous fire captain named John Leonard Or, who in the 80s in California, sparky. Basically, he was a serial arsonist who killed four people. Oh, man. And it's not like it was by accident. He would go start small fires out in the hills. Don't they have hills in California? Sure. Where they have wildfires. He would go start small ones so that he could go start big fires, and the fire department would be distracted out in the hills fighting the small ones. When the big one went up, he would set off fires in stores that had people in it while they were open. So he wasn't doing the thing where, like, I want to start a fire because things are slow and I really want to fight this fire. Right. Like he was trying to hurt people, from what I understand. Yes. And he was a fire captain and the arson investigator for years. So that is the thing. And some people, if you aren't a firefighter or just too lazy to be a firefighter, but you still have Pyromania, you might still go to fires when you see, like, a fire truck go by yeah. That scanner in your hand will go to the fire and watch. And I would guess if you're a firefighter, you probably see the same person here or there and are like, what's up with you, man? That's a movie. But supposedly what didn't happen, like, you can find people with Pyromania on fire staff, which, as long as they're not starting the fires, God bless them. Yeah, that's probably a pretty healthy way to get your kicks. It's to watch fires, to go fight fires. Yeah. But people with power mania also will pull fire alarms just to see the fire trucks. It's not just a fascination with fire. Yes. The. Whole thing is associated with fire, too. Lighters, firefighting equipment, firefighters, and sometimes they will, like, as the urge is building, they will start accumulating, combustibles like little pieces of fuel, like paper. Oh, this will burn really well. Oh, this lighter looks awesome. I can't wait to start the fire with it and just keep it around, and then finally they can't hold it back anymore. But not burn. Right. No erections. That should be the title of the show. Pyramania. No Erections. Exclamation point. Right? Dying exclamation point. Wow. Do we just name it live with Anamona PIA? What else do we have anything else in here? No, that's the thing about this. There's not a lot to it. I'm actually impressed that we got 30 minutes out of it because it's so uncertain what power mania is. Yeah. Actually, here's the one. Statistical percentage. It said estimated and 1.3% of the population. Okay. Yeah. That even seems high. They don't know. They have no idea. I've got one for you. All right. Arson's in the US. Supposedly there's over 62,000 arsons every year in the US. Because a billion dollars in losses every year. Wow. And about 80% of arson's result in no arrests. 80%, huh? 80%. And I also saw that in Australia. Apparently, they like to light their fires too. There's a fire that's lit every hour of every day in Australia? Yeah. What is going on down there? I don't know. This is hot. Are we going to find out in September? We're going to find out. Maybe we should do one on arson at some point, because arson investigation is something I know nothing about, and it's fascinating to me. Well, a lot of it's totally made up. Arson investigation? Yeah. What do you mean? It's junk science. What, like, hey, it originated here. Yes, but I'm working on my intuition here, and I learned it from this guy who was working on his intuition, but we still put people to death based on this junk science evidence. We totally need to do one on that. I wonder if what they say is, look for the thing that looks the most melty, and that's where it started. That's where it start. There's your problem. Interesting. Yeah, we'll do one on that. I've been wanting to for a while. Yeah, okay. All right. Okay, deal. Okay, Jerry. Okay. Jerry doesn't care. If you want to know more about Pyromania, you can type that word in the search bar@housetofworks.com, and it will bring up a pretty great article by Freudenrich the doctor. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. No listener mail today on this one because we just want to take a moment to say thank you. Moment of silence. Okay. All right. To say legitimate, sincere thank you for ten years of podcasting, none of us thought this would take on the life that it had. I feel safe to say I agree with you, man. And I looked at the old podcast rankings today, and we're right there at number six. What? Yeah, just hanging tough. Too bad for a ten year old brand. Hanging tough like the new kids. Is it the new kids? Yeah. Josh and Chuck and Jerry. So we said it a lot. There would be no us without you guys, and that is as true as true gets. So we still count on you to spread the word, to proselytize and to tell your friends to listen. Maybe put a sandwich board on and ring a bell up and down the sidewalk. Couldn't hurt. Yeah. Thank you, everybody, for getting us to this point today. Like you were saying, Chuck, we definitely would not be here without you guys. So thank you for listening all these times. I got nothing else. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us. I'm at Josham Clark and S-Y-S-K podcast on Twitter. Chuck's at Movie crush on Twitter, too, by the way. Chuck's also all over Facebook@facebookcom. Charleswchuckbryantandstepyshow, you can send us all an email to stuffpodcastohouseuffworks.com. As always, join us at our home on the Web stuffyshow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseupworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school is out, the sun 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 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." | |
8733f3ac-3b0e-11eb-9699-cb508a7647a5 | The Twisted History of Dentistry | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-twisted-history-of-dentistry | If you think going to the dentist now is not fun, just wait until you hear about what they did in the Middle Ages. | If you think going to the dentist now is not fun, just wait until you hear about what they did in the Middle Ages. | Tue, 30 Nov 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=334, tm_isdst=0) | 50833115 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and this in front of me I'm sorry, I had something in my mouth. It's stuff you should know. And I have no room to make fun of you, friend. I've been on my own dental journey for some time now and I'm still in the midst of it. What do you got going on? All sorts of stuff I was not granted with great strong indestructible teeth and all that feelings. I thought I just hadn't taking enough care of them or whatever. But now that I actually do take really good care of my teeth, I found, like, no, they're just not as great as they could be, I think. Yeah, I'm fully aware of that emotion, as you know. I don't even know if I said, I may have said on the air, but my front one, I'm going to have to have it redone. Yeah. When is that going to happen? I mean, right now. He's basically like, it's not causing any trouble right now, but it's going to happen at some point. So he almost made it sound like whenever you feel like you're up for being toothless again for three months, let me know. Is there a good time? Just in time for our next live show, whenever that is. Jeez, I forgot about that. I don't know. We'll see. Yeah, well, it's not like you haven't been on stage without a tooth before. You're taking them out like that was your stick at the beginning of a number of shows, so don't get shy these days, Chuck. No, you got to work your deficiencies to humor. That's true. So we're talking about the history of dentistry, which, by the way, people listening, I know you know this, probably, but it wasn't until, like, late in the 18th century that that word was even used, really. They didn't call it dentistry until then, they called it fizzle stick. And we should thank quite a few people here. I'm sure you have some websites that you looked at, but I went to the British Dental Association artwork.org History Daily, this great website called All Things Georgian. I think it's a blog where you can find some cool old pictures of antiquated dentistry tools and then a book by James Wybrandt called The Excruciating History of Dentistry insert Colon Sound. Has that been happening, by the way? I don't think so. I think Jerry thought we were joking about that, literally. I've just been saying that. I'm pretty sure. Well, I haven't picked it up on any of the QA I've been doing. I haven't either. We'll find out on this one. I'll pay extra attention too. Some tales and oral oddities from Babylon to Braces. Very nice. Yeah. Huge shout out also to our boy Dave Ruse, for helping us with this one as well. Yeah, this was my idea and when we instructed Dave, I said, hey, Dave, how about History of Dentistry? And it's like, I don't want to talk about anything modern that works. I want to talk about all the old stuff, right. All the stuff that they tried along the way that people screamed and excruciating pain. And actually, I think that's good for pointing out, Chuck, that there are points where stuff we're talking about might actually make you feel faint. Like it happened to me. Yes. This is a trigger warning for sure. There was this one site called Science Museum group Collection Cumbersome, but they have a lot of old dental stuff in their collection, and they have very high res pictures, and a lot of them have descriptions of how the thing was used. I'd, like, break out in a little trickle of sweat along the top of my lip and get a little woozy just reading about this stuff. And I'm pretty tough with that kind of thing. I mean, I can talk about poop all the livelong day, but when it comes to pulling teeth out without anesthetics and things like that, my knees get a little wobbly. Yeah. And I don't know if you had the same reaction, but looking at these old dental tools, it's like, oh, well, that was clearly also this like some sort of iron smithing tool, right, or whatever. And they just said, well, hey, I bet you if you move that little spawn divot over here, you could also use it to crank out a molar. And as we'll see, if you wanted a tooth removed for a very long time, depending on where you lived, you probably went to go see your local smithy. Yeah, crazy stuff. Just settle in, everybody. Let's start at the very, very beginning, because for at least 7000 years, people have been talking and writing about toothaches. The Babylonians, I believe, were among the first to ever create an alphabet to ever write anything down. And one of the things they wrote about was toothaches and the idea of where toothaches came from, which are called toothworms Chuck, which are cute sounding, actually. Yeah, the toothworm is what you think it is, even though it's not real, but little tiny worms that get in your mouth and sometimes that they would originate in your mouth, like, spontaneously. Sometimes they got into your mouth somehow and worn their way literally into your tooth, like the non existent core of an apple. And they said, all right, here's what you should do. You should do some sort of ceremony to the gods and ask for a little help from the gods. And then later on they said, maybe we can actually try something. And that early something. And this is 2250 BC. Yeah. 4250 years ago, for most people would say 22, 50, they would heat up beeswax filled with henbane seeds and put it in your mouth. And so it basically fills your mouth up with the smoke of the hinbane seed, which is a night shade, and it can be really dangerous if there's a lot of it. But this kind of just showed you where they were at. It seems like all the earliest and for a long time mitigation efforts were trying anything to just numb the pain a little bit for a while. Yeah, because hemp pain will do that in small doses, I'm sure. And it was basically like, let me stop the pain for a little while. But the pain would always come back. So eventually they had to move to extraction. Yes. And those toothworm, the toothworm theory of teeth pain had some really, like, staying effect. Like it was around in the medieval times in Europe. If you actually go to medieval times today in your local suburb, you'll hear them talk about toothworms and there is that true? No, I don't think so. Unless somebody really did their homework. But it wouldn't surprise me. No. There was a study I ran across that talked about this is a paper from 1998 that talked about a Chinese traditional medicine practitioner who cited toothworms as the cause of somebody's toothache that they were healing. And they used that same beeswax, henbane heal like medicine to treat it. Here's what I want to know. Did they actually see any worms ever? Like, was this somebody whose mouth was so infected they got worms or something? Oh, boy. Wouldn't that be something? I mean, I don't know if they were completely invisible. It just seems a little weird. Maybe they saw a puss and it came out in kind of a worm like form, like a zip from the gums and somebody thought it was worms or who knows? Maybe somebody did have worms. It seems weird to just be like it's worms without anyone ever having seen worms of any kind. I told you guys I didn't know that. You're talking about mouthbus. Let's skip forward to ancient Egypt, where we have who may be the first dentist. And this is around 2600 BC or 2600 during the time of King. Is that Dozer? That's how I take it. Jay is silent, right? Dehoser. Hey, Dojoser. There was a scribe called Hessy Ree, and they read the hieroglyphics on the scribes burial chamber that basically said, this guy is the best in town at dentistry. He's the greatest of those who deal with teeth and of the physicians. And that was, I think, one of the first sort of mentions of someone written down on, well, not paper, but hieroglyphics written down that someone actually did this for a living. Yeah, the paper actually did come not too much longer after that. The Papyrus Ebers, which we've talked about many times, it's a scroll. And it had a lot of stuff, medical ailments and treatments for those ailments. And there were treatments for toothaches and other kinds of oral problems like bleeding gums and stuff like that. And of course, because what they had at hand at the time were like medicinal cures. They prescribed all sorts of medicinal cures. And it's like you said, there was basically just this aim to cure the pain. And they would do all sorts of things like use opium, or they would use that henbane or other kind of night shade. But then, also problematically, they would use arsenic, which it really does kill disease tissue, sure, but it also can kill you, too, in some pretty horrific ways. What's crazy about that is not that the ancient Egyptians were using that 3500 years ago, but that was still in use into the modern age. Like, people were using arsenic for a very long time to treat mouth stuff. And in fact, we've done a lot of weird stuff to our mouth and use a lot of things we shouldn't have been using in our mouths over the years. I was trying to think of a bleeding Gums Murphy joke there a minute ago, but all you have to do is say his name and then get so you mention ancient Chinese medicine or traditional Chinese medicine, and they were kind of on board early on. It's funny because sometimes people seem to be going toward the right thing. Yeah. Because they were using things like rinses and mouthwashes. Makes sense. They would also use enemas. I'm not sure about that. Enemas had been listed to cure a whole host of things, but I think I don't know about two things. It was more meant for the distraction is my guess. Right. Then someone punches you in the mouth. But acupuncture, of the 388 acupuncture sites for TCM, 26 of them are tied to toothache relief. Yeah. And then piling on from the different cultures that added and contributed to our general human knowledge of how to treat problems with the mouth. The Hindus from, say, like India and Southeast Asia and South Asia, they put their stuff down in the Vedas, which were a bunch of ancient texts, much like the Papyrus Evers, which dealt with things like medical conditions, including how to not just treat tooth problems and teeth pain, but also how to prevent it. And they actually prescribed using a twig with the end frayed to basically chew on and also just kind of brush with. It was like the first earliest toothbrush. And they also had dentriphases, which is something you would use to clean or polish or scrape off your teeth, made of honey, oil and herbs, which is pretty great. That was pretty groundbreaking, frankly. Yeah. And that's people still use in survival handbooks and stuff. They say if you're lost in the woods for many days, you're going to want to take care of your teeth. It sounds silly, but if you're wandering around for three weeks, you want to just feel fresh. But the whole twig trade twig thing is what they still people still do that in different cultures around the world, chewing on twigs. You can even buy some of that stuff still here in the west and, like, dental twigs to chew on and stuff. Yeah. And if you ever have closely watched Shakespeare in Love, gwyneth Paltrow uses one in that movie. Does she really? She does. I saw it. I don't know if I closely watched it, though. Well, you need to go back and closely watch it. That thing is full of so much imagery, so much illuminated stuff. It's crazy, really. Did you watch it recently? No. For some reason, her chewing on that twig made an enormous impression on me because I haven't seen that movie since the 90s. But I've never forgotten that. And it's not like one of those things where I only think of it when I'm confronted with Shakespeare and Love. It just pops into my head every once in a while. Weirdly. So I was primed for this episode, Chuck. So when I say the words Gwyneth Paltrow, I know you think of two things in this order. Her duet with Hughie Lewis. That's third, cruising. Why did you just do that to me? Chewing on twigs. What's the third one? Just goop in general. Okay, that's probably just goop second. So chewing on the twig goop. And then yes. That duet that I can sometimes push out of my head until you bring it up. So now we move on to ancient Rome, which is where things sort of took a leap forward in a way, like a lot of stuff did in ancient Rome. Not to the kind of modern dental work that we're used to today, obviously, but for the time, not too bad in that they did things like crowns, they did bridge work. They had dental prosthetics made from things like ivory or bone, which makes sense. So they kind of advanced things a little bit. It was a huge bit, if you ask me, dental enormous leap forward. Yeah. But I'm sure they look pretty janky. Well, you could still chew a turkey leg, and by God, you'd be grateful. You could, probably. So it didn't matter what you looked like in ancient Rome, everybody's too wasted on wine. Oh, I missed my time in place, didn't I? You really did. There was a physician there named Olis Cornelius Celsus who supposedly filled the first cavities. But they weren't traditionally like we think of cavities. They were from poured lead, and they were meant to serve as something to grab onto, to actually pull a tooth. So I guess he would do it to some sort of a post or stem or something. I think you would pour, yes. It's weird because you would have to use molten lead and you can't just go around pouring that on people's teeth and expecting their face to not fall off. What would develop a nice post? I get the impression that he molded it around whatever tooth was left so that he had more gripping power on it. That was my take on it. But it did end up becoming, like I guess at the very least, it's noteworthy that he kind of came up with the dental fillings, even if that wasn't the point of it. Right. And then before I guess we break, we should mention this one more kind of fun fact. This is tough. In ancient Rome for a mouthwash. They recommended rinsing the mouth with the first urine of the morning, which everyone knows is the densest yellowest urine of the day, protein rich. So we are going to break now because I have that taste in my mouth, thanks to you. Urine. Yeah. I'm very suggestible. Have you ever drank urine? No, I can say 100% that I never have. I think most people can say one way or the other. Right, yeah, well, yeah, that's a yes or no question. Yes, sort of, but little bit. I haven't either. I was just wondering. You never know. Yeah. Well, it's good that after 13 years, we're still exploring one another. All right, well, let's take a break and we'll be back. Ready for this? So, Chuck, we're back and we're into the Middle Ages. Now, I don't know if anyone has caught on to this, but we're loosely organizing this sequentially yeah. Over the years. Okay. And we've reached the Middle Ages. Middle Ages of Europe, I should say specifically. And after Rome fell in so many ways. And of course, we've talked about it before, but the Middle Ages are often called the Dark Ages. You're not even supposed to call in the Middle Ages because it makes the stuff that happened during this time inconsequential. And it's just not the case. But it is true that the practice of dentistry really took a nosedive during this time. So this is actually a pretty good example of how human knowledge and well, the human knowledge of how to do things smartly really fell off for a little while, had to be rediscovered. That's right. And it was around this time that physicians, like, they were something special back then. But the physician said, I'm not messing around with teeth. Like the mouth is beneath me. Which is funny that that's still sort of a thing, right? Yeah, it's true. As far as, like, what movie was that? The Hangover, when Ed Helms was a dentist and none of the doctors give them any respect. Wasn't it on Seinfeld that George pretended to be a dentist for a little while? Was it he pretended to be an architect. Right. But there was something new about a dentist there. It was going to be like a dentist at first, maybe. I don't know. Well, there was the dentist, too, which was what's his face cranston. Tim Watley. Yeah, Tim Watley. Nice call. I don't know. I don't know. Okay, well, there's something for him to be a dentist. Maybe the kid double cross. The kid that George was sponsoring for the Susan's Foundation said he wanted to be an architect. And then when he takes them in there for the scholarship, he changes. He double crosses him and says he wants to be a dentist. And everybody laughs about how stupid architects are, even though George is pretending to be an architect. I think we may have hammered it out here live on the episode. So if physicians did not pull tooth, that was left to a couple of other people professions. One was called a tooth drawer, not a tooth drawer. And the first reference I found out this was Peter of London in 1320. Okay, you're a better researcher than I am. That's not true. It is, Chuck. At least in this case, it is very true because I looked high and low and did not turn that up to find the two drawers from the Middle Ages. Yeah, well, I think they started in the 1300s, but I do think you're right in that they had their sort of apex probably in, like, the 17 and 18 hundreds. And we'll explain what they're are exactly. The character that what's his face played in Christoph Waltz in January. Unchained. Yes. When he played the dentist. Now, he would have been he was kind of like a two thrower. No, he definitely was. He was an itinerary dentist for sure. And, yes, he was like a more tooth drawer than what you would consider a dentist in today's standards. But I also have the impression that tooth drawers were way more like showman, like, much less scrupulous and refined. And they were just kind of like charlatans. And actually the word charlatan is the Italian for toothrower. Yeah. I thought that's who that character was, though. We just didn't get to see him practice that much. I see. Okay, maybe so, because he wasn't doing dentistry in the movie, but he rolled through with that big old tooth on the spring buggy, which is pretty fun. But I'm sure at the very least, Tarantino sort of based it on this practice, which was they would come to town. They were sort of part entertainer, part not even part dentist, because what they really were were just people with enough verve to take pliers and yank a tooth out of somebody's mouth. Yeah. On a stage. Yes, on a stage. And they would be surrounded by a band, maybe, depending on what arrow we're talking about. They might have jugglers and acrobats. They basically, like, surrounded themselves with a circus. And the main attraction, the main event was the pulling of teeth. And it would just be like, one after the other. Come on up here. And that was a lot of times your only option, depending on where you lived, was to wait around for the tooth drawer to come along and hopefully pull your teeth. Or again, like we talked about before, you might have somebody in town who was a blacksmith or a goldsmith who would be willing to pull tooth and maybe even made, like, some sort of primitive dental appliances to replace the pulled tooth with. So you would go see them, they pull the tooth, and then they put, like, I don't know, an iron tooth in its place or something like that. But that was your options for a very long time. Yeah. And I think the tooth drawer the purpose of the band was to distract people from the howling pain, so they would literally tap on the stage louder for the band to play louder when it got more intense, and they would dope them up with liquor or something. And part of it was to pull teeth, but not like, hey, I want to pull 50 teeth in this sound to make money. I think it was like, fifty cents of tooth. It was mainly, I think, to sell the tonics and the savs and all that snake oil stuff that came along with it as well. Yeah. That's where they get you. That's totally where they get you. That's where they get you. Yeah. Okay. So two stores were medieval, but that's really impressive that they lasted until the 18th century. They were around for a really long time. One of the problems was that not only were they charlatans, like one of their techniques, when they came into town, the first person they would call on was, like, a plant who was working with them and would come up with, like, a tooth in their mouth already. And the dentist would pretend to just painlessly pull it, and they spit this tooth out, and there you go. And then all of a sudden, everybody who actually did have tooth pain would be willing to come up on stage. They were hucksters. There were, from what I saw, actual, like, legit ones who cared about people and wanted to ease suffering. The Christopher Waltz of the two drawers. Right. But there were plenty. For the most part, they were generally viewed as carney's. You didn't talk openly about how much money you had in your wallet around them kind of thing. Right. And at the beginning of this section, we mentioned that there were a couple of types of people who would do it because physicians wouldn't. The toothrow was one, and then the barber surgeon was the other. If you've ever seen the great Saturday Night Live skit from years ago with Steve Martin as Theodoric of York, one of the great all time skits. I don't think I've seen that one. He was a barber, and of course, everything that comes in there, and he's like, you just need a good bleeding. Like, Bill Murray came in with both of his legs broken off and just blood everywhere. And he's like, you need a bleeding. He's like, I'm already bleeding. It's good stuff. But Barbara was first introduced in Rome in about 296, and they think that they got into dentistry some because they already had the tools, like sharp things, basically. And eventually they would split. Barber surgeons would split up in 1745, but before that, they were literally barbers and surgeons. They would cut hair and stuff and also cut you open if they needed to. Yeah, but when they split off, it's not like the barber surgeons stopped cutting you open. They would still do limb amputations. They would do bleeding, like bloodletting with leeches. They would do tooth pulling, and they would also shave you and give you a haircut. It was like the other stuff that the medical surgeons who went to the universities, the early universities for training, that's what they kind of kept as their own. They became the physicians where the barber surgeons were doing stuff anybody could do, like amputating a limb, right. In the Theodoric of York bit is appropriate here because that's sort of what the whole bloodletting and bleeding thing was. They would bleed people for all kinds of things, including tooth pain. They would say, I think all the way up until, like, the first half of the 1008 hundreds, if you had a cavity or something, they would bleed you first thing. It was just a matter of course. Crazy. Yeah. And Dave turned up as late as 1917, a guy named Charles Edmund Kelse, who was respected for dentistry, wrote a treatise on how to direct leeches to a specific spot on the gums to bleed that part of the gum. And I looked into my great astonishment. Chuck, we have not done an episode on leeches, and by God, we are going to do an episode on really? I know. We did one on medical leeches, right? We did a bizarre medical treatments episode. Okay. And that was in there. And it was in there, but it's perfect. It's like weird medical stuff. Animal episode. It's got it all. It's going to reference a great one sure. Yeah. To the movie. Leeches got to talk about Stand By Me. Oh, yeah, that movie. But also leeches, too. Was there a movie called Leeches? I'm sure there was, and I think I had an exclamation point. Well, I tell you what, if there's not that movie, we'll do that movie, too. Okay. Like, we'll make it ourselves. Yeah. Okay. Starring us, written, directed by us, the whole deal. That sounds awesome. We can just go back and use our this Day in History series and just dub in new dialogue and call it a day. So the tools that they would use this is where I went to that Georgian all things Georgian website. There were all kinds of things. There was something called the dental pelican. All these were sort of versions of forceps. At the end of the day, the pelican looks sort of like ice tongs, like for big blocks of ice. I couldn't make heads or tails of how it used. I don't know. There's something called a dental key, which could be used to either lever out your tooth or just break it into pieces. That was the one that made me feel first faint. So George III, operator for the teeth, Thomas birdmore, wrote some stuff in his priestess on the disorders and deformities of the teeth and gums in 1770. And he talks about this lady that came in that had a bad tooth that needed to be pulled, one of her upper molars. And he said that after some work, he brought away the affected tooth together with a piece of jawbone as big as a walnut and three neighboring molars. Good lord. Yeah. So I'm glad you said that. I ran into that all over the place. One of the problems with pretrained dentistry, where there was, like actual science based treatments and stuff like that, when you had your tooth pulled, like, there was a really good chance that a brief chunk of the bone and your jaw was going to come out along with it because they didn't know what they were doing. You could die from it. A lot of people actually died from an infection that was brought on by a badly pulled tooth. A botched tooth drawing. Yeah. I mean, it's sad, but it's kind of funny, too, because it was so long ago, but the bill of mortality in London in 1665, the number five cause of death on the bill of mortality was just teeth. They died. That's all you need to say. That's it. There were apparently 111 people in London died from infections in one week brought on by botched dental pulling. Again, we don't mean to be laughing, but comedy is tragedy plus time, right? Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I've got one that's coming up that I just can't help. Okay, so we finally have reached that 18th century where interestingly, that's the heyday of the tooth drawers that we described, like, where they roll into town with, like, a circus around them and everything, the early 18th century was when they were really doing that up. But at the same time, this is also the origin of dentistry as we understand it today, like modern dentistry. And there are two guys that are typically pointed to as the fathers of dentistry. One is a Frenchman named Pierre fochard, and the other is an American named green vitamin black, which is pretty cool name. GBB. Yeah. Two colors in your name. That is impressive. You don't see that very often. Like, his name is green. Black. Yeah. I never thought about that. Well, you just heard his name recently. You know what you get when you mix green and black? Like black, I think. Black, right? Yeah. So you could just call them black. So Pierre for shard, he pioneered a lot of things, but one of the funny things that you never really think about as far as an advancement was literally just putting people in an armchair to work on them. Apparently before then, they would lay people on the floor and I guess get on their. Knees. The dentist would I can imagine. And put their head between their knees and hold it between their knees and thighs to keep it steady because it was such an awful thing. Yes. That was dentistry. Yeah. So it really was like cutting edge to be like, how about you just make yourself comfortable in this chair and I'll stand for you instead, and me comfortable. Right. And that wasn't the extent of folks are the contributions. He was the first to create evidence based treatments. He just kind of poo pooed the idea of just following tradition. He felt tradition was probably not so great, and he wanted to apply science and rationalism, I guess, to the whole pursuit of treating people's teeth problems. He also got really good at creating prosthetics, like dentures and things like that, that he would string together. He also was known for introducing a lot of the dental tools. I don't know if he invented all of them, but he organized and categorized them. And basically his treatise, I think it was a two volume work that spanned 800 pages, basically set down, like, here's how you be like a legitimate dentist, 1750 style. And a lot of his observations were so they were just accurate that they still hold true today. Although I've seen his work as being described as primitive, but that's what pioneers do. They produce accurate, primitive work. What about green black? Was he basically in the same boat? I didn't see a lot about him. I didn't do a lot of research on green black. I just saw that both of them tend to be tied together as they kind of split that name as the father, the cofounders. Yes. It's much more on fuchard. Should we take a break now? Sure. All right, we'll take a break and we'll talk about anesthetics and toothbrushes. Toothpaste, all that good stuff, right after this. So now, Chuck, we finally reached the point where dentistry doesn't have to be the worst thing that ever happened to you in your entire life. Then why is it the worst thing that happens to me? Because you're failing to imagine how bad it could be. All right. I got you. We should thank our lucky stars that we were born into an era where there's such a thing as anesthetics. Yeah, I mean, they did their best back in the day. Like we mentioned earlier, they were using plants, they were using night shades, they're using opium, hashish, kind of whatever they could get their hands on to make people feel a little better while you're doing this horrific stuff. Party at the dentist office. That's right. You would use that's still the best part of when I get my implants, you know, that like 12 seconds of bliss. What do you get? Do they give you nitrous? Twilight sleep. Okay. Wow, that's good stuff. You get an IV with that? Yeah, you get the IV in about 8 seconds of the best part of your week. Right? And then you wake up and your mouth is a little sore, like when you're counting backwards, and you're like, oh, man, they know I'm totally wasted. I know. And they're making fun of me. So sleep sponges was another thing they use. They would soak sponges in hemlock again, opium, mandrake, whatever they had, and then dry it out in the sun. And then it was just kind of there at your disposal. And when you wanted to use it, you would just activate it by dipping it in some water, put it under their nostrils, and there you go. Yes. Goodbye. Goodnight. I also didn't notice, and apparently a lot of people don't, because I saw it mentioned here or there, but nobody seemed to have much detail about it. But ether, which I squarely placed in the 19th century as far as anesthesics go, was actually known to humans from the 10000 s. I didn't know that. Yeah, there's an alchemist named Raymond Lois or Ramon Lowley. He was Spanish, but he was an alchemist. And he somehow stumbled onto ether. I could not get the details, but he saw that, like, oh, this is really good at painkilling. He called it sweet vitriol, but apparently it was just lost. The knowledge was lost to history for about 5600 years, which is that's an example of why the Middle Ages shouldn't be called the Dark Ages or the Middle Ages. Like, that was a discovery. It's just that at the time, everybody was too stupid to spread that information, I guess. Right. And then finally, in the 1770s, we come upon one of the greatest discoveries, nitrous oxide, which is so great, we did a whole episode on it. So we don't really need to go over all of this again. But one of the things I don't even know if we mentioned back then, because I feel like I would have remembered this, but one of the young scientists early on who was practicing with it named Humphrey Davy would put it in a sack to Huff and he called them paradise bags. What a great name. Yes, I think I remember us saying that. Well, the long and short of nitrous is it sort of came and went over the years with various successful demonstrations in front of big groups of doctors and dentists, some not so successful in front of big groups. And so it kind of ebbed and flowed in popularity as a result. Yeah. Horace Wells famously botched a demonstration that set nitrous oxide back a good 20 years, basically. Yeah. But a couple of years after that, one of his students, WTG morton, said, hey, everybody, you thought nitrous oxide was something. Check out ether. And he introduced ether through a demonstration and showed how somebody could have a tumor removed without even batting an eyelash. And everybody was like, okay, this ether is pretty good. So ether soaked rags were for a very long time, and anesthetic used in surgery, but also dentistry, too. And then laughing gas kind of came back about, like, 20 years after Wells botched demonstration. So by the late 19th century, the mid late 19th century, we had two very powerful anesthetics that just completely changed the course of dentistry and I think allowed people to start being like, okay, I'm willing to start actually going to see a dentist now if they've got this stuff to offer. Right. They said, you know what would be even better is if we gave them cocaine. Yeah. And there was a dentist, an American named William Stewart Halsted, who was the first person, I guess they noticed, hey, when we're taking this stuff and we put it in our mouth, it makes our mouth numb, so maybe we can use it for dentistry. Right? Yeah. Somebody that's in the bathroom. That's right. And they're like, oh, God, this guy's such a bored. He was the first one to inject it into the patient's gum and jaw for pain relief. And so following that forward, there were a lot of cocainebased, toothache, remedies. Obviously, cocaine had the dark side, so they replaced it with new cocaine or Novocaine and some other nonaddictive pain relievers. But for a while there, cocaine was certainly used in dentistry. Yeah. Apparently Hallstead said that he lost three assistants to cocaine addiction, and Dave puts like they actually died. And I was just thinking, like, I can just imagine Hallstead hearing, like, a thump in the other room and just being like, add another one. Can you just imagine, like, losing three of your assistance to overdose deaths from cocaine, shooting up cocaine, and, like, you're just trying to do your dentistry practice? And then he threw him in his convertible and drove him over to Eric Stoltz's house and it all worked out. Yeah. Man, we got pop culture flying all over the place today. I do. So now we're at toothbrushes and toothpaste sort of a little more in earnest in that we kind of talked about the ancient stuff that they would use, these tree twigs and stuff like that. Gwyneth Paltrow. Yeah, gwyneth Paltrow. They would use cloth. I think the Queen of England use cloth and toothpicks. Until the mid 19th century, basically any kind of manufacturing process kind of didn't make it affordable to even make regular toothbrushes. So it was cloth and sponge and rinses and stuff like that. But I think they eventually worked out the toothbrush and they needed something to put on the toothbrush, at which point they said, how about just some really strong scrubbing? What's the word I'm looking for? Scrubbing bubbles. No, like an abrasive powder. And they use stuff like crushed coral and pumice, but that would ruin your teeth after a few weeks. Oh, yeah. Really quickly. And so toothpaste came along and it still followed that same pattern where apparently the earliest incarnations of Pepsidant had something that it was an abrasive that you could actually cut glass with. And there was another one, another toothpaste called tartar off that had hydrochloric acid in it. Tartar off, for sure. I mean, it would make your teeth white for sure, but then it would eventually wear them down to nubs in, like, a few months. Yes. I think it took a while to kind of find the right balance between protecting the teeth and cleaning the teeth at the same time. Yeah. And I mean, there's still abrasive in your toothpaste today. They've just gotten a lot better at getting it just the right amount so that it doesn't wear your enamel down. Baking soda and stuff like that. Right, yeah. I ran across something on, I think, the Ada website that in America, toothpaste and brushing your teeth in general did not become widespread. It wasn't like the norm until after World War II, and it was because American GI's returned from Europe saying, hey, it's crazy. Everybody over in Europe has actually nice breath, and this is how they do it. And that's when it really took off from what I really cool. Yeah, it is. It is cool in a way, but also like, wow, in another way. It's like, these are my grandparents we're talking about, right? The greatest generation. That's right, the greatest generation. We can dispel the myth that George Washington had wooden teeth. He had terrible teeth, and he had a really bad time with his teeth. I feel bad for him. So he did have fake teeth, but I think the bases were made from ivory and tusk and stuff like that. Right. But the teeth were actually human teeth. We talked about gray robbing in the live episode that we did. They would grave rob for teeth, good teeth. Poor people that had decent teeth would sell their teeth for money. They actually documented that he paid his slaves for teeth, which on the one hand, you're like, oh, that's pretty cool. He actually paid his slaves rather than said, go bring me some of my slaves teeth. But at the same time, I was reading about it, and they were like, it doesn't matter, really, what he paid them, unless it was just some eye popping amount. It's still like it's an inheritable choice inequitable transaction. But I do feel bad for George Washington in that he apparently kind of suffered with his teeth. There's nobody, especially in America, whose teeth have ever been talked about and written about more than George Washington. I'm second place. You are a close second. But he's definitely the first place winner. Yeah, I think so. And he apparently one of the reasons why he wore dentures and kind of suffered through this and insisted on wearing them all the time was because he was the face of this new nation. He was the first president. Right. And at the time, his vitality, his health, his strength was basically the same as the nation's health. And strength. And so for him to show any kind of weakness or problem or disease or anything like that would make people wonder, like how does that also mean that this new American experiment is also diseased and problems? And so in a way, he really kind of carried this burden for the country, for the image of the country. But yeah, his teeth, he had no teeth by the time he was 51. They all fell out and they started falling out when he was in his early twenty. S I was talking to Yummy because I was like, we've seen his teeth. And we both actually thought that maybe we saw it at the Memorial Masonic Temple in Old Town Alexandria, but I don't think they're there. So we think we saw them in Mount Vernon because supposedly that's where they are. But both of us remember seeing them at that Masonic Temple. I've been to Mount Vernon a couple of times, I don't remember seeing his teeth. So I wonder if we did see his teeth at the Masonic Temple and they moved into Mount Vernon and now I'm looking on the Internet, it's like, no, they're at Mount Vernon, silly. Maybe it was a museum of sex. They had George Washington's chattering teeth. Very sexy. So now we move on to X rays which were discovered in 1895 by German scientists. They started using those on the mouth pretty quickly, but a thing kind of popped up early on that ended up being bad and that they didn't really know how to read X rays that well, at least probably everywhere at first, but at least around the mouth. And they discovered these things, a condition when they would take the teeth in the jaw X rays where they would find pockets of infection under the gum line, which now we just know are I mean, what is that? Just pockets of infection? Pus mouth pus, yeah. They call them focal infections. And the problem is it's a good thing that they spotted these, but they didn't know what they were, so they linked it to other stuff and other organs of the bodies, sometimes the brain even. And it became almost like a new version of bloodletting in that for a while if you had almost anything going wrong with you sometimes and they showed these pockets on the X ray, they would just pull your teeth. Like if you had a kidney disorder, they would pull your teeth first. Yeah. There was a guy who was apparently one of the leading proponents and practitioners of this focal infection hysteria. His name was Henry Cotton. He worked at the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum is what they called at the time, between 19 seven and 1930. And he and his team pulled 11,000 human teeth during that time, including his own teeth, his wife's teeth, his children's teeth, but mostly inmates of this asylum. And the idea was that that infection had gone to your brain. So you had to pull the teeth out around it to treat the infection, to cure your mental illness. And it just so happens, Chuck, that our good friend, our dear friend, beloved friend John Hodgman played that man on the TV show The Nick. Was that his character? Yeah, that guy existed in real life, Hodgman's character. And I read I came across a mention of it in Paste magazine, said that Hodgman played Henry Cotton, quote, with perfect offhand authority. I remember being on The Nick, but yeah, I don't remember that he was playing Henry Cotton, this guy who was just pulling 11,000 teeth from people over 23 years to cure their mental illness, which is nuts, but it actually happened. You have to text them, let them know we were talking about his acting career. I will. I'm sure he'll hear it when this comes out. He listens to every episode of the moment. It's really doesn't someone will let them know. And then we wind up to kind of a guy who weirdly ended up being, for the wrong reasons, the person who changed dentistry for the better, and that he was not a good dentist. And he came along at a time when the Ada had just formed in 1859. They met at Niagara Falls. Formed the Ada in 1866. They said, you can't use you can't be a snake oil salesman anymore. You can't have these advertisements and personally solicit business. We got to kind of put ourselves up there with the doctors guys and not do this stuff. And a dude came along that defied all that, so much so that they really started to sort of codify and put that stuff in the rearview mirror while they were trying to figure out how to differentiate themselves from just people who pulled teeth for a living but didn't go to dental school. And it's hard to do that. A way to do that is to find a scapegoat and point out how terrible they are, to use them as an example of how great you are right. To make yourselves look good. And that's what they did with this guy, edgar Randolph Painless Parker, who was very much a snake oil salesman of charlatan. He was of the kind of dentist that he actually did go to dental school, but he was like, I'm losing money to these tooth pullers these tooth drawers. So I'm going to start advertising again, and I think while I'm at it, I'll start making snake oil and all that stuff. But he was of the school where you would just, like, fill a tooth with amalgam, say, mercury or something like that, and you wouldn't get rid of any of the decay. Well, your face would still rot off regardless. But, yes, your dental visit was painless because they didn't scrape out any of the cavity to start. That's who they were competing against. So they use this guy to basically say all this stuff this guy is doing. This guy right here. That's not dentistry. Come over here. What we're doing is actual dentistry. It's going to help your health. Yeah, like you said, he went to dental school. He went to the Philadelphia Dental College, but apparently he literally did not pass. Like, he would not have earned a degree had he not gone and begged the dean to let him through. And I guess he sounds like sort of a squeaky wheel kind. And I think they just wanted to be rid of him, so they said, fine, here's your degree. And so that's when he went to Canada and sat in an empty office because he wasn't losing, like patients were coming and leaving. He didn't have any patience to begin with. And so, yeah, he started doing the Snakehole thing and he literally went back in time to become like a dental jar and had these big sort of tooth pulling events and parties with a band just like they were in the heyday in the early 18th century. Same exact thing. Unbelievable. He also supposedly wore a necklace of 357 extracted teeth that he supposedly pulled all in one day, which has been made for a good live show. Oh, well, let's save it. I don't think so. This has all the makings of a great live show. Well, there's a whole thing I agreed. There's a whole thing that we didn't even get to talk about. Call the Amalgamours, which I think we're going to do a short stuff on because it was pretty interesting, too. All right. Okay. I'm up for it. So that's it for now. For the history of dentistry. This may be an ongoing thing, who knows? And since I said this may be an ongoing thing, who knows? It's time, of course, for listener mail. I'm going to call this missed opportunity for a Pavement reference. Oh, yeah, I saw this one. Did you see this? This is from Alan Coleman and this is about the Salem witch trials. And I can't believe I walked right past this because this is one of my favorite Pavement songs. He said, hey, guys, love the podcast. I'm not one of those that cherished being able to send in a correction, so this isn't one of those. I listened to Salem witchcraft trials and noticed an unexpected omission. Being a big Pavement and Silver Jews fan for the majority of my life, I enjoy hearing your references occasionally. So I saw the title and I knew that you had mentioned the Pavement song, Give It a Day, which is about increase in cotton mather. Good work. Stay alert for those possible Pavement references. And I'm going to read the first verse of that song because I know the song and it never really occurred to me. That's why I didn't get the ref in the episode. But it's kind of the most Pavement of all Pavement songs. It sounds like it increased. Mother told her dad by the way, he says her dad I Randlely disagree with you. Your vocal style is too preachy, and the yokels mock your teaching. But Cotton, he was just so oblivious to all their cutting pleas. Soon the town folk took to it, and every few, they looked to him for guidance just like Ilas Lambs awaiting that old kebab stand the skeptics formed the nation's born they want to have it Cotton's dream but increase had them mounted and they burned on open fires so the word spread just like smallpox in the Sudan. And the gentry cried, give it a day, give it a day, give it a day. That sounds pretty pavement to you. You're right. And when you listen to it, it's like Steve Malkman said his most wordsmithy working. All those words in there, that's awesome. I got it. What album is that one on? I think that was from an EP, if I'm not mistaken. It wasn't on a regular LP. I've definitely not heard that one, but thanks to Alan Coleman for that. I walked right past that. Hello to Bob Nastanovich. If you're listening there you go. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Allen did, or if you want to say hi and you're Bob. Nasanovich chuck always likes hearing from you, Bob. Please write in. You can get in touch with us via email at 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." | |
a6df671c-5462-11e8-b449-f799cd7fb9a8 | How Ayahuasca Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-ayahuasca-works | One day in the Amazon Basin, a shaman put together a plant containing DMT with a vine that allows the body to absorb DMT. The combination, a foul-tasting, wildly hallucinogenic brew called ayahuasca, has changed cultures throughout the Americas. | One day in the Amazon Basin, a shaman put together a plant containing DMT with a vine that allows the body to absorb DMT. The combination, a foul-tasting, wildly hallucinogenic brew called ayahuasca, has changed cultures throughout the Americas. | Tue, 11 Dec 2018 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=345, tm_isdst=0) | 43162715 | 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 with no fees or minimums on checking and savings accounts. Banking with Capital One is like the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Kind of like choosing to listen to another episode of your favorite podcast. And with their top rated app, you can deposit checks and transfer money anytime, anywhere, making Capital One an even easier decision that's banking reimagined what's in your wallet terms. Apply Capital One in a member FDIC welcome to Stuff You Should Know from Hastepworks.com hola, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryan. There's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. The poor attempts at Spanish edition. And yet another drug cast covering all the drugs, everybody, one by one. And this one is ayahuasca we'll have to do one just specifically on DMT sometime, too. All right. Because DMT is the base of iowaska, but it's different. I mean, there's other stuff going on with iowaska that DMT doesn't have them. Spoiler alert. DMT is its own thing for sure, from what I can tell. Yeah. Okay, so it's agreed then. Chuck yeah, but you just ruined this whole episode. Oh, sorry. Well, let's go back to the beginning then. Yeah. Ayahuasca, it has a bunch of different names, and this is something I didn't know because I'm a dummy. I didn't know anything about Ayahuasca except to use it as jokes. It's been sort of a running punchline. Like, you have to forgive me, I'm on ayahuasca that kind of thing. I got you. But I thought that was the name of a plant, and it was one plant called Ayahuasca. Right. Sort of like what's the other plant? The corn. Like corn? No, the one that the doors took. Oh, mescaline. Yeah. Mescaline. Yeah. But that's not the plant. What's? The plant is mescaline. The plant, too. No. What? Peyote. Peyote? That's right. But that's the masculine buttons on a peyote plant. Right. Which we haven't covered yet. We should do one on peyote. Bam. Another drug test coming at you. But Ayahuasca is not the name of a plant. No, it is actually a concoction made from a couple of different plants. Yeah. And originally it was just one plant, actually known as the vine of death. Yeah. Are we going to pronounce these? Let's see what we can do. Okay. You did the time wasting. Throat clear. I know that move. It's stalling. So if you go and drink ayahuasca today, you're probably getting one that's a combination of a plant called psychotria veridis I think I got that. And a vine known as banisteriopsis. Copy. C-A-A-P-I So psychotria Veridas and berenicedopasa. Man, there's a lot of letters in that one. Yeah. But it's pronounced like it looks yeah. Banisteriopsis. You got it. All right. Copy. Right. And that one, the second one, the copy is the vine. Correct. That's the OG, ayahuasca ingredient. Right. The vine of death. And this is I guess we haven't even really said we've danced around it. It is a drug concoction that they have been taking since who knows when, but since before Europeans arrived in the New World. Sure. A long, long time in South America. Yeah. And specifically, they think it may have originated among the Napo Runa tribe in Ecuador. Right. But it's spread throughout the Amazon basin. And today, if you are a well to do tech worker who makes her way down to South America, you're probably going to go to Peru to check out your Ayahuasca trip. Yeah. This became a thing weirdly. In Silicon Valley. If you are a young, rich entrepreneur in Silicon Valley that has a couple of hit apps on your hand, it became a thing to throw on your hoodie and travel to South America to take part in an iowaska ceremony. Yep. And I'm not sure. I mean, I guess I know what happens is one dude does that and then says, bro, you got to do this. Right. A late night conversation at Burning Man opens the flood. Absolutely. That's how it went down. And then before you know it, it's a thing. Right. You know, there's some kids in Silicon Valley being like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Are they making fun of us right now? Yeah. And then they feel that hood that they've never even put over their head, itching their neck, and they're like, stupid stereotypes being true. Oh, man. At any rate, iowaska. Yes. So it did start out as a traditional thing, but there's, like, the whole popularity that grew among Westerners traveling down to South America for whatever reason, I'm sure for vision quests, for fun, a drug they hadn't tried yet. Who cares? There's a lot of reasons that people travel down to South America to partake in this, certainly most of them. Not nefarious or dumb, probably a lot of the reasons were great. But the influx of Westerners and Western money has radically altered Iowa ka and the ceremonies and rights and the people who perform iowaska ceremonies just over the last ten or so years. Dramatically, yes. One might even say that the Western white man has ruined the whole thing. I think it's been commercialized, but that there are still very much the original or the real deal is protected in many ways by the people who are like, yeah, you guys go drink it over there. We've got our thing going on over here. And in fact, there's at least two churches in the United States that practice ayahuasca diets that are real deal religions as far as the Supreme Court is concerned, that clearly show that there is real legit Ayahuasca ceremonies being practiced throughout the world. I think both of them are from Brazil. Yeah. In 2006, the Supreme Court said that the Unaio de Vegetal UDV was a legit religion. They are, in fact, from Brazil, christian spiritualists, about 17,000 adherents all over the world. And the literal translation of that religion is the union of the plants. Right. So it's like a plant religion, and Ayahuasca is at the center of this. Yeah. The other one is Christian Syncretism, which is like Santo Dime. Yeah, that one is like they incorporate not just indigenous Brazilian and South American beliefs, but also some African indigenous beliefs, folk beliefs as well. Like, it's a whole very big inclusive pantheon that is centered around visions from Iowa, like iowaska Sacrament. It's pretty interesting. Yeah. Both protected in the United States by law now that this is part this plant concoction as part of their religion. They cannot be arrested for doing this because the legalities of it is technically illegal. It's a little gray whether or not the actual plant is illegal. Is that right? Yeah. Supposedly the plants themselves are not illegal. It's the combination or the brew made from them that's illegal. Got you. That's what I saw. I don't know that that's necessarily true. And I would guess if the plants are still legal now, they won't be in two to three years. Right. Because why make it legal? Why would it be legal? Yeah. Something people get enjoyment for that comes from the Earth. What's outlawed. Yeah. I don't know if enjoyment is quite the right word, though, from the way that The Grabster puts it that an Ayahuasca trip is not necessarily fun. It's a harrowing, psychological, spiritual journey that you're undertaking. All right, let's take a break. 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All right, so DMT, which you mentioned at the onset, the one part of this concoction, the P Barritus, contains DMT. You're going to pronounce that? Oh, yes, it's dimethyltryptamine. Oh, look at you. Just rolls off the tongue now, doesn't it? It does. So this is something not exclusive to P Veritus. It's found in a bunch of psychedelic substances. And this is something that can cause hallucinations, perhaps changes in your perception, your state of consciousness, your sense of self, which we'll really get into because it has a lot to do with the Ayahuasca journey. Right. However, if you just eat the DMT, it's not going to have this kind of effect on you, because there's an enzyme called monoamine oxidase, and that's going to break it down in your digestive system before it gets absorbed. So you have to combine it with this copy vine, which prevents the uptake of it. Yeah, the copy vine has an alkaloid called the Harmola. Alkaloid and Harmalines are psychotropic in and of themselves, which is why the copy vine alone used to just be Ayahuasca. But the fact that it prevents the monoamine oxidase to break down the DMT, it allows your body to absorb it and all of a sudden you're tripping balls. Although I hear it's not all of a sudden. I think it takes a good 30 minutes to come on and then it takes like a supplementary boost an hour or so later to really bring on the kind of transcendent experience that people are looking for when they take Ayahuasca. Yeah, for sure. So you've got the DMT being absorbed. That's the one two punch, right? You've got the DMT itself and then you've got the plant that allows the DMT to be absorbed. And when you put those two things together, the Prevaridis and the Bcopy, that's the Ayahuasca that you read about and vice. That's what they're talking about. Yes. And this is administered by a shaman, someone who ideally, as a shaman, that knows what they're doing. And sometimes there are other plants that are brewed in there as well, but not always. And sometimes it's brewed separately and then combined later. Sometimes it all depends on which shaman you go to, of what the ritual is like. Sometimes you're included as part of it. Sometimes it's like a thick liquid tea. Sometimes it's a paste. It's been described, no matter what it is, it seems like around the horn, everybody says it tastes awful, so awful that you can very easily throw up, which is something that's pretty common with an Ayahuasca experience. I didn't get that from the taste, though. I know that once it's in your body, it makes you nauseous and you throw up. Right. But this tastes so bad, I'm going to peak it up. No, because then it wouldn't be in your body long enough to be absorbed. Right. Yeah. But I think the taste and the memory of the taste combined with the nausea is enough to throw up. But whether you do throw up or not, it's not necessarily like 100% you're going to throw up. One of the points of an Ayahuasca ceremony is to throw up. You're meant to throw up, and you will actually be forced into this either. If you don't do it from the Ayahuasca, you may also be given something like tobacco juice, like a water with tobacco that soaked in it for a while, and you'll be told to drink that so that you will throw up. Because this idea of purging, whether it's throwing up or diarrhea, is a very frequent side effect of Iowa. Okay. Very frequent. You are meant to be purging your body, and it's meant to be this kind of symbolic, spiritual purge of your ego, of all the nastiness, of all the horribleness that's a part of you. You're getting it out as part of the trip. As the trip sets in. Yes. And the taste has been described. The New York Times has said it's like a muddy herbal taste. Someone from Voxcom took it. A guy named Sean Illing. He described it as a cup of motor oil diluted with a splash of water. Right. I read it's almost as gross as a necko wafer. I don't think I've ever had a neckl wifer. Good on you. Have you? No. What am I, crazy? What are they? Necko wafers? They're like old timey kind of like chalky candy that comes in a roll. You've seen them, probably. You've seen them in my old timey candy days. Exactly. I'm sure I did. Yeah. All right. I guess we should talk a little bit about, like you said, it's origins in the Napo River basin by this Runa tribe, like you said, and it's called the vine of Death, or the Mother Vine. This copy. And they think that early on they may have just taken this copy by itself. Right, right. Because without the Brew, it's got the harmlines in it that's not only an MAOI, but also has its own kind of psychoactive stuff going on. So that was the original ayahuasca yes. And we have written accounts from the 17 hundreds when Jesuits would go to the Amazon to try and Christianized folks and trip balls. Yeah. Because I'm sure the entry was like, Whoa. And that's it. Did you hear about the guy that was just killed? The missionary? Yes. On Sentinel Island. Yeah. It's like something from a movie. He went at first and a child shot an arrow through a Bible that he was holding. Apparently. I hadn't heard about that. Yeah. Because he went back a few times and was like, journaling about it and said he basically held up his Bible. It's like something from a movie and an arrow was shot through it. I'm like, Dude, if that is not like, if you believe in God, that's a sign from God. What do you remember? Turn around. The man in the whole episode, we talked about them. Yeah. They were the ones that everyone knew. You just don't go anywhere near them. And some fishermen had been killed, like a few years back and this guy, I guess, had tried he decided he was going to be the one. Yeah. I don't actually know enough about the story, but he clearly was trying to gain access to them. Yeah, he was trying to spread the word of Jesus and paid, like you're not supposed it's illegal, I think, to even trespass there, but he paid people sort of under the table to take him there and they did so and those people were arrested. And his family is saying, you need to let these people go because he really wanted to do this. I see. It's very interesting. Yeah, it is crazy. But that sounds like something you would make up from a movie, like shooting an arrow through the Bible that you're holding up. Right. So we got a little sidetracked, but we were talking about the Jesuits, like having this on record in the 17 hundreds when they went and they were like, hey, there's something going down here. That's very interesting. Yeah. And even William S. Burrows wrote the Yahoo letters in. It was about his experience with the Iowa vine. And apparently the practitioners at the time knew well into the 20th century that you could combine it with the Pveridas and have a completely different experience. But that wasn't necessarily the point. That was like an optional ceremony you could perform. But the most widespread and traditional ceremony was just the vine of death. Right. Yeah. And then at some point somebody started putting them together and worried about this God out. And the mid two thousand s is when it just ayahuasca, like, kind of hit the public consciousness in the west. Yeah, I mean, in the course, in certain subcultures in America, they knew about it because of Williams boroughs and people seeking out things like peyote and all kinds of psychedelic experiences. But it definitely was not sort of in the mainstream until not too long ago. And even still, I think even at the time, it was strictly the harmlines and just the vine that was being used, the copy vine. Somebody started putting it together frequently with the virtus plant and that's when it became hugely popular. Yeah, so popular now that there is ayahuasca tourism big time, like going on in South America and said the central part is Peruse Arumbamba Valley. If you are going down for an Iowa caucus experience, like a spiritual quest is the reason you're going down there. I don't fault you for that at all. Sure. But you have to understand, you have to do your research. You can't just show up in South America and be like, all right, somebody give me some Ayahuasca. Because there are a lot of inscrupulous and nefarious outfits that have come up to take advantage explicitly of that kind of Western tourists, the ill informed Western tourist who is going to have a horrible, terrible trip and not going to get the spiritual experience you're looking for. So you have to do your research because there are some legitimate Ayahuasca outfits in South America, but they're not going to take you if you just show up down there and you're going to end up in a bad situation. Yeah, for sure. So taking part in one of these ceremonies, let's say you do find like a legit shaman who's willing to take your American dollars or whatever, however you're paying your gold ingots and trinkets. It's sort of funny. It all goes back to Burrows with the set and setting thing, which is what he famously preached about any psychedelic experience, is to really put a lot of thought into the set and the setting where you're going to do this so it goes well for you. So as this concoction is being brewed, like I said before, sometimes you're taking part in this and helping to mash it up and brew the tea. But what they're really trying to do is the whole ceremony isn't just like for show. It's all part of the thing to get you settled in and focused on kind of the right things going in. Like, what do you want to accomplish here? What do you want to find out about yourself? What questions do you have about yourself and really get into that frame of mind as they hand you your puke bucket? Although I would recommend bringing your own. Oh, yeah, I hadn't thought about that. I would not want a reused puke bucket. Good Lord. I hadn't even considered that it would be by O B for me. Yeah, I can just totally see how as a Westerner, you would just be like, come on, we don't need the ceremony stuff. Give me the good stuff. Right. But like you said, that's the point is to ease you into it, to get your mind and body prepared for this enormous trip you're about to go on. Because if you just get dropped right in the middle of it without any kind of preparation or without any kind of assistance, you're going to lose your marbles pretty well. Yeah. So that is a big part of going on an Ayahuasca journey, is having somebody who's competent trained and empathetic and willing to stay there with you, to prepare you to stay with you, to keep an eye on you. You need to be monitored. You can't be up and just running off into the jungle by yourself because terrible things are going to happen to you in that situation and then to help you afterward as well. And from some of the preliminary research that's starting to come in, if you undertake an Ayahuasca journey, I guess the best word I can come up with under the right setting, under the right guidance, with the right support, both pre during and after, it can have profound effects on your spirituality and your sense of connectedness to the universe. It can also possibly help you with diagnosed mental illness as well. Yeah, we'll get to the mental illness part at the end, but just your standard sort of truth seeker, let's say. Okay. It's very much tied into ideal conditions in, like, the LSD well beyond, but the LSD experience in that there was a lot of talk in the 60s about the ego, and every hip musician in the United States talk about stripping away the ego. From Brian Wilson to the Mamas and the Papas to Neil Young, is stripping away that ego of yourself, basically, which means kind of getting outside yourself to the point where you're not looking at the world around you and how it affects you. But there is no you. There is no it's a loss of self such that's so profound that you can only see the world and people around you as they exist in reality. It's a pretty sort of deep, tricky thing to try and describe in words on a podcast. But I think that's sort of the general thing is washing that ego down to where it's not around anymore, and you get, like, a true sense of the world around you right. Maybe for the first time. Yeah. The ego in and of itself isn't a bad thing. Like, they think that it developed among animals. That's your sense of self awareness. That's the thing that leads you to want to preserve your own life, to get away from danger, to realize that you can die because there is a you right. It's a very basic thing. The problem is, in humans, as we've evolved, our ego has also evolved, and it can get to a point where it's unhealthy it's kind of toxic. It can help you develop bad relationships. People don't want to be around you. It can also affect your self esteem if your ego is underdeveloped. There's a lot of problems that can go wrong with the ego. And so a lot of people who prescribe psychedelics to deal with that kind of thing say psychedelics strip away the ego. And now that we've gotten to the point where we are advanced enough as a civilization that we can give people acid and put them in an MRI machine, the one machine, and watch what happens, we've shown that, yes. It seems like the areas that are responsible for generating the ego, they get kind of turned off while you're under the influence of psychedelics and it allows you to connect, to see outside of yourself, to see that you are connected with all of this other stuff. So this whole ego depletion or ego stripping, it's a major component of not just ayahuasca, but all psychedelics, but it's a big reason why people undertake ayahuasca journeys. Again, I love it every time you say that. But get this, there was something I hadn't realized before Chuck. From those MRI studies, they found that there's something called the Default Mode Network, which is the thing that keeps your body humming and keeps you it's the part of your brain that's going while you're not thinking. Right. And they found that when the Default Mode network is suppressed and your frontal cortex is activated, that's when it seems that your ego is at the least it's when your ego is turned off and you're free to connect with the universe or whatever. Right? Yeah. Well that Default Mode network is a very primitive part of our brain. It's a very primitive system of our brain and it kind of suggests in a way that the loss of ego is something that we may eventually evolve to. Oh wow, isn't that cool? Yeah. Because if your frontal cortex is what's being activated and your Default Mode network is inactivated, that's like your ancient brain and your evolved brain, one is activated and one is suppressed and your ego is gone. That says to me like, well, yeah, if we keep evolving a frontal cortex, I wonder if we'll lose our ego at some point or at least it will be radically altered. Interesting. I thought so too. Yeah. So what can happen? Like any sort of psychedelic trip, it's going to be completely singular to the person that's doing it. There is no across the board sort of sweeping statements you can make. But you strip away that ego and anything can happen from feeling connected to the more connected to the universe or the Earth or the tree you're leaning against. Or maybe the father that passed away when you were a child that you didn't have a relationship with or the loved one that you currently have a toxic relationship with. You can feel sort of not imaginary, but it is in your mind, but a bond, and that they're not like right there in front of you, just new understandings of relationships that may be complicated or toxic in your life. Right, exactly. Like you're seeing them in a different way because of that ego loss. Yeah, I think that's fascinating. And like you said, it is a symbolic death of the ego, which is why that vomiting is important in theory, I guess. You're vomiting up that ego and then it's go time. Apparently, you can hallucinate your death. And like you said before, it's not often looked at as like, hey, man, this is going to be a great time. But at the same time, I think it's also typically not looked at as like some horror show that you're about to undergo, although it can be. But it's just a profound emotional and psychological experience. Right? Exactly. I've never done it either. This is from researching it, right? Exactly. Which is like, we've never been to the sun either, but we talked about that. Yeah, that went great. Actually, now that you mention it. Should use a different example. Let's take another break and then we'll talk about what you kind of teased earlier with Iwaska and how it could be used to treat addiction or PTSD or other mental illnesses right after this. 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OK, Chuck, so we're back and we're talking about using Ayahuasca as a tool, like taking that experience of being outside of yourself and connected to the rest of the universe, of reevaluating your life in a lot of ways to cure mental illness. And one of the things that it's been, I guess some studies have actually shown, like, no, this actually works, is to treat addiction. Whether it's cigarettes or booze or drugs or whatever. You can undergo an iowaska ceremony. People have and have come out on the other side like, I'm good, I don't need that. Cigarettes or booze or drugs or whatever. Yes. And one of the suggestions for what's going on with this that I saw is that you are actually healing the psychic damage that's causing you to self medicate in the first place. Right. Something probably from your past. And then so without that need to self medicate, you don't have necessarily the desire to drink or smoke cigarettes or whatever that you used to, which is a different model of addiction that's kind of starting to gain a little bit of traction, but is also very controversial because it makes it sound like addiction is a choice. You're selfmedicating you're choosing to do all those drugs and throw your life away because of some psychic trauma. But there does seem to be a camp in medicine that is saying, like, this actually might have legs. It kind of makes a lot of sense. And from what I can tell, those Ayahuasca studies kind of are a check mark in that views favor. Yeah. And I think that can work in conjunction with the other piece, which is removing that ego, even if it's for, whatever, how many hours that you're undergoing this trip could just simply disrupt that. You often hear about addiction being like this sort of cycle, like a cyclical thing. And even just disrupting that cyclical path of that circular path can be enough to sort of get you on the off ramp from using yes. Gets you on the off ramp. Yes. That's what you said, right? Yeah. And then eventually off that off ramp onto a nice chill side street. Yeah. Maybe a nice drive into the country, passed a few cows and then sleep. Yeah. I had a therapist one time that talked about getting off of the highway. It was a metaphor that actually worked for me, but like, choosing to get off the highway when certain things were happening. And sometimes something that simple just kind of clicks in like, oh, if I notice something's going on, I'm speeding down the highway toward the Badness and just get on that exit ramp. And now I'm in my neighborhood. Now I'm hanging out with cows in a nice bucolic pasture. PTSD is another specifically, I think a lot of times with military PTSD, they've been using psychedelics more and more in. Ayahuasca is no stranger to this treatment, and while it is not a magic pill, they are doing some studies on this. And it seems like with all these, it's tough to get funding for these kind of studies sometimes, but it does seem like it's gaining more ground in the medical community to try out these kind of experiments. Well, they're trying to get some of these studies underway in the United States, but because Iowa is considered a schedule one drug, which is the worst, most nefarious drugs of all, they can't I don't think there's been a single study in the US. But fortunately, they can just go down to South America and do the best they can with some of the Iowa Cafe centers that are down there. Again, there are some legitimate iowaska centers that take Western tourists for Ayahuasca journeys, and some groups are going down there to partner with those centers to study people. Some of the people they're trying to study are PTSD patients. And they think that if Ayahuasca is helping people with PTSD. Which it seems to be. It's basically negative exposure therapy. Where you're dredging up all of those worst. Your worst memories that are causing your PTSD. Which is bringing them to the surface and allowing your awareness to kind of shine a light on them and say. Okay. I'm going to re categorize these now. And they're not being categorized as bad and frightening as they were before. It's not as dramatic as they were originally categorized. Yeah. And specifically in this study that you're thinking about or talking about is combat veterans suffering from PTSD. And it's the temple of the Way of light and the Amazon has partnered with a group in Spain and the UK, the International Center for Ethnobotanical Research and Service in Spain and then the Beckley Foundation in the UK. And they're treating close to 600 combat veterans a year. And it says it's the largest psychedelic study ever undertaken. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's really interesting. Yes. I know that they're using MDMA to treat PTSD as well, and then I can't remember the name of that one treatment. But remember, you like, follow a pen with your eyes while you're going over your worst memory and it recategorizes the memories as less scary. I don't remember that one. Yes, I can't remember what we talked about it in, but that apparently works really well too, without the vomiting. Right. That's a big part of it though, my friend. Just bring your own bucket. Problems with iowaska, it is not generally toxic and you would have to take so much Ayahuasca. It's sort of like when we were talking about marijuana. Is there even a lethal dose? Can you even say that? Because the lethal dose, apparently for Iowa's skill, is 20 times what you would normally take in a typical ceremony, as the gravester put it. He might have been quoting someone. But could anyone even choke this much of that down? Right. Probably not. Is that even possible? But there have been some deaths that have been related to Iowa's. When you dig a little deeper, you find, like, oh, it wasn't actually the iowaska directly that caused this, but these people would not have died had they not been in South America on the Ayahuasca journey. Right? Yeah, there's a way to say it. There's this one guy who died in, I believe, 2014. He was an American. Oh, he's British. I'm sorry. And his name was Henry Miller, and he died on the way to the hospital because he had gone kind of non responsive. And the Iowa squareo's yeah, I said it. That took him to the hospital, had him on a motorcycle. He fell off the motorcycle and died of a head injury on the way to the hospital. So it wasn't the iowaska that killed him, but he wouldn't have been on the motorcycle in the first place had he not been on this Ayahuasca trip. So the shorthand and the headlines is a man dies from Ayahuasca. Yeah. There have been some other cases where people would be having a bad trip and maybe attack someone else, and that would lead to, like, violence or death or just this year, in 2018 in Peru, an 81 year old shaman woman was shot and killed, and then a Canadian man was murdered for revenge for that killing. Yeah, but supposedly this had nothing to do with being under the influence, but it was some sort of dispute that happened during this whole conflict. Yes. The woman was named Olivia Arovalo, and she was the spiritual mother of Peru second largest indigenous tribe, the Shape of Coneivo. And this Canadian guy named Sebastian Woodruff shot and killed her, allegedly because her son owed him money. He was there to learn Ayahuasca, and he didn't feel like he got his money's worth, so he killed her. He killed this woman, the shaman, the spiritual leader of the second largest tribe in Peru, and he was Canadian. Yeah, I know. It's surprising. Not a very Canadian thing to do. No, really wasn't. But the whole thing really revealed the problems that have been developing from this Ayahuasca tourism. First, this guy was down there and wanted to learn about Ayahuasca so he could take it back to Canada and appropriate this culture. Right. No problem. One, two, he didn't get his money's worth, so he shot and killed the woman who was supposed to be teaching him. It's a big problem as well. But then also between the Iowa squares and the practitioners who are hosting these tourists and then the governments of the countries that they're hosting them in, there's tensions there as well, because this village said there's police everywhere, the police never come here. But then a Canadian man goes missing, and now our village is overrun with police. Like, what's going on here? So there's a lot of simmering tension that's being heated by this Western Ayahuasca tourism. And it's kind of largely in part because it's unregulated, but also because a lot of people going down there don't have respect for what they're doing. And then also a lot of the people who are popping up as Iowa squares don't have any respect for what they're doing either. So the respect that's been given to this tradition for so many hundreds or thousands of years is being lost. And then on top of that, the Ayahuasca that they're drinking is so wildly more potent than what it traditionally was all those hundreds of thousands of years. The Jesuits version of iowaska. That's really kind of, I think, fueling this kind of recklessness that's becoming part and parcel with ayahuasca use down in South America. Yeah. Because some of these areas are poor. And so all of a sudden it becomes a hip thing for Westerners with money to come down there with cold, hard cash. And then, like you said, they're appropriating their culture. So that's one strike. But then to appeal to these people, all of a sudden they're not as like, we don't want to freak people out, maybe by being too traditional, so we're going to Westernize our own methods a bit, unless, hey, let's get a website going, and then we'll be the go to for when they come down here. So then they're undermining their own culture and it's just sort of becoming a big mess, it sounds like. Yeah. And again, I think if you're going down there, like whether you're Western or Asian or whoever you are, if you're going down for a vision quest, that's not what's being brought out as the fault. The fault is if you're going down there because it's hip or because you just want to party or because a friend did it and you're not being respectful of it, then that's where the issue seems to be arising from. Yeah. Ayahuasca. Anything else? Oh, yeah. There is one thing that we didn't cover that can happen because the copy vine is Mao inhibitor. There's a lot of other things that can actually kill you that are pretty normal, like interactions. You can have drug interactions with things as normal as chocolate because the monoamine oxidase typically breaks these things down. And if it's being inhibited so that the Ayahuasca can work its effects, if you eat chocolate, you're toast. And one of the other things that it can do is the MAOIs prevent your serotonin from being taken up. And that's how DMT acts on the brain. It goes into where serotonin receptors normally fit and just says, let's party. Right? Yeah. So with all this extra serotonin floating around, if you also happen to be on an SSRI, a serotonin reuptake inhibitor, you've got too much serotonin, you can go into what's called serotonin shock. This is where the diarrhea comes in. That's one of the symptoms of serotonin shock, but that's one of the mild symptoms. You can also have seizures. Your heart can also stop. And you can die from having too much serotonin flooding your brain. So that is a direct way you can die from ayahuasca but it's not from the hallucinogen aspect of it. It's from the MAOI. So when they show up from the Silicon Valley and they say they're translating, and they're like, hey, bro, he wants to know if you got anything if you've had anything in your body. And then you're like, no, just my selection. And wolf down a toblerone on the way over. I'm good, right? Let's do this. Let's skip the ceremony. Just let me drink that stuff, right? You mash the shaman's face out of your way. Like, get out of here. Just give me that. Now I know why we haven't been selling tickets in Seattle so much. Oh, no. Seattle, we love. That's not Silicon Valley. That's right. Well, San Francisco, too. We love all people. We love all of you. Everybody. We love all potential ticket buyers. Our egos are down in the pits. Yes. If you want to know more about ayahuasca man, do some research. There's a lot of it out there, so do it. And since I said that, it's time for listing or mail. Yeah. I'm going to call this short and sweet, but we did get an answer to something. Remember in the firetwox episode, you could not remember that game, and we got everything from SIM City to civilization. Yeah. None of them are right. But our friend, our new pal, Mike Mangoba, mike says this guys have just listened to the firetwox episode and also shout out to two things. All the people who wrote in and spelled it firetwox. Yeah. And then all the firefighters. We heard from a lot of firefighters. Every single one of them said, yes, it's chilly. Josh did not oversee the chili thing. Yeah. And they're all very nice and said, you guys got most of this right. Anytime if something really specific like that, we are going to get some stuff wrong. But they were like, you guys did a good job. And one of them even had a joke that said, if you're at a party, how do you know if there's a firefighter there? And the answer is, oh, don't worry. They'll tell you that was from a firefighter. I guess they have a sense of humor about it. So anyway, guys, listen to the firetwox episode, and he talked about the old game that burns buildings to the ground if you don't have a fire station. And that game is called Pharaoh. Yes. Pharaoh charaoh. Yes. You're building an Egyptian. And he said, it's an expansion game. The expansion game is called Cleopatra. And it was one of my favorite games, which I still play today. Keep up the chatter. Mike Mangoba. Thanks a lot, Mike. That's exactly what it was. I never million years would have remembered that, but it was indeed Gobes. Oh, is that what we're calling yeah. All right. Thanks a lot, Gobs. Well, if you want to be, like, Gobs and rescue us by reminding me of something, I can't remember what it was, or just correcting my syntax, you can get in touch with us. We're all over social. You can find those links@stuffyshineo.com, and you can just send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuffpodcastupworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseepworks.com. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's Criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. 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a6ebcf84-5462-11e8-b449-37de31851162 | E.T.: Is It Really the Worst Video Game of All Time? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/e-t-is-it-really-the-worst-video-game-of-all-time | If you play video games you probably have an easy answer to worst game of all time: ET. But it turns out there are no easy answers, especially when you’re talking about a game so terrible it’s blamed for bringing the entire video game industry with it. | If you play video games you probably have an easy answer to worst game of all time: ET. But it turns out there are no easy answers, especially when you’re talking about a game so terrible it’s blamed for bringing the entire video game industry with it. | Thu, 20 Dec 2018 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=20, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=354, tm_isdst=0) | 39931088 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Jerry. And it's like the holiday season. I feel great. It is holidays with a Z. We're going to do what we almost did for a short stuff. Oh, yes, Chuck. You are commended for that call. Well, I was just like I kind of wanted to do this one always as a long stuff. We don't have a show called Medium Stuff yet. No, we have a so stuff. It's called stuff you should know. Yeah, but yeah, I saw that documentary, Atari Game over a few years ago. It's a good one. And I also guested on Tech Stuff and did a two part episode on the history of Atari. It's a good one with Strickland. He's great, too. And we could probably do Atari on its own at some point, too. I agree. I think we definitely should. But this is I mean, I was about to say Strickland and I could get two episodes out of it, but you know how that guy goes on. Oh, my God. He's the hardest working man in podcast business, I'll tell you that. Just ask. So we're talking today about what is widely believed to be the worst video game of all time. Except that it's not. Except that it's not. It's true. I love stories like this, where it's like everything you thought you knew was wrong and really stop and ask yourself, how did you even know that? This truth that you knew before. I love that man. Yeah. Et. The Atari video game, a lot of people it's that whole Internet bandwagon thing, I think. Worst game of all time. They tried to bury it in the desert. It was so bad. Killed Atari. Killed the whole stinking industry. Right. But it was just that bad of a game. You've played it. No. Yeah. I will say this. It may be one of the most disappointing games of all time. It could be. Yes. Because if you were a kid back then, like me and you, and you played Atari like I did, it was a disappointment. It was greatly anticipated, I'm sure. A lot of anticipation. That was probably the biggest reason why it gets all the attention. Because it was Et. It wasn't Dumb game, Sorcerer. Yes. Or fast food. There were so many bad video games for Atari. Yeah, there were a lot. It was awful. So we'll just come out and say, no, Et. Is not the worst video game of all time. There were a lot of far worse video games than Et. But like you were saying. As far as the anticipation went. As far as the let down went. As far as the loss of money. When you can understand how people would say. This is the worst of all time. But also the timing of its failure was so utterly. Amazingly perfect that it just took it from worst video game of all time to worst video game of all time. Yeah, it's like, here Atari in video home console game industry. You're not doing well, and I noticed you're thinking, let me tie this anvil around your ankle that's shaped like E T. Yeah, that's right. It's just really bad timing. So let's get into the story, because it's one of the more interesting ones, and it features a great guy named Howard Scott Warshaw, who, if you've seen the movie Game Over, you have probably come to really like and admire. Good dude. Good dude, brilliant designer, and like, just a genuinely great guy. The story begins back in, I believe. Yeah. He was a designer at Atari. He apparently started out writing code at Hewlett Packard and was very unhappy. So he made the move over to Atari, even though he had zero experience with game design. But he was really an exciting game designer because he came up with some really innovative ideas. Yes. Yards Revenge is one of the best Atari 2600 games of all time. Did you have that one? Oh, yeah. I never played it. It's great. It's kind of space invaderies or something. It's like a shooter thing. Kind of a single screen shooter. Well, I guess you're a yard and you're this sort of bug like creature, and instead of shooting at something to chip away at it, you do it. So with your body, you just fly into this. You would fly into this. I mean, of course, all this stuff was supposed to represent, like, a spaceship or a planet, okay? But it was made up of blocks and fuse. I don't even know what it was, but your whole point was to make it smaller. Got you. And you would fly into it. I know you're. Instead of shooting, you would fly into it. For my money, that kind of game the best of all time with Centipede. Centipede is great. It was great. I mean, a lot of those games I play today, when I happened upon an arcade, galaga and Frogger and Centipede and Defender, those are still really good, challenging, joust, sure. Fun games. Yeah. Miss Pacman, they just stand up still, for sure. It's not like you go to Gallagher or Joust now and you're like, this is easy. What was I thinking? I was such a kid. They're still hard, challenging games. And I think that's sort of the key to a good video game, is it's got to be winnable, but it's got to be hard because the kid doesn't want a pushover. Right. But a kid also wants to win. So Howard Scott warshaw knew this? He was a game designer. He wasn't like a code monkey or anything like that. He was a game designer, an artist. I'm sure he considered himself, especially at the time, and he should have. One of the other things he was known for was he was the guy who realized that you could make a game way more enjoyable if you created a backstory for it. So rather than drive this car there, you're actually running away from this gang of international mafia guys who are trying to kidnap your girlfriend or whatever. You make up a backstory for it. The player reads this backstory and then plays. They care that much more about the person because their imagination is now kicked in. They're not just doing a mindless task. They're imagining what's going on in computer world. And he did that for games, and he was one of the first, if not the first, designer to create backstories and biographies for his characters and games. Yeah. And you know what? Just now it's sort of hitting me. That part of the appeal was the imagination of the kids. So, like, when you got the game Adventure or Asteroids and Asteroids, you're a pencil drawn triangle, right. Shooting at pencil drawn shapes, shooting pencils at pencil drawn shapes, shooting dots at pencil drawn shapes. And Adventure, you are a cube, right. That flew around with an arrow attached to you that was supposed to be your sword. But when you look at the actual cartridge or the box that it came in right. They had this great artwork of this knight on a horse with his sword drawn, or in Asteroids, this Han Solo like, pilot, like, cruising through an asteroid field, and that kickstarts the imagination of a ten year old. Right. And then they forget they're a cube or an arrow. Yeah. It makes it that much more real. Yeah. It was really cool because the imagination can do some pretty amazing stuff with eight bytes of graphic. Sure. So Warshell figured this out. Yes. Designing worlds. He would design Easter eggs into his games, too. Yeah. He wasn't the first, but yes. No, but he was an early person to do that. Yeah. Adventure was the first, I think. And in addition to yours, Revenge, he also already had a hit in the Raiders of the Lost Art game. He had designed that. He played that so much. You did? Oh, yeah. So from what I never played that one. From what I understand, it was extremely difficult. It required both joysticks. Yeah. I think I read somewhere that there were 33 screens, which is unheard of. I could buy that. And people still have trouble beating it today. Well, it was really hard. I remember very specifically, there was one part where you were to parachute from one screen, and it would all of a sudden, you went to the bottom, and it would pop up, and you're on the next screen going down, and there's a tree on the left, and you had to start that jump early, going hard left and hook onto that tree with your parachute. If you hit at the wrong angle, it burst your parachute, and you would die. Wow. And if you didn't, you would hook onto it and slide perfectly. And it was probably one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in a video game. Now, as far as video gameplay, though, really, it was very challenging, but it was possible. So when you tried it 27 times and you nailed it on that 28, like, you would run around the neighborhood telling all your friends that you nailed the parachute. Very cool. Really, really hard. But it was so hard that it was like you would get frustrated, or it kept you sucked in. No, you're like, I know I can get it. There is the key. And that's where Et messed up. But we'll get to that. Okay, so on June it's funny, he remembers this, the date on June 27, 1982, howard Scott Warsaw is hanging around Atari, and he gets a phone call. He gets a phone call from the CEO, Ray Cassar himself. That was a big deal back then. Oh, sure. And Ray Kasar says, hey, kid, we know you. We love you. We've got something going on with Steven Spielberg. He remembers that you made the Raiders of the Lost our game for him. He thinks you're a certifiable genius. But we have a special assignment for you. We want you to make the Et. Video game. Can you do it? We don't answer yet. Can you do it in five weeks? Then he went, sure? Yeah. He said, yeah. Even today, you're like, five weeks? It doesn't sound like very long. That was less than a 10th of the time that it would normally take. Yeah. And the little secret is that he had already called some other people in the company and said, the CEO, is this even possible? Or am I just crazy for asking this guy to do this in five weeks? Because it takes five or six months. And they all said, no, it's not possible. And he said, Well, I'm going to ask him anyway. Right? Howard Scott Warsaw didn't realize that they had already told him, like, no, this can't be done, when he said yes, but he was locked in the punch, and he was 24 years old and full of exuberance and hubris and all sorts of stuff, and said, I can do this. So he did. And the reason we should say the reason why the schedule was so short and usually took five to six months for a game to be developed, and he had five weeks to do it. And the reason why is because the haggling the deal to get the rights for the Et. Game, for Atari to purchase them, which they bought for $21 million, took way longer than expected, and they really wanted this game out in time for Christmas. That was the whole deal. Because the deal had worked all the way up into the summer, and Christmas was on the other edge. They needed also several weeks to manufacture the actual cartridges and get them into stores. If you laid all this timeline out, they left five weeks to develop a game from scratch. So they knew just the guy to do it. And it was Howard Scott warshaw. And Howard said, I'll give it a shot. I'm going to do it. Yeah. And I should point out that when you say five or six months is the usual time, five or six months was fast. The usual time was more than that. Well, you also probably had a team working on it. Like, five or six months was the Rush version. Right? Anyway, yeah, that's a pretty delightful Prague rock version. They should have their own video game. I'm surprised they didn't. They were like, right there. They did that wheelhouse. We would know, like, the 2012 game or something. We would know. There's no way we would know about the Rush Atari game. So Warshaw gets to meet with Steven Spielberg in La. And was not given direction or brief. He meets with Spielberg. Says, here's what I propose. This adventure game that follows the plot of the film somewhat, where the kid is E. T playing the game. You are Et. Right? And you got to go around and collect all these pieces to build a phone so you can phone home. And the government's after you, and these bad doctors are after you. It's just like your movie, right? And Spielberg was like, well, can't you just have them running around and eating Reese's Pieces like Pacman? Yeah. And he went, oh, there's this great quote where he's like, here's one of my idols, Steven Spielberg, asking me to knock off Pacman for the Et. Game. And I thought, well, gee, Steven, couldn't you make something more like The Day the Earth Stood Still? Yes. Burn. Right? Burn. So he apparently had to do a little fancy footwork to talk Spielberg into going with his vision, rather than a Pacman knock off of Et. Which, who knows, may have sold a lot better, but he got them to agree to his vision for this game. He said, no, this is a groundbreaking movie. We need to make a groundbreaking game. And so Spielberg agreed to it. And Warsaw started to get to work. So we should probably take a break before Howard Scott really jumps in. Let's do it. All right, Chuck. So, it's basically the beginning of July, 1982, and Howard Scott Warshaw is the sole programmer for an Et. Video game. Atari's biggest bet that they spent $21 million on the rights to that. They're going to spend an additional $5 million on the advertising budget for the most anyone's ever spent on a video game up to that point. He's the only programmer who's going to make this game, and he has five weeks to do it. Which, from what I understand, no one had ever done before. Yeah. And this was atari was a giant at the time. If the video game industry was beginning to slip, the public didn't really realize that yet. The industry may have. But Atari held about 80% of the market. They were at about 2 billion in annual sales and about three quarters of a billion in profit, which is just unheard of about 2 billion in profit in today's money. Yeah, so a ton of money. But they saw the writing on the wall. They knew that the personal computer, like the Commodore 64 that could play games, but also do a lot more, was a real, genuine threat to the home console. So I read a contemporary article in The New York Times from 1983 talking about this, and Atari said they did not see the writing on the wall. Well, one of them said, the first six months of 1983 was one way. The second six months, it was like we were in a totally different business. Yeah, but if you read interviews with them now, I think that might have been, oh, the guy covering his well. Yeah. I don't think you want to go out in the press in the moment and say, hey, everyone, we're super scared investors. Don't freak out. Don't panic. You're right, Chuck. I feel a little foolish. So what they did was they set Warshaw up with everything he would have at work. They set him up at home. So the only time he could not be working on this game was his very short drive over to the office. And he worked on it almost non stop for five weeks. He had a manager that was assigned to him to make sure that he ate. That was, I'm sure, not the manager's only duty, but it was one of the manager's new jobs, was to make sure that Warshaw ate every day. How about a waffle? Sure, whatever. Stop bothering me. ET's in the pit again. So for five weeks, he worked almost, like you said, 24 hours a day. He said it's the hardest he's ever worked in his entire life. And when five weeks came and went, he handed off the game. He finished it. He completed it in time. And it wasn't done in his opinion, or it would turn out in anybody's opinion, but it was done. It was a complete game that he had finished in five weeks, the Et video game. And it wasn't just something like a Pacman knock off. He given real thought to it and created a world that was much different from a lot of the other games at the time. At the time, it was a world like it was a cube shaped world with six screens. And so if you walk to the left, you knew you were going to end up on this other screen. If you walked up, you would end up on the other screen. It was a world that you were navigating rather than, say, like Yours Revenge, which is just one screen, and everything's happening on the one screen. And it may imply motion or something like this, with the Et. Game, you are moving from one area of this world to the next, which is new. It wasn't new, but it wasn't standard to have six screens, especially if you have five weeks to do it. Give the guy a break. Yeah. No, what I'm saying is that it wasn't like some big revolutionary thing. Like, the Raiders game was previous, and it had 30 something screen. Okay, all right, fine. And adventure kids were used to this by this point. Okay? So it wasn't like, oh, wait till they get a load of six screens, like, leaving the screen. I see. But I think Howard Scott Warshaw should have gone to everybody's house and been like, here's your copy of Etc. I made this in five weeks. Well, he designed Easter eggs in there, too. And I kind of wondered, how much time did he spend doing that with his own initials and the little yards? Revenge flower? I hadn't really thought about that. I don't know. So he said time was of the essence. Though I just maybe put that last on the list. He says today that had he had one more week to just troubleshoot, he could have worked out all the Kinks. He could have worked out the kinks. And one more Easter egg. But he handed it out. He handed it off to Atari. And Atari said, Genius. They gave it to Steven Spielberg to play. Spielberg apparently liked it. And in the game, it wasn't just some dumb clunky game. It was a mediocre game. But it was a game, and it was done, and it was out the door. And they got it out in time for Christmas. The cartridges shipped. If you go back onto YouTube and search Et game ad for commercial, it brings up some extraordinarily nostalgic ads of Et. Dressed as Santa Claus playing his own video game of a kid. Like receiving the Et. Video game from Et. Out in the shed. Oh, yeah. Amazing stuff. So not only is it like, Christmas time feeling, but, like Christmas time feeling. Christmas plus Et. Over the top. It's nice. It's just like the taste of iced sugar cookie swells from the inside of your mouth. You almost gag on it. It's so overpowering. So produce. Well, we don't know for sure how many. Maybe as many as 12 million copies of this. At least 4 million. That's part of the urban legend. Yeah, I don't think there's an exact number, but millions of copies of these were produced. $21 million invested in the licensing, plus $5 million in advertising and marketing. Right. I mean, who knows what they paid Worshaw or for the actual production, right? I mean, I doubt if it was millions of dollars, but it's probably salaried. They sunk a whole lot of money into this thing, right. And sold okay. At first, they sold about a half a million copies. And I remember oh, you do? Oh, yeah. Oh, nice word. Got around. And this was obviously long before the Internet. Like, you could still sell some stuff back then before everyone realized it stunk. Right. And that's what was going on. But literally, kid to kid to kid in cul de sacs and classrooms got the word that the Et. Game stunk. Yeah. And it killed it. It did. It little kids killed it. They sold, like a half a million copies right out of the gate, almost. And then it peaked right there very quickly, right around the Christmas season. Right. Yeah. I mean, just think about that, though. It was children led to the demise. It's not like kids read an article in the newspaper, even a review on the Et. Game. It was kids going, man, that game stinks. Yeah. What, you bought that? Oh, don't buy it. It stinks. Yeah, it's terrible. And that happened like a game of telephone all around the country. That's really cool. Simultaneously, kids get things done. They do, man. So, like you said, it happened pretty fast. They peaked at a half a million copies, and over time, it managed to sell another million on top of that. So a million and a half copies. That's a success. I think it's, like, actually in Atari's top ten of best sellers. But the problem is, if this story is the story of everything or anything, it's not the story of a overconfident game designer making a terrible game. A very confident game designer making a middling game. If it's a story of anything, it is of executives being drunk with confidence in hubris, that no matter what they put out, if it's tied to a hot property of, like, a movie or something, it's going to sell. It doesn't matter what the game is, it's going to sell. Problem one. Problem two was they forecasted based on that hubris, too. Yeah. So not only did they say it's going to sell, no matter what we put out, it's going to sell bigger than anything we've ever put out before. And they ordered 4 million cartridges. Well, again, it sold a million and a half. And two and a half million cartridges were sitting in warehouses, not to mention ones that were starting to be taken back. Because not only did kids go, I don't want this game. I want to take it back, and took it to the stores. The store started taking their games back to Atari. So Atari is like, Wait a minute, everybody. This is Et. The game. What are you doing? Put this in your 2600 and shut up. And people didn't listen. Yeah. And you can hardly blame the executives. They were like, Warshaw plus Spielberg is going to be another hit because we had it in Raiders. So I sort of get it. But it was that timeline. Right. That was the big problem. It was all of a timeline. He could have created a game as good as Raiders. Right? Yeah. Given five, six months I'm sure. Yeah. Even given two months, he probably could have made an even better game. But it was kind of a boring game. It wasn't that fun. There's a very famous quote from a New York Times article in 1982 where a little ten year old said, it wasn't that fun. Yes. That's all you need to say. And it wasn't. And not only was it not fun, but I guess you could call it a bug. It was a bug. It seems more like bad design than just a mistake. But what would happen is Et. Would fall into these pits, and then he could levitate back out. But depending on which way or even how you're holding the joystick, the slightest little move would cause Et. To fall back into that pit, no matter what direction you went. Sometimes, yeah. But it wasn't like, all the time. It happened enough, though, to where as a kid, remember you asked me earlier if it was frustrating trying to parachute? It was not, because you knew you could do it. Right. This was frustrating. I got you kids got frustrated. Et. Was falling in the pit, and he would get out and he would fall in the pit. Right. And then you do that enough times, and you're like, I'm going to play Yards Revenge or any of my other games. Do you have fast food? And kids put it down. Yeah, they put down well, they didn't put down the joystick and go outside and play. That would be like the movie ending. They just popped it out and put in the game that they liked. Exactly. This is a big deal for Atari because it came at the worst possible time. And speaking of the worst possible time, let's take a break and do an ad break, and we'll come right back. All right? All right, Chuck. So, like I was saying, this came at a really terrible time for Atari. You kind of talked about how the personal computer industry was starting to eat into their profits big time, and they really needed this Et. Bet to pay off. And not only did it not pay off, they lost tens of millions of dollars on this. It was a huge, catastrophic bet for Atari. And the numbers are just stunning. Like you said, in 1982, Atari's profits were $2 billion in well, in today's money no, that was yeah, their profits I'm sorry. In today's money, their gross was 2 billion. In the second quarter of 1983, they posted a loss of $310,000,000. $536,000,000 loss for the whole year. By 1084, the company had been sold. So it went from $2 billion in profits to a loss of $536,000,000 over the course of a year. Yes. And it was not because of Et. But this is the thing okay, so it gets even worse. Hold on. We're not there yet. I'm getting excited. The whole video game industry actually went down. Oh, yeah. So there's something called the North American Video Game Crash of 1983, where not only did Atari go under, basically, the industry did. So the whole industry in 1983 had $3.2 billion in sales by 1985. Two years later, they had a $100 million in sales. It was a crash. Like, that is a catastrophic crash. And like you're saying, no, it wasn't because of Et. But imagine this. Think about this. All of that has been laid ever since then at the feet of Et. The video game and Howard Scott warshaw. People look at him and say, you ruined the video game industry single handedly. That's how he's thought of I think that was the case up until, like, 2014 or 15. Right? Yeah. I think people in the know knew that that was not the case, but the popular pop culture opinion of them. Yeah, maybe. But let's say Et. Was a big hit. It would not have saved Atari. No. It might have saved the bleeding a little bit, but not cool. It would have been a drop in the bucket, basically. Yeah. I mean, I certainly feel bad for Warsaw, but he has a good inning, so stick around for that. Don't go anywhere. After Et. He took some time off. He said that he just needed to sort of recover. I believe it was the words he used. He went into real estate and did not enjoy that at all. And eventually he became a psychotherapist. And that's what he does today. He's labeled the Silicon Valley psychotherapist and sort of specializes in talking. He jokes that he's fluent in English and Nerd, so I think kind of specializes in talking to Silicon Valley types about their work problems. Yeah. Certainly a man can identify. Right? Yeah. I bet he's a great psychotherapy. It seems like he definitely would be. Yeah. So he definitely made peace with the whole thing. And I think he very frequently jokes. I've seen it in more than one article that he says he kind of enjoys it when people say that Et. Is the worst video game of all time. Right. Because people also say that Yours Revenge is one of the best video games of all time. So he has the greatest range of any video designer ever. So he definitely has, like I think it took him a little while. That's the impression I have to make peace with it. But he made peace with it. And I think one of the reasons he was able to make peace with it and I'm just armchair psychologizing here, but he came to realize, yeah, I've used it before. And you said the exact same thing, I think, too. Yeah. He realized that it wasn't the worst video game of all time, and that a lot of the people who were saying it was the worst video game of all time didn't know what they were talking about, which has to be super liberating. Sure. And the whole world is like, You ruined everything. And then you realize they don't even know what they're saying. You can just kind of let it roll off your back a little more easily. So the cherry on top of this story we mentioned this documentary, it's already game over. It is about the legend of the story of the Et game, which continued after its demise with this urban legend, that Atari was so distraught and embarrassed by this game that they had all the remaining boxes shipped out and buried in the desert under cement. Initially, you're like, that doesn't make any sense. Why would it already spend all this money to do this when they could just burn them, sell them in the dollar bin, do anything other than this weird plan to bury them out in the desert of New Mexico? Yeah. And a lot of people took it when it was kind of an initial rumor that was trying to bury their shame. It just went that much further to point out how bad the Egypt video game was. Atari was trying to bury it and forget about it. Right. So in 2011, there was a party where there was an former Atari person there, and a guy named Mike Burns was talking to him and said something about, yeah, this urban legend that you guys did this. And apparently the answer was just sheepish enough to where he was like, wait a minute. Is that true? Right. So did he fund this documentary? Is that how that works? He's the guy who makes things happen? He brings people together? Okay. I think, yes, he definitely put some of his own money into it, but I think he also got others to put money into it as well. Okay. I didn't know if he was involved in the dock itself yes, he was. Or just financing the dig. Both. But Zach Penn made this documentary. Zach Pen. Great writer. Ironically wrote the movie Ready Player One. Oh, he did. Which talks about adventure and Easter eggs and all that fun stuff. So he's rent a bunch of movies, a bunch of the Marvel movies and stuff. And it was clearly a labor of love, this documentary, if you've seen it, zach Penn is, like, super excited about all this stuff. Yeah. So the old Alamogordo landfill in New Mexico, it's 300 acres, and then 100 cells, which are these holes, but they're just these big, square, deep pits where if you listen to our landfills episode, then you know what goes on there. They just dump stuff in there and cover it up. And the legend was that Et. Is in one of these cells. And these days, they chart it and it's mapped out so they know what's where, generally. Sure. And if a cop comes and says, hey, there's some evidence from four years ago, they could say, oh, well, that is going to be in this sale. It was from this area of town where it was picked up. Right. And we buried it here. Back then, they didn't have anything like that. No, it was like they just dug a hole, put garbage in it, covered it up, and went home. According to a guy named Joe Lee windowski. And Mike burns lucked out that a guy named Joe Lee windowski worked at the Alamogordoe city waste department because he is basically the institutional memory of Alamogordo's waste. Oh, yeah. And he worked at the dump for so long that he had a pretty good chance of remembering where this stuff was put. But he was kind of like, no, we didn't document it. I have no idea. Leave me alone. And apparently, Mike burns is not the type to just be like, oh, okay. Things didn't mean to bother you. He'll keep pestering you until you do what he wants, from what I understand. And so he finally got jolie woundowski on board. And in just an astounding turn of good luck, jolie windowski's wife had made a scrapbook of Joe's time working for Alan Mcgurto's waste department. That included pictures of the dump from around this time. So they were able to narrow down these 100 cells, over 300 acres to just two, which narrowed the search enough that they could actually start taking samples to try to yeah, that was a very big breakthrough. And if you watch this documentary, when they're taking these samples and they come across, like, newspaper clippings from that year and that month where these cartridges were supposedly buried, it's really exciting. It is. I got to admit. It's like, oh, my gosh. It's like finding buried treasure. Right? So they narrowed it down. All of these people showed up. Fans what's his name? Ernest Klein, who wrote the book ready player one. He showed up back to the future. DeLorean and it was a very big deal. Howard warshaw came in and he was there, and people were just like, embracing this guy instead of like, it's not like he showed up, and people are like, there he is. Get him, get him. He's like this beloved cherished dude. Right. And I get the sense that this is a very big deal for his closure, which is interesting, because burying something is usually the closure. In this case, digging it up was the closure. Yeah, good point. And they did find 1300 game cartridges, which it makes you wonder, like, how they got there, how the rumor got started to begin with, and the fact that there is some truth to it. Yeah, they feel like it definitely confirms that urban legend. Like Atari definitely did cover up. They did dump these cartridges. But it wasn't just Et. Cartridges, and it wasn't like the millions that they supposedly dumped, but they probably buried some elsewhere in either California or Texas or both. But it confirmed that, yes, this actually did happen. The urban legend was real. And at the very least, it gave Howard Scott warshaw that closure you are talking about. He got to see 30 something years on. People were still vibing out on his creation, although in ways he could not have possibly predicted when he was spending that five weeks programming this game. Yeah, he said he was full of gratitude. That's really cool. That's a very cool way to go through life, my friend. Oh, man. If you can remember to have gratitude, it truly does make you happy. Yeah. It's insane. It's just remembering to be grateful is the trick. So they ended up a lot of these went on ebay auctioned off. I think they sold about $100,000 worth of these things that went to the city of Ella Maureen. Of course they owned them. Right. It's not like they just gave them out to everyone that was there as a party gift. They should have sure. They should have given everyone one copy. I think some of Mike Burns and some of his crew got some, and Almaguerdo kept some. But I think the ones that were auctioned were auctioned by Almagueordo to go to fund a museum. I would love a copy assigned cartridge for more show. I mean, the most I think one went for was $1,500. I don't want it that bad. I'm saying that's the most the highest any of them went for, you could probably give him for a couple of tried. I wonder if he listens to the show. I hope so. You never know. I hope so. I hope we cleared it up for you. Warshaw. Your legend, sir. Yes. Hats off to you. Send me a signed cartridge. Send two. Josh needs one. Thank you, buddy. Do you got anything else? No. Et. Was not the worst game. There were games that were so bad that they were just in the dustbin of history. They were so bad. Yeah, like sorcerer, like you said, manjas. Apparently pretty bad. Yeah, they were terrible. Like, all these not knock off companies. But Atari opened it up to where anyone could design a game that fit their console. And some people say that that was one of the reasons why Atari lost market shares, because there's so much Crud on the shelves. People were tired of buying Cruddy games for $25, and they just over saturated the market themselves. But they oversaturated with terrible stuff over satched. Well, at any rate, that's Et. The game. Not the worst video game of all time, but a heck of a story. I'll tell you what. Good one. And hopefully it gives you a little bit of nostalgia this holiday season. Yeah, great. Feel that warm tingling? It's either a bladder infection or nostalgia. Let's see. Since I said bladder infection, everybody, it's time for listener ma'am. This is about bird poop. Hey, guys. Listen to the olive oil podcast and loved it very much. Living in Italy, I use it every day. That's my wonderful complexion and youthful looks. I want to tell you about a problem, though, that we have in Rome every year, indirectly caused by olives. Every winter, the city center is home to millions of migrating starlings. They spend their days out on the local countryside, eating olives and having a great time. In the evening, they come back to our warmer city center and sleep in the city center trees for the night. Great news for bird watchers, but bad news if you like to avoid being pooed on. The city gets covered in the stuff, and he sent me a video of these cars parked on the street, and it literally looks like it was painted with bird poop. Completely solid, every square inch. That's got to be bad for the paint. Yeah, it's really bad. He said, what does it have to do with olive oil? Well, the olivestones may not come out of the starling birds bottoms, but the olive oil infused greasy poo does, and it makes driving along the roads almost impossible. I've fallen off my scooter twice in the past few years oh, my gosh. Because of this. So I guess it's slippery oily poop. My gosh. And that is from James in Rome. Oh, thanks, James. That email is kind of petered out at the end there. Yeah, I was expecting a big finish. Just oily poop. All right, well, thanks regardless. And stay safe on your scooter there, James. He said, people use umbrellas. And hats off to you living in Rome. Have you been to Rome? Sure. When I went, I was like, I could live here pretty great. I told you. And she's like, maybe. It's lovely city. It really is. Old world charm. Cats. What else? Wine, food, beautiful people. Yeah. Man, I remember seeing men and women at every turn that looked like runway models. Sure. And they were just regular newspaper boys. Well, the fact that they do like, a little twirl every once in a while as they were walking really kind of sold it, too. Yeah. And go chow chow bell chabella. Wow, this turned out weird. If you want to get in touch with us, you can go on to STUFFYou know.com and hit us up through our social links. You can go to the joshclarkway.com, or you can just send us a good old fashioned email to stuff. Podcast howstepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
What is parallel evolution? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/what-is-parallel-evolution | In the process of parallel evolution, two seemingly unrelated species living in isolation can evolve surprisingly similar traits -- but how does it work, and why does it happen? Join Chuck and Josh as they break down the process of parallel evolution. | In the process of parallel evolution, two seemingly unrelated species living in isolation can evolve surprisingly similar traits -- but how does it work, and why does it happen? Join Chuck and Josh as they break down the process of parallel evolution. | Thu, 19 May 2011 15:49:55 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=15, tm_min=49, tm_sec=55, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=139, tm_isdst=0) | 26723971 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. With me, as always, is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. I am here, sir. Yeah. And that makes the stuff you should know indeed The Friday version. Yeah. Been a while on the Friday. It is Friday, isn't it? Are we shouting out to Kiva first thing? I think we definitely should. Dudes and dudettes. We have surpassed half a million bucks as a team in Microloans to Kiva.org. Yeah. And that was our goal, was to hit it in May. And darn it all if we didn't do it. We totally did it. We started our team October 2010, 2009. But by the next October, we'd already passed our $250,000 goal, and then we wanted to get to 500,000 in May. I didn't think it was possible. We totally did. It's possible because of people like Glenn and Sonya yes. Who held the team for us. That's right. There are de facto captains. It's because of people like Blake. Yeah. This guy who came in and basically put 16 loans, I think, on his credit card because he said he was sick of us being so close to half a million dollars, but not quite there. That's awesome. And everybody who's a member on our team who's contributed anything? Well, at least $25. Yeah. We're number three on all of Kiva and the number of team members ahead of Team Obama in Australia, in Europe. We're just so proud of you. We're very proud of everybody, and it's just cool. And I guess Glenn and Sonia will probably help us figure out the next goal, which I guess will be a million bucks. I would say. I'd say a million. Why not? Let's do it. Might take a year from now, but I ain't going anywhere. We'll find out. Yeah. Let's do it. Okay, so our goal now is to lend a million dollars on Kiva through our Stuff You Should Know team. Let's go, guys. All right. Way to go, everybody. Eat a cupcake. That's right. A good one, too. And if you want to know about Kiva and you don't know about our team, you can find that@kiba.org team. Or is it Teams? Team. Singular STUFFYou know, you can join up with the team and just make one little lousy $25 loan, and you can get your money back, and then you can pull it out if you want. But you're probably going to want to reinvest it because it's kind of cool. And you know what? Before you do, before you sign up, or if you just recently signed up, you should read our two part blog post on Kiva and how we feel about Kiva, because it's not a perfect system, and after a while, everyone inevitably runs up against the flaws, and it talks about quitting and all that. Right. So we wrote a couple of posts on it. So you could search Why We Lend at SYSK and that will bring it up on the blogs, right? Yeah. What I've learned is, just like regular loans, micro loans are no different. There are people that get in trouble and should not have borrowed what they borrowed. And it's even sadder, I think, that people borrow $600 and can't afford that. There are some downsides, but we found not only that, there are also tons of predators out there lending to people at horrible rates. Yes. But we believe in Kiva and we found that there are many more positive associations. Agreed. Moving on. Moving on, dude. So also probably wouldn't hurt to go listen to our Micro Lending how Microlending Works podcast. Yeah. Where we first discovered Kiva. That's right. So, Chuck, we're going to talk about something that has absolutely nothing to do with Kiva, as far as I know. Okay. I think you're right. Let's talk first about Australia. Okay. Australia is this awesome little natural laboratory, a giant petri dish, if you will. Just from childhood, I've always been amazed that it's a country and a continent. My hat has always gone off to Australia. Sure. To all of our peeps down in Australia. Chuck, take off your hat. Asia. Okay. There you go. You're supposed to say oi. Yes. Okay, just pretend I just said and the reason being is because at one point, the continents all formed a supercontinent pangaea. Some of the other continents kind of stuck together a little more. Australia went off by itself, as Australians do. It went off to do its own thing. That's right. And there were animals in existence about 60 million years ago when it broke off that were living on Australia. Yeah. I pictured the little crack forming and then separating and literally animals looking at their little species brethren going, Bye. That's a really good way to look at it, too, because it's not like these cracks happen. Like this species lives over here, this species lives over there. Right. I mean, that's pretty much exactly how it happened. Not that quickly, maybe using time lapse photography, but essentially that gave rise to related species evolving in completely different parts of the world. That's right. So Australia gave us some freak shows like koala bears, kangaroos, wombats, tasmanian devils that are really different than other animals in other parts of the world. Exactly. But it also gave us a little something called the Flying philanges. I've never heard of this. Okay. The Flying Philanthropy is a rodent. It has a tail, it has a tiny head, it's covered in fur. It'll give you some sort of pestilent disease. Right. If you eat it raw. Yeah. But it also has this weird little bit of skin that retracts, except when it's jumping from tree to tree, it spreads its arms and legs out, spread eagle and this flap of skin in between its arm and say it's ribs. And then it's legs, and it's a buttocks. Okay. This skin flaps out to allow it to glide. Yeah. It's like those flying dudes that you see now, the skydivers that they basically wear little flying suits. Yeah. Wingsuit. Wings. Those things are awesome. Pretty cool and way dangerous. So this is like the original this is the OG of that? Yeah, I think it was based on that flying flanges. Sounds like, again, a total freak show until you remember. Oh, yeah. North America has flying squirrels that are the exact same thing. And I had a pet one. I think you mentioned that before. You did, didn't you? Yes. Okay. So if you go back far enough on the family tree, you're going to find that both of these animals ancestors were living in Australia and elsewhere in the world at the time. That's right. Okay. So when they split off, when Australia broke off, this animal's habitat was disrupted. And so you had two members of the same species living in different parts of the world but evolving completely differently. Right, right. So they've gotten to the point now where the flying squirrels and the flying flanges are not the same animal. They're different species because they can't engage in successful reproduction any longer. Right. But they still both evolved independently. These flaps, which are just totally odd, that's what's called parallel evolution. Right? That's right. And the flying phalanges and flying squirrel are far from the only species that are no longer related that are no longer the same species that have evolved similarly, which poses a really big question for biology and evolution. How is this happening? That's right. Well, parallel evolution further defined as when they're related species that have been split. When two different species share these traits, it's morphological similarity. It's kind of neat. And when two completely unrelated species develop this morphological similarity, it's called convergent evolution. And it's kind of hard to tell because we don't know exactly how things were millions of years ago when you look exactly sure exactly which one of these were similar back then. But we do know in, like, the case of the squirrel and the phalanger. Yeah, philanges. I've been saying phalanges. Oh, really? Philanger. Yeah, it's a philanger. The flying philander. They should just call it a squirrel. Well, that occurred to me. Maybe there isn't such a thing as parallel evolution. Maybe it's all humans. We're just not calling everything the same thing. Yeah, it's our naming convention. There's problems solved. So one of the reasons, and it's pretty simple, actually, and it makes a lot of sense that parallel evolution can occur is that when you have a similar environment with two species, population pressure is going to lead to similar traits. Like, we got to survive. So if we live in a similar environment, then we're probably going to evolve similarly. Like, if it's really cold, we're probably going to have thick fur as different species. Pretty basic. Another really good example I think that was used was teeth. Yes. Right. Yeah. I know that's jumping around a little bit, but no, that's all right. Teeth, things we take for granted, they're so ubiquitous. Sharp teeth. Sharp teeth are found in all carnivores. And the reason why is because it's a really good trait. Right. Because we can dig into meat. Right. Same thing, though. Although I can't with my stupid bum tooth. I'm devolving Sunday again, through technology, I hope. So what you're talking about, Chuck, with natural selection is that basically, imagine dropping an animal into an environment. Okay, so a jungle. Right. There are parts of it that are going to allow it to thrive. There are things that are going to make it less likely to thrive. Yeah. The things that make it likelier to thrive are the traits that are going to get passed along from generation to generation. Yes. As long as they hang on long enough to survive through the reproduction process. Then it gets ingrained and boom, you've got yourself a trait. Well, by nature, the traits that allow it to hang on long enough to reproduce are going to be most successful traits because with reproduction, those are the ones that are going to get passed around the most frequently. Sure. And then eventually, the animals that had more of the traits that didn't allow it to thrive are going to die out. They're not going to reproduce. So on a long enough time scale, this reproduction will lead to higher frequency of traits that make an animal fit for its environment. Right. Like the gorilla, for instance, used to have a large tail with a pinwheel on the end of it, but it didn't really do much for them, so over time, it just kind of went away. Right. That's not true though, is it? No, it's not true. What do you mean? Is it all right? I was just making sure. So these changes, though, these traits, right? They just kind of seem to pop up here or there in our current understanding of genetics. The 1980 is understanding of genetics. They just kind of pop up out of nowhere, right? Yeah, sure. But, Chuck, if I may digress for a second, please. Have we ever explained what came first, the chicken or the egg? Yeah. It's been a while, though. But we have already. Yeah, but it's been a while. I think it deserves a recap. Okay. Because you actually know the answer. Yes, I do. I can say that the egg came first because the genetic mutation that gives rise to new species, to new animals occurs in the zygotic stage of development. Right? Right. So that means a non chicken and a non chicken got together and created a zygote that had a mutation that eventually turned it into a chicken. Its genes were expressed to be a chicken. So the egg came first. The egg came before the chicken. Eventually the egg hatched and you had the first chicken, but the egg came first. All right. But the point of me saying that is that the mutations that appear, these traits that change over time show up, that make an animal more fit for its environment, happen in the reproductive level of zygote. That's right. And the accumulation of those traits, the beneficial traits that make it able to survive in a certain place, like a polar bear in the cold, is called an ecological niche, or niche, as some people say. We talked about the polar bear before separating from the brown bear and the black bear and evolution and isolation, which is kind of a companion podcast of this one. Agreed. Did you write that one? Yeah, I wrote that one. I didn't write this one. This is the grabster. Yeah, that's right. Of course. Grab. So that's an ecological niche. And animals, like we mentioned, the polar bear that have adapted to live in a cold area. Throw a polar bear out in the savannah of Africa and it's not going to do too well. Right. Which brings up another point. I think that there's a lesson in all of this, what we're talking about, especially with ecological niches. Okay. We especially us being humans at the top of the food chain and the smartest things ever since sliced bread. Right. Or fairy dogs. Go ahead. Okay. Tend to look at evolution as basically a ladder and we're at the top, baby. Right. That's not the case. And ecological niches. Point that out. Okay, great example. If you take a human and put it at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, it's not going to thrive. No. It's going to drown or its head is going to explode. Right. We're not suited for it. So we're not evolved. We're not at the top of evolution. If evolution were a ladder and we were at the top, we'd be suited for any environment. We're not. That's a good point. So as a guy named Matt Ridley points out in a book called The Red Queen sex and the Evolution of Human Nature that evolution is not a ladder, it is a treadmill. Yeah. No animals necessarily better than another more highly evolved it has to do with adapting to your local environment. That's one of the processes of parallel evolution. Makes sense. We adapt to our local environment or our ecological niche. That's right. That's a very good point. The reason we're pointing out ecological niche to begin with is because organisms, period, that have parallel or convergent evolution or more likely to have a similar ecological niche. That's a really long way of putting that. Does it? Yeah. For instance, you look at an animal like the wildebeest or North American cattle, they're actually sort of parallel evolutionized because they live in very similar areas plains, hot, grassy. So they're really similar in the end, even though they're on two different continents. Yeah. Number one evolutionized T shirt. Okay. Number two that's absolutely right. All right. Thank you. Absolutely right. Okay, great. What do you think? I thought you said wrong, and I heard absolutely white. Okay, that's absolutely blight. But Josh absolutely kite. Sometimes convergent evolution does not depend on this ecological niche because the trait is really advantageous for all kinds of organisms. And that's when you brought up the sharp teeth. Teeth, limbs, wings, arms. Consider this the arms. We can say now, looking at genomes, that arms are a direct relative of fins. This, again, goes to the idea that evolution is a treadmill, not a ladder. Right. So it's not like arms are the inevitable end of fins. What are you laughing about? It's that fins are better suited for swimming around the water. Yeah, right. With the same genes, the same genetic set, the same genetic code that give you fins also give you arms if you're walking around, maybe swinging from trees or need to climb them or need to high five somebody to keep society going. Right? Yeah, same thing. Yeah, you're right. But we're not the only things that evolve limbs. But limbs are so advantageous, just like teeth, that we are a lot of different, completely unrelated species evolved limbs to walk and to grab things. What is that? Convergent evolution? Yes, I would say so. At the very least, parallel. You know, I have to say, I'm surprising myself. I'm extremely passionate for this one. I don't understand why. Well, it's cool, and we haven't covered evolution in earnest as a podcast, but we've hit on it in so many, I think we're covering it in the long run, one way or the other. You know what I think it is, Chuck? I am just barely hanging on by my fingernails. Yeah. If I say it really fast, it'll be right. All right, let's talk about genetics in this whole mess. Okay. A parallel evolution. There are two things to think about when you think about genetics, and the first one, I think, is kind of cool. The genetic code for species potentially has a hidden blueprint, almost, for what it could do, but not necessarily does do. And the graphs are liking it, too. Let's say you have a blueprint of a house, and the architect designed it such that you can add on a master bedroom here in this spot. Right. But you never do it. But it's there. You've got the land and the blueprint for it. You just don't use it. Right. Because the architects said, don't build that addition yet. They don't have the money for it. They're just building the house. Exactly. But it still exists in the master blueprint. And the same can be said of, let's say, a jellyfish, which is round. Right. There is no right or left side of a sea anemone. Right. It has radio symmetry. Right. A jellyfish or an anemone. That's so hard for me. Anemone. Show off. Anemone. No, it's not an enemy anemone. There is no left or right side. It has a radial body plan. It's circular, which is not a funny shape at all. And the genetic code, though, is there. So eventually, one day, let's say, the jellyfish needed to evolve to have a left or right side. For some reason, it could do that, genetically speaking. The code is there. Yeah. For bilateral symmetry. Which I have. Which you have. That's right. If you cut us down the middle, we could be folded in half. Yes. If you put a mirror up to your nose. Perpendicular to your nose? No, parallel to your nose. The point of your nose. It would be half. It looked like you. That's right. Right. You know, they say symmetry equals beauty. Yes, that's what they say. That's what a lot of people say. You've got a big wall eye on one side. That's why you're not attractive. What are you going after the eyes for? You mentioned disco. I in another recent podcast. Did somebody wrong you recently? No. Okay. So jellyfish have radio symmetry, but they have a genetic marker to kick in bilateral symmetry if they ever need it. And believe me, I would run horrified. Maybe that's what Cthulhu is. It's a jellyfish whose bilateral symmetry started to kick in a little bit. Nice. The point is, it's not just jellyfish. There are a lot of dormant genes just ready to go off with the right mutation to change all sorts of stuff. And I think also, I read the article that he cited, the Rstechnica article. The jellyfish have that so that they can develop their mouth. Oh, really? Yeah. Cool. Because the mouth requires bilateral symmetry between a jellyfish. The reason we mentioned this to begin with, though, is that the belief that you can develop similar traits even though you evolve separately, which is what we've been talking about this whole time, because the trait has always been in your genetic code to begin with. Just dormant. Right. It's just very ancient. Yeah. And it can express in different ways. Like, apparently they looked at the fins of a fish right. And found that they have pretty much the same genes that we do for our arms. Okay. And bilateral symmetry, those genes are the same for everything. Wow. Right. So we're all a lot more related, I guess, than we thought. Now that we're starting to look into it, I wonder if well, we probably know this by now if we have any dormant genetic codes in humans. Like, we could potentially grow that tail if we needed to. Well, apparently we do have tails in some embryonic development stage. We still have stigma tails. And there are people who are born with them who don't shed them. That's pretty cool. Who had the tale? Jason Alexander had one in one of the Fairly Brothers movies. Yeah. There's something about Mary, wasn't it? No, he wasn't in that. Are you sure that wasn't it? Shallow hal? Yes. Thank you. Yeah, that's what I meant to didn't one of the friends have a tail? No. Chandler had a third nipple. Yes. Super fluid nipples. Crusty the clown. Hey. So, Josh, what's the second thing to consider? Well, I guess the other thing what got biologists into the idea of looking at genes is that we were looking at morphological changes. Right. Stuff we can see. Yes. Like, this flying squirrel is not related to that flying squirrel. But they're both flying squirrels, even though we call them different things. PhilAngers. Right. When we look at the genetic level, we're finding that these same morphological traits, the similarities are also found on the genetic level. Right. So basically they're thinking, like, you can look at the ecological pressure, the environmental pressure that caused a polar bears coat to become white right. On an internal level with the interactions between amino acids and proteins that are causing these genes to be expressed. So internally and externally, these changes are occurring to form flying PhilAngers and squirrels on two different continents. Thank you. The freak show that is Australia for basically pointing science in the right direction. They love it when we talk about them, too. We always get email from Aziz that are just like, you guys are the best. Yeah, they gave us another one, too. The Tasmanian wolf. Is that Australian now extinct wolf, which is almost completely unrelated to any other wolf. It's extinct. Like I said. But it is the spitting image of the gray wolf here in North America. Same size, even though they're like, they were not related. Same everything. This is the kind of science I dig. Yeah. Cool science. Yeah. Not that physics magnetism. You're into physics, though? Sort of. Just out of necessity, I guess. Yeah. But you have an appreciation more than I do, I think. Really? Yeah. Do you know, like, fulcrumbs? What is wrong with that? What's a fulcrum? The fulcrum is the point. I know. It's like a CSA, right? Is that the fulcrum? Yeah. Okay. It's the point of balance on a sea salt. Yeah. It's the point that seesaw balance is at. Yes. Thank you. Does anything else? No. Are we just going to evolve separately here? I think so. Okay. If you want to learn more about evolution, you should type in evolution in the search bar@houseupworks.com. Also check out can animals evolve in isolation? That's a cool article. This article we've been talking about from The Grabster. How can two seemingly unrelated species that live in isolation from each other evolve into identical forms? You can also reach it by typing in parallel evolution in the search bar@howstepworks.com. So there's a lot for you to go check out there. All right. Yeah. And I would say just type in evolution and how stuff works and you're going to get a whole bevy of cool stuff. That's what I said first. How is it? Yeah, I'm reinforcing that. Well, Chuck said search bar and how stuff works. Right. Yeah, I did too. It means it's super. Time for listener map. That's right, Josh. I'm going to call this mountaintop removal coal mining email from an insider. One of millions. Yeah, we got a lot of positive feedback on this, and surprisingly, not one person has written in yet that said, you jerks. You never think about the minor side of things. Most people have been like, yeah, this is probably shouldn't be. Some guy on Twitter basically said, I don't like it when they get political, but this one was pretty good. All right, yeah, I'll take that then. Hey, guys, I've heard all your podcasts from day one. And keep up the good work, please. Sometimes you are all I need to get away from the day stress. I mean mining engineer student enrolled at the university of Kentucky go wildcat. One of the largest exporters of eager and to do mining engineers. In reality, the decision to enroll here had more to do with scholarship opportunities than a lifelong love of Appalachian mining. However, after being surrounded by overzealous students who would personally blow up the earth for an ounce of coal because it keeps the lights on, I have become entirely infatuated with this mindset. I've interviewed for all the big name companies, some of which spend hundreds of thousands of dollars recruiting new workforce. When I interview for these companies, they seem to be in complete denial of the statistics, occasionally showing a picture of a deer standing on a patch of grass and claiming that it's as if we were never there in the first place. As I have been shown firsthand what the mining field entails, I have nothing but devout respect for what these people do on a daily basis, and that's something I don't know if we made clear. We're not anti miners. We know these people work very hard. I think we made it extremely clear. I have nothing but devout respect for what these people do on a daily basis to make sure that I can send this email on my electricity powered laptop. At the same time, I shudder and disappointment that they wishfully remain ignorant of the science involved and the harm they are doing. Part of me wishes to enter the field to reinvent the idea that providing energy must come as a sacrifice that compromises our ability to take care of the environment and our neighbors. Wish me luck, as I have a lot of work ahead of me. And asked him if he wanted to remain anonymous, and he said it's probably a good idea. So that's anonymous, but pretty cool. Hey, thanks a lot. Anonymous. Hopefully he'll infiltrate from within. Yeah. Changing the place from the inside, right? Good luck, buddy. We like anonymous emails, right? They're usually the most like, what one? Right? Exactly. All right, well, if you want to send us an anonymous email, we would love to hear from you. You can address it too. Stuffpodcast@howstepworks.com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Visit housetepworks.com to learn more about the podcast. Click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our home page. The House of Forks iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on itunes. 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 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." | ||
42f17070-53a3-11e8-bdec-274ed1ebf826 | Barefoot Running: The Best Podcast Episode in History | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/barefoot-running-the-best-podcast-episode-in-histo | What is barefoot running? I think you know. But we'll detail all of the ins and outs. Listen and learn! | What is barefoot running? I think you know. But we'll detail all of the ins and outs. Listen and learn! | Thu, 23 Jan 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=23, tm_isdst=0) | 39921894 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there, and there's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know about barefoot running. Don't do it, says Chuck. Josh says, do it if you want. Oh, it's just because it's running has nothing to do with being barefoot. Really? I got you. Yeah, man. I don't know. I'm not a fan of running. I love it. I love walking, but I don't think I don't know. Have you just tried to walk faster? Oh, I walk, exercise, walk super fast. I'm kidding, by the way, walking fast and running are not the same thing. No, they're not. I don't know, man. It's just a lot of wear on your body. I don't think humans are meant to run like this. Well, in Chuck, you would be running afoul of an entire subgroup of people who believe that not only humans should be running barefoot, but that we're actually designed to run long distances. Yes. I think the idea is that we evolve and this sounds crazy to me. We evolved to run long distances so we could eventually just out run animals who got tired before we did. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. I'm just going to run after this bore until it gets tired. Sure. Does it make sense to you? Logically? Sure, if that's true. Well, that's the thing. They could also get spears and bows and arrows, which they did, which probably means they didn't like running after animals. Right. But if you speared an animal, it doesn't mean it's going to drop dead where you speared it. You might have to chase after it. Well, that's when you do the fast walk. Can you imagine, like, took doing, like, the sport, walking over the tundra? That would be kind of nice. Okay, so we should probably tell everybody what the heck we're talking about in general, running without shoes. Yeah. Or with those minimal. There are different versions of how minimal those shoes get. Yeah. So this whole thing started, this idea of like, hey, man, you know those running shoes you got? Chuck them off and just start running barefoot, and you'll be glad that you did. That all started around 2009, 2010. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it definitely hit a Thai watermark. It got a lot of press. It was a huge trend in running, and then it seems to have kind of crested and waned, and now it's back. But the running world has changed forever because of it. But from what I understand, there's not like a lot of people who are barefoot running these days. I don't think it has swept the nation. It did for a minute, but there are definitely people who adhere to the philosophy of your body will adjust because we ran barefoot for 80 million years. Right. Well, that's one of the implications of that is that some people suspect not only are you supposed to run barefoot, but that running with shoes, including very expensive, highly designed running shoes, are actually going to increase your chances of injury or that wear and tear on your joints and you're better off running barefoot, which sounds totally counterintuitive until you stop and think. They say, hey, man, how long have we been running? And running shoes or shoes of any kind? I think the oldest shoes that have been found were actually found in Oregon, and they're like 10,400 years old. They're called Fort Rock Sandals. They were called Prefontaines. Right. Should we talk a little bit about the history of the running shoe? Obviously not as long as that pretty exhaustive list from mental itch. But supposedly the running shoe goes back a couple of hundred years. Yeah, something like that. The sneaker at least goes back a couple of hundred years. I think. In 1832, a guy named Wait Webster. It's either Wait or Wyatt, but it's spelled like Wait. W-A-M-T. Anyway, we'll call him Senor Webster. He came up with a way of attaching a rubber sole to a shoe, which really kind of changed shoes in general. Like, people were like, hey, these shoes are actually going to last. Whereas before it was like all weather and they fell apart in the rain really quickly. These rubber soles could really kind of take the impact that you put on your body when your foot hits the ground and they weren't going to come apart because you could really attach them to an upper. Yeah. And the word sneakers comes from the fact that they were quiet. They were the first shoes that didn't clip clop around, like Jerry's Elementary School principal shoes she had on last week. So they were sneaks or sneakers, because you could sneak around. And I saw that that was invented by the British, but then the British went back to calling their sneakers, I think plim soles, that's what they call them today, is plim soles, which were like kid shoes back then. Right. But we call them sneakers here, and then what we call running shoes, they call trainers. Right. I think they still say trainers, don't they? Yes. And I think they still say plimsoles. And they still say garage lift and flat. Sure. And lieu and lowering and all that. And aluminum and herbs. Right. The only one I really take issue with is aluminium. Really? It's just wrong. I'm sorry, UK, but it's wrong. Even when David Attenborough says it. Or Richard Attenborough or any Attenborough. I'm not saying it doesn't sound pleasant, I'm just saying it's wrong. Okay. Okay. This was interesting, too. I didn't know that Reebok went back so far. They were the Bolton Company initially. Joseph William Foster was the founder. In 1852, he developed the first running spikes, and it sounds like in the 1860s. For the next decade, running spikes were just sort of shoes with spikes, like regular shoes with spikes on them. Yeah. And you would hope that they'd flatten out the end that pressed against your feet, but I suspect that they didn't always. Not to your satisfaction. Right. And then, of course, other developments in the 70s, air cushioned shoes, and then eventually the gel insert or not insert, but the gel cushioned heel. Right. And that was from asics in the 1980s. And I always thought that was kind of a scam. But apparently close to 30% more displacement of impact than the air technology. Yeah. And the air technology had been invented, I think, decades or so before NASA, right. By a guy named Frank Rudy, and he worked with Nike to add air to the soles so that this compressed gas would distribute the force that you are putting on your shoe and make it easier on your joints. Backup stream. Yeah. But if you ask these shoe companies, they're saying that they have developed this technology over the years to help runners. If you asked a skeptic and a barefoot enthusiast, they'll say, man, this running shoe thing is just a big marketing money making scam. Right. Because what they point to is, okay, the modern running shoe, actually, it was New Balance. They came up with the modern running shoe in 60s with their tracks. But most people point to the Nike's waffle shoe as, like, the birth of the running shoe. Yeah. Because isn't that when running for exercise kind of really started as a mainstream thing? That's what I learned from Forrest Gump. Oh, really? Was that in Forrest Gump? Oh, yeah. Remember he did running and he inadvertently starts the leisure running trend? Oh, I didn't realize he was starting the trend. I just thought he was running. Right. And then people started being like, what is that guy doing? I'm going to run alongside him. And he ended up starting the running jogging trend. And then moviegoers sat in an audience and thought, why is this even in this dumb long movie? I like that movie. I don't know what you're talking about. You said something bad about it before. I have yet to see it since then. Oh, since it came out? No, since you put it down a couple of weeks. Yeah. All right. Which is rare. Maybe you don't then. But they point to this. They say, okay, from the 70s, when we started this running shoe thing, running injuries haven't gone down. Right. In some cases, they've increased. And in fact, things like shin splints, I believe, planter fasciitis, knee injuries and a couple of other things have actually increased. So people are like, well, wait a minute, what is going on here? If you stop and think about it, no one was really paying attention to it until 2010, when a guy named Christopher McDougall came up with a book called Born to Run. And it's basically makes the case that paleo does for dieting that we have evolved to be a certain way to behave under certain conditions, and our modern world has kind of taken that and co opted it and messed everything up. And as a result, we're suffering from all these maladies. But rather than eating ultraprocessed food is the Paleo diet. Whole thing is based on this, was that these modern running shoes were running in are actually causing injuries. We need to throw our shoes away and just run barefoot and we'll be better off. Yeah. Because we have adapted our running to these shoes, and we're not even supposed to run. And we'll get into the whole I don't want to spoil anything by saying he'll first, but we'll get into that a little bit later. But he's saying we have adapted to run a certain way because of running shoes. And this is not how humans or not how the specifically the Tarahumara Indians, he's like, they don't get injured. They've been running barefoot for eons across long distances on all sorts of terrain. Yeah, the Tarmara Indians. Targhumara. They live in northwestern Mexico, I believe, and they're known for running around barefoot or in, like, sandals that they make from old tires. And they showed up at the Leadville Trail 100, an ultra thaw up a mountain peak and back down. They were, like, middle aged smoking before and I think during the race, may possibly drunk on corn or some sort of moonshine at the time. And we're just passing everybody. Oh, I'm sure without, like, they didn't stretch. They didn't do anything. And they're passing some of the world's most finely tuned ultra marathon ers. It was nothing. And people were like, what is going on with these guys? They're not even wearing shoes. What's the deal here? They really kind of kick things off. They actually MacDougall went and visited them, wrote an article about them, and ended up writing a book on barefoot running based on his experiences with them. That's awesome. Yeah. Should we take a break? All right, we're taking a break. Yes. We'll be right back. Okay, so this guy, Christopher McDougal, comes around, born to Run. I've seen it referred to as the most influential running book of all time and greatest Springsteen album. That's more than I wonder if they're related in any way. Let me say this. If ever in his book, he finishes a chapter with, Baby, We Were Born to Run, then he should have the pants suit off of him. Oh, you don't think he should be celebrated? Maybe kiss lightly on the cheek for a witty Springsteen reference? Sure. He's already stealing his title. How come on, as The Boss, how's he stealing his I thought he meant, like, his title. His status title still pretty recent after the New Year. Christopher McDougall, The Boss. What are you talking about? I've not seen him refer to that. There's only one Boss. But think about it. Jim Fix wrote I can't remember what the actual title was, but it was like he wrote the book on running. Yeah, I remember that. Okay, so the art of running, the joy of running. One of those two. And they're saying that this book was more influential. It just hit it just the right time. But not only did this book hit it just the right time, it came either right before or right after a study came out that basically said the same thing, that this other guy who's like one of the luminaries of the barefoot running world. Oh, yeah, daniel Lieberman. Yeah, he's a paleoanthropologist at Harvard, which means that he gets listened to you when he talks. That's right. But he released this study with some co authors, I think in 2009 or the beginning of 2010, that basically said, hey, man, if you run barefoot, your body is going to suffer far less than if you run in modern running shoes. And it was just a perfect timing with this book, Born to Run, and the two together caught the attention of anybody who is into running at a time. And people started literally taking their shoes off and going and running and then hurting themselves pretty quickly. Yeah. And he would point to things like, look, we've got Achilles tendons. We got these big knee joints. We have a big gluteus maximus, especially me. And he's like, we were kind of made to run these distances. Other people say, hey, we have those glutes because they're great for squatting and for foraging and pooping, let's be honest. Sure. I hadn't thought about that, but you're right. Sure. And so there are competing theories out there because we don't know exactly for sure, but he basically says, the way the human body is put together, we don't need these shoes, and we were built to run, not born to run. Right. But the other idea of this is and this is really where he uses to get people to buy into it, is we evolved to run this way. Running with shoes is unnatural. Yeah. And it doesn't matter who you are, even if you're super fit, if you're running with running shoes on and you're a runner, you have an 80% chance of getting injured at some .8 out of ten people every year. You said yes, get injured every single year. And even if you're in, like I said, super great shape, and you run all the time, in fact, if you run all the time, you're probably more likely to get injured. Right. Because, again, we didn't evolve to wear super cushiony gel shoes right. When we run. We were evolved to run barefoot, or maybe in some very thin sandals or something like that. Minimalist shoe wear. And he also said, well, some of the other modern problems that we have, or some of the other problems that just come along with walking around in these shoes, things like Supination Pronation, which I do. What's Pronation? It's where when you're walking or running, the inside of your heel is curved downward. So your shoes eventually, when you look at the sole and the cushioning, they're worn on one side or the other. Yeah. More. Yeah, I think I do that a little bit. I walk, like, verbal Kent at the end of The Usual Suspects, basically, from the looks of my shoes and the wear and tear on them. Yeah. Mine actually wear a little bit, I think, on the outside more than the inside. Okay, so that'd be walking shoes. That's supination. Yeah. They're two sides of the same problem, which is that your feet, your heel is not landing in line in the same axis with the front. It's tilted. I think there's like three different things going on biomechanically. But what people like Christopher McDougall and proponents of barefoot running say is, buddy, that's because you're walking on these padded soles of shoes. They're new. They haven't been around for even half of a century. Yet our feet are not designed to walk like this. And so that's why you're doing this. If you'll stop running in shoes, your pro nation or your supernation will actually fix itself. And there is some data that that is actually true, that those things. Biomechanical disorders can be fixed by running or walking barefoot. Other people say, no, if you have a biomechanical disorder like Supination or Pronation, you have no business going barefoot. The barefoot proponents say, do not listen to that guy. He's a dork. Right. And then they say, you really don't need to bring name calling into this. Whatever. Dork. Yes. Would you say dork? Remember in Police Academy where they wrote dork on mouser's chest with suntan lotion? You got a real red burn. Just realized I was reminiscing about Police Academy. I was just watching I'm watching the TV show party down for the third time now. And there's the great. Did you ever see that at all? Still have not. It's a catering company. And each episode is a different party. And there's one party where they go to Steve Gutenberg's house for his birthday party, right? And he's like, oh, man, I forgot. We actually had a surprise party. My friends through for me. So there is no birthday party. But he's like, I don't want this to go to waste. Why don't you guys just come in and call your friends? We'll have a party. So it becomes like a party at the Goose house. Awesome. That's it's a really good one. I'll bet that's probably how it would go down in real life. He at least seems like a good guy on this fictional TV show. Sure. Who got their start on that show? I don't know about getting their start. I mean, who's on it start? Adam Scott and Ken Marino and Jane Lynch. She didn't get her start on it, but she got it pre Glee and then had to leave the show when she got Gleeton. Megan Malally. I think it was like seven or eight years ago. I saw her on an episode of maybe law and order or something like that old one. And she's, like, playing serious, like, pathologist showing, I think Lenny Brisco, something in somebody's tissue or something like that. And I was like, oh, it's Shane Lynch. It was like where she was like, am I a serious actress? Am I a comedic actress. Why not? Both yeah. She was good. Our buddy Kristen Bell was on it. Martin star. Okay. Maybe it was Kristen Bell. I was like, she didn't get her start, though. Is that after Veronica Mars? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, she sort of did a guest starring thing. Got you. But it's Ken Marino at his best, and he's like one of my heroes. Martin stars on Freaks and Geeks and then later on Silicon Valley, right? Yes. Okay. I love that guy. Yeah, he's great. He actually, since we're already sidetracked, you should at some point try and bring yourself to listen to the Mark Marin episode with Martin Starr. Why would I have any trouble listening to Mark Marin? I don't know. Really interesting guy. Martin Starr. I can only imagine. And different than you might think. Oh, really? Yeah. Is he very, like, tweety and whimsical? No, he's very intense and spiritual and heady. Oh, yeah. Super smart. Yeah. Not that I thought he was dumb, but he can play that. I got you. All right, where are we? We're talking about barefoot running and how the people who are proponents say if you throw your shoes away, you will fix all these modern problems. Yeah. So the idea is that your feet have these nerve endings that will give you feedback when you're making contact with the ground that you don't get when you're wearing these shoes. Right. And they will tell you how to walk, basically, depending on what kind of terrain you're on, and your body adjust accordingly and had for many years. Right. The other thing that they say is without shoes, you actually run differently than you do with shoes. And this seems to be the genuine article argument for or against barefoot running. And it seems to kind of land in favor of barefoot running, to tell you the truth. So should we talk about the old hill first thing? Yeah, he'll striking. Yeah. When you run, because I don't run, but if someone were to steal something from me on the street and I had to run, you would see me take off down the road, and you would notice that my heels are striking the ground first and with a pretty great impact. And people like me would see you and be like, terrible form. Yeah. And say, you're never going to catch that guy. Just don't even bother. So when you run like that, it actually hurts pretty quickly. And you're actually propelling yourself in a weird way backwards. Like when you bring your heel down, your foot is up, and your heel is actually hitting the ground at a direction opposite the direction that you're trying to go. Yeah, like freeze frame. That for kind of a long running stride. That's what it would look like. So just as far as running form goes, it's not a good way to run. Anybody who runs can tell you that you're not supposed to heal strike. Although it feels very natural when you're in shoes. Right. If you take off your shoes and you heal strike, you'll take about two steps and your head will just explode with pain. And your heel. Yeah, because your heel is not made to be run on. Now, if you lean forward and run on the midfoot or the ball of your feet, you'll find running barefoot is much more comfortable. And that's what a lot of people who are proponents of barefoot running say is, this is how you're supposed to run, and this is how barefoot running makes you run. When you wear shoes, it's much easier to heal strike. You have to remember not to do that. Right. Like a sprinter. When you see these Olympic sprinters, they're not heel striking, right? They're pitched forward a bit, and they're running up on the front or at least the middle of their foot, and you see how fast they go. I took a running class once. College or no, just to learn how to run better. Just like out of shop, out in the world. What's it called? Continuing education. Yeah. Adult ed school, I think. And what I was taught was that running is falling forward and catching yourself over and over again. So the whole time you have to go flail your arms, basically. But you do that in a controlled manner. Right? Obviously. But when you learn that and you try it, it forces you to run on the balls or the midfoot. Midfoot is what I learned is the best way to do it. He did this to learn, like, proper technique and stuff. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. And once you try it, remind yourself that you can actually feel yourself doing it and you realize you're in the right form when you feel like there's a slight falling forward sensation. Yeah. The last time I did any kind of running was when I was playing softball, which is all sprinting. And even for a guy with extra pounds, I was always pretty quick, believe it or not, burst of speed. And I would just naturally jerry's laughing over there. I would naturally run not on my tippy toes, but kind of pretty far forward. Mincey. Yeah. I would mince toward that first base bag. Yeah. Go, tink ting. And people would be like, did you hear that tinking sound? And look how fast that dude is. Is that a rainbow trailing behind him in his wake? Yeah, he looks like he's about to fall over. And sometimes I did. Oh, really? No, but I saw other dudes. You know, this is an old bargain league. Some pretty funny running and some weird balance issues. Sure. Guys kind of falling down and dripping and clumsy because of all the junkiness. No, we didn't drink before games, but yeah. What about during? No, I didn't. Okay, now they would go afterward, but I didn't socialize with this crowd much. You hated them so much. I was just the ace pitcher who would come in and then go home and ice my elbow. Oh, that's pretty cool. You were like the closer. No, I pitched the whole game. Oh, really? But I was a specialist. I got you specialist winning. Yeah, that was it. All you do is win. Win. That's it. Well, let's take a break, Chuck, because I feel like this is so far off the rails, I don't even remember what the topic is. All right, let's do it. So what is the topic? Barefoot running. And we should say that when we say barefoot, there's a range of how bare your foot is. It can be completely bare. Some people just go completely foot naked. Then there are these I don't know what you call them. They're about as minimal as you can get. It's almost like a little tire flat. Like you were saying, it's called minimalist shoes. Yeah. And it's just a really thin rubber sandal, essentially. And I've seen that for running, but what I've mainly seen those for is just people saying, just go out and be in the world in these things. Okay, so you're talking about the sandal ones that go in between your big toe and the next toes. Little webbing. Yeah, it's just like a shoestring and a piece of rubber. They also came up with shoes, shoes that are called minimalist shoes. There's much more to them than what you just described. Yes. They wrap around the top of your foot that have a similar footbed. That shoe you just mentioned is like the Tara Maura Indian. Are they wear, like, a little sandal? Yeah, but they make theirs out of old tires. Okay. Which is even cooler. Totally. So there is, like, different degrees of it. And the reason that people started wearing things, I think the company Vibram made a sock with some tread on the bottom. Yes. Remember I got in trouble for bagging on those years ago? Five towed sock. Yeah. I made fun of those. And people wrote in that had their feelings hurt. Yes. I'll bet the same people do not wear those in. I bet you're right. I remember going to a Cindy Lopper concert with Yuumi, and there was a couple there, and they were wearing matching Vibram shoes, sock shoes, whatever. Minimalist shoes. And were you guys like, hey, we should do that? I will never forget them. They looked like they were going to, at any minute, just kind of go from walking on their feet to just walking on their hands and then back on their feet and then back on their hands. This is what they looked like for some reason, because they weren't wearing workout gear or anything. This is like the shoes they were wearing out there in the world. Because a lot of people say, like, no, don't just do this for running. Like, do this for life, basically. Yeah. I've always been a barefoot person. When I was a kid, I would play a lot in bare feet and always had really tough footbeds, natural footbeds. What do you call those? Just soles of your feet. Yeah, sure. They're always pretty tough and still are. Yeah. Well, Daniel Lieberman, the paleoanthropologist, did another study recently, I think in 2019, and he found that, by the way, he won an IG Nobel Prize for figuring out why pregnant women don't tip over. Oh, really? Back in, like, 2009? Yeah. Wow. What was the answer? The way that they lean backward and there's additional lumbar support in their lower back. And I think maybe the way the fetus lays it's all. Like, just kind of that's how we've evolved to not fall over, basically. Right. But this more recent work, he went to Kenya and he studied native Kenyans who basically lived their lives without wearing shoes. Yeah, he studied Americans who have worn shoes their whole life, and then he studied Americans who wore shoes and then made the transition over to barefoot running. Right. And he found that the Kenyan subjects all had deep calluses on their feet, so he thought that they would not be as sensitive. And he found that that's actually not the case, that they're much better off because they have these calluses. So their feet are naturally prevented from things like cuts and punctures and things like that, because they're just tougher on the bottom. Right. But the calcium don't cover up their nerve endings, so there's still feedback coming from the ground. But the feet are also protected by the calluses, which is kind of surprising from what I understand. Right. And his buddy, the anthropologist Brian Richmond, who he worked with, I think he's from GW University, he was talking about the arch of the foot and those ligaments, and he says those things stretch and contract every time you hit the ground. And that allows the calf muscle to act as a spring. Yes. So that's what I've seen barefoot running. One of the reasons why they say, like, no, it's just healthier and less injury prone is because of the arch of your foot acting as a spring and then your Achilles heel and your calf muscle acting as a shock absorber. Right. But these are the things that come into play when you run on the ball of your foot or your midfoot. When you heel strike, you are offloading that same force, maybe even more force, but the full weight of your body coming down on your heel, that doesn't utilize the calf or. The Achilles tendon. It sends this shock wave of force back upward to your knees and your hips. And that is why heel striking is so bad for you. Whereas running on the ball of your feet is probably better, or your midfoot is probably much better because that force is distributed to the right places, in other words. Yeah. And the skeptics will say, you start running barefoot, you're going to get hurt. And then Adherence will say that's because you just throw your shoes in the trash and go out and do your workout routine. It's like if you want to do this, you got to really wade into this water very slowly. And they recommend even, which sounds kind of silly, but they recommend doing something you probably do every day anyway, which is walking around your house with no shoes on if you're a normal human being. Yeah. And then start walking outside on different terrains. Just walking without shoes on. Soft terrain first. Yeah. Like dirt or grass or something. Then working your way up to pavement and asphalt and stuff like that. Then broken flaming glass. That's right. But they say you really got to work into it. Otherwise, like, any radical new thing you're going to do to your body, you can't just shock it. Yeah. And not just because of your feet and the bottoms of your feet either. You have tried the New Balance minimalist years and years, maybe 2011 or something like that, as a runner. And she had read, like, I think the people who sold her the shoes even told her, like, don't get out there and do it. No, they're like, do not do your normal run. Like, do a third of it, I think is what they said. And Yummy is like nuts to that. And did her normal run maybe even then some. And I thought she may have been crippled for life afterwards. Really? Yes, because she was used to heel striking because she'd been running like everybody else the whole time, and all of a sudden she's running on the balls of her feet. Not even her midfoot. The balls of her feet. So all that stuff is getting moved into the calf muscles, which just get overloaded with this workout and just laid her up for, seriously, like about five days. She could not run. She was so sore. Could she walk or was she barely wow. Barely. Like the kind where have your muscles ever been so sore that you feel like, flu? Like almost like that? Yes. It was bad news. And she was like, you should try this. And I'm like, not on your life. No way. That's very yummy. Like, yeah, they can't tell me what to do. They don't know me. They must just be talking about themselves. That's great. And there is another study, I think this was even from kind of late last year, that we found an Outside magazine from a study that was in the Journal of Applied Physiology from Peter Wayand and his biomechanics group at SMU. That's Southern Methodist. I think there's some kind of a horse mascot. The stallions? No, just remember, never mind the pony. Do we really want to talk college football? Well, like volleyball or high alive. It doesn't just have to be football. Well, that's true. That was some kind of a horse. You are so SEC. I am so we should point out that when you're doing these kinds of studies, there are a couple of ways to go about it. There's something called a force measuring treadmill or a force plate that's kind of installed on the ground and you run on it and it really measures and can show a graph on a curve or a curve on a graph on where your foot is exactly striking and what that means. Right. It shows the force not just like where in space, it's more like it tracks the force over time, I think. Yeah. So this is how they're doing all this. They're not just kind of guessing by watching people. Right. This is lieberman. Specifically, I think, too. That's right. And by the way, there's somebody knocking somewhere in this building. We're trying to get to the bottom of it. Jerry's walking around with a machete. We're hoping we can get it out in the edit. But if you hear some knocking, we're really sorry, but I think you'll agree with us in this episode, it sincerely doesn't matter. There's probably like half of the normal amount of people listening at this point. So back to this study, they use this treadmill and these force plates, and what they are determining is something called the loading rate, which is how quickly that force is applied. Yeah. And what they found is that when your heel or the ball of your foot, or wherever your foot strikes, there's like this initial force that is transferred through your body from the ground hitting from your foot hitting the ground. Right. Which will show up as a spike on this graph. Right. Depending on how quick that force is transferred, that's that loading rate. Right. And then what follows is the rest of your body weight and reaching its lowest point in your stride. And then you go back up, you push off the ground and you start all over again. That's like one stride. And that's what these force plates measure. Yeah. But what they found is when you run on the ball or midfoot, when that's what touches the ground, that actually distributes and kind of prolongs that force long enough that it actually merges with that second introduction of force, the rest of your body weight, into basically one force curve. Yeah. I think for a while they looked at this spike and when they ran on the midfoot, that spike was gone. But what they determined was it's not gone at all. It is, like you said, just kind of covered up and merged with the other. But that was the early evidence from 2010 that Lieberman came out with that supported Christopher McDougall's Born to Run hypothesis. That's right. The spike wasn't there when you run barefoot. It is there when you run in shoes because your heel is striking. Right. This leaves a really important question, though, Chuck, because this new research is basically saying, like, all that stuff, that's not the case anymore. We just change our loading rate depending but it's ultimately the same amount of force getting transferred through the box right. Depending on what kind of shoe protection you're wearing. But I think what's weird to me and what I didn't understand with this new research is if it's going to different places. If that shock is being absorbed by your Achilles tendon and your calf rather than your knees and hips. Who cares if the loading rate is the same. It's going to different parts of your body. And some parts are designed to handle that shock better than others. Is that what they're saying? Like, you may be less likely to get injured because the parts of your legs that are affected are more capable of handling it? Yeah, that when you run barefoot because you're running on your forefoot or your midfoot and you're distributing that force to your calf and your Achilles tendon, that you're less likely to get injured because of that, because you're taking that stress off your knees and hips. My question is this wouldn't you be better off then running in shoes, but hitting your forefoot or midfoot? Best of both worlds, in other words. Right. Which is probably I mean, that's what I do. So, I mean, of course it's doing great, but I think that must be the case. But I didn't see anything where it's like this is definitive still, after ten years of this being a huge trend of a lot of studies being done, a lot of people who are very smart have thought about this. It's still not definitive what the best way to run is. And I think we go back to me, which is to not run and just walk. Right. But I think the last thing that I saw from this is that if you like our track coach, they frequently now prescribe running barefoot in the grass as a cooldown after the race. Yes. And then the other thing you'll see, too, is the era of the very chunky heel. Running shoe has kind of gone because of this. Yeah, it feels like they've gotten a little leaner, haven't they? They have, because when you have a chunky heel, it's called your shoe drop, which is the ratio of where your heel lands in relation to the front of your foot. And the higher the shoe drop, the thicker the chunkier your heel is. It's impossible not to heal, strike. So what they figured out is if you kind of drop that heel down more in line with the front of your foot. You can run on the front of your foot a lot more easily and not heal. Strike in your shoes. Yeah, those big, tall heeled running shoes, too, are always made me more susceptible to an ankle turn as well. You're kind of up there. You are. It's kind of like walking in high heels or something. I wouldn't know about that, but you can imagine. Sure. Okay. Got anything else? Nothing. So that's barefoot running. It sounds like the jury is still out everybody. But if you do get into barefoot running, do it slowly. Learn the lesson from you. Me? That's right. And since I said that, it's time for listener ma'am. Hi, guys. On the safe cracking episode, I was reminded of a track by Bristol based music producer in the UK, tricky. We know Tricky. Sure. I think you got to explain that to us. Right? Come on. Everybody knows Tricky's from Bristol based, which featured on an album he released called products in the environment. It was a series of interviews with old school London gangsters from the Cray twins era, telling their stories of lives of crime over triphop beats. That sounds awesome. One of these was Bernie Lee, who learned his safe cracking trade while in prison. His favorite technique was to blow the doors off with nitroglycerin, which you touched on the episode, but not in that context. Check it out here. Insert hyperlink. Also MH 370 at the end of the episode. The second one, josh questioned the ability to tag all pieces of the plane with his call sign. Speculating on the existence of such tech, chuck said that was the future. Well, it's actually the present. What smart water, not the bottled drinking water, is a technology that encodes detailed info of a thing within water and then is applied to said thing, allowing that info to be read later on if necessary. The only problem, it evaporates. It's apparently quite robust, so it doesn't simply wash off or whatever. But I don't have first hand experience, so I can't be exactly sure how it works or how it's read. BT Openreach, the UK's main telecom network provider, uses it to tag the copper wires that make up the network as a deterrent following a spate of copper theft about seven years ago. Interesting. I feel like I'm losing my mind right now. That's from Liam. He says, big up. Thanks, Liam. Here in the States, we say big ups. That's right. They dropped the s there. Aluminum. Was that in this episode? I know. Can you believe that? This might be the longest episode we've ever done on nothing. Yeah. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like Liam did, you can go on to stuffyshow.com. Who knows what's there these days? Instead, why don't you just send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio's How stuff works. For more podcasts my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my favorite Murder, and Smalltown Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
c89cfb7a-3620-11ea-b32d-b3f821e576ee | Short Stuff: How Eyes In a Painting Follow You | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-how-eyes-in-a-painting-follow-you | Ever noticed how eyes in a painting sometimes follow you around the room? It’s weird! But it’s also fully explainable and Josh and Chuck do just that here. | Ever noticed how eyes in a painting sometimes follow you around the room? It’s weird! But it’s also fully explainable and Josh and Chuck do just that here. | Wed, 25 Nov 2020 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=330, tm_isdst=0) | 11488923 | audio/mpeg | "Hey there. Hi there, Jose, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck, and Jerry's here, which took up an extra couple of seconds mentioning Jerry. So let's get to it because we just wasted some time. Yeah. So if you remember, about a year ago, dear listener, we did a podcast, a little shorty on the Mona Lisa, and we talked briefly about the fact that Mona Lisa's eyes will follow you if you move about the room, like a horror movie painting. And that's the thing. And we said I think Josh even said, hey, you know, I want to do a show on that. I like a regular shorty on that. That was a great Josh impression. Hello, love. Let's do one on that. Too many crickets. So we did this is what we're doing right now, Chuck. That's right. The reason why which will come later in the podcast. But the phenomenon of that we've all seen on scoobydoon and horror movies of moving around a room and the appearance that the eyeballs of the painting are following you. Right. So there's actual like, this is actually a thing, as anybody who has ever seen it in real life knows, but you may not have ever understood why. And it turns out that it's one of the easiest things in the world to understand. One of the hardest things in the world to explain. For some reason, I had a hard time, too. It makes no sense whatsoever, because once you understand it, you're like, okay, yeah, of course. That makes total sense. But I even had to go back and add some to this article that I wrote. This is a Josh Clark jam from the house. Stuff works very how stuff works. He, too and I had to go back and add something from, I think, some art site and another site about there was, like, a forum among painters. There's this one painters post saying, I can't make the eyes look at the viewer. Help me. And some people kind of swooped in and explained to this one painter how to do it, but it's actually very hard. But the whole thing is based on perspective, and you would not have been able to make a painting with eyes staring at the viewer before the 14th century, I believe, and thanks to an Italian architect named Philippe I'm sorry, Chuck, you want to take this one? I was about to say, I mean, I know I'm not sitting in the room with you, but Philippe Brunellesco very nice. And he was an architect in Italy, like I said, and he was in charge of the Baptistry. Sorry, Chuck. Baptistry in Sanjoini. Very nice. He basically accidentally figured out perspective, linear perspective in particular, which is in a painting where if you're looking at, say, like a painting of railroad tracks, they vanish in the distance. But if you'll notice, they come together. The reason that they seem very far off and that the tracks closer, the tracks wider apart are closer to you, and the tracks closer together, further from you is because it's using linear perspective, which is just all lines in a painting can trace their origin back to a common single point. That's the source of linear perspective. Yeah. And it's one of the coolest things in art, the notion that you can draw something on a flat canvas and just have those points kind of come closer to each other at the top, and it gives the impression of distance. It's really cool. It is very cool. So that's one thing that it's like you said, it gives the impression of distance. And before linear perspective came along, artists had height and width. And the only way to make something seem further away is to draw it smaller than the other thing. You want to seem closer together. And the whole jam just seemed very flat. Like, if you think of hieroglyphics Egyptian paintings on walls of tombs, that's a good example of pre perspective art. Right. But very flat and two dimensional. Yeah. You can also do some other things to create the illusion of depth. Obviously, light and shadow. If you use light, it will demonstrate something surfaces, closeness to the light source, and it's going to protrude out and then reflect more light. You're going to use that shadow and the darker areas to denote something that's more closed off, maybe something further away. You combine those two things and you're going to have another illusion. That illusion of depth, basically sort of like a third dimension that's really not there. Exactly. But for all intents and purposes, you have just figured out how to add that third dimension. And it's like you just said, it's really important. It's not actually there. Using linear perspective, using the interplay of light and shadows to suggest depth, it's not there. Height and width, they're actually there. Those two dimensions are actually present in the painting. But that third dimension of depth, also known as length, that is nothing but an optical illusion. But that optical illusion gives rise to another optical illusion, the eyes. And a painting following you around the room. That's right. So we're going to take a break and talk how that actually works right after this. All right. So before we get to how that actually works, we should point out that what you mentioned earlier from that painters blog or thread or whatever, it is a tough thing to do as an artist to paint eyes on a human being that look like they're looking at the person looking at the painting. That's a hard thing to do. Yeah. Like, you are basically a master of painting if you can do it without really having to think about it. But it has everything I've been trained for years. Are you do paint? No. Okay. I can see that being like just something I didn't know that you just kind of did on the side. No. So if you ever want to try apparently, Chuck, from what I could tell from this painter forum, we'll call it paint chain, if you have the face looking dead on, like 90 degrees from the canvas, it's much easier to paint the eyes looking out that way. It gets really hard when the head is tilted in one way or another away from that 90 degree axis. That's, when it gets hard, has everything to do with how much of the white is shown, how much of the iris is shown, where it sits in the eye that it's really tough to capture unless the painting is looking or the subject is looking straight out of the painting. Yeah. So another thing we should understand before we move on to how this little trick works with the eyes following you. Is if you move yourself around a statue. A sculpture. Or if you move yourself around a live human being and just tell them to keep their eyes fixed forward and you move around them and you keep your eyeballs on theirs. That trick is not going to work. Their eyeballs are not going to be following you around the room, nor would it appear so from a sculpture, because you are changing your perspective. Their perspective is saying the same. And you are actually, when you round the corner, you go from seeing iris to the whites of someone's eyes and then the back of their head, and then eventually back around again. And not only that, you're seeing more iris or less iris or more less white. And this is giving your brain visual cues about this third dimension, but also the interplay of light and shadow on their face, on their eyes, wherever, are also giving your brain cues, too. And it's changing in three dimensions. Yes. The statue, your friend who's staring straightforward, going like, Why am I doing this? Again, those things exist in the actual three dimensions. The painting itself, again, that third dimension, is nothing but tricks of technique. They don't actually exist in the three dimensions. So when you paint eyes looking a certain way, they're going to look that certain way no matter what they're fixed, they're set your brain's not going to get any more information moving around the room. You're not going to see more white or less white of the eyes. The irises aren't going to change position. They are fixed no matter where you stand in relation to that painting. And as a result, that's why the eyes follow you around, because if they're painted gazing out of the painting to begin with, they're going to seem that way no matter where you stand. The eyes will follow you around the room from the painting. That's right. If a person on a painting is painted to where they're not looking at you, they're looking away from you, it's not going to allow that illusion to take place. And to cap it off, it's even hard to have that person meet your gaze. Like, let's say someone's painted and they're looking sort of off to the side. You can't just walk off to the side to kind of where they seem to be looking and lock eyes with them. There is just this weird illusion of this sort of forever into the distance gaze that happens. Yeah. Which really listen. I think, admittedly, fully understanding it for the first time has really given me a lot of more respect for the craft of painting portraits than I have before. Yeah. I've never been into portraiture that much. For me, too. Yeah. I like a good rembrandt, but I mean, the idea that it's really hard to paint the eyes a certain way, and then the fact that when you are painting eyes one way or the other, you're locking them in through tricks of perspective, using shadow and light and all that's off to all of you painters out there. Yeah. One thing I truly did not understand was this experiment in 2004 from a group of researchers to try and prove this using mannequin and math. I read this ten times, and I have no idea what they mean. So they didn't use an actual mannequin. They used an image of a mannequin. So it's in two dimensions. That probably helps, but they use perspective to make it seem like a three dimensional mannequins towards okay, well, that makes more sense. But then they plotted out the different dots, the dots that should seem further away, because the mannequin itself, that part of the mannequin was further away, seemed further away, no matter where you stood when you were viewing this image of the mannequin. And they managed to basically capture this digitally to prove once and for all, this isn't the eye. Following in a painting aren't a trick like it actually is the way that you're perceiving it. They do seem to be following you around the room. It's not like you're going nuts. Amazing. Really cool. It really is. So now everybody knows the eyes in a painting follow you around, because if they're painted looking that way, you're not going to get any other visual cues suggesting that they're looking any other direction than that way. I think we've explained to Chuck, I think so. And since Chuck breathlessly said I think so, that means short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
Could you live without a refrigerator? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/could-you-live-without-a-refrigerator | Do you know that hulking refrigerator in your kitchen emits CO2 thanks to the electricity it uses each year? It's a comparatively small amount, in truth, but enough that some people have foresworn their fridge and adopted a life without one. Included are | Do you know that hulking refrigerator in your kitchen emits CO2 thanks to the electricity it uses each year? It's a comparatively small amount, in truth, but enough that some people have foresworn their fridge and adopted a life without one. Included are | Thu, 02 Jan 2014 15:24:41 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=15, tm_min=24, tm_sec=41, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=2, tm_isdst=0) | 35033846 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there. And she's eating stalks of broccoli. Not the florettes, feeding the chunky trunk. She throws the florets away. Bizarre. I'm not into food waste. So she's eating every single bit. She's just munching on it like a rabbit over there. Oh, I see. Oh, now that I look more closely, I see that you're right. That was just a clever lead into what will be a great intro from you. No, that was the intro. Okay. Jerry doesn't like food people. No. Food waste is a terrible thing, and that's only part of the tip of the iceberg of this subject that we're about to touch on tip of the ice box. This is a huge, rambling, enormous topic that we're about to tackle. Chuck, you've heard of Green eco friendliness? Yeah. We like eco consciousness. We like to push that racket when we can. Yeah. What said is, like, more and more today, it seems to be well, there's parts that have become ingrained, like people recycle and recycling is a thing now. It's not going anywhere. Yeah. If you don't recycle now, you're kind of like one of those people that throws cigarettes out the window. Yeah, that's pretty bad, too. A lot of people still do that. Yeah, but I think not to get off on my high horse, but I think a lot of the people that toss the cigarettes out the window probably would say if someone threw a McDonald's bag out the window, they'd be like, how can you do that? Yeah. Like, they justify cigarettes somehow. I've seen that people throw those things out. Like, eco friendly people. I think eco friendly smokers, I think, justify that because it's like, well, you still don't want a cigarette in your car, right, dude? Because they stink. They're bad for it. Put it out there, it'll end up in a lake or something. A bird will eat it. Did you know that I was at the gas station the other day, and I saw a guy driving off, and as he drove off, he held his hand out the window and released a stack of apparently losing lottery tickets I'm talking, like, 30 just right into the parking lot. I couldn't believe my eyes. I mean, it's a joke now, literally on anchorman, in the original anchorman, when they finish all of their McDonald's, they just throw all their stuff in the park. Mad Men had one of those, too. They have, like, a family picnic, and afterwards, they gathered up their stuff and just, like, picked up the mic and threw all the trash out and were like, let's go. Right, exactly. That's how it used to be, though. Yes. Isn't it weird that that used to be a thing? That it's okay to throw trash on the ground? It's not okay, but some people still do I've seen it. Right. But the point is I am making a point here. Believe it or not, there are some parts of the green movement that have become entrenched and sconced in the mainstream culture. And it's having an impact. It's having a real effect. Sure. It's not having enough of an effect. We're all headed for global catastrophe eventually. But when we think about the green movement now, it almost seems past tense. There are parts of it that seem like a bit of a fad. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like being green. How green can you go? What can you do? There was this thing that kind of popped up in 2009 because of a New York Times article. Okay. People were starting to give up their refrigerators oh, yeah. As part of the green movement to be green, to basically like, say, I'm greener than now. Right. You get the impression that that's what they're doing. Ultimately they're saying, no, it's just one less thing that's using up electricity. So it's saving CO2 emissions. But it seems to me to fall along the line of the people who had themselves sterilized so they couldn't contribute to the growing population, global population, you're saying those are about the same, it seems to me. Yeah. Although the refrigerator one is far more reversible because you just go out and buy your refrigerator and plug it in. That's true. Bam. I'm back, baby. Well, you can reverse your procedure to not have kids too, these days. Yes. I think it's kind of roll the dice. Oh, really? If it'll work again. Oh, I thought you could get it reversed in a sweat. They can reverse it, but it doesn't necessarily work. Okay. I thought it's pretty good. Alright. Man, that was a sidebar. So should we talk about food waste? Well, let's talk about this refrigerator thing. You're really fixated on the food waste things, aren't you? Well, it's a big part of whether or not you can go without a fridge. Well, let's talk about what happens or why people go without a fridge first. Chuck, if you'll bear with me. Okay. So people are pulling the plugs on these refrigerators, or they were in 2009, or at least three people were in 2009. One in Canada, I think. Oh, really? Yeah, but I got the impression from reading the original New York Times article that it was just kind of the sub things among the ego green. No, it wasn't all the rage. No. Like bamboo flooring and cork flooring. No. In the New York Times article pointed out that it seems to be a dividing line among the eco conscious and the eco crazy. Yeah. Where some people say, that's preposterous. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. And then other people are like, look at how far I'm willing to go to be green. So what's the benefit of all this? Well, a refrigerator uses electricity and I guess we can give you a couple of stats to bring it all home for you. Typical fridge, post 2000 uses about 450 year. Yeah, that's thanks to the Energy Star ratings. Yes. Which is better than it used to be, for sure. And if you want to translate that into cheeseburgers, no way into miles driven in your car. Because we're talking about the emission of CO2. That's about 800 miles driving a car. About 800 miles, depending on what kind of miles you get. Because really it's equivalent to what, 35 gallons of gas? 35 gallons, yeah. So even in the article, they point out that it's kind of low on the list. It ranks behind clothes dryer, central air, and your furnace. Yeah. Your furnace is like 6000 year. It's amazing. So your refrigerator is 450 kilowatt hours of electricity per year. So it's not even super high up in your household. No, it's nowhere near. But I think the people who are pulling the plugs on these refrigerators are saying every little bit counts. Yeah. And they probably have already taken other green precautions. They probably don't run their furnace like this. Right. Like they might have a potbelly stove. They better not. If they use a normal old terrible electric furnace, then I'm going to go to their house and have a little, like, shaking outside their house. Yet they're eating out of a glue cooler. Right. And that's what they do. I mean, when you pull the plug on the fridge I wish I could just come up with another phrase that rolls off the tongue because I'm tired of saying that when you go without a refrigerator. Yeah. Defridge. Defridge. Chuck nice. When you defridge, you still need typically some source of cooling inside of your home. Something that can keep some food items from perishing. Because we apparently refrigerate a lot of stuff we don't need to. That is true. You can keep that ketchup and mustard out on the counter. Hot sauce. Oh, yeah. I've read it goes three years in the regular pantry. Really? Little Sriracha just to keep it out there. Yeah, we kept growing up, kept a lot of stuff out of the fridge and not for any reason other than that's just how it was in my house. I remember butter in a tray, butter on the counter. Butter is better that way. Room temporary. Oh, man. Are you kidding me? Yeah, it's so spreadable. Right? I keep mine in the fridge just to keep it longer because I give you that much butter. But man, if you go to a restaurant and they give you butter and it's cold, dude, just like, what are you doing? It's literally Emily's biggest pet peeve. Well, I agree with cold rolls with cold butter or hot rolls with cold butter. Yeah, because you get the hot rolls and you think this place knows what they're doing and you get this cold pad of butter. So I've developed a technique under the armpit method. Well, it's closed. You just cup your hands and you put a couple of those little foil wraps. You want to make sure it's wrapped in foil, patch of cold butter, and you heat them up pretty quick. And I'll tell you what, you can make some friends around the table if you heat somebody's butter up for them, because nobody likes cold butter. And then you hand them a little butter pat and you're like, here, take this. Yeah, it's my gift to you. I like it when they just have a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar. That's good, too. But I like good room temperature butter, especially like, 83% milk fat content or more. Yeah, good butter. So like I said, I left butter out. We left butter members, certain condiments being left out. What about fruits and vegetables? Yes, a lot of vegetables. I don't refrigerate now. Like, I never refrigerate peppers and onions. Well, you don't want to. If you do refrigerate an onion, it will last longer, but if you're going to use it to heat, you want to take it out of your refrigerator and bring it up to room temperature before you cook with it or use it in food because it takes a lot of the temperature away. But that's also a tip if you hate crying. Yeah, because if you cut a cold onion, the enzyme that eventually sets off the chain reaction that makes you cry is contained. It's not as volatile. I've noticed that. So that's your tip from Chuck and Josh. My eyes killed me, too. With onions. It depends on the onions. And it's not just like, oh, it's little tears. It's like massive burning. It's really bad. Really? Yeah. You should be super sensitive. I did a don't be dumb on it. That explains exactly what's going on with you. I've seen that. Okay, so, you know, so, yeah, a lot of the vegetables I don't keep, like, it depends on when I'm going to eat it. If I bring home some, like, a big head of cauliflower, I'll keep that out in the fruit basket for a couple of days. I've never seen that before in my entire life. What, cauliflower out? Yeah. I've only seen it in, like, a crisper drawer. Yeah, I've left cauliflower and broccoli out, like, green onions and I can see that. Lemongrass, sure. Garlic, of course. Potatoes. I think I would like stop. Shorten point. If I saw, like, cauliflower out in, like, a fruit past, really be like, what is that? No, that's just fine. I haven't even been to your house. I didn't notice that. Well, I mean, I don't always have have you gone through the cauliflower? Yes, I just eaten it. Tomatoes are another one, too. They'll last longer in the fridge. But if you're going to cook with them, you want to bring up to room temperature some stuff you just don't want to refrigerate. Potatoes, apparently, you don't do very well in the fridge. You put them in a nice brown paper sack in your pantry away from the sunlight. They keep for a really long time. Yes. You know, Jerry, I think Jerry showed me the little trick. Was that you with the cilantro, Jerry? Yup. Oh. What I need to know is because I eat a lot of cilantro, the cilantro you don't use. Just fill up a glass, like, half full of water and just throw it in there and just leave it out in your kitchen, the base of it in the water. And just stay fresh, like, super long. And the fridge can beat up cilantro after, like, a day or two. I like your optimism, by the way. Thank you. The avocado is what always kills me, though. Well, I eat a lot of avocado as well. It's hard to keep this fresh. I've tried a lot of tricks, too. Well, here's your trick. I will leave the pit in. You ready? Okay. Oh, you're cutting up an avocado. Yeah. That's it for the avocado. I have no trick for that. Well, what, do you eat them whole? Yeah, pretty much. I don't understand. I don't like eating the skin and everything. No, that's not what I mean. It's like once I cut into an avocado, all of that avocado is about to be consumed by me. Oh, so that's the tip. Yeah. But I do have another tip for you, though, with avocados. You know how you go to the store and you, like, squeeze them and you can find one out of 150 that's squeezable? It's pretty annoying. It is. But that squeezed one is going to be nasty and bruised and just disgusting. There's going to be basically, like, rot wherever you and everybody else squeeze that avocado. So you're going to have a lot less usable avocado. So you want to get one that you can't squeeze. It's so firm it can't be squeezed well, but then you just have to wait a few days to eat it. You can wait one day. One day all it takes, my friend. And here's how. You take a brown paper bag and buy a banana, and you put the banana and the avocados in the brown paper bag, roll it up pretty tight, but leave a little space in there. And they do it right. They get it on, and what happens is the avocados ripen. Really? Yeah. The banana, as it ripens, dust well, it puts off a gas. Interesting. That ripens the avocados. I got to try that, man. And I'm not kidding. Twelve to 24 hours, you have totally ready avocado. Yeah, because I like my avocados firm still. Oh, you're going to love this, Chuck. And not mushy, but not hard, but just firm. You're going to thank me later. I'm excited about your avocado experiences now. I am, too. So there's plenty of stuff that doesn't need refrigerating. So that's one way that people can refrigerate. Yeah. This is turning into, like, Food 101 with Josh and Chuck. Yeah. I hope that's okay. Yes. Plenty of stuff that you don't have to refrigerate, but people still use some sort of cooling mechanism. Yes. Like a cooler, like if you have meat or dairy products. If you want to go without a fridge, most people use a cooler. And the thing that annoyed me with this article is they said or they use a mini freezer to make ice. I'm like, well, that's probably just about as bad as your stupid fridge. Well, it's pretty close. So, like, one of those little chest freezers I didn't see the size of it. A 6.4 cubic feet chest freezer, which isn't big, but it's not that small. But apparently that's the thing that people who defrauded use that still uses 200 kilowatt hours a year. So really, by unplugging your refrigerator and using a chest freezer, you're saving about 15 gallons of gas a year. Yeah. I don't know if that's your best, like, spend your time doing better things for the environment. Right. Well, again, I think people who do this are saying, I'll do this on top of stuff. And then kind of cleverly, if you ask me, they're using this, the ice chest, to basically fill up, like, a two liter bottle of water, which they didn't allow to go to waste. The two liter bottle? Sure. Putting those in the freezer chest and then having, like, a separate cooler that they put the frozen water bottles in to keep cool their milk and their meats and stuff like that. Yeah. And you know what? We're going to talk about some tips for shopping to accommodate this lifestyle. But first, let's take a little message back. Okay. All right. So you're talking about the cooler full of frozen bottles of water to keep, like, your milk and some of your dairy and stuff. But when you go to the store, if you're going to try and live this way, you can't probably buy the gallons of milk. Unless you really go through a lot of milk. You might want to buy quartz of milk. Right. You can't go to Sam's Club and buy eight gallons of mayonnaise unless you eat that pretty quickly. That makes sense. Yeah. You should focus more attention on your mayonnaise habits than what you're doing for the environment. So you're going to have to buy smaller amounts of things, which they say can cost a little more. But if you're not wasting food, though, like, if you added up the food you waste, you're probably burning a lot of money, and there's going to be far less food waste if you're buying in smaller amounts. Right. The other side of that, though, is if you're eco friendly or eco conscious, one of the things that you're probably trying to avoid is packaging as well. And if you buy smaller amounts of food, that means you buy more packaging. Think about that. And if you have smaller amounts of food. That means you have to go to the store more often, and then you may have to drive more often, which doesn't matter if you're riding a bike or something like that, but if you're driving a car and you're burning those gallons of gas that you might necessarily not have been anyway. Yes. Like you get in your old 72 pickup truck and drive 12 miles to get, like, a pint of mayonnaise. Right. You have to stop and fill up at least once during that stretch. So can we talk a little bit about food waste, though? Yeah. Because it's a pretty big thing. Like, if you have no refrigerator, the chances of your food spoiling just simply increase if you have no refrigerator. Yeah, well, not so, apparently. According to a 2008 report, in less developed countries where they have no refrigerators, they experience less food spoilage. Bam. You just faced me. Because they're eating what they need, right. They're not going to Sam's club. Right. And buying 700 Chicken McNuggets to put in the freezer. I hear that. And I guess if somebody who defridges uses the developing world as a model for their food consumption yes. I wonder what hang ups there are, though, that would keep you from successfully doing that. Or if it is just entirely possible to just watch how you're eating enough so you don't have very much food waste. Maybe let's talk food waste, finally. In developing countries, post harvest losses of food grains can reach as high as 50% 50% dude in developing countries. Isn't that a sad statistic? Yeah. Because one of the things that makes it so sad, Chuck, is that food has been harvested and is ready to go. Yeah. So not only is it ready to go, it just doesn't make it to somebody's stomach. All of the energy used to produce, harvest, and transport that food has already been used as well. Yeah, I didn't think about that. So that's a huge waste there, too. Food waste. You add a double bummer onto every bummer that I express. I'm good at it. The US. Spends about a billion dollars a year to dispose of food waste in this country. A billion dollars a year? And the EPA says that food leftovers are the single largest part of our waste stream by weight. Right. They make up about 12% of municipal landfills, which are pretty awful word in and of themselves, because municipal landfills are responsible for about 34% of methane emissions globally, or at least in the US. And methane is 21 times more damaging as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Yeah. And all that food waste is producing, like, tons of methane. Yeah. Which I don't understand why we're not trapping that methane and burning it off as energy. I know there are some pilot projects, but I don't understand why it's not a bigger thing now. Yeah. Didn't we study something about cal farts? Yeah, I saw that. I see that rings a bell from the past. Yeah. Livestock is a huge contributor to methane emissions, and nobody knows what to do about it. But there were plans to kind of try to trap it and burn it for electricity. I think there was a farmer who was doing he was using cow poop or something. Yeah, I think that Dirty Jobs episode did something like that. I definitely remember looking at that, but I agree. Methane. Let's trap it. There's a tshirt. So yeah. So food waste. I thought the potential was increased without a refrigerator. You've opened my eyes here. But those double bummers that I did add, the more packaging and more trips to the store. Again, if you live near a store that you can bike to or something like that, that gets around that. And then also, if you are one of those zero waste people, have you heard of B. Johnson? Yeah, she's pretty remarkable. What's her website? It is zero waste home. Yeah, she's one of these people that is doing the family experiment. Let's see what we can really do. And putting it on a blog. I think her family is the one that has produced a court of waste in a year, a court of trash in a year. Everything else is reused. She has five Rs. You think your three Rs are worthwhile? Reduce, reuse, recycle. What are her other two? Refuse. Oh, so she's saying even if it's free, you know, that free frisbee the chiropractor gives you say you don't want it. I do that a lot, actually. I don't want a lot of that junk. Okay, so you're in line with this? Yeah. Reduce, which would be, say, using your own grocery bags. Oh, sure, yeah. So you're reducing the use of the store's grocery bag reuse. So don't throw your own grocery bag away. Right. Use it again. Recycle. Yes. You've heard of this one? Sure. And then rot. Chuck rot. Like rot and h. If you're not going to do this. I think so. That's the last one. What do you mean by rot? I'm sure composted. Oh, okay. Yeah. And like you said about the people that I want to go without a fridge, but I'm going to go to the grocery store every ten minutes to get a packet of mayonnaise. I don't think that's the case. I bet a lot of those people are growing food in their gardens and composting and probably not doing that. And plus, also, she points out, b. Johnson points out that a lot of the stuff that we would consider food waste, like grocery stores, food waste to me is I think we should do a whole podcast on it. It is fascinating, mind boggling, the amount of waste we produce. Food waste. I've read that something like a third of all of the food in the world goes to waste one way or another. Either like 50% in the developing world doesn't make it after being harvested food waste from the United States. In the grocery stores in the US. There's any kind of cosmetic imperfection? Yes. If it's not pretty enough, they just throw it away. There's nothing wrong with it, but it'll just get tossed. Yeah. I don't think I would like to know what goes on behind the scenes of, like, a huge grocery chain. I think we need to get to the bottom of it. An expose, perhaps, but B. Johnson points out a lot of the stuff that even people at home would consider wasted, spoiled food can be reused. So, like, if you have a bunch of stale bread, make bread pudding. If you have some wilted, lettuce drop it in an ice bath and it wakes back up. Stale bread to the birds. That's nice. Like, when I have moldy bread, I always just go out and throw it. And then do you eat the birds afterwards? Are you, like, raising them? Yeah. I get my BB guns. You don't even need a BB gun. You just teach them to eat out of your hand and then grab them, snap the little neck, and you got brown thrasher for dinner. That's our state bird. We get in trouble for that. Would we? Yeah, you can't kill your state bird. I figured it was the state bird because it was the tastiest bird. I don't think so. You dug this up. This is pretty interesting. If you want to talk about people really going the extra mile to not have carbon footprint. Some folks are making their own shoes out of old tires and old jeans and hemp, of course. Okay. Yeah. Not much art support, though, apparently. Right. Sort of like a moccasin, I would imagine. Yeah. You can eat your weeds in your yard, right, if you're into that. A lot of edible weeds, like garlic mustard or chickweed. Yeah. I mean, like, what's a weed, but some plant that we decided we didn't want. Yeah. I read something somewhere about the human diet, how it's become so narrow. We used to eat a lot more stuff, a lot more weeds, and as a result, our health was a lot better. The bitter, I think we talked about it before. Have you gotten to the point, too, where everything we talked about rings a bell? Like, we've mentioned everything before? Yeah. Our world is getting narrower. It is. But I feel like we've talked about before. The bigger the plant, the healthier it tends to be. And I think you said also. Bitterness, though, also suggests that it's poisonous, too. Well, that is part of the Edibility test, and you shouldn't just go in your yard and just pull a bunch of weeds and eat them. Not everything is edible. Dying is not that green. But if you do have edible weeds and you want to add them in your salads or something, that's something that some people do. Some people use old license plates to side their houses. Is that true? It's in this article. Of course it's true. I bet you. I bet you that's the thing. I could see that. And you know what? Why not? They're just going to waste all license plates. Sure. We got a bird house made out of license plates. Oh, those are cute. Yeah, it's all right. We got it because it was Ohio, California and Georgia, which was Emily's three states, which is kind of weird. Triumphant. I got to have this. Do you use it for BB gun practice? No, that's just birds. Okay. I shot an animal once in my life and it was one of the worst things that ever happened to me. I was too young. I got a BB gun and I was tired of shooting cans, so I shot a squirrel. And it haunts me to this day, I imagine. And I'm not Poopooing hunters. If you're into that, that's fine. I'm just not into it. So I shot a squirrel when I was twelve. You're a haunted man. I want to come clean. Yeah, all right. What's this poop burger thing? I couldn't find any corroborating evidence, but basically there was a story that popped up on a couple of blogs about a Japanese scientist who basically converted human feces into an edible burger. And the two blog posts I saw were basically piggybacking off of each other, and the original source led to a 404 error. I think the American press accidentally picked up a Yesman article or something like that. Well, how about if anyone can corroborate? I have the worst time with that word. Corroborate? Yeah. I can't ever say the word right. Corroborate. There you go. Can we put a ding ding ding in their post production? So if anyone can let us know that this story is true, then, yeah, I'd love to know that. Yes, let us know. Speaking of fecal material, though, Chuck, there was also this green movement to give up toilet paper. Oh, I heard about that. Do you remember that huge ball that was the size of a school bus that was made of handy wipes and fat in London? I don't remember that. Oh, really? No, it was this fatty deposit made up of grease and used handy wipes. Was it like an art project? No, it was trapped in the London sewer system. Okay. I thought you were on display or something. No. God, no. I don't remember that. That's terrific. It was within the last year. Wow. Well, anyway, I guess some people are taking this even further and saying, not even toilet paper will touch my bottom. Instead, I'm going to use basically diapers. Oh, just like cloth squares. So you keep a pail of clean ones on one side and a dirty pail on the other, and then you just wash the poopy ones and you're green. I don't think I would go that far, but I am interested in a bidet because. I do think toilet paper is disgusting, like taking dry, thin paper and wiping poop from your skin. I don't get it. And it's never made sense to me, really, even as a child. Well, now, since I got grown enough to realize that moisture is a pretty nice thing to have if you're cleaning poop. Yeah. Just put a little Vaseline in there. I'd be into a bidet. Okay. And I'm exclusively with the wet wipes. Well, you're contributing to the huge fat deposit ball really made up even those that say they're flushable. It's probably a bunch of bunk. The London thing proves it's bunk. Really? And for some reason, I don't remember why, but it was almost exclusively wet wipes and fat grease, like they were attracted to one another or something like that, maybe so I don't understand. All right. Do you think there'd be, like, a squirrel yeah. Or the remnants of a squirrel in there or something? But no, it's just wet wipes and grief. Holy cow. Let's get this one back on the rails and finish it up. I don't have anything else. Did you see the Albert Einstein refrigerator? Oh, that's like no electricity whatsoever. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, it does need a source of heat, but in 1938, I think Einstein and one of his former students developed a refrigerator that has no moving parts requires it could be run on solar energy. But basically, when you lower the pressure, the atmospheric pressure of something, it's boiling. Temperature lowers as well. And then when you boil something, it sucks energy out of the surrounding atmosphere and lowers the temperature. It's basically this kind of Rube Goldberg esque Einstein invention that this guy in Oxford was trying to rebuild. He made a test pilot version of it, but it's, like, not very efficient. I think that's not a new thing, but I've seen a lot of stuff lately about people remaking, like, some early inventions that were never able to be properly made. Yes, I think you're talking about that, like, DaVinci stuff. Well, there's that yeah, there's a TV show where they definitely did the DaVinci stuff, but those were mainly, like, weapons and things. Oh, yeah. But I did see a video the other day. Someone made a DA Vinci a musical instrument that DA Vinci invented that was never properly made, and it looked like it played like a piano that sounded like strings. Nice. And it was really kind of awesome. So that's a long way of saying build this fridge, the Einstein fridge. Well, there's other things you can do, too. If you have a fridge and you don't feel like giving up your fridge. If you have a fridge that's older than 2000 and you have a little bit of dough, go buy an Energy Star rated one. Yeah, throw that other one in the landfill. No, use it as, like, a planter or something out in your backyard to grow food in. Yeah, you can always sell a fridge. Yeah. Like any appliance that works, you can sell to somebody. You just want to take the door off to make sure no little kids get trapped in it. Or Indiana Jones. That's right. If you do have an Energy Star rated fridge, you want to clean the coils off once a year. That will keep it running efficiently. Right? Exactly. You want to think about what you're going to open the fridge to get so you don't just stand there with the fridge open like a slack jaw yokele like everybody does. Right? Yeah. And then apparently, if you keep your fridge fairly stocked, that will allow the temperature to bounce back to where it needs to be. It has less atmosphere. Got you. Cool. My fridge you have to open to get the filtered water, which really bugs me. It's not like in the outside of the door. I've never seen that. Yeah, you just live in a cuckoo house. You got cauliflower laying around, basket. You got to open the door to get some water. Got cilantro sitting in cups all over the house. That's a good idea. I've tried that. But put it in the fridge and it just wrecks it. So I guess maybe just leaving it out, I mean, it lasts for quite a while. Man. I love that stuff. Don't you feel bad for people who taste dish soap when they eat cilantro? Yeah, I love cilantro. Me too many, buddy. Well, that's it about cilantro. If you want to learn more about it, you can type the word into the search bar, how Stuff works. And you can also type in can I go without a refrigerator? In the search bar, and it'll bring this article up. And since I said search bar, that means it's time for listener mail. Yeah. I'm going to call this from one of our law enforcement officers. Hi, guys. My name is Andy. I'm a police officer for a law enforcement agency in St. Louis, Missouri area. Go Cardinals. I'm a big fan of the show and appreciate the always new, interesting topics and discussions. I've noticed that you seem to have an affinity for law enforcement related topics, which is true. You definitely do. You love them. I think I wanted to be a cop or something. Maybe you can be a security guard. It's not the same. I was just listening to the Meth podcast and noticed that you mentioned one of the first shake and bake incidences, and that's a mobile meth lab. Apparently that's like the Kaplano, which occurred actually in my precinct at a Walmart. Remember we talked about that? I was not yet employed there, but I know the officer that responded. From what I understand, a woman was shoplifting was in custody of the loss prevention officers, and when they called for police assistance, my now co worker arrested her and in the process discovered a gatorade bottle in her purse, which was being used as a mobile meth lab. That is so crazy. It is very crazy. Meth usage in the area that I work in is rampant, and only having been on the force less than a year, I've already handled two meth labs of my own. Having seen firsthand some of the reactions to meth that these folks have, I will say that you are pretty much right on, guys. Additionally, another unfortunate situation is that where there is a meth lab, typically there are children. One of my meth labs is also home to seven kids. It's a really sad sight to see. Do you remember that one episode of Breaking Bad? Which one? The one where Pinkman basically gets kidnapped by this method. That's who robbed the whole ATM machine. And there's a little kid there. Typically, you will find that the parents have little interest in their children and pay them very little attention in general, of course, because they're all interested in using math. Sure. It's kind of a one track mind situation, so it makes you appreciate non METHUS versus what Andy says. So thanks, Andy. Officer. Yeah, he wrapped that up at the end and he spanked it on the bottom. He had another part, so it might have read awkward a suggestion, which I cut out, but I took the suggestion, but I just didn't read it. Is it a mystery suggestion, then? Yeah. Maybe I'll surprise you. Well, if you want to send us a mystery suggestion, we are welcome to those. You can tweet to us at siskpodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffysheanow, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com, and you can hang out with us at our nice little warm home on the webstepysheanow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com. Hey, Netflix, streams, TV shows and movies directly to your TV, computer, wireless device or game console. You can get a 30 day free trial membership. Go to www.netflix.com stuff and sign up now." | ||
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2008/1229353215146hsw-sysk-flirting.mp3 | How Flirting Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-flirting-works | Flirting is an ancient -- and, at times, unconscious -- form of communication used to indicate interest in and receptivity to another person. Learn about the science of flirting and find out how to flirt in this podcast from HowStuffWorks. | Flirting is an ancient -- and, at times, unconscious -- form of communication used to indicate interest in and receptivity to another person. Learn about the science of flirting and find out how to flirt in this podcast from HowStuffWorks. | Tue, 23 Dec 2008 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2008, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=358, tm_isdst=0) | 16977154 | audio/mpeg | "Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from house. Stuff works. Calm. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. I'm Chuck. Yeah. Hey, Chuck. Studio One A. Yes. Deep within the bowels house. That works. Corporate headquarters. Nice where we are. Chuck, I have a question for you. Shoot. Is that a bottle of Windex in your pants? It is not. Oh, that's funny, because I can see myself in them. Really? I have no idea where this is going, actually. I just wanted to demonstrate an example of flirting. That flirting. It is a really overt, crude, crass, and probably completely counterproductive form of flirting. But yes, that was flirting. I don't know if that counts, actually. That was just come online. I don't know if that counts as flirting, to be honest. Well, I could have just as easily said, chuck, have you seen the latest issue of National Geographic? Believe it or not, there's a leopard on the cover. That is not flirting at all. I chose to direct a sentence sure. To try to get you into bed just now, actually blushing as a result of flirting. Right. We'll get into that later. And I've got some very startling facts about blushing and other things like that. It's going to be a good point. Good. So we're talking about flirting today, Chuck. Right. From what I understand, flirting is technically considered a language, especially by evolutionary psychologists, behavioral psychologists, anthropologists. Basically anybody with an IST at the end just especially considers it's a type of language. It's body language, but it's language nonetheless. Exactly. It is. And it's been pretty important to our survival as a species. Basically what flirting is, whether it's me giving you a bad pick up line or rubbing your knee, as I am right now. Yes. Okay. Did you think it was Jerry, our producer? No. I thought we had a troll under the table here. No, that was me. What did you think? I felt nice. Okay. So whether it's rubbing your knee or trying to pick you up with a bad line, basically what I'm doing is I'm sizing you up and letting you size me up to figure out how well we could reproduce. Right. Okay. In a sense, and the reason it's so important for the evolution of the human race and actually just about every other animal race out there or species out there is we can figure out whether or not the reproduction will work before actually having sex. So essentially without flirting, either nothing would happen ever. Right. Or everything would happen all the time and there'd be 6 trillion people on the planet, which would wobble sticking inly under the weight. Pretty much. Wow. Yeah. So we would have died out or there'd just be too many of us and either way we'd be screwed. Right. So flirting is a way of kind of leading up to the sex part and keeping us from jumping in bed with every single person to see if it works. Right. Well, thank God for that. Agreed. Flirting is kind of fun, isn't it? I'm a world class flirt. Are you really? Yeah, sure. You always rein it in when I'm around you. Never let that light shine onto the Josh. I like that. You want to talk a little bit about some of the flirting signs? Like some of the physical cues? I think you should. Okay. Using your name a lot in a conversation, which I didn't realize, that's how I did. Really? Yeah. And it's actually kind of offputting if it's not done. Very deftly. I could see that. Yeah. Complimenting the other person. That obvious one. Sure. Asking about interest, touching an arm or knee. That's a big one. That's huge. Someone told me early on, a female friend of mine, that when a girl is talking to you and she grabs your arm or shoulder or something, that is a sign of all signs. Yeah. My sister, when I was younger, told me that if a girl ever looks at you more than once and you're not dressed like a total freak, she's interested. Right. She's open to checking you out. Sure. Yeah. And we're idiots. Men are idiots. So we need the females to tell us these things along the way. Otherwise, I just think, why does that girl keep touching me on the arm? Well, we'll get to this again in a second, too. It's not entirely our fault. We'll talk about protein behavior. All right, well, we need to get that quick then, because that's interesting. Another one, though, is leaning in close to someone, obviously physical proximity and smiling. The old classic smile, which can be taken one way or another. Sure. Okay, so let me talk about that protein behavior. Right. Right. Basically what that is, it's a form of flirting that most women do, where it's just on the threshold between normal behavior and flirting. Right. And it gives a woman plausible deniability in case her advances are rejected or she doesn't get the response she wants. Right. Or in case the guy turns out to be a big dope. Kind of, yeah, but it's confusing. Is it more a protective thing, like to protect themselves? I took it, actually. Yeah, they're protecting themselves. Like if they're rejected right. If the guy doesn't go, hey, put yourself out. Exactly. She can easily rein it back in. Okay. But if you aren't picking up on this quite right. If you're not aware of these protein gestures, which is actually its named for Proteus, the Greek mythological figure who could shape shift. Right. Very appropriately. Makes sense. It's very confusing, and I consider myself fairly smooth. Dude. But I'm confused by this. And actually, after I figured out that there is such thing as protein gestures, it supported my general theory that women suck. Wow. Yeah. It was a big eye opening experience. Well, I know men's flirtations are much more aggressive and overt. Exactly. Women do things like flip their hair or it says, actually in the article, bat their eyelashes. It seems slightly dated to me, to be honest. Pretty coquettish. Yes, I guess they still do that, though. Yeah. Do they? I haven't seen it in years to keep an eye out for it, but yeah. Men, intense eye contact and aggressive gesturing, they're a little more intense with their flirting. Yes, that is true. Not to protein. Now, what's interesting about flirting is that it's such an animalistic behavior. Number one, it's emotional behavior, it's not rational. Right. We don't walk up to one another and say, I'd like to have sex with you. Shall we have sex? It's very, again, smooth if done right. If not, it's painfully clumsy. Either way, it's driven by desire, which is an emotion. And guess who makes an appearance? Our old friend Darwin. No. I mean, he's always in the backdrop somewhere. He's got kashkari. No, not kashkari. The fight or flight response. The sympathetic nervous system. Exactly. Separate thing. So, basically, this very primeval part of the brain takes over when you see a woman or man that you would like to have sex with. The limbic system. Yes. Which controls the sympathetic nervous system. So you see somebody you're turned on and you engage in this flirtatious behavior, but you're not thinking, I'm going to puff my chest out. But you do anyway. Or women don't swivel their hips a little bit to let the guy see that they're of a proper ratio from waist to hip. Yeah, let's talk about that just briefly. It's pretty interesting, isn't it? Yeah. Apparently, women will draw attention to their pelvis because it indicates whether or not they can carry a child. Yeah. And additionally, men are attracted to women with that ratio, hip to waist ratio. The waist must be no more than 60% to 80% of the hip circumference. Yeah. You want to know what's uncanny? They've done studies on women with those kind of ratios and they found that the women who fall into that 60% to 80%, actually 70, the ones who fall right in the middle are the most fertile. Really? Yeah. So there's actually a basis in it. So when you see, like, a curvecious woman, you're turned on by her, you're basically responding to eons of collective memory, of experience that's on the cellular level. It's evolution, baby. It is, baby. And it's really strong. You're absolutely right. Pretty cool. So we know all this because people actually study it. And there's a guy all of this studying started in the think, right? Real serious study of flirting started in the 70s. There is a guy, and as per usual, I'm going to butcher this person's name. Let's hear it. Erenius Ival Eibsfeld. Sounds good to me. Thank you. And, erenius I don't actually know. I imagine maybe some sort of psychologist, a sociologist, possibly a gist. He came up with his own little camera that took a picture in a different direction. He was pointing it so he could get candid photos of people. And he trained this super cool camera on couples around the world who were engaged in flirting without pointing the camera at them. Right, okay. So they didn't think they were being photographed and they weren't paying any attention to him. And he started comparing these photos and he found a pattern, actually. And women generally tend to extend their necks, which is actually very comparable to female wolves in the wild that will turn over and submit to men. It's an act of submission. Men tend to puff out their chests right. And all of this together. It's very animalistic. And it's stuck in their stomachs. Is that in there? Actually, if you think about it, sucking in your stomach. Good point. And you want to puff out your chest, you want your chin to go up and appear broader. One of the things you're showing a woman as a man is that you are well, number one, you're vero right. And actually, bilateral symmetry, your face being even on both sides is a real sign of developmental health. So good genes right there. I saw special in that one. It's very interesting, symmetry. Yeah. It is kind of offputting, asymmetry is a little off putting, if you really think about it. You've got symmetry. Right. So that's actual reproductive health. You have, like, a prominent jaw that's developed by testosterone, so you have reproductive ability. And then if you're a big guy, wide shoulders, big chest, you can puff out. You're showing that you can actually protect the young that you're about to create with this woman. You're going to get it on with. Right. Yeah. So that was the original study. This guy found that this is universal. Right. And then it started to really kind of take off. And actually, most of the actual studies of flirting and flirtatious behavior have been conducted in lounges. Like, one landmark study was conducted in the bar of a Hyatt hotel. Nice. And after studying, I don't know, probably for several days, if not weeks, the researchers got so good at it that they could predict just on body language alone, who is going to go upstairs to get out? Yeah, we've got flirting down pat. Unfortunately, most of us don't have flirting down pat. Researchers may understand it, but it's still just kind of this vague, often uneasy kind of thing. Right. There's no formula. No, there definitely is. It'd probably be kind of depressing if there was a formula. Obviously, there is a universal physical gestures, but apparently we have different cultures, have layered on their own interpretations of these. Chesters yeah, that makes sense. Did you read that Germans and Americans famously tend to get their wires crossed when flirting? Really? Yeah. What does that mean? German women find American men too forward when they flirt. And apparently German men just get all sorts of confused when American women are just talking to them. They assume they're being flirted with. Yeah, I could see that. Probably because of the same reason american women, I think, are a little more forward than German women. Right. So I've got another study, if we have time. I'd love it. Yet this was not in a bar. This was a few years ago at Tillane University, and they researched a little bit about how flirting affected women in the workplace and their careers. And it was a small sample. Only 164 women, but fairly valid. 50% of these women said they use various forms of flirting as a tool to get ahead at work, and 49% said they have never flirted for such purposes. And the women interested? What do you think? I haven't even told you this. What's the call? Flirting gets you ahead, or now? I would say you. No, really? What they found was that the women who did not flirt earned $75 to $100,000 per year, while women who did flirt average $500 to $75,000. Wow. And if you did not flirt, you also were promoted three times as many times. And basically their takeaway was that sexuality is a short term power source. Does it kind of cheapen the value of your personality? I could assume that maybe a man would not take a woman as seriously if he realized that she was flirting to try and get ahead. I know I wouldn't. Yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah. Nice one, Chuck. Thank you. Way to pull that one up for the bowels of Tulane, right? Yeah. So, well, that's flirting. Hopefully it helps a little bit here and there for all of you awkward, single gangly young men out there who have trouble getting dates. Just make them laugh. Yeah. Really? Ultimately throw symmetry out the window if you're not very viral. Whatever. There's pills out there. Sure. In both, Chucks. In my opinion, it comes down to if you could make a woman laugh, she'll be yours forever. Right. If you're not funny, then we have no advice for you whatsoever. You better be handsome. Yeah. That's all I got to say. I guess it's probably time for their advice for us. Right. Which would be listener mail. Exactly. Okay, Josh, this listener mail isn't so much advice, but it's some fan mail from terrible segway. Yeah. Okay. From someone named KAS. I'm going to put you this name. K-A-A-S kasbachttal. B-A-C-H-T-I-L from Ashland, Wisconsin. Okay. Nice. Wisconsin person. Yeah. So I've been listening to your podcast and joined them greatly. Always a good way to get your finger right on the air, by the way. Starting off that way. And this is on the podcast we did on gorilla gardening, which is when people take over public spaces and plant flowers and things. And at one point in the podcast, we talked about how we can't imagine that someone would not want anyone to do this. Yes. Have we played it? Yeah. Let's play. Look up. Yeah. I'd like to pick someone's brain who's really against this. I want to meet the person who sees what's going on and goes home and is just fuming, how dare they plant those flowers right there. I'm just curious what's happening there. Yeah. And I don't think I could explain it, but I know for a fact I've met people like that before. Yeah, it's always a little unsettling. So this person writes in and says, I can think of one possible situation where a perfectly sensible property owner might object to gorilla gardening. In some areas, a person can lose some rights pertaining to their own land. If someone else can show a pattern of long term benefit from trespassing. So they're thinking of people parking or walking on other folks land for 20 years. Then the owner comes and they're unable to get rid of these people without any legal recourse. The only way to prevent this in some cases is to keep people from establishing that long term usage benefit in the first place, ie. Planting flowers and making it a more attractive place to hang out. That is an excellent point. I hadn't thought of that's. Squatting, essentially. Right. And that's a great point. As a matter of fact, for that great point, don't you think Cost should get a T shirt? If we can get Cost a T shirt, I think we should. We'll see. We can do Cost. If you want to send us your address and we will see if we can get a house Stuff Works t shirt out. And shirt size? Yeah, shirt size. Good one, Chuck. All right, cool. Well, thanks for listening. Anybody else who has any comments, any mail, anything you want to drop us a line, send it to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, 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." | |
c6185136-5460-11e8-b38c-836fa6fdd8f5 | Selects: A Brief Overview of Punk Rock | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/selects-a-brief-overview-of-punk-rock | Punk rock really needs about 10 episodes to do it justice, but we'll try and tackle anyway. Learn all about this movement right now in this classic episode. | Punk rock really needs about 10 episodes to do it justice, but we'll try and tackle anyway. Learn all about this movement right now in this classic episode. | Sat, 12 Mar 2022 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=71, tm_isdst=0) | 50188628 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, everybody, it's your old pal Josh. For this week's SYSK selects, I've chosen our 2019 episode a brief overview of punk rock. And it's just that and I have to say we did a pretty good job, job for a couple of squares, a couple of uptight weirdos, you know what I mean? So I hope you enjoy this brief overview of punk rock because we did. Welcome to stuff you should know a production of. iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. thrashcore. I'm already regretting that. There's Chuck Bryan. Over there. Charles w. Chuck Bryan. There's Jerry. Jerome Rowland. And like I said, I'm Josh. Mrs. W. Shannon. Hey, ho. Let's go. Exactly. I want to issue a COA off the top here to fans of punk music. Get ready to be mad at us. Yeah. Please don't beat us up, though. Yeah. Here's the thing. Punk, it's sort of like the hip hop episode. It's not just music, it's a culture, it's a movement. And there are so many tentacles, alternative tentacles, so many subgenres, so many like, the more I started getting into it, I was like, why are we even doing this in a single episode? I had the same feeling because it can only disappoint. But we're doing it now. There's a lot of people out there who don't know squat about punk who are going to be like, cool, I'm punk now. I get it. And the people who are punk now are going to love us for it. Well, I mean, there are certainly podcasts, I'm sure, that are dedicated to the history of punk right now. I know. And the thing is with the big distinction here between the hip hop episode and this episode is that the hip hop episode doesn't beat you up if you show up to their shows and you're not wearing the right thing. That's true. Punk is kind of protective of punk, which makes sense because that's pretty punk, right? Like you can't allow for commercialization of punk or else it stops being punk. So by definition, it has to be vigilantly defended and protected. But the irony of the whole thing is when you do that, you actually strangle it from becoming anything ever and you kind of kill punk, strangling it in the cradle, the end. Yeah. And I listen to a lot of music while researching this, and there's just so many things that could possibly fall under the banner of punk and probably so many real punk fans that will fight you on any of them. If you say, like the talking heads were punk or television was punk. Not really. But were they new wave? I don't know. Yes. The New York Dolls, I was listening to them proto punk. When you listen to them, though, they sound like sort of like dressed up rock and roll, like Rocky Horror Picture Show style. Right. But make no bones about it. The New York dolls were a direct predecessor of punk. Yeah, but then I started listening to things I never listened to growing up at all. Like, I was in a punk kid, right, but I saw all the jackets with Minor Threat and Circle Jerks and Dead Kennedys on them and I started listening to that stuff today and I liked a lot of it. Oh, it's good music. And some of it I didn't quite love. Okay, which one? I think my deal is I like vocals and vocalists and punk is not known for that. No, but stuff like that had a really unique bent and wasn't just screaming. I liked a lot more. So you like the misfits a lot. I like The Misfits. I like The Damned. I like the circle jerks. Yeah, they're great. Did not like the germs. I was never into the Germs. What about The Cramps? I didn't listen to the Cramps yet. They're like rockabilly punk, I'll probably like it. Yeah, but stuff that had a little more melody, a little more vocal styling, I liked much more than The Germs. Which Derby crash. Just screaming things that you can hardly understand. Right. Didn't love Black Flag. What little Ice listen to. Like the Henry Rollins Black Flag. I listen to a little bit of both. Okay. But it's all very interesting to me and I dig the music for sure. Yeah, it's hard not to in some way, shape or form like punk when you hear it, right, it just gets under your skin just too easily really quickly and you might not even realize your head is kind of nodding and your knees shaking or whatever. That's right. But no matter who you are, punk can get to you like that. Now, whether you're like, I'm going to start buying punk records and get a mohawk or something like that, it's maybe a couple of steps down the road. Most people probably wouldn't, but I think everybody can appreciate punk on some level. Especially to me, the greatest punk band of all time, and what I would argue would be the first punk band, is The Ramones. Right. If you like melody and you like singing, but you also like punk, they've got everything you need. Yeah. And if you like songs that are 95 seconds long sure. Well, that was a big thing. Punk grew out of this idea that Led Zeppelin had eleven minute songs they were playing on the radio and guys like The Ramones were like, shut up. They purposely and deliberately went the opposite way and they started making songs that were sometimes less than a minute. Like one of the greatest punk songs of all time, in my opinion. Circle Jerks Wasted is like 52 seconds long. Get in, get out. That's all you need. He gets the point across. He talks about all the drugs he's on. He talks about all the stuff he does when he's on drugs, all in less than a minute. Yeah, but I think you bring up an important point, is punk was a reaction. It was a reaction to the Bloated money and the Bloated song links and the arena rock cucumber in the pants, hard Rock Mckeezemo getting the ladies like this great quote from one of the Ramones. These are kids on the outside. And he said, Johnny Ramone in 1976, and Rolling Stone said they got together because none of them could get girls. They all found solace in each other. And he said girls always wanted to go with guys who had Corvettes, so we had nothing to do but climb on rooftops and sniff glue. The Ramones in a nutshell. But if you look at 1977, like the albums that came out in 1977, you've got the Sex Pistols and the Ramones and stuff like that, but you've got Eric Clapton, Slow Hand, Fleetwood, Max Rumors. Okay, not bad. Point of no return from Kansas. The stranger from Billy Joel. Which one was that? It was one of the great ones, but they all work great, right? Asia from Steely Dan. Okay. And these are like the big chart toppers. And so punk came along and was just like, no, screw all that, to heck with you guys. Yeah, that's what it says. So it was an ethos and a spirit even as much as it was music. Yeah, and I think one of the other things I commonly ran across in researching this was that it was not just kind of like, rock sucks because it's getting so eleven minutes long per song and there's lots of guitar solos and stuff like that, but also that it was hopelessly commercialized. And so punk was like, there's nothing inherently wrong with rock. It's just gone on this path that it's been on for so long that it's just become, I think, like you said, bloated. Let's take rock back and scrape away all the bloat and just get back to the core. And the point of it originally, which was rebellion. That was what punk was built on in the late seventy s. And the Ramones again, I will go to my grave saying they were officially the first punk band that ever existed. But there was music that led up to that immediately before it and even a decade or so before it that really laid the foundation in the groundwork for bands like the Ramona and the punk music that took off right afterward. Yeah, and you also got to remember that coming into the early 70s where some of these proto punk bands started, this was coming off of the late sixty s and the hippie movement and Nixon and Vietnam. So all that proved a failure. Yeah, and flower power and peace and love and all that stuff. There's still Cries who fills the Nash and hanging around, but there's also a younger generation that thumb their nose, or more specifically, their middle finger at that whole generation. And that's what sort of birthed the punk movement and their protopunk movement, at least. Right. So I saw the earliest protopunk band I could find that you could trace a direct line to is actually from Peru. Okay. They were around in 19 starting in 1964, Los Saicos. And if you go listen to a Losacos song, it's quite clear that this was protopunk. Did it have the speed? A little bit, yeah. Because I think that's a bit of the distinction. Like, there was that whole nuggets era garage rock of the 60s. Sure, you can hear a little bit of that, but it still didn't have that chugga speed that punk rock would be known for. Yes, it did. It did. Yeah. Like another proto punk band that's more garage rock. But kind of some of the sentiments they came up with, the Chocolate Watch band. Sure. Anthem called like I'm not like everybody else. And it's, like, real kind of groovy. But if you listen to the words, this guy is talking about being a punk. Right, but it's long before punk. But their musically, they were not punk at all. Losing punk. Their sound is definitely punk, and they were around the same time. Yeah. The specifics of what you're doing musically on a guitar with punk, this is important, is the downstroke. So it's hard to talk about it without showing you. But if you're playing like an Eric Clapton rhythm part, it's like you're stroking down and up in if you're playing punk, you're just going down. That nice. That was a really great impression. And the Ramones made a career out of two or three chords, played fast, playing that same rhythm and downstroke over and over and over and over. Like, I'm convinced you just did a two second snippet of a Misfit song. I could hear it, like, plain as day. It's great, though. I was listening to stuff today, I was like, Man, I really like a lot of this. And I missed out. So I see myself diving into it again or diving in for the first time, rather. Sure, you totally should. I mean, I know about the Clash and the Vermonts and stuff like that, for sure. But, oh, there's like, I mean, as, you know, a whole world. And then the thing about punk is the more like you find, oh, I like this band. And then it turns out this guy used to be in this other band. Yeah, they're from the same scene as this other band. It just keeps going and going and going. Because one of the through lines of punk is that anybody could be in a punk band. It was super democratized, and the DIY ethos was basically the foundation of punk music. All right, well, let's take a break. Okay. We'll go back in time a little bit and talk about New York and London, and then we'll get to that. What I think is kind of the coolest part of this whole thing is that DIY aesthetic. Okay. All right. So I mentioned London and New York. I sourced this from a bunch of articles. I can't remember if this was the Pitchfork one or not, but the headline of this part is The Tale of Two Cities, new York and London. But La. Would come along a bit later with its own scene. And also London gets mentioned here at the expense of Manchester, which I would say is like, that's Ground Zero next to New York. Right. Also Ground Zero, which doesn't get nearly enough press, is Australia. Oh, yeah. These things were going on in parallel all over the world. That's really interesting to think, like, this stuff is happening almost independently of one another. It was, because it's not like someone in Australia heard someone on the Internet in 1974. Right. But there were a couple of bands. One called Cheap Nasties on the Western, I think, in Perth, and then the Saints, probably the biggest punk band to come out of Australia. This is at the same time that CBGB's and The Stooges were, like, getting big. It's crazy. Yeah. So The Stooges would technically qualify as protopunk, too. Right. But they came from Michigan, along with MC Five. Right. And Death. Death is an even earlier proto punk band than The Stooches. That documentary is great. Actually, I haven't seen that one. Yeah, there's one on Death. It's just called, like, a band called Death, right? Yes. They're amazing. And they were, I think, three African American brothers from Detroit just killing it in 1971 form like, a punk band. Yes. And this is before the Stooges. I think this is before MC. Five before bad brains. That's for sure. For sure. So all of these bands are starting to kind of lay the groundwork, and then it's almost like it just kind of ignites, like we're saying, in different parts of the world virtually at the same time. Which I just find endlessly fascinating. Yeah. And I think that's what really lends a lot of credence to the fact that it was a movement, it was a feeling people were rebelling against more than anything, which can happen parallel in different parts of the country and world. If there's anything that can bring the whole world together, it's disdain for hippies. They really bring that out in everybody. Did you see the Tarantino movie yet? Once upon a time. There's a lot of anti hippies. It was pretty funny. Yeah, a little. Some of them are beaten to death, literally. Well, I just mean, all the DiCaprio stuff was really funny. How did the hippies but Tarantino really pointed out the Manson family has been celebrated and romanticized, at least in some weird ways. Yeah. And they should not be. And this is why I think he did a really good job of doing that. So sorry. We're talking about the Stooges and MC Five in Michigan and New York City. Is where things really crystallized with the club CBGB owned by Hilly. Crystal. Crystal. No. Is it Crystal? I think so. Like Billy Crystal, right by Hilly. And originally that stands for country, bluegrass and blues. And that was what it was supposed to be when it opened in 1973. Yeah. But then in about two years, the Ramones started playing there. Talking Heads started playing there in 1975. Blondie television, I think. Television. Television. I'm okay with them. I don't love them, I don't hate them. But they were essential to that scene happening, for sure. And a lot of people kind of overlook them, I think is like one of the foundation bands for punk. Yeah. Which is, like I mentioned earlier, it's such different kinds of music. I love talking heads in television. And Blondie and the go goes and they were all in that early scene. But I don't think that's anything like the Misfits of the Damned or the Ramones. No, but the Misfits and the Ramones both started their careers at CBGB. Yeah. So it was like the place where punk began in the United States. Yes. But also at Max's Kansas City in New York legendary club. This is where, like, Patty Smith is hanging out. The Velvet Underground is hanging out again. They're not punk at all, but they were in that scene. Right. And one thing that we're kind of not really mentioning that is a common thread to all these bands. Not necessarily music, but heroin was a huge thread. They shared their deep love of heroin in common and that definitely bound them together at CBGB for sure. And that was a huge factor on the early punk scene, was heroin. That's right. If you remember, back just a few years ago for OxyContin, turned everybody into junkies in the world. Heroin was not a big drug at all. And back then especially, it was like you were a total burnout if you were doing heroin. Like, it was not done. So the fact that these people were shooting heroin in the clubs that was another kind of badge that they took on that separated them from everybody else. Even their preference of drugs was super hardcore. Yeah, for sure. Another interesting thing happened early on in 1977 when these two scenes sort of exported one of their early big bands to play in the other city. In 1977, the damned played in the United States. And less than a year before that, the Ramones had gone to the UK to play shows in London. And that was a big deal because all of a sudden you had these two different scenes swapping bands. Of course, it wasn't anything they planned, but they got a taste of New York City and London with the Ramones in a big, big way. Right. And the same can be said in New York City with the Dams. Very British. And then a month before, The Ramones played in London, in Manchester on june 4, 76, the Six Pistols had their first show. And a lot of people point to this as this is when UK punk happened. It was this one show at the lesser Free Trade Hall, which is like a hall might as well be a VFW, basically. And that's where the Sex Pistols had their first show. But some of the people who were there were so influential, including a 17 year old Morrissey who went to cover the thing for New Music Express, that it just spread out like a germ. It was the single point that UK punk spread out from, and this was June of 1976, and within six months, the major record labels were lining up to sign any and every punk act they could get their hands on. Six months. So not only did it spread and grow in parallel around the world at the same time, when it hit the scene, it's hard to overstate how quickly it just blew up. Like, just from nothing to it in six months. Yeah. If there's one thing I don't know about the music industry today, but previous to digital content, the music industry was always there, waiting to commodify the next big thing. Yeah. And they did it to punk big time. Yeah. So let's talk about this DIY thing for a little bit. It was really cool, this article about these DIY origins in punk music. What happened was, when punk started coming around in the mid 19th, 70s, this coincided with a big shift in equipment and recording gear and modernizing recording gear among the big labels. Yeah, sure. And so all of a sudden, there was all of these rooms and this gear that you could either rent cheap or buy cheap. Yeah. They're old stuff that they didn't need anymore. Yeah. And so the punks came along and started using it. And the very first punk labels were self started, miles Copeland started Step Forward, bob Lass started Fast Product, and of course, very famously, Tony Wilson started Factory Records. Yes, dude. Which, by the way, see 24 hours party people. If you never have everybody. It's amazing you can see that again. I saw it once when it came out. Yeah, it's a good movie, but it follows this progression of punk into new wave into the 80s. It just does it in a spectacularly great way because it's Steve Coogan who is graded so good. But people trace the punk on record or on recorded tape, rather right to the very first single, they claim. Very first punk single, november 76, the Dam's New Rose, which I thought that was weird because The Ramones released their album before then, but maybe because The Ramones were on a label when they released their album, they're saying, like, this is the first DIY, maybe. When was the Ramones first off? I think like the full year before 75, I'm pretty sure. Oh, wow. If not at least 76 then. But I'm pretty sure 75. Well, The Buzzcocks put out an EP and I listened to a lot of that today. I enjoyed that. Yeah, it's good. Spiral Scratch was this EP was apparently the first British homemade record and that was a really big deal. This is a 1977. They sold out 1000 copies that they printed. Then they went on to sell another 16,000. And the influence of Spiral Scratch really spread out and told everyone because they printed it was very cool. They printed on the little record jacket, like how much it cost, how they produced it and what the money was all about for \u00a3153. Basically saying, go do this right and here's how to do it. Yeah. They kind of set the tone for other records. Like other punk bands released their own records also included instructions on the sleeve that the record came in and the whole DIY record release thing that The Buzzcox kicked off. Other people started to find other ways to kind of make it so punk could exist outside of the influence of the record companies. Like people would release records in Ziploc baggies. That was the record sleeve that your record came in. People loved it. You didn't need like this expensive sleeve for the thing to come in. Like you could just pop it in a Ziploc bag and sell it. It's very punk. It's super punk. And then also if you can form a band, it was put like this. Like the Sex Pistols showed that anybody could be in a punk band. Yeah, if you didn't even need to be very talented, right. You didn't even need to know how to play an instrument and you could be in a punk van. And the Buzzcocks came along and showed that anybody could press a record. But there's still one very essential ingredient missing and that was distribution. And like you said, mail order made up for a lot of the Buzzcox EP sales. But they realized that there were more people out there who wanted this stuff but didn't have a way to get to it. So what was called the Cartel was formed which is a group of independent record stores around the UK that would basically serve as a distribution network for these DIY punk records. It's so cool. It is. Not only that, but zines were very important early on in the punk and really kind of a lot of music genres. Zines were really big, which are these fan made magazines. Yeah. Maybe with like photocopy. Not even photocopy, like mimeograph stuff. Yeah. And you would just print out your Zen and some of these zines got to be pretty big. And they would attach distribution to these zines sometimes and sneak 45. Not sneaking, but pack of 45 in the Zen. And that's how you could release your stuff. Again, it sounds so trite to say very punk rock attitude, but that's exactly what it was. The way they were doing things was all under the radar, all on their own. And that changed pretty quickly. It did it's because the big players came in, they smelled money, they smelled something new, the next big thing. And they started signing everybody they could, left and right. And these punks were going like, no, Bollocks, I don't want your money. They're like, what if we pay you in heroin? They said. Oh, okay. Yeah. I like to put it that way. You could buy drugs with money. Right. So, again, within six months of what most people point to as the source of UK punk, that one specific show by the Sex Pistols. The Sex Pistols were so new, sid Vicious wasn't even in the band. He was still Susie and the Banshee's drummer. So this is how young the stuff was. Within six months, they were signed onto a major record label. The Clash was signed onto a major record label. The Fall, The Jam, The Stranglers, everybody got signed in this feeding frenzy where everyone who had a punk band could get a record deal with a major label. Six months after the Sex Pistols had their first show. Yeah. Generation X with a young Billy Idol, which I did. Ever do that? Dancing with myself was originally a Generation X song. I didn't know that either. They released it, then he rereleased it as a solo artist, like, a year later. Wow. And it became a much bigger hit. Sure, they were like, thanks a lot, but yeah, text Pistols went with The EMI, the Stranglers at UA. The clash signed to CBS. The jam went to Poly door generation X and stiff little fingers went to Chrysalis and even the buzzcocks they were very quick to hop on that train, too, with United Artists, which actually, that's not too bad. You could have signed with Worst because United Artists was started by Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and DW. Griffith so that artists could have more control and ownership over their work. Yeah. I mean, it was a movie company and I guess they dabbled in records. Yeah. So one of three things happened, basically, to the little DIY small label movement. You either got pilfered they used one example in Belfast, the Good Vibrations label. Four of its first six bands were stolen away or signed away, I guess. So either got pilfered and then just shut down and give up, or you grew and got bigger to where you were like Rough Trade and Factory Records. Those all became like bigger independent labels. Yeah. Rough trade is still around. I checked. They have state of the art cutting edge, or they stayed small and just kept going. Right. They went punk and went back underground. Yeah. They didn't all go away. They didn't all say, we're all getting pilfered, so we're just going to shut down. They would just find more underground bands and go deeper and deeper and deeper. But then something happened. In 1979, february of 1979 that a lot of people point to just as they point to that first sex pistol show as the beginning of punk in the UK. They point to the death of Sid Vicious as the end of punk, at least the first wave of punk. His death from a heroin overdose is widely pointed to as the death of punk. Which is a really dumb thing to say because punk very clearly went on. But I think people are saying, sorry, I guess it's not entirely dumb now that I say it out loud. But what people are saying is that punk transformed into something else. And that punk really, as it originally existed, was only around for about two, three years, maybe four or five of you. I'm sure there are some people at a bar right now that are just saying that over and over again. Right? Punk only lasted three years. Okay, well, I agree with you, drunk person in this sense. But it's not like punk went away. It transformed and became something else. And so what it transitioned into is commonly called hardcore. Hardcore punk, where stuff just got faster, louder, little angrier, and it just went in a different direction. Predominantly in the United States. Yeah, there were a couple of scenes. The La. Scene had already sort of been born by the late 70s, if you haven't seen it. The great documentary from Penelope Spirits, the Decline of Western Civilization, released in 81, but filmed over, I think, 78, 79 and 80, maybe, covered the La. Scene. And that's the Germs. And I think Blondie and the Go guys and stuff like that. Jerks have like one of these New York the best sets ever in The Decline of Western Civilization. Yes, very good. And the Germs, too. That's where I was watching some of that today. And that's when I knew I didn't like the germs. Right. But Pat Smear, of course. The Foo Fighters. He was in the Germs. He likes money. And also, if you're like who's penelope Spirits. You may be familiar with her work if you've seen the movie Wayne's World. That's right. Or the movie? Black Sheep. The Chris Farley David Spade movie. Or the decline of Western civilization. I think she ended up doing like three or four of those, right? At least three, because I know she did one metal. The second one was metal, which is good, too. Those are the only two I saw. Did you ever see that documentary about heavy metal? Parking lot? Yes. Where everybody's smoking PCP at a Judas Priest concert. Yeah, it's pretty great. Did you know early 80s metalhead smoked PCP? No, I didn't until that documentary. It was quite a surprise. I was scared of all those people. Well, they're kind of scary because they were all on PCP. Especially when you're like eight or ten. They're very scary. So American. We were talking about punk bands releasing their own albums. This started. Happening on the west coast. They started forming their own labels, even to release their albums and sign other, like, bands, like SST. Very famous punk label was started from the original guy from Black Flag, right? Yes. What's his name? Greg. G-I-N-N either gin or gin. Gin. I'm sorry, punkers. I know you're mad at me right now that I don't know this. Yeah, I think he was, like, the founder of Black Flag. Okay. Jello Biafra. Of course. He formed alternative tentacles with East Bay ray. Yeah. In 1979. And 79 was a big year because that's the same year that a band called Bad Brains came out in Washington DC. Which I didn't love. Did you see the Dave Girl documentary series? Yeah. So I can't remember what it was called. But he did this, like, ten part documentary series where he would do the music of a different city, and it was really good, except for the last 15 minutes of it. He would get the Foo Fighters together in a studio and they would play, like, some of those songs. And if you're really into the Foo Fighters, I imagine you loved it all. Not into the Foo Fighters, so I would just stop it there. But he does Seattle. But what got me on this was one of the most interesting episodes was the Washington, DC episode. Sure. Because I didn't know it was such a hardcore scene. When people talk about hardcore, they're like, well, DC is kind of the cradle of it. And Bad Brains, which my friend Jason Jenkins in college introduced me to. And that's when it was, like, really fast, had a little metal edge. But Bad Brains was also started out as, like, jazz fusion and had reggae roots. Also african American guys. Four of them. Yeah. And really good stuff. Yeah. So you've got, at the same time, La and DC as the new seats of punk music in the US. Yes, punkhardcore. And it's going, like, way more hardcore, way more masculine, way more macho than the UK went. The UK went a different route. They went way more political, way more like class struggle. And there's definitely lots of political threads that American punk music went through. But I think the UK went to it earlier. Like, Cross is a great punk band from the UK. They're just great. Check them out. But they were doing anarchy stuff in the 70s. Yeah. The Clash certainly is notable for their political statements. Very political. And then you've got, like, the six Sex Pistols talking about anarchy in the UK. They didn't really mean it. They were just saying something. Right. But there were a lot of politically motivated bands in the UK in the early 70s that didn't pick up till later in the 80s in the US. Yeah, because Ramones certainly weren't political. They were not political. But the other thing, the other differentiation I saw between UK and US punk was that UK punk didn't take itself quite as seriously as the US. Started to in the late 70s, early eighty s. And that this guy I read, I think a Guardian article trace that back to a love of glam rock, that glam rock really led to punk, especially in the UK. And if you're into glam rock, you just can't quite take anything fully seriously, including punk music. And the US. Even though punk came out of the New York Dolls in part. Which was definitely glam rock. It just didn't have that through thread. So it did get taken way more seriously and that was a big part of hardcore and what differentiated it from the earlier punk taking things really seriously and it being a little more political than ever before and angsty against things like the boredom of suburban life. Yeah, I think punk is just as important for things that it inspired that happened afterward as it was the actual movement itself. Because you can point to stuff in Minneapolis like Hooskar Do or bands like The Minutemen Who I Loved and they had a very punk sound to them and maybe are even considered punk. Probably post punk. Post punk. I think men and Men are considered punk, but who screwed you would definitely be postponed post punk, for sure. And stuff like Sonic Youth, which I would call them post punk, too. Postpunk Straddling into the early Grunge, though, too. Well, yeah, it's easy sometimes to trace that through line, sometimes it's really difficult. But we want to we want to be able to say, like I know it went from Bad Brains to Hooskaru to Sonic Youth to Nirvana, four degrees of Nirvana three days, and they're going what about us? Right? Exactly. But you can't but at the same time you also can't discount the effects that these later bands got from listening to the earlier bands that came before him. Like there's undoubtedly an influence, just not quite as crisp and clean as we like to make it. Yeah. And it's even argued in one of these articles that the birth of hardcore came about because, like, you kind of teased earlier on because punk flouts the rules and norms of rock and roll, then they form their own rules and norms and we're really pretty serious about it. And so hardcore came along because they didn't quite fit in with the true punk aesthetic. Right. They took punk even further because punk was being commodified and commercialized otherwise. That's right. Which would make it kind of easier to break from, especially if you just go slightly angrier and faster and louder. Right. But you also can look at stuff like you talk about tracing the through line if you want to think about early Manchester and stuff like Joy Division, that goes to New Order, that goes to Orchestral Maneuvers in The Dark and Simple Minds and all of a sudden it's a John Hughes soundtrack. Sure. And then it's like, what is punk about anything? Right? And that's sort of softer new Wave, but at the same time you can also say, well, New Order was just straight up new wave. But then New Wave caught on and got commercialized and commodified and then you end up having a John Hughes soundtrack because the record label got a hold of the New Wave band. Right. So that's kind of like the story with music as somebody comes up with something raw and organic and rebellious. Everybody loves it, the big guys come along, get their hands on it, coopt it, commodify, it commercialize, it ruin it, and then some thread kind of jumps off of that and it starts something else. The whole thing always it just continues on and continues on, except until the mid 2000s when music died forever and ever and ever. Alright, well, let's take another break here and we'll talk a little bit about the end of punk. But before that, maybe we'll hit on the fashion of punk. Oh, boy. Okay, Chuck, we're talking fashion of punk. Yeah. Every genre has its own look. I cannot remember what it had to have been the safety pin short stuff where we talked about Richard Hall being considered the guy who started the safety pin as a fashion statement. I think so. Pretty sure. But it was Richard Hall. He was the guitarist for television. Yeah. And he was like the first guy with the mohawk, like the Elmer's Glue kind of mohawk and safety pens holding his shirt together. Yeah, that's quintessential punk. But at the same time, dressing like a Ramone is quintessential punk too, with like the jeans with the knees in it. Black jeans. Doc Martins or Converse low tops. Or Converse high tops. Sure. Black biker jacket. Yes. The New York Dolls were very famous for wearing the jean jackets. Super small jokes in this article that they could barely fit in them. Right. They also wore super tight lycra shiny pants and stuff too. Yeah, but they were glam. Right. But it was really those black ripped jeans and this was a time where that wasn't like the cool thing to wear. If you didn't walk around with holes. Now it's become a recurring thing in fashion to have holes in your jeans being cool. Right. At the time it was not cool. It meant that you were poor. Exactly. Man. This was like somebody in this article, I think, from Pitchfork said dee Dee Ramone had holes in the knees of his jeans, not because it was cool, but because he didn't have any money for some new jeans and those jeans had holes in them. So that's what he wore. Now you pay like 100 or $200 for jeans that have pre ripped holes that are just right. That's a perfect example of the commoditization of punk. Yeah, for sure. Other, you know, in La. They have their own fashion scene going on because it's La. And they don't have harsh winters and cold, rainy weather. So they went to the thrift stores and bought things and cut them up. And that's where you never saw a shirt on a punk in the La. Scene that didn't have like the neck cut out or the sleeves cut off. Or in the case of the Gogos, in their earlier punk days wearing literal trash bags as fashion. Very funny. And blondie too. Sure. They all had a very specific aesthetic in Los Angeles. Yeah, it's interesting that the Gogo started out on the punk scene when they were, I think, to the casual music fan known very much for just sort of a bubblegum sing along pop hits that they had just lovable as all Get Out. As all Get Out, great songs and beyond. And the Carlyle too, like her solo stuff is yeah, she just kiss everybody. You couldn't see that. But that's what I get. But it's that whole pop punk thing which is kind of where it started to go bad. You could make the case that started in the beginning of 1977 when all those first record labels came in and it started to go bad then. But hardcore, this is my reading of this, okay? And I'm not a punk or even music historian by any stretch of the imagination, but from what I gathered from this research is that early punk got co opted and commodified by the record labels immediately. Hardcore grew out of that. Hardcore is way harder to commodify because it's much more raw, it's much less melodic, it's much more in your face and angry than the original bonus was. And it's also jealously guarded and defended by the fans, where at the beginning of the show we're saying, please don't beat us up. Like if you go to a hardcore show and they think you're opposer, you may get beaten up. If this is the 80s or the don't know if they still do it today. I remember feeling that threat. Oh, yeah, it was on me. But real the punks at the school, like, he didn't want to cross them. It was part of being a punk is like you beat somebody up to basically defend punk dump, right. To keep it from getting commodified square, get away from kids like wear thrasher Tshirts today, and they have no idea what thrasher is. Yeah, if you did that with punk in the you would get beaten up. Maybe even at school. Definitely at a punk show. And so in doing so, they were able to defend hardcore from commoditization because they kept it their own violently. Right. But at the same time, it's kind of like how a language evolves the more people speak it and the more free and easy the rules on it are by putting these very tight restrictions on what's punk and what's not punk and who's allowed to come to a punk show. Which is super ironic for punks to do to come up with all these rules and regulations, right? They kept it from evolving. They definitely kept it underground and it's still around today, but it's the same thing over and over again because it wasn't allowed to grow and evolve, because the fans have kept it, at least in America, have kept it underground purposely, deliberately and violently. So punks kill punk? Kind of. They would argue, no, punk is still around. I go see punk shows all the time and don't come to it because you're opposer and we'll beat you up. So they're still punk. But as far as, like, you and I walking around are concerned, punk is dead as a doorknob. For now. Yeah, for now. Well, I mean, I remember when we did our UK tour, I remember seeing a group of punks in Manchester that looked like they stepped right out of 1981 with the full spiked mohawks and the leather studded leather collars, and I was scared of them. In a little bit, you're like, Those are bad. Kids are going to try to get me to smile. I'm in town to do a podcast. Right? What's funny is that fashion that you're talking about, that quintessential punk fashion, that was a commodification immediately, too. The Sex Pistols manager used to be the manager of the New York Dolls, Malcolm McLaren, and he owned a shop in a BDSM fashion shop with Vivian Westwood in London. And he basically used the Sex Pistols to promote the fashion he was selling at his shop to make it fashionable so he could sell more clothes. This is the manager of the first UK punk band ever. Well, and he had put them together, right? It's not like essentially the six Pistols all got together because they were mates. Like they were formed by a manager. Yes, by this guy Malcolm. They were the monkeys, kind of. They were the monkeys of punk. They were the punkies. So many people are mad at us right now, for sure, but it's true. I mean, go look up your history if you're mad. Monks are going to beat us up next time we go on tour. Some 13 year old just looked down at their sher and went, that's what the Sex Pistols are. I have no idea. Well, it's funny, though, you talk about the pins and it was all homemade stuff. I remember it being a very I mean, I was certainly way too square, but I remember seeing the punks in my school doing stuff to their clothes during class and at lunch and thinking it was the coolest thing, whether it was Black Sharpie doing the dead Kennedys or the anarchy symbol. Well, the Dead Kennedys did have the coolest symbol, right, that was pretty cool. Or just fraying their jackets or adding safety pins. It was all created out of that homemade aesthetic, sort of like the music. And it appealed to me, but I was afraid of it. And now that's why I'm just now starting to listen to some of this music. Are you going to turn all punk now? Maybe. Okay. That would be one of the biggest surprises you've ever laid on me, man. But pop punk we should talk a little bit about. They call it bittersweet in this article suite in the sense that you could get tons of money and be super famous, but bitter because it spawned a genre that I think a lot of true punks really loathe. I think true punks like a square more than they like a Blink 182 Fan Indubitably. Yeah. And that whole scene, the Vans Warped Tour and Rancid and Offspring and Green Day and all these groups was a part of a big second wave of these kids who grew up definitely listening to that stuff and I guess feeling like they were a part of it. I'm sure Green Day really feels like they're a punk band and part of the punk movement. Whereas I remember the first time I heard Green Day thinking these are guys pretending to be a punk band. Which is a really crappy thing to say. But I mean, it's totally understandable how you would think that. But it is punk in some way, shape or form. It's punk. The stuff they're talking about is pretty punk. But punk bands don't release acoustic songs. Well, that's the first album. Dookie, right? Is what we're talking about, I guess. Was that the first one? I think so. I just remember hearing it and going like, why is that guy trying to sound British? Well, that's pretty punk, actually. Very punk. Yeah, for sure. An American kid trying to sound british. Well, I guess so. Yeah, I would guess you're right, though. They're on Broadway, for God's sake. Well, yeah, there was a brief shining moment where you could conceivably call them a punk band. Here's the thing, though, man. People like money. Yeah. But that's been through not just in the punk scene, but just in music in general. Although hats off to the punk culture for keeping it at bay better than anybody ever has. Any other genre I would like to hear I'm sure there are people listening that know of punk bands that did stick their middle finger up to the money and say, no, I can tell you one. Fugazi. Well, I love fugazi. So fugazi DC. Or I guess, hardcore. Hardcore. And I think they formed discord records. If not, they're a big act on Discord Records and they have done this whole DIY thing from the get go. They've issued the major labels, as far as I know, their whole career. And they were extremely successful despite that. Yeah, I saw them in Athens once. Oh, yeah? What did you think? That was great. I think they got together in the 87 ish and this was more like 92. Okay. Well, they were still huge and probably bigger. That was when they were at their height, I would guess is 92. Yeah. I mean, technically, I don't know about how it performed on the literal charts, but they had that one song that had a big MTV hit, waiting Room. Yeah, it's a good song. It's a really good song. Yeah. So I just want to give some shouts out to anybody who's like, this is really interesting. I want to know more. Go. Listen to the cramps. I would recommend the cramps. Listen to Crass. Go watch the decline of western civilization. Definitely check out the circle jerks. Who else? Chuck. I'm going to say for my picks, bad Brains and the Damned. Okay. For sure. I'm going to toss Gigi Allen out there, although he kind of transcends everything. Just punk. And you're sending me some. I didn't catch any of the names, but she said there's a big punk scene in Japan still. And that was another thing, too. Somebody said punk's not dying. It's just coming up in other places. Right? Like in Islamic countries. There's a big punk movement. I saw mexico has got a big one right now. Apparently Japan has it. And then there's a whole chicken. Punk is good. Riot girl. Feminist punk, that is. Man, if that's not punk, I don't know what. Eastern block punk. Riot girls. Right? I love it. Yeah. So punk is still alive. Punk not dead. Punk's not dead. Punk's not dead. Okay. If you want to know more about punk music, go listen to that stuff we just told you to go listen to. And since I said that's, time for Listening mail. If you want to learn more about punk music, you can probably go to literally any other place other than this episode and learn more about punk music. If you want to know more about punk music, go to your local library and read up. It's fundamental. All right, guys, I'm going to call this poop no poop on that short stuff about the guy who didn't eat for a year. We talked about the fact that he didn't poop that much, and she said this is the norm for people with a colostomy or ileostomy. I had a temporary ileostomy, an ostomy connected to the ilium instead of the colon. Due to crohn's complications. My colon was completely separate from the rest of my digestive system during this time and basically sat dormant while food exited into an ostomy pouch. No food means no poop, but the body still produces the normal gut stuff like mucus and cells and needs to evacuate on occasion, which I think that's what we talked about. For people with years of bowel issues such as pain and running to the bathroom every 30 minutes, this can be a literal lifesaver. Anyway, my colon is currently now reattached to the rest of my intestine, and my crohn's is in remission. I had no idea. So this person had a colostomy and it was reversed? Yes. I had no idea. They could do that. Yeah. We should do something on Crohn's. Sure. And just tie all the stuff together. Okay. I just wanted to give you a little perspective on the topic. Actually, Ostomy would be an interesting topic for you to tackle. For sure. Thanks for doing the best podcast around. According to my podcast app, I've listened to over 400 episodes. Yikes. Well, Sonia, in Canada, you have another, what, 700 and 5800? What are we up to now? What number of episodes? 850. We're up to, like, 1200. Well, she's listening to 400. Okay. So just do a little math. Okay. Hold on. I can do that. So another, like, 800 or so? Yeah, I would say so. All right, well, you're a third of the way there. Keep at it. Yeah. Roughly. Yes. You got it. A third. You guys should have just seen Chuck, like, look up into the air from the side of that. She said, we'd love to see you come out to the prairie provinces. So I know in Canada we do Toronto and Vancouver, but there's a lot of countries in the middle there that we should probably go to at some point. In the US. We call them flyover states. In Canada, they call it prairie country. Right. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, like did Soniaa, thanks again, Sonia. You can go on to STUFFYou Shouldn't Be.com and check out our social links. And you can also send us an email to stuffpodcast at iheart heartradio.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." | |
ab923216-3620-11ea-924d-f7263af45f07 | Short Stuff: More Phrase Origins | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-more-phrase-origins | We're back with another handful of phrase origins. | We're back with another handful of phrase origins. | Wed, 02 Sep 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=2, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=246, tm_isdst=0) | 11774376 | audio/mpeg | "This July, don't miss an entire summer of surprises on Disney Plus with Disney's High School Musical, the Musical, the Series season three Zombies, three Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and the wonderful summer of Mickey Mouse. Plus new episodes of Marvel Studios, ms. Marvel and National Geographics. America the Beautiful. From the award winning producers of Planet Earth, Frozen Planet and the Disney nature films, america the Beautiful takes viewers on a tour of the most spectacular and visually arresting regions of our great nation. All these and more streaming this month on Disney Plus. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Jerry's out there fiddling around somewhere in the Ethernet of the Internet, whatever. And this is short stuff. Let me just stop talking. Let's go. Yeah, this is something we've done before and we will do again because as everyone knows, we like phrase origins. I especially love phrase origins, and I think we're doing three today. The second one, which can be summed up in, like, a single sentence, probably, but we're going to start with a grain of salt. Take it with a grain of salt, buddy. I will take it with a grain of salt because I've just ingested some poison. No, salt won't help that. Well, according to Planning the Elder, it would. They think that that's where the phrase take this with a grain of salt really finds its origin. And by the way, take something with the grain of salt means that you should be skeptical of what you're about to hear or see or whatever. This information that you're about to receive is of dubious origin. Right. That's the current understanding of take it with a grain of salt or a pinch of salt or a dose of salt, however you put it. That's the current meaning of it. But they think as far back as planned, the Elders Naturalist historia that that's where it finds its origin. It's actually kind of a referential thing to that to a recipe he gave under the walnut section. Yeah. Take two dried walnuts, two figs, and 20 leaves of roux. Pound them all together with the addition of a grain of salt. If a person takes this mixture fasting, he will be proof against all poisons for that day. So if you thought you were going to be poisoned that day, before you eat breakfast, eat this concoction that includes a grain of salt and no poison will befall you. Yeah, but here's the deal. That explains nothing about this phrase other than he said the words grain of salt in his language, which was.com grano salis. Okay? Because it's not metaphorical, it's literal. If you want to talk about metaphor, you need to flash forward quite a bit. Till 1647. John Trap used it in a book called the Commentary on Old and New Testaments Colon. Boring. No, wait, I just made that part up. And he said, this is to be taken with a grain of salt. But we still aren't sure what he meant by that. I want to hazard a guess here, I think, with John Trapp, who has a great name, by the way. What he was saying is that the following is very difficult to hear or it's hard information to swallow, aka poisonous. So you would have to take this with a grain of salt. That's my guess. Now, I'm putting this out there, everybody, because this is short stuff. I did not go to the trouble of reading John Trapp's commentary on the Old and New Testaments. So it's a guess. But man, oh, man, it is a good guess. Yeah, that makes sense. And it did pop up since then, but usually, again, referring to actual grains of salt. Then in the Athenaeum, it's a literary journal, had this line, our reasons for not accepting the author's pictures of early Ireland without many grains of salt, which I can't even make heads or tails of that sentence, period. No, but I think they were wailing on the photographer, which is like, just don't accept the pictures. Don't make fun of them in the magazine. That's like us criticizing how Stuff Works articles that we based episodes on. We never do that. No, it'd just be mean. I think this one frustrated me because even that it still doesn't say where it came from or why they started saying grain of salt to mean what they meant. Metaphorically. Yes, because it was terribly written in this House Stuff Works article. Well, did you find a real reason? Because I didn't. I didn't. It just kind of suddenly is like it just appeared. And I get the impression that a grain of salt is kind of appeared out of nowhere. That it was not appeared out of nowhere, that they have kind of traced it back, but there's not any real clarification. I'll tell you what has a clarification check. A clear lineage. And that is the phrase close but no cigar. Yeah, this one's easy. And we can definitely get this in in the next minute and 20 seconds before a break because it's super easy. In the early 20th century, when you went to these traveling carnivals and they had these ripoff games where you would throw a ring on a Coke bottle or shoot a basketball into a hoop that's barely the size of a basketball, which I didn't figure out until I was way too old. Right. That was not a standard hoop. You had great hair by then. I did. You're meant to not win those games generally, or to come close and want to spend more money. And that's the whole idea. But back then, what was the price or one of the prizes that you would get? A cigar. That's right. So if you were sitting there throwing, you know, doing a ring toss around some glass bottles and you missed and you missed and you missed. You ran out of rings the carnival barker would say, Close, but no cigar. No cigar. So that's where that origin comes from, or that phrase comes from, which is great, because it's a nice, tidy package. There is no controversy, no disputing it, and it's just done. It's not like that ugly, horrible grain of salt origin. Yeah. And kids, six year olds everywhere would go, well, I never get the cigar. And their dad would say, Here you go, son. Have mine. That was great. Did we take a break? Yeah, I thought that was implied by the pregnant pause. All right, we'll talk about south pause right after this. That's why 2022, when things look different, like doctor's visits, for example, sometimes you don't have to go into a doctor's office to be treated for non emergency situations like a sinus infection or allergy. And that's why teladoc gives you the chance to connect with board certified physicians right from your home via phone or video. That's right. Doctors are standing by 24/7, so you can schedule a visit according to your schedule. You can see for yourself why teladoc is ranked number one by JD power and Telehealth satisfaction with direct to consumer providers. Teladoc is available through most major health plans and many employers. But even if you're not covered by insurance, everyone has access to use teletoc. That's right. If you want to check it out, download the app today or visit teladoc. comStuff to register or schedule a visit today. That's teladoc.com stuff. For JDPower 2021 award information, visit JDPower. comAWARDS. 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. All right, Chuck, we're talking South Paws, and this one's like a neat combination between horrible, ugly grain of salt and beautiful, perfect close but no cigar. Because there's a lot of different ideas that are competing for the origin that aren't necessarily right, but aren't necessarily wrong either. So there's a lot of great info involved. That's right. And it kind of comes down to a couple of sports. South Paul has long been linked to boxing and baseball. Rocky Balboa was a south. Paul no. Was he? Yeah, I think so. Right? I don't know. I don't pay that close of attention. I'm just enthralled by the action. You're just all about those muscles. Yeah, I think it was kind of a deal that he was a south ball. Okay, so you've long heard it to be about boxers and baseball, but generally, even more specifically, it's been associated with pitchers. A left handed pitcher is known as the South Pole. Okay. Yes. Now, that's the one I've always heard it from no, I'm sorry, I was about to say the reverse of the truth. I've always heard it from that's not a lie, right. I've always heard of it being associated with boxing. I've never heard it associated with baseball. Okay, yeah, baseball pitchers generally, it's an old school term, but I've definitely heard it before. So even before, necessarily, it was involved in boxing or it was involved with boxing and there was a political cartoon that was referencing boxing and we just didn't realize it. The earliest one of the earliest mentions of the left hand, especially involved in delivering a punch being called the South Paul comes from an 1848 editorial cartoon that showed a candidate named Lewis Cass, who is running for the Democrats. He had just laid out Zachary Taylor and Taylor's running mate, Millard Fillmore. And Millard Fillmore has a black eye. And there's a quote coming from him which Chuck, I think that you would be really good to read this quote. Curse the old Haas Watt, a southpaw he has given me. That was one of the best Millerfilmore impressions I've ever heard in my life. It's Otwatt. I'm going to bring that one back. Yeah. So Millerfilmore is calling, at the very least, the punch that Lewis Cass landed on him, a south paw, if not Lewis Cass, a south paw for using his left hand, who knows? But the idea is southpaw and knocking a person to the ground with your fists was associated at least as early as 1848, at least as politics is concerned. Yes. There were more specific boxing references. There was one in 60 in a bare knuckle fight, I guess, or boxing match. Pugilist squaring off against one another way to put it. The New York Herald. The reporter David Woods reported that in the 9th round I'm sorry, David Woods was the boxer. David woods planted his south paw under the chin, under his opponent's chin, laying him flat as a pancake. And that wasn't calling him a south ball, but called his fist his south ball. Two words. Right. Okay. So that's good enough for me. I say boxing, but unfortunately there's some contemporaneous use of southpaw as far as pitching goes. As far back as 1858 in the New York Atlas, there's mention of left handed first basement who's called the South Paul. That predates that boxing reference, although it comes after the Millard Fillmore quote. There are some others, like 1875 edition of St. Louis newspaper. So it seems to have been associated not just with pictures, but the pictures are the ones who have the great origin story of associating left handedness with being a southpaw. Yeah. And some people said that ballparks were oriented in the 1800s with home plate facing west, which meant that a lefty player facing west would be pitching with his south paw. But not all baseball stadiums were oriented that way. So that seems a little flimsy to me. I was thinking of the boxing thing. If you were a boxer, you've got your right hand sort of up as your lead hand, and your left hand would be south, so that might be your south paw. But if you are a South Pole, then your left hand is up. So that doesn't really make sense. That's right. It's not sensible at all, which means it's not solved. We have no idea what the true origin of southpaw is, but at least there's a lot more information about it that we can choose from and make our own decision. So are we one for three on this one? No, we're two for three. I'm including south because it's so great. Close, but no cigar is literally perfect. And then I don't even want to bring up the other one again. Yeah, I'm going to go on a salt free diet for the next week because of this episode. Yeah, that'll show salt well. If you want to show salt well, you do that same thing yourself. And because we have run out of things to say, everybody, short stuff is out there. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
a7dc0da6-361e-11ea-938d-1b94085b863e | Short Stuff: Dagen H | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-dagen-h | One day in 1967, Sweden changed what side of the road its citizens drive on. It went surprisingly well, considering. | One day in 1967, Sweden changed what side of the road its citizens drive on. It went surprisingly well, considering. | Wed, 25 Mar 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=85, tm_isdst=0) | 12053142 | audio/mpeg | "And I got a Davida, everybody, and welcome to the short stuff. It's Josh and Chuck. And there's Jerry over there, somewhere out there in the ether, right? I hope so. This is stuff you should know. Short stuff. We should probably stop horsing around. Yeah. So I don't know why you said in theatre, davida, I'm assuming. Is that sweet? No, I think it's pig Latin or gibberish. Oh, really? Yeah, it's in the Garden of Eden, but for some reason he said in a gata de vita. Why did you say it for this show? It's just for fun. It's a pleasant thing to hear, don't you think? I thought it was an Easter egg no. And now it's just totally ruined. Well, we are talking about a pretty interesting thing that you teased out on an episode we did recently, and one that is from an episode. Well, it's not from an episode, but there's also a 99% invisible episode about this. Yes, there is. If you want to hear a better version, tune into that. Right. Roman has a speed in just about every way, but we'll try our best, right? Agreed. So what we're talking about today is called dognh. And dogon h is Swedish for our day or right day. The H stands for Hooger, which is the Swedish word for right. And what the whole thing was really talking about was something called sugar traffic ninja. Nice. I don't know if night is the right word, but sure. Thank you. And what that means is the right hand traffic diversion. And ultimately, what all of these words and oomlots all piled together mean is that this is the day. Dog and H, september 3, 1967, when Sweden said, we're no longer driving on the left hand of the road like we have been since 1734, we're all of a sudden, on one day going to switch over to the right hand side. That's right. And I think did you mention how long they had been driving on the other side? Yes, it's 1734. It's a long time. So what you're having to do is there's a couple of factors here. You've got to teach people how to do this, literally. So they put together a pamphlet that literally told you how to do it. And then it's an infrastructure project, supposedly the largest driving related infrastructure project ever undertaken by any country. Oh, really? No, it's definitely Sweden's largest infrastructure project. To that day, it was the largest for any country as far as traffic related. Largest traffic related infrastructure. Yes. What I just said. Okay. I just couldn't believe my ears. Chucked there's the infrastructure section of it, and then there's the public information campaign. And it was a lot more than just like a pamphlet. Pamphlets were step one, dot oh, we'll go with indicating that there's plenty of other steps. How about that? And some of the other things they did was TV ads, radio ads, newspaper ads. They came up with a logo for Dog and H that was everywhere. They had a song contest to pick us a theme song for Dog and H. And they came up with a good one. I'm sure you listened to it. Yeah, it was good. Have you? Oh, yeah. It was called well, the American translation is keep to the rights, vincent and it was by the telestars. And it was, like you said, selected by a vote. It actually reached number five on their charts, whatever the sweetest charts are. And there was also a weird little sly side meaning because apparently keeping it to the right means to be faithful to your significant other as opposed to cheating on some, which is going left. Oh, I hadn't heard that before. Yeah. Wow. Chuck that's a deep cut right there. It's fairly deep. So the name of the song in Swedish is Holligo Hooger Spencer. And I listened to it enough that I could have sung it, but enough time is the lap. Since I've heard it, it's already gone. Can you say, that would have been great. Now, do you think we've talked about it enough to play it at any point, or do we have to just tell people to go look it up on YouTube? No, I mean, could we play, like, a version where we won't get sued? I don't know. We'll find out in the edit. How about that? All right, well, let's play a little part right now. Here is Hall Digtail Hugger Spencer by the telescopes. It's just not bad. About as catchy as it gets. I'm surprised it only rose to number five on the huge parade. Yeah. Here's the thing with Hday, though. Every municipality had to deal with their own issues. They had to change. I mean, when you think about it, it's not just about educating the public. That pamphlet I mentioned, I want to make it clear that was not just like, hey, here's what we're doing here. It's how to drive on the other side of the road. Oh, got you. Yeah. And then you've got street signs, you got bus stops, you got traffic lights, you got bicycle lanes, you got one way streets, you got buses that have doors on one side of the vehicle that now need doors on the other side. It was huge. Yeah. One of the other things, too, was the sweets didn't even want to do this. Not at all. There was a referendum that had been held ten years before when they started thinking about doing this, and, like, 83% of Swedish voters said, no, they did not want to start driving on the right hand side of the road. And the government said, well, we're doing it anyway. And the reason why they wanted to do this in the first place was because Sweden was kind of lagging behind the rest of Europe, which had started to increasingly or the rest of the world, I should say, which has started to increasingly drive on the right hand side of the road. So that was one thing. Sweden didn't want to look backwards or anything like that. But then the other thing is that the government was like, this may cause fewer fatalities because while we drive on the left side of the road, we're buying cars, including Volvo's, that are designed to be driven on the right hand side of the road. So you're driving on the left hand side of the road on the left side of your car, which means you're just kind of looking down into this little ditch next to you with oncoming traffic, which it seems reasonable that they thought this was a dangerous situation. Yeah, I never really considered that because I didn't wonder what the big deal was. My only experience, I think I've said before was when we were on the Australian tour, I drove opposite side and right hand side steering wheel wise. But now that I think about it, I guess it would be a little weird to be opposite side with the regular set up, right? Yeah, it would be a little weird. Like, you'd be really far removed from kind of where you need to be paying the most attention, I think is the thing. And they ultimately did show a decline in traffic accidents and fatalities because of dog and age, but they think it was because people were just paying more attention, getting used to driving on the right hand side because within two years, it went back up to about normal. Yeah, I think people are a little extra cautious, which is great. Yeah. Here's the thing, though. When you do something like this, it's not like little by little, over the course of a month, you can start changing street signs because that would be chaos. Right. So the night before and the day before, they had to shut down basically almost all traffic. You had to have special permissions to have a car on the road at all. And they had to change 360,000 street signs in less than 24 hours. Were they successful? We'll let you know right after this message break. Okay, Chuck, I can't stand the tension any longer. Were they successful in changing 3600 street signs all across Sweden in one single night? Well, I want to say for sure, my gut says they may have missed one or two. Okay. But overall, they were very successful. At 450 in the am. On September 3, 1967, a bunch of people came out to watch. There were cars on the road, and they said, Stop. Go to the other side. And directed people to the other side and said, all right, have a blast, everybody. Yeah, there was like a countdown on the radio. And then there was the announcement after they reached one that Sweden now drives on the right hand side of the road and everybody can start driving. And I'm sure they were like, wobbling and weaving and kind of like little kids on a bike with training wheels, or after having the training wheel taken off, I should say. I'll bet it was adorable to see. But the next day, that was a Sunday at like 05:00 a.m. When they started. And the next business day, Monday, there were no fatalities, nobody died, there were like 157 car wrecks, which is slightly lower than a normal Monday in Sweden. Yeah, and it was not cheap either. Obviously, this is going to cost a ton of money. At the time, it cost 628,000,000 kroner, which was astronomical. Yeah, it's about 316,000,000 American dollars today, but about 5% more than the government's estimated budget, which is not a bad overrun. No, not at all. And if you read some of the articles on it, we used, in addition to a couple of others, this one BBC article about it that was super interesting. They pointed out some of the people who were there and took part in this point out, like, dude, that was ridiculously cheap, even for the time. For the massive scale of this, not just the infrastructure again, but also all of the public information campaign too. They did it for cheap and they did it really quickly. Yeah, it was quite a project. My hat is off to them for doing it, by all accounts, like pretty successfully. Yeah, they did it and they said, that's great. But then, like I said, traffic fatalities went back up after a couple of years when people got used to it. And so Sweden undertook a project starting in 1997 that said, we don't want any traffic fatalities, no matter what side of the road we drive on in our country. So they came up with a program called Vision Zero and they've just been slowly but surely trying to whittle down the number of traffic fatalities. And in 2016 it was down to 270 F. 270. That's a minuscule amount for a country the size of Sweden for an entire year. So who knows if they'll ever get to zero? But hats off to them also for trying to do that. Yes, and for digging up telestar to cut the hit song Vision Zero. Right. They literally had to dig one of the members up. Oh, man. Yeah, I got nothing else except to recommend the 99% Invisible episode, because they do their show a little differently, so they got some cool interviews with people that were there at the time and it's always a little more dressed up than our show. And by that I mean way more dressed up. Agreed. They do it very well over there. So that's it for short stuff. Go head on over to 99% Invisible and we will see you next time. Adios. Stuff you should know is production of how stuff works. For more podcasts from My Heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-06-13-sysk-beagle-brigade.mp3 | How the Beagle Brigade Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-the-beagle-brigade-works | If you've ever been to an international airport, you've probably seen one of the keenest spotters of illegal contraband - The Beagle Brigade! These cute dogs aren't after drugs or bombs, they're carefully trained to sniff out agricultural products. Learn | If you've ever been to an international airport, you've probably seen one of the keenest spotters of illegal contraband - The Beagle Brigade! These cute dogs aren't after drugs or bombs, they're carefully trained to sniff out agricultural products. Learn | Tue, 13 Jun 2017 16:54:52 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=13, tm_hour=16, tm_min=54, tm_sec=52, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=164, tm_isdst=0) | 47593928 | audio/mpeg | "Attention, anyone with access to an airplane. We are going to be in North America for our North American 2017. Stuff You Should Know live tour. And we're kicking it off in Toronto August 8 th and Chicago August 9. We're going to take a little break and hit Vancouver on September 26 and Minneapolis on September 27. Yes. Then we're doing Austin, October 10. And Lawrence, Kansas, October 11. And then finally we're going to finish up October. It's a three night stand at the Bellhouse october 22, 23rd, 24th before we wrap it up at home in Atlanta for a special benefit charity show on November 4 at the Bucket Theater. Yes. You can get all the info you need and buy tickets at our other live show, Home on the Web. S-Y-S Klive.com. Go check it out, and we'll see you guys starting in August. Welcome to stuff you should know from housetepworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clasark. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. Jerry jerome rowland's over there. This is stuff you should know. The Beagle Brigade edition. Yes. Another I guess we covered drug sniffers not or did we do Seeing Eye dogs as well? We did remember, because Seeing Eyed Dogs is actually a brand name. It's one of those, like a bandaid. Yeah. Kleenex or something. That was a great one. Yeah. Is this the last job that dogs have? We didn't cover dogs that service pack animals yet. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Like herders. Yeah, that'd be good. Or lumberjack dogs. That's true. That's right. Or dogs that are sous chefs. Right. So, yeah, we've got a big, long sweet coming. I thought it was done. Sorry. No. But this one might be the most adorable of all of them. Yeah. And this one was I was always confused. I always thought the beagles at the airport because as you will learn, Atlanta, they're trained here outside of Atlanta. I just thought they were drug sniffers or snippers or everything. Sniffers. Oh, I see. No, you could have a big old suitcase full of cocaine and walk right past that dog and be like, well, that's good to know. Sure. For the next time you're smuggling cocaine. Yeah. Once you make a pest of beagle, you're home free. But don't have a head of lettuce. No, because those beagles will pounce on your neck and chew your throat out. Or don't have a train to do. Don't have a whole hog. Can you believe that story? Totally. So this one was I think it was in Atlanta at Hartsfield Jackson Airport, and there was a woman traveling from Peru to the United States with an entire roasted pig in her bag. And I mean, it was very sweet. She was just trying to bring home a holiday meal for her family. Yeah. It was Thanksgiving, I think. Right. Yeah. She smuggled in and roasted pig. Yeah. And it wasn't a little big? Well, pigs tend to be I mean, it didn't say a suckling pig pig. I assumed it was a big old pig. No, it was a picture of it. Oh, yeah, that's right. It it was was a good sized pig. Yeah. The guy, Rob Brisley, public affairs officer, said the right steps had to be taken to confiscate and destroy the item, and then the sentence stopped. But I imagine he said with our mouths. Right. With extreme ventures. So, anyway, I mean, that's just one example. Yeah. We should probably say exactly what we're talking about for those people who haven't been to an international airport in the United States, but there is a group of working dogs that are exclusively beagles, hence the name the Beagle Brigade. From what I understand, although I did see reference that they do use labs sometimes, but I'm pretty sure it's almost exclusively beagles. Not exclusively beagles. And these dogs have a job. They're actually federal agents with the USDA, the Department of Agriculture. Not the FDA. No, not the DEA either. They're federal agents, and their whole job is to sniff out agricultural products. And the whole point of all of this is that the US. Has a pretty extensive agriculture infrastructure. Right? Yeah. And if something comes through, say that's a pest, right? Like a bug that eats, what do we grow here? Cotton. A cotton weevil, but from another country. Right. So a non native pest or non native plant or a diseased bat. Okay. It could wreak havoc not just on our agriculture system, but if the wrong kind of thing comes through, like there are procedures in place for food to come in the United States, you're not supposed to carry it in your luggage because it has to be inspected. It has to come from a trusted source. We have to know that it doesn't have something like hoof and mouth disease or Ebola or something like that. Right. Yeah. It says in here in our own article that it's a $1 trillion industry, our own agricultural product industry. Right. And that's import export eating it, producing it an invasive species. Can be. Says about $136,000,000,000 in agricultural lost revenue. Is that annually? I believe so. Man. So that's a lot of economy at stake here. So they take it very seriously. Right. So the USDA, the Department of Agriculture here in the US. Has a subgroup called APIs, which is the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. And they're the ones who are tasked with basically creating this virtual border, this virtual barrier to stuff coming in the US. To protect agriculture in the US. Right? Yeah. Like the notorious Romanian cottonweavil. Right? Exactly. The most insidious of all. And specifically at international airports, working in conjunction with the Customs Bureau. CPD. Customs? No, CBP. Right. Customs and Border Patrol. You've got these cute, adorable little beagles who are trained to sniff this stuff out from people who are trying to smuggle hole pigs into the country when they're not supposed to. God bless that lady. I feel bad for her. Yeah. I mean, I get it. Sure. But there's no way she did not cry when the agriculture inspector took her whole pig. I know. She's going to feed to her family. What a waste of food. She works so hard on that, Chuck. I know. It might have been like her favorite family pig that she was waiting. It was Babe. Babe gave his life. So you want to talk a little bit about the history here? Because agriculture dogs or agricultural detection did not start in the US. It actually started in Mexico. Yeah, I guess was probably the early seventy s. I could not find when it started, but yeah, we know it's definitely prior to the 70s because based on this, I guess it was a USDA training manual that was referencing it. It picks up then in the late seventy s that the USDA started this. Yeah. And then up until 1983 we use big dogs typically, and I think we covered this in a lot of the other truck sniffers like German Shepherds and labs are certainly good, but labs aren't so intimidating. But German shepherds can be. Even though I love them, I grew up with them. Sure. A lot of people side of a German shepherd coming at them in an airport is a little scary. Yeah, I mean some people have signophobia, which is a fear of dogs specifically and in which case even the smallest dogs going to scare you. But even people who don't have an actual phobia of dogs are going to be scared of certain breeds and that definitely includes German shepherds. For sure. So it started in Mexico and then finally in the USDA, started at Lax, which is probably a pretty good airport to pick for a pilot program. Not an airplane pilot program, although I'm sure they had those. Yeah. Did you hear about the King of the Netherlands? They found out that he has been secretly undercover, moonlighting as a KLM airline pilot for fun once a week for the last 20 something years and has been flying. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. He's been undercover flying. Not as the King of the Netherlands, just trying to have a life of his own. I thought you meant like Leo DiCaprio didn't catch me if you can he just pretended to be a pilot. Oh, no fake checks. You're a king, you can't be a pilot. Wow. So did he come clean or was he outed? I guess he was outed and he said from time to time somebody would recognize him but he'd just have them kidnapped. Yeah, kidnapped and killed. Rendered extraordinarily. Wow, that's pretty crazy. Yeah. Well, good for him. They should just let him fly. I think so. They're going to work it out. Probably. I hope so. If not that guy's. One outlet has been taken away from well, so his pilot program may be failing, but the pilot program in Lax worked great. And this was a big deal at the time too. It was a big change from any kind of detection programs that they had at the time. I don't know why it took that long, but because dogs are obviously well known sniffers to the tune of compared to humans. How many millions of olfactory nerves the dogs have. I know it varies. So somewhere in the middle is the Dachshund. I didn't see the beagles specifically, but supposedly beagles are about average as far as scenting goes, which is surprising to me. But the Dachshund has 125,000,000 olfactory receptors. Amazing. And humans have 5 million on average. And I know the dogs, even the size of their nose can make a difference. I was a little surprised they picked beagles. But one of the big reasons is A, the Navy had used them previously to great success, and B, like you said, they're little, they're cute, so they're not going to scare anyone at the airport. And they're agile because they're small and they can jump around on a conveyor belt like nobody's business to find that Romanian cottonweavil. Right. Sometimes they'll find just enough fruit that they'll make a little headdress out of it. Like Carmen Miranda. Yeah. Nothing cuter than seeing a beagle in one of those. Well, the other cool thing about the dogs and their sniffing abilities is you can't disguise something. Like if you have of course, I was about to say drugs again, but let's say you want to sneak in that cotton weevil. Okay. And you think I'm going to hide in a can of coffee? Actually, that you might not be able to bring in coffee either. Now that I think about it. I was just trying to think of something with a strong odor, a bottle of perfume. Okay. The dog will be able to pick that out of that perfume, right? We'll be able to almost geolocate it because they don't get confused like we do. Yeah. So you know how like a dog can when you watch a dog on a scent, it's just kind of like sniffing back and forth in the air as it moves. Oh, yeah. So what it's doing is it's basically the same thing with our vision, right? The information is getting from one nostril and the other nostril is brain is putting together to create basically like a 3D map of where that smell is coming from. Just like the information from one eye compared to the information coming into our other eye gives us an idea of like depth, right, or perspective, that kind of thing. So it's basically the same thing, but with their olfactory sense. Put on top of that is the fact that they can distinguish sense. Like this article, this USDA manual said, when you walk into a kitchen and you smell chili, you smell chili, right? Chili's cooking. Put it all together, it's chili. That's how you smell the sum of all the parts. Yeah, if you're good, you might be able to pick out a thing or two, maybe detect some cumin, but a dog will walk in there and smell every single one of the ingredients separately. Right. Which is why you can't just take something and try to overpower the smell of it with something else. The dog will smell the thing that you're using to try to overpower it with, but it'll also smell the other scent. Apparently they can smell this thing, says they can smell table salt in a dilution of one part to 10 million parts. That's amazing. Isn't that crazy? That is crazy. That's also why if you've ever taken your dog to a new, like, a really new environment that they've never been to, like the beach, for instance, when I took a couple of years ago, we did a beach vacation and took our dogs and they were going crazy. They walked down to the beach and it was just nose in the air because there's always a good breeze or usually a good breeze on the beach. And I can imagine they were smelling these just hundreds and hundreds of things that they've never smelled before. Yeah. And it's pretty neat to see and you kind of wonder what's going on in that luck head of theirs. One lunkhead and one smart one I've seen before that when a dog is sniffing at a tree, what you're watching them do is sniff the tree itself, but also every single insect in that tree, every bird in that tree, everything that's in that tree right. Then that dog is smelling that. Yeah. I think it definitely varies because obviously some dogs are better, like hunting dogs and such. And my new dog Nico, we think may be part plot hound. What's that? Just like a hound. Okay. You can look up plot hounds and it looks like my dog. Okay, all right. But like a mix of a plot hound. But I think that they're like really good scent dogs, too, because more so than other dogs I've had is really driven by her nose, and when you let her out, she's got her nose to the ground for quite a while. I was reading today about scent tracking, and apparently it's something like some people like to do agility stuff with their dog or other people do, like, obedience competitions and stuff, and then other people and apparently this also is a really good thing to do if you found your dog is, like, no good at obedience. Right. They might actually love scent tracking because unlike the obedience stuff or the agility stuff, when you're sent tracking, the dog is totally in charge. You're basically following the dog, but you're doing it together, especially during training as well. Well, they'd say if your dog has behavioral problems, and a lot of times that means they have a job that they're not allowed to do. Yeah. That makes sense. If you have a herding dog that doesn't have a herd, then that might be a big pain in your butt. Until you can find a way to kind of let them I don't know if they can not necessarily hurt part time as a herder, but do something that acts as a hurdle, might as well make some money off of it. You want to take a little break? All right, we're going to take a break and get back to the peoples right after this. All right, Chuck. So we're back. So we were talking basically about dogs in general, but since 1984, the USDA has been training beagles for its beagle brigade right. Which is this front line covering America's agricultural infrastructure. That is correct. So I was very heartened to learn from researching this that the beagle brigade specifically with the USDA, all of them come from shelters. They're all shelter animals. Yeah. And you know what? It kind of makes sense. At first, I just thought it was out of the kindness of their heart that they wouldn't support the dog buying industry, but a lot of times just get problem dogs, these beagles that are so, like, up in the business, in your pantry or your refrigerator or sniffing out your shoes so they can chew them up. People will have opinions on this, but people will turn that dog back in or whatever to be adopted, hopefully from a no kill shelter. Right. At the very least. So then that's a big point that this USDA spokesperson makes in the house. The Forks article is like, a lot of people are saying, I'm not quite sure how I feel about this. You guys are using these dogs as tools, basically. Yeah. And? I don't know. I don't think dogs should be used that way. And the USDA's response is a lot of these dogs would basically be put down if it weren't for us. They would be euthanized because they're too hyper to live with a family. But that's exactly the kind of temperament we need for what we're having them do. So actually, it's win win for everybody. Well, yeah, and as much as I love my dogs laying around in bed with me, a happy dog is a dog that's working and exercising. And then at the end of the night, they get to relax, but it's easy to and we cover some of this and seeing eye dogs and stuff, it's easy to be like, oh, man, that dog doesn't get to have fun all day. That's just not true at all. These dogs have a purpose, and they're good at what they do. So don't think of it as, like, using this dog as a tool in a bad way. Right. And then on the other end of it, if the dog is brought into the program and they find out that the dog doesn't have what it takes, maybe it doesn't work very well amidst chaos that like an airport always has. Or perhaps the dog just seems unhappy. They say if the dog seems unhappy, they'll retire it early. Yeah. At any rate, they have apparently a 100% record of adopting out their beagles. And there's a wait list right now oh, I'm sure. To adopt these beagles that have worked for several years or didn't work, didn't make it, but entered into the program. They don't return them to shelters, they don't euthanize them. They adopt them out. And apparently the USCA has a 100% adoption record on that, which is pretty outstanding. Yeah. And as with a lot of service dogs, their handlers given first right of refusal for adoption. Right. A lot of times they do. So, you know. Yeah, I would guess so, too, because apparently when the dog and the handler are paired up together as a team, they stay a team for the dog's whole career. It's like Riggs and murta. Right. Or Turner and Hooch. Actually, it's not like Riggs and Murta, because they were paired at the very end of Danny Glover's career, so that was a bad announcement. Oh, that's right. That's true. Because he's too old for that crap. Yeah, that was a big line. Yeah, that was a great line. Isn't that a TV show now? I don't think it is anymore. Jerry's nodding, but that probably means you're both right. Short lived. I think so. I haven't seen any ads for it lately. What a dumb idea. Like, hey, let's dust this thing off for me, man, with years ago, they do that with everything, like Twin Peaks, even. It's like, come on, how are you going to pick that back up? Well, I don't mind that, because that's just more greatness from David Lynch. Is it any good? I've heard not necessarily. I think it's great. I'm a fan of anything David Lynch does. I didn't expect it to be exactly what Twin Peaks was. It just feels like a new TV show from David Lynch to me. Oh, got you. Really? Okay. I can be down with that. All right, so let's get into this. You mentioned handlers. We've been dancing around this the whole time. You mentioned handlers. And like we said earlier, this takes place at a place called the National Detector Dog Training Center, the NDTC, right here in lovely Newton in Georgia. Is that west? I think it's south. Atlanta west. Southwest, like, just down 85 after it splits off as 75, 85. My knowledge of my own home state is pretty poor. If I haven't camped there, and it's outside of Atlanta, I probably don't know exactly where it is. I'm pretty sure I'm right. Okay, southwest then. Let's go with that. Okay. And they start training. Like with most service dogs, they do that initial testing to just sort of see are they healthy, do they have the right temperament? How's their behavior? And that initial screening is where the first lot gets weeded out and one of the biggest parts of that initial weeding out is they have to have a high food drive, and that doesn't mean how hungry are they. That means your dog has just been fed. Those little beagles just eaten, but they still have a high desire to get to where the food is. Basically, that's what you're looking for. Yeah. And you make a lot of noise, and you have crowds around, and you're testing their focus. And this is all just like I said, the initial screening to say, all right, little Henry, the beagle here has what it takes. Right? We think, yeah. Well, that's just the start. Can he also learn to differentiate? That's the big one. That's the next big step. Right. So I think there's, like, a one or two week evaluation process. They also give the dog a full, like, veterinary inspection. I believe they spay and or neuter, I guess not and or specifically not and or in that case, they spay or neuter to the dog. A lot of times the dogs come in not very good shape because they're shelter dogs. They probably weren't taking very good care of early in their life, so they may need some sort of treatment or check ups or whatever. But then after that happens, the training actually starts, and the dogs are trained to scent. I guess, starting out, from what I saw, five basic restricted scents. Yeah. I didn't expect these. Would you? No, it's five. It's random. Oh, is it? No, it's random. Oh, I thought there were $0.05. No, there are, and I'm saying it's a pretty random assemblage. Oh, okay. I got you, man. You'd think after nine years together, but, I mean, if you were to have picked five cents, I probably would have definitely picked beef, pork, and citrus. That make sense? I guess I would have picked, like, monkey, bat, and probably pig too. Yeah, I mean, those are in there. Well, the monkey and the bad aren't, but beef, pork, citrus, mango. Yes, that's where you threw me. What was the other one? Apple. Apple thrown with apple. I didn't even know they grew apples outside of the United States. Who's trying to smuggle an apple into the US. I don't know. We got the best ones here, buddy. Just leave them at home. Yes. I would love to know why those are the five basic sense. If someone has more information, because I could not find out. I could not either. There's a real dearth of information on this stuff. I even emailed the Customs and Border Protection today because I could not for the life of me find the name of that first beagle that started out at Lax in 84. Cannot find it anywhere. Well, you're on a list now, buddy. The fact that somebody forgot to write it down. So no one knows you're being tracked now, probably. Oh, yeah. I've been looking up, like, restricted items, agriculture, invasive species stuff. Like that. I'm sure I'm on a list. All right. So they teach them those well, this is toward the end, is when they know those five basic sense. At first, they're just basically teaching them how to sniff through bags and suitcases and boxes and making sure they'll throw a goat head in a suitcase and send it through noonan. And you laugh, but one of them found a coach head not too long ago. I know what happens. And they just make sure they can do that eventually. And then, of course, they have to differentiate. Like, there's a lot of things that are scented. Like those things that are just fine, like an orange perfume. Right. Well, that's another that's got to be kind of tough to learn for a dog, too, is the difference between orange scented stuff or things that are made with, like, say, orange essence, like a candy or a lip balm or something like that. And an actual orange, because the lip balm no problem. Actual orange, you got a problem. That's right. And once they've done this, this is about a few months, probably ten to 13 weeks, and they're being trained in regular, like, how to pause that stuff and alert and sitting responses. All of this is one big learning period. And the handler is getting trained as well, obviously. Right. But at the end of this is when they finally do graduate to those five basic scents. And I guess see, what I don't get it from the basic sense is, is it from those scents that they can smell anything? No, that's crazy. That's what I thought, too. That's what it implies. Like, if you put together apple and pig and mango, that's good. You've got, like, Bat, you have a blue app. That's not the case. Each thing has its own scent. I don't know if those are, like, the most commonly smuggled ones, possibly. Maybe. So those are the ones they need to start out with. Maybe they're the easiest ones. I don't know. But, yeah, if you put those things together, especially if a dog smells in layers right. And differentiates between scents sure. It's not going to smell the combined scent of those things. It's going to smell each thing. So I'm not sure why those are the five basic ones. Can't find out. Yeah. Well, hopefully this one was a stone wall. I mean, we're professional researchers here, and we really ran into a wall. Yes. Who would have known that the beagle brigade is what would throw us? It would break us. So they've learned all these things. They've learned how to alert. They're getting treats. They're getting positive reinforcement along the way. Yeah, that's a big one, too. The entire training is strictly positive reinforcement. Yeah. They don't beat these dogs down if they're not smelling correctly. They spend ten grand a month on newspapers to roll up, teach these dogs lesson, puppy boundaries. Once they've gone through all of that everyone knows I'm joking, right? Yeah. And if you're new to the podcast and don't even bother emailing. Yeah, we're great animal lovers here. So once they've gone through this whole training process, they finally graduate. They get their little diploma, their little hat and their little robe, and they graduate from Noon and they get to move to the big city with their Atlanta or anywhere, any international airport. But Atlanta certainly has a large one, for sure. And so once they get to their home base airport that they're going to be working at, they're still evaluated and trained for another sometimes ten to 13 weeks. Yeah. Training is kind of ongoing from what I saw, too, like, the whole career. Yeah, okay, stop learning dog, you know too much. But I think the initial training period, their basic training still can go on for another ten to 13 weeks after they get to the airport. And even once they get to the airport, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to stay in the program again. Once they're finally introduced to the chaos of an international airport, that dog might just be like, this is not for me, send me back to Noon. Yeah, you can try to duplicate that chaos in Nunan, but good luck. You just can't. I mean, even you just can't. There's nothing like a busy airport. You can't recreate that. Yeah. So some dogs are fine with it, some dogs are not. But again, one of the main reasons why they're choosing Beagles is because it is so chaotic. And these dogs are their whole thing is they're not there, like a mail processing facility. They're not there like a border crossing. They're there at a busy airport, and they're meant to be able to kind of weave in and out of this crowd while also being nontreatening and also being lovable, too. That's not by accident that they chose these incredibly adorable dogs. The USDA says that the Beagle brigade is basically like a walking lovable advertiser for what they're trying to do, which is protect agriculture here in the US. Yes. They have a little vest that says Beagle Brigade and everyone oozes and owes and some people. This is probably how they do it. If you're not actively oohing and eyeing and you're standing there sweating heavily, then the dog keeps it on you. That'd be a big trouble. And I don't know if you said it or not. If you did, I didn't catch it. But the dogs are trained to walk up to locate a contraband item and sit at the bag. Yeah. I thought they attacked the person first. It's called passive indicating. Yeah. But rather than I saw in this article, it says they paused it everywhere else. I saw that they just sit and kind of look at the person. Like, shame on you. Exactly. It's very passive aggressive way to help somebody for a goat set in their suitcase, right? Yeah. Man, You read my mind. All right, we're going to do that, and we're going to finish up here with a big old brigade. All right, so what happens at the end of a long day? Josh, the dog most beagles enjoy. Good pipe. Maybe a scotch in an easy chair, perhaps a cigar. Sure. They tend to watch CNN, although if you watch Fox News and they fall asleep a little drunk, that's what they do every night. It's their routine. And that's what beagles like. I know. That's our routine in our clubhouse where we live. I know. Weirdly. And this kind of surprised me. I guess it's not weird now. They've seen the explanation. But I was surprised to learn that they are kindled, I guess. I thought they lived with their handler. Yeah, because canine police dogs live with their handler. Yeah, I thought it was weird too. But they're kindled. They have a facility near the airport. Some people have asked, like, can I just keep this dog at night? And then take them to work every morning? And they say no. They said this is actually best for everyone. They need to rest. I imagine they have a good play together. I doubt if they just like drive them straight there and put them in the crate. Right. It's probably a little social scene going on. I hope so. I hope they don't get scolded for making eye contact with the other working dogs they live with. No, they put in their 8 hours, they come home, they probably play a bit and then they're kindled overnight. And they said that they need this rest time in order to do their job successfully. And like I said, a happy dog is a dog that feels good about its work. And you said, Chuck, some people ask if they can take them home. Sure. You should specify like that's not the agents. Ask people at the airport. I know. Can I just take them home for the night and you guys can come get them tomorrow or I'll bring them back. I only live like 45 minutes away. Yeah, sure. Give me your cell phone number. That sounds great. So it does make sense that they are left to just kind of rest. And I'm sure that they actually live at the airport, which is funny. It's like that movie Terminal with Tom Hanks. It says a nearby facility. You think it's actually there? I'm sure, yeah. Did you know that the movie Terminal with Tom Hanks is based on a real life thing? Yeah. And the guy was living there for a decade or something like that. In Charles de Gaulle. Yeah. Did you see that movie? No, I just read the article of movies based on yeah, it's not very good, unfortunately. I got that impression. Yeah, it was a bummer. Oh, really? Doesn't end well. No, it was just a bummer that it wasn't good because Spielberg and Tom Hanks and I think my hopes were high, but I didn't care for it. No such luck. Charles. So the Beagle Brigade is a very closely guarded secret. Just how many Beagles are brigading? So they can say, though, that there are 116 CBP agricultural canine teams with the dogs and the handlers and that every international airport in the country has big overgay there right. Doing their job. So they can tell you a lot. Yeah. I mean, you want to tell some stories here. Yes. So there was this one dog called Murray. Murray? Murray. He was at a shelter in North Georgia and apparently some dummies decided they wanted a hunting dog and didn't want to spend any money, but they wanted a dock, tail and ears and everything. So they tried it themselves and it didn't go very well for poor Murray. So they dropped them off at a shelter. Probably, knowing the state, they probably dropped them off on a dirt road and somebody else found him and took him to a shelter. And Murray was rescued by a group called Alcovey Pet Rescue. And I guess Alcovey has a direct pipeline to the Beagle brigade. Handlers down in Newton said, hey, we think we got one for you. This guy is so food driven, it's crazy. He's got a lot of love, he just needs a little bit of attention. He's missing part of his ear, but we can get past that. And at age two or three, he became an agent for the USDA Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International Airport. That's great. The only way that story could have ended better is if those original people had part of their ear cut off by a dog. Yeah. What about Jasper? So, Jasper. He worked at JFK, I think. Yeah. This was late last year. Jasper retired after an eight year career, and during this career, Jasper seized over 17,000 items. The goat head was Jasper, like I mentioned. Yeah. Whale meat. Yeah, whale meat. Rhinoceros skin, cooked bat. Really? What else? Anything else crazy like that? No, not that I saw. And a lot of Romanian cottonweavils. Right. And his handler, Amanda tipple or triple? Is it tipple or triple? Triple. She said that she was interviewed with Modern Farmer magazine, which I didn't realize existed until last week. And now you have a subscription. Yeah. They did an interview with her and she was saying that he could very easily work longer, but that the mandatory age of retirement is eight because they want the dogs to have some years of just chilling out, not having to work, and that she's going to take him home. She's adopting him. She did adopt him. I think that article was from last year. And he was on the verge of retirement when they interviewed him. But he went, and apparently this is fairly normal, went from something like 15 to 30 hits. 20 to 30 hits a day. Wow. But had declined to about ten to 15. Yeah. Everybody was very disappointed in them. Well, I mean, that's a good retirement age if they're eight. Like barring some very sad health concern, a dog that size can live to be 1314 years old. Right. She's many years ahead of them, hopefully, in retirement. Yeah. And once she takes them home, she gets another dog that she's going to partner with. So I wonder how that will go over. Jasper be like, I know where you've been today and I just want to tell you again, I'm not happy with this. Well, I bet Jasper and all retired dogs have to deal with that transition. Imagine there's something the handlers have to do with them on a daily basis, like probably a lot of long walks. Imagine the dog isn't just like, all right, and now I'm going to rest like they're used to that activity. Oh, yeah, I was wondering that as well. I wondered too if they get them when they're young so they're super hyper and then maybe by the time they're eight they've mellowed a little bit. Sure. At least comparatively speaking. Yeah. I think a mellow beagle is still pretty hyper compared to a normal dog. Yeah. I've never been around beagles, actually. They'll pull yeah. And they bay and everything. They're super cute, but they can be rambunct, just for sure. Yeah. I've never known anyone with a beagle, so I don't even know if I've ever touched a beagle, now that I think about it. No, but if you've been touched by a beagle, you'll never forget it. Chuck, a couple of stats for you. Last year alone in 2016, the brigade inspected 23 million passengers, 741,000 pieces of freight, and they alerted total in the United States to more than 1.77 million seizures of illegal materials. That's a lot. It's about what, like seven, 8% of people bringing stuff in that have been caught. Yeah. And I saw also that there's an even more specialized group of dogs that are typically Jack Russell terriers that work on Guam to root out specifically brown tree snakes yeah, that's crazy. Which are an invasive species that got introduced to Guam and have killed off like, a lot of indigenous bird species. And they're basically trying to protect Hawaii as much as they can. I don't know, hawaii didn't have snakes until this article. Yeah, it's like Ireland over there. Yeah, I mean, it made sense, of course, but I just figured there's all kinds of invasive species, so I just thought that I just figured snakes would be one of them. Yeah, no, Hawaii takes the agriculture defense very seriously. Yeah. It's a felony. The snake thing is yeah, well, they'll just beat you up before they even take you to jail. They catch you. Well, I read an article because I was like, what? Is that real? Which is, I guess, of great comfort to backcountry exploring and explorers if you're scared of snakes. But I read an article and there were a couple of them found last year that people had managed to sneak in. And one was a boa constrictor that was dead in the road, like 5ft long. And the guy, oh, man, saw it and said, there's a snake. And everyone in the car was like, there are no snakes in Hawaii. They're like, no, that's a snake. He's like, oh, I'm just a total idiot, I guess. I'm sure their legs under there just a big lizard. Hate you guy. Yeah, that was news to me. So very interesting. Supposedly the Everglades down in Florida have a huge problem with Burmese pythons and like a couple of different kinds of pythons. And all of them were pets. And now they're just taking over and getting to be like 20ft long or just crazy eating wild boars and things like that because idiots get them and then they grow and they say, this snake is too big, and they just put it out in the swamp. I just wanted a puppy snake. So here's a good example too. Like the goat head and the cooked pig gets a lot of attention, but usually this stuff is not nefarious. It's like this one lady. In February of this year, actually, there was a beagle named Gadget that sees and this is just one seizure from one person, a potted tamarind plant, two live trees, 42 packages of seeds, 20 pieces of palm tree plantings, chicory seed, rice, millet and fresh garlic, and a note from God. I mean, that's a lot of stuff, but this is what happens. Like, someone goes to another country and they want to bring back seeds to plant something. It's not like they're awful people, but they can innocently wreak havoc on agriculture here by doing so. Right? So the process, from what I gather, is that you declare anything you have on you, and then if they can let you bring it through, then they'll let you bring it through. But if not, they'll just take it and be like, sorry, we got to take this. Then they'll shoot it in front of you if you don't declare it and they catch you with it. Thanks to the beagle brigade, you can be fined up to something like $1,000 for your first offense. And if it's clear you're like a straight up smuggler yeah. You will probably go to jail. Well, this person did declare that had all that stuff, chocolate and an apple. So she thought maybe if I declare something, I won't be as suspicious. I don't know. Right? But I mean, if you're a CBP agent and you're looking at that and you have the discretion of whether to arrest that person or not, you may very well be like, you were definitely trying to smuggle this stuff, so I'm going to make an example out of you, lady. Yeah. And then Gadgets just sitting there just like, judging, what have I done? Yeah. And the lady, as they're hauling her off to jail. She's like, I would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for you meddling dogs. You got anything else? I do. I have one more thing. I ran across this article. I think it was on court, and it said illegal bush meat could be the cause of the next big global pandemic. Wow. There's apparently a major market for bush meat, which is any wild animal meat. Most people think of it as like monkey gross or bat or something like that. But it also is like elk or caribou. Any illegal meat that's basically just being smuggled around. There's huge markets for it in New York, in London, in Mayland, Europe, and people just smuggle it in, and a lot of them make it through. And these things just get sold behind the counter at butcher shops in some cities. And all it's going to take is one of those things to have ebola and maybe a mutant strain that is transmitted a little more easily than Ebola light or whatever we have now. And you got a pandemic on your hands, and we can say, thanks a lot. I hope you really enjoyed that monkey leg that killed off three quarters of the population of humanity. Gross. Those two words. I don't like it. I know. It's pretty rough. So I guess you're done then, too. I'm done, sir. Okay, well, if you guys want to know more about bush meat or the beagle brigade or anything like that, type those words in the search bar. Howstepworks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this one sad yet happy email. Hey, guys, my name is Sam. I wanted to send you an email thanking you for your show. The podcast is actually a rediscovery for me. My dad used to play it back in 2009 when we would drive up to the mountain to go skiing. Have very fond memories of laughing and nerding out with my dad and brothers after a great day on the slopes. Can't believe you guys are still going strong after eight plus years. There is a little more to my rediscovery of your show, though, that I wanted to share. It's been four and a half years since one of my brothers, who was an amazing skier, died tragically to suicide. Since I was in college at the time, I didn't have enough time to properly grieve. Recently, I've been mulling through many painful memories that I ignored in those first three years. However, your show unexpectedly brought back really happy ones. It has reminded me of the fun adventure and learning our family enjoyed while listening to your show. When we were skiing, I remember laughing hysterically with my family at your jokes, rolling my eyes with my brothers, and dad would try to comment on your show to sound smart because it was so creepy. One of your favorite episodes of ours was the one on cannibalism. Being a high schooler at the time, I also really liked the show and flirting. I thought I could put it into practice. Needless to say, it didn't really work. You know what? This month I went home for a week to visit my parents and I went skiing with my mom and dad for the first time since my brother died. It was very painful, but also unimaginably special. When my family and I are on the mountain, I feel like I can encounter my brother as he was when he was healthy and full of life. I could picture him diving down a slope that was way too steep with the most enormous grin on his eager face. All in all, it was a great day. So I just want to say thank you for the hard work and providing interesting topics to fill my time, making me laugh, but also inadvertently helping me cherish a special time in my life. That's heavy. That is from Sam and she sends hugs. Sam, that is fantastic. Thank you very much for letting us know. We appreciate that and our best to your whole family. Absolutely. If you want to get in touch with us, like Sam did, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can hang out with me at Joshua mclark on Twitter. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook@facebookcom. Charlesw chuckbrant? You can also see us@facebook.com stuffyshow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@houseworks.com. As always, join us at our home on the Web stuffyshonow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com. Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from exactly right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarra in Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
Live in Chicago: How Public Relations Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/live-in-chicago-how-public-relations-works | After a year of taking it on the road, Josh and Chuck are releasing their show on public relations. Learn all about the ways you're manipulated on a daily basis and the man who invented it in this fascinating live episode. | After a year of taking it on the road, Josh and Chuck are releasing their show on public relations. Learn all about the ways you're manipulated on a daily basis and the man who invented it in this fascinating live episode. | Thu, 26 Nov 2015 14:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2015, tm_mon=11, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=14, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=330, tm_isdst=0) | 71036019 | 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 we are here live at the beautiful Athenian Theater in Chicago. I go Illinois. Very nice. We should say the sold out athenium theater. Thank you, Chicago. We feel very loved here. And big thanks to the Athenium. You guys have been awesome. And AEG the promoters. Let's do this, buddy. I'm sweating already. Good Lord. What's wrong with me? It's a hot show. Hot, hot show. Right, everybody? And it's me. Let's be honest. Well, you're a hot, hot podcaster. Did we say who is who, by the way? I think everyone knows. You guys know, right? That that's Chuck and I'm Chubby. There's a spelt, handsome guy and there's a chubby, bearded guy. We really like to keep ourselves on opposite ends of the spectrum. Jerry is not here. I'm sorry? Jerry is not here. That is so sweet of you guys. In awe every time we say Jerry's not here and cheers when she is here. I wish we could say why, but we'll announce it soon. She has some top secret business going on. Yeah, that's not cryptic at all. Yes, she's leaving us for another podcast. She's not allowed to leave. She would never leave it. We fired her, so that's not true either. So you guys know how you have no idea what topic we're doing tonight? You're about to understand why. Because we're doing public relations. And before you leave, please hang on. Because actually, public relations is one of the most interesting topics we have ever, ever encountered. It has it all. It has manipulative psychology, it has old timey history, it has cool ads. It has, like, mind control. It's got it all. It has it all. Nazis, like CIA. Everything is involved in public relations. And as a matter of fact, we're sitting right smack dab in the middle of the world that public relations built. And we should say, are there any PR professionals here tonight? Yes, well, we want to apologize in advance. Everybody. Be nice to those guys. The bartman of the show. That's right. Sorry about that. They're ready to drink. Everyone settled in? Any maurer? Did they serve malorie here? Any what? What is that? I told myself I had to mention Malort. What is it? Malort. Well, what is it? It's wormwood. Right? I was going to guess wormwood. What is this stuff? It's made me psychic. Yeah. It's from Chicago, I believe. Right? Or at least very big here. And it's the most disgusting thing you will ever have. Cross your tongue. But does it get you pretty buzzed? I don't know, because I've never had more than a sip, and then three days later, I'm still, like, brushing my teeth with steel wool trying to get the taste out of my mouth. Weird. Yeah, the aftertaste is pretty special. I got you. Are you guys on alert right now? A couple of people are, huh? I've heard it's a hipster thing. Now I can buy it. Give me a shot of Malort in a PBR and some steel wool, but only artisanal steel wool. I'm sorry. Artisanal steel wool? Yeah. Wow. All right, so let's get this thing going. If you go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, like we do, just to read, you can look up PR specialist. And has anyone heard the recent one on publicist? This is tangential, but this is better because we like to save the good stuff for life. Right. If you look up PR specialist, you can find this definition. They are someone who creates and maintains a favorable public image for the organization they represent, and designing media releases to shape public perception of the organization and to increase awareness of his work and goals. Sounds very nice and innocuous, doesn't it? Chuck just started with a quote from the Bureau of Paper Statistics. If you read any podcasting handbook, they specifically say not to start to show off like that. And you know, because you wrote it. Yeah, it's self published, but still it's there. I think it's gaining some steam. You're doing fine. So it seems like a pretty straight ahead job. And if you heard public, it's pretty straight ahead. But the creator of PR, there was literally one dude who created the job of public relations specialist, and his name is Edward Bernays. Anyone familiar hear of that guy? A couple of people. That's good. For the rest of you, prepare to have your minds balloon. Yes. This guy is arguably tied for second most evil person in the 20th century. I was saying something because there was at least one really evil dude in the 20th century. I would go number two behind a certain German man. There's the Nazis appearance. That's the parents one, by the way. Yeah. They're going to be like at least three Nazi references. So he was voted by Life magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the 20th century. And we easily agreed that he's like, a top tenor. Right? We say Bosch to Life stupid rating system. Ours is better. I would say top six. Top six. Top six. Most influential, maybe top three. Yes. And it's not just us, like, hating on Edward Bernays. Are you guys familiar with the New York Times? It's a newspaper and they write obituary. It's no Chicago sometimes. I'll give you that. Or Tribune. All right, which one did Ebert work for? Tribune, right? Times. The Times. Really? I thought he was a Tribune guy. Okay. All right. Do sometimes I got it was Cisco or the other newspaper? Were they rival newspapers? Oh, really? Man, I used to love that show. I love this town, man. Have you seen the documentary, man, we're already sidetracked about the Eber. Documentary. Yeah, the Ivy Burnt. Have you got seen that? No. It's so good. And get the box of tissues ready when you watch it too. Unless you have no heart like Edward Bernays if you're dead inside. Yeah. So the New York Times wrote an obituary. Edward Brunette live to be 103, by the way, because the most evil ones do. Mr. Burns, Dick Cheney, they all develop like a huge hump and claw like fingers and that kind of thing. Ever Bernard was among them, lived to 103. And when he finally died, the New York Times wrote an obituary. And I think they tried to be hard hitting, yet polite. So this is the most polite that The New York Times could possibly be. They said that Ever Brenes was either a benefactor of the human race or someone who had a lot to answer for. They left off in hell. I'm sure his relatives like that was nice. Yes. At least he was in the Times. I guess so, because he lived so long. His career literally spanned from World War One. Not World War II, World War I to the beginning of the Information Age in the mid 1990s. So he had a lot of influence, to say the least. Yeah. Man, I hope you do that like eight times tonight. So he's a very controversial guy. And what he did was he realized early on that he could lift weirdly enough, he could lift a lot of his practices from Sigmund Freud. Freud came along and he said, there's this thing called the Self, these unconscious desires and fears that all of us have. We don't know about them because they're unconscious and it's a thing with every human being. And Bernard said, you know what? I think I can use that to manipulate people into being interested in products. And Sigmund Sloane Freud, by the way, anyone know that his middle name? It's true. He didn't go by slomo. He was very much ashamed of his middle name. And so he basically lifted this stuff, this fear and desire and preying on that because uncle so Freud was Brenes'uncle. And we call Freud Uncle Slowmo for the rest of this podcast. If you get confused, just remember that Uncle Shlomo equals sigma or greater than Sigmund Freud. So Uncle Shlomo was fairly innocent in this whole affair, basically, as far as psychology goes. He just basically stumbled across the Self, this idea that we're all driven by selfish desires that we're not aware of and that we all subscribe to a herd mentality and that you guys all care what the group thinks more than anything else. And that's how you think, and same with us than anybody, right? So this is what Shlomo came up with. And it was a big deal, like up to this point, like people didn't talk about their feelings, they didn't think about their feelings. They certainly didn't think that they were driven unconsciously like automatons by these crazy desires. And the first thing Grenades thinks of is like, that would be a great way to sell to people. Exactly. I think I can exploit that and sell more stuff. So if you think about the advertising you see every day today, it's a different world than it was back then. Back in the day, advertising was very straightforward and it literally just advertised how a product worked as it should. You would see an advertisement about a car, like the new Ford runs like a car should run. It looks like this, and it gets you from point A to point B. Good night. That's all you need. Or the Kenmore blender. It really blends. Well, that was advertising. Yeah. Maybe in, like, the more expensive ads, there'd be like a hand drawn finger pointing at you. Sure. And it was a you in all caps with some exclamation pointing, like, you buy this morphine because it will give you the buzz you're looking for. That kind of thing. But it was based on this idea that you were a rational actor in charge of your own decisions and that you would want to buy this. If it was explained to you that the Ford was the best choice for you, it treated you like a human being. In other words, when Freud came along and came up with the self and then Bernays figured out how to hijack it, all, that went out the window and all of a sudden, we were all kind of slaves to these selfish desires. Well, yeah. I mean, think about the ads you see. Now, if you can find an ad that doesn't prey on some fear or desire, it's either you've had a rough day indulging that Ben and Jerry's. Chuck. Yes. Have you guys noticed that Ben and Jerry's ads now say Chuck? At the end of all of them, they know their audience. Or fear. Or you deserve, like, the sports car, like, all these things that you deserve, all the stuff. You're getting old. Don't you want to stay relevant? Buy the sports car. All of your friends are going to tortuga and having fun. Why aren't you? Right? Would you like to stay relevant? We have a product for you that will help you feel young again. Right. Or at the base of it all, use this mouthwash or you'll die alone. Which is kind of accurate as far as advertising goes. And back in Bernays day, the reason they had ads like that is because you literally use something until it was done back then, like you drove your car until it quit running or you had your blender until it quit blending. There was no such thing as buying the new version of the thing you already have. And I know no one here has a phone in their pocket and another phone at home. It still works, but gathering dust. It's not the new model. Yeah, exactly. So that was a completely new thing to buy something before it had worn out. After World War Two, manufacturing kind of dried up and they were kind of worried. They were like, we sold all of our stuff and everyone's got everything they need. So they were like, well, we need to think of new ways to sell things to people. Yeah, we need to sell people stuff that they don't need. Exactly. And the best way to do that is to prime those unconscious desires, to prime those unconscious fears, and then in the next breath say, and by the way, this product will fulfill all of your desires or will vanquish all of your fears. And people came to identify themselves with products. And all of that is, frankly, because of Brene. So basically, all of the weird, quiet maltreatment that every living person in the Western world undergoes on a daily basis can almost without hyperbole, be laid at the feet of Edward Brunette. That's right. He invented it. You guys get this now. So he had a super long career, like we said, and this is just a smattering of people. He worked for President Eisenhower. I think he worked for, like, five or six presidents. Do we have any Eisenhower fans in the crime? You liar. Thomas Edison was a client, right? Wow, that really is a nice and higher fan. Henry Ford was a client. Samuel Goldwin of MGM was a client. Eleanor Roosevelt. And those were just a few. And reportedly, this is Nazi reference number two. Reportedly, Hitler wanted to hire Edward Bernays to run his propaganda wing, and he turned them down. And we can't find really good verification of that. So what we think, because we studied Edward Bernays, is that he actually took that up to tell people, like, I turned down Hitler to make himself look good. We uncovered some Edward Bernays BS. He wanted me, but, well, you know, I had some other clients. So whether that's true or not, if this floats your boat at all, guys, if you leave this place thinking, like, I really want to know more about this, go check out this really cool documentary called A Century of the Self. Right? Yes. So, four part BBC documentary, and it delves into a lot of this stuff, and it keeps going even further beyond that. But one of the things that's featured in this documentary is news real footage of Joseph Gerbils, the Nazi propaganda minister. Nazi reference three. Three of three. Is this it? Yes. You get no more Nazi reference. Sorry. This is the end of the road with the Nazis. So Gerbils is talking on film about how much he admires Edward Bernays and his writings and ideas and how it's directly influenced the Nazi propaganda machine. Again. Yes. I like those gasps. Do the thing. Yeah, there we go. He was the first person to use polling, like, to pull the public and tell the public what everyone should think about products. He was the first to use expert opinions. Like, nine out of ten dentists a blank. He was the first person to do that. He was the first person to use product placement in movies and TV and films. And he had a really great knack for getting lots of different people to write him big checks for the same work. Smart guy. Yeah. He's very wealthy too, by the way, because of this. So, for instance, he had at one point, William Randolph Hearst, the great publisher newspaper magazine publisher came to Bernade and he said to Mr. Bernays Fuel that we're selling a lot of magazines to men. That's a great verse, by the way. But I think women would like to read magazines as well. So how can I sell magazines to women? To clues? He just went weirdly British all of a sudden. So bad. My impressions. It's a great host. I appreciate that. So he went to Bernade and Berna said, you know what? Here's what we'll do. Let's start putting ads in magazines that cater to women. Like diamonds. Women love diamonds, right? So let's put diamond ads in your magazines. The diamond people were his clients. So he was like, I got two checks now, but why stop there? Yeah, why stop there? Let's put, like, a famous actress in there, in these ads. No one has ever done that before. And let's get like Clara Bow and let's put her in these diamonds in the magazine. Clara Bow was also a client. So he's getting three checks for the same stupid diamond ad to sell the same stupid women's magazine. And then women's magazines were a thing. Not saying that's bad. They're great, right? Yeah. This is not about women's magazines. That would be weird. But before all of this, before he gained his massive amount of wealth and influence he was just a little bitty regular baby because babies aren't evil. I think he might have been an evil baby. Now that you mention it, all babies are good. I don't know about this one, at least for a few weeks. It was this little baby born in Vienna, Austria in 1891 one of five children of Eli Bernays and Anna Freud. Bernays and this part always melts my brain how it works out with the relationship with Sigma I'm sorry, slomo. Slomo. So I need you to explain because I can never get it right. Okay, so Bernaise's mother was Freud's sister and burned. His father was Freud's wife's brother. So it sounds gross, but they're my really no idea what that means. There's just some sibling swapping going on which is legal in all countries. It seems like incest, but it's really not. It's fine. They're just tightening family. That's right. So by 1912, he made contact with Uncle Slomo. Through the years he visited Vienna. He eventually moved to New York and then visited his uncle in the summers. But eventually in 1912, he graduated from Cornell University and he had his first gig to sort of influence what his career would be when this producer of play came to him and he said, you know, I've got this play, and you're a young, upstart person that thinks you know what you're doing, and I'm not selling any tickets, and I could use your help. It's about this couple with Syphilis. It's called Damaged Goods. Seriously. And no one's coming, and I can't for life if you figure out why people aren't lined up around the block at the Amphitheame Theater. Chuck is totally serious about this, too. It might have played here. This place has been around for, like, since the early 1904 years. No reaction whatsoever. No respect for anything. Like you said, 105 maybe, right? So he goes to Berna's and he said, I need some help selling tickets. And Bernard said, you know what we'll do? I have a little plan. Let's make this not a dirty thing. Let's get out in front of this, because you know what? We should be talking about syphilis, because it's a problem. Everyone's got it. Everybody had Syphilis at the time, and you're brave enough to do a play about it, so get out in front of it, and let's make this part of the national conversation. And he engineered it wasn't a huge play, let's get real. But he engineered a little campaign, and all of a sudden it started selling tickets. So he had his first little feather in his cap and all that. Sounds fine. Sounds great. Like he was the first person to use let's get out in front of it, says a phrase, or he started a national dialogue or whatever about Syphilis, which is a good thing. And this is very Bernasian, right? So you think you're distracted over here by the good that it did, but really, if you look at it, he just did the whole thing totally cynically to sell tickets called Damaged Goods. Yeah. And that was very Bername. So he wrote a book. His first book in 10 00 19 23 was called Crystallizing Public Opinion. And he was really excited to send it to Uncle Slomo because he had used his work to influence him, and he sent it to him, and he didn't get, like, the most well, he got a very slow, mole response. So you guys know Slomo heat in America. We should change that. No more Freudian. You have to add an extra lumolian. Yes. Trying to say it without the extra L, it's impossible. I'm not even going to do it right. So Slowmo writes him back and says he says, I have received your book Ellipse. It's not good in a letter. As a truly American production, it interested me greatly. And everyone knows Freud was psychic, so he did that when he wrote the letter. And then while Bernard was reading it, he did it again because he knew he was reading it right then, and it would really drive the point home. He was not satisfied with just an Ellipse. No, he was not. But that takes a lot of effort to actually write the Ellipse. Yeah. With a feather and all. Oh, no, wait. I guess he had pens at that point. So Freud was a little cool. No, no, they have pens. Okay. Oh, no, on the joke. I thought it was a great joke. Great. I didn't realize it was a joke. Say yes to everything. Okay, good. So Uncle Shlomo wasn't super impressed, which it bothered young Edward a little bit. Young Eddie. But it came back to roost a little bit when slowmo came upon hard times, because apparently he did make a windfall of cash. No, he did. The Austrian economy fell apart and inflation went through the roof, and his bank accounts just went and he found himself broke. Right. So we needed some dough, and little Eddie helped him out. And he said, you know what? Let me help you get your work published in America. Which, again, sounds nice. But Bernadette retained the publishing rights in America. That's right. And didn't he actually tried to get him to write articles for one of the new women's magazines, Cosmopolitan. Can you believe that Freud came that close to writing a column in Cosmo? Seriously, how to satisfy your man in five easy steps. Number one, stroke his beard. Yeah. Smoke a cigar. Cigar is not always a cigar. No, especially not in Cosmo. Well and actually, didn't someone give someone a box of cigars in this transaction? So when Freud, a box of cigars, sent Bernays a book of his General Introductory Lectures, which is what inspired all this Bernays, he actually sent him a box for ours. Not ironically. Can you just see Freud hypnotizing himself, like, shaking this box of cigars, just trying to convince himself that cigars just a cigar? He was a sicko yet I can't put it in my mouth for some reason. Wow. All right. 1928, he writes a second book, and at this point, he's not even trying anymore. He calls it Propaganda. That was the name of his second book, which was the original name for PR, literally. And he was like, you know what? Maybe we should change that. So he invented the term Propaganda. Sorry, PR. Because Propaganda, he thought, kind of had a bad rap. And it had a bad rap because number four, the Nazis. I knew we could do it. So he said he was interviewed when he was 100, and he said Propaganda had a bad name. So I made up a new one. Called it public relations. His word. So you actually read Propaganda, right. Or a lot of it. I read a lot of it. It's not a long read, but if I wrote a blurb for it, I would call it a brilliant despicable read, because the title gives it all away. It's basically a handbook on how to manipulate people on a massive scale. And I think he used the words like dope and stupid, because one of the things we're putting Renee down. He hated you guys. He hated us. He hated all of us. He thought people were generally sheep, unreflective. He used the word stupid and dope a lot. And for example, in the book Propaganda, he mocks the spread of literacy and says that it just makes it easier for the average person to read an ad. Right? That's a jerk. Do it again. I've never had this much control over you. I know. I feel like a marionette. My fingernails hurt so fast. You're soaking too long. It's not the soaking part, it's the filing gouging. Did they ever say, like, sir, it looks like you're not allowed to talk? Okay. So Bernays had this thing where basically he saw society as a very he was kind of right this hierarchical view of society where he thought, there's a bunch of dummies out there and they need the select few to guide them in the right direction and to narrow the choices down because we're all just big dummies. We can't decide if we have too many choices. That's no good. Yes. More than two political parties. What shall I do? Pretty much. And so he said, you know what? I'm going to use my uncle's stuff. I'm going to influence these people. I'm going to narrow the choices down because we're all big dummies. And if you have a limited number of options, then you're more likely to choose one. Who was writing me a check? Right? He actually used the phrase the hallucination of democracy, which he would describe what we're living in right now, this idea that all of us have some sort of say in this participatory government. But really there's an elite group that's actually running the show, basically. And I'm one of them, right? Well, we both are. Oh, no, not me. Bernace. Oh, yeah. So anyway, there's this idea that any crackpot theory you've ever heard where there's people running the show, where there's an elite, shadowy group this guy is writing the book on this, and he's saying, like, not only is this real, here's how it's done. Here's how to do it more effectively. And the idea was that there were people who are working behind the scenes because one of the really important things that Bernade figured out was that no matter whether we're all stupid sheep who have follow a herd mentality and don't think for ourselves and are driven by violent, selfish, sexual repressed desires that we're not even aware of, we don't like to be pushed around. No. So we don't like to get the idea that somebody is telling us what to do or that we're being manipulated. So all of this working behind the scenes has to happen behind the scenes. We can't know what's going on. So all of this stuff has to be happening at what you would call basically a very high level where even, like, say, the media is manipulated, they're not even on board at this point. And again, I know we sound crazy. Just hear us out. He was not very well liked, even within his own profession. He was well liked socially because he lived in New York, and he was super rich because he got all these people writing big, fat checks, and he threw these big, lavish parties and was sort of a socialite because he loved making these contacts, because then he could then manipulate them and use them later to his own end to get big, fat checks written for him. That's networking. Okay, but you're not into he even admits that. So he threw these big parties, but even in his own like, he created a profession, and the people that benefited from having those jobs didn't even like him because he was such a blowhard. He was his own biggest PR guy. And here's a quote, though, from one of his clients that I think this is foreshadowing, too, as a United Fruit executive said that everybody in the company hated him. We didn't trust him. We didn't like his politics. We didn't like his fees. But the sense was that we were definitely getting our money's worth. That's how he existed for so long. Yeah, absolutely. He was a master of what he did. Yeah. And that's the thing. It sounds so insulting that he was right, which really just drives us crazy while we're researching them. We wanted him to fail at every effort, but all he did was succeed, and it was so maddening. So he was extremely good. He was the guy who created, basically exploiting what he called special pleaders people that the rest of us trust, their opinions, that kind of thing. He would go up and be like, how much will it cost for me to buy your opinion? And he would come up with things like you said, nine out of ten dentists agree. Sure. Or something called the calculated simulation of enthusiasm, what you might call like a flash mob today, or grassroots kind of stuff. It's actually astroturfing, that kind of stuff. And he was just a master at this kind of thing. And the best way we figured out to get Bernaise across is to kind of go through what we like to call eddie Brunette's greatest hit colon prongs to Success. Because what we learned in researching this was he would not attack something with one idea. He wouldn't say, Maybe we should do this. He'd say, let's do these five things or these two or three things, and come at it from all these different angles behind the scenes. No one will ever know. Right. He was really good at his job. As evil as he was, he was a hard worker. So cut number one on Eddie Bernays. All my best prongs to success is Vanita hair nets. Everyone here supports Vanita hair nets, right? Right. I thought I saw a few hair nets in the audience. No hair nets. World. War, I hearnets, were a big thing for a little while. And after World War One, women started cutting their hair in a bob, and they didn't need the hair net anymore. And it was a big problem if you make hair nets, especially if you were a company called Venita because they were the industry leader of hair nets, right? And so they hire Eddie Bernaise, and they're like, do something. You have to do something. We're losing so much money. And Bernard is like, Calm down, calm down. I got this. And he went to work. What did you do? I'm a set. I went like this. Okay, so Bernaise, he applies his typical Bernaisean stuff and he looks around. He says, who do people who wear hair nets listen to this one's. Kind of a stretch. But he identified artists as the special pleaders in this case, right? So we went to some leading artists and said, hey, don't you think hair nets make women look beautiful? And they're like, oh, God, no. Have you seen a woman in a hairnet? Are you out of your mind? That is patented make it rain thing. So he just went like this with a bunch of cash. And an artist top artist an artist said, yes, as a matter of fact, they're awesome. It's probably Clara Borabo, her artist friend. So that's prong number one. So, yes, they get fashionable, and these artists are saying now everywhere they go that hair nets give women a Greek coffee look, whatever that is. Stupid words, I'm sure. Brene's like, I can't believe that's what they said. There are artists saying this, and all of a sudden, the media who pay attention to the art beat are starting to hear all these artists talk about hair nets. And it's all because one or two top artists said it. And now all these other ones following the herd mentality are parroting the same thing. Then the media picks it up. That's prong one. Well, he's also got the media in his hip pocket, and he's calling people saying, have you noticed everyone wearing these air nets? Yeah, you might want to write a little story on it. And Cosmopolitan. It's all I'm saying. So that's prong number one. Prong number two is he went to manufacturers in factories and said, it seems really dangerous to me that these women are working in your factories because they could be pulled into that lathe and that's have you ever seen an have you ever seen one of those pictures? Very dangerous. And a head pulled into a wood lathe is no good. So if you wear a hair net, it solves all the problems. And so they got manufacturers and factories say, you know what? Everyone needs to have a hair net. All these women and I guess men with long hair, which they were probably like three guys, maybe three post World War II, right? I'm sorry. World War I even had long hair and all of a sudden, he's got two prongs look good, be safe, the need of hair nets. Sold a lot of hair nets. Wrote a big giant check, right? Because women all of a sudden were picking up the paper in the morning, reading about how all these artists were talking about how great women look in hair nets. And then after work, they were going to, like, the union meeting and hearing about how safe hair nets were, and they were thinking, maybe I should grow this bob out. And all of a sudden, Vanilla Herinets are back, baby. All because of Edward Bernays. It was a big success. It wasn't his first, but it was a big one. Yeah. Cut number two. Edward Bernays. All my best. Let's get in the way back machine. Oh, yeah. All of us, we're in the wayback machine. So the way back machine is imagining yeah, I'm sorry, you guys. I know. Surely you knew that, right? We actually have room to bring out a DeLorean behind us. We have the room, not the money. So we're on the way back machine. We're traveling back to 1929, when it was a taboo for women to smoke in public. Women would, like, kind of have to hide their cigarette smoking at the time. It meant like, if she spoke, she poked. You know what I mean? That's not me saying it like, this is the social taboo. I'm just putting it why are you saying it? I'm not saying that you just said it, but he's quoting. But not quoting. I'm just trying to put it in easily approachable terms. But he's right. A kid that was literally like if you smoked and you were a woman out in public, you were sort of promiscuous. Maybe it's a much better way to put it. So he was hired by the American Tobacco Company by a man named George Washington Hill of American Tobacco, aka foghorn Lake. Apparently that was no hurst. And he said, I say, Mrs. Bernaise, we're selling an awful lot of cigarettes to men, but I think we can kill roughly twice as many people if we sell them to women. I got these Lucky Strikes and they're not flying off the shelf. So what can you do, sir? I got a check. Renee goes. He's so young. It's funny because every time I go like this, I actually, in reality, have to go like that, so I feel like a jackass. No, Bernaise got on it, right. He was like, yes, this is BS that women can't smoke because of the social taboo and that you can't sell twice as many cigarettes because of this stupid social taboo. So I'm going to go break the social taboo. So Bernade's, working behind the scenes, contacted a friend who is an editor at Vogue and said, Give me a list of debutants. And they should be good looking, but not modely looking, because I want what I'm about to hatch to seem very grassroots, right? So he got his hands on this list, got these women together, and said, hey, how would you like to single handedly advance women's rights? And these guys are like, let's do it. Yes, I'm ready. I've burned my Venita hair net and I'm ready to go. So he said, this is what we're going to do in New York. They have an Easter Parade every year. Still do. And this year, on April 1, 1929, all you gals are going to be out there on Fifth Avenue and right in the middle of Easter Parade, you're all going to light up at once. And it'll be called we'll call it, I don't know, just thinking off the top of my head, the Torches of Freedom Campaign. And you will put women on the map. And the women said, let's do this. Yeah, he did. He literally cast them from an agency. And I think he said he wanted not too good looking because we don't want to give ourselves away. Yeah, but I still want some good looking broads, right? They can't be dogs or anything. You know what I mean? That was brunette saying that. That was Edward G. Robinson. See? Yeah. No dogs. Don't even think about it. Too pretty. Not pretty enough. Just right. Stop wasting my time. That was a lot of ever. G Robinson. So he concocted his Torches of Freedom braid. He, of course, like, he always had the media in his hip pocket. He leaked and said, you know what I heard? I heard there are some women that are going to smoke in public. And you know what that means, right? You are so lucky. This is an audio podcast. I learned that when I was, like, nine. That's literally the safest way to portray I don't know if that's necessarily true. You just took all the heat off of me. Better than saying poke. You guys are going to leave tonight and be like, Josh is great for that shot. Yeah, he's edgy. I didn't think he was that dirty. His beard makes him seem so comfortable. All right, so that was Prong One, and it was a huge hit. Yeah. The international press, they were like papers in Paris, France, writing about these women. Well, in France, they all smoked all the time. They're probably not embarrassed. But international press picked this up, and it was a big thing all over the world. Yeah. These women are smoking. And now in the press, it's equated with women's rights. They come a long way, baby. Yes. That came later, but yes, basically the same sentiment. Right? So this idea was, now, if you oppose women's smoking, you overtly opposed women's rights. The gauntlet had been laid down in secret by Edward Bernays. Right. So, like Chuck said, that was just prong one. Prong Two was he was a research animal. He made us look like human garbage as far as research goes. Right. This guy put everything he had into research, and he figured out that there were a lot of problems men had with women smoking. And so we hired a nurse to go around the country to teach women to smoke better. Who else would you hire but a nurse? Yeah, well, that's who people trust, right? I mean, if you're going to learn about smoking, you learn it from a nurse, right? That's where everybody here learned to smoke. So her name was Florence Linden. She was a former actress and nurse, and so she went around to, like, the society of New York state women and garden clubs and all these things to teach etiquette smoking, to not annoy your husband. And he actually did research and some polling to find out what really annoys you about when your wife or girlfriend smokes. And there are some real answers. This is not made up pet peeves. Number one is the messy way they opened the packages, which apparently was, like, with their teeth or something. Really bugs me. Number two was the affected mannerisms, how you smoke. It's all, like, showy and stuff like that. Andrew dice. Clay Fernays invented that. He made Andrew Dice career. Number three puffing like a steam engine. There's too much smoke when you're smoking. Like hot boxing, basically, hot boxing is different. I went to college. Number four was lipstick smears. You smoke and you get like that lipstick I make you wear gets all over that cigarette filter. It's really annoying. I don't want to see it in the ashtray. I know it's not funny. So those were literally the feedback. They also actually because I figured they had to make it equal. So they had said, what annoys you women when your men smoke? Right. And at the end of the day, it'd be like, oh, yeah, hold on. Sure. You got to ask. You, too. And they would find out. Yeah. And that was when you put your men put their cigarettes out on their dinner plate, was number one. And number two was when they were just smoking, and they just run it under the faucet and just drop it in the sink and leave. But Ms. Linden, equal opportunity sexist, she taught everyone that if you are smoking in bed, you should use a closed ashtray. Right? All of us, it's just smart. That's prong number two. Prong number three was he did research again and found out and did some surveys that women didn't like lucky Strike green, the color of the package. It wasn't the color of the day. It didn't match anything they wore, so they didn't want to carry around the cigarettes. So what did he do? He made green fashionable, like, basically single handedly. He threw green balls. He made sure that all the department stores had, like, green gowns in their windows. And now, all of a sudden, lucky Strike green was the color of the season, thanks to Edward Bernays. And it's very prong to sell cigarettes, and it was totally and completely successful. Foghorn Litecorn went to sleep every night on a bed of money and everbrenaise hump grew three times. All right, I'm sorry. Not a prong. Another cut from the album Bacon for Breakfast. Anyone here eat bacon this morning? You want to know something? Bacon was not a breakfast food until Edward Bernaise came along. Serious? I know, right? Poor bacon. I feel so bad for that part of the pig. We just ate it at lunch and dinner. Bernaise came along because he was hired by the Beach Nut Packing Company, who made bacon, and they said, we're selling a lot of bacon for lunch and dinner, but not enough. Yeah, sure, it would be nice to sell it for breakfast. What can you do for me? I have a big giant check and a bin. And he said, let's see, who do people listen to when they're thinking about their diet? Doctors. Sure. If I write a big enough check, I could coopt the doctor. And he did. He found a doctor who wrote a study saying we should all start eating hardy breakfast featuring bacon. And Bernade took the study and forwarded it to other doctors who are like, yeah, we subscribe to her mentality. Let's follow this guy's advice. They started, but he included a sample of bacon to sweeten the beech nut bacon. Right. And all of a sudden, doctors are like, by the way, you should be eating more bacon for breakfast. Because breakfast, at the time, like, everyone seemed mad men. It was like a piece of dry toast, coffee and a cigarette. That was breakfast. The big hearty breakfast didn't come along until Edward Bernace made it. So and supposedly he invented the expression a meal that sticks to your ribs. Evil genius. Evil genius. So, bacon, do you clap for it? You're about to feel bad for clapping for Edward Bernaise, because this is about where Bernays's career takes a really dark turn. A dark and successful turn. So should we go on the way back machine again? Yeah. This time, everybody, we're going to Jamaica. Yes. We're going way back. Yes. There's a dude named Lorenzo Dow Baker, and he was the skipper of a ship called the Telegraph, and he showed up in Jamaica one day because he wanted some rum, which is pretty smart to do when you're in Jamaica in 1870. What else is there to do? And while he's sitting there at the bar drinking, some guy comes up and says, you want some bananas? I've got a bunch for twenty five cents a bunch, right. Yeah. 160, I think, is what he bought. Yeah. He said, that's a heck of a price for bananas. I'm pretty drunk. Take a bunch of bananas. We don't have like he was from Boston. He's like, we don't have a lot of bananas in Boston. I don't know if you know that. I bet I could sell these for a lot of dough. And he did. In 1870, he was reselling these bananas for up to bunch. Yeah, it's a lot of money back then. There's a lot. He bought like half of the US. Probably with his proceeds. We failed to go figure out how much that is in today dollars. But it was a lot. Believe us, someone out there is checking there on that website. It's that guy. So it worked out really well for Lorenzo del Baker. And by 1885, he had eleven chips flying under the banner of the Boston Fruit Company. They were bringing in 10 million bunches of bananas a year at this point. They became United Fruit and eventually became Chiquita Banana, which we all enjoy today, right? Still today, don't you? There are a couple of ooze. Oh my God, Tequita. That's my favorite banana. I can't eat any of that other crap. It's got to be Tequita. It's the only banana. So everything is going very well for United Fruit, and by 1040, they basically owned a number of countries. In fact, the term Banana Republic came from this idea that United Fruit ran the economy and essentially the government of countries in Latin America, including Guatemala. And by 1940, a guy named Sam Zamuri, who was known as Sam the Banana Man, was running United Fruit. The best we can figure is that he had to have gotten that name after he worked there. I don't know necessarily true. He literally could have been born to become the head of United Fruit. Think about it. If you were interviewing people, wouldn't you, like, give a second look to the guy named Sam the Banana Man? Come on, fruit Company. Sam the Banana Man. Oh, I like the I got to say, sir, you've got a leg up. So Sanders and Murray became the head of United Fruit, and they were selling tons of bananas at this point, but it wasn't enough. It's never enough. And so they controlled, like Josh said in much of Central America, owned all their bananas and they weren't getting a lot in return. Let's be honest. You know how it works. And he said, Mr. Bernaise, I'd like to sell more bananas. I'm saying the banana man. After all, I can't lose that name. That would be embarrassing. So how can you help us, Brenece? He said, okay, I got it. Hold on. I'm still thinking. When you see my prongs program. Yeah, have you heard about my prongs? So Bernade says, I think we should try to make bananas appear healthy. Maybe we'll sell them as like kind of a health food, which they're not at all. Actually. That's not true. Bananas are completely healthy. No, that's not true. That's actually grenades at work right before your very eyes. No, bananas are healthy. You're being coy, Bernays. That was like the one honest thing he did, actually. So Bernanz aren't healthy. Look it up. That was Prong one. I don't know if I'm going to count that as a prong, that's a prong, okay? Taking something that's patently unhealthy and saying it's healthy, that's a prong. Prong number two. He said, you know what we need to do? I'm going to go on a banana assault in this country. Full frontal banana assault. I saw that movie and the sequel. It's very dirty. He said, let's get bananas. I want them in hotels. I want them in hotel lobbies. I want them in YMCA. I want them on trains. I want them in airports. I want them in Boy Scout rooms all across the country. I want them in what room? In a Boy Scout room. You wrote this, and it says Boy Scout, and it doesn't say Boy Scout room anywhere. I think you're having a seizure or something. I want them in movie studios. I want them at Palm Beach. I want them at resorts. Bananas are everywhere. And people are like, have you noticed there's bananas, like, all over the place? Yeah, like movie studios. I should be eating these, right? A little bit. Well, I hear they're very healthy, so maybe you should eat a bunch of bananas right now. I'll watch. Man, I love Chicago. Yeah, for real. Detroit was just like, I don't get it. Well, now we can't release this show. We can edit that part out. All right, guys, we'll lose all 400 of our Detroit fans. Two prong, two prong. Three is he said, I think what we can do to sell more bananas. I think if people had a connection to where bananas came from, they would be psyched about it. Kind of like later with the chiquita banana lady. It's like, hey, that's kind of cool. Look at her. She's wearing bananas on her head. Right. She's a weirdo. So he set up one of his fronts, which he often did. Yeah. He would pay professionals to put out an opinion that was prescribed by him that jibed with what he wanted him to say. And in this case, it was called the Middle America Information Bureau. It had nothing to do with the Midwest. Sorry. He was talking about Latin America. Don't know why he called it that, but he did. So the Middle America Information Bureau was Akita United Fruit backed think tank. And the whole thing that they did was put out press releases about how awesome Latin America was, and how when you ate a banana on your lunch break, you could basically, now that you know about Latin America, take a little mini vacation to the tropics. Because you know about Latin America. Because the Middle America Information Bureau has been putting out press releases to the newspapers, which are now printing them, because newspapers could not have cared less, apparently, at the time. So they would print banana related stuff. So this is great. This is working really well. The banana assault, full frontal banana salt was working great. People are eating bananas. We're supporting this economy down there. We're like feeding families by eating their bananas. Not true. Have you seen the lady who wears all the fruit? I love that lady. What was going on was there was a dictator in Guatemala, which is where they were getting a lot of bananas at the time, and a United Fruit ally named Jorge Obiko. And he was I feel like you should say that in your Italian accent. For some reason, it doesn't make sense, but it doesn't work. Sorry, everybody. Well, that was Latin flavored at least, right? Oh, yeah. No, that was good, but the Italian, it wouldn't fit, man. I'm like a yoyo with you. So Jorge Ubiko was clearly in the pocket of United Fruit because he was getting kickbacks. And he was like, yeah, man, come to my country. Give me some dough. Who cares about all the people? They're just beyond own all our land and just give me some dough. And he was basically, well, not overthrown. He was taken out by popular boat. I think he was actually overthrown. And then they held a popular vote. Yes. So he was like, you're out of here, pal. At gunpoint, basically. Okay. But the guy who came in after him was elected Democratically and won 85% of the popular vote, which is I don't think this probably ever happened legitimately in any kind of democratic election. He's a very beloved man named Juan Jose Aravallo. Right. And he was a leftist. He definitely thought that one of his principal ideas was that he wanted to be able to create internal competition to United Fruit among Guatemalan farmers. His idea was, this is our land, these are our bananas. This is our population. We should be able to make money off of these bananas like United Fruit is. So, United Fruit, you can stay, but we're going to treat our people better from now on, and we're going to actually subtract some of your wealth by doing that. United Fruit didn't like that at all. No, they didn't. One of the first things he did was United Fruit owned all this land. This fallow land, it wasn't even being used. And he said, you know what? You bought this land from us for $3 an acre. I'd like to buy it back for the $3 an acre. I see your tax return says $3 an acre, so let's just do that. And United Fruit said, well, actually, it's more like $75 an acre now. Just out of the blue. Yeah. So let's just up the price on you. But he was able to get a lot of the land back. He was able to build some roads through the country and actually provide competition to the United Fruit, which would become chiquita, which was not a good thing. No. United Fruit was like, this is a really big deal. We've had total control over this country for half a century at least. And this guy comes along and now he's stealing our land that we stole. No, that's not all right. So they went to their friends at the CIA and Edward Bernays and said, guys, what can you do? And they talked to the right guy because Edward Bernays said, let's just overthrow the government. And they did. Yeah, they literally overthrow the government. And he thought, the first thing we have to do is we have to get the American people behind this because you just can't overthrow a government without the people being behind it. So let me think about this. Aren't there a lot of Communists in Guatemala? Oh, yeah. And wait. Isn't the Soviet Union communist? We hate those guys. Yeah, the Red Scare. And everyone's like, well, there really are no Communists in Guatemala, actually. He said, well, nobody knows that. So let's get all my friends in the magazine and put in the newspaper business to write a story about the brewing crisis in Guatemala. Right. They're right at our door. They're just below Mexico. Below Texas, right? Yeah, in Texas, everybody. Texas. So this Middle America Information Bureau goes from putting up press releases about how wonderful bananas are to the brewing Soviet crisis in Guatemala. And the newspapers listened, they started reporting on this and it became a really big deal that there was a Soviet threat in our backyard just below Texas again. And the American public got on board, basically. Yeah. So once he had the American public support, he got in touch with a former lieutenant colonel from the US army living in exile and said, why don't you get some CIA buddies together and let's cross the border from Honduras with a couple of hundred men that are well trained and let's call it the army of Liberation and let's overthrow the government. And that's what he did. Plunging Guatemala into a decades long civil war, including genocide, all to sell bananas. Bananas. Yeah, that's the appropriate response for that. So we said all this and we said that we're still living right smack dab in the middle. Hopefully all this seemed vaguely familiar to you. And recently, I think in 2008, all of this idea took on a new name and new momentum. Have you guys ever heard of nudge? Politics, anyone? No? So basically nudge is this new thing. It's the new name for all of this. And it's the idea that people are stupid and that you have to have elite people figuring out what the best outcome is and then nudge people toward that outcome without people understanding that they're being nudged. Sounds familiar. Yes, it does. And as a matter of fact, this has recently, under a presidential executive order, become policy in the American government. It seems kind of benign. A lot of it. Right. Like, I think the USDA is using nudge. You'll get a prompt sometimes if you're printing and you're working at the USDA and they'll say, don't forget to change your printer preferences to double sided, which everybody loves. Double sided printing. What's wrong with that? Nothing. But beyond this kind of benign idea, that nudge or that PR, the idea of this hallucination of democracy is harmless, or we can be nudged in the right direction, are two really important points. And one is that the people in charge know what the best outcome is, and the best outcome is often subjective. Sure. Like, we might not think that the best outcome is the same as the people who are deciding what the best outcome is. The second one is that the people who get to decide what the best outcome is has all of our best interests in heart. That's not necessarily true either. So you can easily go from two sided printing to no, you need to decide that the death penalty will never, ever go away, no matter what you think. Right. Or let's just make the easiest thing, like you have to opt out of organ donation. We're not saying organ donation is bad, mind you. Yeah, we're not equating organ donation with death penalty right now, but things like opt out clauses, it's just included because, for the benefit of everybody, it can get a little slippery and a nudge becomes a little more like a shove when it's in the hands of the wrong person, you have to really be careful about yeah, well, here we go. Let's finish up with this. Or not finish up here's more. You would think after all of this. Are you guys confused? After Edward Vernay's sold us, bacon is the healthy thing to eat for breakfast, and bananas is a healthy thing to eat all day long, and women should smoke cigarettes and let's overthrow Guatemala to sell a fruit. He would have been in his hundreds on his deathbed and thought, you know what? I kind of regret some of the things I did in my career. Not true. No, he couldn't even look up. He was interviewed by a guy from the New York Times when he was 100 years old and he basically said, yeah, people are stupid, Dopes, and I stand by everything I did and I had a pretty great career. Yes. As a matter of fact, his last words were, tell him I said they were stupid. So that's Edward Bernays. That's his career. And we're going to finish out with a bit of a list that we like to do. Top ten list. That is always only five or six because it's us some of the worst PR disasters in history, and we're going to open up with one. US Airways, not Delta. A few years ago, a young woman complained to US Airways that her spring break was ruined. But, man, if you're in college, that's a big deal. You only have one spring break a year. Yeah, that's true. And they said, we don't like to hear this, Alex. Please provide feedback to our customer relations team right here. And they left. A link for all the world to click on. And that link went to a pornographic image of a woman with a model Boeing 747, and she was doing things with it. That's a big point. Someone probably lost their job over that one. You got Philip Morris. So we love picking on smoking because it's so easy that you guys are familiar with Philip Morris, the big smoking tobacco giant. Apparently, in 2001, the Czech government came up with a study that found, surprisingly, that smoking actually cost their economy money. And Philip Morris said, no, let us commission our own study and find out what the real deal is. And they found and announced publicly, check government, you're wrong. We found that smoking actually saves your economy up to $30 million a year. And do you want to know how? By early smoking deaths, all that money you guys would have spent on health care, pensions, housing. You didn't have to, because those smokers died early. And they're like, this is a good study. Look at this, right? And Philip Morris was surprised by the blowback. They actually were like, we have other studies that we should probably cancel lined up in other countries, because we thought this was going to be the thing that really drove home to everybody how great smoking is. I love that one. All right. In 2002, Abercrombie and Fitch that's all you have to say? Shirtless, dudes. That's all I think about. And ironically, this is about T shirts. They had a line of T shirts that were racist in 2002 depicting Asian stereotypes. Well, what was one of the shirts? I'm sorry, everybody, I'm sorry. Wong Brothers Laundry Service. Two Wongs can make it white. And they stood behind it. Their quote for this campaign was, we personally thought Asians would love this T shirt. That was their corporate communications people that came up with that. That was the company's response to the blowback. And not to be outdone one month later, 30 days later, they released their line of thongs for ten to twelve year old girls. And their corporate communications response to that was the underwear for young girls. The intent was to be light hearted and cute. Yeah. Right? Everybody. Have you guys heard Coca Cola? You guys have Pepsi up here, right? Well, we have Coke down south, and Coke is huge, right? And Coke back. And I think, like the early 90s, Coke had this thing called the Magic Can Campaign. Does anyone remember that? You, sir, can go to sleep for the next two minutes. So the Magic Can campaign was basically you'd pick up a Coke and you'd open it and a prize would shoot out towards your face. Yeah, that's not even the bad part. It literally had a spring loaded mechanism that would shoot out. Like, sometimes the prize was, like, $100, which is awesome, great. Sometimes it was one dollars. So you would buy the Coke you wanted and open it to get one dollars and then buy the Coke you wanted. I have, like, $0.30 leftover. Yes. It's a net zero, I think, at that point. It's close. So Coke had this thing going. They were very excited. Everything was going great. But the problem was that people were opening these magic cans and being like, oh, a dollar. Great. Thanks, Cope. And then taking a sip and going, right, because the stuff inside tastes like poison. What is this? Tasted like chlorinated water. I better call my local poison tip line. And people did, and poison lines across the country started getting hot, like tips that you should not drink these magic can Cokes. And it became enough of a deal that Coke had to take out ads saying, like, don't drink the stuff in the magic can, which is not what you want to do if you're a beverage company, right? You can go home on YouTube and look up Coke Magic can. And there are commercials that say the Coke Magic Can. That guy if you open the Coke and something pops out, don't drink it because you won. But seriously, don't drink it. Did I mention not to drink it? Right? So they genuinely had to take out ads saying this. That was bad enough, right? But then some people in the media started to think and went, Coke. Why didn't you just put Coke in the magic hands? You got a lot of Coke. You're set up for Coke and put Coke in it. Yeah, coke. Why? Chlorinated water? Coke released a response, and they said, we didn't put Coke in the magic cans because it would dissolve the prize mechanism. $100 million. Campaign done. $100 million. I love that one, too. That is a good one. Heineken? So you guys are familiar with Heineken? Did you know they own Strongbow Cider? Did you guys know that? Well, Strongbow had a campaign where they wanted to honor the guy who founded the company, and apparently he found it in, like, the 19th century. He's a Victorian dude. They could not find a picture of this man to save their lives. And you can't have a print ad campaign if you don't have a photo, what the heck are you going to do? So they turned to a photo service like Getty Images or something like that, and they just randomly picked a great Victorian looking dude. Most likely had the mustache, monocle top hat, probably that kind of thing. And it would have worked in just about any other situation. But they happened to pick the picture of a guy named Hugh Price Hughes. Yeah, he was a very famous Methodist minister, and he was actually famous for his work with recovering alcoholics. Out of all the people in the world, they picked an anti alcoholic campaigner for the face of Strongboats, such as they stand in for their founder. All right. And finally, before our Q and A, we're going to finish with this because we like to depress everybody at the end. Yeah, my friend John Hodgman said, you know how to really go out with a bang? Lift them up, drop them down at the end. So does anyone here remember I spoke of Domino's Pizza earlier? You remember the avoid the noid. Yeah. You remember? Because it was successful for a while. The creepy bunny eared buck teeth thing in a onesie that represented annoyed. That's what it came from, that your pizza wasn't there. They created this fun character, all right? It was neat, and, I mean, clearly it was a huge hit because you guys still remember this. We remember the noise, and everything was going really great for the noise. And Dominoes in general. Everybody just talked about the Noid around the water cooler, like husbands and wives, like a pillow talk about the noise. Did you get that pizza really quick last night? It was great, man. I love the noise. 25 minutes. So everything is going very well. And then in our own Atlanta, Georgia, in January 1989, a Domino's Pizza was stormed by a man wielding a. 357 Magnum. And he took the two employees working their hostage, and he engaged in a five hour standoff with police. And he very wisely ordered the two employees to make him pizzas the whole time. Seriously? And he had a few other demands. He wanted $100,000. Sensible. He wanted to get away a car with a full tank of fuel. Sensible. Very sensible. He wanted a copy of The Widow's Son. Yeah, it was a novel about Freemasons. That was his Catcher in the Rye. Right. And it's kind of a big giveaway, right? Yeah. He must have left his at home. Right? I don't really need this. So he apparently wasn't paying attention, because at one point, the two employees were like, I think we can sneak out of the back. And they did. They left and right when they did, he was reading The Widow. I think he was. He's like, God, this book is so good. And then the police were like, Swarm, swarm, swarm. I don't think they say that. No, but they did swarm, swarm. And it's a pretty good seinfeld reference. And this guy was taken peacefully. I think he fired a round off or whatever, but he was taken, and he was taken before the court, and he was sentenced to a term in a psychiatric facility. Why? Why? Because his name was Kenneth Lamar nod. Yes, Chuck, I know. And he thought Domino's Pizza was specifically tormenting him. Why? Ad campaign. Because he was a paranoid schizophrenic. It does get worse. It gets so much worse. So Dominoes is facing a PR disaster. There was one headline the next day, domino's hostages couldn't avoid the Noid this time. I know. Those cheeky newspaper writers. They thought they were so clever, so poor Mr. Noyd is like suffering in a mental facility in Georgia. And finally, years later, he's released I think he moved to, like, Miami, and in 1995, he couldn't shake this idea that Domino's had specifically targeted him with their Avoid the Noid campaign, and he committed suicide, which is pretty perfect reaction. Pretty awful. In Detroit, they were like, yeah, they were like, I guess you shouldn't have been born, Lloyd. It's his fault. So it gets even worse, actually. Yeah, it gets worse than that. That's right. In 2011, just four short years ago, on the 25th anniversary of the nod, dominoes introduces a Facebook game called the Noid Super Pizza Shootout. And that is PR. All right, thank you guys for coming out, hanging out with us. Good night, Chicago. Thank you, everybody. You are awesome. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com." | ||
Sherpas: Warm, Friendly Living | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sherpas-warm-friendly-living | Pop quiz: What word denotes a nation of people, a last name and an occupation? If you guessed 'Sherpa,' then congratulations: You're correct. But what exactly is a Sherpa? Tune in and learn more as Chuck and Josh explore the culture of the Sherpa people. | Pop quiz: What word denotes a nation of people, a last name and an occupation? If you guessed 'Sherpa,' then congratulations: You're correct. But what exactly is a Sherpa? Tune in and learn more as Chuck and Josh explore the culture of the Sherpa people. | Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:31:16 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=5, tm_hour=15, tm_min=31, tm_sec=16, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=95, tm_isdst=0) | 27348405 | 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 Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hi, and welcome to the Sherpa. I'm Josh Clark. There's, Charles. W did I just say sherpa no, you said welcome to the podcast. Why do you say welcome to the sherpa? Because the sherpa is a nation of people and also a last name and also an occupation. Yeah, that's pretty good. Well, that's the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, as Charles W, Chuck Bryant. Ignore Gay Bryant. Sherpa. Yeah. Chuck, we're talking about sherpa today. Yes. Is it sherpa or sherpa's? I have no idea, because I see both in this article. I do as well. All right, let's find out, shall we? Everyone will just hold on a second. Are you actually looking this up, Chuck? Most people do this before their hit podcast. Have you ever seen well, I'm sure this won't make it in. You never know. It will never make it in. Have you ever seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? The first one. That was not the first one. Yes, it was. Raiders. The Lost Ark was the first one. That's what I meant. I'm sorry. Temple of them was two. What was I thinking? I don't know. You've seen Raiders of the Lost Ark? Yeah. Okay. Scores of times. So you know when he goes to meet Marion for the first time after, like, ten years after guilting her? Yes. The drinking scene. Yes. The huge guy that Marion is drinking with, or I guess in a drinking contest with. It's like they kept hearing me say Chuck over and over again. Right. That, my friend, was a sherpa. Was it? I'm pretty sure he looked Mongolian to me. No, they were definitely in, like, Nepal. Okay. Yeah. It even said Nepal. Remember, he flies in the plane. Boob. And it's like Nepal red line takes him to Nepal. Yeah. All right, so let's call him a Sherpa. So sherpas is plural of sherpa. That's what I thought. I thought so, too. The Sherpa people are actually pretty fascinating. They're pretty isolated, and they haven't been where they are, which is the base of Mount Everest in the Solo Kumbu area, region of Nepal for more than actually about 500 years. And when they arrived in the Solo Kumbu region, they found it uninhabited. And the reason why is because the Sherpas are pretty much the only people on the planet besides maybe Ethiopian Highlanders or Peruvians in the Andes who could conceivably live in this area, because, again, it's at the foot of Mount Everest. Yes. And we recorded a podcast on Tibetans and altitude sickness. So if you want to know all about that, refer to that podcast. But, Josh, you're right. They migrated from Tibet, from the province of Kam to the northeast corner of Nepal around the 16th century because of warfare. Yeah. As I understand, they're very peaceful people. Oh, very. So they would have been fleeing warfare. I would say so, yeah. Not running toward it. Headlong so they migrated there. There was a lot more like forest and wood and for fuel at the time, which was good. And they could grow wheat and buckwheat at the time, and that's about all they could grow. But that was enough, right? Later on, potatoes really changed the way they do farming, because they grow a lot of potatoes now. Yeah, I think the potato was introduced in the mid 19th century, and that kind of changed everything. 1880. I'm sorry. But if you think about it, these people, when they first arrived in the area, they moved to the Kumbu Valley, which is higher up, actually, than the Solo area. And it's about between 11,000 and 13,000ft. They're like, this is a little too high. Everybody is a little sick. They're going to move a little further down to the Solo region between 6000, 510,000ft. It's still extremely high, it's still extremely rocky. And they whip this part of the Himalayas into shape. They created terrace farm fields. Guatemala, baby. Remember that? Yeah. Down a slope, you can create you can farm on the side of a mountain. People do. But think about this. How did they figure that out? I'm very curious. Well, it's not rocket science. You need flat land. And if you have a zero steep side of a mountain and you cut into that, you can create a series of steps, essentially, which is flat land. Cherries in there. Laughing. Yes, I know. I would have been in trouble. Cherries, like, I've been to Guatemala three times. I know all about step irrigation, and I know how to do all that. Right. I would have been like, man, I wish it were flat around here. I guess I'll just sit here until I die. You'd be bad sherpa. Oh, I'd be terrible at it. One of the reasons why I'd be terrible at it is because I will get in my car to drive 500ft from, say, store to store. Do you do that over there at the edgewood? Like, you'll go to Target and you'll drive to Kroger? I haven't been there in a while, but I have totally I mean, yeah, I'll walk I walk more now than I ever had before in my entire life, depending on the weather or what's going on. Definitely depends on the weather. It depends on my schedule. Very often, I get that if I'm in a hurry, I might do that. Right. I would make a terrible stripper, though, because they don't have wheeled anything there. A terrible stripper I would make both terrible. Both. Well, I know what Aaron Cooper is going to make this time. Exactly. Yes. As I just said, I think it bears reiterating mr. Joke Guy, there are no wheeled anything there. There's no cars. There's no wheelbarrows. Yeah, they don't even use wheelbarrows, which now we've reached another reason I would be a terrible sherpa. They have to carry everything. I can barely carry a thing of dog food out of the grocery store to my car. And that's like, with a car involved, which has wheels, which they don't have in the Solo Kumbu region. That's right. They carry everything. Josh and we actually saw this in Guatemala, too, the plum line. Trump line. Yeah, plum line is a little different. Yeah. What they'll do is, let's say, get a big load of firewood and they'll wrap it up and spank it on the bottom. They'll wrap it up and so they can wear it on their back in a big bundle, and then attach to the top of, let's say they lay it in, like, a hammock and fold that over a hammock like thing. And then that is attached to a band that it's like a headband. So it goes around their head and it takes a lot of the weight off their back. And we saw these in Guatemala dudes walking up the road, and I thought, man, look at that. That's like ancient engineering. Still in practice. And you're like, Man, I got to do more of that. And you got back here and you're like, Give me a cheeseburger in my Jan Sport backpack. Anybody who's ever seen the front cover of Led Zeppelin Ford is familiar with this concept as well. Was he wearing one of those? He should have been if he wasn't, because that's a big old bundle of sticks that guy is carrying. That's a bustle in his head drop. Sherpas can whip a mountain into farmland. They can live on buckwheat and then several hundred years without the potato. And then the potato yak milk and yak meat. Right? They walk everywhere, they carry things everywhere with yachts, and they are basically mountain folk. They speak a Tibetan dialect that's virtually their own. They don't have a written language. No written language until the 1960s, there is no formalized education, they just lived. They carved a very meager existence out for themselves. Yeah, and thanks to a dude named Sir Edmund Hillary, they now have the foundation that he set up. And we'll get to Edmund Hillary in a second. But everyone, come on, you know who he is. He's the first man to ascend Everest with Tins Ignore, Gay Sherpa to summit to summit. What doesa send yeah, you got to get to the top. Right, or else what? He just blew 65 grand? That's about how much it costs these days. Yes, it does. So through his foundation, in later years, he became to love the peaceful Buddhist of the Sherpa people there, and so he's like, I'm going to set the foundation, we're going to do things like bring some schools, bring some hospitals, give these kids access to health care, things like that. So he did that and that helped a lot. Although nowadays the schools aren't in great shape, evidently. It's kind of hard to get there, so they're doing what they can, right, you can take the folk out of the mountain, but you can't take the mountain out of the folk, you know what I mean? That's right, they are very friendly, very peaceful, very compact, very strong, great attitudes, apparently, and that's not just Chuck saying that. Chuck? You're basing that on the guy who basically took these very isolated, happy, self sustaining, self sufficient people, mountain people, and introduced them to the world, or no, introduce them to the people who had introduced them to the world. Right, right. What is the Englishman is credited with saying, hey, if you want to get up Everest, you need yourself a Sherpa? That was Alexander Kelles, not tens. Ignoregay, not Sir Edmund. Hillary right. Well, Tens ignoregay was a sherpa. He's far too modest, I'm under the impression, to have been like, you want to get a beverage to get yourself a Sherpa. Sherpas. They're not big self promoters. The English have been the biggest promoters of Sherpas, and Alexander Kellis was his name. Yeah, Kellis, he tried to make it up Everest and failed. But there was a point in time where, well, if you look at a mountain, it's not like a cone. You know those styrofoam cones that you can get at, like, the craft store that have, like, actual volume? It's a cone. Yeah, the mountain is not like that, it has all sorts of crazy peaks and different faces, and if you go up one side and make it up easy, that doesn't mean that you can go up any other side and make it up easy, right? Yeah. So the place where the Sherpa live is actually a pretty good way to get up everest, but it was closed off. Nepal, as a country, was closed off to the rest of the world until, I think, 1949. Yeah, Everest was confirmed as a high speech in 1865, but it wasn't like, all of a sudden the floodgates were open and every Brit in the world said, I must conquer that mountain. They said that, but they were like, but how to get to it? Right? It happened. Right. But in between, they're like, well, let's just colonize that place and then figure out how to get up. Exactly. 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. Amazonandhalopetscom. 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. You can listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. True. And when India began colonizing I'm sorry, when England began colonizing India, darjeeling, across the eastern border of Nepal, was a big popular tour spot for British military political officials. Big wigs. That's where they met the Sherpa. And that's sort of where the mountaineering profession for the Sherpa kicked off, because all of a sudden, there were Englishmen saying, I can now get in here to Ascend and summit this mountain. Right, but I need some help because I'm not carrying all that junk. Yeah, and it's not like Sherpas are the only ethnic group around Mount Everest. But as people soon found, like you said, they were sturdy, they are compact, they can carry tons of weight, and they have a cheerful attitude. So Alexander Kellis introduced the climbing community, the Western climbing community, to the Sherpa. And in short order, Sherpas became extremely famous after, like you said, Sir Edmund Hillary summited Mount Everest. Yeah. And he was one of 400 people on that expedition. I never knew that. I just thought it was sir Edmund Hillary got in his car in England and drove to Nepal and said, hey, Tinsig, take me to the top. But it was a big group of people, and they were the only two that made it. Right. They were the last ones, and they just kept on going. But yes, it was tense. Ignorege Sherpa. That's his last name. Yeah. Because as you said at the beginning of this, it's a group of people, it's a profession, and it's the last name. That's right. So from that moment on, everybody knew what Sherpas were, right? Yeah. They were no longer confused with Alpacas. In popular culture, people are like, oh, they're a group of people. Yeah. Literally, the people from the east. That's right. And they like you said, they're not grand standards, they don't get a lot of attention. And I made a joke, I believe it was either dead bodies on Everest or the Tibetan altitude sickness about Sherpas being unsung at the time, about how you always hear about the Indian or the Brit standing on top of the mountain and you don't see the Sherpa behind him carrying all their junk. And that's really true, because when you know what I mean, when Hillary ascended and summited, he got a knighthood and Norgate got an honorary medal. And you think, well, of course they're going to give the British guy the knighthood and they're going to give the foreigner a medal untrue, because Sermon hillary is from New Zealand. That's right. He wasn't British, so technically he wasn't a citizen of Great Britain, and neither was Tense Ignore Gay. And they still didn't get the same thing. Yeah. It was called the British Everest Expedition was the 400 people. So that's why I think a lot of people probably thought Hillary was a Brit, but he was not. But again, our Western culture is a little different from Sherpa culture. Like you said, they're not grand standards, they're not publicity hounds. The ones who are involved in climbing and trekking do make a pretty substantial amount of money, especially in comparison to what the average person makes in Nepal, they make about two grand for a trip. Right. And the gross domestic product per capita of Nepal in 2007 is like $331. Yeah. That really puts into perspective. They're rich by other standards, I guess. Extremely rich. Very wealthy. But I guess in addition to making money, they help other people ascend Everest to attain their personal glory. Right. For the other people to attain their personal glory, which is kind of there's a lot of dichotomy between how the Sherpa view Mount Everest and how they interact with it, that the Western influence kind of puts them in this weird position, because they follow a form of Tibetan Buddhism which says that you should perform selfless acts and help others. Right. Yeah. And being at the top of Everest to them means you're closer to enlightenment. Right. If the people are going to climb up anyway, you might as well go with them for two grand. Sure. But you might as well go with them to make sure that they don't kill themselves, right? Yeah. Very selfless people it is. But at the same time, they're helping the west kind of exploit Everest. Some people worry that the Everest experience is being cheapened since Hillary summited. Everest, I think more than 2300 other people have. Right. Kind of loses its closeness to the Buddhas when all these other footprints are everywhere and there's a couple of hundred dead bodies on the mountain. Yeah. I think Norgate kind of summed up there how they feel about Everest. When he called it, when they asked him how he felt about being up there, and he likened it to a mother hen and said, what else? He said that this was, quote, warm and friendly living. How about that? Yeah. And then Hillary shoved him back down. He's like, Quiet, you, get out of my picture frame. Here's your metal. So, like you said, the region now, Josh, because of the massive amounts of tourism, and not massive like Grand Canyon massive, obviously, but still, for Mount Everest, it's a lot of people going there trying to climb it. We did talk about pollution there now. And so the very thing that brings the Tibetan Buddhist Sherpa's enlightenment has also kind of denigrated the area somewhat. Yeah. Well, it's about 20,000 people pass through that area per year. And now you can go play pool. You have Internet access. You have the trappings of modern living, and you also have the drawbacks of modern living. Deforestation. Yeah. Pollution. Yeah. Exploitation, that kind of stuff, right? That's right. And this is, we should point out, in Sagaramatha National Park, where about 3500 Sherpas live, and Sagarmatha is the word for Everest. Right. The Sherpa themselves call Everest chomalangma. Chomolungma chambawamba. It's close. No, but that's not it. Okay. Chomolangma, which means, roughly, goddess mother of the world or Mother Hand. You want to talk about a couple of famous Sherpas? Yes. We talk about Edmund Hillary all day long, but you never hear about APA Sherpa. Yes. And all he's done is ascend and summit over 17 times more than anybody else in the world. Not bad. Yeah. What about Babu? Chichiri Chihiri? Sherpa yeah. Camped on the summit of Mount Everest for 21 hours without oxygen. Usually what happens when you climb Everest is you get your picture made and you say, wow, this is really unbelievable. This is amazing. All right, let's go back down. Right. And you have 5 million canisters of oxygen at your disposal. Really high. Yeah. Who else? There's a Lockpa Galu Sherpa, who holds the world record for the fastest Mount Everest ascent. 10 hours, 56 minutes in 46 seconds. That's a lot. Not bad. Wow. 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. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but we're pretty excited about summer. I mean, what's not to like? School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's right. And that's where True crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. Yeah. And with so many killer shows like Morbid, My Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. Prepare to go deep and become your own detective in the world of serial crimes and unsolved mysteries. Get lost hearing spooky stories with a combination of detailed research and lighthearted analysis. Whether you're a lifetime fan of True Crime or you just feel like being entertained while doing the dishes at night, there's a podcast out there for you to download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app. Today you have Ming Kippa Sharpa. What's the big deal with Ming? Ming just climbed Everest at the age of 15 years old. Not on his Xbox. In real life. Yes. And then there's Pessang Lambo Sherpa, who was chuck the first woman Sherpa. Yes. Climbing Everest, which apparently when women started climbing Everest or serving as Sherpas to climbing expeditions in the 70s. This is probably the biggest problem internally for the Sherpas that Western tourism was having on their culture. A woman's place traditionally is at the farm in Sherpa culture, on the side of the mountain. And I guess there was some static for a while, and then finally more and more women started doing it and we're doing it successfully. And that was that. Yeah. And evidently, when the husband, if the husband is the Sherpa worker, goes on one of these trips, then the female becomes the head of the household at home. If she's not a Sherpa herself and will take care of things just like the husband would, what else is here? I love these people. I think you have a fun place in your heart. No, they remind me of the people of Guatemala. Kind of short and friendly and warm. Friendly living stocky. Yeah. It makes me kind of wonder. There's so many similarities. Chuck that because, think about it. Everybody calls the people the Sherpa, right? Yeah. The people from the east. But that's in reference to where you are in solo. Kumba. Kumbu. Right. Okay. What were they called before they moved west? The people mayan, maybe. Finally, Josh, for my part of this podcast, if you think this one is off the rails, if you think the sherpa have it bad with not getting any recognition. There's also something called a porter. Yes. And a lot of Sherpas grow up serving as porters. As porters. That's basically the job below the Sherpa who does even more of the heavy lifting and gets even less money and less oxygen, less clothing and other outerwear. Yeah. And there's an actual international porter's group, right? Yeah. Protection group that are advocates for their safety and fair wages, because obviously, if you've got very poor person doing a lot of hard work, they're probably being taken advantage of in some way. So, Chuck, we would be remiss to do a podcast on the Sherpa and Everest and Hillary and not mention the yeti. I don't know much about the yeti. I didn't look at that. So the Himalayas are the home of the yeti, the abominable snowman. It's another way to put it, which is basically like the extreme, cold, high altitude version of Bigfoot. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. I just always thought that's what we thought of, but I didn't look into it. No. It is pretty much okay. It's a biped, a very furry, heavy, large biped that's mysterious and lives out by itself, it's bigfoot. But in the Himalayas, it's like an empire. Like on Hop, it's more like the abominable snowman. And the Rudolph Christmas specials look kind of like the thing in Empire. Kind of, yeah. Who looks like yeah. Wow. Anyway, Hilary himself was actually a believer in the yeti. He went back after summiting Everest. He went back again in 1960 to look for the yeti because he'd seen yeti footprints, what he took to be yeti footprints. Oh, really? Interesting. He found nothing, though. He didn't. And a lot of people think that these were just some other animals footprints that melted in the snow and expanded as the snow melted. Right. Who knows? Yeti again, you have taught me something, my friend. Thank you for that, because I couldn't figure out how to wrap this one up. I feel like we should apologize for the light nature of this, but we just recorded right before this on the nuclear disaster in Japan, so I think we were rife for a little riff. Plus, also, we should point out, in true Sherpa style, Chuck, they'd want it this way. Well, think about this. There are all sorts of trappings of Western influence and degradation of culture. There is a dwindling of population. I think at its peak, this area was home to 25,000 people. Now it's down to 3500, like you said in the park, right? Yeah. There was a National Geographic survey of Sherpas saying, are you concerned about Western influences on your culture? And they were like, yeah, not overly. Can you hear me? The TiVo remote, you're sitting on it. Do you have any Mountain Dew or vault? So that's it a sherpas. If you want to read more, there's actually some more in there, especially more on the buddhist religion, I believe we didn't cover that fully. Yeah, there's more goodness in there for sure. Yes. You can type in sherpas or sherpa if you want to be safe in the Handy search bar@housetuffworks.com written by Kristen Conner of stuff mom never told you. That's right. That's true. Excellent podcast. Yeah, it is. Great podcast. And they did a great job at south by Southwest. They did. And since I said Handy Search Bar and south by Southwest, that means it's time for listener mail. That's right, Josh. This is a little more Disney dirt. And most of the Disney dirt we got wasn't very good. We got a bunch of yeah, there's really nothing going on there. There's underground tunnels, but that's no big deal. Yeah, a lot of those. And it's really not like you guys think. We finally got a pretty good one. This is from M and M. Seems like she would have been one of the employees that I might have been hanging around with that know about the dirt. Some people apparently don't even know about this stuff. I hope we don't get trouble for this. Hang on. Hey, guys. I just finished listening to the Tickling podcast. Excited that you asked for Disney dirt. As a cast member at the Happiest Place on Earth for almost four years, I gleaned some interesting tidbits of information. For starters, in a workroom behind Pirates of the Caribbean, there exists an infamous mylar table, which has a long standing reputation for being a favorite place for cast members to be amorous with one another after hours. I can't imagine how clean such table might be, but many cast members have been known to participate in tradition simply for the sake of being part of the legend. Or like, the mile high club, I guess. On my attraction, the Jungle Cruise, it said that one can't be a real skipper until they have urinated into the river. No, I suspected as much about you can create the what is it? The happiest place on earth. But if you staff it with bored and nihilistic 20 year old, it's going to end up like this. Yes, someone's going to be in the river. Most of the time. This is done before or after park operating hours, when a skipper can take out a boat alone and relieve him or herself, often into the hippo pool. You can imagine it's harder for girls to participate in this rite of passage out of sheer logistics, but I do know some women who have managed to become real skips. I think it'd be more physics and logistics, she says the mechanics boggles my mind. Now, for the gnarly stuff under Space Mountain, there are stored 60,000 body bags. Supposedly they're there in case of a natural disaster or some other emergency where people may be trapped inside the park for an extended period of time. I don't believe that. I don't believe it either. The food freezers in the. Storeroom down the hall are also over 6ft tall for storage. Do you know what I mean? It's quite morbid and a popular site for telling ghost stories. I've got plenty more if you want some off the record ghost stories. This was on the record, jeez. Or personal anecdotes for my time as a jungle cruise skipper. I'd be happy to share. Keep up the great work from M. Well, I would love to hear the off the record ones. Me, too. What is her name? M. I'd like to take her to lunch. Yeah, well, please at least send us an email. Okay? I don't think we'd be allowed to go out to lunch with that girl. No, our significant others would. Chuck, you got anything else? No, I'm done. All right. What should we call for here? How about if you've ascended Everest? No, it's boring. Okay. If you are interested in your state succeeding from its current geographical boundaries, we want to hear why. That's right. Send it in an email to stuffpodcast@housestepworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstepworks.com. Want more housestuffworks? Check out our blog on the Housetofworks.com Homepage, brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means schools out, the sun's shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgueref and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen. Today, you want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural science based nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leaving brands? Find Halo Elevate at Petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores." | ||
How Dog Shows Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-dog-shows-work | You know those shows where people wearing sensible shoes jog dogs around in circles? They actually represent the pinnacle of a long and complex path to glory for dogs and their owners. Join Chuck and Josh as they peek inside the American dog show. | You know those shows where people wearing sensible shoes jog dogs around in circles? They actually represent the pinnacle of a long and complex path to glory for dogs and their owners. Join Chuck and Josh as they peek inside the American dog show. | Thu, 27 Dec 2012 16:40:50 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=16, tm_min=40, tm_sec=50, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=362, tm_isdst=0) | 40259152 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from howstepworkscom. Hey. Hey. This is unusual, but I feel like we plug other people's stuff so often. Let's take some time and plug our TV show. Television show people are like, again. Yeah, we know. Yeah. Well, then by now you know that it's going to premiere at 10:00 p.m.. Eastern Standard Time on Science Channel at 10:00 p.m.. Episode one at 1030 p. M. Episode two falls right behind it. Two back to back episodes of Stuff You Should Know, the TV show where we play ourselves. Ourselves. That's right. And it is premiering after the season three premiere, or if you're from England, series three premiere of Idiot Abroad with Charles Pilkington wicked your Base. And it's a great lead, and we're really happy because it's an awesome show. And if you don't have TV or cable, you can actually purchase our show now on itunes after the premiere date. That's right. Every time a new episode comes out the next day, it will be up for sale on itunes. Yes. For Buck 99. And Science Channel is so cool. They are making the first available show for free, the premiere for none money. And we think you're going to like it if you don't let us know. If you do, let us know. But we had a good time making it. We got the whole first season done, and we're rolling them out starting January 19. That's right. We appreciate your support. Yeah. Okay. On with it. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me, as always, as Charles W, Chuck Bryant. And that makes this step. You should have the podcast. Indeed. About dogs. My favorite topic. Yeah, it's one of them. What else? I don't know. Dogs. I'm one of those people that like dogs more than many humans. Sure. As you know. Although dog shows, I'm not really big on. I love watching dog shows. Yeah. I just never gotten into them. I know there's criticism, there's controversy, but I don't care about that. I'm kind of bored watching them. I never get bored. It's almost like watching a Fractal screen save or something. It sucks me into that level of just zoned altitude. Is it appointment television for you? Like, do you make appointments every February or something? I think I think last year it was Valentine's Day. Yeah. Okay, so early February. Yeah. Last year, when a little pekinese one named Malachi I think I remember seeing that dog. Look at that dog. It's faces most beyond cute. Look at that hair. So apparently, if you want to blow up the Twitter verse with angry tweets, you can talk politics, you can talk religion, or you can hold the Westminster Dog Show and select a Best in show. People get pretty upset, man. People went crazy last year. Like you commenting or just in the Twitter universe. People on Twitter. Okay. Yeah. I'm just a fan tweeted during the show? No. Okay. I live tweet very infrequently. It's tough on the thumbs. Sure. Maliki, this little cute four year old pekinese one Best in Show, and people were really mad. They called it a mop cousin. It Heraldo Rivera's mustache. A Wookie snookie for some reason. Maybe just because it rhymes with Wookie. And that's what they were going for. They just been watching Jersey Shore. Who knows? That's silly. But Maliki is no slouch. It had won 114 Best in Show Awards. Wow. Only four years old. So this thing's been mopping up the competition. Oh, man, I just made myself shiver. Yeah. But people went crazy. One guy said he was a fan of The Dalmatian, and he said, I'm done with these dog shows. And I think that happens every year until the next dog show. Exactly. Yeah. There's a lot of people who feel very passionately about dog shows. There's plenty of people like me who love to just zone out and watch them. Sure. And then there's people who just don't know anything about them. And that's what we're here for today, to explain everything there is to know about how dog shows work. That's right. And this will either be really interesting to you, or you may just zone out like Josh does watching the Westminster show. You know, though, I don't think we've ever released an uninteresting episode. Maybe they have uninteresting titles. But you go on and you listen to it. It will interest you. I defy you right now. You should know listeners who haven't listened to every single episode. So we'll call you the 28% yeah. To go out and find an episode that sounds boring in the title that you've not heard, and listen to it. And I guarantee you, you will find it interesting. It's just that thing. Yeah. One comes to mind. College football rankings. Interesting to me, but, boy, our listeners are not into college football. But was it, for the most part, boring? Was it really not interesting? There's nothing interesting in there. I think if you're not into sports at all, then it was probably really boring. Got you. We'll avoid that one where the guarantee is void. But, hey, if you're into sports, you'll love it. No, I think on the other end, if you're into sports, it was like, well, you guys messed this up, or you forgot this. Yeah. Oh, by the way, congratulations. We are now an award winning podcast. We got a Stitchy. Is that what they're called? That's what I made up. Mark Marin had to call our names. He hosted these Stitcher awards last night. Oh, really? Yeah. He won one himself for a Best episode. Yeah, we were nominated for that, too. One that I didn't think was an accidental intervention. Yeah. I mean, that was okay, but I would have picked a different Best episode. I think it was the sacrament bit that really led us into that. Sure. On the toast. Yeah. Okay. So, anyway, dog shows. Yeah. Conformation shows, not formation. C-O-N-F-O-R is what we're going to talk about for most of the show, and that is purebred dogs competing against other pure bred dogs, almost exclusively based on physical attributes. Yeah. That's the Westminster Dog show that you see every year at Madison Square Garden. Yes. It's just what the dog looks like and basically it's appearance, its body structure, and then to a lesser extent, it's dude. Yeah. It's attitude. It's a character, because that also what they're trying to do here. If you've ever watched a part of this, and I love that, this who wrote this one? Jane McGrath. Oh, Jane. I remember her. She wrote that. Have you ever been channel surfing and come across one? I feel like a lot of people, that is their entrance into the dog show world is they're flipping it around in February, they go, oh, yeah, that thing where the Christopher Guest movie mocked. I'll watch a few minutes of that and I've done that and I've always been like, I don't get it. How are they judging these other dogs against each other? It's a very good question and we're here to tell you how. Yeah. Because this little pekinese went up against things like Great Danes and Dalmatians and Dobermans and all that, and it still beat them all. And the way it did that is how they judge any kind of confirmation show. They judge the dog by the standards of its breed and then the dog that most closely fits those idealized standards yeah. Wins these very specific registered, I'm going to say registered standards. Yeah. So let me give you an example. I was looking this up. AKC has developed these standards from information taken from breeders. That's right. For example, the Lakeland Terrier. One of the standards is attitude. Right. And the Lakeland Terrier has, quote, a bold, gay and friendly with a confident, cock of the walk attitude. So this is the kind of thing that the AKC sits around us. Yeah, basically. I love that. In England, they have different standards. That's the American Kennel Club. And they have a different show called Crufts Crufts. And theirs is a little bit different, but we'll get to that later. Yeah, we'll talk about that in a little bit. For the most part, we're focusing on Westminster and the AKC. So in addition to attitude, character traits, there's all those physical traits that the AKC has maintained on each breed. So, for example, balance, and not how well the dog stands up. Although the gate is important. Yeah. If your dog falls over, that's probably a bad sign, but, yeah, it's not going to win this year. Balance is what we would call symmetry for humans. It's the overall proportions of its shape and size. Yeah. Like that Scottish terrier is really pretty, except, boy, look at those ears. Look at the size of its butt. Yeah. You're out. Sorry, Scotty. Weight size eyes. And again, eyes is size and shape and color. Yes. If you got that one wonky eye, forget about it. Unless you're an Australian shepherd. Yeah. Are they supposed to have one? I think they're supposed to have a blue and a brown. A blue and a brown? Everyone I've seen has. Yeah, but what does the AKC say? I don't know. They don't care. What slugs like you and I think the head shape, of course, ears, muzzle, whiskers, thickness of whiskers is an important one. Oh, really? Yeah. I would think that'd be an indicator of poor health. What if they had bad whiskers? Thin whiskers? Thin riddle whiskers? I think you want nice, stout whiskers, like a centimeter thick each. Okay. That's probably the standard for any breed. This is the JKC. Yeah. Teeth. You always see them checking out the teeth. You don't want any kind of weird scissor bite or I guess certain breeds have the underbite. Yeah, a lot of them do the breakdown cardi. Yeah. Our own Jerry's dog Charlie, I recently learned, has a bit of a little underbite, and sometimes the lip will get hung and the little bottom teeth are just kind of jutged out there. That's very cute. It's very cute. You want to go over and adjust the lip. So here you go. Yeah. Moist enough. I like dogs that have teeth sticking like Shizu's. Yes. Boxers, too, right? Boxers. Pugs pekinese. Oh, did that one. Yeah, they all have that. It's like brachiocardi. Anything with the smooshed face usually has an underbite as well. Okay. Teeth. All right. We just said teeth. Tail. I mean, shoulders. And these dudes are feeling these judges are feeling these dogs as well, like muscle and bone, like they're trying to get under the fur to judge these things. So one of the big things your dog has to learn very early on is to let strangers feel him up yeah. In all sorts of uncomfortable places. Yeah. You don't want your dog snapping at this guy when he fondles your dog. And if your dog snaps at the judge and then falls over, just go home. It's all over. What did they say best and show when the dog broke his gate? The one guy so we might as well just taking a dump right there on the floor. Yes. Michael McKenzie said that thing. He's awesome. And then, of course, there's coat length and texture and color and very much like thoroughbred horses, there's accepted colors for each breed. You got a dog that's blue, and it's supposed to be a golden retriever. You got problems. Yeah. If you got a blue retriever, you have many problems. Although you could probably make some money taking it around the country. Sure. Taken an old tiny circus where you can't make money is by winning the Westminster Dog Show. Yeah, it's a good point. You would think that these things offer, like, big cash prizes, but they don't. It is really about prestige and being one of those dog show people like wearing that ribbon and getting that trophy sure wearing sensible shoes and learning to walk very fast as a lease because your gate matters is a human right so you put all this together right and these judges know the standards for the breeds and when they're looking at these dogs. They're saying they're matching it up to their mental catalog they have and then the ones that most closely match the idealized version of breed. Like we said. Wins boom. And that's how you get the little loss or the pekinese that can beat out like a Great Dane or a German shepherd or something like that that's how they compare them yeah and that's only been going on since I say only since 19 seven previous to that and this has been going on at Madison Square Garden in New York City since 1877 they did. Big time they didn't have a Best in Show at all until 19 seven because they said. How do we codify this? Right? And they did they figured it out really? Jane says it sounds confusing, but once I spell it out, it's simple but it's still a little confusing yeah, it took me a couple of times to figure this out it's just a lot of steps she does a great job of explaining it there's a lot to it so you want to explain this? The Westminster Dog Show. We should say. Is the pinnacle. The peak in the United States for any dog but there's a long road ahead of it. Like we said. Malachi. The winner of 2012 show had 114 Best in Shows under its belt yeah. And Jane called it the Super Bowl I would say it's more like an allstar game if the allstar game counted for something very picky because it's all these all stars from the different breeds from all these shows making this final it's like the Little League World Series for dog great. It's like the chefs it's like Bobby what's his face fisher fisher almost at Bobby Riggs and you guys like Tennis Story who Bobby Riggs? Bobby Fischer. Oh, yeah. Did you ever see Searching for Bobby Fisher? I did it's a great movie years back and then. Of course. That song One Night in Bangkok yeah. It's from a Broadway show and I can't remember what the Broadway show is. But it was based on Bobby Fisher in his life and now he moved to Asia and he devolved in Madison that song is about Bobby Fischer and that was from a Broadway show. As far as I know yes and then the pop version was just rerecorded by whoever that was possibly by the original composers but for the radio I thought One Night in Bangkok was about you would think. Never mind. I was going to bring up all you have to do is just end there yes. Who's Gary Glitter? That's what I was thinking. Yeah, I don't think so. I think he got in trouble in Bangkok, if you know what I mean. He did. And he recently got in trouble with the whole Jimmy Seville. Oh, yeah. He was part of that, too, apparently. So. Gross, man. What a sidetrack that was. Okay. To be a champion. Right. This is what a dog aims for, is to be a champion. That's right. Because if you're a champion, you get to add ch as a prefix to your name. Yeah. Like I would be ch then Chuck if I were a champion dog. Yeah, you'd be Chuck. All right, so let's walk everyone through this, right? Yeah. All right? To be a champion, you got to get compile, a certain number of points, and you earn these points at different dog show competitions around the country that are not the Westminster show. Yeah. And from different judges. Right. You got to get at least 15 points from three different judges or at least two major wins from separate judges. And a major win is one where you can earn three, four or five points. And that's when you can get that as a champion. Just for that little show, though, right, or no, for the compilation of those shows. Yeah. Right. So when you get to become a champion, when you have I think it's 15 points and two major wins from separate judges yes, you're right. You get to this point. Also, like you said, it's not Westminster, it's these little specialty shows. Sure. And I don't mean little diminished, I'm just saying, compared to Westminster, they're much smaller. It's not on ESPN and there's specialty show. Well, it's on the ocho. I'll bet these specialty shows are based on specific breeds. Right. So you'll go to, like, the Chihuahua show or the Lakeland Terrier show. Right. And the dogs are separated between male and female. And we can say the B word in this one because it's what it's called? It's my new band name, by the way. What? Winter's Pitch. Okay. And the males and the females are then separated into six different classes. You've got the puppy class, the twelve to 18 month old class, novice. So those are dogs that are six months or older, that haven't won any points yet, haven't won any first place prizes. So they can be a little older, but they're still rookies as far as the competition stage goes. Right. And six months is the minimum age to compete in an AKC show. Yeah. Below that, there's no way. Yes, they're too dumb, too unpredictable. Bred by exhibitor is a class of dogs where the person showing the dog is also the breeder. The breeder, by the way, is the owner of the dog's mother. Right. There's American Bread, which is any dog born in the US for USA. And then there's Open. The open class is open to any dog. And this is the only class that any dog that's already become a champion can compete in in the specialty show. Oh, they are? Yeah, that's the only class open to them. Okay. Because they could just mop up all the other classes. They have to face any takers in the open class. That's a good way to put it. So they divide it up by male and female. The males go first and they inspect all the males as they do at any of the shows. You know what that means? You give them the award ribbons first through fourth place and you don't get any points. At this point though, the first place winners of the male class have to compete for the winner's dog. The Female's Class compete for winners, bitch. Man you want to say it? I've said it twice now. I don't want to say it. I find it difficult to say. Oh, really? It's just the connotations there. Sure. I've never used that word in anger about someone. It's a very rough it's a terrible word. Yeah. And I don't think that makes me a good person or anything, but there's just a couple of things that I wouldn't call my worst enemy and that's one of them got you. I don't have any enemies. What am I talking about? So you've got the Winner's Dog and the Winners bitch. Yes. And this is the point where they start winning awards, winning points. I mean, I'm sorry, all these different dogs have been weeded out by the different classes. And then you've got out of all these six classes of the male version and the female version, you have winners. Right. So this is where the points start being awarded. Then there's chances for more points in the same show. Any champion can come along and take the winners on for Best in Show or Best in Breed. Yes. And you compile extra points depending on how many dogs they beat out. So if you beat out a bunch of more dogs, you can earn up to five points, right? Five is the most. And remember, a major win is three, four, five points in a win. Yes. Okay. So you can win some by being the Winners Dog or the Winners Bitch. The champions can take those guys on in the Best of Breed. And then between those two, the Winter's Bitch and the Winter's Dog, there's another walk off, I guess. And they can win point whoever be too. And then there's the best of opposite sex. Yeah, that was the Best of winners. Right. And then the Best of Opposite Sex, which it says the best dog of the opposite sex of the best of breed. Yeah. So whichever dog, whether it's the winner's dog, the Winner's bitch, or any champion that took them on in one the Best of Breed. So that's a male that wins. Right. Then there's another category for the winners that's females or vice versa. The Best of opposite. Basically, it's like we got all these points sitting around. Let's get rid of some. Good point. Or it's like, did you ever go to a camp and run a race, but you ran terribly, but you still got a ribbon that just said participants. Yeah, maybe it's like that. That's like every race I ever ran. Just same here, basically. I had a trophy once, but it was a sad face. Really? Yeah. There's a baseball bat just kind of sitting at the foot of the kid with his head hung down, frowning. Yes. I played church sports, so we didn't do a lot of trophies, even in church leagues. Like, the ultimate victor of the church league got a trophy, but they weren't big on, like, ribbons and trophies. The ultimate victor of the church league, I would imagine, is salvation. Yeah. We all won. Okay. So then you've got your Best of Breed winner, and then that dog can then advance to a group show where all these Best of Breed winners compete, aka or AKC Westminster. Right. So to make that point, when you are at a specialty show and you're aiming for Westminster, which I imagine every dog there is oh, sure, you want to win Best of Breed. You can win points and become a champion through winning other stuff, like best of opposite sex, best of winners, winners dog winners bits. Right. Yes. But to move on to the next level, you have to win Best of Breed of that show, and you have to win a bunch, I imagine. That's right. And at this point, half of our listeners are delighted in half their eyes are rolling back in their head. Man, we just explained the heck out of that. I agree. So we're at best in show. Yeah. The movie. That's such a good movie. If you've not seen Best in Show, the Christopher Guest film, just go out and see it right now. Yeah. Just stop. I think it's streaming right now. I'm sure it is. Yeah. It's really good. It's hard to pick out a favorite part of that movie, but the scene that always pops up to me, parker Posey is trying to get a replacement. Was it a b? It's a little stuffed animal. She can't find it. And the guy is trying to help her. He's like, well, this is yellow and black. And it was like a parrot or something. I can't remember it all, but she's just, like, my hero. Yeah. Very good. All right, so a little bit on the AKC. There are several hundred dog breeds in the world, but the AKC only recognizes a little over 151 50. That's it. And they separate those into groups. Yeah. The AKC loves categorizing. Putting dogs into categories and breaking them down and then putting them into new categories. Yeah. And that's what they do here. And the poor dogs are just like, what? Can I have a treat? Can I get a bacon strip or what? Squirrel. Okay. Sporting dogs is one. Obviously these are dogs that are good for hunting pointers, retrievers, setters and spaniels. Yeah, those are good dogs. Great dogs. Hounds, beagles, bloodhounds toxins. I like hounds. Except for the baying, the howling, the howl. Yes. A beagle. Have you ever heard, like, a beagle? No, never had a beagle that much. They are loud and insistent. Really? Super cute puppies. Possibly the cutest puppies of any breed, I think. Yeah, those and oh, man. What's the one I'm thinking of? Little Puff balls. It's an Asian dog. The little Puff balls. Maltese? No, is it a little dog in the end? Yeah, but the puppies are little puff balls and they stay puff balls, like oh, Pomeranian. Yes. Those are pretty cute puppies. Yeah, they don't even look real. It looks like no, squeeze them. It should make a little noise, right? They do, yeah, but you don't want to do that. Okay. Working dogs. We're talking Great Danes, Rottweiler, Saint Bernard's dogs who are hardy and they even are used as working dogs, like search and rescue, stuff like that. Right. And then there's terriers that chase rats. Did they maybe even fight cobra or two? Those are little Schnauzers Scottish terriers, also known as Scotties bull terriers, which you would recognize as buds. Mackenzie yeah, those things are weird looking. My buddy Clay just got a giant schnauzer. They're big. Well, this thing is like six months old and he's already as big as my biggest dog. Yeah, just wait till you see. His name is Bro. He's like, what do you see Bro at the end of this? He's going to be enormous. How big is he expected to get weight wise? I don't know, but really big. He's awesome. Very fun dog. Just like for a dog to be that young and that big, they don't have control of their limbs yet. So Bro would just go running downstairs and just like, faceplant and then get up and the happiest expression behind his little eyes. You can see like that there. What else? Toy dogs. Yeah. Chihuahuas, poodles, pugs and how you pronounce it? I always said Shizu. Is it? Shizu. Shizu. Shizu. Non sporting dogs. I guess these are the intellects. This is a catch all breed when you don't have unifying characteristics, which is kind of sad. The one unifying characteristic is these dogs don't play. They don't play bulldogs. Dalmatians and the American Eskimo dog, which I've never heard of. Yeah, it's basically like, we don't know what to do with you guys, so we're going to put you in the non sporting dog and then two more herding dogs like Australian shepherds and miscellaneous. So remember we said that the AKC likes to classify dogs and there's more breeds than it recognizes. This is a group that you can't win points, you can't win any major awards, I believe. But if there's a breed that's starting to get more attention and there's more people breeding it, it's like a part of the process of becoming recognized. You start out in the miscellaneous group, so that's prerecognition almost. Yeah. Jeez. Hey, man, these people are keeping track of the dog's riding. They pay attention to details. All right, so the best of breeds in each of the group are going to compete in a group show, and then if you win that group show, then you compete in the ultimate I think we skip that part, which is the all breed show. And that's the All Star Game. The Super Bowl. That's Westminster, the chess match. Right. The Bobby Riggs versus Billie Jean King. That's when a judge goes through each of these groups and picks out the best seven groups because the 8th can't win. Right. And they basically go through and say, you're number one, you're number two, you're number three, you're number four. And all of a sudden, that number one is the best in show. And the controversy, erupts, twitter goes crazy. I'm going to have to pay attention this year. Yeah, it's fun to watch. Yeah, I've never watched it when I was like, tents, sure. But I've been like, oh, that's great. Or, oh, really? I'm sure you find yourself rooting for certain dogs, though. Yeah, there's always a dog. There's always at least one if it captures you, just like, I like that dog right there. All right, let's talk about the criticism of dog shows. Yeah. Because there's definitely plenty it's out there. One of the problems that certain groups have is that when you're talking pure bred dogs, you're talking about breeding. And I myself and many others are against dog breeding because there's plenty of dogs out there for the taking. Yeah. But they're much so breeders basically breed these dogs to acquire these or to at least hold on to these attributes. And that means in breeding sometimes, and that means shorter lifespans and disease and defects. Birth defects like Dalmatians tend to suffer from blindness, and German Shepherds suffer from hip dysplasia. And these traits have become associated with the breed, the standards of the breed that the AKC maintains. And it's kind of like, well, yeah, but if you want to have a dog that meets all these other criteria, it's also going to get dysplasia when it's sick and it's just part of inbreeding it's narrowing of the gene pool. And I've definitely noticed, and this isn't 100%, of course, but all the dogs and people I've known who had dogs throughout the years, I've noticed more purebred dogs dying younger than the MutS. Well, supposedly they have a weaker immune system. I don't remember what episode it was, but we were talking about that experiment that people use scent to detect an immune system different from yours, because when you put together your immune system and somebody else's immune system for reproduction, the kids should have a doubly great immune system. That was a long time ago, remember that? Yeah, it was. I. Don't remember what episode it was. I found this email. Maybe. Maybe so. Yeah. So remember a few minutes ago we were talking about the miscellaneous category can eventually earn you status as an officially recognized breed. The American Border Collie Association, the ABCA really didn't want their dog to become recognized by the AKC because they thought that meant once it's an official breed, then that means breeding will become more intense and these dogs will suffer from all these things that we just told you about. Yeah. They specifically petition with the AKC don't recognize us, and the AKC said, we're going to recognize you. I don't think it was maliciously, but they're like, this is what we do, and we're going to recognize this dog as breed. No, they were like, had you not asked, we wouldn't know. But you did, so sorry. Peter also filed an official objection against tail docking, which is when they amputate the tail. So you have the little nub. Yeah. It's not just tails. Ears. Yeah. Ear, cropping, straws. Yeah. There's a lot of breeds that have these unnatural attributes that you have to perform surgery on to get, which is counterintuitive because you're talking about the idealized version of a breed. Why would you have to take some sort of technological step to reach the ideal version? Like, if it doesn't happen naturally, it seems really awful. Yeah, it does to me, too, but I mean, I don't even declaw my cats. Yes. The way to go. That's the way I got crap all over my house. It's got scratched. But at the same time, you know Holly Fry of Pop stuff? She was talking about how she lets her cats play on their iPad. Really? And I was like, you must have a serious scratch guard because there's, like, cat playing apps on iPad. Oh, wow. And she's like, Well, I don't think we have a scratch guard. Well, when cats play around like that, they usually don't have the claws out. They're usually just pawning around. You would hope, but yeah, I wouldn't put one on my iPad. No way. I put on the little sticky things. They have, like, clear tapets that you put on, like, your couch arm, and those are unsightly and collect hair and dust. And just one of the things if you're an animal owner with five animals in your house, it's hard to not live with some hair. Do you have Arumba? No. You should probably get arumba. It might change your life. Yeah. I'm in love with my vacuum cleaner, so I feel like that would be cheating on Luxey. Nice. Yeah. Okay, there's some follow up. So what else was there? Jonah Goldberg had some words about breeding, especially with the AKC. He compares it to eugenics. Yeah. In fact, he thought it spurred the eugenics movement. Yeah. We're like, oh, wow, we have this really great dog, and we should do this with humans. I'm tired of people with epilepsy, let's just get rid of them. And of course, you can go back and read or listen to is it legal to sterilize Attics? Yeah, that was episode basically was all about eugenics. That's true. He also contends, and not really contends, it's pretty obvious that it's a beauty pageant. They're focusing on these physical attributes and only the aesthetic matters, in his opinion, and that's not something he says, you know what, if you want to judge a hunting dog, take it out hunting right, and see how it does there. Because these dogs, these dogs have jobs. Most dogs do have a job of some sort. Right, and let's see how they do their job. Yes, that's how you would truly appreciate a breed, not just its looks. And you mentioned UK's Crufts, the England Kennel Club runs Crufts and they do have lots of agility and stuff like that. Apparently they're criticized for going too far the other way, that they need to bring back more confirmation, conformation. Right. But, yeah, if you go to England and you're into dogs, you're going to be very surprised because their big show doesn't look anything like ours. Yeah, well, we'll get into agility trials, but is that what they have in there, where you're running between bobbing and weaving and going through the tunnels? Yeah, obedience stuff too. Yeah. And the AKC has these things, it's just not part of the big one, the Westminster show. Right. But Chuck, you would also probably appreciate England's Kennel Club maybe more than the AKC, because they have something called Scruffs. Yeah, I want to see this televised. It's basically the Crufts for cross breed dogs, non pure bred dogs, and it's just adorable that they have this and they welcome anything. Pretty much, yeah. I mean, obviously you have to have your dog trained, you can't just walk up off the street, but as far as breeds go, you can enter your dog, the criteria are pretty wide open and they just look for good temperament, good health and good character, which I like. Yeah. So we talked about agility trials. These are sometimes separate competitions altogether. Right. And then, like you said, in England, incorporated into the best in show, and that's where they're basically doing like, a little obstacle course, which is adorable off leash. I mean, did you see this picture? That's the cutest picture ever in this article, how dog shows work. Yeah, it's just a little terrier jumping over like a little post, and he's got this look on his face like, I'm going to do it. He is going to do it. He's got his tail up, man, that's a cute picture. And then obedience trials are basically taking commands from the handler, like you got to be listening. Some of the commands are just vocal, some of them you can't speak at all, and you're just using hand gestures and they're just seeing how well trained your dog is. Right, yeah. The dog can become the champion, which is the national obedience champion, which has got to be kind of a dubious honor among dogs. Like, you're the most obedient dog in all the land. It's kind of like Kurt Russell when he was like the star of Disney movies. It's like, yeah, you're a movie star, but you're also like the clean cut team. I remember those. But even he distanced himself later. He's like, no, I'm badder than this. I'm snake Pliskin. Exactly. Yeah. I forgot about those early movies. Those were awesome. I was a big fan of those. What was it? The kid with Two White shoes or something like that. They were really like vanilla. Yes, they're pretty vanilla. Yeah. So over the years, we have a few little stats. The breed that has won the most, the fox terrier 13 times. Not bad. Yeah. The dog that has won the most was champion Warren Remedy, who was a fox terrier who won three times in a row in the early one 9000 hundred. So it's pretty good. Yeah. My favorite is the oldest dog to win, the eight year old papillon who won champion low ticky Supernatural Beings. And the youngest ever was a rough collie named Long Loyalty of Bellhaven and one on its nine month birthday, nine months old. It's pretty young. Makes Bro look like an idiot. Bro is an idiot. He's lovable, though. I guess it's about it, right? Yeah. I'm going to watch this year. It's appointment TV for me now. Good. That is good. I think you'll like it. And then go on to Twitter and register your anger or your happiness at the winter. I will do so. Maybe a live tweet. Your thumbs are going to hurt. I got to get her Twitter login. I don't even know it. Well, you're the Twitter master. I'll just leave that to you. I'll email it to you. Okay. And by the way, our Twitter handle is S-Y-S-K podcast. I knew that part. Okay, so, Chuck, if anybody wants to learn more about best in show and dog shows and to see this adorable picture of this terrier jumping in midair, it's a cute picture. You can type in dog shows in the search bar. Hustleforce.com. And since I said search bar in there, I imagine it's time for listener mail. But first, Chuck, I feel like we should wish everybody a happy new year. Yes. I hope you had a great 2012, and if it wasn't great here's, the better days ahead. Very nice, Chuck. And I want to wish a very happy birthday to my sweet and wonderful wife. Yumi. Happy birthday, baby. Happy birthday. It was very sweet. Okay, listen or mail. Yes. Okay. All right, Josh, I'm going to call this crying during music. And this is from Angela in Columbus, Ohio. Who's. Blue Michigan. Oh, tough words. All right, guys, listening to Chuck talk about his experience at Carnegie Hall, maybe you want to share this story I heard a story one day about a new musical based on a book, Wicked, and I know we all know this musical now about the wizard of Oz. Yeah, I had a soundtrack for about a year before I saw it, and I found out there was a Broadway across America tour coming to Columbus, Ohio. My husband and I bought tickets, went with a group of friends, had been listening to the soundtrack for about a year, as I said, so I was really excited. So I'm watching the show, really enjoying it, getting swept up in the stage production and the acting. The music was better than I even thought it could be. And when they hit the main song, defying Gravity, sung by Edina Mindzel on the soundtrack, that's when it happened. I had a chuck moment and broke down, sobbing like a little baby. I don't know if I call that chuck moment. I mean, I'm sensitive, but that's pretty hilarious. All right, I'm leapy. The song itself is incredibly moving overall. There's a point in the middle where there's a break for the action. Before she hits the third burst, she says a few lines, turns the last line into this incredibly cathartic note and takes off in flight. Sitting here, remember it. I'm actually choking up. And that's where I can no longer control myself. All through the third verse, I'm sobbing uncontrollably. Loud gasping sobs. Both my husband and my brother in law offered me comfort, but I could not control myself. I cried to the end of the song and the house lights were coming up for intermission. My husband gave me a hug, not really knowing why. I was so moved, and I still can't say why. I was a mess and incredibly embarrassed. But it was a beautiful moment for this touching character who speaks to me. PS. And this from Angela and Columbus. PS. I feel a sense of strength and catharsis. Also currently while listening to Shake it out by Florence and the machine. Well, that was a specific email. Yeah. Thanks for sharing your story. What was that person's name? Angela. Thanks a lot, Angela. We appreciate that. That's pretty cool. So what do you want to say? I don't know. Dog show stories? What do you think? Yeah, sure. Dog show stories it is. If you want to get in touch with us about your dog show story, you can tweet to us. Remember it's S-Y-S-K podcast. And of course we're on facebook, facebook. Comstuffynow. And you can send us a good old fashioned email to stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseofworks.com." | ||
c33701e2-5460-11e8-b38c-0b47071970bb | SYSK Selects: How Zero Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-zero-works | Few numbers have as storied a past as zero. Even fewer have had as great an impact on our ability to understand our universe. Yet zero is a relatively recent arrival in math. Find out all about this surprisingly fascinating number with Chuck and Josh. | Few numbers have as storied a past as zero. Even fewer have had as great an impact on our ability to understand our universe. Yet zero is a relatively recent arrival in math. Find out all about this surprisingly fascinating number with Chuck and Josh. | Sat, 27 Apr 2019 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=4, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=117, tm_isdst=0) | 28387449 | audio/mpeg | "Hi there. Hello there. It's me, Josh, your friend, with this week's edition of SYSK Selects. And for this week, I've selected how zero Works, a surprisingly riveting episode about zero. Zero made famous by the phrase, you better lose that zero and get yourself a hero. Well, it turns out zero is pretty great in its own right. Just listen to this episode, okay? Enjoy. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles WTOK. Bryant, and this is a rare, unusual, mathematical episode of Stuff You Should Know. Yes, and I'm just going to step out of the room, and I'll be back in, what, 25 minutes? This is not going to be another Yoyo episode. Oh, I just hate math. This is not math heavy at all. It's about the history of zero. It's about the weirdness of zero, my hero zero. Exactly. Till you came over on a cell people counted on their fingers and toes I posted that today on Facebook. I don't know what that is. The Schoolhouse Rock. I don't remember my hero zero. I don't remember that one till you came along keep on her fingers and toes. It's basically you would appreciate it because it sings what you wrote. Oh, that's great in a much more basic way, but basically trying to teach kids how amazing zero is. And don't discount it as just a number. It's not the absence of something. Well, there's a lot. There's a bunch to it. It's many things. It's a multifaceted number, not a multifaceted entity. Well, null is German for zero. Did you know that? Yeah. Butt kiss is, I believe, Spanish for zero. Zilch. Zilch is cajun. I did actually get a little etymology research. Originally, Sanskrit was sonya, which meant empty. Then later, Arabic was safira or nothing. Then Italian was Zafira. And then finally, French gave us zero. Right. And we represent zero as something that looks confusingly, like an o. Right. That was the Europeans who did that. Prior to that, the Arabs, and I believe the Indians, too, represented zero with a heavy dot. Do you know where that might have come from? Where? Robert Kaplan's book the Nothing that is a Natural History of Zero. He speculates that the shape comes from the round depression left in the sand, a sand counting board once you remove a stone from it. Wow. So would be around things. That's what he thinks. He speculates. But that wouldn't have been the Europeans, because the Europeans that came up with that. Well, no, but you said, like a heavy dot. Yeah, a heavy dot, a solid could be the depression where a stone was in sand. That's a good one. Who is that? Robert Kaplan. Thanks, Mr. Kaplan. Well, I guess I feel like we've kind of done a pretty good set up here, Chuck. I think so, too. We've talked about how zero is multifaceted, and we talked about the Arabs and the Indians, right? Yeah. And we have to go back even further to first find when zero made itself known. Should we get in the way back machine? What? Let's blow the dust off of this thing. Sorry. Wow. That was right at you. I think this thing still works. Let's find out. Are you ready? Yeah. Hey, look at there. Wow. Lit up like a flex capacitor. It's nice. We're back in ancient Sumer and these baked clay tablets haven't even been baked yet. They're still wetland. Wow. Josh was here. Cool. So Chuck, if you look at this clay tablet do you see these two diagonal lines there's? Little wedges. Yeah. Those my friend, represent nothing. Really. And the reason they're there is because round about this time somebody figured out they ran into a problem and when they were making some sort of tax record or grain inventory that showing that basically writing out 3000 lines for the 3000 heads of cattle. That doesn't make any sense. But let's say you have 300,000 heads of cattle and all you have are the ways to represent 300 heads of cattle. There's a big difference. Right. There's an extra digit in there and those two diagonal lines were used to represent one of those digits when there was not any digits there. But there's something to the left of it and something to the right of it. That's right. And Kaplan also said that before that even they just would leave a blank space sometimes before they even came up with little wedges. Right. So what this is all based on is basically our numerical system where if you look at a string of numbers right? Yeah. Starting from the right you have the ones column, the tens column, the hundreds, the thousands, the ten thousands, the 100 thousands and so on. You'll want me to keep going? Add infinitum right? Yes. And in each of these columns there may or may not be numbers present. So when there are numbers present we have our friend zero to serve as what's considered a placeholder. Yeah. It's very easy to just say well now but way back then before there was a zero we take it very much for granted. This is huge. This changed everything. Changed everything all of a sudden now because we said there's a big difference between 3000 head of cattle and 300 head of cattle and by putting a zero there saying this column is represented, there's just not any in here. You're not going to find the two cattle that should be in this. Right. That changed everything. It changed everything. It meant it was frustrating before that only there was something to put there. Yeah. Just trust me, I have 2000 cattle. And I guess when they left the blank space that got confusing because they could have thought it was an error. So they figured we have to put something there so they know it's not just an oversight. Right, exactly. That's the dining lines. Well, I think before it even became that standardized, they use different things because they found a tablet from 700 BC and a dude used three little hooks to represent zero. Well, that would have been after that because the Sumerians were doing this like, 5000 years ago. Well, it's probably hard to get the word around three hooks. What is this? Crud? Exactly. So the Sumerians are the first documented to come up or stumble upon zero as a placeholder. Sure. And then it was codified with the invention of the Abacus, which uses our numerical column system that we use today, which was invented by the Babylonians about 300, 500 BC. Wow. Right. Smart folks back then. So we have zero as a placeholder. We have this understanding now that there's something out there that we can represent nothingness. But it wasn't until the fifth century Ad. In India where zero first comes about as a concept, as a number, which is equally groundbreaking. Yeah. On this, nothingness, we should point out was not something that people were comfortable with back then. True. Oddly, now it seems odd, but to have something represent nothing made people very uncomfortable. It was associated with chaos and the great void and even the sign of the devil. Yes, it was. Well, I mean, if you look at the Christian theology, the void which is represented by zero or nothingness was the state of the universe before the creation of man. Humans sure seeks feel the same way, too. Although I don't know how they felt about zero. But that's their conception as well. There was nothing there's. Void and then also void fits well with chaos, which is the Christian conception of hell. Right. No one's in charge. Right. So, yeah, it was avoided. I don't know. I went back and looked, Chuck, after I wrote this article. When we were studying today, I went back and looked and I didn't find a lot of support for that. I didn't either. I did see that during the Dark Ages, monks kind of were probably they feared zero. Well, Caplan mentioned it in his book. It was out there. But these people did this. They told this guy for saying the word zero. There was nothing like that out there. I think, more to the point, it was the Romans who just didn't use zero. And the west was built by Rome. And that's, I think, where the shunning of zero came from. Not necessarily from fear, but just because the Roman numeral system doesn't have zero. Yeah. I found where they flirted with it at first with nulla N-U-L-L-A which they would represent with a little N. But it clearly didn't take. No. They said, we're not going to use it as zero. No. Why would we ever need zero? We don't need it as zero. Right. Did they talk like that back then, too? Yeah, like Vinny from Brooklyn. Sure, I think so. Where are we? In India? Yeah. We're in the fifth century Ad. In India, and a guy named Ada is possibly the person who invented zero. Really? Possibly. Or discovered, as you like to say. Thank you. Yes, thank you for correcting me with my own words. That happens a lot, doesn't it, when there are your articles? So it is pretty much universally accepted that zero was created or discovered in India, and then it spread pretty quickly over to Islamic nations, Arab nations. And it was the Arabs who taught a guy named Fibonacci, Leonardo Pisa, who was a great mathematician of the west in the 12th century or the 13th century. You know, people are going to say, do the Fibonacci number. Go ahead. Well, no, people are going to ask for that podcast. Okay. In fact, they've already been asking for that podcast. Do you want to do that one? Yeah. You want to? Maybe. Probably not. Well, Fibonacci was the son of a customs officer in Algeria. Chuck yes. And he had Arabic tutors, and they said, hey, kid, we're going to teach you how to really do math. Because by this time, by, I think, the 1200 or the 1100 century, the Arabs were very well versed in mathematics, and the west was still just complete idiots. Fortunately, Fibonacci was over there getting tutored, and he figured out, wow, this is really important, and introduced our Arabic numeral system, which we use today, to the west through a book. So you said he wrote a book. Did he write the book? No, he wasn't the only one. Okay. No, that's not true for the west. Yes, he wrote the book, and then other people wrote treatises on his book. Okay. So he pretty much said the basis yes. Okay. He was the fulcrum, the hinge between west and Middle East. As zero is the fulcrum. Yes, it is. Interesting. So he was the one who introduced it to the west. But again, we say that because we're Western writers. Chuck but it was very well established for hundreds of years by the time Fibonacci heard about zero. Yeah. And you also point out, interestingly, that simultaneously and completely independently of India and Central America, the Maya were also beginning or already using zero mainly for their calendar. Right? Yeah. It was the base of counting, which makes sense. It totally makes sense. And it makes for more accurate calendar. Right, sure. So for Mayan calendars, like, the day of the month would be zero day, then one day, then two days, then three days, and so on. How would you say that, though? Because you say 1st, 2nd, 3rd. How would you say they had different names for the day, like Zool okay. Would be Zul or Mon or something like that. It was like rather than 1st, 2nd, 3rd. They didn't have numerals like that. Like first, 2nd, 3rd. That's Arabic. Right. So to the Maya, it was like dual day. Isn't that Ghostbusters? I think so. Okay, but that was, what, sumerian? Yeah. Zulu sumerians all coming together. So that does make for a lot more accurate counting. And that's one of the big flaws in our calendar, the Gregorian calendar, is that there is no zero year. Well, and we all got that pointed out to us quite through the media, especially when the millennium turned, because there's no year zero. Our decades and our centuries and our millennia actually occur at the end of that year and not the beginning. Like when the clock struck midnight at 2000, we all went, Yay. New millennium. Not so. And we still had a year left. That's right. Have we started counting from zero than January 1, 2000? That would have been the start of the new millennium, but we started counting from one. So one to 2000 is 1999 years rather than 2000 years. And there was one guy in every bar trying to point out to as many people as he could. Do you realize it's not even true? And he's like, why isn't anyone buying me drinking so crazy. Why are they going to beat me up? Yeah, and I put a little notation in there because I have trouble wrapping my head around that sometimes. But the point is, there are ten single digit numbers in the Arabic numerical system that we use. Yes. And it's zero through nine. Anything beyond that is in the tens column or above. And thanks to zero, we have a ten column. Exactly. Take it, Chuck. Well, Western astronomers, they came up with a system late 17th and early 18th century, that designated calendar year, one BC is zero, and then basically anything above or below that would either be plus or minus. So BC or Ad. Right. So two Ad would be minus one. Two BC would be minus one BC. Yes. Since we're not living in Ad, they just kind of screwed with the BC a little bit. So right now we're in plus 2012. Yes. Which also makes it not just calendars. Zero lies between negative one and one and serves as a fulcrum point for basically all numbering, positive and negative. And that was Jacques Cassini who came up with that astronomical calendar. Well, those Italians were all up on this stuff, aren't they? Yeah, it's going to be French. But if it is an Italian well, Jacques, though yeah, who knows? Maybe he's Northern Italian. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, so he basically said, well, wait, why don't we just choose one year to be zero? And then we'll just basically make the calendar based on zero's rightful place of numbering, which is precisely between one and negative one. There's a zero there. It doesn't just go from negative one to 10 is, like you said, the fulcrum of all numbers. It spreads out infinitely on either side. So it's not positive and it's not negative. And so it's the only number that is non positive and non negative, but it's neither a positive number nor a negative number. Wrap your head around that one. Yeah. You college students sitting around here at midnight, just gaze up at the stars and try and figure that out. Start counting. Start counting. It's also an integer, a whole number, right? Yes. And it's very handy when it comes up to ratios in fractions, because a fraction can be written in a couple of ways, either with the one on top of the other or with a little decimal point. Yes. And without those zeros, you wouldn't be able to do that. No. So this decimal system, basically, you can look at it as anything to the right of the decimal. Yes. So the tens, the hundreds thank you. Yes. You're getting as bad as me time. Those are all encapsulated in that zero. That's up to positive one, right? Yeah. Because it's less than a whole one. But it's not so much that it's negative one. Right. It's encapsulated by that zero. So all of these ratios, all of the decimal system gives us these incredibly precise numbers, whereas we can count on whole numbers to the right of zero and positive whole numbers. That just goes on and on and on and measures the vastness of the universe to go the other way to go in this infinite decimal system that's encapsulated within zero lets you measure the infant dismal. Right? Yeah. So it's not like, oh, it's between two and three. Right. I mean, try making high quality machine parts using whole numbers. Yeah. You can't. No, it can't be done. So there's all sorts of things that would have never taken place had zero not given rise to the decimal system, or everything would be really big. Everything would be like twice as large. Like the 10,000 year clock wouldn't even work. Remember they were using, like, fractions of an inch. That still wouldn't work. That's true. What else, Chuck? Well, you point out very astutely some odd properties of zero, and they are actually called the properties of zero because it's such a weird number that you have to have properties to explain it. Exactly. So which is the first one called is the additive property of zero. Addition property. Yeah. Add zero to anything and you're going to get that same thing. That sounds very basic. Same with subtracting. Sure. Five plus zero is five. Five minus zero is five. Right. And it is very basic. But zero is the only number that doesn't affect another number when it's added or subtracted to it, which is important. It is. Anytime a number is the only thing of its kind, it's worth mentioning, like pi, which, by the way, wouldn't exist without zero in the decimal system or any of those otherwise exist to us. Sure. There's the additive inverse property at zero, where any numbers that add up to zero are additive inverses of one another. So negative five plus positive five, or just five, as they call it in positive land, equals zero. So negative five and five are additive inverses of one another. Multiplying from the time I think I learned in the second grade, my multiplication tables, if I remember correctly. Ms. Anderson. Ms. Temple. Thank you very much. Very good. They taught me that if you multiply any number by zero, you're going to get zero. And as you point out, that multiplication is really just a quicker way of adding things. To shortcut. Yeah, to shortcut. So the idea that a number can be added zero times or that zero can be added to itself, that's when I get the most yeah. It just doesn't make any sense. Like, five times zero doesn't mean zero plus zero plus zero plus zero plus zero, that doesn't mean anything. Zero. Yeah. What about dividing by zero? Let me ask you no, let me ask you. This is the part where I was like, nobody understands this, okay? I don't feel very bad about this because no one really understands it. There are these other properties of zero that cover, like, additive inverse, addition, subtract, multiplication. There is no property that says why you can't divide by zero. Because it's so nonsensical. Right. It doesn't even exist. The concept of dividing by zero doesn't really actually exist except in the imagination of people. I bet mathematicians have tried, though, like frustratingly tried. You can't there's nothing you can do. And they don't even fully understand why. But the best explanation that I saw was that it has to do kind of with the multiplication property, right? To where if you divide something so, like, six divided by two equals three. So if you can divide a number, the result of that number by the divisor. So in this case, three and two multiplied by one another should equal the dividend, which is six. Right. Now, if you divide six by zero, it doesn't equal anything. It should equal zero. If you multiply it, it's not going to equal two. Right. That's the best example I could come up with. Yeah, that makes sense, though. It shouldn't. Well, I mean, you're completely insane. It makes sense that it doesn't make sense. Okay. That's what I'm saying. And Stephen Wright had a joke. He said that black holes are where God tried to divide by zero. Wow. You like it? That's good. I still did his one bit. Sometimes when people get in the car with me, I say, hey, put your seatbelt on. I want to try something. That was one of his jokes. Nice. He's like, Just try that whenever someone gets in a car. He's good. Yes. And then also there's the property of zero exponent, which also doesn't make any sense. Chuck. There's negative exponents, like numbers to the negative power, ten to the negative five. Yes. Because of this, mathematically, it works out, but I don't understand it. Numbers to the zero power equal one but that doesn't make any sense because zero multiplied by something should equal zero, not one. That's how it works out, though. Thank you. Magical, mysterious number, my hero zero. And I ran across one other thing that I thought was pretty cool. The evidence of Islamic countries comfort with zero concept. Right. And Western countries discomfort with it can be found still today on elevators. In countries where the Ottoman Turks or any other Islamic nation conquered and ruled for a while, you're still going to find evidence of a comfort with zero. Like in Hungary, if you look in Spain, here, too, if you look on an elevator, the ground floor is zero, and any floor beneath that is a negative number. Really? Like the basement parking, like subject, like, negative one, negative two. Isn't that cool? And apparently that's because of the presence of the Turks who were there for a while. Wow. Yeah. I mean, they didn't have elevators then, but apparently you don't see a floor zero in the west. No, you don't. We just don't like zero that much. Or a floor 13. Right. Although it is 13. We've had that talk before, I think we have, yeah. What do we have here? P one. P two in our building? Yeah. That's so boring. Definitely not negative. Let's say that from now on, like, what level you parked on. I'm on negative four. Yeah. I will say that. I will say that right now, I'm on negative two. I was too early going chuck and also, let's see. You can type zero. You got anything else? You're just happy to be done with this one? No, this is actually really good. I don't know about that. Zero is my hero. Three is the magic number. If you type in zero in the search bar, HowStuffWorks.com it will bring up this article, including a cool little story that we didn't get to about a great parrot. True. And also, I highly encourage you, if this even piqued your interest at all, I highly encourage you to read Zero and Four Dimensions, which is an article you can find online from 2002 by a guy named Hussein Arsham, and he explains in much greater depth in detail, like zero and what's so cool about it. Or if you want to really get into it, robert Kaplan wrote a whole book on it. We should do one on three. All right. I pitched that article a long time ago. Long time ago. On three. Yes, I remember. So those would be our two numbers. I'd have to write it, though, so I don't know if that will ever happen. Get to it. I wrote this so we could do this. You're more of a man than me. I think at some point in the not too distant past check, I said search bar. Yes. So that means it's time for listener mail. Indeed. I'm going to call this coffee including coffee song from a listener. Okay. This is from Ashley. Great work on the coffee podcast, Gents. I could have saved my last four years of work at a cafe just by listening to you all. Really though, it was a splendid way to spend my days getting to know the locals in downtown Edmonton, alberta, Canada, North America, Earth. Have we entered the song yet? Did she rhymed a second ago? No, that is not the song. Okay, that's coming. She's just a rhymer by nature, I think. While I can't say I'm a total coffee snobber expert, I do have a thought on the old why is Starbucks so bitter? Debate. I think that part of the taste comes from the number of beans used in the blend. For instance, at the cafe I used to run, we served both Milano Coffee and then umbria, I believe that each of these companies, plus the coffee I now drink called Intelligentsia, contains a blend of beans, as many as 15 different kinds to create that smooth balance I really love. In my Americanos it's her last name Starbucks. No, she's saying Starbucks doesn't use the blend, so it's more better. Her name is mom and Pop. Her last name. As far as I understand, Starbucks may use as few as one to three types of beans and their espresso blend. Like I said, I think this may be a part of the story, but not likely the whole story. On another note, since leaving the cafe, I now work with a group of software nerds who used to visit my cafe on a regular basis. So now I too get to go for coffee every day. It's one of the perks of the job, pun intended. We even have a little coffee song and she recorded this and sent it to us. So we're going to play that right now. Coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee all day long when I eat some coffee I sing the coffee song. Well, that's the G rated version I learned. So how about that? Josh that was something else. Thank you, Ashley, for that. Yeah, thanks a lot. She says, as you can tell, we're a bit mad about our coffee drinking. It's the new smoke break for us. Where is that person from? She didn't say. Oh no, she did say. I'm sorry. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. That's right. Well, thank you very much for that. We appreciate you and your coworkers for making that song, for listening, for drinking coffee and eat, for caring. That's great. Yeah. If you have a song, Chuck, we get them from time to time and I feel like we should be better about playing them. Yes, we want to hear it. You can, I guess. Make it as an MP3. MP4. MP3 is good. Right, Jerry? MP3. And you can send it to us. You can tweet to us and tell us it's on the way. Hey, podcast. You can go on to Facebook and tell us it's on the way@facebook.com. And you can actually send it to us at stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. Stuffyhealth is production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio App, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal. Morbid part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this charttopping series will have you hooked before you know. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." | |
cf97258c-5467-11e8-a32a-4b5855c5196f | The Lava Lamp: Goes Great With Acid | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-lava-lamp-goes-great-with-acid | What started out as an egg timer at a London pub became a furnishing for bachelor pads before it took its rightful place as the most recognizable icon of psychedelia. The lava lamp became popular with people on LSD not once, but twice, decades apart. | What started out as an egg timer at a London pub became a furnishing for bachelor pads before it took its rightful place as the most recognizable icon of psychedelia. The lava lamp became popular with people on LSD not once, but twice, decades apart. | Thu, 06 Sep 2018 13:30:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=6, tm_hour=13, tm_min=30, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=249, tm_isdst=0) | 44465928 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's charles W, Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there. Lights are turned down here. We got our crew VAD going super swinging style. I couldn't get square, could I? Couldn't get more square. Is that what you're saying? Square? Yeah, square. Well, could I answer my question? You're not square. I bet you got a lava lamp in your house. I don't, actually. Never have. Really? Never have had one of you. I would love one. I think we had one in college in one of our houses. I doubt very seriously it was a trademark original lava lamp. Lava lamp, yeah. But it was probably a knockoff because I don't think it worked great. There's a lot of knockoffs for those. Yeah, you can get little cheapies now. There's no good. Right. You want the real one? Yeah. And I think if for no other reason than to support the original OG stuff handmade in the UK. Yeah. Still? Yeah. You believe that? I do, actually. That's great. Based on the woman who owns it now, she seems like the type who would just be, like, sticking to it. I could make way more money, but I'm not going to because it's the way it should be done, is how it started. I'm staying with tradition. That's how she does it. So we're talking about lava lamps and actually, Chuck, can you just give me a second here? Yes. Before we get started? Yes. Can I give a little plug? Sure. Okay. So as you know but I want to share with everybody else, on October 8, I will be doing a live show on Existential Risks. It's called Existential Risks. Or How I Learned to Start Worrying and Love Humanity. It's a pretty great show. Yeah. There's slides involved. There's doom and gloom, maybe a little bit of optimism. Who knows? There's some humor mixed in. It's going to be a pretty good show. I did a similar show at the Bellhouse a couple of years back. This is a totally brand new show, so even if you saw it, then, this will be new to you. But it's October 8 at The Bellhouse, and if you happen to want to go, tickets are available@thebellhousny.com. Dude, I would be there with bells on. I will list you, but I'll be in California. Well, I'm going to list you anyway. Yeah. Like former Falcons coach Jerry Glanville used to leave tickets for Elvis at every Falcons game. That's smart. It's stupid because those are two tickets that could have gone to me. Oh, that's a good point. Just dumb. Oh, hey, are you going to be on the radio for the Chiefs? No, you turn it down. I kept forgetting the response. I was out of town. So it already came and went. Yes. For those of you wondering why, we're just talking and chit chatting, and I wish I had his name. Can you find it? Some of the guys from the voice of the Kansas City Chiefs radio, they played a preseason game against the Falcons this last Friday in Atlanta. Invited us to be on the field and in the booth. Yeah. And I was out of town for my niece's wedding. Congratulations, Shelby and Dan. Oh, hey, yeah, congrats. And it was two family weddings, two out of town family wedding weekends in a row. Yes. So congratulations. Also to Alex and Catherine. Alex is Emily's cousin. Okay. So we went to Columbus, Ohio, and then Jacksville, North Carolina lucky went to these weddings, and I was not able to go to the Falcons game. Well, that's quite a sacrifice, because a guy named Dan Israel dan. Dan invited us to hang out in the broadcast booth for the preseason game between the Falcons and the Juniors. It would have been so all over the world. And I presumed to help call the game. Oh, yeah, I would guess. I'm pretty sure he would have put us on. Well, I told him I emailed him back and said thanks, but if you ever come back, let me know. I get to it. I just remembered I got to respond to him and say thanks. Can I come? I just needed fire up the way back. Machine. So that's a lot of chit chat. Yeah, if you don't like our size and tangents and stuff, I'll bet you hate this episode already. But the net net of all that is I'm doing a live show at the Bell. The net of all that is that we're about to talk lava lamps. Dude, that's the net net. Corporate goon. I think you've wanted to do this one for a bit, right? No. No. Okay, I just made that up then. No, I was, like, trying to come up with an episode idea. Sometimes it's harder than others. I don't know if you've noticed it's getting tougher, but the world's getting smaller. I remembered we did that one on Food fads. I was like, that was an interesting episode. Let me go see if I can find another fad. And one of them that came up was this petroch article about lavalier. Okay, maybe we should do pet rocks one day. So I was like, all right, let me see if this is any good. And it was okay. But then I found an article by Zachary Crockett on Price Anomics, which is one of the better websites of all time. Yeah, Zachary Crockett is one of the better nonfiction magazine writers of all time. Agreed. On the web. Yeah. And this article, The Lava Lamp Just Won't Quit, really kind of gave a boost to the stuff on how stuff works. Yeah. So let's go back in time. Let's hop in the old wayback, machine. Well, and speaking of, we actually have Wayback Machine T shirts now. I know. At our Tpublic.com store. Yeah. Got a bunch of different merch now. All right. But we're in our own version of the Way Back Machine, which is better than what's on that T shirt. Okay. And we're going back to 1918 in the county of Dorset in England, and a little boy named Edward Craven Walker is born. He would grow up, and we follow him in the Way Back Machine as he's growing. He eventually becomes an RAF pilot in World War II. Right. Looks like everything's going normal and smoothly. Yeah. He actually flew recon missions, photographic missions, where they would go up in planes and take pictures of what the enemy is doing. And eventually the war ended. And after the war, he said, I'm going to go live in this little trailer in London behind a pub and build a travel agency. Yeah. He actually created a home swapping program like Airbnb, but this is in, like, the 50s. Interesting. Yeah. He's pretty ahead of his time. He was, in a lot of ways, it seemed like. So, again, everything's going pretty normally, right? Yeah. He's just travel agenting and doing quite well at it, I think. And he goes to the southern coast of France and what this author calls a life changing trip, and he comes back a nudist filmmaker. Underwater nudist filmmaker. I think he did drugs down there. What do you think what that means? I just think he took his clothes off for the first time ever and was like, I had never really noticed the breeze before. This is nice. You think? Feels like drugs were involved. It's possible, but he seemed to not really think too highly of drugs, so I think it was more just like actually, you're probably right. He became a nudist is what it was. Yeah, I think you're right. So he took his clothes off for the first time. He was never nude before. That right. And in 1960, he actually, under a pseudonym, made a movie called Traveling Light. It was a short film with a naked lady performing underwater ballet that, believe it or not, did. Okay. In London. Had a six month run when was the last movie you knew? Had a six month run at a major theater in London? Titanic. Maybe it was lucky. Probably. Avatar is the last one. Probably. So that was actually Chuck, part of a trilogy. Titanic? No. Traveling Light. Oh. What were the other two? Sunswept? Because I was trying to get information. I was trying to watch it, and I couldn't find any. I'll bet you were. I know. I couldn't find it either, but I found some mention of it, and I saw the movie poster for it or whatever. Yeah, I saw that. It was, I think, preceded by a movie called Eaves on Skis. New to skiing trip. Okay. Sunswept sounded like what this is describing as traveling light. And then Traveling Light was actually, I think, the second of the three. It's actually a sweet little trilogy. Preporn time in humanity when, like, hey, here's just a naked person skiing titillating as we get. I've seen it referred to as nudist propaganda films, which is basically like, look, this is the life. I went to the south of France. Now you can, too. And it's certainly not prepaid. I was kidding about that. We should do an episode on pornography. I was going to say we've done one on nudism new beaches, at least. Yeah, we should do one on porn. That'd be good. We should. That could be a two parter. Maybe even, like, three or four. Yes, maybe five or six. All right. I'm Ruthie and this is Eugene Porn. You should know. So here's the thing about Edwin Craven Walker's film career. Yes. He was very successful at it. He became something of a legend, and he invested his money in building a nudist camp. Yeah. He's like, I got all this dough. Here's what I want to do with it. So I'm sure a few of you are like, how's about lava lamps? Chill out. Now we've reached the part where the lava lamps come in. That's right. And the lava lamps come in one day, and I think the mid 50s, where Edward Craven Walker and I believe it's hyphenated actually, Craven Walker is his last name. Oh, is that the deal? Yeah. And he's hanging out in a pub called the Queen's Head. The Queen's Head? That's in New Forest in the southwest of London. And he's sitting at a bar ordering a beer pint, and he notices on the bar, along with the liquor bottle, there's a cocktail shaker, but there's weird bubbles floating around in it. Yeah, glass one, too. Not like a steel one. Right. And there's actually you can see pictures of it on the mathemo site. Oh, really? The original thing? Wow. Yeah. So he's sitting there about to drink, like you said, and it's got water and oil, and there's a little camp stove underneath it, heating it, and it looks like what would become a lava lamp. It's got the oils and little blobs, and it's floating around, and it's the thing that we all recognize now. But when this dude sees it back then and no one had ever seen anything like this, he was like, wow, what is that? Right? And the bartender was like, that's an egg timer. Yeah. Kind of a weird answer, but that's weird. That's what the lava lamp started out as, an egg timer. There was a guy named Alfred trivia question it is. A guy named Alfred Dunnett, who was a regular at the Queen's Head in New Forest, had built this thing where it was this glass cocktail shaker on a camp stove, just a little tiny camp stove. And he put oil in the water, and when the oil rose to the top, by the time it took to heat up and rise to the top, it meant that your egg was fully hard boiled. It was an egg timer. Yeah, but Edward Craven Walker saw this and said, no, this is way more than an egg timer. This is the most mesmerizing thing I've ever seen. And so he did it, right? He found out that Alfred Dunnett had passed away, but apparently he had a patent on this egg timer. So Edward Craven Walker went to the widow of Alfred Dunit and said, hey, how about you sell me this patent, the history of bad deals. But here's the thing, you go ahead and I'm going to retort. Okay. Well, I mean, I might even retort for you, because when you look at the history of business and bad deals, he got this patent for less than \u00a320. But at the same time, Dunnett's widow was probably like, what in the world? Why would anyone ever care about this? Right? It's just sitting there. Yeah. And not only that, this guy doesn't want to make an egg timer. He wants to make something bigger out of this thing. So he actually rescued a patent from obscurity and improved on it. And by the way, West Egg doesn't convert for pounds. It's strictly USD. But there's a site called Imkate which does inflation calculation for pounds. Oh, interesting. So \u00a320, according to Imkate, says it would be about \u00a3783 today, which is about $1,000. Yes, roughly. So that's not bad. Yes. Here's $1,000 that you were totally not expecting for something you were never going to do anything with. I'm going to take it and present it to the world. Yeah. So he gets a bottle. It's called treetop orange squash. It was a drink that he used to drink as a kid in England. It's still around, I think. So I don't think it has this original shape, but the shape of that bottle, more or less, is sort of what the shape of the glass of any lava lamp that you see today looks like. Yeah. You look at it and you're like, oh, yeah, of course. It would be the prototype. And so he gets this thing, he gets a couple of liquids. It is not oil and water like I probably thought before I researched this. It is water and wax, and they are what's known, and we'll get into the science in a minute, but mutually insoluble, meaning that they don't dissolve into one another like oil and water. Sure. And he has a few other little chemicals here and there and got a little light bulb, screwed it into a base and kind of hooked it all up. And the astrolamm, as he called it, was born. Yes, it was astro light, astro lamp. Okay. The astrolamps that's another trivia question for you. The original name of the lava lamp was the astro lamp. Should we take a break? All right. We'll be back right after this and talk about science. All right, Chuck. Science. We're going to talk science because there's actually some physics behind the lava lamp, and we're going to explain it because it's actually understandable. Yeah. Who was the guy who wrote this again? Zachary Crockett. But this is a Houseworks article that explains the physics. Oh, the inside the lamp part. Yeah, because I thought that was kind of cute. Actually. The bullet points for that are the things that you need are a compound that makes up floating blobs. Blobs and quotes. A compound that the blob floats in there wasn't quotes that time. And then a lamp that illuminates the display and provides the necessary heat to move the blobs. Again, no quotes. Yeah. That's it, though. But that's what you need. But we're going to talk about more science as far as mutually insoluble liquids go. Right. Because it sounds really easy. Right. You got your blobs, you got your liquid, the blobs floating, you got your light to heat the whole thing up. Easy peasy. It's actually really hard, because what you're walking is a very fine line between something that will work as a lava lamp and something that will just not work at all. Yeah. Or look like a lava lamp gone bad. Right, exactly. So you've got immiscible compounds, compounds that don't dissolve into one another. But you need to have them. They need to have pretty similar densities. Not exactly the same, because then it won't work. But not too different either, because then that won't work either, and you'll understand why in a second. They need to be fairly close. And so the reason why Edward Craven Walker used wax and water is because water, plain old, fresh water, has a density of 10. It's basically the set point for densities. Paraffin wax has a density of zero eight, which means that it's slightly less dense than water. But close, right? Very close. So if you heat up something, it tends to expand, right? Correct. When it expands, it becomes less dense, which means that something that was more dense before will be less dense. Meaning that if it's in some other liquid that's denser, this less dense thing will float to the top. Yes. If it's less dense, it rises. If it's more dense, it will fall. And that's why, if you want to change this density and make these molecules spread out right. One of the things you can do, especially in the case of a lava lamp, is to heat it up. Right. That's the point of that bulb at the bottom of the lava lamp. Yeah. Because if you see a lava lamp that's not turned on, you just see the blob at the bottom, and the fluid is not water, of course, sitting at the top, and they're separated, but they're just sitting on top of one another. Right. And it actually is water. Oh, is it really? I thought it was something else, too. They added some other stuff, but the liquid that the blobs are in is mostly water. Okay. Yeah. So here's the thing. When you turn on a lava lamp. You turn that, you start the heat of the light bulb. Yeah. And that wax begins to warm up and it liquefies. And as it liquefies, it becomes less dense. Yeah. And things get really exciting at that point. Right. And then it starts to flow to the top. Right? Yeah. You're like, all right, things are happening. It actually forms what are called stalactites. Yeah. And everyone's like, you feeling it yet? Right. And as it starts to form stalactites, then eventually the tops of them break off and it floats up to the top, and you're like, this is all yeah, I'm definitely feeling it. And then as it gets to the top of the lamp, it's far enough away from the heat source that it starts to cool down. And so it sinks again to the bottom. And as it does, it passes another Glob that's on the way to the top. And then when it reaches the bottom, the whole process starts over again. And that wax glob gets reheated and it goes back up and it passes on the way up the glob. Then it just passed, coming back down. And that's a lava lamp. And again, it sounds simple, but to get the wax density and the water density just right, you have to add some other ingredients. And so going back to the original prototype that was created by Edward Craven Walker, it's really impressive that this guy with zero chemistry training whatsoever managed to do this ever, let alone in just less than a decade. Yeah. I mean, I imagine there was a lot of trial and error trying to get that thing just right. Because, again, like I said, you think it sounds easy, go build one on your own and prepare to be disappointed. And you can you can make one with oil, water, food coloring and then Alka Seltzer. It's called a Janky lava lamp. It's terrible. But this is nothing like this. Yeah. Because the whole point of a lava lamp is to create this mood and to have these amorphous blobs separating and floating around and rising and falling. And that's the whole effect. It wasn't meant to be a lamp to give much light. It's to create mood and atmosphere. And as we will see, we keep making little druggie jokes. That was a big part of why they sold. Right, but we'll get to that in a minute. Right, but you were talking about the fact that it was impressive. It says only five or six people actually know this exact formula. Still, that who work for the real lava lamp company. And there are plenty of knock offs, but that original lava lamp recipe is not known by many people. Very closely guarded. Yeah. Even in Craven Walker's original patent, it has the ingredients, but it doesn't say in what quantities or anything like that. It's still a trade secret to this day. Yes. And also, he figured you had to there was a lot of trial and error because he had to add the water very slowly, apparently, or else it becomes what's known as an emulsion, meaning it's just sort of mixed together. Yeah. Like you can conceivably mix oil and water together, especially if you have an emulsifier, but you can also do it by stirring it really fast and it'll mix together. And that's not what you want. You want them to be separate from the first moment they come in contact together in the lamp globe. Right. So 1963 years, I think it took him to finally get the design right. He called at the Astro Lamp. He built a little factory in his backyard. And his wife at the time, I think he was married four times, but she was like, he was the type of guy that would finish this thing once he started it. Right. And he did. And originally he decided that it fit really well with this post World War II British demand for very flamboyant, colorful home furnishings. He's like, this is nothing if not flamboyant and colorful. The original lava lamp was yellow liquid water and red wax globs on a gold base. Great looking. A bit groovy as groovy gets. Right. But he originally envisioned it is like, this is something for a cool bachelor pad. If you're a wealthy bachelor and you're looking to put something that's very interesting and high end as a home furnishing, try the Astrolamp. It was originally envisioned as a high end home furnishing. Yeah. There's this one great ad that had the scene of a bachelor pad on a magazine page and the caption said, the perfect gift for one's relatives, one's friends, and dash it all oneself more by three. Yeah, exactly. By three of them. This actually didn't work out very well for Craven Walker because he and his wife were driving around in their van, going to places like Herods and getting a very chilly reception to these things. Apparently, the Herods buyer thought the lamps were disgusting and ordered them taken away. I don't know why. Can't imagine seeing them as disgusting. Well, maybe there was, like, pubic hair stuck to the outside of them that could make a lava lamp disgusting. Right. Well, I imagine at the time, especially in stuffy old England, this post war transition wasn't met with open arms by everybody. I'm sure the traditionalist thought it was disgusting. This blobby thing floating around, I get, especially with the pubic hair, craven Walker, he was like, well, fine, I'm just going to create my own company and I'll market it myself. So he formed Crestworth, which is the original company that put out the Astrolamp, which we know and love is lava lamps. And I should say there are a lot of different names for lava lamps and it's really tough to distinguish which one is actual trademark. So lava lamp seems to be a generic term. Lava lite seems to be generic. But Lava all caps, is a trademark name for the American version. Okay, but there doesn't seem to be a trademark name for the lava lamp. The original one in England. Oh, really? They just call it a lava lamp? I thought it was lava lamp. What's the trademark? Because not that I can see our dumb article calls them motion lamps, and I thought that was to avoid the generic term. Yeah, I thought they were doing that to avoid saying lava lamp. No, that's so like, 2005, how stuff works. Call it a generic it's not kleenex, it's facial tissue. Yeah, that's totally why they call it that. Oh, goodness, you're so right. All right, so these things aren't selling to the rich and powerful. They did not see it as a luxury item. But then the 1960s are rolling along. LSD comes on the scene. Pink Floyd is in the back room. The yardbirds are upfront. Sidbury is for freaking out. He's freaking out. And the astrolamp really fit in to this whole scene. Like he was mismarketing this thing from the beginning. I think he didn't predict the 60 psychedelic. He was more into, like, the swinging Austin Powers bachelor stuff that was pre psychedelic and moved into psychedelia. But he should thank his lucky stars, and I'm sure he did more than once that the psychedelic thing happened, because when that happened and the hippies in London found out about lava lamps, lava lamps took off. Oh, yeah. Just shot off like a rocket. And at first, Edward Craven Walker was not entirely cool with this. I mean, he was happy to have the money, and his lamp was finally a success. But he knew what people were buying these for. They were buying them so that they could take acid and stare at them for 8 hours. Right? Yeah. And he actually had an ad where he said, if you buy my lamp, you won't need drugs. Which is L seven. Yeah, because the ad should have read, this goes great with drugs. Right? Like, drugs. You're going to love my lamp. That is the level of dedication this guy should have had to LSD because LSD made him a very wealthy person, like, in a very short amount of time. Should we take a break? Yeah. All right, we're going to talk about how they hit America right after this. All right. So they're taking off in England. He takes these things to a trade show in Germany in 1965, and a couple of dudes named Adolf Wetheimer and William Rubenstein I'm pretty sure they didn't say their names like that. They're from Chicago. Yeah. So they were just good Midwestern Germans. And they said, I want to buy the North American manufacturing rights. We're going to call it the lava lite. Lite. And we have our own drug culture that's starting to boom over here. And I think he should be a big hit. Right? And they were. And they got them on TV. They got placement. They got them in. Doctor who. That was huge. Got it in the Avengers. Not the old TV show. The Avengers. Yeah. It says here though, it was on James Bond, and I looked high and low for what they were talking about and I actually came across a post on the internet, of all places, by a guy who runs a website. Anthony Vase runs a website. I can't remember the name of it. I think maybe Lava Love or something like that. But he was on there saying, I saw this in an article that it says it was in a James Bond film. What James Bond film are they talking about on like a James Bond fan forum? They're like, no idea, bud. And if we don't know it didn't happen, I have no idea what James Bond film it was in the first giveaway to me that's bogus is here's the sentence. A red model debuted in 68 episode of Doctor Who. This is followed by appearances in The Prisoner, the Avengers and James Bond talked about generic. Remember that movie? James Bond? Sure. We should ask the Great Met Gorley. Does he know James Bond of the super Ego podcast? Yeah. Okay. He's an aficionado. Well, there you go. Called James Bonding. There you go. I bet Gorley would know. So on that forum, somebody's like maybe that Woody Allen spoof Casino Royale. But I couldn't find any mention of lava lamps in that movie either, so who knows? But they made some product placement. They were starting to pop up all over the place. And apparently Edward Craven Walker knew that he'd made it. His wife later recounted when they found out that Ringo Star had just bought one in 1968. I love it. He also might know he made it by the fact that he sold 7 million of them annually by the end of the 60s. Apparently he was so eccentric that he drove a fire truck. Yeah, he ride around a fire truck. Yeah, he also drove nothing if it was a car, nothing but British made Jaguars. Oh, well, nothing wrong with that. Sure. Well, it depends on the year because they have some pretty terrible Jaguars for a while. They're in the 80s. Like any fad would go away and in the late seventy s the lava lamp I remember the lava lamps kind of just weren't around that much anymore. By the time we were kids, they didn't even have like kitschy appeal any longer. They were just like everyone became the Herods buyer. These are disgusting. Get them out of here. But he was smart enough to know that fads come back around. He did not shut down the business. He did not just sell it off for pennies on the dollar. No, he kept releasing new stuff. Yeah, nothing really took. I tried to find any like his other little inventions, but I couldn't really get much. So nothing made the. Waves that the astrolamp did. And by the late 1980s, they declined to about 10 lamps per year. That is so few from 7 million a year. Yeah. Even you would think you'd get 1000, like, white elephant gift purchases. Sure. Like, look, this is the dumbest thing I could find. I mean, I guess it's what they were so 1000 a year at that point. And then a woman that we mentioned earlier, name Cressida Granger or Chrissida Granger, great name, she's 22 years old, ran an antique booth and saw these things were selling, like, the vintage ones, these used lava lamps. This is back in 1989, I think. Yeah. And so she was like, These things are kind of selling. She got in touch with the guy with Craven Walker and said, hey, I'd like to buy your company or partner with you in Crestworth if you're open to it. He said, Fine. Meet me at this nudist camp. And she went, all right, keep your pants on, and I'll do so. And by all accounts, they were fully closed and struck up a deal where she would take over operations and as managing director. And they had a deal in place and great deal for her where she could slowly buy his company from him overtime. Right. So think about being 22 and having that kind of, like, get up and go. I love it that you're like, I'm starting to sell some vintage lava lamps. I'll go see if I can buy the company. But then from Craven Walker's perspective, you're like, I'm down to selling a thousand of these a year. Why not do that? Yeah. If this person wants to invest in the company, why not? And so Cressida Granger's timing could not have been better. She was really prescient to notice that the vintage lava lamps were selling. The reason the vintage lava lamps were selling was because there was an acid revival going on. The same reason lava lamps sold the first time around is the reason they sold the second time around. Everybody discovered that they really, really like LSD. And lava lamps go really, really well with LSD. Well, and not only that, but that was with house music and ecstasy and raves and Austin Powers. Like, that whole thing kind of came back. Well, Austin austin Powers is like a kind of a third wave. Yeah. That was mid to late 90s. Yeah. Like, I think 97. So she oversaw a revival of the Lava lamp, a resurgence in it, and saw the manufacturing uptick in it, too, in the late 80s, early ninety s. And then managed to ride that wave through to the late 90s when it ticked up even further because of Austin Powers. And they started to sell so much. Cressida Granger says they sold more in the 90s than they did in the 60s. That's amazing. Yeah. And she started the whole thing at 22, going up to Edward Craven Walker and saying, how about it, partner? Yeah. And so in 1991, the 20 year patent expired and Granger said that no one realized this, thankfully, and so we just kind of kept monopolizing the business and she slowly bought it out over time. And I think by 92, she renamed the company Mathmuss, which apparently was a tip of the cap to barbarella the film. Yeah, there's like an energy bubble that lives underneath the city or something called Math Muscle, and that's what it's called today. If you go to the website, she moved into the manufacturing facility, so she didn't say, hey, let's take this state site or take it to China. No, she said, we're going to keep doing it right here. Endorse it. And like you said at the beginning, that is still where these things are made today, by hand, by British workers. Endorse it. I think they said, how many of them can a good worker making a day? 400. Amazing. Fill in these bottles by hand. Right? So if you look at the mathematics lava lamps and compare the price to one you just find online, like a knock off, which technically they're not a knock off because the patent wore off. Right. But still a knock off. It's like $80 compared to, like, 15 or $20 for what looks to be the same thing. Actually more than \u00a3177. That's how much mathematics is now. Yeah, like, they're standard. The original classic lava lamp is 77 lbs. Got you. The reason why they're that much more is because they're handmade in the UK, just as they have been since the Love It man. It's pretty cool. And she said that there's a lot of pressure for her to transfer production overseas, where it's going to be way cheaper and she can make way more money. And she's like, no, I'm keeping it here. Yeah, they're more expensive. And, yeah, we would sell more if they were cheaper, but I'm just not doing it, if you haven't noticed, I'm a rich woman, right? I'm doing all right. I've been pretty well off since 22. I've got all the acid I can take. No, all right. Should we talk about lava lamp tips? I want to say one more thing. That another reason I think crested a granger is pretty awesome. She kept Edward Craven Walker on as a consultant up into his death, even though she had full control of the company, I think, in 1998 or whatever, and he was done. She kept him on as a consultant until he died and it was two years later. But she didn't know when he was going to die. Sure. Unless she poisoned him with a lot of acid or something, she probably didn't do that, but I thought that was a pretty mark in her favor for sure, that she kept the eye on the original creator, the second creator on as a consultant. I'd like to meet her one day. So, yeah, I think we should give some lava lamp tips. Because, frankly, if I were out there listening and this happened to me during research hearing all this stuff, I'd be like, I want a lava lamp. Yeah. So if you buy a lava lamp, there's actually some things you need to know about how to use it correctly. Yeah. So apparently the bottles are replaceable, so they do run out after about 2000 hours of operating time. So they sell replacement bottles, which is really nice. I don't know about this. To get rid of your old bottle, make a hole in the metal cap with a sharp point. Yeah. I also saw that you can pull the liquid out. That seems a little unsafe. That's what the Mathemos site recommends. Really? Yeah. They say you can recycle the glass. You just got to get rid of the contents inside. I also saw there's an SFGATE article on how to revitalize vintage lava lamps, and they say you can get that cap off with vise grips. You should not do that. Don't do that. Josh and Chuck didn't tell you to do that. I'm just saying. I saw that on SF gate. I don't know if I do that. Right. So recycle it. You can get the bottle replaced. The liquid eventually will fade. At least the color in the liquid will. Yes. Over time, like we said, that 2000 hours is a lot of hours. Sure. It's a lot of acid, a lot of trips. Here's another one. The lamp. The very first time you take it out of the box, it may take up to an hour and a half to start working. But once you have used it, it doesn't take quite that long. You should have your room be at least 68 degrees Fahrenheit, 20 Celsius. Because I think if it's too cold, it won't work. Right? Yeah. And you don't want it near an air conditioner or draft or anything like that. Or in the sun, necessarily. Well, the sun will make the color fade that much faster. Yeah. Right. So if it's too cold, it won't work. But then they also have a tendency to overheat, too. Yeah. If you come in your room and you're flying right. And your lava lamp is just a single blob and it's just a big blob, that means it's overheated or the universe is ending around you right now. So eight to 10 hours, they said, is the max. You want to run that thing in a row? Yeah. Turn it off and let it cool. Yeah, there you go. That's your fix. You let it cool. And then so no more than 8 hours, usually for normal operation, and then in between uses, let it cool completely. And that's just going to extend the life of your wax that much longer. But then another reason you don't want to overheat it is because it is possible, and it's probably not possible for it to overheat with the bulb itself. Like the glass. But one thing they say is never ever put that thing on a stove, which some people have done, and you can understand why you'd want to do that. You got a hot date or your ass is kicking in faster than you think. Right? It's taking too long, so you'd put it on the stove. You don't want to do that. And seriously, at least one person has died from putting a lava lamp on a hot stove. Yeah, it's hard to believe, but you sent this over. In 2004, a young man named Philip Quinn was 24 years old in Kent, Washington, put his lava lamp on a stove. It exploded, and shards of glass shot into his heart. He stumbled in his bedroom and died. And apparently no drugs or alcohol were involved. So it wasn't like he was just, like, messed up and goofing around. It sound like he just wanted to heat it up faster. Yeah, that's what I think. He's impatient, wanted his lava lamp heated up and then some yahoo drank it, right? Yeah, somebody in the 1996 article in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, they described a guy in his mid sixties who drank the contents of a lava lamp. Wavy Gravy. Yeah, and then immediately regretted it because he spent three months recovering from kidney failure. Man, what a dummy. And then there's one more thing about lava lamps. This is pretty recent. It's kind of awesome. There's a company called Cloudflare. Yes. I didn't understand this at all. Okay, so whenever you're on the web, when you go into a new website, you're assigned a code that you use on that website, and it's supposed to be random, or else somehow hackers can impersonate you. If it's not a random code, humans are not capable of generating random numbers, and the computers we program, by extension, aren't either. Okay, I can generate a random number. You can't? 89764. Two not random. That would be funny if you were like the new Internet security guy. You just start spitting out numbers and foil all the hackers. Well, for now, until they employ you. This company, Cloudflare, has a wall of 100 lava lamps and a camera recording their movement. And the completely random, unpredictable movement of these globs on the video screen gets turned into pixels, and those pixels get turned into a random number. So this random number is generated by the movement of lava lamps. And that's how about 15% of Internet traffic gets their random number. Security codes generated by a bank of lava lance at club players offices in San Francisco. That's pretty cool. Of course it's in San Francisco. Of course they micro dose out there, which I think we've been on the record is looking down. You want to hear an interesting tidbit about random numbers? And I don't know if this trick works. Quick, give me another random number. 986-7539. That is a good one. Well, that's my story, though. Apparently that old song, 86753 Nine jenny right. If you go to a store where you have a rewards program and they say, enter your number, apparently enough people sign up using that number that you can go to any store in the country and spit that number out and you will get to whatever discount I'm going to try that. Nice to work. Like you're traveling and you go into the BevMo or bottle of wine like you got your BevMo card. I'm like, oh, I'm just in town. We don't have BevMos in Atlanta. Just say 867-5309. That's awesome. And what if they're like, you're the 1000 customer or whatever? You're under arrest, you're tripping. And it's bad news from there. It's got to be the last acid reference. I don't know. Is there one in this list or mail coming up? I bet we can work one in. So if you want to know more about lava lamps, go get one. And maybe if you've got the coin splurge for a handmade, one from the UK from Athlos. If not, get one from Lava. Like here in the US. We won't judge or just get one on Alibaba or Amazon. Whatever floats your boat. Okay. And since I said whatever floats your boat, that means it's time for listener mail called this board breaking. Follow up sometimes episodes that I think like, yeah, it's fine. We get tons of reactions. Oh, this one, we just got something wrong. Right. Physics wrong. Well, that too, but we had a lot of cottage and martial arts. Okay. Yeah. People write in Enthusiasts about board breaking. Right. They really were into this. So this is kind of a two parter with a little correction in the end. Hey, guys, listening to board breaking, it sounds like you had a confusing source. I hope I can clear it up. He said that when breaking a board with a karate chop, you want the grain parallel to your hand, but you weren't sure what to do with the grain when striking it with a closed fist. Okay. What matters isn't the orientation of the grain compared to the hand, but the orientation relative to how the board is supported. When stressed, the board naturally wants to crack along the grain, not across it. So you want to be sure that the grain isn't oriented so that the fibers in the wood span from one support to the other, like the person holding it or it'll be too strong. That makes sense. Yeah. When oriented correctly, the grain will be parallel to the hand for an open handed chop, but that's just coincidental with being oriented correctly compared to the supports. Okay, I hope I was able to say this clearly, guys. Totally. I can understand why your source had trouble putting it clearly. I think by source they mean you. That's from David Branson. And then we also got a little bit of the formula wrong for force equals mass times acceleration. Yes. He said it's force equals mass times acceleration, not force equals mass times velocity. The thing is, with physics, like, most of those terms are interchangeable. It means the same thing. Joe Dyer says, acceleration is the derivative velocity, velocity is the derivative of position. And Joe also says, yes, I'm an engineer, so I won't bust your chops over this. Too bad. Yeah. So thanks, Joe, for being nice. And thanks to everyone who wrote in with those corrections and your enthusiasm for board breaking. So Joe wrote both of those? No. Joe Dyer wrote that one. And then David Branson got you of Branson, Missouri. No, that's good. Okay. He wrote maybe. I don't know. Probably not nice. Missouri's are nice. That's true. Well, thank you, David. And thank you, Joe. And thank you, like you said to everybody who wrote in, including those of you who wrote in while you were on acid, if you want to get in touch with this, you can follow us on social media, go to our website, stuffyyshow.com, and you'll find all the links there. And you can also send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuffbodcast@howstepworks.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 pools like, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from exactly right media, my Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilgarif and Georgia Hardstock, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more. 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." | |
107bdfa2-ea6f-11eb-9558-f7dac3c04b62 | The Origins of Some Everyday Superstitions | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-origins-of-some-everyday-superstitions | Why exactly do we avoid walking under a ladder? Why is stepping on a crack in the sidewalk such a big deal? What kind of monster carries a rabbit’s foot in their pocket? The answers to these questions and more lie in wait ahead in this episode. Look out! | Why exactly do we avoid walking under a ladder? Why is stepping on a crack in the sidewalk such a big deal? What kind of monster carries a rabbit’s foot in their pocket? The answers to these questions and more lie in wait ahead in this episode. Look out! | Thu, 22 Jul 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=203, tm_isdst=0) | 38797155 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. Josh here, Chuck. There, not Josh and Clark, which cracks me up still every time. This is Josh and Chuck, your pals. You know us, don't you know us? And this is stuff you should know. Are you superstitious at all? I feel like we probably talked about this at some point. Yeah, I was like, have we done a superstitious episode? And the closest one we did was Friday the 13th. Am I superstitious? To answer your question, Chuck, let me just get back to that right now. Yes, I am in a lot of dumb ways, but, like, really childish ways. I'm not in any way, shape or form genuinely superstitious, but I knock wood when I say something that, like, invites the hubris of the gods, you know? I feel like I've seen that out of you a little bit here and there, now that you mention it, what else do I do? Oh, I throw salt over my shoulder when I walk under ladders. Yeah, I've got no problem with ladders. It's just ridiculous. Okay. Yeah, see, I'm not superstitious at all and sometimes even bugs Emily that I will sort of flout that blatantly by walking under ladders or not knocking on wood. And she's just like, just do it. And I'm like, better safe than sorry. That's the superstitious mindset. Better safe than sorry, I guess, so and it's fine. I'm not going to yuck someone's young. Superstitions are just sort of silly and fun, but I'm a man of science, and I know that there is no real world connection to knocking on wood. No. So I don't do it, but I will do it to satisfy my wife. Yeah, I think that's very kind of you. And I don't make fun of her. I don't go, okay, well, do this dumb thing you think worked. Right. I'll knock on what I'll say. Okay, sorry. I think I've said before, you meet superstitious of the number four and nine. So I will do things for her, too. Like, I'll try not to let the gas number, like the dollar amount or the gallon amount have a four in it, which is harder than you think to do or not. When she turns 49, is she going to freak out? She's going to be like, well, I'm 50. She's going to go, right, 50 for two years. Yeah, for sure. Let's say 40 for a year. That's what I do. Oh, that's an even better idea. I'll pass that one along doors and then skip right over to 50 when the time comes. Right, just go. But if you look on some Japanese or Korean or I think Chinese as well, elevators, they don't have, like, a number four. When there's a fourth floor, they'll skip it like 13 in America. Or they will just put the letter F. Right. So there you go. Because I think they're saying, like, F the number four. Yeah, and I've also tried to not be sure I'll do that one myself. I also try to not be the jerk that says, no, there's still the 13th floor, even though it says it's not 13. Man, I feel like we've really evolved and grown up over the years, you know? I mean, this just started when I was in my thirty s. And I'm 50. Yeah, same here. Crazy. Yeah, except early 30s for me, and I'm nowhere near 50 right now. You get closer than you think, my friend. So, Robert, and talk about that kind of thing, let's talk about superstition. Just to kind of start off, I was digging into what makes us superstitious, and there's this article I found all these articles. I could just put together a handful of cute little articles from How Stuff Works. Most of them are written by Debbie Ranka. You're pal. Yeah. And the premise of the whole thing is that humans are superstitious because we have this desire to control the world. That is a way for us to not feel like we're just subject to the whims and vagaries of fate or God or whatever. That we can do things by noticing patterns, making cause and effect, causal connections, and then using them to our advantage by doing something or not doing something in a certain situation to affect the outcome. That's a superstition at its base. Yeah. And superstitions don't work in one sense, because, of course, if you're a baseball player who doesn't change their underwear after they have a big game in the playoffs for the remainder of the playoffs, of course that's not really going to help you hit better or feel better or pitch better, but if that tricks your mind into being more relaxed or more confident, you may perform better. So, in a sense, it maybe does work in a weird way. Precisely. Yeah, I saw that in a number of places that there is this idea that rituals like superstitions can have a real world effect, but they have a real world effect on you, the person who's superstitious. Right. And I think it could also I didn't see it anywhere, but it's logical to an extent. And we're just throwing out superstitions here, so I feel like I can riff. Sure, we're riffing, but the idea is they could kind of be a nocebo effect to that thing, too, where if you feel like you violated some sort of superstitious taboo, like walking under a ladder and not remedying, you might be a little more clumsy than you would think because you're psyching yourself out, you're expecting bad luck to happen. And so you may actually kind of go face first into bad luck, where otherwise you might not because you haven't been focused on something bad happening. Or there's a reverse attribution that happens where you're like, you hit your thumb with a hammer later that day and you're like, see, because I walked into that ladder. Right. Or is there an evolutionary basis in this? You're right. I think it was in that one article from Debbie where she talked about, like, an animal hunting at night, and if there was a full moon out, they may make a false association with, like, a rustling sound in the bushes, being connected to that full moon, being connected with a kill and eating good for the night or being killed by that large animal. So you run away. Yeah, I guess so. Avoiding that animal that's wrestling in the bushes. I guess that makes more sense. Well, both of them do, because you can have a positive reinforcer or a negative reinforcer. A reinforcer or a punisher is what they're called. And it will either make you want to repeat that behavior that you think is magical or avoid that behavior that you think is magical. So it could go either way in that situation. And at its base, the idea that if you hear rustling in the bushes, you would probably be wise to run, and therefore, under natural selection, you would be likely to survive a lion attack because you didn't stick around to see whether it was a lion. So you could pass on your genes so we could select for scaredy cats or natural selection could. And then that makes sense at its base, it's when you start to add additional things, additional omens or signs like that full moon you were talking about, that superstition really sets it, because before, it's just like that's just a good instinct. That's a survival instinct. Once you add the full moon being a part of it, then you've reached superstition, and it's probably a little foolish. All right, so we dive into some of these. Yeah, because these are so great, man. Yeah. I mean, mainly what this is, is an origin podcast on the origin of some of these terms. It's like where Peter Parker came from, but with superstition. That's right. Some of these customs, like horseshoes, I do not do it, but whenever I see a house or an entry way with a horseshoe hung above it, I always think that's kind of cool. I just like the tradition of it all. It's a superstition, but I don't judge it and think it's silly. And I think most of these are kind of just fun customs that I don't mind either adhering to or seeing them around me. Right, sure. Because there is something to be said. There's something very quaint and charming about folksiness earthiness that, like, a lot of these superstitions have. And it's very much like that. Yeah. And it does have that kind of charming aspect to it. I think also, one of the things about horseshoes and being positive is that it's meant to be a good luck charm as well. Like, not only does it supposedly ward off evil, it actually blesses you with good luck for walking under it typically, yeah. So this 1 may have its roots in Ireland. It's a story, a legend of a blacksmith, and the Devil blacksmith is working along forging horseshoes. The Devil shows up and says, give me my shoes. I want horseshoes on my little clothing hose. No, you need to do Sammy D. Hey, man, I could use a little iron down below, if you know what I mean. And so the Devil appears, asks for that, and the blacksmith recognizes the Devil, takes a hot horseshoe and nails it into the hooves. The Devil gets burned, rips them off and says, I'll never go near these horseshoes again. No. No. What does he say? What does he sound like when he says that? Me and any other listener listening right now are not going to stand for that kind of laziness. Sorry, Cat, but I am donezo with the horseshoe thing. Thank you, Chuck. And then all of a sudden, that becomes tied to the tradition of hanging a horseshoe over your door to keep the Devil out, or evil spirits. Yeah. And anytime you see it, from what I can tell with superstition or folklore, even when the Devil makes an appearance, you can just say, okay, the Devil is this Christian incarnation of any and all evil spirits, from fairies to nymphs to witches to whatever that predate the traditional Christian idea of the Devil. But it's the same thing. You're being protected from evil by this thing. And so the horseshoe itself has, like a story as a horseshoe. But the fact that horseshoes have usually typically been made of iron the whole time people have been making horse shoes in and of itself, makes it kind of like a good luck charm. And that people used to attribute magic to iron all over the world the Arabs, Chinese, the Western Europeans. I think the Caldeons, which were in ancient I think they're still around catholic Eastern Catholic sect from Iraq. A lot of cultures basically said iron is something special. So the fact that you would make a horseshoe out of iron meant that it was automatically a good luck charm. And then the shape also made it even luckier, because crescent shapes have been viewed as having very special magical powers for a very long time. That's right. And not only that, but the number of nails, seven holes in a horseshoe in the horse's foot, that is a lucky number in many cultures. And the way you hang it, though, is kind of where it comes into some dispute. Some people say hang it upside down to hold the good luck. Other people say hang it did I say upside down or right side? Upside down. Heels down. The little points down. Yeah. Heels down would be dumping good luck on you. Heels up would be containing that good luck for those who enter. Right. And I've heard people say it both ways. I don't know if there is a right way the right way is to put two horse shoes one up, one down. There you go. Why discriminate? They're horseshoes, for God's sake. I like it. And then one other thing. I think we should take a break, but I wanted to give a shout out to you know how I'm always into contemporary journalism? Yes. I found an article in the Journal of American Folklore by Robert M. Lawrence from 1896 that is just a page turner shout out. I recommend everybody go read it. It's about horseshoes and superstition, and it's pretty great. All right, we'll be right back. All right, Chuck. So we've gone through horseshoes. I feel like the well is dry. Is this the end of the episode? It's not, my friend, because I got my pinky wrapped around a wishbone and I'm just waiting on you to come over. Well, I wish that this episode could just go on forever and we'll be doomed to eternal damnation during this episode. Forever. The fercula is the wishbone of a foul of a turkey, a duck or a chicken. And that's where the clavicle is fused to the sternum, right above the sternum there, fused together. So everyone knows that the trick. You put one pinky on each side of a wishbone, you both make a wish, you tear it, and whoever it breaks apart and whoever you got to dry it out first, that's key. If you try to do it fresh out of a turkey, you're just pulling out because it's collagen, and collagen doesn't break very easily. Yeah, but whoever ends up with the biggest part of the wishbone, their wish will come true. And this goes way, way back, doesn't it? Super far back. As far back as we've identified so far to the Etruscans, who were the rivals of the ancient Greeks and the predecessors of the ancient Romans who lived in Italy, and they engaged in animal section, all kinds of stuff. Yeah, it was probably orgy every night of the week kind of thing. But one of the things they did was blood sacrifices of chickens, and for some reason, the wishbone caught their attention. Chickens and birds in general were believed to be oracles or divine. You could tell the future with that kind of thing, or you could make a wish on them. And for some reason, the curriculum was identified as this particularly magically, potent part of this already magical animal. The bird or the chicken. Yeah. So they would stroke this thing, they would make a wish on it. I think the breaking apart didn't come to a little bit later. Yeah, I think that was the Romans, because they didn't have a lot of chickens, which surprised me. I thought the Romans had a lot of everything. Yeah. If there's a Roman scholar out there who let us know, does that sound hinky? Does that make sense? And if so, why did the Romans not have chickens? And I think we just came up with a new super in Group T shirt for stuff Romans. Colon. Wear the chickens. No, you mean colon. That's right. We need a colon jingle. We got a colon jingle, didn't we? I don't think so. Did somebody already send one in? No, I saw an email from a guy saying we have a colon sound. I think he's talking about a fart. Oh, I see. I might have read that wrong, though. But anyway, not as many chickens, not as many wishbones, so people would break bones in half, and that supposedly is where the breaking of the wishbone finally comes in, which is then, of course, passed along to Britain, passed on to America, where we had lots of ducks and turkeys and chickens and that's kind of the deal. That's why Americans still do that today. I still do it every now and then. Sure, yeah. I mean, why not? The animal died for that purpose mostly. You might as well do something about it. But supposedly the Brits took that and really ran with it and added some stuff to it. Like initially in Britain, I should say, during the golden age of wishbone breaking in Great Britain, you would balance the wishbone on your nose, make a wish and then take it off, let it fall off, and then you would go about breaking it with somebody. And then after that, if you won the larger piece, you still had another obstacle to make it past, which was you would take each piece, put it in your fist and make the person choose a fist. And if they chose the shorter one, finally, you who held onto this longer one throughout the whole time will get your wish granted. If not, they could come up and sneak your wish away just by getting the longer piece out of your fist at the end there. So, of course, the puritans are like, that seems pretty ungodly. Let's really trim this down and make it more pure to ask. And there you go. The only dubious part of this part of the article to me is it says that's where the term getting your lucky break comes from, and I'm not quite sure about that. No, from everything I saw, that came about from playing pool and billiards starting in the mid 19th century, which makes way more sense. Lucky break. One more thing about the fercula. It's actually a really ancient bone. It allows wing movement among turkeys and chickens and stuff like that, but they also found them among velociraptors and trex as well, to allow for arm movement and extension. So it kind of is one of those things that directly connects the dinosaurs to modern day birds. Very cool. I think so, too. I wasn't going to let that one pass, man. No way. So should we get into salt? Yeah, so throwing salt over your shoulder, that's the thing. You spill a little bit of salt, you take a pinch. Peach you throw it over that left shoulder. And this, they say, may have come from DaVinci's painting of the Last Supper. If you look closely, Judas is scary. It has knocked over the salt, spilled that salt. Judas was not a good guy. He betrayed Jesus in the Bible. And so the association of salt and disloyalty started there. And the idea that the devil is sitting over your left shoulder in some Christian beliefs and you're throwing salt over your shoulder to blind the devil over that left shoulder, and that might be where that comes from. Yeah, I saw elsewhere, I saw in a few places that it was DaVinci started that with that painting. I also saw that he was following on a much older tradition of the idea of spilling salt being considered unlucky. Right, which makes sense because people probably were not actually paid in salt ever at any point in Western history. Yeah, we talked about this in our currency upside. I hope we busted that one because I don't think it's actually true. It's just such a great factoid, but not necessarily a true one. But that's not to say that salt wasn't an extremely valuable commodity for a very long time. So they think that there was a taboo that grew around spilling the salt that turned into a superstition that had kind of practical origins, which was that's really expensive stuff. Don't spill it or else you're basically letting the devil take over. And that made sense for why you would throw some of that salt over your shoulder, although it's even more wasteful. That's what I was getting at it. I just don't get that. Yes, agreed. I guess it's just a pinch. But still, maybe that came about after salt became a little more easy to get. That's basically free, like people pay you to take salt now. Basically you try to go out in a street corner in New York and not have somebody give you salt. You can't see what happens. I think we could probably move on to the rabbit's foot now. This is my favorite, so just be prepared. Yeah, this is one where I remember, and you probably do too, growing up in the Saw, a lot of highly dyed and colored rabbits foot keychains. And I always thought those are real rabbits feet and thankfully have learned that they are generally synthetic these days. These days. I'm not sure about the seventies, man. They may have been were they real rabbits feet? It's entirely possible. I mean, think about where you're seeing those things. Like next to a deaf leopard mirror the people peddling. These were not necessarily the best and brightest society had to offer. And they probably had a line on rabbits cheaper than they did on synthetic rabbits feet. In the don't know if you remember this, but in the My school there was a trend that happened for a little while where girls would have these ridiculous key chains with three keys and 40 other things on them, including rabbit's feet and, like, feathers. Remember the Mr. T feathers that you would put on your ear? And it wasn't until you're older that you realized it was a roach clip, and that's why it hurt so much. Do you remember that? Oh, sure, totally. But yeah, there was just a big gaudy keychain movement in the it was always girls who had all these things on their keychains. And I feel like all of them always had, like, a purple or pink rabbit. No, they definitely did. Every single one of them. There wasn't a single girl that didn't have that maybe early ninety s. And they also had that big, giant multicolored pen. Yeah, the one that could write in all sorts of different colors and yes, big hair, too, for sure. It was the age of aquinite that's right. But we're talking about the rabbit foot here. And this kind of goes back to the idea of a totemism and carrying around a lucky charm. And in ancient times, hares and rabbits were lucky for a lot of cultures. Yeah. So one of the reasons why they were considered lucky is because they were a symbol of fertility. Which extended not just to having a bunch of kids. Which is something you really wanted to do in an agrarian society. Because more kids you have. The more help you had on the farm. The more you could grow and produce and survive all sorts of terrible misfortune. But also fertility in those crops as well. So rabbits were considered lucky in that respect. But then also rabbits make their homes underground, so they were also associated with the underworld, too. And there's a lot of spirits that live in the underworld that you may or may not want to be in contact with. That's right. This seems to have been something that started in ancient times and probably never stopped all the way through today. Like, you don't see them around that much anymore, but it's still a thing. The thing that cracks me up is it was originally hare's feet, which is the slightly larger version of the rabbit, but they realized along the way that you can't really tell if it's a hair or rabbit's foot once it's cut off of the body. So we'll just say they're both lucky. It's basically the consensus everyone came to in the superstitious world. Yeah, but I mean, what's the difference? Really? Different size, right. Speed. That's about it, from what I can tell. But one of the places where it popped up so the rabbit's foot, as we understand it today as a lucky charm, was actually brought over by people who were enslaved in West Africa and brought to the Americas, and they developed hoodoo, which is not to be confused with voodoo. It's a totally different thing. Hoodoo was more of African west African folk magic. Right. And one of the things about West African folk magic. One of the hallmarks of it is that things have an opposite or reverse effect. So a rabbit's foot was lucky because it was actually a highly deeply evil thing in that a rabbit, typically one where you saw a rabbit at night in a graveyard, was actually a witch. It was a transfigured witch who had morphed into the shape of a rabbit. If you could shoot that rabbit with a silver bullet around midnight in the graveyard, and you cut off its rear, which was the magical foot, the rear feet are most magical on a rabbit. And the left foot, which was the sinister associated with witches, that was an extremely potent magic charm. You basically had the back left leg of a witch in your pocket. And so, because it was such a potent evil thing, it actually warded off other evil, so you could carry it around on you to protect you from real evil. And that's where our kind of idea of a rabbit's foot in America came about as a lucky charm. So the luckiest one you could have is the left rear foot of a rabbit shot in the cemetery with a silver bullet around midnight. That's precisely correct. As far as American hoodie is concerned, it doesn't get much more magical than that. I love it. I love it, too. And apparently there's an anecdote where Booker T. Washington accidentally he was in DC. Or at some sort of dignitary dinner, and he and the Austrian ambassador, I think, got their coat switched, and the Austrian ambassador realized that he had Booker T's. Coat because he didn't have his coat, because he found a rabbit's foot in the pocket. And Booker T. Apparently was like, that's my coat, and I wish you hadn't told people that. Please put that down. Amazing. Yeah. All right, so let's take a break, and maybe we'll come back and cover two more wacky superstitions right after this. All right, Chuck. So I think next we can't avoid it any longer. We have to talk about walking under a ladder, which I'm not at all afraid of, but I do find this one particularly fascinating, in part because there's a lot of interesting theories, but also there's ways to undo the problems you created for yourself with further superstitious behavior. Yeah. And we should point out the regular real world danger of walking under a tall ladder. If there's a tall ladder up there, maybe someone on it. There may be a hammer sitting up there. There may be a tray of paint walking under a ladder, there could be a real world consequence that has nothing to do with luck by walking under a ladder. Right. So, I mean, it's kind of like spilling really expensive salt taboos kind of developed around a very practical thing to not do. Right. But that has nothing to do with the superstition. Superstition wise. They think it might have its roots in religion. If you believe in the Bible, you believe in the Holy Trinity of the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit, and that forms a triangle, and the triangle and the number three can be sacred in other cultures as well. And so the idea that you are walking through that triangle, which is the latter, means that you are breaking up the Father of the Son and the Holy Ghost. You're breaking that three way connection. Right. You don't want to do that because there's a couple of things you don't want to. One. You're insulting the Christian God. Very powerful potent god. And then secondly, you're also summoning the devil or inviting the devil in because you've broken that very sacred bond that represents the Trinity in Christianity. So that in and of itself is reason enough not to walk under a ladder, correct? I think so, except I do it. You bless them. What are some other reasons why you might not want to walk under a ladder? Superstitious wise, though, I think they use ladders for gallows. Yeah, that one makes sense. Or a ladder against a wall might resemble a gallows. So there was a theory that if you walk under a ladder, it's just reminiscent of walking to your execution, or you're basically walking through where the person would be hanging out. It's just creepy to even think about. And then supposedly the Egyptians had a superstition against walking under a ladder and that they said that you could conceivably accidentally spy a god walking up or down the ladder. I couldn't see this anywhere except repeated everywhere. I didn't see any scholarship on it, and I'm not entirely certain when the first ladders were developed. There's like some cave paintings from, I think, 60,000 years ago that Neanderthals made in Europe that it looks like a ladder, but it could also just be a design. And ladders just kind of hang out until the 19th century in Dayton when some guy invented the Collapsible ladder. So somewhere in there it's possible that the ladder was invented in Egyptians used it. Some people also point to Jacob's ladder being present in the Bible, but that could also have just been a strange translation where it would make sense to somebody living in a world where ladders have been invented. That what they're describing as a ladder, but they were not necessarily describing a ladder. You know what I mean? Right? Yeah. So who knows? Who knows? But it makes a good story because I'm guessing the sight of a god going up or down a ladder, viewed from underneath is not pleasant. You don't want to see that junk. No. This is one, like you mentioned earlier, though, that you can undo with further superstition. There are a few different things. If you accidentally, let's say, walk under a ladder, first of all, that means get off your phone and look where you're going, because walking under a ladder is a very specific thing. And if you do it unawares, then that means you should pay attention more. Right. So, that aside, if you happen to accidentally do that, you can make a wish while you're walking under the ladder and then walk backwards through that ladder again, and that might undo the bad luck. Right. To get that wish coming true. That one's good. It makes sense. One of my favorites is so disgusting. You can spit three times through two of the wrongs between two of the wrongs. It's pretty gross. Okay. You can also make the sign of the figure, which is if you take your thumb and you put it between your forefinger and your middle finger and let it yeah, the got your nose. Yes, exactly. That's called the fig sign. It's called the got your nose dating back to well before it represented female genitalia back in the day, and it was considered a very rude thing to make it somebody probably along the lines of slipping someone the bird, which is, of course, a phallus that you're putting in their face. I read this. This is really fascinating. If we have any listeners in Russia who can attest, let us know. But the sign of the fig is apparently pretty widespread in Russia, but it's lost its kind of negative meaning, and apparently it means a really emphatic no. So that's the sign of the figure, the fig sign. Net no. You have to be like, NIT. I said it before, I'll say it again last time. NIT. I got your Nietzsche. You can say bread and butter when you walk under that ladder. That'll cancel out that bad luck. There's another one that did with spitting. If you spit on your shoe, but you have to spit on it then not look at your shoe until the spit has dried. Supposedly my favorite is the other one. The fingers. Yeah. You have to basically what, make a P sign? Is that correct? No, just cross your fingers. Cross your fingers. I forgot that was a different thing than making the peace sign. Making the Psych is the opposite of crossing your fingers. Now I think about it. But you cross your fingers until you see a dog, and then you can stop. And the spell has been broken. The bad luck has been removed because you saw a dog. I love that one because you know the dogs. Good luck. I didn't do anything. Now I'm just trying to picture you someone flashing you the peace sign and you crossing your fingers in return. And they're like, yeah, man, hope. Yeah, exactly. Fingers crossed. Hope for peace. So, let's see. How about stepping on cracks? The last one. Yeah. So this is one I have a personal association with, and I know I mentioned it at some point on the show in the past 13 years. I have a thing where I think it's a minor, low level OCD. It doesn't manifest itself in a lot of ways, but ever since I was a kid, I have no idea why I purposely step on cracks when I'm noticing it. Your mom is toast when I notice it. I don't think every time I'm walking, like, oh, I got to step on cracks. But still, to this day, if I notice, like, I stepped on a crack with my right foot, I will then step on the next crack with my left foot and balance it out. That's harder to do than it seems at first glance, isn't it? It is. And it has led to a little weird, stutter steps here and there in my life ever since I was a kid. Nobody much knows about it, but I do know that I've told that story at some point, and the only thing I can think is that it might just be slightly on the OCD spectrum, maybe. But one of those little stutter steps did bring you good luck, because I remember it was on one of those ad shoots that you're doing it and you fell into the arms of Erik Estrada. That's good luck in anybody's measure. Always. But, yeah, stepping on a crack, though, usually denotes bad luck. Step on a crack, break your mother's back. Step on a line, break your father's spine. Do you know the second one? I had heard of it, but it's certainly not ubiquitous like your mother's back. Yeah, Devo left that one out. That's right. That wasn't a Devo song. Wouldn't it? Yeah, it was in Whippit. Right? Whipped it good. Licorice whip. Remember the Simpsons variety show episode where Waylon Smithers was doing a version of Whipped it, but with licorice? I say whip it. Licorice whip. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. I forgot you have colved it. I got 30%. Oh, that's good. So the idea that this is bad luck, it could come from, again, from the old days where cracks signified a gap in the boundary between Earth and the metaphysical. And if you're interacting with this chasm, even if it's just a crack in the ground, then that could bring misfortune to you and your families. Makes sense. A lot of people were scared of things in the ground or even, like, crevasse in a wall or something. Who knows what it was hiding? Which you could also kind of see stemming from those hunter gatherer days where it was like, yeah, you don't want to put your finger in there because something really bad can happen about that. The black widow could sting you or something like that, or bite you. That's a good way to kind of pass that along without having to explain black widows and venom and that kind of thing. There's evil spirits that dwell in cracks. They don't mess with them. Yeah, I never really thought about that. You don't go sticking your hand in a crack. No, you'd have to be a dingus. Sorry, Chuck. No, I'm good. Okay. That wasn't a good fall. Okay, so you actually do kind of fall in line with another version of the superstition where people say that stepping on a crack is actually a positive thing because you break the devil's back. So you're actually breaking the devil's back, chuck, when you do that, maybe that's where that came from. You're making early religious days. It's possible. I could actually see that. And you just forgot all about it. Well, it's still a thing, though. Like, grown adults like myself still do it. And there was a poll, supposedly in England, where 3000 people, they polled and said that one in 20 would not step on crack still as grown ups, because they thought it could lead to bad luck. Yeah, I mean, there's all sorts of other superstitions people have. Well, like what, Chuck? Emily, when she passes a car with a headlight out, we'll kiss her hand and hit the seal of the car. I don't know if that's good luck or not, or just sort of a game there's. Supposedly you are supposed to lift your feet over a bridge. Seen that one. I've heard that. Yes. There's just a lot of, like, weird little modern superstitions that we might never know the origins of knocking on wood. Yes. Which is a good one. That's the biggest one, but we're not going to talk about that one. Do you know the origin? Yes, the Celts. As far as we know, the Celts and other cultures felt like trees were very enchanted places filled with all sorts of spirits, and they would actually sacrifice humans to the trees, which made them even more mystical and magical. And so when you were knocking on wood, you were basically asking those spirits for luck or a favor, help, or something like that. And then when you knock twice, the second knock was meant to say, thank you very much for that help. It there. Yeah, that appeared to be on the fly. But the secret is you researched that and I didn't have a chance to. Hey, man, that's okay. As long as we got it in there, I think people would have been like, how did you not talk about that? You talked about it at the beginning. You didn't follow up with it. So we did. And I feel good. All right. You feel good? I feel great. Well, then I think the superstition episode has come to a conclusion, Chuck. So if you want to know more about superstitions, type that word in the search bar. Good old house stuff works, and it will bring up a bunch of good little articles about those and others we haven't talked about. And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. Yes, this one is from Poison Control, and this is kind of cool. We did a show on poison control centers and we heard from Poison Control Centers. I always love it when that happens. Yeah, same here. Corrections when experts write in oh, sure, yeah. And this is a correction, and we're happy to issue it, but they were very kind, and they really loved the fact that we did a show kind of highlighting the work they do. And they're always a little more official, though, than, like, regular fan mail. And this one starts out hello, Mr. Bryant and Mr. Clark. We don't know who you are. I hope this email finds you both well. I'm a big fan of stuff you should know. And I work at the headquarters of the American Association of Poison Control Centers. We would like to express our sincere gratitude for showcasing poison control centers in a recent episode of your podcast, Stuff You Should Know. Toward the end of said episode, at 52 50, you mentioned the National Poison Helpline phone number 180-222-1222, followed by a URL. That is not accurate. Oh, boy. The accurate web page triage tool for the AAPCC is poisone. Helpelporg. And I think we said poison.org. We need to go back and fix that, and I want to accidentally send somebody to the wrong place. Yeah, we should probably actually do that. The two sites have similar URLs, so we completely understand, but the correct address, again, is www.poisonhelp.org. Thank you again for dedicating an episode to Poison Control Centers. Let us know if you have any questions with gratitude. This one, we got a few of them, but this is from Davis Ladley, an operations associate there. That's awesome. Yeah. Thank you very much. Davis. That was a great connection, and we will go do something about it so everybody can go. Here one of us. Go poisonhelporg Beijing. Mr. Herman. Right. Look out for it in the coming days or weeks. Yeah. Sorry we screwed up the one URL that we needed to get right, right. Because I don't think we mentioned any others in the whole episode. No. Well, if you want to get in touch with Chuck and I, like, Davis did. Great name, by the way. I always admired that name, Davis. I thought it was a cool first name. Yes, me, too. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heartratio, visit the iHeartRadio Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
45b4e564-ba8a-11e8-9ed2-4b3d308b61a6 | Short Stuff: Yellow Rain | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-yellow-rain | After the Vietnam War, the Hmong people told the world a toxic weapon was being used on them. Thus began a mystery that still remains today, which might have been solved when it was chalked up to bee poop. | After the Vietnam War, the Hmong people told the world a toxic weapon was being used on them. Thus began a mystery that still remains today, which might have been solved when it was chalked up to bee poop. | Wed, 17 Jul 2019 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=17, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=198, tm_isdst=0) | 11845421 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to Short Stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck, and there's Josh over there. And this is short stuff. Giddy up, Chuck. All right, we're going to go to the late nineteen s seventy. The Vietnam War is well over. Well, for America, at least. Well, that's true, but Vietnamese and Laotian people started noticing over there that periodically there would be a sticky yellow rain when it was really sunny out coming down, and that this substance killed plants and made people sick, especially among the Mong, which is to say H-M-O-N-G. Which were people in Southeast Asia who fought with France against the Communist since the 1950s. Yeah, they were mountain people in north north Vietnam and in Laos. Yeah, I think they probably oh, never mind. I was about to discuss a deleted scene in Apocalypse Now, but we don't have time for that. Are they the ones that they dine with? They have dinner with us? I think so. I think they were French and Mong, but it would make sense because the Mong cast their lot with the French and then later on the Americans and the CIA showed up because remember, we've talked about this in multiple episodes. One of the things the CIA did is they would drop behind enemy lines and say, oh, you hate the people we're fighting too. Well, let's assemble a guerrilla army. And the Mong fought with them. Well, that led to big time trouble for the Mong after the Americans withdrew in, I believe, 1975, because that left the Mong holding the bag. Everyone knew that the Mong had fought against the Communists and the Communists had just become successful in the Vietnam War. And so the Communists turned their ire against the Mong, people who no longer had any American backing. So as they were kind of driven from their homes to refugee camps across the border into Thailand, they were harassed by the Communist government. And from that, from that experience, this idea that something was being sprayed on them kind of took root this yellow rain that was thought to be some sort of biological weapon that was being deployed by the Vietnamese government. And the Americans took it quite seriously and got their hands on some samples and in I think Alexander Haig, who was Secretary of State at the time, said, yes, it's some sort of biological weapon. We think it's trichothecine, which is a mycotoxin, and we think that the Soviets are supplying it in flagrant violation of antibiotic weapons conventions that have been around since 1925. You didn't do your Alexander hay. That was my Alexander Hague. Okay. It didn't come through. The whole thing was oh goodness, sorry, Al, can you do one? Let's hear yours. I would just have said something about the Soviet Union like that. That's Henry Kissinger. Oh, you're right, yes. Alexander Hat didn't talk anything like that. I was totally thinking kissinger. It's funny, as soon as you said that. I got a mental picture that went from kissinger to Hague, because I totally remember Al Hague now. Yeah, for sure. All right. He liked to impersonate kissinger every day yeah. Behind his back, and it wasn't very flattering. All right. And we're going to leave that in there even though it's short stuff. I don't care. That was a classic SYSK moment, my friend. First of all, we should point out that this idea that it would be something like that after we had dropped Agent Orange all over the place for ten years, you can't blame them for thinking something like that is going on. However, something kind of smelled hanky in the nose of one Matt Metselson, who was a biologist at Harvard University, and he said, this doesn't really make sense to me. So a couple of years later, in 1983, he got some samples, and he said, you know what's? In here it's really weird. He said, there is a lot of hollowed out pollen that's indigenous to this area, and this would mean that the Soviet Union is taking pollen, hollowing it out, filling it with poison and bringing it back and dropping it down on sunny days. Like it's rain is very bad idea. It's very outlandish. It's not a very effective dispersal method. And the concentration of mycotoxins in there, anyway, was not really any different than samples of leaves and plants anywhere else in Southeast Asia. Right. His position was like, yes, these people are being harassed, but I don't think this yellow rain is actually a biological weapon being supplied by the USSR, that there's something else going on. It's like you said, it's just too outlandish what the process would require for this to be what it was. He was a biologist, like you said, and he knew enough to know that bees, specifically giant Asian honeybees that lived in the area, actually will eat pollen, but they don't eat the outer shell of the pollen. They eat the protein inside the pollen. So when they poop, they poop out regular pollen or they poop out hollowed out pollen. Okay. Yes. So he said, I think this might just be a case of honeybee poop. I think that's what everybody's freaked out about, is it's just honeybee poop. But people were saying, okay, yeah, that's true biologically, but what you're talking about, for something that looks like yellow rain to be produced would require a mind boggling number of bees to all poop at once in the same area. So explain that, Mr. Mestson, mr. Harvard trained biologist, you can't, can you? And he said, I will right after this message break. All right, so Metselson takes a message break, right? Everyone's like, what's? That right. And he said, I just had to use the bathroom. Well, that's normal enough, but we don't call it message breaks. So there was well, he used scare quotes. I got you. So he said, there's some other inconsistencies here, too. Because you interviewed a lot of people, and there's a lot of people that said that there were no planes around when the stuff was raining down, which is a problem. Yeah, because, I mean, that's how you disperse biological weapons, typically, is from a plane. So where's the plane? How is this stuff happening if there's no plane? And he also said that all these health problems that are going on, he said it's really probably just people with dysentery and nutritional deficiencies. And it seems like you're asking very leading questions to me. This whole thing really stinks at this point to mess with them. Well, also, Check, there's one other thing. I went back and I was reading some article in Science from the time, and they were saying there is indeed some sort of mycotoxic poison that is hurting people. And so that was a big reason why this is still yet resolved, because there was mycotoxic poisoning. Meson's position was, well, these people are living in refugee camps. It's not like they're eating top of the line food. I'm sure some of them are eating moldy food and are suffering ill effects from it. So that would explain this appearance of mycotoxic poisoning. And in that guy's defense, that trichoscine supposedly was discovered in the USSR from people eating moldy food. That's how it was first found. Amazing. Yeah. So a few years later, 1989, I'm about to graduate high school, and Mesolin teams up with some Canadian biologists to figure this whole thing out, because the whole idea of how many bees it would take to poop down yellow rain on everyone, right? And they said, well, we're going to find out just how many bees it would take. They realized that it was falling on hot, sunny days, which is the first big clue. And they measured the body mass of these bees before they left their hives. Then after they came back to the hives, and they found out that while they were gone, they lost 20% of their body weight on the return flight. That is a big old poop. That's a big old poop. So they would leave together in these big giant swarms, thousands of them. They would poop. They would come back to care for their little larvae. And they said, this is also happening most frequently on really hot, sunny days. So we think we've kind of figured this thing out, right? What they figured out is that Asian honeybees, the larvae, as they're developing, if they overheat, they will deform, basically. They will develop incorrectly, I guess. And so to keep the temperature in the hive lower, especially on hot, sunny days, the bees in the hive will fly out and excrete waste all at once, basically, or in one trip. And then when they come back, since they've lost 20% of their body weight, the temperature inside the hive is that much lower because their weight is not producing that much more waste heat. So they actually figured out that that's what bees will do, at least Asian honeybees, to regulate the temperature in the hive so that the larvae can develop normally. And they said, we think we just solved the mystery of yellow rain. That's right. More research and later years pretty much confirmed this and everyone is basically on board except for the fact that Kissinger and Alexander Hague never came back and retracted their statements. So officially, I don't know if that stuff matters or not, but officially we have never retracted that statement as a nation that it was not the Soviet Union. I just got finished watching Chernobyl. I got to see it. I'm like at a fever point of like the truth and toxins because the Soviet Union still says, or I'm sorry, Russia still says 31 people died. How many people did die? Oh, they don't know. Anywhere between 4090 thousand is what it is, depending on how you count cancer 20 years later and stuff like that. I was talking to a friend, Blair, who is a friend of both of us, is a photographer and he was like, you got to do one on Chernobyl. And I'm like, Everybody knows about it now. Should we do one? Maybe? Okay? Because I'd love to. It's a fascinating topic, but if everybody already knows about it, it's like, what's the point? It was a heck of a show, I'll say that. All right, well, I'll at least watch that. All right. So to finish up here though, the Monk, for their part, things haven't gotten a lot better. They continue to suffer to this day. Very small amount of them made it over to the United States. Some people returned to Laos, some people returned to Vietnam. As we said at the beginning, a lot of them were going to Thailand as refugees. But in 2009, the Thai government shut that down and sent away thousands and thousands of The Monk. And it's really just sort of a sad situation. But as this article points out, the one silver lining is that this whole thing, anytime there's a new theory about what happened, or anytime it makes the news, the Monk also make the news. Right. Which I think is really worth pointing out for sure. One of the articles we used for this was called The Mystery of Yellow Rain. It was written by Jacob Roberts for Distillations, which is a blog of the Science History Institute. Very good stuff. All right, well, that's it for Short stuff. See you later. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's how stuff works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows." | |
How Landslides Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-landslides-work | Landslides are a form of mass movement of the Earth, and with the amount of death and destruction they wreak on the people and towns they cover, their toll can be massive. Learn all about landslides in this episode with Josh and Chuck. | Landslides are a form of mass movement of the Earth, and with the amount of death and destruction they wreak on the people and towns they cover, their toll can be massive. Learn all about landslides in this episode with Josh and Chuck. | Thu, 27 Mar 2014 14:52:10 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2014, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=14, tm_min=52, tm_sec=10, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=86, tm_isdst=0) | 31184841 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W. Chuck bryan is with me, as always. Hello, sir. Hello. How are you? I'm good. Jerry in the house. Oh, yeah. This one probably won't be our funniest podcast. And I have to say that I suggested landslides without knowing about that. Landslide. No, I swear. No, I promise you. I sent this to you on Monday and then saw, like, a few hours later. Wow. And I was like, oh, boy. I was on vacation, so I didn't hear about it, but yeah. So it's super relevant. Yes, it is. And apparently unintentionally relevant. Like our Black Boxes episode. Yeah. It's been happening weirdly. Yeah. If you have been not paying attention to the news at all lately, then you may not know, but there was a massive landslide in Washington. As of last count, I think the death toll is at, like, 24, which is an astoundingly high number for a landslide, at least in the United States, because something like 25 to 35 people die in the US a year from landslides. This one was one single enormous landslide. And if you haven't seen the pictures, to get an idea of just how large it was, you should go online immediately and check it out, because it was nuts what happened there. Yeah, it's about an hour north of Seattle, and I know we have a lot of fans in Seattle, so we're obviously thinking about everyone there, but there's still 170 plus people missing, and it looks like it will be easily the deadliest landslide in US. History by the time this is all said and done. It seems like it, but I'm clearly hoping there's more survivors. But it's just a scary man. Oh, yeah. To think about being trapped like that and possibly still alive. It's just like the whole thing is upsetting. Yeah. Because if you were inside a structure, it's not covered with mud, there's a chance that you're not buried. The structure around you is buried. Right. So, yeah, it's pretty awful stuff to me. What's even more awful, and I read an article where an unnamed resident was saying, like, yeah, we're not mad at the authorities, but yeah, apparently they didn't heed a lot of warnings. Oh, really? The area that was covered in landslide was known since the 60s. In the area is Slide Hill. The area itself is called the Steelhead Landslide. So imagine if the street you live on is not in East Lake, right, but in Steelhead landslide. Landslide is in the name of the area that you live. So it wasn't, like, the biggest surprise. No. And there was a 1999 report by the US. Army Corps of Engineers that predicted the potential for a large catastrophic failure right there where it happened. And that's exactly what happened. The landslide happened. It covered about a square mile, and it's like, 15ft deep right now. Well, you can't tell people where to live, though. No, you definitely can't. But I'm not saying they shouldn't have worn but people still live in flood zones, and people still build their houses on the sides of a hill in Malibu. Yeah. And I guess if you're warned and you are willing to take that risk and you want to, then sure, yeah. I don't disagree with that, but I don't know if everybody was as aware of the potential, but apparently there was a landslide in the area as recent as 2006. Really? Yeah. So apparently this was the big one, and it was coming a long time and set off by water in this case. Right. Yeah. There was word that possibly it was an earthquake, but they think there was a lot of rain that came before then. Let's get down to explaining what happened exactly. The landslide there is actually technically a mud slide and mudslides landslides, a bunch of other ones, they all fall under something called mass movements. Yeah. And that is the umbrella term. And that basically means gravity is at work moving something down a slope, some kind of sediment. It can be a landslide, which is obviously devastating, or it can be super slow over centuries. And we'll get into all that in a minute. Well, we'll get into all the triggers, too, but I guess we should talk about they're categorized, depending on how fast it's moving, what kind of materials are being moved. Right. In every case, though, you're talking about soil moving off of bedrock, the friction being overcome by gravity. That's exactly what a landslide is. It's like super fast erosion. Yes. On any slope, you have soil over rock, and it's being held in place by friction. It's kind of scary to think about. It really is. You know, it's true, but then when you read it, it's like, wow. Yeah. I mean, if you've ever dug a hole in the ground, it's not easy. It's not like silt or something like that. It's like ground. It's hard ground, but that stuff is not fused to the bedrock, but there's a friction that's holding it in place, and that can fail. And that's what a landslide is. Exactly. Like you said, gravity overcomes friction. Yeah. And it can on some very large scales. It can on small scales. And then, like you said, depending on the type of movement, how it moves, what's moved, you have different categories of mass movements. Landslides are just one of them, or a slide is one category. The slides creeps, slumps and flows. Yeah. Creeps are obviously super slow. It can be months, years, it can be centuries of creep. And that is when the sediment, when the friction is not working, but it's not completely destroyed. So there's still some friction. It's just moving super slow. And that's usually as a result of a lot of freezing and thawing going on to change the composition of the soil. Yeah. When a freeze comes through, the sediment in the soil is pushed upward as it freezes, and when it falls, it falls back downward. So what you have, if you look at it on a geological time scale, is basically an undulation up and down of the soil that is moving downward on a slope, like millimeters at a time. Right. And then the telltale signs, though, you can see that creep is happening because telephone poles will be kind of skewed or trees or something like that. Yeah. That means that you're standing on or looking at a slumping slope. Yeah. And you won't see it happening. No. But I do see a pretty awesome gift. I can't remember where. Was it? Timelapse? Yeah, it's a time lapse gift. And it wasn't over the course of a year. It was over the course of several days in San Bernardino or whatever. But it's like there it goes. It makes you feel unstable. Yeah. Like the earth beneath your feet. Yeah. Well, I mean, the earth is a constantly evolving mass. Soil is being moved from here to there, and there's all sorts of different agents of change, and it moves in different ways. It can creep. I think I said a slumping slope. That's not true. That was a creeping slope. Yes. A slump is when you have a big chunk that breaks off as a single whole chunk and just moves. That's a slump. Yeah. And the actual thing can be called a slump, too. It can have a couple of meanings there for that word. Like, the big piece can be called a slump. Right. Or the movement is the slump. If they're not sliding like they used to, they're in a slump. Slump, yeah, true. And that is when, basically the base can't support this big chunk on top of it. And again, it's usually due to moisture. And water is the general cause for slumps as well. Yeah. Water is the primary all time leading, winningest cause of mass movements. Because either in a slump good analogy or a good example is if you're at the beach and you just see, like, a whole hunk of wet sand off of another hunk of wet sand, you just witnessed the slump. And actually, water can create stability for sandy loamy or clay soil. Yeah. Like you build a sand castle, you want the sandwich. Exactly. Up to a point. Right. When you add too much water become saturated, and then you have a slump, or you have a slider of flow, and then with other types of mass movement, that water can get underneath and interrupt the friction between the soil and the bedrock. And that's when you have some sort of movement as well. So that's creep and that's slump. And then finally we have flow, which is just basically a soupy mix of water and rock and soil and other materials. Those are usually the deadliest spread further. That's like a mud flower and avalanche. They get everywhere. They'll enter into everything. It's not just like a bunch of dirt. It's like a fast moving river of mud and debris. And I misspoke earlier that's in Oso, Washington, that's what that was. It was a mud flow that started it that came down and covered everything, which actually hampered rescue operations because apparently it's just like quicksand right now. So in the case of anything other than a creeper slump, if you're talking about a quick landslide, it happens just like in a snap. It's going and picking up speed. But it is the result of years and years of slow, steady erosion, basically. It's not something that just happens out or it can be triggered. We'll talk about like earthquakes and stuff like that. Right. But in general, it's the weathering down of objects. And I guess the difference we should describe between weathering and erosion is erosion is transporting the weather material and weathering is the actual wearing down of that material. Right. So they're different. Yeah. So if you have a rock that's a nice big solid piece, millions of years later, it's been weathered into a bunch of soil. And then as it's lost its composition, it can move more easily. And when it moves, it's being eroded. So erosion is the process of movement. The weathering is everything that leads up to the ability for it to be moved. Moved, yeah. And weathering is important because your weathered landscape is going to be much more likely to landslide. That's why you'll see them in more extreme environments where you get like tons of rain or like a lot of snow, maybe heat, cold water and oxygen. Those are all things that impact weathering or cause weathering. And there's two types of weathering. There's mechanical weathering and there's chemical weathering. And mechanical weathering is basically the material is broken down, but it retains the same chemical composition. Like the rock. Right? Yeah. It's still the rock, but it was broken down into smaller pieces of itself, say by wind or something like that, or water lapping against it. Now, if you had those pieces of rock that were in water that ultimately over the course of years dissolved it, it would be in solution and it would no longer chemically resemble itself. That's chemical weathering. Right. So like, if you pour acid on your hand, it's going to reconstitute into something else on the other end. The hole that burns through it, the stuff that ends up on the table is not really the same thing as your hand. You just chemically weathered your hand. Wow. That's a pretty extreme example. And then you talked about the constant state of movement on the earth that's going on at all times. And that's basically if you're going to have erosion, you're going to have a deposit somewhere. And it's just a constant cycle on the earth of weathering carried away by erosion and being put somewhere else. Right. In cases of landslides. The bottom of hills. Yeah. When we toured Guatemala, jerry and I should say me, we were at the site of a landslide that had happened. I will never forget. Yeah. And you could still see in the jungle, like, forest, the swath that had been cut through years earlier because all the stuff on either side was old growth. And then the stuff through the landslide flow, it was much younger, shorter, like a different kind of green as well. And they pointed out that we were, like, 12ft higher than basically standing on. Yes. The old village. They were unable to recover about 250 people. Yes. It's really upsetting. Yes. And remember, their children were running around, all these orphan children, like, they just kind of belong to the remaining village now. It was really something else. Well, yeah. And just when they said, you're like, 12ft higher than just the whole land raised up because of this month's line, it was one of those ones that you just kind of chewed on for a little while before you finally understood the full gravity of it. Even though while I was standing there, I was like, oh, this is nuts. And the more I thought about it, the nuttier account. So the sediment we talked about the deposition at the bottom of the hill. The sediment is known as tallis. Right. That's the official word for it when it's from a landslide. Yeah, that's what's being carried down. And with erosion, there are five different things that can act on it, which are water, which we've covered in wind, and then gravity, of course, which we mentioned, and then waves and glaciers, too. And technically, gravity is a part of all of them, right? Yeah, that's true. A part of all mass movement. But those five agents of erosion, there are different things that can trigger a landslide or mass movement. And really, if you think about it all, a mass movement is like a landslide. It's just erosion at high speed. Sudden and high speed. Erosion is basically what that is. Rather than taking millions of years to move from here to there through wind or waves or whatever, it just happens in a moment, and it happens on mass. All right, so you mentioned the triggers. We will cover those right after this message break. All right, so we mentioned triggers. The landslide always has to have a trigger. There has to be something to actually set it off. Even though it may be years and years in the making, something finally pushes that button to make it happen. It forces gravity to overcome friction. That's right. One of the things that we mentioned already in the case of Washington was water, and that is probably the most common heavy rainfall I know in California. In Los Angeles, when you see houses slipping off the hill in Malibu, it's because they don't get a lot of rain. And when they do things like that, happen. Yeah. And it's either water saturating the ground and just making it so heavy that it flows downward or it gets down in between the soil and the bedrock and just causes the whole thing that undermines everything. Either way, water equals a lot of movement. Earthquakes that can definitely trigger a landslide. We've covered earthquakes. You should go listen to that show if you haven't. It's a good one, but you've got the vibrating of the earth's crust and that is going to disrupt that friction pretty easily. Yes. Another big one is wildfires, which you would think, well, how would a wildfire trigger that? I'll tell you how. The roots of vegetation can lock soil into basically a totally solid cemented state. And as long as you have thick vegetation on a slope, it's going to be fairly stable when a fire comes through, burns out all that vegetation and often burns the roots as well, leaving not only less stable soil, but actual pockets in that soil too. So now it's kind of pebbled, which makes it a lot more vulnerable to landslides after a wildfire. Yeah. I'm just guessing here, but I would guess a landslide could happen even long after wildfire. If those roots die away, it would just become even less stable. Yes. And then volcanoes. Volcanic action is a big cause. And there are a couple of different kinds of flows that can contribute to a landslide from a volcano. One is called a pyroclastic flow and that is after your dome has collapsed or during an eruption. And these are super high speed. They've clocked in at 450 miles an hour, 1500 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah. Lava flowing at you at 450 miles an hour. I can't even imagine that. You imagine like 724 km/hour. That's easier. Well, there you go then you just imagine 450 miles an hour. Yeah, but I mean, I don't even know what that looks like. Instant death. Yeah, exactly. And then there's something called a lahar, which is an Indonesian word and this doesn't have to be during interruption, but it can be. And it is set off by water as well. It's almost always near something called a stratovolcano, which are like super steep cones and a lot of times there's either a crater lake or it's snow capped up top and so that's the water agent. A lot of times it's the snow and it sort of looks like wet concrete flowing downhill. Yeah. And it may or may not be set off during an actual volcanic eruption. It can happen any time. Yeah, and it's much slower, 20 to 40 miles an hour. But still, if you're in a golf cart, you're dead. Yeah, it's a good point. And while it's not fast, it has a lot more rock. So it is one of the deadliest lahar is I think because of just the sheer, like you can carry like a big boulder in the middle of that wet concrete. Plus the volcano also, it's not very stable because the composition of it is usually pretty loose, rocky soil. Yeah. So, yeah, if you had water, it immediately turns to slurry and when they erupt, they tend to shake the ground a little bit, which is what happened in the largest recorded landslide in 1980, mount St. Helens. Everybody knows the eruption, but there was actually an attendant landslide that is on YouTube you can check out. As a matter of fact, we're putting a post up of just amazing landslide footage that you can check out on our website. Just go to stuff you should know.com and check out that post. There's just some crazy stuff that people just happened to be filming and all of a sudden the Earth changes right before your eyes. And one of them is this Mount St. Helens eruption where just the whole mountain is basically just melting in front of you. I remember that one. Do you? Oh, yeah. I was only four. Yeah, I was nine, so it was on my radar. Oh, yeah, slightly. That one traveled at speeds of 150 miles an hour. And again, Washington State, not getting a break, destroyed 27 bridges, about 200 homes, miles and miles of road, and covered 23 sq mi with debris. That was Mount Saint Helens. Well, you know, with the landslide, another frequent hazard associated with landslides is think about it. When all of this earth is coming down, it's coming downward into a lower space, which is very frequently a valley, which is very frequently a river valley, which means that the river is damned now, so it's flooding behind it. Right. So you have a flood hazard immediately, and then if that river or if that dam breaks, then you have another flood hazard downriver all of a sudden too, which is something that's going on in Washington right now. Yeah, the same thing happened, and I think it's the most expensive landslide in US. History in thisle Utah in 1984, the same thing happened there. It damned up the Spanish Fork River and caused much more problems just because of the flooding. Yeah. And that was $200 million fix and 1980, $4. That was even when Reagan was in office. So it's not too much different from the $2,013, $14. The submarine landslide we should probably talk about that is in the ocean. And that is you can have an earthquake under the ocean, triggering a landslide underwater, which will trigger a tsunami. Yes, it can. A one two, three punch, basically, of natural disasters happening. Yeah. All in concert. I don't know if this really technically counts, but seeing that little bit triggered a memory of the Lake Penure disaster in Louisiana in 1980. Texco is drilling in Lake Penure and apparently they didn't consult the map closely enough. And they were using a 14 inch diameter drill and they drilled into the lake bottom. Which was on top of a salt mine. And they drilled into an operational salt mine. And the lake got sucked into the hole in a giant whirlpool that took about. Like. 30 to 50 of the surrounding acreage around the lake into the lake with it. Holy cow. Eleven barges were sucked in, the flow of water reversed, so it went from freshwater to saltwater. It sucked the Gulf into it for a second, man. And then a couple of days later, after they were, like, 400 foot geysers, as these shafts were filling with water and the air was being displaced. Wow. And a couple of days later, after the water pressure stabilized, like, nine of the bar just popped back up and went back to floating after being sucked down into this diamond mine. That's crazy. And apparently there's footage of it. It's awesome. It's like, just the most amazing thing, I guess more amazing than that is no one died. Wow. There was one guy on the lake who was operating the drill. He got off, and then there was a guy fishing on the lake, and he zoomed his boat to shore and made it, like, far enough that he made it. But I think three dogs died. Lake Penguur. P-E-I-G-N-E-U-R. Disaster. Check it out. I was all excited. And then the man that's crazy. There had to be some sort of erosion going on there. Technically, it was submarine erosion. The most deadly landslide in the history of the world was in China, December of 1920. It was triggered by an earthquake, and as many as 200,000 people died in that one. Holy cow. And some of that was from the earthquake. But they said the landslide was responsible for most of the deaths. Yes. As I said, in the US, it's like 25 to 35 deaths a year. Worldwide, it's more like 4000. And then on years where there's terrible earthquakes, it will go up into the tens of thousands. And then there was a mudslide in 1999 in Vargas state of Venezuela that killed 30,000 people. Just covered a bunch of towns, like, all at once. It was a mud slide or mud flow, I guess. Well, one thing I thought was interesting was that and I think Jennifer points this out early in the article, that while in the States, we don't see a lot of deaths from landslides each year, they're the most expensive natural disaster over, I think, tornadoes, earthquakes combined in this country. And if you will consult your homeowners insurance, you will almost definitely find that landslides are not covered. Yeah. No. Well, I guess we should get to that point then. Is it us? Is it humans that are causing these things? Yes. Always. Not always. No. Animals can cause it like a goat can cause a landslide if it really is unsure footed. Yeah, but goats don't blast mountain tops with dynamite. That's one. Yeah, they don't DeForest. Yeah, deforestation is a big problem. Road building through the mountains. Yeah. Because think about it. When you have a mountain and you cut a road through it, all of a sudden, what was once a relatively gentle slope are now two steep slopes on either side just aiming right at the road. Well, yeah, and I think everyone's probably driven on mountain roads where they either have chain link fencing on the side of it, which is scary enough, or I guess it's even scarier when they don't have fencing, but they have signs that say, watch out for falling rocks. Yeah. Good luck, pal. Yeah. There are things that people are doing, though, when they do build roads, they sometimes will put in drainage pipes to carry away water, which helps impermeable membranes like plastic sheeting. Yeah. So it can't trickle down the retaining walls and reforestation. So if you're going to clear cut an area, if you're going to harvest timber, maybe go back in there and try and reforest plant something. Yes. Really? Sure. I can't believe that's not a law that if you take X number of trees down, you have to plant X number of trees, and the number you plant should be more than the number you took. Is that not a law? I'm quite sure it's not. We can't even get black box recorders ejected for an extra, like, $50 a plane, remember? I remember. There's no law for that. Hey, but here in Georgia, we just passed the law where you can bring guns into churches and bars. Oh, I thought you were going to say, I'm actually rejoicing for another law. I don't know if it was signed in the law or if the house passed it and it's on its way. It is now a crime to drive slow in the fast lane, or it will soon be when they pass this law. Give me some parameters. Do you know it's called the slowpoke bill? Okay. And if you are impeding the flow of traffic, not even if you're going under 55 or under 45. Right. They're so aware that Georgia drives fast that they say if you're impeding the flow of traffic, even if other people are breaking the law and you're going the speed limit, you are breaking the law by being a slow poke in the fast lane, which is the most glorious law any city or state has ever come up with. Well, the state is right. If you go to Europe, the left lane is just for passing. Like, you shouldn't even be traveling in the left lane, right? It's supposed to be you go around someone and then you stay out of it. It's supposed to be that way here, too. Boy, it ain't. No, but if you got the chops, you can travel in the fast lane as long as you're not holding people up. The ones that are really, like, need to go to jail or ones that are just knowingly I'm driving the speed limit. So you don't own the road. It's like, well, there's ten people behind you that you're holding up. So you're the one who goes to jail now in Georgia, that's going to be tough to enforce. It totally subjective to you. It's totally up to the cop to enforce or not. But yeah, it's still I just think it's a grand gesture. Agreed. Slowpokes. Okay. So if you want to learn more about Landslides, you can type that word into the search bar@housetoforce.com. You should also check out Geology.com. They have a really great page with lots of different sub pages on Landslides. Yeah. And if you're in the area and have been impacted, we would love to hear from you. For sure. And we're thinking about you guys, obviously. I think we say search bar at any point. Yes. Well, then that means it's time for listener mail. All right, I'm going to call this possibly the uni bomber is riding us. Hey, guys, I want to send out a note from the Great North. I've been listening since my buddy Adam played me the Lego podcast a few years ago, and since then, I've been a fairly regular listener, but never more so than over the past few months, because last spring I moved from Minneapolis to Juneau, Alaska, for job gardening at a public Barbara. Sounds like a lovely job, by the way. I live in a little shack in the woods near my work, about 25 miles out of town, about a half a mile from my nearest neighbor, almost free of rent, close proximity to work and uniqueness of the situation is what drew me to it. I have no Internet. I have no cell phone service. So every time I head into town, I stopped by the library or a coffee shop and download more of your podcast, new stuff and oldies but goodies that are still new to me. I have gotten into the habit of listening to you guys most evenings while making or eating dinner. I know some people in our town, but in the interest of using less gasoline and sparing my more or less meager bank account, I spend the majority of my nights out here alone. Whenever I do go into town or one of my friends make their way out here, I tell them about whatever I've learned from you guys. Listening to you banter and learning a lot of interesting new things has definitely helped me keep my firm grip on my sanity. Winter is basically wrapping up here. It was long and harsh. We had 96 inches of snow in December alone. Can you hear me? Losing your mind? I'm really looking forward to spring and summer when Alaska comes to life with tourists, seasonal workers, and long, sunny days. But I will still find time to listen to your good stuff, so keep it rolling. I am happy I decided to live out here this past winter. It's a beautiful spot and a good adventure, but would have been a lot more difficult. Without the company of you guys. You rule. We do rule. And that is from Will and Will. That sounds like my kind of life, buddy. I'd love to do that. It is uni bomberesque. I could send the bombing. I could be the Unabomber. Well, I'm glad you're enjoying yourself, Will. Thank you for letting us know that we're helping you out out there. If you want to let us know that we're helping you out, whether you live alone or are part of a Brady Bunch or something like that, you can get in touch with us. First of all, you can hang out with us on social media. Look for SYSC podcasts on things such as Pinterest, Instagram or Twitter feed. Facebook. Yeah, we are new to Pinterest and Instagram, so we'd love for you guys to check us out there. It's very entertaining. Yeah, it's been fun. And you can send us an email to stuff podcast@discovery.com. And you can find all of our information and all sorts of great stuff at our home on the web. Stuff you should knowe.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstofworks.com. Hey everybody. 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455109fe-ba8a-11e8-9ed2-a350df2da65c | Short Stuff: Johnny Appleseed | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-johnny-appleseed | Johnny Appleseed was real! And he was about as amazing as the legend paints him. He really did plant apple trees all over America and if the feds hadn’t chopped them down during Prohibition, they’d still be around. Learn what we mean in this episode. | Johnny Appleseed was real! And he was about as amazing as the legend paints him. He really did plant apple trees all over America and if the feds hadn’t chopped them down during Prohibition, they’d still be around. Learn what we mean in this episode. | Wed, 30 Jan 2019 18:02:44 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=30, tm_hour=18, tm_min=2, tm_sec=44, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=30, tm_isdst=0) | 11915712 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, there, and welcome to short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Jerry. Let's get to it. I thought this was an interesting pick from you, and I salute you because I'm literally saluting you. I know. I see my hand. I'm pretty good at it, too. You really are. Look at how high and tight that is. And you did, like, a little snap where your hand kind of reverberates. Oh, I hate a lazy salute. Yeah. I salute you because people think of they hear the words Johnny Appleseed. They hear that name, and immediately they think of the Disney version or they think of folktale. But Johnny apple seed was a real dude named John Chapman who planted apple trees. Yeah. It's one of those amazing, awesome myths that turns out to be virtually accurate. Yeah. So it's not a myth at all. No, not really. I mean, there's only, like, some stuff about that legend that is somewhat mythical, but really, most of it is pretty accurate. It's not like he had, like, a giant ox or anything that followed him around. That was blue. No, that was all bunyan, I think. Right. The thing that people usually get wrong in the retelling with Johnny Apple Seed is that he was basically, like, the world's first flower child and that he was just basically, like, kind of traipsing along the frontier at the turn of from the 18th of the 19th century, planting trees just because he loved nature. That is not correct, necessarily. This guy did love nature. He's a businessman. He was he did this for out of a business sense of business for profit. You can say it, sure, but he was not like any kind of hard nosed, hard hitting, like, come to your house and break your legs kind of businessman. He would never double cross anybody or do something in business that would make someone else suffer. He apparently was well known for never, ever reminding someone that they owed a debt. He believed the good lord would tell that person, you need to go pay Johnny Applesee because you owe him some money. And it really didn't matter anyway if you bothered him because they knew that they owed the debt. And who was he to go bug somebody and make them feel down? You never knew someone was going through. So he was that kind of businessman. And yet, even with that mentality, even with that attitude, he had everything he needed in life and more, which was not necessarily substantial because he used to sleep on a bed of leaves and little twig huts that he made of his own construction on the frontier. Well, let's talk about apples for a second. Apples, as far as we know, started out in what we would call Kazakhstan. Today. They gained a lot of popularity in Rome because they grafted apples and a lot of fruit trees. If you want them to grow and fruit like you are accustomed to or like you want them to. You don't plant from seed. You graph them, which is when you take a stem with a bud on it. And through magic, not technique as a gardener, but through magic, you graft that onto another tree instead of planting from seed. Right. And you will get a more reliable outcome, especially in the case of apples, because apparently, growing apples from seed, if you have a wonderful Red delicious apple and you go spit a seed out into the ground, it might grow into something and maybe an apple tree, but it probably will not be a Red delicious apple that you can eat. No, they're called spitters. Apples grown from seed are called spitters, at least according to the Smithsonian article that we found, because they are way sour. Apples did not used to be like what we think of apples today. They were very sour, at least the ones growing from seeds, they were sour. And Henry David Thoreau said. Did I mention they were sour? Henry David Thoreau said that they would put a squirrel's teeth on edge. It's pretty sour. That's super sour. And I love the way he put it. So, folksy, yes, now, he was a proto hippie, I'll tell you that. But these were the trees that Johnny Apple Seed was planning. He was planting them from seed, not from grafting. And apparently one reason why he planted them from seed and not grafting was because he was a member of the Sweden Borgian Church, which kind of held that plants could feel, and therefore grafting was inherently cruel because it could conceivably create suffering in the plant. So he grew from seed. All right, let's take a break. Oh, wow. And we'll come back and we'll talk about why John Chapman wanted to plant all these apples to begin with from seed, right after this. All right, so Mr. Chapman was from Ohio. And it's funny, we don't know a lot about his early years. He was born and actually born in Massachusetts, but kind of lived his life in Ohio, I think, for the most part, which was the west at the time, which is funny, and said, all right, here's the deal. The Ohio Company Associates said, all right, you want to go out west and settle. If you want to form a permanent homestead beyond Ohio, then you can get 100 acres. But what you have to do, though, is you have to plant 50 apple trees and 20 peach trees in three years. I guess it's an incentive to make the land rich with plants. Well, also to show that you plan to be there in a few years when those things started bearing fruit, it was a way to show that you meant to settle there permanently, I guess. Well, yeah, but it was not like build a house. It had an agricultural benefit. I see what you mean. Yeah, I guess that would have been part of it. Then, too. Yeah, so he says, all right. He sees a business opportunity, and he's like, if I can start heading west from Pennsylvania, and I can get just ahead of these settlers and plant these things, like claim this land and plant these trees and these orchards, then I can turn around and sell them at a much higher value. Yeah, because he improved the land. He was the first squatter, kind of, in a way, I guess. But the other thing that I saw he did, too, was he would establish nurseries in the area as well. So if you didn't buy attractive land that he already developed, you could also still just come and buy his trees from him. And he did this for decades, going up and down the frontier, because the frontier kept growing further west. And at first, when he first embarked out we're talking Ohio. Ohio is the frontier. There is no United States beyond that. I don't think Ohio is even a state quite yet. So he's walking up and down these unsettled lands, growing these orchards, planting apple trees, and then also creating nurseries. But at the same time, too, he was also serving as a liaison between these incoming settlers and the Native Americans, who now suddenly had neighbors, whether they wanted them or not. And he apparently spent a lot of time learning the languages of the different tribes that he encountered, and they grew to trust him. And so he became an advocate for the settlers, but also was able to advocate for the Native Americans, too. He was just that kind of a guy. That's kind of the cloth he was cut from. I bet he put his mouth around a piece. Piper too, speaking of one of the first hippies. Sure. All right, so he's going around, he's planning all these apple orchards and I guess presumably peach, because he was required to. But he's not known as Johnny Peach Tree. No, just apple seed or peach seed, I guess. Here's the thing, though, with these apples, like we said, because he's planting them from seed only and not grafting them, it's pretty wild. It's like the wild west, apple wise, you don't know what's going to come up. Many times, like you said, they're much too sour to eat. But what they weren't too sour for is to make booze out of them in the form of cider. And cider was a big part of frontier life. Right. Like, they drank it. It's apparently New Englanders that transplanted out on the western edges of Ohio would drink close to 11oz of hard cider per day. And it was a time when water quality was suspect. And you knew you could count on that cider. Right, because it's alcoholic. So it's fermented, which means that any harmful bacteria has been killed. It can't really survive in an alcoholic drink. Right. It's wonderful. So they would drink cider instead of water, which, by the way, 11oz. It's like a bottle of cider today? No, it's not too much. No, it's not. But everyone drank it every day instead of water, so there was a certain amount of buds going on, I'm sure. And who knows what the alcoholic content of the site or what? 30%. Right. But that was what apples were used for. I think Michael Pollan said that up until Prohibition, an apple in the United States had a much greater chance of being turned into hard cider than it did of just being eaten. And again, it was because most apples in the US. Were grown from seed, meaning they were sour, meaning they were much better for cider than they were for eaton. Right. And that's how it was again up until Prohibition. And one of the reasons why cider just kind of went away is because Prohibition, apparently the feds used to chop down apple trees. They saw them to kind of say, no, you're not going to make any cider out of this. You hate seed. Heck, you got it. I'm going to cut down this tree right in front of your face. Right, exactly. You like cider? Yeah, I love it. Yeah, it's great stuff. My initial introduction to cider was really sweet, I guess the first wave of the resurgence. Yes. Like back in college in those days. What was the one that everyone drank? Woodchuck. Yeah, that was it. It was basically the zema of cider. At least back then. I haven't had it in a while, so maybe they kind of is it not a sweet now? I don't know. That's what I'm saying. They may have toned it down. No, I mean just regular hard siteer. Oh, yes. And it's not supposed to be it was never supposed to be sweet. That was just a weird anomaly. So I think the site are now is much closer to the traditional cider, which has got like a tad bit of sweetness to it, but it's definitely a lot more beery than apple juicy. I have to dip my toe in the cider pond once again. Do not do that. Just drink it. What else do we have? Do we have anything else in this guy? Johnny Appleseed? Yeah, no, I think I mentioned he was a sweet businessman. He was a friend to the Native American and the European settler. Check and check. There's supposedly a tree in Nova, Ohio, on a farm. It's a 175 year old tree, and some people believe that it is the last remaining tree that can be found that Johnny Chapman, aka Johnny Appleseed, actually planted. Because, again, the Prohibition federal chopped all this other stuff down. Amazing. So that's Johnny Appleseed, everybody. Drink it up. If you want to get in touch with us, send us an email. You can do worse than that just because end it off to stuff podcast@howstuffworks.com." | |
875abc4e-3b0e-11eb-9699-37460fd31b95 | SYSK’s 2021 Glad Tidings Bonanza Holiday Special | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-s-2021-glad-tidings-bonanza-holiday-special | Josh and Chuck’s holiday mojo has returned and they’re back in the saddle to rustle up some holiday cheer. So put on your comfiest sweater, ugly or otherwise, grab a mug of whatever makes you happy, gather round with your favorite people, and listen in. | Josh and Chuck’s holiday mojo has returned and they’re back in the saddle to rustle up some holiday cheer. So put on your comfiest sweater, ugly or otherwise, grab a mug of whatever makes you happy, gather round with your favorite people, and listen in. | Thu, 23 Dec 2021 10:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=12, tm_mday=23, tm_hour=10, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=357, tm_isdst=0) | 49814403 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know a production of. iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the holiday cast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's with us in spirit. And everything is married ft and bright and the tidings are glad and the halls are decked and Santa's on his way. That's right. Our Christmas episode that we look forward to every year, this, along with the Halloween episodes or episodes, are two of our favorites and they are both ad free because we insist upon it. Because Christmas has been commercialized enough. We're doing our bit to reverse that trend just ever so slightly. And I think it's been having a measurable effect, don't you, Chuck? I think so. People's fingers are spared that fast forward button for the next 45 minutes. Right. And let's do this. So what are we going to do first? Maybe the mystery behind the world's most famous Christmas poem. Yeah. Did you dig this one up or no, I believe this was a listener suggestion. It was. So this is based on an article by Stacey Conrad in Mental Floss, but it was suggested to us by one of our listeners named Adam Stevenson. And thank you very much to Adam for sending this idea in. And the whole thing, Chuck, that we're talking about is probably the world's most famous Christmas poem. It's called A Visit from St. Nicholas, and we've read it before, but it's actually, in most people's mind, called Twice the Night Before Christmas. I was confused a couple of times I read through this. So that poem, the authorship of it, is disputed and has been disputed for some time now. And it's not one of those questions where somebody says, no, it was my great great grandfather who wrote it instead. There's actually evidence that kind of backs this up. So right now, here, in 2021, and maybe for the rest of all time, we're not certain who wrote A Visit from St. Nick, also known as Twice the Night Before Christmas. That's right. We know it first popped up in Troy, New York's, troy Sentinel on December 23, appropriately 1823, with no authorship attributed. And then 13 years after that, a professor and a poet named Clement Clark Moore was named as the author because of the story that his housekeeper, without him knowing it, sent the piece in. It was a poem he wrote for his kids, supposedly. Right. And sent it into the newspaper. And then in 1844, which is 21 years later right. It was officially included in one of his poetry anthologies. That's right. So it officially became credited to Clement Clark Moore. That's right. And then at some point, and I'm not entirely certain when another family, the family of Henry Livingston, Jr. And again, by family we mean five generations grandchildren stepped forward and said, hey, I don't think this is quite right because it turns out that great great grandfather Henry had been reading this poem to his kids. My great grandmother for, like, 15 years before it was first published in the Troy New York Sentinel. Right. So if that was 1823, they're claiming it goes back to yeah, that's what I saw. All right, so let's duke this out on the Livingston side. And we're not taking sides because neither one of us know or care, but they certainly do on the Livingston side. They say, you know what? We have Dutch heritage in our family and ancestry. Great grandpappy Henry's mom was Dutch, and there's a lot of Dutch references in the poem. So it's his. Yeah. Apparently this is where we get the names for Sansa's eight reindeer, and originally Donner and Blitzen's names were Dunder and Blixem. If you read that. I know, it's great. What makes it even, like a cheap T shirt you would buy or something? A Dunder brand T shirt. Well, just know, like, your off brand toys. This seems like the off brand Christmas shirt. Yes, but Dunder and Blixem mean thunder and lightning and Dutch, so hence the Dutch references. And the thing is, Clement, Clarke Moore wasn't Dutch, and he didn't have Dutch heritage. So it does make it a little more sensible that Livingston, who did have Dutch heritage, would have used those Dutch names initially. That's right. And for all of you thinking I just stepped by a Dunder and Mifflin joke, just wanted to acknowledge it, so you know that I did think of it, and I chose not to. Same here. All right. It's a Christmas miracle. We're growing up. Yeah, we really are. So Blixom changed to Blixen first, I think, to rhyme with Vixen. And I believe in 1844, More stepped up because he was like, hey, this is my poem after all. Right? Yeah. And changed it to the Germanic Blitzen. And then Dunder eventually became Dondar. And then in the early 20th century, it went to Donner because it's also Germanic. Yeah. So there's the whole thing. Originally, Dunder and Blixon were two of the names, and those are clearly Dutch words, which has nothing to do with Clement Clark Moore. There's another thing, too. Remember we said that Henry's children said and apparently a neighbor at the time said that they remember him reading this to them back in 18, 716 years before it was published. And there's also family legend among the Livingstons that there used to be a handwritten draft copy that had mark outs and scratches and revisions to it closed. Yeah. We basically suggest this is the original version of the poem and the case would be closed had that not burned up in a house fire at some point in family history. See, when I was reading this stuff, I was like, all right, here we go. It's over. Case reopened. Yeah. The mysterious house fire. Now I'm like I don't know about you. Livingstons. Right, okay. Very fishy. Well, then the literary professors got involved, and then things got really taken off the rails, right? Yeah, there have been plenty of well, plenty, but at least a few literary professors who have gotten in the archives and the anthologies and said, you know what? This More guy never wrote anything like this thing. It's in this antipestic scheme where you have the two syllables followed by a more stressed third syllable. And you never wrote anything like that, buddy, so I think you're a fraud. Yeah, and I had no idea about that scheme until I kind of spelled it out myself. I got it wrong, though. Did you notice that? No, I didn't. You got the first half right, but then you lose it. You lost it after and all through the house. Oh, I did? Yeah. That was pretty much like oh, yeah, I see now. Okay. Can I read it like you read it? Yeah, please do. It was the night before Christmas, and all through the house. Not a creature with stirring, not even a mouth. Oh, man, this is like my math. He got tripped up. Yeah, that's all right. Good stuff. But that's anapistic scheme, they said, you didn't write anything like that, buddy. But Livingston wrote plenty of stuff like that. Yeah. So again, case closed, right? And if you want to put a nail in that coffin, another professor from New Zealand, a guy named McDonald Jackson, stepped up and said, get this, everybody. I've devised a statistical analysis machine, and I set it loose on Clement Clarke Moore's manuscript notebook, and it says all of those poems are Clement Clark Moore's. But when I feed that same machine twice, the Night Before Christmas, a Visit from St. Nicholas, and everybody goes, oh, yeah, that one. He goes, it just starts coughing and smoking and sputtering and it broke. Yeah. Basically, if you talk to Namors, they're like, yeah, but you know what? You're just constructing this in a way that makes it look like he never wrote anything like this, because I know for sure he wrote The Pig in the Rooster, and that's anapest. He wrote one like this. Yeah. And that's that I should spell out some of the pig in the rooster and anapestic scheme and see what happens. So on the Moore side, I sort of get this. But Moore was buddies with Rip Van Winkle, who was very much into the Dutch culture up there in New York State. And I guess the argument is, because he was good friends with Irving that he picked up on that Dutch stuff. Is that the argument? That's the argument. But the argument that I saw that basically is like, no, it's Clement Clarke Moore is that Clement Clark Moore, who has otherwise never been accused of doing anything nefarious in his life, stepped up and claimed credit and authorship of this. And that just doesn't seem to be something that he would have done had he not done that. And the Livingston Henry specifically, who was alive after the thing was published for five more years, never stepped forward to take credit for it. To a lot of people, they're like, well, that's that. Yes, you can create statistical analysis machines to say whatever. But as it stands now, if you go onto the Poetry Websites Foundation they say that there's a lot of scholars that credit Henry Livingston with authorship. But they still if you search Clement Clark Moore the poem that they have on their website for him is A Visit from St. Nicholas still. So everybody's like, who knows? But ultimately, who cares? Just read the poem. It's so great, it doesn't matter who wrote it anymore. I agree. So I think, Chuck, that we've done our first little segment which means it's time for some of Jerry's delicious Christmas interstitial music. All right, let's do it. Oh, boy. Isn't it so much better than an ad? Yeah. That is so nice. Jerry really knows what she's doing. She's gotten really good at this stuff. All right, where are we headed next? Oh, jeez. I'm driving. Huh? Okay, I guess you said you wanted to skip around. Yeah, let's do one of yours. How about red and green? It's Christmas colors. Yeah. We need to thank Wonderapolis, Reader Digest and our old buddy, Robert Paulson. Mr. RP funding himself, long time listener. I think he's done this past few years. Sends us a bunch of Christmas ideas because it gets hard, you guys, to think of new things and to find new stories. And Paulson's always send us good stuff. So this was inspired by Robert. And this is the idea that where did green and red comes from for Christmas? And there's quite a few theories and no one knows for sure. No. Which is fun because that means you get to toss out a lot of theories that might be right or wrong. Who knows? But if you go talk to a Christian and say, hey, that whole red and green thing for Christmas, you're a Christian. Where did it come from? And they'll say, well, sit down, friend, I'll tell you. It turns out that the green represents an evergreen tree which in turn represents Jesus. And you say, I didn't see Jesus coming in this. But here we go. Yeah, it's only Christmas. And the reason that the evergreen represents Jesus is because Jesus has eternal life or offers eternal life. And the evergreen is representative of eternal life and living through the wintertime. Even the Bleake is part of the winter and evergreen is still green, hence the green part. And you say, well, what about the red? Don't say blood. Don't say blood. What do they say, Chuck? Blood. Yeah, blood of Christ. It's always the blood of Christ. So supposedly that's where the red and green came from, as far as Christian scholars are concerned. That's right. Other people say, Well, I'll tell you what, in the 13 hundreds churches would put on these miracle plays is what they were called and on Christmas, they would perform one called the Paradise Play, which retells the story in Genesis of the creation of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. When Adam was instructed not to eat from the tree of good and evil did so anyway, they were banished from paradise. And when they put on these miracle plays, apple trees weren't in season, so they couldn't drag a dead apple tree in there. So they would bring in a nice, lovely green evergreen pine and then fasten apples to them. And that is where the green and the red comes from. And every single year there was always one townsfolk, one annoying towns folk. We'd stand up and point and say, that's not an apple tree. That's right. Cletus is blackjack Jokel. But then now we get into probably the true origins of it because we're going back beyond the origin of Christianity and starting to get into pagan and Roman culture. And as we've seen time and time again with a lot of the holidays that we celebrate these days, they're ultimately based on pagan and Roman rituals. And this is no different. They think that Saturnalia actually used to claim as its holiday colors red and green, again because of evergreens and the berries they bear. And we talked about Saturnalia before in a Christmas episode. Right. We had to have surely at some point that's the only way I would know about it. The Celtic people, also the ancient Celts, they loved their holly plants because they were evergreen, and holly is very much associated with Christmas. And they were saying, well, that's where the red and green comes from. And then a little bit later on, they were these religious screens called rudes. And medieval churches were dyed red and green. But other people say, well, that's because those were the pigments that were available at the time. Right. So no one really knows for sure. No, but it does present like a connection between Christianity and red and green. Those medieval church greens definitely do. So the Victorians came along and they had a bunch of different color schemes. Blue and white, blue and red, red and green. All were pretty much equally associated with Christmas with the Victorians. And it wasn't until 1931 when Coca Cola commissioned had in sunbloom to do his famous illustration of Santa Claus, where Santa Claus became fat and fully clothed in red for the first time. And for the rest of all time before that, he was naked as a Jay bird. That's right. It was a gross Christmas tradition. All right, Jerry, how about some more of that music? Take it away, Jerry. Okay, Chuck. So now I think it's your turn to pick which one we're going to do next. It's like opening Christmas presents. We're going to just switch off. Well, you know where I'm headed to? Headed to the December 1987, and I'm watching the TV show Alf, and I'm shocked at what I'm seeing on my screen. That's right. Mainly because I never saw an episode of Alf. Yeah, you were a little old for it. I definitely did. It was a cute show. 86. So I was 15. Maybe just on the cusp, but yeah, I didn't way too old for you. What was Alf like? An eight year old show? Exactly. The right age to hate Alf more than any other age group on the planet, I think. Yeah. I started listening to Pink Floyd when I was 15. Right, okay. Yeah. You wouldn't like Alfred. People who have never seen Alf like you. I was thinking our younger viewers, but I guess anybody who's never seen Alf. It's a 80s sitcom about an alien who crash lands on Earth, takes up a residence with a family who he, in short order, starts to drive crazy with his wife cracking, his trouble making. He's good hearted, but he's just a lot he's a handful. And then on top of that, they have to keep him a secret from nosy neighbors from the government. And it's a cute little show that like a six year old can follow the plotline of. You want to hear something more shocking? Yes. I didn't know until yesterday that Alf was an alien. What did you think he was? I don't know. I never thought about it. I knew it was a puppet. It looked like a little fuzzy beast of some kind. I never really thought about it. I had no idea what Alf was. But now that I see this and I see the year clearly capitalizing on a post Et kind of thing, let's do a sitcom. I'm sure that was brought up in the room. Yeah. And Alf actually stood for alien life form. It was the name that the dad, Willie gave to him. His real name was Gordon Shemway and he was on the planet Mel Mac. Was it really? Gordon Shemway? Yeah. Have you ever seen the movie Permanent Midnight? Yeah. Oh, sure, yes. That guy that was based on the Ben Stiller place, he was a writer for Alfred. Yeah. That's all I knew about, was that movie. Okay, got you. That was one of my favorite lines from any movie, is when Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller have lost their percocet Owen Wilson. And his voice goes, if I were a percocet, where would I be? I love that line. I can totally envision that. Wow. That was a dead on Owen Wilson, by the way. Wow. There it was again. So with Alf, what you see was what you got. It was very straightforward as far as episodes were concerned. So it was kind of jarring, like you were saying when you tuned in on December. Well, I don't remember, but in 1987 and you found out that there was not just a one part as a standard, but a two part episode shot on film of Alf. And it was a very special Christmas special of Alf. Yeah. To say the least. Not very funny. I watched some of it today. They didn't forego the jokes entirely. They tried to use them effectively to sort of punch up some moments here and there, but it was definitely different. It was Alf gets outside the house, get hitches a ride with Cleavon Little from Blazing Saddles fame as Santa Claus, and they go to a hospital where Alf is mistaken for a Christmas toy and given to a little girl who is dying. Yes. Which is basically the main plotline of this episode. Alf hanging out with this dying girl in her hospital room, and it's not like the kind of thing where the dying girl doesn't know she's dying. She actually talks openly and frequently about dying and how she's being scared of it. Yeah. Being scared to die. Yeah. Not exactly like the typical Christmas themes you would expect. There's also a part in the second part where Alf talks Cleveland Little character out of taking his life by jumping off a bridge. Actually, I was about to say that's not like a very Christmassy thing, but thanks to A Wonderful Life, jumping off of a bridge actually is kind of Christmassy, now that I think about it. Yeah. But being Alfred, being a TV sitcom from the would think at the end, of course, the doctors come in and they say, we're going to save this girl, or, Alf, your heart was big enough to heal this girl. But no, it ends with Alf leaving and waving from the back seat of the car, and she waves from her hospital window, and the assumption is that she dies. Yeah. I mean, there's a part early on in part one where Alpha over here is a doctor talking to Cleveland Little and saying, like, yeah, she's a goner. There's nothing we can do from her. This is going to be her last Christmas. And the show makes no effort to change that whatsoever today. If you read about it on the internet, people like to tee off on it in some pretty annoying think pieces. It's an easy target if you look at it from a really cynical point of view, but if you actually stop and watch it, it's an extremely touching episode. Apparently, viewers in 1987 were very touched by it, now went on to become a big hit in part because of this kind of daring limb that they went out on. But there's a guy who writes for Yahoo. News named Ethan Atler, and he noticed that at the end of part two, there's a little title card that said that that episode was in memory of another girl named Tiffany. So he was like, well, what is this? That's the name of the dying girl in the episode. Who's this Tiffany? And he started to dig into it, and he found out there actually was a real life Tiffany who was dying, who was a fan of Alf that's right. And apparently this was something that happened a lot, is that kids who were battling cancer or something terrible like that would get involved in either with make a wish or just had a wish to see Alf and to meet Alf because kids loved Alf. And that's what happened. Tiffany went through make a wish, wanted to meet Alf. So they set up a video conference in no small feat between Alf and the puppeteer Paul Fusco, obviously. And then Tiffany was in her hospital room, and the mom says, you know what? If it hadn't been for this, like, this gave Tiffany an extra month of life. It, like, picked her spirits up so much. Brandon Tardikov, who was running NBC at the time, heard about this, and of course, you can imagine what happens from there. That's how this story was born. He was like, this is gold. Christmas gold, everybody. That's right. So they actually did make this two part episode again, shot on film, and they dedicated it at the end title card to Tiffany Lee Smith in her memory, which is pretty sweet. But, I mean, that video conference, that meeting between those two was significant enough that they did that. If you go back and watch it, I've only seen part one because I accidentally stumbled onto an internet mystery. Chuck, part two is not on the internet. Part one you can get anywhere, and you watch it, and you want to see part two, and you can't see part two anymore. Interesting. I watch this. You probably saw this, too. There's, like a ten minute video where this guy kind of breaks it down and goes over the story and shows clips from it. Apparently, Al delivers a baby at some point, too. Right? Yeah. That's where some of the laughs come from. Yeah. But yeah, it's interesting. And the guy in the video, too said that on alfan sites, it can be rated the worst or the best episode of Alf, depending on which one you go to. Yeah, I read, like, a little article on me TV, and they were saying the Alf Christmas special is the Alf movie we always wanted. But anyway, it was nice. It was very pleasant to watch, at least the first part of it. I recommend anybody who can go check it out. It's good. And it made me want to watch more Alf again. Yeah. I looked up the girl. I was like, I wonder where she is today. She's born in 75, so she's a year older than you. And she didn't do a lot of stuff after her childhood, but she was on that TV show as a cast regular. Not Full house. Our house. Yes. With Wilford Brimley. Yeah. I never saw that. Shannon Doherty and Wilford Brimley. She was one of the little girls in that, too. Yeah. So now she's locked into Christmas history. That's right. Trapped forever with Alf. All right, Jerry, this is your chance to shine. Tune up that violin and let's hear it, man, we're just careening from Christmas spirit to Christmas spirit, aren't we? I know. Love it. So that was yours. Why don't we go with oh, no, you pick from mine. Is it my turn? Yeah, that's what we're doing. Okay. Because we got a big finish, if you ask me. Let's do Christmas songs, which is interesting, but, you know, the one I'm excited about. Okay. All right, fair enough. Okay. Yeah. Christmas songs. This got me thinking about I saw the movie about a boy recently, again, movie that I really love. And in that movie, Hugh Grant's character is still living the good life as a fat cat because of a Christmas song that his father wrote. I can't remember the name of the song, but it's sort of the idea, and it's correct that if you are a pop star, or even not if you write, especially if you write and record and have all those rights to a popular Christmas song, then you are living on easy street, my friend. Yeah, you can pretty much just retire. And it's possible your kids and their kids might be able to retire too, for sure. And such as the case Chuck with Jim Lee, who figures prominently in this article you found about Christmas music in the music industry. He was the bass player for Slade, who, until today, I didn't realize was the originators of quiet riots. Come on, feel the noise. Yeah, it's actually Slades. Come on, feel the noise. And I went back and listened to both of them and I was like, this Slade boy is so much better. I love the Quiet riot song. And then I heard the Slade version. I was like, oh, wow, this is amazing. Yeah, Slade. By the way, this is from Rob Pitchett at CNN. But, yeah, I love Slade. When I was a kid, they had that great video, MTV video hit Run Away, and that's how I got introduced. But previous to that, in the early 80s, they were a big glam rock band in England and Jim was the bassist, and he was talking about the pressure of riding that next big hit all the time. And he was sort of dry of ideas. And apparently, as the story goes, in 73 in a hotel bathroom kind of wondering what to do and remembered that his manager and his mom had both said, why don't you write a Christmas tune? You can bloody retire. He said that inspired him. Get out of my room. I'm in a hotel bathroom. So that inspired him. And he came up with the outline of a verse and then a bridge, apparently. And then all of a sudden had a Christmas hit by Slade, which isn't as big here in the States. I definitely heard it quite a few times, but it's really big in the UK. Yeah, I'd never heard it before in my entire life until yesterday, I think. Yeah, it's called Mary Xmas, everybody. And, yeah, I think it's enormous in Britain because, again, Slave was British. But, I mean, it's so big in Britain. I'm very surprised I'd never heard it before. But it's a cute, fun little song about how not so Christmas is. But it was a huge hit for him and it's kind of one of those things where Slade, the guy, the bass player, Jim Lee, when he came up with this idea, like, to do a Christmas song, it wasn't like the band had been thinking of doing a Christmas song. He really had to go sell it to talk this awesome hard rock and glam rock band into doing a Christmas song. And they didn't release it as like a single or a special, they released it on one of their regular albums. Yeah. You're going to say the name of the lead singer. It's great. Hold on, what is his name? Naughty Holder. That's right. It's a great name. And he actually looks a lot like a Naughty Holder. He does. But Lee talks about the fact that it's like having a pension, basically here as he's aging, and he said, My grandkids, just like we were talking about, he said, they're going to be getting money for this thing because Christmas tunes don't go away. If you managed to wedge yourself in there with a popular tune, at least in your home country, you're going to make a lot of money. And that's why Freddie Mercury came to Jim Lee right, at one point and said, hey, I'm kind of thinking about doing a Christmas song. Is that okay? I'm not going to be stepping on your toes or anything, am I? Yes, well, I mean, that was part of it, I think. Also, Slade was the ones who made it okay for people who weren't being Crosby and Gene Autryd Christmas music, because after them, Bowie recorded that Little Drummer Boy with Bing Crosby, queen came along and recorded theirs and it just kept going from there. I have the distinct impression that slayed were the originators of that trend. I think you might be right. It seems to be what this article is indicating. And now I think they said that, and this was in 2014, no one knows for sure because no one really wants to share these numbers, I think partially because it goes against what you want to think about at Christmas, but like, that Mariah Carey song in 2014, they estimated had earned her about $16 million. It's a great song. I'm not even a Mariah Carey fan, but I love that song. It is a really good one. Apparently she has some more upper sleeves that have been coming out lately, too. Christmas album, I think. Yeah, I think she just released another one. But it is a definitive recent Christmas hit. But it also points out how hard it is to make one of those because. She's definitely not the only artist who's working still today who's released a Christmas song. Every Christmas, tons and tons of artists take their shot at a Christmas song and one of the reasons why they take their shot is because they will basically be able to stop working whenever they want. If it's a hit, it's just so rarely a hit. There's this guy who is interviewed in the article who basically said he works for PRS for Music, which manages royalty payments. He said basically you can count on your fingers the number of artists in the last 25 years you've had, like a bona fide Christmas hit. And it's true there's plenty of Christmas songs, but Christmas hits are few and far between. Yeah, I do think it's funny, though, how everyone, even bands you don't think are doing it, they try to get some of that Christmas juice because if you will bring up like a modern Christmas rock playlist, it is just littered with bands that I haven't even heard of that are throwing their name in the hat, basically. Yeah. I mean, I love a lot. I love Elton John's song. I love Queen's song. Thank God it's Christmas. I think my favorite might be Tom Petty's and the Heartbreakers Christmas all over again. I don't know that one. Oh, it's great. It's great because at the end, I think I talked about this on Movie Crushed a couple of years ago, at the end, it's kind of fading out with some jingle bells and Tom Petty and that sort of Florida southern drawl. Says Santa. This Christmas I want a Fender Twin Reverb, a Chuck Berry song. Yeah, okay. And he's just like listing things out. It even fades out on his voice. Yeah, I remember that song. That is a cute one. What's your favorite? I think we've talked about this before. My favorite Christmas song of all time or recent Christmas hit. Favorite pop rock of any era. Christmas song, man, somebody's going to find me on the street and strangle me but I got to say last Christmas by Whammy. Oh, it's great. Are you kidding me? Yeah. A lot of people really hate that song, but it's not because it's a bad song. It's just because it's really overplayed. And that's one of the other problems with the fact that so few Christmas songs or Christmas hits because that means that there's a small pool that gets played over and over and over again. Such good stuff. What a big mistake to get a Christmas heart and the very next day give it away. It is a big mistake. There's one other person I want to give a shout out to, though, is Kylie Minogue. She had some good Christmas songs and there's actually she did a duet with James Corden called like, Every Day Is Christmas, I think. Okay. Very cute. It's not a hit in the United States, but I would bet a lot of marmalite that it's a big hit in Australia. I know people are sick of hearing it, but I still love Paul McCartney's wonderful Christmas Time. And I love John Lennon. So this is Christmas. Good stuff. Yeah, it is good stuff. And then also the thing I've been playing, Chuck, and this will come probably as a little surprise to you, but I just wanted to shout it out, too. I found a YouTube video that's an hour long called Kmart Store intercom Christmas music. Knock Your Socks Off. Is this a playlist? It's apparently an hour that they took from the Kmart store intercom because at one point they called for security in section three. But it's like just like instrumental, multi Christmas music that will make you pucker. It's so sweet. Emily has been she usually likes her rock and roll Christmas mixes, but she's a big Christmas music person. From Thanksgiving to Christmas, it's always on in the house. Yeah, but this year, she's just so crazy with work and really stressed. She's listening to nothing. But we're calling it Jazzy Christmas. I don't know what it is, but it's sort of like dentist office Christmas piano stuff. Oh, yeah. Nice. Very relaxing. Nice. But I do miss step into Christmas and Christmas all over the world, so we're going to have to rock it out soon. Okay. Another one that we should mention is that Donny Hathaway song. This Christmas, I think, is what it's called this Christmas. You've heard it a million times. Listen to Dolly. I think I put this before I left social media last year. A full 30% of Dolly Parton's Christmas songs are about having sex. What? Go listen to Dolly Parton's Christmas songs. About 25% of them. At some point, she's talking about, like, screwing Santa or like, the kind neighbor or like, what? It's really funny. I'm telling you, just do it. And it's in the Dolly Parton way. Sure, yeah, of course. It's not like we had a few drinks and can do something. Really? I had no idea. It's really funny. But she deserves another shout out just for hard candy Christmas alone. Well, I think that one talks about it. Yeah. I think she talks about going to the bar and picking up somebody. Maybe at one point. I know what you're talking about. I haven't really thought about it because it's just Dolly. All right, I'm going to look at the lyrics for that. Well, we need to move on. We're just going to spend the next 45 minutes talking about Christmas songs that we thought of. All right, jerry, that's your queue. All right. Is it my turn? It's your turn, buddy. All right. Well, I guess there's nowhere else to go for you than Advent calendars. That's true. I don't know how that happened. Did you choose first or something? I must have. All right. I'm not sure. It's kind of like that anapistic rhyme scheme all over the place. But we're talking Advent calendars and I realized that I didn't set out what an Advent calendar was. Maybe not everybody understands that because I was raised Catholic, so I had an Advent calendar every year. Did you? No, I got into them when I took German in high school and we sold them for German Club. Okay, all right, so they're a super German thing. But also, if you're Catholic in the United States, they're pretty Catholic thing, too. But I think they're also a lot of Protestants use them. But it's just basically a little calendar. But it's a calendar plus, because for each day from December 1 to 24th, that's the extent of an Advent calendar. Each day it has, like, a little door on it each day. And you open up the door and there's like a suite inside or something like that. And the whole point of an Advent calendar is to get kids jazzed about the coming of Christmas as if they needed any extra jazzing whatsoever. But that seems to be the whole point of Advent calendars. Yeah. I don't know why I didn't get one this year, because we've been getting them, and I've seen with my own eyeballs how delighted my daughter is because it becomes the ritual every day to open that door and get that little piece of chocolate. Jeez, I didn't get one this year. I feel like a dope. It's not too late. You can just pick up the pace and just start it like December 12. Yeah, I guess we're recording this on December 9. So you're right. I need to find a local German club. High school German club. Hurry. All right. So these things there isn't one on the 25th. Does it end on the 24th? I've seen both ways and I don't remember. I haven't had one for years, either. But I feel like there was the last one you opened on Christmas, I thought. But maybe it is Christmas Eve that you opened the last one, and then you wake up and it's Christmas, and you burn it. Then you set it up Latin. In Latin, coming or arrival is what Advent means. So obviously, the arrival of Christmas and the first Advent calendar that we kind of recognize as one was introduced later than I thought in 19 eight in Munich, or as we would say in German Club Munching, Germany, by Gerard Long. Gerard? No. I think it would be Gerhardt Long. That's what I thought, too. You really threw me off suddenly. We were in Saxony or something. Yeah, Gerhard Long. So Long actually said it was my dear sweet mother who introduced me to the Advent calendar. She used to make them for me by hand herself, put little pastries in there so that every day I would get to eat a little sweet. And that was my treat for Advent. And he loved it so much and loved his dear, sweet mother so much that he grew up as an adult and in, he released the first Advent calendar. But it was the suckiest Advent calendar you could possibly get because it was just a flat piece of paper. There were no treats involved. There were no doors to open. You just crossed off the day. Terrible. And I think Gerhard Lang's mother haunted him by his bedside for years until he finally, in 1926, added doors to his Advent calendars and put suites inside. And then everybody said, okay. And his dear sweet mother could rest in peace from that point on and went off to heaven. It's nice. German heaven. This went throughout Germany, of course, and they were selling and printing these things like crazy up until World War I, and in World War II, when they stopped doing it because of the paper rations. But you'll be glad to know that in World War II, the Nazis still printed their own Advent calendars with Nazi propaganda stuff behind the little doors. Yeah, they took all the churchy stuff out. Yeah. Put in little pagan symbols. And then after World War II, they kind of cranked up the operation again. Yeah, they got back to normal. Everybody's like, thank God. And apparently they just stayed basically in Germany. It was a German tradition among Lutherans and other German Protestants. And then in the 50s, Dwight Eisenhower, dear old Ike, was photographed with his grandchildren around Christmas time opening an Advent calendar. And everybody said, I like Ike. So they went out and bought Advent calendars. And they suddenly became a lot more widespread in the United States. And today they are widespread, to say the least. And they really bear little resemblance to the original Suki 19 eight Advent calendar that Gerhardt line came up with. Yeah, when I bought them, they do resemble it. It's still sort of the traditional admin calendar with just the simple little chocolate in there, but they can get quite fancy now, apparently you can get large calendars with beer or wine or whiskey in them, which I think is kind of cool. What else? If you're a little kid and you're like, I really want to be exposed to branding all month long to really get me primed to ask for certain presents. And they've got Advent calendars for you. They have Roblox. They have Lego Hot Wheels minecraft. Some of them manage to be Doubly branded. There's harry Potter. Lego. Advent calendars. Pokemon Funko. Advent calendars. It's an advertising bonanza all about the arrival of the baby Jesus. I bet Amazon sells one. That's just a tiny little QR code for 5% off something. That's right. And like, you open each door and the message is, you love Amazon. You love Amazon. You cannot do without Amazon. And then there is one that I meant to look this up and see a picture of it, but apparently if you have way too much money and you're no, I'm not going to say what kind of person might be okay because it's our kids are listening. But you can get one from Tiffany and Company, which has a big crate with legit jewelry inside each day to give your special someone 24 individually wrapped Tiffany gifts. I think in this crate, man, the spirit of giving. That's what they call that. I guess so. And by the way, everybody, advent calendars was the suggestion of another little helper named Alexandra Stock, who sent in that one, and a whole list of others. So thanks for that. And, Chuck, I think it's Jerry's time to shine again right now. All right, we're back, and we need to shout out Time magazine and this is going to be a dead giveaway. Festivusweb.com for this next bit. Yes. So we're talking about Festivus, Chuck Festivus, the festival for the rest of us or the festival for the rest of us, depending on who you talk to. That's right. If you don't know what we're talking about, then you probably are not a Seinfeld fan. But Festivus was in the 1997 episode of The Strike in the 9th season when Frank Costanza, the great Jerry Stiller. Has he left this or is he around? Do you know when Amara died? I don't know. All right, should we get our person to check on this? Hey, check on that, will you, people? I think people think we do have, like, a dedicated researcher at our side. That's right. At all times. And they're not very good. So, Jerry stiller, this is great. He staged a war on Christmas and created festivals with one of the great lines in Seinfeld history. He said, Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. And here's the line as I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way. That's right. I watched him twice. Twice today. You watched it twice today. Oh, my gosh. It is flawless, man. It has it all. Kramer is on a bagel. Strike is like giving her fake number out and trying to get a free sub Kruger in it. George's Human Fund. Like fake charity. Jerry's two faced girlfriend. Everything is in that one. It's just an amazing, flawless episode. I love it. So this is on the show. It's celebrated on December 23 because he wanted to get a leg up on Christmas. And he practiced festivals with the festival pole, which was a bare aluminum pole in the living room or the backyard with no decoration. And they have, of course, the airing of the family grievances and then engage in defeats of strength. That's right. So everybody knows that Seinfeld and Seinfeld writers just created this out of whole cloth, and Festival was born almost immediately. People just started taking up festivals and celebrating festivals as well, and still do today very much. But it turns out, and I had no idea about this, but one of the writers on Seinfeld dan O'Keefe. His father, Daniel O'Keefe Senior, actually created Festivus back in the little Daniel Keef as a kid in the celebrated it with his family every single year. So Festivus was a real thing that the other writers of Seinfeld forced Dan O'Keefe to basically include in an episode. Yeah, I think I may have heard that at some point, but didn't really have it ingrained in my mind until this popped up. And it just makes it all the better, the fact that this is a real thing. As the family story goes, in 1966, on the eve of the first date that Daniel Senior had with his fiance to be, Deborah, they commemorate festivals and it became an annual tradition. Some differences is they did not have a festival poll that was created for the show and it was not on a set date. Apparently in the O'Keefe family, it happened at any time of the year and never actually happened at Christmas. Yes, I read an interview with Dan O'Keefe and he said he never knew when they were going to celebrate festivals until he got off the bus after school. And his dad, like, had the decorations on, was playing weird 60s French music. And he was like, oh, I guess I love that so much better than it being a Christmas thing. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. There's no idea when, but they actually did air grievances. That was part of it. And that seems to be part of the actual theme or reason for festivals, as Daniel O'Keefe Senior conceived of it, that it was partially just kind of like blow off steam, get out what was bothering you about the rest of the family, and then you move on. It's a healthy thing to do. It really is. They didn't call it the airing of the grievances. They just basically spoke about their beefs. They apparently were inspired, or the senior Daniel was inspired by a Samuel Beckett play called Crap's Last Tape, where the protagonist in the movie or I'm sorry, in the play, tapes himself speaking at different points in his life. And so the O'Keefe family used to tape recorder to record their festivals. And some of these tapes still exist, apparently from Little Dan's life, which is great. Yeah. And there's actually in that episode, Frank Castanza brings in the old tape recorder and plays a audio tape of one of the festival's where they just all the whole family descends into screaming and George is crying. And it's pretty seriously, you need to watch that episode again. It is so good. I'm like, man, this show was good. And that was a really great episode. I'm going to do that right after this. Actually. This exactly what I'm saying. I don't blame you. One of the traditions that they did that was not on the show was this is really funny. It was called a Clock in the Bag or a clock in a bag. And the thing here is that apparently even the kids still don't know what that was all about. This is something that dad did, and they would ask him, like, dad, what is the clock in the bag all about? And he would say, that's not for you to know. So they just had to go along with it and honor the clock in the bank. That was so great. And apparently one of the other famous things about Festivists, the festivals for the Rest of US is what a lot of people say. It's the slogan that's on the episode. That actually was a slogan for festivals with the family. They call it the Festival for the rest of US. And initially was kind of a bit of dark humor reference to Daniel O'Keefe senior's mom dying. And so it was a festival for the rest of them left over after his mom died. That's really sad. But it was part of the point was to move on each year to air your grievances and kind of bid a due to whatever problems you had and just move on rather than dwelling in the past and your problems. And that seems to be tied in with that. If festivals could have gotten any better, it just did for me. I love it. So we should do that now. Josh, I've been meaning to say, you're not so great at math. Yeah. That's all I have to say. Your put downs are actually not that bad. How about that? That's my big problem. All right. We've gotten that out of the way. I feel so much better. I do, too. I love it. I think it's great that it was a real thing and the writers had to kind of put him up to it. Apparently, Dan was a little reticent about sharing this, but his sense, I think he went on to write a book about it, even. Yeah, I think so, too. So he fully embraced it with a stack of cash. Right. And he definitely set loose a huge cultural juggernaut on the world, which is cool. I love it. This makes me think of Erin Cooper. So we want to shout out Aaron, because I know Aaron loves Festivus. Yeah, for sure. Happy Festivus. Cooper and happy Festivus to all the rest of us. Yes. And thanks for another great year, everybody. And you and Jerry and Dave and Max, who helps us with the ads and the ad sales team and everyone at Iheart who helps us put this thing out. We got to thank Dave Rus. We got to thank our newest member, Livia. We got to thank Grabanowski and Julia. Yeah, that's right. Julia Layton. And also thank you to our special elf helpers, adam Stevenson, robert Paulson, of course, Alexandra Stock for coming up with these great suggestions for us. We appreciate that big time. And like Chuck said, happy Holidays, merry Christmas, happy New Year, happy Hanukkah, happy Kwanza. As they say in that episode of The Simpsons. Have a tip top tet. And we appreciate you guys joining us every year for this thing because we really look forward to it. And, Chuck, I have to say, after a wonky ish 2020 episode, which I think was very appropriate for 2020, I feel like we got our Christmas spirit back in this one. I think so. And, of course, if this is a tough time of year for you, which it often is for some people, we're thinking about you hang in there, get through these holidays and look forward to, hopefully a better next year. Yeah. So in the meantime, everybody, happy holidays from all of us. It's stuff you should not 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." | |
Should we have a fat tax? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/should-we-have-a-fat-tax | The concept of fighting unhealthy behavior like overeating by taxing unhealthy food has been around since 1994. But as the debate over a fat tax rages on in the U.S., Europe has begun to institute them and there's talk of taxing overweight people as well. | The concept of fighting unhealthy behavior like overeating by taxing unhealthy food has been around since 1994. But as the debate over a fat tax rages on in the U.S., Europe has begun to institute them and there's talk of taxing overweight people as well. | Tue, 12 Jun 2012 16:57:34 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2012, tm_mon=6, tm_mday=12, tm_hour=16, tm_min=57, tm_sec=34, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=164, tm_isdst=0) | 36500604 | 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. This is Josh Clark. Charles. Www up. Brian is taking a refreshing sip off of a little Craw brand carbonated soda. And since he's doing that wearing a plaid short sleeve T shirt. Sure. And I'm wearing jeans. That means that this is stuff you should know that's, right? Yeah. That's the formula. The secret formula. Jeans on you, plaid shirt on me. Nothing from the waist down on you. That's it. Yeah. Socks, of course. And flipflops. It makes the whole thing so much more unsettling, I think. Still, there's not much funnier than socks and shoes on with no pants. Yeah. It's a Homer Simpson. It's always funny. He has nailed it, especially with his pointy little brown shoes. Yeah. The big row ton pubic mountain that he has. He's awesome. It's been a long time, hasn't it? I know. We've been out of the office for two weeks just so people know we're getting back into things. And it's refreshing to do something that we're good at. Yeah, it is some safe it gives me a sense of control. Yeah. I feel like we're good at this. Check. We know what we're doing. Except for maybe the unions. One man. No, I mean, it was good. All the information was there, but it sounded like I had a trans orbital lobotomy, like, just moments before we started. I thought it was a good one. Did you? Yeah, we'll see. This one is going to be a good one, my friend. Remember the tipping episode? Yes. It's going to make that look like poop. Okay, we're talking today, Chuck, as I know you know about the possibility of a fat tax. That's right. We'll get to exactly what it is in a second. But let's talk about why you would even consider taxing fat. It seems like, Chuck, there is an obesity epidemic in the United States, and not just the United States, but in the Western world. Yeah. We're not the only fatties, although we are typically the fattiest of the fatties. Yeah. Well, we're the best in everything. Yeah. By percentage. I think there are more obese people in the States than elsewhere. Yes. But it is still a problem. It's very prevalent everywhere. When you mean I went to Japan? She was like, everyone in Japan is so thin. Everyone is very thin. They're very small, fatty. We went and I was like, you sure? When was the last time you were here? So, yeah, it's everywhere. But they would probably say, like, we're just fat now because we're eating American foods. That is what they say. Because you know what? They're probably right. Dude. Their McDonald's makes our McDonald's look, again, like poop. They have this thing called the Megamuffin, and it's an Egg McMuffin with sausage and, like, extra egg, and it's huge. And it's probably the most delicious thing I've ever eaten in my life. I'll eat a Sausage McMuffin with egg every now and then. Well, you can get an Egg McMuffin with sausage here in the States, if you know what to ask for. Sure, but it costs you, like, $6, but it's worth it. That's not true, but yeah. Anyway, yes. The double egg interests me, though. No, it is true. Like, it's $6 easy. Wow. Yeah. Okay, so in the United States, let's throw out some statistics because this is where we live in. Again, the United States is the greatest country in the world when it comes to obese people producing the obese. And obesity costs the US. An estimated $150,000,000,000 a year in healthcare costs. That's a significant amount of meatballs. Yes. 22% of all medical costs and 26% of Medicare costs are during the last year of life or due to obesity. That's a lot of 22%. That's significant. Yes. I thought that was a weird statistic, though, wasn't it? Yeah, I thought it was a little odd. That guy that pollster who you're quoting, he was definitely biased. It seemed like it was his own poll. I know, but I'm saying, even silly, it's like, here's this poll that we just conducted, and here's how I feel about it. Patty so we've got a lot of money being put into treating diseases that arise from obesity, aka preventable disease. Well, yeah. Obesity is considered a chronic disease, which is something that can be treated and prevented through behavior modification, like shock therapy, which costs far less than treating heart disease. Let's see. The costs are expected to rise, and however you feel about Obamacare take that off the table. Put it on the table. Take it off the table. Either way, if we don't change the amount of money we're putting into care for obesity related diseases, those costs are going to go up just because the sheer number of obese people are expected to rise. Sure. There's something like 72% of Americans are either overweight or obese. Yeah. Boy, that's a lot. It is a lot. And I think more than a third of Americans are obese. And obese is a body mass index of, like, 25 to 30. 25 to 30 kg/m\u00b2. Right. And then they're kind of refining that. So it's not just weight anymore. Right. It's the amount of fat you have on your body. Right. And apparently there's a move toward refining that even further, which is how much fat do you have on your upper body, which is the really unhealthy stuff out of the right. I know. I can't gain a pound below my waist. My dad, I carried all between my chin and my waistline. Is that right? Oh, yeah. I got skinny little legs. I don't get, like, the big butt that some guys get. I've noticed since I've been running, my butt has gone up and out a little bit, and I guess that's the way it's supposed to be, but I don't like it, man. I'm self conscious about my bottom now. Okay, so the percentage of obese people in the US. Chuck, is supposed to go from about a third, 32, 33% it's at now, to 42% by 2030. That's just not overweight. That's obesity. That's creeping up to half the country. Yeah, that's a lot. It's nice to have something to shoot for. So there's a lot of as a nation, there's a lot of reasons that people would start talking about instituting a fat tax. And when we're talking about a fat tax, we're talking about this concept that was first introduced by a Yale psychologist named Kelly D. Brownell. Yeah, the Twinkie tax. I hate that they throw Twinkie on everything. I always do. Anytime something has to do with junk food, they throw Twinkie into it. Like the Twinkie defense. The word Twinkie was never uttered during the trial. Yes, during the trial, it was all junk food. That was the Harvey Milk thing, right? Yeah, it was Dan White. Yeah, the Dan White trial. He never mentioned Twinkie, but that was the press. They just put Twinkie on anything they can't jerks, I guess. Yeah. He first coined it, and this was back in 1994 in The New York Times. So it's not the newest idea to be floated. And there are some different ways that people have suggested that we go about this. He has a couple of proposals. One is taxing seven to 10% on unhealthy foods and then use that revenue to subsidize healthy foods, to make it cheaper. To make that cheaper and less expensive. And the idea behind that is what? That people just buy unhealthy food because it's cheaper? Because it traditionally is. I wonder if we would find out if that's the case. I don't think that's the case. I don't know. I think people buy those foods because they want to buy that junk and eat it. I guess it depends on what you're talking about, though. Like, if it's a TV dinner, you're looking for dinner, and that's super cheap, right? True. So if there are healthier alternatives that are cheaper than that, then maybe they would go with the healthier alternative. But when you want an Oreo yeah, you want an Oreo. But I bet you could get one of the little healthy choice meals for about the same as a TV dinner. Aren't those about the same price? I wonder, though, also if proportion has to do with it, too. I think proportion control is a huge portion. Portion control. It is a proportion well, when you're comparing a healthy choice to 100 minutes proportion. And the other thing is, too, though, I mean, the Healthy Choice meals and those diet meals, Weight Watchers meals, they are lower. And I guess, like fat and calories and stuff like that, it'd still be hard to argue that they're healthy. Any kind of, like, package processed food like that is inherently not like, super healthy. I guess you're right. But it's probably better than The Hungry Man. Well, it's like the whole thing with high fructose corn syrup sugar, refined sugar is a healthy comparison to it. Like that whole throwback thing that Pepsi did. Right. That was supposed to be better for you. But they used just refined sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. So I wonder if what you're saying then, is that's along the same lines, I guess. Well, yeah. And that presents one of the problems that we'll get to is how do you if you're going to do something like this, where do you draw the line and how do you attack this? Is it just sweets and fatty foods or a pint of Ben and Jerry's? Ice cream is made with really healthy natural ingredients, but it's full of fat and calories. Right. Whereas a Healthy Choice, quote unquote, is processed and loaded with preservatives, but it's lower in calories, so it's hinky, you present a sticky conundrum. How are we going to figure this out if it ever goes through? So that was the first proposal by Brownell. Basically, seven to 10% tax use the revenue to fund or subsidize healthier stuff. Right. Yeah. And they can actually I don't know how they did this, but Oxford University actually put a number of value on how many lives a year that could save. Yeah. And they claim that a 17.5% value added tax could save up to 3200 lives a year. And I guess that's probably just in England, I'm imagining, right? I believe so. It seems like England is all over this as well. Yeah, they are. US and England. Well, Europe is kind of moving toward this, but yeah. The studies that we came across seem to be mostly British in origin. Right. They love their studies over there. They do. So that's one proposal. What's the second one? Well, the second one was less aggressive. It was basically just tax amount onto unhealthy food and then funnel that into public education. And Brownell said that that would probably be easier to get pushed through legislatively, but it would have less of an effect. Yeah. I mean, if you're going to do this, and I don't even know if it's a good idea or not, I'd rather see cheaper, healthy food than some stupid campaign. Right. The whole awareness campaign. I have doubts about the effectiveness of those things. Well, they have an obesity awareness campaign going on, and it's like they're using these poor fat kids as models, and it's like, what school do you go to? You have to be private tutored now because you're literally the poster child for obesity. Yeah. So you were saying that the Brits came up with the idea of doing a 17.5% value added tax, right? Yes. Value added tax is basically like every time a raw material comes into the manufacturing plant, there's a tax on that. When the manufacturer finishes the final product, sends it to a exporter, there's a tax on that exporter, gives it to a distributor, there's a tax on that. And ultimately all these taxes build up and are passed on to the consumer. Yeah, right. The savings aren't passed on the taxes, the extra payment. So these Brits who studied that found that if you did that 17.5% tax and you just did it on foods of saturated fat, it could actually be counterproductive. They modeled it and they found that it would drive people to other foods salty and would have even more severe health consequences. Right, interesting. And then what's more, here's a big problem, too. It would increase food costs by about 3.2%. Here's where we reach a really? So if you're a liberal, right, and you're like, no, we need to look out for people. These people don't understand the consequences of their eating habits and their diet habits are passing along to their children. We're all going to die at age 50, so we need this kind of tax. And somebody goes, it's regressive, so it's unfairly taxing the poor. And every liberal just goes, forget it all, never get behind it. And that's part of the problem, because the poor tend to spend a larger percentage of their income on food. So if you start taxing food, it's going to unfairly hit the poor harder than anybody else. Right. So they found 3.2% for that one that's just saturated fat. And they did two other models too. Yeah, the one where they actually assign a score rating to your food. Don't ask me what this stands for, but the SSE G 3D score, I looked, I couldn't find what it stands for. Super secret, let's just call it that, the super secret score. So basically they're going to rate foods based on eight nutrients and a higher score is bad. If you're a plus eight, then you're going to get taxed more and that would save 2300 lives, I guess. Is that a year? Yeah. And then increase 4%. So even higher increase in food costs. Right. But it saves lives rather than having more severe negative consequences. And it hits that sweet spot that you are looking for, the science. Right. So you could run anything conceivably through this algorithm and get a point it's blind to whether it's Lien Cuisine or Ho HOS, it's going to spit out a score and depending on the score, you get taxed or not. Right. That makes a little more sense. It does. Still though, 4% increase in food costs. That's significant. It is. And then the third one was where basically they spread the tax among a bunch of different foods, almost half of all foods, all unhealthy, though. I don't know. I don't understand. Yes, I didn't get this one. Okay. But what they found was that it saves lives, but it increases taxes by about 4.6%. So if you're an Anglophile and you are into studies and you like choosing multiple, you would probably go with number two. I think it makes the most sense to me, and you right, and it should everyone else describing ourselves. Okay. Actually, in Britain, they already do this on some things like ice cream and potato chips. They mentioned in here, I already have a value added tax. And in some states I know, Georgia is not one of them. They tax small taxes on soft drinks and things like that. See, I don't know if that's true, because I found this one article about Redmond, California, where they're talking about adding a soda tax, and it says that they would be the first city in the country to actually push it through. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, it does say California and Maine and Maryland had fat taxes approved and then repealed. Yeah. First city in the nation, leviate, specifically targeting soda and sugar laden beverages. Interesting. All right. But if this goes through, it's coming up pretty soon, I guess in November. But if it goes through, there's that one problem again where it's a regressive tax, right. Because it's a fixed amount, it's one cent per ounce. And because of that, the cheaper the value of an ounce of soda, the more percentage you're going to pay in taxes. Right. So let's say you pay one dollars for your generic store brand two liter, that's 66 or 67oz. You're going to pay a cent per ounce. You're going to pay an extra $0.67. Yes. Which is 60% more cost. Yeah. It's almost double what you were paying before. And the people who are buying that dollar store brand two liter are probably people who can afford the dollar two liter. Right, exactly. Now, if you do a twelve pack or something like that, and it's 144oz, but a twelve pack is already like $6. Right. That's only an extra dollar, 44. That's only like 20% or something like that, added tax rather than 60%. So that's why they say regressive taxes are usually unfairly burdening to the poor. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, I see it all the time. Let's just say that you do. I used to work in a convenience store, and so I had a good eye on who was buying and what what kind of snacks people ate and stuff like that. I was amazed to find when I worked in a gas station that people chew white clay. Excuse me? They chew white clay. I don't know what that means. Have you not seen white clay? No. Look around. Next time you're in a gas station, and especially out in the sticks, okay. There'll be a little cellophane bag with the little paper hanger like you buy like gummy worms or whatever in yeah, like that. But it's a food it is not a food item. It's clay. And people chew it, apparently. I've never heard of it. It's like a folk tradition among pregnant women to chew clay. But people have this kind of craving for it as well. And they sell this inconvenience store. I never knew that one. Always blew me away. That's a good one. I'm going to be on the lookout now. Okay, so we've talked about all the reasons why you should do this, right? Yes. It seems like this would have all been pushed through if there weren't some sort of opposition to the concept of fat taxes. Like Tony Blair. Oh yeah. For instance, in 2004 he called it a sign of a nanny state. And basically that kind of sums it. Critics will argue that this is like the government once again legislating something in your personal decision you want to make, which is, you know what, if I want to eat Twinkies and get fat and dive a heart attack at 40, it's my right. Yeah. Because I love those twinkies. That makes a really good case. Yeah. Like who is the government to tell you you shouldn't? Right. There is a really good argument on the other side that often comes from the same side though, which is if we as a society have to pay for your health care right. Then yeah, we do have a stake in telling you, no, you can't eat that Twinkie. And yeah, we agree. We can't tell you not to eat that Twinkie, but we can make you think twice about it by raising the price of it. Well, and therein brings up the third model, which is not to tax food, but to make people pay more for something like insurance if they're obese detects the person and not the item. Yes. Which is probably the more diabolical model of the others. Yeah, I get that. But at least it singles out the problem. Although some people might say the problem is the existence of the Twinkie, but the critics will say no. But what if you're super healthy and you like to indulge exactly. Twinkie every now and then? There is nothing wrong with the existence of Twinkie. Chuck, that was hypothetical, right? Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Okay, but if you levy this tax on junk food and I'm a marathon runner, that once a week. I love my Reese's cup. Why should I have to pay more money on that? Because a larger person eats them five times a day. See, I disagree with that though, because think about it, man. Who's really paying for that extra tax? Todd? The larger person who eats them eight times a day or you who eats them once a week? It's like buck up and pay the extra forty cents and shut up. We're trying to deal with something over here. Go run your marathon. That's what I have to say to that person. As far as it goes with the obese person who when you are faced with that idea of having to pay more for that Reese's, there is no sweet spot. As bad as economists want to be able to say this is the point where everyone will stop paying for Reese's and stop eating them. It's the same with gas. No one has any idea. You can take the average of all this, but it's really different for everybody. So that's one of the big challenges, is how much do you raise? Right. So if you take away the idea that that's going to change behavior, it might not. It might just mean that people are going to have to shell out more money, which sucks. But what happened with smoking? Did people smoke less when they started taxing the credit out of it? Yes, they did. A really good example of how you can successfully tax unhealthy stuff and change people's behavior. So that worked. It did work. But think about what a pack of cigarettes cost today compared to ten years ago. I think in, say, New York. It's probably about twelve times more than before. I know. Like almost overnight. After the tobacco settlement in 1998 was settled. Yeah. Tobacco prices doubled just from the added tax. But tobacco use has gone down, went down like 25% from 95 to 2007. And is that due to the price, or do they know that it is? They believe it's due to the price, probably also due to public education. But really they were educating the public before then anyway. Sure. So, yes, they think that it has to do with the fact that the tobacco settlement led to just ridiculously higher taxes and still continues to. So you can say that there's a model that okay. If you just keep adding more and more and more money in the form of a tax to this item, eventually everybody's going to fall off. Right. You will reach that point where no one will pay that any longer. What we were talking about, where you're actually taxing the consumer, that's different. That's saying whether you eat terribly or not until you get down to a certain, what, body mass index or whatever, sure. You have to pay more for health insurance. I almost feel like it should be the other way around. Like car insurance. Like you get brakes if you're a good driver. Maybe if set up incentive plans. If you lose weight, then you get lower costs. Right. It'd be nice to lower costs for a change. It would be, but it's ultimately the same thing. It's just a different way of looking at it. The people who aren't losing weight, they're paying more than other people. But I see you're saying it's starting out at a level and then people who are better at something who do well, pay less. It seems fair there's some problem. So how do you keep track of that? Keep track of the individual? Yeah. I mean, how often do you have to like, if you lose a significant amount of weight, do you go in and say, hey, I need a letter from you saying I can get a reduction in my insurance now because I've hit this goal or whatever. Sure. Run it through your doctor and have a standardized form where they take certain measurements. And if you want to apply and get the cheaper rates, then it's up to you to get those sheets filled out and turn them in every six months. I think you may have just solved a big problem. That makes sense to me. Well, in Japan, they're doing something like that. It's called the Metabo Program, where every year everybody goes in for an annual check up anyway, and they do it through their employer. They added some sort of, like, body mass index measurement now, too, for the person. There's no financial stake in losing weight or getting a target weight, but there's a lot of societal and peer pressure from their employer, who's getting pressured from their city or county or town, which is getting hit financially for X number of people that are not losing weight. Right. So they're using this societal pressure to pressure people, because the Japanese no shame. Well, see, that would work for me, because I'm overweight. And I guarantee you, if every time they rang up something, if a little speaker at the register went, fat tax, stop buying those things. Right. Or I would find out a way to get them on the black market. Well, I think a lot of people would, for sure. Yeah. That would shame me. That's what they should do. I'm amending my previous statement. They should have a computer voice that yells out fat decks every time you buy something fatty. Why not just combine both of those? Sure, let's combine both. Because then I think you have a powerhouse model, the Chuck plate. And this is coming from the guy who's, like, \u00a335 overweight. Sometimes we have the best ideas. I can tell you, though, seeing, like, on a restaurant's menu board, seeing the calories next to it, that definitely has an effect on my behavior. For sure. Apparently. I mean stuff anyway. It's not like but seeing it like, wow, that's really 900 calories. I don't feel like that right now. Yeah, I guess so. It doesn't for me. I guess I'm never fooling myself into thinking that fried chicken doesn't have that many calories, but maybe seeing it yeah, I see what you mean. Yeah, I guess if I think about it, I'm like, well, yeah, fried chicken has that many calories, but it's more likely to think about it if you see it. Yeah. Okay. So what do Americans think? If you believe this poll? One in three believe that Obese people should pay more taxes than healthy weight people. And this is conducted by the Phalanx Investment Partners, LLC. And he asked a lot of questions in here. He's got a lot of stats. He does find it interesting, and I do, too, that the Obese could garner support by 40% of Americans where 75% are overweight. So what that means is 35% of overweight people are even saying, yes, they should be taxed, or they should pay more for health care. It makes sense. He used a terrible analogy. Should we allow shortsighted or nearsighted people to become lion tamers? He was basically comparing that. But that kind of brings up a larger question, like, is this habit? Is it just poor habits and poor eating behavior? Eating patterns? Yeah. And if so, then, yeah, this guy can make a pretty good case that we need to break people's bad eating habits, especially if they're passing them along to their kids. Sure. Well, interestingly, younger people responded generally more in favor of taxing food more than older adults, and people of higher income responded more positively to a fat tax, quote, unquote. Yeah. Then obviously, people with a lower income so hold some weight. Terrible. That was terrible. I didn't mean that like that. So this is all kind of theoretical right here. I mean, Richmond, California, might have a $0.01 soda tax, but they'd be the only city with that. Right. Other places have tried it. New York tried the same thing, but apparently the soda companies shouted it down as a naked money grab cleverly disguised as a health policy. That's sad. Yeah, it sucks. From lobbyists get their meat hooks and stuff. Things like money grab. But if you go to Hungary or Denmark hungary. It's awesome that they have a fat tax because of their country's name. But if you go to Hungary or Denmark, there are fat taxes instituted there. Hungary has one that's like a flat 30.37 euro tax on anything that's unhealthy. I'm not quite sure what the parameters are, but basically junk food what we consider here. And then Denmark just instituted something to where they tax saturated fats in foods to the tune of, like, 16 croner a kilogram, which comes out to be, like, a dollar 29 a pound. Wow. And then divide it up. And they take into account not just what ends up in the end result of the fat, but how much fat is also put in and maybe lost along the way. Interesting. They're really going after it. Yeah. I like the companies that incentivize. Our own Discovery Channel will pay for half of your stomach stapling gym membership. Oh, yeah. Which is great. Like, make it a little cheaper to join the gym. Can't make you go to the gym, but you feel like a sucker when you're paying to go to the gym and don't go to the gym. I forgot that they'll do that. I need to take them up on that. Oh, yeah. Dude, you just missed the deadline. But it's man once per quarter of your gym membership for you and you. Me? Really? Yeah. Wow. That's great. I totally forgot about that. And it's not the most money in the world, but a few. Shekels makes you feel good. Yeah. I will definitely take them up. Thank you for reminding me. Yeah. Next time. My reminder pops up, I'll remind you. How about that? I'll go start it today. Okay, let's see. But yes, please do remind me, just because it'll make me feel good that you remember. I guess that's about it. Bad taxes. They're all over the place in Europe. They're spreading their way west. Yeah, maybe. Let's see. If you want to learn more about the proposals for the fat tax, you can type in fat tax in the search bar@housetheporks.com. That will bring up an article written by Jeopardy winner Jacob Silverman. Yeah, Jacob. I watched all three of those shows. He won twice. He won three times. Did he realize there should be four? Right? Well, he's coming back. They had to suspend for, like, they do, like, the tournament or something. So he'll be back at some point to continue his run. That is awesome. Yeah, and I never even knew the guy, but he was really nice to me when I first got hired. Like, he emailed me a bunch and kind of, like, helped me out early on. And then I saw him on TV. I was like, so that's what Jacob told him. Oh, you never saw him? I never even saw him. He's a neat guy. Yeah. Well, congratulations, Jacob. Also, if you want to learn about BDD, you can type that into the search bar, and that'll bring up an article by mee. And I said search bar in there somewhere, which means it's time for listener mail. So Chuck sorry, I know that normally we should be doing this in the mail here, but let's tell everybody something. Okay? So itunes was cool enough to say, hey, guys, what edutainment podcast is your favorite? Edutainment, you say they put in quotes, and there's us competition stiff, dude, us. Ted Talks Discovery News Freakonomics Radio Lab Radio Lab. Radio lab. Dude, we're up against radio lab right now. Yeah. Is that all of them? I don't want to leave anybody out because they're all very great podcasts. Yeah, I can't remember. But yeah, we're up against some heavy hitters, so we are. So they created a poll on the itunes Facebook page. So you can go to itunes on Facebook, and if you look on their wall and go down, let's see, I don't know, a few posts you're going to see. What entertainment podcast do you like the most? Right? You can go vote for us if you want. Indeed. That would be very nice. We think that would be sweet if you did. If not, it's cool. You're listening. Anyway, we know you like us. We won't extort anything from you, but if you're having trouble finding it, here's the URL, httpswww dot facebook.com. You should probably go get a pin. Wait, is that in the URL? No questions, plural. That's right. And you can go vote for us if you want to vote for us. You can also go vote for Ted Talks. You can vote for whoever you want. But we just think it was a nice thing that they did. Yeah, and we'd love to be featured. Oh, yeah, we left that part out. Whoever wins gets featured on the itunes Homepage on June 25. Anyway, go check it out. And if you're unfamiliar with itunes, check that out, too. Josh I'm going to call this pediatrician follow up with Marinol. Remember in our medical marijuana podcast we talked about the synthetic pill Marinol? Right. That you can get a prescription for? Sure. Guys, I'm a huge fan and I even followed and said hi to Josh once in Macy's at Lennox Mall. Ring a bell? No. Oh, yeah. Yes. You know this guy? I remember that guy. Yeah. Jimmy. Jimmy the doctor. I didn't realize Jimmy was a pediatrician. He is. By the way, I had a fan encounter at the grocery store without my tooth in the other day. No way. It's embarrassing. Did you take a picture? No. I don't think you noticed, but I think I came across as odd because I was acting real funny because I didn't have my tooth in. He probably thinks you have a drug habit. I didn't want to smile real big, so I was kind of like, Nice to meet you. Anyway, I'm a huge fan from Jimmy, and I was particularly interested in Chuck's Hesitancy in saying he had taken a Marinol pill before since it's a legitimate prescription drug. While one doesn't normally associate medical marijuana with the under 18 year old crowd, the use of Marinol is not uncommon. Actually, in our pediatric oncology patients undergoing chemotherapy, we use it as a second or third line of antinalgia drug. However, in children who are unresponsive to those medications, marinol is safe and often highly effective alternative. That being said, you'd be surprised at the number of parents who are hesitant or who even blatantly refuse to allow their child to take Marinol because of the stigma associated with it being quote from marijuana. This normally leads into a conversation describing the fact that many of our medicines are created based off of street drugs. Like you guys mentioned, the derivation of the very commonly used morphine from heroin. I'd say 50% to 60% of the time we can convince the parent to allow us to help their child. However, again, it's certainly not uncommon for them to refuse. It's incredibly frustrating, let me tell you. Especially when a child is clearly suffering because of their parents hard headedness, but we ultimately have to respect their opinions and their wishes. Dr. Harris doesn't house he doesn't respect anybody's opinions or wishes. He just hammers through the best treatment he can think of. Just thought you guys may find that aspect of the social stigma associated with Marinal interesting. Thanks for doing the topic. It's one that comes up frequently in my circles. Ned is Dr. Jimmy. Thanks, Doctor. Jimmy. I totally remember you. That was nice. That made my day. That one time Yummy was very impressed. Oh, really? Yeah. And let's see if you have an opinion on the VAT tax. Sure, there are plenty. I'm pretty sure we would get them even without asking. But let's go ahead and ask. Make sure everybody feels comfortable telling us what they think. Be nice, but we want to hear about it. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. We're on Facebook. At Facebook? Comstuffyshehnnow. And you can email us at stuffpodcast@discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetoftworks.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 killers. 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." | ||
c490f3ae-5460-11e8-b38c-93e74d76b5b7 | SYSK Selects: How Panic Attacks Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-how-panic-attacks-work | Almost three percent of Americans suffer from a debilitating disorder that causes them to suffer intense fear seemingly without reason and science hasn’t yet figured out what causes it. Join Josh and Chuck in this classic episode as they get to the bottom of panic attacks. | Almost three percent of Americans suffer from a debilitating disorder that causes them to suffer intense fear seemingly without reason and science hasn’t yet figured out what causes it. Join Josh and Chuck in this classic episode as they get to the bottom of panic attacks. | Sat, 22 Aug 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=8, tm_mday=22, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=235, tm_isdst=0) | 32975395 | audio/mpeg | "Hi, everyone, from October 2014, my Saturday select pick for the week. It's how panic attacks work. This is very sad and serious stuff, everybody. Panic attacks are terrifying. They are real deal stuff. Ever had one? I've had friends and family members that have had them, and it's tough stuff. So if you suffer from them or have friends or family that do, why don't you give it a listen and maybe this will help out or at least bring a better understanding about how panic attacks work. Welcome to stuff. You should know a production of Iheartradios how stuff works. Hi, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. So it's stuff you should know. Yes. Widespread Panic. Did you see that video? No, which one? There was a dude, this is just like two days ago that went up on stage and attacked the band. Oh, no, I didn't see that. Yeah, and they've got the whole thing, and it was during one of the really repetitive drone parts of a song. And I haven't seen an explanation, but I went to the Widespread Panic Facebook thing because there was a big threat about people talking about it, and I just said, hero. Did you really? Yeah. People gang following me going, Hero. That's hilarious. I thought it was pretty funny. He attacked the members of the band. Yeah. Like, physically. And I couldn't quite attack the drummer, and he was upset and wow. I don't know if that part of the song made him snap, but it was definitely one of those repetitive things. Stop. But he was at the show, so that'd be weird. Unless he went there to attack them. Yeah, that was probably the best salt, maybe. So we're not talking about that kind of panic. That's more a psychotic break. And this is not widespread at all. It's very individualized panic. It is, but it turns out people suffering from this is kind of widespread. How about that? So it fits a little bit. Sure. Instead, we're talking about panic attacks and the combination of panic attacks or the culmination of panic attacks that can lead to something called panic disorder. And it is a sucky mental condition. That about 2.8% of Americans, which is a pretty significant amount of people. Yeah. That's more than bipolar, which we've covered. And schizophrenia. Yes. And OCD. Well, we've covered, all three of us. Yeah. So that's a pretty significant amount of people who suffer from panic disorder. Right. But that's different than just plain old panic attacks. Even though to have panic disorder, you have to have panic attacks. But if you have panic attacks, you don't necessarily have panic disorder. Right, right. Exactly. And I've had two experiences, which I'll talk about at some point through the show, not personally, but Emily had a panic attack once, and friend in college had a panic attack, a roommate, and neither one of them had panic disorders. It was just an isolated incident. Yeah. So apparently I don't know if common is the right word, but people do have panic attacks, but that might be the only one they ever have for their entire lives. I hope so. Which makes the whole thing kind of mysterious. And we should say science does not know what exactly is going on here. They have some theories, but there's no way to predict what's happening. They don't even know if it's genetic or what. Environmental? Well, they finally isolated a gene last year. I guess I can go and talk about that now. Okay. In December 2013, they isolated the gene. And genes are always so boring with their names unless it's cement. That's right. The Nkrt Three, they think may be responsible because its presence appears to cause an overestimation of fear and danger and an over activation of the hippocampus and amygdala. So basically, if you have this gene, you're going to exaggerate your fear overall. Okay, but it's not like they're saying they prove that's the cause. But that is a good step scientifically, in the right direction. That's a huge step. Because, I mean, that does sound very much like what a panic attack is. A panic attack is where you experience a very pronounced sense of fear and basically your fightorflight symptoms response. And really, from what I can understand, your flight response. Yeah, like you're not in a position to fight or freeze because, you know, now these days, it's fight or freeze. Oh, really? Yes. I don't think I knew that. Yeah, there's a third option now. Like drop and roll, kind of. Yeah. Oh, no, wait, those aren't options. That's a sequence. Right? These are options when you're confronted with danger. Nick Thin or Buddy the comedian dude, have you seen his Honda Fit ads? Yeah, those are awesome. Yeah, I was like that's. Nick thou and he's on like Miss America. Yeah. The first thing I always think about is, good for you. Cash those checks, baby. Yes. He has that funny bit on stop, drop and roll, and like they needed to continue that. Like, keep rolling. He's like, that's kind of key. Don't stop, drop and roll because you'll be consumed by fire. You need to keep rolling right. Until you get to a door. Yeah, it's very funny stuff. So this is a little different. Flight or freeze. Yeah. So how does freeze factor in? Like, you just freeze up and toast that's beneficial of all these adaptations to danger, but basically when you confronted with danger, you can either fight, fly, or freeze. That makes total sense. I don't know why Frieze was never in there to begin with, because so many people freeze. They just added on the last couple of years. I think I'm a flyer or a freezer for sure. It depends. I don't know. Do you think there's a personality type? Oh, boy. I don't know. Don't you think it's possibly, like, just what your body chemistry happens to be doing right, then no, I think some people are more inclined to fight, for sure. Okay. Well, with panic attacks, you're flying. That's your jam right there. And you're experiencing it in the exact same way that somebody's coming to mug you or has pulled a knife on you and you're running away, or there's a lion chasing you. Except this is the key to panic attack. There is no lion, there is no mugger, there's no knife, there's no discernible reason for you to be experiencing the sudden onset of crippling fear, but you're experiencing it nonetheless. That's right. No tangible thing happening right in that moment. Right. So when you come out of it and these things can they peak within about ten minutes, but the symptoms can last for an hour or more. When you come out of it, you're like, I don't ever want that to happen again. The place that this just happened, say, the park, I'm never going back to, because now I associated with this. Because what you're doing when you experience fear, you're learning to stay away from something. So whether you want to or not, you've just been conditioned to fear the place that you just were. Sure. Because you had a panic attack. And then lastly, you think possibly you're crazy. Yeah. Or having a heart attack. Yes. Both of my wife and my friend both thought they were having heart attacks. Yes. Which is super scary, and we'll get to the difference later on. But I guess we should talk about just some of the initial symptoms of a panic attack. The old DSM diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders lists. Looks like about ten symptoms. And if you have at least four of these, you may be having a panic attack, which is heartpounding shaking, dizziness, sweating, choking, feeling nausea, shallow or short breath, chest pain, numbness or tingling, chills and hot flashes, feeling of unreality, feeling like you're going crazy or feeling like you're about to die. Yeah. You got four of those. You're having a panic attack. Yes. And if you have four panic attacks within four weeks, or you have one panic attack and then fear having another panic attack for about a month or so, then you can be diagnosed with what's called panic disorder. So if you listen to our Fear podcast, which was a really good one, it's kind of the same as a panic attack we covered. Your autonomic nervous system is what maintains all the functions in your body, the involuntary functions in your body, that is. And it's going to take signals from your central nervous system. It's going to regulate your organs. That's why you don't have to tell your heart to beat or your kidneys to work, your pancreas to secrete stuff. That's right. It's your autonomic nervous system, and it has two parts, the sympathetic and parasympathetic, and your parasympathetic controls, like I said, your heartbeat and stuff like that the normal aspect. Yeah. Homeostasis, right? Yeah. That balance that we all seek, that we don't know we're seeking. And then the sympathetic is if you have that fight or flight or if you become excited in any way. Really? That's when that's going to kick in. Yeah. It's like normal gear and then high gear. Yeah. But it's not always fear, just any kind of excitement. Right. You could be super happy. It could be sexual arousal. That's all your sympathetic nervous system. Right. And those two components make up the autonomic nervous system, which kind of switches from one to the other depending on your state of arousal, right? That's right. But when fear has aroused you, your sympathetic nervous system kicks into high gear and adrenaline is released, which is a huge factor in causing the symptoms of a panic attack. Like, you start breathing very heavily and shallowly, your pupils dilate. We always used to say if you're digesting food, you stop doing that. Yeah, that's right. Basically, all of your energy is transferred over to either fighting or flying. And in the case of a panic attack, it's transferred over to get you to be able to run away as fast as possible. Yeah. Which can be a little scary. But in a real fear situation, if you're in danger, your parasympathetic nervous system is going to kick in and calm you down. But that is not what happens in the case of a panic attack, which is really perplexing. So let's recap this. A panic attack is when you experience this incredibly intense fear, so much so that you run away, but there's nothing there to be afraid of. And then to make everything a million times worse, your parasympathetic nervous system doesn't kick in and calm you down like it would under normal circumstances. So you get to experience this horrible thing even longer. That's right. All right. So like I said before, breaking news from December of last year. They think they've isolated a gene previous to that. Some research has said it could be genetic because identical twins experience it more than fraternal twins, but it's always been sort of up in the air. There have been contradictions as well. On a genetic basis. They think it's also possibly epigenetic or environmental. Like, apparently one study found that a lot of people who have panic disorder had some sort of traumatic incident happened in their childhood. My friend from college did. Is that right? Yes. So they're thinking, like, possibly it had some sort of effect and set up like a time bomb for later on in life. Yeah. The stored feelings that maybe you've never dealt with about some traumatic event, they're going to rear their head at some point in your life in some way. Yeah. Or it just rearranged the neural output in your brain so that one day you're just set up when everything is just right. That chemistry is flooding your brain in a certain way and then bam, it comes out of nowhere. You have a panic attack. Yes. Another theory is that they think if you have an overactive fear system like you basically have been scared too much in life or you're a scared person, then it's just going to make it a hair trigger for something to set it off. Right. Which makes a lot of sense. I think it could be a combo of a lot of things, as usual. Yes. I wonder though, what it will end up being now if we'll find that there is one thing that leads to this predictably built up, but then there's the actual trigger. Right? Yeah. And that's another thing too. They don't know what triggers these things. They do know that a panic attack, being worried about having a panic attack can actually trigger a panic attack. Yeah, absolutely. I feel so bad for people with panic disorder. This is like a terrible affliction because you do become very much afraid that you're going to have another panic attack. So that can set off a panic attack, but it also can set off a comorbidity called agoraphobia where you are afraid to leave your house but you're also afraid to be alone. And I read this article that was from the they were saying like the Freudest followers of Sigmund Freud were saying oh well clearly if you're an agoraphobic, you don't want to go outside because that's where sexual desire is and you don't want to be alone because you're worried that you will like abuse yourself. Right. So agoraphobia and everyone went boo. Sit down. Shut up Freudies. Yeah. And so nowadays they have realized that agoraphobia is almost exclusively the result of panic disorder. Oh really? Yeah, and it's because you fear the place that you had a panic attack, so you don't want to go there again. And then maybe it happened again at the grocery store, so you don't want to go there and it happened. You don't want to be alone, but you don't want to be around strangers. So you cling to your family members and now all of a sudden you're not living your life anymore. You're developing phobias because of your panic attacks and your association with them. Like if you're on an elevator and you have a panic attack, you're not getting on an elevator again. Right. You've just developed a phobia for elevators. And so all of a sudden you're not going to be working at a place where you might normally work because you have to take the elevator to get there. Or you develop a love of stairs. Right, but then what if you don't like confined spaces at all? Like a stairwell? Yeah. You ever been locked in the stairwell here at the building? Yeah, I mean you just walk down however many flights. So you're in the lobby. Yeah. Oh, you can get out down there. Yes. Okay. Yeah. You're not actually locked in, you just have to walk all the way down. They usually just call you and say, let me another theory is that when you're super tired and overworked, a lot of times when these are set off, your brain is producing sodium lactate or CO2. And when those levels increase, your brain says, you know what? I think you're suffocating, and so I'm going to send a signal to get you a lot more oxygen. And I found this really sad case of this woman, a university student who died from a severe asthma attack, like three days ago. And she had a history of asthma and then told the medics that she was going through like, final exams and she had been having panic attacks in the weeks, like, proceeding. So breathing is a huge part of panic attacks. And as evidenced by her, if you have asthma, it can be deadly, which is super, super scary and sad. Yes. Then one other I guess there's a neurological basis, they believe, for people who have panic attacks. People who suffer from panic disorder tend to have fewer serotonin receptors and apparently also GABA, which helps us get to sleep. It's called gamma immunobutyric acid. Let's call it GABA. GABA. Those two have some sort of role in panic disorder. Like, you don't have enough serotonin and your body's not producing enough GABA. You may be prone to panic disorder. There isn't like a specific type of person that necessarily gets a panic attack. It can happen to anyone, but usually it happens if you're in your 20s, although they say kids can get it as well. Have a panic attack or a disorder. Twice as many women have a panic disorder, develop one as men, which is pretty interesting. And like you said, just the fear, like having had one before, that fear can lead to more. So it's very cyclical. Yes. And you know, that one paper from 87, I can't tell if it was arguing in favor of panic disorder being like an evolutionary adaptation and possibly beneficial, or if they were saying, like, some people think this, can you believe this? But one of the points that this guy made was, well, twice as many women have panic disorders as men. Right? So clearly it's an evolutionary adaptation because women wouldn't have had to have gone as far away from camp while they were gathering food as men. Sure, men couldn't stand to have a panic attack, or they couldn't. It wouldn't be an adaptation for men. It would be for women. Plus, women can't run as fast when they have kids to carry, so they need to be on alert a little more. Got you. It just smelled like bunky. Bunk. There was a big year for bunk. Yeah. If you do have a panic disorder, you may have a hard time getting your family to understand it. Sometimes they overreact and think it's like way more severe than it is. Sometimes they under react and say, it's all in your head, right? Like, just calm down. But either way, saying, boy, you're nuts, or you just need to relax, neither one of those is going to help out your loved one. Chill out. There's no lying. One thing I've learned in arguments and fights with my wife and boy, I learned this early on, is telling someone to relax never causes someone to relax. No, it's, like, not the worst thing you can do if something's heated is to say, just relax, it is true. That's just going to ramp it up. Yes. That's my advice for couples out there in any relationship, really, it's good advice, Chuck. Thank you. There is a silver lining to all this, and that panic disorder is actually highly treatable. The treatments that they've come up with are pretty successful, and we will talk about those treatments right after this. All right. So you mentioned that they are treatable. They have found success rates through medication and therapy, which seemed to be about the same. As far as how effective they are between 60 and 90% of the time. That's pretty good. Yeah, that's not bad at all. So that's the good news. So there's three typical methods of treatment antidepressants, antianxiety pills, and therapy. And you might use them independent of one another in conjunction with one another. I also saw beta blockers. Some people use beta blockers to treat them, but they're not quite sure what's going on with that. I've used those before live performances. Those are the ones I read about that you gave me one, and I was like a useless worm. Yeah, it didn't affect me like that. I just totally lost my personality. I wasn't nervous, but I didn't do anything. Well, I've gotten used to live performing now, so I don't need them anymore. But I got that tip from, apparently a bunch of musicians, like, in symphonies and stuff use them. I was like, well, if the first chair of violinist, if it's good enough for them to give me some beta blockers. Yeah, but it worked for me. But like I said, I'm over all that. I enjoy being on stage now. So with SSRIs, which is what you moved on to from beta blockers, right? No, I'm not on it. So with SSRIs, those are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and they do exactly what they sound like. You've got a bunch of serotonin receptors in your brain. If you have panic disorder, you may have fewer serotonin receptors in your brain. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that helps basically stabilize your mood by either causing a neuron to fire or inhibiting a neuron to fire in this really beautiful, perfectly balanced chemical reaction, right? Yeah. So if you have fewer of these receptors than normal, you're going to be comparatively out of balance. What an SSRI, an antidepressant, does is it allows the serotonin to kind of stay in your synapses a little longer than is normal, so that you are releasing a little more serotonin than you would under normal circumstances, and it's proven pretty effective for panic disorder. Yeah. I mean, they work wonders for a lot of people for a lot of reasons, but not everyone. And they can cause a lot of negative side effects. So, obviously, work with your doctor on a program, and it takes them a little while, like, two to four weeks to begin working. Right. For a panic attack. An antianxiety drug like Xanax might be a little more effective because that immediately hits you. It is a tranquilizer benzodiazepine, right? Yeah. And it's Xanax. It's going to help chill you out immediately, but you can get hooked on those things pretty quick. Yeah. And they're dangerous to quit cold turkey, and it's not the best thing to go to Xanax a lot. Well, yeah. They say that you should basically, if you undertake an SSRI regimen, you can conceivably stay on it for years. If you undertake anti anxiety or benzodiazepine regimen, it shouldn't last for more than a couple of weeks or months, from what I understand, because of the dependency. And again, you want to really do all of this with, like, a qualified, competent doctor's assistance? Sure. Not a doctor's assistant. Doctor's assistant. It depends. If it's a qualified, competent doctor's assistant who can write prescriptions, who they trust, go for it. That's true. And then there's therapy, of course, the old CBT, cognitive Behavioral therapy, which we've talked about a bunch, but sort of the process is going to play out like this. They're going to teach you about your panic disorder. Right. Which is a big step. If you understand something, you can overcome it more easily. I think they're going to monitor you, and you're going to self monitor and record your symptoms and when they happen and why they happen, what the circumstance was. Breathing, like we mentioned, is a huge part of it. Anything from meditation to just regular breathing exercises, which will give you some tips on that in a minute, too, are going to help you out. And then the old exposure to situations. And this is once you've rethought what your approach is going to be like, here's your new outlook, and now here's a situation that might give you a panic attack. How do you feel? Yeah. Or, like if you had a panic attack in an elevator, like, they may tell you to imagine you're in an elevator, your therapy might progress until you're actually in an elevator and you're chilling out. And the hope is that if you can undergo exposure therapy to that degree, it will get you over your panic attacks in general. Another aspect of it, Chuck, is rethinking, and that is basically accepting the fact that you have panic attacks. Apparently, if you can say, I'm having a panic attack, or I have panic attacks, and you acknowledge it to yourself and to other people, it immediately turns down the volume on the whole thing. Yeah. I noticed some similarities in someone guiding someone through an LSD trip and guiding someone through a panic attack. Yeah, it's interesting. A lot of it is like, understanding, like, I am having an acid trip, I am not having a good time. It's the same thing as I'm having a panic attack and this is no good. And if I understand that, then I can calm down more easily. And keeping it in just leaves you to freak out more. Exactly. So that's CBT. Cognitive Behavioral therapy. And if you undergo therapy and you're still suffering from panic attacks, apparently being discouraged is a real problem with people with panic disorder. Yeah. Because you can still suffer them even if you're doing everything right. So a lot of people have learned to cope, and there's some pretty common coping techniques for panic disorder. And like you said, the heart of the whole thing is breathing. Like, when you suffer a panic attack, you start breathing shallowly and quickly and you can hyperventilate. What you want to do is breathe from your diaphragm. And you can actually practice this in the times when you're not having a panic attack? Yeah. If you're a singer, you know how to breathe with your diaphragm, but if you're not, what you can do is lie down on your back, put some pillows on your head and knees, and put a hand on your stomach and a hand on your chest. And then practice breathing and making your hand on your stomach move without the hand on your chest moving. Right. And then tap the hand on your stomach while you make a circle with the hand on your chest when you're really advanced. Wow. It's pretty impressive. And then another thing you can do is just literally, like, put a weight on your stomach and make sure it's not too heavy. No, like a book. Sure, yeah, like a nice atlas. Something that you can see going up and down when you're breathing with your diaphragm. That's right. And you want to just kind of breathe in the good exhale the bad. Yeah. Like, I'm having a panic attack. This will pass. I know this will subside. This is a temporary feeling, is what you should be saying to yourself. And if you're a person who's, like, out in public and you see somebody having a panic attack, you basically want to do the same thing that they're trying to do for themselves. You want to remain calm. You want to tell them that it's going to be over with pretty soon, that everything's okay. They have nothing to fear. Yeah, you don't want to tell them to chill out, though. Guiding someone through relaxation is different than saying, chill out, by the way. Right. Very different. They do recommend that if you have a problem with attacks in general or if you have a disorder, you should exercise a lot. You should practice. They don't call it meditation but that's really what it is, is deep breathing and relaxation. It's called mindfulness these days, isn't it? I don't know. I think that's what they call it because meditation turns people off, right? I guess. Interesting. Cut out the caffeine and sugar and nicotine. That's a big one. Yeah. That's not going to help you at all doing all those things. And if this stuff is stuff that's building up inside of you, which it often is, learn how to express yourself a little more and talk about your issues. I know that in both of my cases, my buddy in college, it was during finals week, and I had gone to bed, and my roommate and another dude were out in the living room staying up, and one of them came and woke me up. And he's like, dude, he's having a heart attack. He's having a heart attack. And I didn't know anything about panic attack, so we took him to hospital, of course, and that's all it was. It was a panic attack. He calmed down. I think they might have given him something there, some sort of medication to calm him down. Probably benzodiazepine. Yeah, probably like a good shot in the arm of that stuff. And he was like, oh, I'm fine. Right. With Emily's case, she had been under a lot of stress and was in driving back from Akron, Ohio, to Atlanta. I think she went to get some furniture or something. So she was in a truck, like a moving truck? Oh, yeah, that's a stressful event. Had been drinking caffeine like crazy like she does, and basically started to have trouble breathing on the highway, going like 80 down the highway and had to pull over, called me, and I called her down. I was like, all right, now let's get back on the road, see how you do. She got back on the highway and immediately freaked out again. And I flew to Cincinnati and went to her hotel and drove her home. Nice. Yeah. I mean, there was really no choice at that point when it's your wife. Plus, it was a good opportunity to get on the white horse and ride in and save the day. Oh. That way I think everyone loves those opportunities. Yeah, for sure. And I've always also wanted to run to the airport, say, like, give me a one way ticket to somewhere out of my way. I have time for your body scan. Pretty much that's how it happened. So she checked herself into a hotel, and I went there and had some nice Cincinnati skyline Chile. And then the next morning we hit the road. Nice. Yeah, it was good to start. And she hasn't had one since then, thank goodness. She has a lot of anxiety, just as a human, but no panic attacks. So I definitely have seen the things I saw in this article, in both of them, whether it was during finals, like, the things going. On in her life at the time were super stressful. I think the trigger was she doesn't see great at night or in the rain when she's driving. And I think all these things compounded and just played out to where she felt like she was having a heart attack. Got you. And so did my friend. But I guess we should mention that there are some telltale signs of a heart attack. Yeah, that's a big one. Yeah, that you can recognize the difference because you don't want to actually be having a heart attack and be like, oh, it's just a panic attack. Just breathe right while you're dying. Right. Here are a few tips from the American Heart Association. Pressure in the center of your chest that persists longer than a couple of minutes or goes away than returns shortness of breath. Pain in the arm or upper body. You might feel nauseous or faint. And of course, if you're ever in doubt, call 911. Because like you said, you don't want to be having a heart attack. Thinking it will subside. No. There will be a gun in your face. Well, to say the least. Exactly. If you want to know more about panic attacks and panic disorder, type either one of those sets of words into the search bar. How stuff works and it'll bring up this article. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this basement fear. Hey, guys. I know most listeners know your podcast is great for learning and entertainment, but I found another purpose distraction from stress induced irrational fears. That sounds familiar. We were just talking about this kind of thing. Oh, yeah. And I didn't even realize it when I picked this out. How about that? Serendipity. I grew up in a house with a creepy, gross basement where we did laundry and it never bothered me. My fiance James and I recently moved into a house with a non creepy and nongrowth basement. But I think the stress of planning a wedding is getting to me because when I need to go down into the basement to do laundry, I nearly have a panic attack. Imagining a person lurking in the basement, I've started playing an episode of Stuff You Should Know on my iPhone and carrying it in my pocket when I need to go down to the basement. Stay back, spirit. Exactly. So we literally accompany her into the basement, which I think is hysterical. Yeah. I am busy enough enjoying your humor and information that I don't get as overwhelmed by this irrational fear. I think it may even be waning now. So I continue to make myself go down into the basement and see that my fear is not really based in any reality at all. That's CBT. That's exposure therapy. Really? Boom. Nice. Also, before this weird basement fear popped up, I long called you guys my cleaning crew because I listened to episodes while doing my chores. And that is from Kelsey in Kansas City, Kansas. Not Kansas City, Missouri. Missouri. And Kelsey, good luck with that. And just don't look behind that door. That was over near the washing machine. That was very helpful. Just kidding, Kelsey. There's nothing down there. Just take us with you. We will protect you. Because spirits don't like us. No. The podcast is coming from inside the house. If you want to get in touch with Chuck or me, you can tweet to us at s yskpodcast. You can join us on facebook. Comstuffiesto. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@housetofworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web. Stuffyoushhnnow.com. Stuff you should know is the production of iHeartRadio's Housetofworks. For more podcasts my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you're listen to your favorite show." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2017-05-25-sysk-school-house-rock-final.mp3 | How Schoolhouse Rock Rocked: Featuring Bob Nastanovich of Pavement | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-schoolhouse-rock-rocked-featuring-bob-nastanov | Schoolhouse Rock is possibly the best children's program of all time. Join Josh and Chuck as they tell the story of SR, featuring an interview with Pavement's Bob Nastanovich, contributor to the '90s Schoolhouse Rock tribute record. | Schoolhouse Rock is possibly the best children's program of all time. Join Josh and Chuck as they tell the story of SR, featuring an interview with Pavement's Bob Nastanovich, contributor to the '90s Schoolhouse Rock tribute record. | Thu, 25 May 2017 13:11:44 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2017, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=25, tm_hour=13, tm_min=11, tm_sec=44, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=145, tm_isdst=0) | 59417195 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarke. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. And this is Stuff You Should Know who chip off the block of your favorite schoolhouse. Yeah, that was we just heard the theme song. If you're between the ages of well, were you into it? Yes. Okay, so you're what, 41? I'm 40, dude. 40? Yeah. So probably younger than you, even a bit. Let's say if you're between I was definitely toward the tail end of it. Okay. Let's say 38 to 50 years old, actually. Yeah, that's not true. So let's say it was up to 85 somewhere in that range. I'd say 35 to what? 50 ish. All right. That's what you agree on. A little more 55, maybe. So that 15 year period. You were lucky. Yeah. Like, if you just heard that theme song and something inside your body happened emotionally in your brain, then that means that you grew up in the seventies and eighties, I think. The heyday of Saturday morning cartoons. Personally, as a fan of Schoolhouse Rock, one of my favorite things in the world yeah, it was pretty great. I still love it. Yeah, I still listen to this stuff semi regularly. Oh, do you? Yeah, it's been a little while. When I went back to research this, I listened to or watched a bunch of them, and they all just came flooding back. Yeah. And the writer of this article actually interviewed, didn't he? Bob Doro? It sounded that way. Unless he's a big fat liar in his author's note. Well, I just remember when this article went around. Like, the first thing we do when there's an article at House that works is there's an email that goes around everyone where people kind of suggest kind of questions you can answer and stuff like that? Yeah, I don't think we ever really talked about that, do we? I don't think so. Nine years in, that's the Secret. And people say, hey, you should think about this. You should do this. And I said, somebody should try and interview Bob Doroth. Like, he's 93 years old and you can still get in touch with the guy, I think. Yeah, and apparently this dude did, and sadly, got was, like, one quote. Yeah, well, he was on his way to, like, a jazz gig in London when he caught them. I bet you there was more in there than this. I was a little disappointed. Oh, you're saying I got you. I wanted, like, more select pull quotes from Mr. Doro. You wanted. Like I called Mr. Doroth. He answered. Hello, Mr. Doroth. We should have interviewed him for this. I don't know why we didn't. I don't either. Apparently, it's easy to get to. Well, I'll get to that. Never mind. Should we get in the way back machine? Yes. Let's go back to the greatest decade in the history of humanity, probably. I'm not joking. I'm a fan of it'd be tough for me to decide. 60s were a little too hippie for me. Oh, yeah. Love the 70s, though. I mean, I love the 70s. Not even as a golden age. There was a lot wrong in the 70s. Nixon was president during the lots of stuff were wrong in the 70s. But something about that decade just hit all the boxes. Yes. I just love it. I do, too. And it reminds me of my childhood, which is great because I had a good childhood. It was fun. We talked about that in the nostalgia episode on how nostalgia is the correct path in life, even though John Huntman doesn't think so. Yeah, nothing to that. So early 70s, there's a gentleman named David McCall and he co owned an ad agency called McCaffrey McCall. And as the story goes, he was on vacation with his family and he knew his son was having some trouble in math, remembering specifically multiplication tables. Yes. No matter how much he yelled at him every night, he couldn't get multiplication. But they were in the car and this kid was singing as the Story Goes Rolling Stone song. And he was like, well, you know, that why can't you remember the other stuff? I don't think he was that rough, but it did hit him. He was like, My son remembers he has no problem memorizing things. But there's something about these multiplication tables. So I wonder if there's something to singsong and turning learning into not only just music, because that's not a new thing. People have been doing that forever. Right. But popular sounding music. Right. And, like, pairing them with concepts to make kids understand difficult concepts. Right. It's so weird now, especially in the post schoolhouse rock world. Yeah, of course people do that. Like, that's a technique that you use to teach kids. But apparently no one else is doing this at the time. Yeah, this is a pretty interesting idea. And really, it germinated in just the right guy's mind because this guy McCall was like, you said he was a partner in this advertising firm, and they basically specialized in doing the same thing, but getting you to buy something. He was saying, maybe we could do the same thing that we do to sell people stuff, but to basically sell education to kids. To teach kids using the same techniques that we use in advertising. Yeah, like, they would see a jingle for a product that would get lodged in someone's head and they would say, Why can't we do that same thing? Like, it would get lodged in the kids head and they would have learned something instead of bought something. Right. But you could also buy stuff. If you learn enough stuff, you can buy even more stuff. So he went to one of these I think he was a creative director, co creative director named George Newell ran it by him. He said, great idea. Get someone on it and threw a cigarette at him. Got out of the office and commissioned one of their writers. They had jingle writers on staff or at least working with them and they said, Go write something. It wasn't very good. Didn't you feel bad for this person? I did. But you know what? It could have died there. I never would have had Schoolhouse Rock. But this person went down in history as the contributor to Schoolhouse Rock who didn't make it. Yeah. Sad. Or the person who almost killed Schoolhouse Rock. I guess so. But McCall was like, no, this idea is too good for this. Yeah. Which is really a great thing and a lesson in persistence. So he went to Newell, was a jazz piano player and he went to his buddy Juan Bob Doro, one of my heroes and is a great bebop jazz pianist and composer and said, you can write a jingle too. Why don't you try this out? And here's the one quote. We might as well read it from 93 year old Mr. Doro. I don't know how I lucked out. Apparently, they tried other songwriters, but most of them wrote down to kids. When I met McCauley said, here's my idea. Give it a try, but don't write down to the kids. And when he said that, I got a chill. I have a high opinion of children. And that was sort of the key right there. They weren't songs, like, written in a remedial way because it was children. Right. It's Bitsy Spider. Give me a break. Oh, that's a classic. But you're right. So this idea germinates in this right guy's head. He happens to end up indirectly getting in touch with this guy who has a high opinion of children and he happens to be a jazz composer. Things are starting to happen. It's basically the hand of the Almighty at work here. That's right. So Doro goes home, he has a daughter, gets out of textbooks and the first thing he comes up with, to me, one of the best man, it is far out. Three is a magic number. It was the very first Schoolhouse song written because the first thing they wanted to tackle was math. Because of McCall's son. Yeah. This composition that he came back with, Three is the Magic Number. When I hear it, it's super cool. But I'm really surprised that everybody was like, this is yes. Figure something out from this. Oh, man. I loved it. It's cool, but it just doesn't seem like the basis the keystone of Schoolhouse Rock to me. I'm surprised. Well, it's one of my favorites. That's great, because it dealt with multiplication. And not only that, but, like you said, got a little trippy with the symbolism. Faith, hope and charity. Heart and mind and body. Right. And I wanted to do a podcast on Three, the number Three because it's very special. It is very special. We did one on zero. Why not three? Oh, man, I forgot about that. Remember? I think my brain melted a bit there. That's a good one. It's tough. Zero is tough. It is tough and not at all magic, right? Not really. So regardless, if you would have been working there, you would have been like, meh and everyone else enjoyed it. You've been like, I'm going to go get a bagel. I'm going to go work on this processed cheese account. I did think of Mad Men quite a bit when I was researching this. It was sort of that same time period or I guess no madman didn't make it into the thought he did because it wasn't he supposed to be DB. Cooper at the end. And that was 70. Yeah, early, I guess it was 71. I think it did crack into the 70s. Not like Boogie Nights did. That was all 70s into the that's right. It cracked into the 80s with that song you recorded. Well, no, yeah, that's for sure. But I was thinking about when the party? The New Year's Eve party with Bill Macy. Oh, yeah, man, what a great movie. That was wonderful. Yeah. Movie is almost, like, 20 years old. I believe it. We're old, Chuck. I know, but those pop culture references are the ones that really hit home for me. What, the ones from the 70s? Well, when I think of, like, Boogie Nights, I was like, oh, yeah, that was just, like, a few years ago. Right. And then someone says it's celebrating its 20th anniversary, and I'm like, what? Or like, when I see an athlete's son or daughter. Yeah. It's weird to see that it's playing the same sport. The rookies are now like the old coaches and managers in the sports now, man. It's bizarre. So everyone's impressed at McCaffrey and McCall then. They did a pretty smart thing. They went to McCall was on the board of the Bank Street College of Education in New York there, and he took it. To them, it was just a song at this point. He said, what do you think is a learning tool? They used it, played it for the students, and they were like, this is awesome. They're responding again, except for little Josh. He's just sitting there with his arms crossed. He's scowling. I've never seen him so mad before. So the students liked it. The agency liked it, so they knew they were onto something. They got their art director, Tom Yo. Yohe? Oh, you're going with Yo? I'm going all out with Yohi. Okay. Tom Yohi and said, put some animation to this, draw out some storyboards. Because that was the beauty of Schoolhouse Rock to me, was it was a combination of everything. It wasn't just the song. The songs are great, and we'll get more to the music here in a bit. But it was a combination of the visuals with the song and the fact that you were learning something in such a unique way. It was just like the perfect storm of awesomeness. Yes. The songs on their own would have stood up on their own, and initially they plan to just release an album of cool songs like this. But it was when Yohi started sitting there, like, drawing some of this stuff out. Schoolhouse Rock is not one or the other. It's the combination of those two things. They play off each other so well. Agreed. Now they have these storyboards. They take this to a guy named Radford Stone. He was their account supervisor, the VP for ABC, and they said, there's this young upstart at ABC for their children's programming named Michael Eisner. Doubt if he's ever going to go anywhere, but right now he's running the kids shop over there. And let's bring in, because this guy knows a lot about kids programming, let's bring in Chuck Jones to the meeting, shout out to our friend Jessica, granddaughter of Mr. Jones, and sat down in a meeting, played the demo tape, showed him the storyboard. The house turned to Chuck Jones, said, what do you think? And he said, Buy it. Buy it. That's how Chuck Jones thought. We didn't. And Michael Eisner bought it. And before you knew it, there in business. We're going to take a break. I think we should. Josh is going to go collect himself and we'll be right back. You all right? We're back. So strange. So Schoolhouse Rock started on ABC Saturday Morning as what they call an interstitial. Yeah, we had some of this. Yeah. It's programming between the programming that's not commercial right. When the creators of the program you're actually watching weren't good enough to make 22 full minutes. You rounded out with interstitial program. Yeah, exactly. This is January 6, and 7th was the first weekend in 1973. So I was but two years old. Negative three. Yeah. You were in the upper atmosphere playing my liar coalescing waiting to be born, flapping my wings and this was before, like you said, the original thing was it was just going to be an album called Multiplication Rock until they realized that the visuals were important, they could put it on television. And the first four songs at first weekend were some of the greatest, aside from Three Is a Magic number. Four legged zoo. Elementary, my dear. And my hero. Zero. Great song. Zero Again. Yeah. Not magical, but it is a cool number. Such a funny little hero. Yeah. Teeth came along, they counted on their fingers. And so when was that check? 1973. Yes. And I think that first one had quite a few. There were 13 episodes then if it went from zero to twelve, and I think what they settled on was almost like seasons themed season. So the first season was going to be math related. Yeah. So apparently Bob Darrow had been off, like, coming up with songs, didn't realize that they wanted a song for each number. And he had started to combine several numbers in a different song. He didn't get the memo. He didn't. And he finally did, and he was trying to figure out how to break the songs apart. And he came up with one called the Four Legged Zoo. You heard that one? Yeah, it's fine. Yeah. So not one of my favorites, but they're all great. It's just some stand out a little more than others. Yeah. So what's your favorite of the multiplication rock? Three is the magic number. Okay. Yeah. And that was something else I noticed about this. For each season, there were at least one standout song per season that just about everybody knows. Yeah. And I would guess three of the magic numbers. Probably that one. Yeah. Or maybe my hero zero. That was a big one. Yeah. That was a hit. It's so much so that Bob Darrell was up for Grammy in 1974 for, I think, the whole album. Right. Yeah. But those jerks at Sesame Street one, if you're going to lose Sesame Street yeah. And Doro is like writing and singing these initial first few songs, I think himself, he's saying, yeah, all of them except two. And he hired two other jazz musicians, grady Tate and Blossom Dearie. Great name. Grady Tate sang naughty number nine and Blossom dering figure eight. But all the rest of them, the other eleven, Bob Durrow sang and he wrote all of them. They really struck gold with that guy. Yeah. He was that initial genius behind this whole thing. Yeah. And this is another cool thing about Schoolhouse Rock that I noticed the people involved stayed on for basically the whole run, the initial run from 73 to 85. Yeah. It seemed like a project that everyone enjoyed working on and that was highly collaborative and it just seemed like a good experience. I don't think there's like the VH one special. Like the dark side of the Schoolhouse Rockiers. So they move on to I don't know which one is my favorite, grammar Rock or History, but they moved on to Grammar Rock next, and that was 73 to 74. And we should say that these were like I don't think there were breaks in the season. I get the impression that from 1973 till 1985, when they had enough episodes, they were just running them, like, every Saturday morning during cartoons. Yeah. I certainly don't remember, like, breaks. It just seems like every week they were there. Right. So, 73 and 74, you have Grammar Rock, which debuted, some people will probably say the biggest of all time, conjunction Junction. That's the one. Everybody knows it's. Great song. Song. As he sang many others, including my all time favorite, which I'll get to later. Okay. But I know what it is. I bet you don't. He was Murph Griffin's trumpet player Jack Sheldon, who just had this voice that's just like it's. The Conjunction Junction. Yeah. It's unbelievable. Yeah. Very unique guy. And he kind of looked like Will Ferrell to me. Like he should play him if they did a movie about they should do a movie about the whole thing. If he asked me about Schoolhouse Rock, there's no controversy or conflict. It's just 2 hours of everybody getting along, doing great stuff. He wants to see that. Right. So Jack Sheldon came along saying conjunction junction. And did you go back and listen to that for this? Oh, yeah, I listened to a lot of these. So that is a sophisticated song. If you listen to, like we remember our poetry episode. If you listen to, like, the meter and the rhyming pattern, the rhyme scheme and the slant rhymes they use for something that's made for kids, it is not just rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme, rhyme. It's a sophisticated song and it's pretty cool. Yeah, I think that's why it worked. That was the secret, I guess. It's not talking down to kids. Yeah. And the music was good, right? If you listen to those are a little singsongy, but some of them were like, pop music at the time. Like the verb song. That's one of the funkiest songs I've ever heard. Verb. That's what's happening. Yeah, and especially that one. I read this great blog post by this African American guy that was talking about how verb, like, meant so much to him because at the time they didn't have a lot of cartoons and stuff that addressed the black community at all. And so all of a sudden you get this cartoon. It's got this super funky music and this kid that looked like him having this great adventure in the city. And it just kind of pretty neat thing, I think. Yeah. That was season two is grammar, right? Yes. So apparently in that same season, a lady named Lynn Errands, she was a copy department secretary. Yeah. This is where it reminded me of Mad Men. She, like, basically took Peggy's journey OK. From like, secretary to superstar. I've never seen man been yeah, it's good. I'm rewatching it right now. Oh, really? Yeah, it's that good. Yeah. So Lynn, she was a secretary at the advertising agency, and apparently she was playing her guitar on lunch break. Another reason 70. Exactly. And who was it that founder Newell. The creative director guy. Yeah. Like in the movie, he's just walking down the hall and here's this beautiful music and stops. It's like, what in the world is going on in there? And it was Lynn Erin. They took her and put her on, I guess, part time on the project, and they, I guess, eventually made her a full time songwriter, which is pretty cool. Yeah, that was her gig. 15 of the songs, right? Including some of the biggest ones. A noun is a person, place your thing. Great song. Interplanet Janet. Interjections a victim of gravity about Isaac Newton. Interplanet Janet. Sounds like rocky Horror if you go back and listen to it. Yeah, it kind of does. It bears a real resemblance to it. Or Rocky Horror sounded like interplanet Janet. Well, I went and looked rocky Horror was three years before Interplanet Janet. The movie or the play? The movie. Okay, so the play was even before that. Was it a play first? Oh, yeah. Meatloaf was even in the play. Oh, yeah. Before the movie. Not a play. I guess. Musical. Sure. Play with songs and dancing. So the next one to come along was America Rock or History Rock, which kind of buys for the best to me with Grammar Rock. And that one tied into the bicentennial. Yeah, that was a big deal, which you don't remember, but I remember being a little kid, being five years old, and it took over the country for that entire year. Yeah, I know. There's like resurgence and colonial emblems and stuff like that. If you ever walk past, like, a very old person's house today, you might see, like a flag holder that's a black metal eagle holding, like some arrows maybe, or something like that that is from still there like a resurgence in Betsy Ross and colonial knickknacks and stuff. Yeah, I was just born, but it created like a high watermark that I was able to see even four, five or six years later. So History Rock or America Rock featured some of the best songs mother Necessity Shot heard around the World, and no More Kings, which is maybe my second all time favorite. Yeah. And that's the one that there was an album that came out in like 95, 96 called Schoolhouse Rocks rocks? I think so schoolhouse Rock Rocks, where they got contemporary artists to cover these songs and did you ever listen to that? Yeah, I listened to the Pavement one today. Oh, man. So I emailed Bob Nastanovich today from Pavement because as I said in the previous episode, I tricked him into being my email friend. And I said, hey, dude, I would love to hear if you have any thoughts on the More Kings, how you guys were approached, if there are any stories, what it meant to you, what it didn't mean, whatever, let me know. Crickets no, he emailed back, and then I said, I'll call you on my way to work. Called on the way to work? Crickets yeah. Got his voicemail. And then as I was coming in the studio, he called and left a voicemail saying he was in his minivan rocking out. And he didn't hear the phone ring. Oh, that's funny. Which is very funny to me. But I told him I'd like to hear what he has to say because he said he has a tale to tell about that experience. Man we're going to have to record it after this. Well, yeah, maybe it could be like a listen or mail. Yes. If I can get him on tape, then I'll tag it at the end. Okay. If not, if it ends up being an email version or something, I'll just maybe recount it in my own dumb words. Or you could ask them if we could read the email and make a listener mail. Oh, for real? Yes, like a real listener mail. It's not a bad idea. So, anyway, so listen up for the end for Bob Nastanovich's story about no more Kings, because if you listen to that CD, it's like The Lemonheads and Wean. It's a super 90 CD. Yeah. Most of them are pretty straight ahead. And so he gets the Pavement song, and it's just all pavement. Like Malcolm change his words. There's, like, laser guns at the end, and it's just wonderful. Pavement. Like quintessential e pavement. Leave it to them to just kind of throw it all out the window and do their own thing. Yeah, I liked it a lot. Three Ring Government. I didn't really know that one. That was good, apparently. So it basically talks about the different branches of the government yeah. But puts it in the context of a three ring circus. Really? Aside from the fact that it compares to the government to a three ring circus, it's not at all offensive. Apparently, they sat on that one for years and didn't release it until 1979 because they were worried about offending the government. Just a strange thing to worry about. Yeah. Through today's lens. Yes. But even still, I mean, this is like post Watergate. It's not like everybody was like, oh, right, we couldn't possibly call the government a three ring circus. Yeah, that's true. That is weird. It seems like that would have been a good time to do it. Yeah, I think so. But the most famous song from that year by far was Sheldon's on Just a Bill. Is that your favorite? No. Okay. That was composed not by Mr. Dora, but by a man named Dave Frischburg. And, I mean, that one was just a mega hit. Went straight to number one on the Billboard charts. As far as Schoolhouse Rocks goes, that's the cultural icon that signifies the whole thing. I think close second would be Conjunction Junction. Maybe they're tired, I don't know. But I just feel like Just a Bill is the most readily recognizable one. Yeah. And it's just amazing when you look back, though, like, the learning that was going on and the teaching that was happening. These kids, us, we were learning how a bill becomes a law. Right. In the best way possible. Like, better than any well, not any teacher. There were great teachers back then, like, any dumb teacher that's boring their kids. But it definitely struck a chord with me. Sure. Yeah. And that's how I remember a lot of this stuff. And apparently two adults were also noticing Schoolhouse Rock at the time. Supposedly, there were plenty of orders. This was before video cassettes, before they were widely available. I guess, in the home. I'm trying to think of how they would have played them if they didn't have video cassettes. But anyway, apparently lobbyists and legislators would get in touch with ABC and be like, you got to get me a copy of that I'm a bill thing. Give me a beta, Max, because I want to show it to my staff to train them on this kind of stuff. Well, I think they asked for cassettes, at least. At the very least, so they could play in the music. I see. Maybe that's what they meant. Probably. Okay. An HRAC. Yeah. And then there was Science Rock was the year after that. That was 78 and 79, which is pretty good. Interplaneta Janet Victor. I like that one. It was so weird. What? Interplanet Janet? Yeah, it's a good one. And then the Telegraph Line song, which I think that was written by Ms. Orange, too, I think. Oh, yeah. And that one was really like you literally learned about the nervous system and how the body communicates to the brain by listening to that song. And that's one that they've wanted to play for med students. Yeah. And they did amazing, some of them. All right, well, let's take another break and jeez. We'll cover the sad last season of Schoolhouse Rock after this. So, Chuck, Schoolhouse Rock for the first four seasons was the epitome of creativity. Even the process was creative. Like, the songwriters, I guess they would say, this season our theme is going to be science or going to be grammar or whatever, so go forth and figure this out. The songwriters would come up with songs and they'd pitch them to the creative team. And so there was this process of creativity, and it started with the creatives. That's the key here. Yeah. That's what made it just so legitimate and so wonderfully creative this whole time. It started with the creatives. Right, yeah. And pretty cool. They would get them vetted by that Bank Street School of Education so they would get to make sure everything was right. Yeah. And then ABC be like, oh, let me see it. And then they'd say, oh, I guess it's fine, and then they'd start to storyboard it once they had the lyrics set in stone. Right. That was the first four seasons, the fifth season, they said, Die, creativity, die. And they reverse the process and they said, hey, songwriters, here are your assignments. Now, we think kids should know more about computers, so we're going to just screw this whole thing up. Okay. Yeah. This is the part I don't get. It says the ABC program Exec Squire Rushnel commissioned this because there was the idea that children were afraid of computers. I don't remember anything but there being, like, excitement about computers. I don't remember any kids being like, I don't want to go near that. Yeah. I remember kids being like, oh, that's cool. Let me sit down. And usually. It was the parents that were afraid of computers. Well, I think here unless the problem with season five, so we should say season five, too. If you notice, we jumped quite a bit from 1979 to 1985. Schoolhouse Rock was running all those years on Saturday morning. They just weren't any new ones. They were the same ones that they were rerunning on the class. Squire. Russell says, give me four episodes. Is it four or six on computers? Yeah. And we're going to call the season a Scooter Computer. And Mr. Chips. What do you think of that? So it's what, like a computer with a bag of chips? It's like, no, Mr. Chips is a computer. Well, what Scooter Computer? He's a kid. No, you haven't. And they said, well, what about the goodbye, Mr. Chips? That great book. And he went, no one's ever read that? What's a book? It was a little confusing. We have disdain for him. It's a little weird. I know. I feel bad if that's not really how it went down, but it sounds kind of like that classic story. Sure. Like an executive takes over the creative and it just goes downhill. It's usually how it happens. And I do feel a little bit bad because the originals were still involved. They got Mr. Dora back on board, and I think they did the best they could. But I think one of the issues is all the other seasons, math and science and history, it's all civics, it's all baked in. Like that stuff is classic and didn't change. When you're writing songs about data processing and basic computer language, a couple of years later, it's not relevant anymore. Right. That's why no one's ever heard of it. Plus again, they were like, oh, wait, scooter computers. The boy or the computer he's hanging out with. Right. And why is the computer on roller skates? Yeah, just stuff like that. It was an undignified end to something really great. Agreed. And so they pulled the plug on the whole thing in 1985. They said, hey, this Mary Lou Rhett and lady, we like her. She's got gumption, she's got apple pie coming out of her ears. Gross. We love her and we want to put her on TV. So they put her inner circles'on. Yeah. ABC, Fun Fit. I'll bet that was the same time when Reagan made Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's like fitness are do you remember that? I totally remember that. The Presidential Fitness Test, right? Yeah. Man, I failed that so many times. Yes. I think I was always sick that day. Like I got to climb a rope. Still to this day, I've never climbed a rope in my life. No. Made it this far. Yeah. I'm going to be chased by a tiger on the way home. I was going to say that's how you're going to meet your demise one day. Just going to be in, like, a burning building and a rope is just going to fall from the ceiling like a cartoon. Right. In the late 80s, there was a student at Yukon, Go Huskies that said, I want to bring Schoolhouse Rock back. They started a petition. I could not find this person's name. For the life of me, I couldn't either. Sorry, person. But ABC said you know what? People want this. And I guess it took them a little while to get around to it, but they brought it back, rerunning all those classic tunes and cartoons and added some new stuff by Bob Doro and the gang. Yes, they brought back the original, and this season was called Money Rock. And they did a substantial number of new episodes, but again, written and performed by all the original people, but a good starting of 20 years later. And they had things like 750 once a week, which is about maintaining your budget, tyrannosaurus debt, which is about the national debt and plenty of others. I remember the tale of Mr. Morton. That was another Lynn Erin's offering. What was that one about? I can't remember exactly. I didn't go back and rewatch it, but I remember he's, like, lost all his money on scratch offs or something. I don't think so. Again, the reason why this was so well is because these were men and women who were used to selling products for a living, and it was just sort of a natural thing for them to do as an ad agency. It seems weird at first when you're, like, an ad agency came up with Schoolhouse Rock, but it kind of makes perfect sense when you think about it. Yeah. I mean, they were selling these ideas to children in ways that were comprehensible to children, that were approachable by children, and they just kind of took the kids point of views and packaged it for them. I think it's a good way to put it. Yeah. So besides the Schoolhouse Rock Rocks CD, which I still have, actually yeah, that 90s thing created a bit of a resurgence of it. Yeah, resurgence in popularity, for sure. Boy, that Blind Melon Three magic number was great. Yeah, I hear that one. Did you like them? Yeah. I think SUP, their second album, is one of the great underrated records of the don't recall that one. And it was good. I think I only heard their first album, but they were too I think they made, like, the pop charts right out of the gate and just kind of were unfairly labeled as a pop group even though they really weren't because a lot more to them. No Rainsong and the catchy video with the little girl and everything. Yeah. Soup was good, man. You should check that out. Oh, well, it's very good. Very sad. What happened to him. Hey, odd. They didn't find him for a while, right? I don't remember that part, but maybe I think nobody missed them for a little while or something like that. What a waste. Yeah. In 1993, though, there was another resurgent I guess that was before the CD when they took it to the stage with Schoolhouse Rock Live, which kind of started out as most great theater like this in a sort of a basement black box theater in Chicago. And it just grew from there to eventually an off Broadway run. Yeah, not just that. Sort of in the basement theater of a vegetarian restaurant in Chicago, just to add that extra little dose to it. Yeah, why not? But I made it onto off Broadway. Yeah. It ran for four solid years. And then they had a touring version. I remember wanting to see it, and I think I was living in New Jersey at the time. I should have gone and seen it. I think I had no money at the time. I think you still might be able to catch it. There's a group called Theater bomb Theater, bam Chicago. Theater Bam Chicago. And they're still doing shows? They're still touring, as far as I know. I need to do my Free to Be You and Me live show. That's one of my dreams. I talked about that before. Isn't that Rosie Greer? One. Yeah. Did he do the whole album or just that one song? Just the one. It was conceived by Marlowe Thomas. That's pretty great. But yeah, that was another like that one hits me square in the face. Still from childhood. Right in the bread basket. Right in the bread basket. In 97, they had a 25th anniversary package of VHS tapes. Yeah. So think about this. It goes up the air, then all of a sudden, 939-4969, seven. There's like schoolhouse rock everywhere. It will never die. No, and I think this was one of the first instances because, dude, admittedly, Generation X is extremely nostalgic as far as generations go. Yeah, very nostalgic. I would propose that Schoolhouse Rock was the thing that kicked it off as far as Gen X nostalgia goes. Yeah. Well, it definitely was something that was so drilled into our consciousness. Like, it's a touchstone. Right. But resurgence of it is the first example of just how nostalgic as a Generation X is. Yeah, for sure. That's mine. You got sharknado. I'm predicting that that will be rooted out by historians in years to come. Dig that one out of the vault. Maybe at the place of your death. Like a plaque next to that rope that you couldn't climb. Memorial. I'll be like, Rope? Jeez, you already forgot. Right. In 2013, Kennedy Center had a sing along for their 40th anniversary. 2000 people in attendance. Pretty amazing. I would have done anything to have gone to that. And then it's been parodied and homaged over the years and everything from Simpsons to Saturday Night Live. Did you see conspiracy Rock? No. Conspiracy Theory, dude. That was a TV funhouse bit, right? Yeah. By Robert Smiggle. Yeah, it's one of the all time greats, man. He nails the conspiracy theory or nails Schoolhouse Rock, but it's all about how these major corporations like GE and Westinghouse own the media. They own, like, ABC, NBC, all these media outlets, and how they can use it to shape opinion and squash opinions that disagree with them or their products and choose what to report on. It is so good. Go watch it. Right now. It's on YouTube, but apparently there's a bit of a conspiracy theory around it as well, because it aired on the actual Saturday Night Live episode. But then when they re ran it and I think released that episode on DVD, it wasn't there. They edited it out, and supposedly it was just because Lauren Michaels didn't think it was funny. There's just no way that that's all it was. So I'm thinking, no, it was such a smack in the face to NBC and all the other ones they just had one couple of years ago that was an homage to just a bill. That was pretty great, too. Yeah, this is better. You got to see it, man. Yeah, I have a feeling I have, and I just don't know it. He nailed it. I'll let you know. I'll text you and say, I have seen it, and you'll say, who's this? I don't have your number on my phone. I actually ran across a little bit as great as Schoolhouse Rock is, I actually ran across criticism of it. What? Yeah. Boy, are you going to leave the room? Maybe. I'm about to get angry. You might want to. All right. So they were teaching very broad concepts to kids in ways that kids could understand. Awesome way. And when you're coming at them with multiplication or grammar, whatever, sure. But apparently, especially with the history rocks or America Rocks season, depending on what you want to call it, that's where the criticism tends to come out. So there's one called Elbow Room. Did you remember that one? Got to get you some Elbow room. Right? There's so many white settlers that we just got a spread westward. Okay, I see where this is going. Not a single Native American is shown in this westward spread. Yeah, they actually mentioned that. It's God's will. Manifest destiny. Yes. So the whole thing kind of I don't want to say it came under fire, because it's not like everybody's like, oh, yeah, elbow Room. Forget Schoolhouse Rock. Very few people are. But there is criticism of Schoolhouse Rock and that it really kind of fed American children the popular line on things. And it was just exactly the kind of stuff where when you grow up, you're like, wow, I was really misled, and this was first explained to me as a child. Yeah. So, well, we talk about that a lot, too, about how schools, especially in, like, the whitewashed, a lot of stuff. This was part of that. I can see that, and I'm not justifying it, but it was definitely of the times, for sure. Which is why I think that these creatives were like, we can't say this to kids, right? I think that there's definitely been more of an awakening in recent years. But I wasn't trail of Fear song, in other words, right? Yeah. And this is another name for what they're talking about, like forced removal, which turned into got to get some elbow roof. So get you, though. I want to know, Chuck, because I'm not in school and I don't have a child in school. I don't have a child at all. Well, I have a four legged child. But are they still misleading kids like they did when we were young? Do we just assume now that we know the deal that they don't do that any longer? Or are they still doing it? So any history teachers out there that are like 5th, 6th, 7th grade? Because that's what I remember really being just overtly lied to. And then as we got a little past that, they started to be like, well, maybe the Native Americans didn't really want to leave. Right. And then it just got a little more legitimate. So I want to know teachers out there. Let us know. I bet the answer we'll get is that we've come a long way and it probably depends on your district. Oh, yeah. And maybe even your teacher. Yeah, I can see that. I bet there's not, like a one sweeping answer for that one, but there's definitely been progress, I would guess. Who would let us know is Tyler Murphy. Yeah, Murphy would know. Let us know. Well, I know what he's doing. He's doing all the right things. Oh, yeah. He's up on the desk. Yeah. Opening mine. Great stuff. So you ready for my favorite? Yes, please. Rufus Xavier Sasparilla. What was that one about? Pronoun. I have a hard time expressing how much joy the song brings me still. I listen to it a lot. Yeah. If I'm ever down, that's the song. That's pretty great. It's amazing. The word play is unbelievable. And it's another Sheldon song. Right? It's very fast. I looked up to see if people did it live and stuff, and everyone always slows it down because nobody can. Oh, is that fast? Well, it's just very complex. And the whole idea of the song is the complexity of all these nouns that you can replace with pronouns. I got you. I got a friend named Rufus Xavier Sasparilla. And they go to the zoo and there's an artwork and an armadillo and all these big words. He's like, I could say that, or I could say, he did this and we did that, and she said this. Nice. Yeah. It's a word that takes the place of a noun like kangaroo. Can we play it? You know what? We wouldn't because of law. They should make actually one about copyright infringement. Right. It was sort out as a bill yeah. So we probably can't play enough of it to do it justice. So I just say, go and listen to that song in full because it's delightful. All right, I'll do that. And they go to the zoo. There's animals. El pile on a bus. Yeah. This girl in Rufus. Xavier Sans Parilla. They yeah, exactly. You got anything else? No, but there probably will be a tag on this one with Mr. Nastanovich or with me. Just recounting his tale. Got you of no more Kings. So if you want to know more about Schoolhouse Rock, go read this article on howstofworks.com and since I said that it may be time for listening to mail with Bob Nastanovich. All right. So now, as promised, or as hopefully promised we have via telephone in the studio Mr. Bob Nastanovich who is actually a member of two of my favorite bands of all time both Pavement and Silver Jews. And it's a real treat to have you here, Bob. We did a show on Schoolhouse Rock and talked kind of at length about Pavement's efforts toward that, I guess, late 90s CD and got in touch with you and you said you had a couple of stories to tell. We were in Memphis. We were supposed to be making a Silver Jews record and the singer of Silver Jews, David Berman, decided he did not want to make the record and he went home. And we'd already booked a week of studio time Silver Juice had and then subsequently we were steven and myself and Steve West were unceremoniously fired from Silver Juice. That's beside the point. We were kind of like at all the studio time that David was supposed to pay for to bail them out. Pavement sort of took that and made a record. So Steven, thankfully, had three songs and we made the Pacific Trim EP. But I guess, most significantly in regards to this project jackie Farrid, dear friend of ours, was supervising the Schoolhouse Rock compilation and she gave us our choice of songs. And it was fairly obvious to us that no More Kings had a lot of appeal. It was always our favorite one. We were kids. Boston Tea Party theme? Kind of. We were able to use the vocal stylings of Steve West to our advantage, I believe, for the first time in band history. What did he do with that song? And it all turned out to be we were very pleased with it. In fact, we're very pleased with all of it. And I think that it's an outstanding compilation. And it's one of those things in Pavement's time that I feel like we actually did a good job on. Now, what did Steve West do for that one? He played drums and then all the deep voice rambling in the background, mostly him. He's got an incredible voice speaking voice. He's one of the people that you can hear from 150ft away with a wind. He got a beautiful, deep boy. He's doing all, like, the ranching and raving. It was all pretty jubilee. Had a good time. It's the only time the three of us ever recorded together as Payment. But I feel like we made a good choice and we just loved that song. It was one take. Oh, really? The overdub? Yeah, one take on the instrumental and just some vocal dubbing. Probably took eight minutes. Wow. And it was just the three of you? Oh, yeah, just the three of us were the only ones there because we thought it was me, silver Jews and silver juice. So Canberra and Ibuld were at home and I don't even know if they were contacted. We made that Pacific Trim EP that song. Give it a day during the same session. And a couple of other songs are on the B side of that thing. But now the school house rock was this kind of thing pop in mind, like, well, we have a to do and it seems like I got this one song. We have to do this thing for Jackie. We have to do this thing for Jackie. We probably sort of planning on doing it anyways, but Jackie at the time was a BJ at MTV and she later became our she was the nanny for Courtney and Kurt for Francis Bean Cobain. Oh, wow. And then she was a tour manager for Pavement. In fact, she's been battling cancer for over a decade. But one interesting artifact that she owns is the actual button up cardigan sweater that Kurt Cobain wore in the famous MTV Unplugged performance. Oh, wow. Holy cow. Yeah, she's quite a character, but it was her project and she was a good friend and we want to do the best we could for her and didn't really care about anything else. We didn't even realize we didn't know whether it was a good tiny thing, like a limited edition of like 200 or whatever. But funnily enough, my wife that was the first Payment song she ever heard because her sister oh, really? Yeah. Her sister bought the school house rock thing when her sister was like 14. And my wife went would have been about ten. And she heard that it was the first time she ever heard Payment. That's pretty funny. Yeah, she likes it. We were talking a little bit about just your take and kind of just the different takes of all the artists on that compilation. And a lot of them were pretty straightforward and I think I really liked The Pavement one the most because it was kind of the perfect mix of very straightforward at times and then just totally Pavementized at times. Yeah. I don't think we're kind of good enough to do things straightforward. I think you think of like a band like Nickel Creek covering our song Spit On A Stranger, and they kind of Americana did or whatever. Sure. In order to do like, straight things you got to be good or else you're going to kind of humiliate yourself. For example, Ren doing pylons crazy. They could do that pretty straight, right? Because they have that sound. I think I've heard a lot of cover songs where it's like a great song and some people with a great voice, usually like a female, will sing it pretty straight. Just the fact that it's somebody with a gorgeous voiceover in a classic, it sort of works. But none of us are good enough to do that. We had to devise our own take on it. Well, I thought it totally worked. Was the Schoolhouse Rock, was that something that you guys were into, or was there much decision? I mean, besides the fact that it was your friend asking, was it something that you thought was kind of cool or did you feel like you should do it? Yeah, I thought it was a great idea at the time. We thought it was a great idea, and at that point in our lives, I was guessing it was like 96, 97 somewhere in there. Yeah, we've forgotten that point where we hadn't seen or heard any of that. The only one I could really remember off the top of my head at the time was like, Conjunction Junction. Yeah, of course. What's your function? But those are some of the first songs when we were a little kid, like under ten years old that got stuck in our head. Yeah. The only negative, I thought it might be a little bit childish and corny, but it came together and it just seemed like a very worthwhile project to me. And she was pretty Ernest Jackie and I'm happy it all worked out. I think it's actually become, like, sort of one of the most significant things that Paven ever did. Sort of outside the realm of pavement. Yeah, for sure. I'll still be in pavement. I don't even know. I'm the kind of person in regards to that band that would find out about things last. Because I lived in Louisville and I was always at the race track, people would say, hey, you know what? You're going to be making a new album in, like, two months. I wouldn't know anything about it. You're going on tour, you're starting in London. I just wouldn't even know. And so anything that rolled through the door there, like, request to do stuff I never knew about them unless we're going to do them right. You can see where I was on the pavement totem pole. Well, man, I always call you Pavent secret weapon. Yeah. I think there was something about your addition to the band that really just sort of mixed everything up, whether it was the percussive elements or just you coming in with your unique take on backing vocals. Yeah, no, I think I presented the element of really not entirely knowing what I was doing, and that was true. And the funny thing about it is, even at this point in my life, people who are completely unaware of pavement, mostly from this industry, the horse racing industry, I was in a band, even a successful band, it doesn't make any sense to them. Right. They'll have to look it up on Google or whatever to realize that we were actually like, a band that made records and stuff. And then the funny thing is, they'll always ask me that if it's musotypes or something. One thing I'm really sort of unaware of in the human race, I have no feel for people that kind of collect musical gear and take music really seriously, like playing music really seriously and like, jam or just really have this incredibly dry approach to gear heads. Like, really serious. Yeah. People ask me to jam. I don't jam. I can't imagine jamming. Like, what does that even mean? Right? It's always awkward. Like, people ask me to do something and then I'll be like, oh, man, I got to figure out a way to get out of this. Because my skills, they're not really not going to believe I'm in a band. Once I show up with whatever, I have two drums or whatever and start hitting them, they're going to be like, there's no way this guy was in a band. This is a fake. So very strange. Well, you just got to say, no, man, I'm the secret weapon. And the secret weapon doesn't say, yeah, like the spice and like some sort of bowl of burgoo or something. I don't even know. The whole experience was pretty magical. It still doesn't really make that much sense to me. I really enjoyed it, for sure, but in regards to that specific project, that's something that went really smoothly. It never got to the point. I mean, it was literally like steven, I'm sure, probably worked on it that morning or something, but when they press record on that rock thing, that thing was a humming or it was in and out the door. Doug easily was like, that's good. Yes. That's probably a good approach for something like that because you don't want to overthink it and then it becomes a thing and it's stressful, perhaps. So I think that approach to just get in there and knock it out was probably the way to go. It certainly worked out in this case. Yeah. It's a song that has no history within the context of the band. It's not like something that we've been working on or something that have been sitting there or something that played live. Yeah, I think that we had to pavementized it and give it a bit of an original spin because that's the only way we can really do it. Like we were talking about with a straight thing, you got to have significance. Not that Steven and Steve West aren't talented. I'm not going to like, those guys are great, but in fact, the fact they're able to improvise, right? Something like that is pretty cool. But I remember being really happy that Steve West, who had never really been used in pavement outside of just playing drums, that he sort of fit fantastically on that recording. I sort of love that about networking. I love hearing him in there. Nice. All right. Well, thanks, Bob. I appreciate your thank you for telling us these stories. And I'm going to think of about 100 more reasons to have you on in the future. Yeah, anytime. All right, man. Thanks a lot. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my favorite Murder, and Smalltown Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
21072ee4-121b-11eb-85ed-ffa89afaabb2 | Short Stuff: Speed Reading | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/short-stuff-speed-reading | Back in the 60s and 70s, a speed reading craze broke out. Tough luck that speed reading is bunk. | Back in the 60s and 70s, a speed reading craze broke out. Tough luck that speed reading is bunk. | Wed, 19 May 2021 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2021, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=19, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=139, tm_isdst=0) | 12790846 | audio/mpeg | "Hey, and welcome to the Shorts Stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. Jerry's hanging out here being a weirdo creeper, but she's standing in for Dave, who just doesn't show up ever, which is sad, but it's all right. This is about speed reading. And you made a very good point, because you put this together for us that if we did the same job today without the Internet, you would get a podcast episode about once every two weeks. Yeah, tops. Because that's how long it would take for us to go to the library and do all the analog research that it would take to get one of these episodes in the can. But now we have the Internet, and that research is much more streamlined as it is for everyone else. It's crazy. Like, when you think about it that way, just the revolution and information that the Internet provides, it's just so easy to take it for granted today. But when you stop and think about what people had to do just 30 years ago, basically, it's pretty amazing. The problem is, up to this point, up to the point where the Internet became widely available to people through search engines, we had decades and centuries of people who did have to go to the library to do all sorts of research, and they still had to do jobs, they still had to find out the answers to things. And there was a lot of information, but all of it was trapped inside books. And to get it out of there, you had to basically guess what book had the information that you are looking for, and then go find the book using the card catalog and then skim that book until you found the fact or the information you needed. And that was really slow and really hard to deal with. So in that context, Chuck, it makes a lot of sense that Evelyn Wood, the woman who founded a company called Reading Dynamics, which taught people for $150, about $1,350 today, starting in 1959, would become an international sensation with this technique of speed reading. Not a few hundred words, which is around where most people talk out, but thousands of words per minute. That's right. I think the fastest readers can read about 400 words per minute. And that's absorbing what you're reading. Yes. That's a big point. It is. And I have gotten into debates with friends of mine who claim to be super fast readers, and I would do what they do. I would try and read that fast as a test, independently. And it just seems very dubious. I'm like, Man, I can barely even move my eyeballs as quick as you say you're reading. Like, I don't think you're retaining as much as you think, because it might be because I'm a little defensive. But I've always been a very deliberate reader. I just read very slowly, and I read it as if I'm reading out loud to another person. That's how I read to myself. Yeah. And then when you factor in, like, your mind wandering, and you're like, okay, I have to go back and reread this paragraph. It takes me a very long time, too, but I like to feel like I got what I was reading afterwards, so it was worth time. Not like those skimmers. Come on. Right? So Evelyn Wood was very adamant, like, no, I'm not teaching you skimming. Because everybody would be like, yeah, skimming. We all do that in the catalogue where the library standing up by the card catalog. We skim. She's like, no, I'm talking about reading really fast. And what she said she had was a technique that she said was, quote, the greatest invention since the printing press. And it used what she called finger pacing, which was, in her view, a way of show pointing out to your eyes huge chunks of text if you were really good, an entire page of text that your eye would just absorb, like a different kind of reading. That's what Evelyn Wood said that she was teaching people. And like I said, it was a smash hit. It was very popular in the mid 20th century. Yeah, there was was we're not skimming. We're scamming, basically. And I think that's a good point for our commercial break. So we'll be right back after this to talk about the scam that is speed reading. All right, so it is a scam. Their website or they didn't have their website. Their workshop I know it started with a W. They workshop boasted that you could read five to 7000 words per minute and you could get through War and Peace in 18 minutes. Immediately upon hearing that, I'm surprised anyone said, well, this sounds revolutionary. Sign me up. I figured 100% of the people in the world would have said, there's no way that's impossible. This has got to be a scam. But everyone from John F. Kennedy to Richard Nixon to Charlton Heston were early adherence of woods speed reading program. Yeah, and it makes sense because in the mid 20th century in America, there was, like, a real trendiness about intellect and the engineering mindset, lots of efficiency. Everything is very buttoned down and compartmentalized. So the idea that you could wade through this enormous amount of information trapped in books really quickly, it was a way to show off that you are an intellectual, number one, but also was like, I'm going to leave the rest of you idiots behind. I'm going to go learn to speed read, and you'll never catch up with me. So there was a lot of adherence to it. The thing is, there was also, very simultaneously from a very early period, I think her first workshop was offered in 1959, and by 1962, the Saturday Evening Post had a story titled Speed Reading as Bunk. So there was criticism of it and skepticism of it from the outset, but she managed to hang in there. And actually reading dynamics is around today still. It is. I think the Washington Post wrote a big criticism in 1009 and 180. There were some other there's a woman named Marcia Beaterman who wrote Scan, Artist, Colon, how Evelyn would convince the world that speed reading worked. And one of her criticisms was this whole finger pacing thing. Even if that was a thing, you could do that yourself. You could run your hand down a page and learn how to do that stuff without paying what amounts to these day dollars, like over $1,300 for someone to teach you this bunk, right? And the whole idea was, I think the Washington Post said it was a new way to teach readers to take in whole ideas rather than words. So I think if you looked at a page of a book and went and went down it, you might pick out, let's say, 15 keywords, where maybe you could say, I think the character went to the hospital and they got better, but that's not the same as reading something, right? There was also, like this kind of veneer of religiousness that was assigned to reading dynamic, very culty, kind of scientologisty a little bit. You were supposed to have faith, number one, in your ability to speed read. You also had faith. You had to have faith in the process, the procedure. And people who weren't any good at it didn't have enough confidence. They didn't have enough faith. And that was born out of Evelyn Wood's background as a Mormon. I believe she was a very religious person. So that definitely kind of was something that reading dynamics was draped in as well. But it also kind of has a, like, you say, a culty technique of blaming the students rather than the actual workshop, which is pretty terrible because it really was the workshop that was the problem. One of the things they did, Chuck, was like, you can't be around for decades and do millions of people like, millions of people took this course. It's like one $300 for the workshop. Millions of people took this course. You can't just dupe them without some sort of rigging. And so what they did was they rigged what's called the reading index. And the reading index is basically the measure of how fast you could speed read by timing how fast you read and then scoring it against your comprehension, right? So you would get a comprehension test at the end. And what the Harvard Crimson and sort of uncovered and pointed out was they very simply made those first comprehension tests way harder than the final comprehension test. So the idea is, as you progress each test, you're going to get better and better scores for your comprehension. And the first ones are very complicated, and the last ones are maybe like multiple choice and just kind of super easy to the point where the University of Missouri did some experiments on the Reading Dynamics testing, and they found that you could score about a 60% read. And I assume this is for the later tests, but you could score about a 60% reading comprehension without even looking at the material. Yeah, I think that was the final test. That's how easy. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, reading Dynamics was also known for threatening or actually filing lawsuits against its most vocal critics, too, to file them. Yeah. Scientology. So the thing is, there's still this desire to speed read. I was reading this article on Wired, and it said speed reading is or sorry, speed reading is a scam. And there's still today there are different iterations of it. And I think part of it probably, especially when you're looking at the original founder of, like, a speed reading technique or something like that, before it becomes like, a business, that person probably really does think this works, and they really do want to learn to speed read, and that desire is still around. But I came across this article by a guy, an author named Mark Seidenberg, who has researched this, and basically he points out that the brain is just not equipped to absorb information that fast. And that when you're reading words on a page, each little bit you absorb, and then you move on to the next bit. Each of those is called a fixation. And we can take between roughly seven and eight letters per fixation, right? Each fixation lasts between a quarter to a fifth of a second, and that really what you're taking in. If you calculate something like seven letters per fixation, you could do 1680 letters per minute, which divided by five letter words, plus a space is 280 words per minute. 280 words per minute is what the average person can read at. So the idea that somebody could read 7000 words per minute and have any idea what they just read is bunk. As the Saturday Evening Post put it, it's total bunk. And the one thing that is also very much Scientology like, as they count on pride and shame to kind of keep former adherence to the program quiet. Maybe you're shameful that you paid $30,000 for Scientology programs and got nothing out of it and you don't want to say anything about it. Or maybe you paid that $1,300 equivalent in the 1950s and you didn't learn how to speed read, and you didn't want to go around telling people you dropped that much money. And they kind of count these organizations. And it is funny how much it's going to cost to Scientology, right, but they count on people kind of keeping their failures quiet because of that pride and that shame. And it worked. It's funny. If you read some of these contemporary articles, you'll see interviews with people who are like, yes, I really used to have it, but my comprehension score has gone down because I haven't kept up with it. That's what they say. I haven't kept up with it. I let it go. I let it slip. So speed reading is not a thing, and it's actually a pretty interesting little world to trapeze into. So if this caught your attention, go check out more of it. And I think, Chuck, that short stuff is out, don't you? It's out as out can be. 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." | |
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/netstorage.discovery.com/DMC-FEEDS/MED/podcasts/2009/1236022186680hsw-sysk-thinking-cap.mp3 | Could a 'thinking cap' make me a genius? | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/could-a-thinking-cap-make-me-a-genius | When Allan Snyder discovered that transcranial magnetic stimulation produces strange cognitive changes, he believed he'd stumbled upon a "creativity-amplifying machine." Learn more about the real-life thinking cap in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | When Allan Snyder discovered that transcranial magnetic stimulation produces strange cognitive changes, he believed he'd stumbled upon a "creativity-amplifying machine." Learn more about the real-life thinking cap in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=3, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=13, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=62, tm_isdst=0) | 19624529 | audio/mpeg | "Objects carry a lot of power. They tell stories about people, places, or a time in history. On mysteries at the museum. The podcast from Travel Channel Don Wildman searches for objects that tell shocking stories of American history, like the ordinary blue mailbox that changed the course of a massive spy case in the Cold War. Uncover the histories behind extraordinary objects. Listen to Mysteries at the Museum on Apple podcasts spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You want your kid eating the best nutrition, right? And by that, we mean your dog. Halo Elevate is natural sciencebased nutrition guaranteed to support your dog's top five health needs better than leaving brands? Find Halo Elevate at petco pet supplies plus and select neighborhood pet stores. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from householdworks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and guess who's with me. It would be Mr. Charles W. Chuck Bryant, who, based on his head, where today has headwear choice today apparently has joined the Cuban revolution. Is that correct, Chuck? Friday hat day. So I'm doing my best. C. Del Castro. Yeah, it's called a combat cat feeling. That it is. It's very cool. It's very cool, Chuck. You want to know something cooler? Yes. Okay. So actually, I don't know if call is the right word. Maybe horrific is a better word. Okay. There's a study conducted here in the States, and of course, the United States, like most other countries, have a long history of well meaning but really misplaced medical experiments or psychological experiments, like giving LSD to unsuspecting Americans. Which we've talked about. Right? Exactly. This one was a little different. This one involved separating twins who were up for adoption at birth in the state of New York. And there were, I think, 13 sets of twins and one set of triplets, and they were all separated through this one adoption agency as part of a study of nature versus nurture. So, like, the only thing the adopting parents knew was that their kid was part of an ongoing child psychology study. And so these researchers were allowed access to these kids over their lifetimes. And then it went from the think and the guy who was running the show, his name was Peter Newbower. He was a child psychologist. He apparently realized that if he were to publish this study, basically he'd be lynched. Right. By the time 1980 rolled around, people didn't think too highly of separating twins. Like, the ethics of experimentation had changed, and not based on the results, just based on the fact that he did this to begin. Yeah, right. Sure. So basically what he did was take all of the research he had the study, it was ready to be published, and he sealed it, and it cannot be opened until 2066. Really? And it's sitting in the archives at Yale University, I imagine. 2066. He imagined he'd be long dead by then. Right. So in 2066, we're going to find out a lot about nature versus nurture. I will be long dead. But you might I'm supposed to make it to 2041, as you know. That's what your death clock says, so I don't think so. I'll belong to you. I've got my Vegas. Odds are against that. Right, okay. So, Chuck, that's an example of a really terrible experiment. Yeah, right. For sure. Have you heard of savant? Autistic savant? I have indeed. You have? Okay. They actually provide a much less horrible natural experiment. Perfect natural experiment to study the brain. Right. Okay. You want to talk about savant for a second? Because I'm going to explain later how they make this perfect experiment. Sure. Josh autistic sabons are people who are mentally deficient in some areas, but excel and others. Like, a lot of times. I know there's a kid that plays a piano. You've seen him, the jazz trio. I have not. He's 15 or so now, and when he first started playing, he was really young and very advanced musically, and he's autistic savant. So that's one good example. Yeah. Music comes out a lot in savantism. There's a guy named Blind Tom. He was this African American guy at the turn of this last century. Not Hippy Rob? No, Blind Tom. And he was severely autistic, and he could play pretty much any piece of music that he heard once on the piano. Interesting. Autistic savant is different than autism, though. Aren't those two? Sure. Not everybody who is a savant is autistic, and not everybody who's autistic is a savant. Correct. So there is like yeah, that's a good point. There is a very, I guess, a subgroup called autistic savant. And perhaps the most famous savant is a guy named Kim Peak. Rainman rain man? Yeah. Really? Yeah, he's the real Rain Man, is what they call him. I thought he just made that up. No, you were dead on. You have an amazing intuition. Maybe I'm a savant. I don't think so. But maybe I'm terrible at math, so I doubt it. Yes, that comes into play, too, as well. But Kim Peak is this the guy who wrote Rain Man barry Morrow met in 1984, and in 1988 the movie came out. So he was very much based on Kim Peak. Did not know that. Yeah, the guy can if you tell him your birthday or your birthday, I'll tell you what day of the week you were born on. He apparently has read 12,000 books around that. He started reading and memorizing things at 14 months. Wow. But he has severe brain damage, developmental brain damage. So he can't, like, button his own shirt. Right. He can't care for himself. Luckily, he's got a really good dad who cares for him. But the cool thing about this story is, after Barry Morrow won an Oscar, he gave it to Kim Peak. He write the screenplay. Yeah. And so Kim Peek carries it around everywhere he goes. I would do, yeah. Isn't that cool? Yeah, it's awesome. All right. So the reason why savant and there have been some really spectacular ones throughout the ages, provide such a great natural experiment for us to investigate the brain is because most of them, they almost exclusively have left damage to the left hemisphere of the brain. Right. And just the very fact that they can excel in math but can't button their own shirts, it provides this kind of certain framework to compare the rest of our brains to an excellent comparison. Right. And the left side is more about detail. Correct. And the right side is more about the big picture. Do you love the lateralization of brain function? Don't? I do. Well, I like the brain, period, because it's still so mysterious. It's amazing how little we know still about the brain. Yeah, it's amazing and disconcerting. Yes. At the same time, I predict the next 50 years are going to see tremendous advances in our understanding of the brain, in part because of the study of savant. Right? Right. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep lets students take charge of their education and their future by combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credits 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 if you were a major transit system with billions of passengers taking millions of trips every year? You aren't about to let any cyber attacks slow you down. So you partner with IBM to build a security architecture to keep your data network and applications protected. Now you can tackle threats so they don't bring you to a grinding halt and everyone's going places, including you. Let's create cybersecurity that keeps your business on track. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. So, yeah, you were talking about the lateralization of brain function. Yeah, you're right. Left is the detail oriented side, and right sees the big picture. Right. And so there are some people who are studying savant, and like I said, one of the reasons why they are interesting is because almost all of them have damage in one form or another to the left side of the brain. Right. And even more suspicious is you can maybe get in a car wreck or have a stroke. And if the left side is impaired people have been known to basically come out of it a savant. Right. And sometimes autistic savant. Interesting. Right. So one of the people that I'd like to talk about today who's studying savant is Dr. Alan Schneider. Yes. Schneider, as I like to call him. He is an expat American who runs the center for the Mine. That's the British Spelling of center in Sydney, Australia, etcenta. And he's a very eccentric person. It sounds like it. He really is. But he's been studying Savance for years, and he has come up with a theory about mindset, and it's based on the lateralization of brain function. I love that. Yeah. The mindset, basically, his theory is that mindsets are created, they're personal, basically, definitions on your experience. Right. So if you see a bear in the woods, well, that's a little less common. Let's say a dog in your driveway. You'll note things about the dog that he's furry, that he has a tail, he walks on four legs, that kind of thing. And your brain kind of stores that away. So next time you don't see a dog, you think, oh, my gosh, what is that creature walking? I've never seen one of those. Yeah, he calls his mindset. Right. So, Chuck, we're basically assaulted with stimuli at all times, all the time. Raw data, basically, from the humming of a fluorescent light to conversations that we overhear in restaurants, that kind of thing. Colors, actions, taste, smells. Yeah. We're constantly assaulted with sensory input. Right. We have this thing called latent inhibition, right, which is a brain process they're still, again, trying to get a handle on. But latent inhibition is basically the process by which we filter out stuff we already know. So if we can identify so we're not constantly focused on the buzzing of a fluorescent light exactly. Or hearing all the voices in a restaurant. Obviously, that'd be maddening. Right. And actually, as a side note, schizophrenics have very low latent inhibition. Indeed. So they're constantly assaulted with all of this stuff, but they also have the added horrible side effect of attaching meaning to these snippets of conversation. Right. So, specifically, you're hearing voices and you're not able to externalize or internalize meaning. You can't tell the voices are coming from your head, and you're attaching meaning to them. That schizophrenia. Right. That's horrible. So it's Snyder's belief, and I'm pretty sure the medical establishment at large is that we're getting all of this raw data. It's being accepted into our right hemisphere, right. Which sees the big picture, and it sends it over to the left hemisphere, which processes it into details, which we hang on to. This interplay between the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere creates those mindsets you were talking about. Exactly. Which, like you said, is how we can see a dog and come to understand what a dog is. And then later on, when we see another dog, we just say, oh, that's a dog. Right. We kind of categorize things in packets. Right? Sure. So we say all that to say this. If supposedly we have damage to the left side of the brain, the detail oriented brain, all we're doing is getting raw data, and we're not able to create these mindsets. Exactly. There's this wonderful article by a guy named Lawrence Osbourne, and it was in The New York Times in 2003 called Savant for a Day. And he spent the day with Alan Snyder. And the whole article is very long, but it's definitely worth reading. He chronicles his day with Alan Snyder. And one of the things that Snyder mentions is that some of the savant that he studies when they come to see him at the center for the Mind, they may have been there dozens of times, but they can get lost every single time just because of the change of shadows. Right. It looks different. They're getting different input. True. So they'll get lost because it doesn't look the same way it did that last time, and they can't form mindset saying, this is the direction I'm going. Right. So since people with left hemisphere brain damage tend to be savant right. Or people who are savant have that condition, snyder has actually come up with a theory that all of us are savant. If you get struck on the head and your left hemisphere is damaged, you could become a savant. Right. So we're all potential savage. Right. And basically, the left side that helps create these mindsets, that pays attention to these details and hangs onto them, are keeping us from being savant. Right. That's really interesting. So how do you investigate something like that? Well, he uses a process called transcranial magnetic stimulation. We're going to call it TMS. Yeah. It's much easier for our purposes. TMS was originally designed, Josh, to examine brain functions during cranial surgery. And what it does is it focuses magnetic pulses to either suppress or enhance the electrical functions of the brain. Yeah. It depends on the frequency of the pulses. Right. Absolutely. And we were talking privately, and I thought it sounded very relaxing as your brain was being massaged. And I was disappointed because you said that you don't feel anything. You're not supposed to feel anything. It sounds very nice to me. It does, kind of. But I think that you could probably get something like what you're describing. It like Brookstone, maybe. So don't fear. Yeah. That's where you sure? Sharper Image, perhaps. They're under. Are they? Yeah. Anyway, Alan Snyder started using TMS because he found this curious little side effect of people that were getting tested with TMS had some cognitive malfunctions right. Like speech impediments. Exactly. While this thing was trained on their brain. Right, right. But it also had some if you put this on an average person had some pretty cool results. Yeah. This is what Snyder has been doing. This is his new experiment. Right. And it's very cool. 40% of the people, the normal folks, let's call him that he exposed to TMS. They displayed artistic and quantitative abilities that they didn't seem to have before. Right. So right on the money. It seems like it's actually tapping into a part of our brain that we have and we don't use, which sort of backs up his theory. Right. And some of the things he puts people through while he uses TMS on them, which apparently it looks a lot like a shower cap that has a bundle of magnetic wires in it. Right. A sinking cap, if you will. Yes. Which is kind of an inaccurate moniker, but an unfortunate one. The press is kind of put on it. Right. They had to label it. Right. Got you. You got to you got to get people to read. Right. Which is why we used it in the title of the article I wrote. Yeah. So depending on where you put it on the skull, it's going to affect that very localized region of the brain. Right. So, of course, neither is interested in training this on the left hemisphere of the brain. Sure. And he's actually using a low frequency, so he's depressing the left brain function. And reportedly, like you said, 40% of people are showing results. One of the things he likes to get people to do is draw animals. Right. And apparently with those 40% who show a reaction to TMS, their drawings tend to get better or more realistic, more lifelike. And Snyder's theory is that this drawing from memory is not based on the preconceived notions that you already have that would come from the left hemisphere of the brain. Curiously, he also has found that people can ordinary people we're talking about can identify prime numbers from site. I love that field. Yeah. And words, I believe, proofreading grammatical errors all of a sudden, out of nowhere. So over the course of this TMS therapy or whatever, they're getting progressively better at these tasks. Right. But only last about an hour, though, is that correct? Yes. And it may not happen at all. There's an argument out there that if you draw 14 cats in a row, they're going to get better. Right. That may or may not be true, but it is pretty interesting data that he's coming up with. And I don't think arguments like that are really putting the kibosh on his investigations using TMS. Right, right. I don't think so. Which, by the way, also, I understand you said has just been approved by the FDA for use in treating depression. Yeah. Josh, they studied 300 people that had clinical depression in Philadelphia, and they found out that people that underwent the TMS therapy were twice as likely to go into remission. That's awesome. 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. 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@ibmcom. And they're also now, this is just as of last week, I think, are asking for stroke victims to volunteer for studies with TMS. Yeah, because apparently with depression, if you train it on the frontal lobe, I believe, and you put it on a high frequency, they've actually shown that it restructures the brain, like your neurons are restructured. And of course, in the frontal lobe, that's where your ability to regulate mood is. Right. So that's just weird, but very hopeful. It is. It makes you wonder if this thing could be the key to making people smarter. Curing brain disease. Sure. Yeah. Interesting. So I guess the takeaway from this one is the next time you meet a savant of any kind, and he or she tries to impress you with their mathematical or musical skills, you can think to yourself, I could do that, too, if I had left side. Great damage. Sure. You're not so special. Exactly. So, Chuck, that would be what's? A thinking cap? And could it make me a genius? The answer is no, not really. But that's what you would type in if you wanted to go to Howstepworks.com, right? Indeed. And I think you had something you wanted to say to everybody. Well, yeah, Josh, it's pretty exciting. Before we get to listen or mail, we are launching a blog. Not just you and I, but I believe, six or seven blogs on the website. A whole mess of them. Whole mess of them. And they gave you and I, as you know, our own little blog called Stuff You Should Know. Yes. Although the whole entire blog section is called Stuff You should Know. Don't get confused. Yes, it is. I hadn't noticed that. Wow. They named it after us. Pay more attention. So we would like our listeners to get active. This is a call out to our listeners to get on the blogs. We're going to be discussing all kinds of cool stuff that isn't long enough to make into a full episode. So, like, shorter topics on there. And we'll also be talking about the shows that we do every Tuesday and Thursday or release. Yeah. And actually, we've picked up on a couple of listener mail suggestions sure. That we've written on. So keep those ideas coming, too, because Chuck and I can only do so much. Right. So go to the website and look for blogs. It should be pretty easy to find. We'll have a URL for you very shortly. And enjoy. Talk to each other. Connect. That's great. What? Nicely done, Chef. Thanks. Okay, so you know what this is, right? It's listener mealtime. Yes, it is. So, Josh, this week we heard from a man named Jason Devonir. How you pronounce it? Do you know? I don't. I've never met him. Or emailed pals. He works for how stuff works up in Chicago. Okay, so this is an insider deal, but that's fine, too, because Jason did write it. This is about the moon landing episode and whether or not it was faked. Right. Jason is a three time space camper, which is kind of cool. I hope you ribbed him for that. I totally did. And full time nerd self professed. Yes. And he said he was excited to see a podcast about the moon landing when you were talking about dust on the moon. He said in the photos video, dust appears to be clouding or kicked up more than dust would be on Earth. This would occur because the particles are airborne longer due to the lack of gravity. Gravity, by the way. Yeah. What didn't fit was when you insinuated that to recreate this effect on Earth, it would require a vacuumised sound stage. Josh apparently, the air has nothing to do with it. On Earth, the dust particles will rise and fall at the same rate regardless of the presence of air in the room. The only effect air would have on a falling object is to provide resistance. When you're dealing with something as small as tiny rocks that make up this dust, air resistance would be such a small factor, it would not be perceptible to the naked eye. So Jason fully geeked out. Set it straight. That's awesome. Yeah, thanks. And on that note, with the moon landing, we had a bunch of people write in about the Mythbusters episode where they tested out some of these theories and they actually shot Beam of Light, a laser, which is a beam of light. And there are these reflectors that they left on the moon and it bounced back and they saw this. So they pretty much proved absolutely that we did land on the moon. And I don't have a list of everyone that wrote in telling us about that show, but it was a lot of folks. Yeah. So you have. It marked lots of listeners. Lots of listeners should be nicely done. Yes, thank you. Well, if you want to become Chuck's or my email buddy, you can send us an email about anything you like at stuffpodcast@housetuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housetopworks.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. 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eb60294c-6c9e-409e-95e0-aea600f68ec9 | The Scintillating World of Interest Rates | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/the-scintillating-world-of-interest-rates | When the Fed raises interest rates a half point, the world market reacts. But why does this tiny percentage make such a difference? Listen and learn!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | When the Fed raises interest rates a half point, the world market reacts. But why does this tiny percentage make such a difference? Listen and learn!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. | Tue, 31 May 2022 15:02:24 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2022, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=31, tm_hour=15, tm_min=2, tm_sec=24, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=151, tm_isdst=0) | 43067025 | 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. What if you were a global energy company with customers in different places on different systems? So you call an IBM and Red Hat to create an open hybrid cloud platform. Now data is available anywhere, securely. Let's create a hybrid cloud that can change an industry. IBM, let's create. Learn more@ibmcom. Welcome to Stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. And there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Seated directly across me, within almost arm's reach, is Jerry Brolin, seated to my right. And I'm seated right here on my access, in the center of my own being. And this is stuff you should know. Yeah. In Person to Dish. First time since the 1980. The one time 3d Audio Experience experiment. I forgot about that. I marked it out of my head. That's the only time we've been in the same room to record since COVID. Was that is that right? Those two episodes? I don't remember the second one. I remember the first one. It was the Ivy League hobbit thing. Yeah, because Ivy League and 3D audio are just like it's such low hanging fruit. Yes, but we're back because I put it on my Instagram. The studio is going away. We're moving house, and surprisingly to me, at least, you said, hey, guys, I'd really like to record in there together one more time. Why is that so surprising? I don't know. You don't seem overly sentimental about stuff like this. That's not true. I weep a lot, yes, but not about studio rooms. No. I mean, I'll miss this particular room. Okay, me, too. I think, like, seven of the most solid years we've ever had been in right here. Pretty solid. Although the corner office with moving blankets says Sound Bafflers was pretty solid. Couple of years, too. The quaint early days. I drove by that building the other day, too, for the first time in forever. Yeah. In bucket. And it was just like do you remember there was like, for some reason, every time we recorded at 130, when we had just started to get going, a fire truck would go right outside every day, the same time. Yeah. It's like they knew all the memories. So that's enough fun for now, Chuck, because we're talking about interest rates. All right. I don't know why I picked this. I mean, I do know why, but I'm still not good at this stuff, so I can imagine an AP Economics like teacher picking this for their high school class. So I think that's kind of like a public service you've done here. Well, I picked it because the Fed just raised the rate by half of a point. Right? Yeah. Biggest hike since no, 2000. Yeah. So I saw that biggest hike and I was like, oh, my gosh, what was it, 2030? It was a half a point. And I was like, I don't understand this, so I might as well learn it enough to tell other people a little bit about it. Do you understand now? Yeah. That half of a percent is actually a pretty big deal? It is. And I understand now more than ever there's, like, nine people that just control the economy of the United States. Right, exactly. Yeah. It's true. Yeah. That half of a percentage point. As you'll see, by the time we're done with this, everybody is basically the Fed going they're really kind of nervous right now. Sure. And what they're going for by raising the interest rate is to cool off the economy. We have inflation rates that haven't been seen since 1981. Not a good time for inflation. And, I mean, we're talking the Great Recession was in there, too, right? Yeah. This is a big deal, the inflation that we're seeing right now. So the Fed is saying, okay, we have an economy that is overheating. Like, you want some inflation, as we'll see, but this is way too much inflation. The prices of everything is going through the roof. People are getting really mad. We better do something about it. But what they're trying to do by raising the interest rates is to create a soft landing so that prices come down, but they don't affect productivity and employment. That's the big thing. And Ben Bernanke put it once back when he was still disappointed, Governor, rather than the chair. He said basically that what they were doing was like driving a car. I'm paraphrasing here. Yeah, probably. He said, basically what the Fed does is like driving a car with fogged up windshield, a faulty speedometer, no good, and a brake pedal and accelerator. Then when you press it, the car has a very significant delay before it responds. Oh, I thought you were going to say a break in an accelerator that just switched positions without letting, you know, fire. And there's monkeys everywhere and they're angry. Yeah. The delay. Sure. Because none of these moves, it's an immediate impact and it's sort of a fingers cross behind your back kind of move almost always. Yeah. And so most people who are watching this are saying the Fed waited too long because they kept the economy juiced for years and years and years. It just kept getting hotter and hotter and everybody's very happy until prices started going up. Right. So they waited too long. So I shouldn't say a lot of people who know what they're talking about say there's a recession coming pretty soon, so batten down the hat. Right. Key indicators, as they say. Right. So what does all this have to do with interest rates? Chuck, let's wrap. Well, we'll get to the Fed, but this is generally about interest rates. The good news is everything else about interest rates is pretty basic. We are a nation in a lot of ways, a world that operates on loans and interest in borrowing money, and then banks borrow money from each other and then the Fed lends money to banks. And it's a weird thing. It's a weird world economy that has been created over the past several hundred years in this country. There's a lot of shiny suits, people break your arms. It's basically what it's all based on. Sure. But it's all based on the fact that if you want to buy something as a person and we're focusing on the United States here and you don't have the money. It's no big deal because you can get credit cards if you want to pay large interest rates. You can get a home loan or a car loan because not everyone can shell out 20 to 50 grand for a car or however much houses costs now. $8 million. And there's risk involved anytime you lend money. And depending all of it really comes down to the risk of the loan as according to what the interest rate is going to end up being. Right. So what we're talking about now are interest rates on the micro level, like the you and me level, like you're saying house buying, car buying, credit cards, all that stuff. And it is, it's really basic. Like you were saying where with interest rates, if you go to get a loan, say they're going to look at a few things like what are you going to buy? I'm going to buy a really cool vintage poison T shirt on ebay. Okay. It's like 15 grand easily. I want to borrow some money to get that T shirt. That's right. So they're going to look at whoever I borrow from is going to look at my credit score, especially if it's an unsecured debt, right? Yeah. Unsecured debt is basically any kind of credit card debt because they can't come and take away anything. Basically, they're not going to take my poison shirt if I default on the loan. They should, the way that they get you as they affect your credit. Right, but I still get to keep the poison shirt. So who's the sucker here? Right. As opposed to a secured debt, which is you got like a home mortgage because they can come and take that. Right. So getting back to interest rates, then that would mean that since the bank that lent you the money to buy your home can legally seize your home because it's a secured debt. Yeah, it's collateral. They're going to charge you less because at the end of the day, if you default, they can take your house. The credit card is going to charge you a higher interest rate because at the end of the day, if you default, they can't take that poison shirt. So they're going to charge more and the reason that there's a difference in charging more or less is because the entire point of interest is that's the price you're paying for somebody to loan you money in exchange for them taking a risk. Because there's always a risk that you're going to not pay it back even if you have great credit. Something could happen. You could break bad or something like that. Who knows? But there's always a risk, and that's what interest is. It's the money they make for loaning you that money and taking that risk. That's right. And it's not counter intuitive, but it kind of works both ways, because if you have the collateral of, let's say, a home mortgage and they can take that house, that's going to be a much lower interest rate, like you said, than the credit card. But it's also going to be higher in some ways because it's a long term loan if it's kind of a negative outlook. But I think the banks look at people and say, well, if you have a 30 year old mortgage, like, I don't know what you're going to be doing in 27 years. Like you may be broke, you may be destitute, you may be in the hospital and have no money anymore. Right. So that's going to be a little higher. Which is why if you can like, people always I mean, financial people, I'm not one of those, but they always recommend you, like, refi your house and bring it down to a 15 year loan because it's less risky and it'll be a little bit less of an annual percentage rate. Right. And then one of the other reasons. If you've ever looked at a house or gotten a mortgage. There's a big difference between the rate you're charged for a 15 year and a 30 year. Not just because there's a longer chance for you to default on the loan. But also because over the course of 30 years. Inflation is going to actually eat into the amount of money you pay that bank back because it's going to depress the value of the dollar over time. Right. So when that bank is getting what's left on your 100 grand 25 years from now, it's not going to be the same as the value of that dollar now. Right. So there's actually two types of interest that you pay on, say like a 30 year mortgage or even a 15 year mortgage, and that is the nominal rate, which is the rate you agree to, say, 10%, which is astronomical. Don't ever take a home loan out with a 10% mortgage interest on it. Right, okay, that's just a tip for me. But over time, as inflation grows, let's say over that 15 years, inflation grows a total of like 4%. You're actually paying the bank back, or they're actually getting back the value equal to about 6% of what they lent you. And what's that called? That is the real interest rate, right? That's right. Okay. I remember. Wake up, everybody, by the way. Yeah. All right. And by the way, Jerry's eating over there, and there's just nothing more normal and relaxing than us sitting in a room and Jerry chomping down next to us. I just wanted to acknowledge that. It's kind of nice. It is nice. She's not eating miso, though, this time. It's the only thing missing from this. You know, most people fall asleep to, like, white noise or the sound of the ocean. I have one of just Jerry chewing. Yeah. Puts me right to bed. All right. So I guess that's, like, just the basic overview of how regular interest rates work. It's really easy. It's very basic. It's the price you pay to borrow money rather than saving up to spending. Yeah, but later, no one cares about that stuff because you try and get your credit card rates down. You try and have good credit and you buy a house. You try and get the best rate you can, and then it's all kind of said and done. But what everyone sits up and takes attention is when the Federal Reserve and by the way, if you ever want to just send me into traffic, we should just do a whole podcast on the Fed. I don't understand why they talk the way they do. I know. Like they're purposefully obtuse. I think it's really hard. Like, you can just read their game in the whole system. So they just want everyone to be even nice and sleepy. I guess so. It's just nuts, man. So when the chairperson of the Federal Reserve sits up and says, all right, we think we're going to raise some interest rates. And by the way, banks, they try to know before they even make that announcement because they're always watching the chairperson of the Fed. Right. Like what they have for breakfast this morning. Right. How are they feeling today? Yeah, and that's why the recent 5% adjustment was just such a big deal, because it can have a really immediate and long term effect, which is kind of weird, because immediately, like, stocks are going to do all kinds of crazy things, and then it's got this long term effect that they hope is going to work out, but it doesn't always because it's not an exact science. Yeah. A really good example of that goes back to bank mortgages. Right. I'm sure they carry out their own research as well to predict what's going to happen in the future. Because they want to set their mortgage rates. Their 30 year mortgage rates today with as close a forecast of what's going to happen with inflation over the next 30 years as they possibly can. Because they want to squeeze out every real penny that they can from you. From your loan. Right. That's like crystal ball stuff, though. It is, but I think they've gotten kind of good at it. But it's still at the end of the day, just an educated guess. One of the things they do is watch what the Fed is doing. Is the Fed raising interest rates? Are they raising interest rates? Does that mean that they think inflation is going up? And inflation is going up? Then we need to adjust our mortgage loans. Right? Right. That's pretty simple. But it just keeps going from there. So if mortgage rates increase, home buying slows, housing prices drop. That means new houses are being built less frequently, which means there's fewer carpenters being put to work. Right. That means there's fewer lumber mills creating lumber for those houses. So those people are out of work. Those people are out of work. They're starting to default on their rent or their mortgages, and foreclosures start to go up, which further depresses the housing value or the housing market. Because a flood of houses started to come on the market because of foreclosures, because banks want to offload them just from the Fed, saying we might increase by a quarter of a percent our interest rate. Yeah. That's what's at stake. I know. When they're speaking out in public or even like making moves without speaking at all. Yeah, it's pretty scary and precarious the Fed itself. And like I said, maybe we'll do. I guess we have to at some point on the Fed. But just as a broad overview of the Federal Reserve is the central bank of the US. There are twelve regional Federal Reserve banks and a seven member board I talked about no, I said seven people, but a seven member board of governors in DC. And it was created in 1913 to ideally stabilize and secure our economy. Because at the time it was sort of the Wild West when it comes to banking. Yeah. There are a lot of bank panics, actually, where people would no good make a run on a bank and the bank would be like, we don't have any more money, and they will go under and people would lose their entire savings. Yeah, I mean, it was a pretty brilliant creation. And one of the things the Fed does a lot but one of the things the Federal Reserve does is it has a lot of cash and it helps supply the banks that you and I bank at with cash reserves and maybe let's take a break. This is a good cliffhanger. OK. And we'll talk about the fact that banks by law have to keep certain amounts of money and it gets even more boring. I can't believe it's a cliffhanger. What if you were a global bank who wanted to supercharge your audit system so you tap IBM to UNSILO your data and with the help of AI, start crunching a year's worth of transactions against thousands of compliance controls. Now you're making smarter decisions, faster operating costs are lower, and everyone from your auditors to your bankers feels like a million bucks. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM let's create. Learn more@ibm.com. Hey, everybody. If you want a great quality website, you want to do it yourself with no must and no fuss. Then there's nowhere else to look in Squarespace. That's right. Squarespace has every single thing that you need to put together an awesome website. Everything from growing and engaging your audience with email campaigns, collecting donations for your cause through Apple, Pay, Stripe, Venmo, PayPal. Plus, you can also make your website optimized for mobile, which is great for your user on the go. That's right. And if you're into selling stuff, square space is everything to sell anything. They have all the tools you need to get your business off the ground. They have ecommerce templates, inventory management, really simple checkout process, and secure payment. So whatever you want to sell, you can sell it on Squarespace. Yeah, don't just take our word for it. Head to Squarespace.com swsk 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. Hey, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify, the all in one commerce platform to start, run, and grow your business, isn't it, Chuck? That's right. Shopify gives entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business, so upstart startups and established businesses alike can sell everywhere, synchronize online and in person sales, and effortlessly stay informed. Scaling your business is a journey of endless possibility. You can reach customers online and across social networks with an evergrowing suite of channel integrations and apps, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and more. And you can synchronize your online and in person sales, so you gain insights as you grow with detailed reporting of conversion rates, profit margins, and beyond. It's more than a store. Shopify grows with you. So just go to shopify.com stuff all lowercase for a free 14 day trial, and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. Grow your business with shopify today. Go to shopify. comStuff right now. Okay, Chuck, before we get into the reserve requirements of banks, I have a pretty neat little story, actually. We're talking about banking panics, and there was one back in 1882, or at least there was one bank that went under, and they had a branch in Sacramento that a guy named Louis Remy, I'm going to say, went to go get his $12,000 that he'd saved up. It's about like $350,000 in today's money. It was like his nest egg, right? He went to go get it out and was told that the bank had failed and they didn't have his money. So you know what Louie Remy did. He got on a horse and he rode from Sacramento to Portland, Oregon. 665 miles in six days. Okay? He rode for 143 hours. Ten of those was to stop to sleep. I thought I was going to say to get a new horse. He did that in an instant. Right. So for six days, he slept 10 hours to ride to Portland, got there before the steamer ship that was carrying news of the bank collapse out of Sacramento. So he was racing the steamer, got there an hour or two before the steamer got his $12,000 out of the Portland branch of the bank, and within an hour or two of that bank collapsing, finding out that there was no more bank anymore. Wow. Isn't that amazing? I'm glad his flux capacitor was working. Basically, that's basically what he did. But the horse version of that man yeah. He said I should give myself an hour. That should be plenty of time. I never understand that in time travel movie. I don't either. Like, go back the week before. Take your time, just take it easy. Maybe get, like, a snack. You have time. All right, so we promise the scintillating details of the fact that banks have to keep a certain amount of money in their reserves, and that is because it's not the 1800, not everyone's going to say, I got to go to that Chase Bank and withdraw every penny all at the same time. Right. But they got to be protected against that. Oh, it could happen, though. Yeah, sure. The problem is once a panic starts, it spreads like wildfire, because that means, well, if these people are panicking, even though I'm not panicking, I better go to the bank anyway to get my money out before it collapses, before more of these idiots panic and take their money out. Right. So whether you're panicked or not, it actually makes sense if there's a panic and a run going on in your bank to go withdraw, and it's just this chain reaction that starts. So the Fed protects against that by requiring that these banks have these reserves, right? Yes. So it's known as the reserve requirement. It's based on a percentage of all the deposits in that bank. It's very simple calculation. And then these banks have to have noninterest bearing accounts at the Federal Reserve to make sure the Federal Reserve can cover everything. Right. To make sure that it's like, okay, you have to have this much, we're going to hang on to it for you. That's right. So they're taking this average every day, but it's an average over two weeks, basically to determine whether or not it's meeting that reserve requirement. And here's the thing that I don't know, I guess it sort of surprised me, is banks, depending on what's going on on a day to day basis, are borrowing and lending money to each other to cover themselves. Yes. That sounds frightening, but it makes sense. So they've got like a pile of money and whatever money they have, they can make more money if they lend that money out, if they put it to work. Right. Yeah. That's what they want to do to get more interest. So if on one day they're like, oh, we've lent out more than we have in reserve, we go to another bank that has an excess and borrow it from them, and then we put it in our Fed account and everything's fine. We're within the legal limits for those reserve requirements. Right. But if they run out of banks to trade with, basically at the end of the day, then they can go to the Fed and say, big mama, we need a little money from you, actually. Right. And the Fed doesn't like that, so they actually charge banks more to borrow money directly from the Fed for overnight requirements. That's right. But it's ironically called the discount rate, even though it's the larger of the two rates. The other rate where a bank borrows from another bank overnight to satisfy the Feds reserve requirements, that's called the federal funds rate. Right. I answered my own funds. Right. I thought, you're waiting on me. And within that discount rate, there are a few different tiers, kind of just like you would scale or a tier. Any loan, you've got your primary rate, which is the lowest one, and that's if you're a great bank in good standing, you're going to get that rate. You got the secondary rate. I think this is, by the way, is Dave Ruse, but from householdforks.com. And Dave said slightly less sound institutions. Right. Galloping Gulch State Bank. Yeah, probably. And then you've got your seasonal rate. And these are very small banks that are based sort of around seasonal economies, like tourism or agriculture or something like that. Yeah. Because when it comes time to bring in the crops for harvest, the farmers come and say, I need some money to get the stuff to market. I need loans. And those banks get strained at those times. Yeah. Or there's lots of great I feel old Tommy Heist movies where someone will, like, during crop season, they'll know a bank will have just be flooded with cash on a certain afternoon. Yeah. There's a movie you're talking about raising Arizona. That was definitely the case. Okay. Was that it Wisdom? It's been in other movies, too. Familio Estavez is that a bank? Robin he was like a Robin Hood where he I think he robbed banks to get rid of the deeds so that the farmers couldn't have their farms foreclosed. I never saw that. I know the movie you're talking about, though. I saw it. Wisdom. I saw it. Hey, while we're talking about movies, I've been meaning to give a shout out to our friend Toby. Yeah. His production company made a movie called The Green Night that slipped under the radar. Not for me, buddy. I was on the theater. Wouldn't that an amazing movie. It is in one of the most, like just sort of like in a day and time where everything is a marvel movie or something. To have something so original based on an ancient tale. It was great. It was. So David Lowry is the director, and he's just a straight up auture. Yeah. He's just making the movies that he wants to make. And their production company is called Sailor Bear, I think. I'm so mad that that got snubbed at the Oscars. It's crazy. It really is. Like, cinematography and set design and costumes. Like, it got nothing. It's crazy. It's wonderful. Yeah. And I think 824 picked it up, which means their streak of, like, amazing movies yes. Flawless. It's a flawless streak. They haven't stumbled once in the entire I think you're right. The entire history of a 24. Yeah. Come at me. If you got a bad a 24 movie, let's hear it. You know what I hear? Crickets. Is there a movie called Crickets? Maybe. Okay. There's a movie out there called Egg from the 60s. Really? Yes. I haven't seen it, though. I just read about it in Uncle John's bathroom reader. I thought you're talking about the movie head. The monkeys, man. Yeah, the monkeys, right. Where they tried to do the whole smile thing. Oh, really? I think so. That was kind of their answer to The Beach Boys. I interesting. All right. Can we just keep talking about that stuff? Sure. All right, here we go. Let's get back on this. The Fed funds rate, is that what you're talking about? Yeah, we're talking about that's the rate that banks charge one another to borrow overnight to satisfy the reserve. Right. And this is the one that is just very simple supply and demand. If there's a lot of cash and a lot of banks, then the rate is going to be lower. If there's demand for more money, then it's going to be higher. The Fed controls all of this in a roundabout way. Yeah. I mean, they kind of control all of it in a roundabout way in, like, all of the economy, like a Rube Goldberg mouse trap kind of way. Like, it'd be so much easier if they were like, this is what you guys can charge one another as an interest rate. Yeah. But they don't do that. They let the market decide. They set a target and then let the market work. And then they manipulate the market. That's right. So if the Fed wants to lower that funds rate, it's going to buy securities from those banks. There's going to be more cash on hand. All of a sudden, if they want to raise the funds rate, they're going to sell government securities, which are I mean, anytime you start talking debt instruments, I just go a little crazy with excitement. But government securities are just debt instruments. They're used to fund government operations. It's basically so, like, the way I understood it was like, a lot of it is military spending and operations, and it just keeps them from having to raise and lower taxes a lot because they want to. Keep taxes kind of stable. Right. So yeah. So with all that deficit spending, what they're doing is if the government could operate just on the taxes, tax revenue it brings in, it'd be neutral. It wouldn't be operating at a deficit, there wouldn't be any profit. It'd be great. Yeah. But it spends more money than it takes in. So it has to issue that debt, which is basically loans in the form of treasury bills. And that's what the Fed is doing. When they're out there buying or selling treasury bills, these debt securities, they're taking debt in or out of the market. They're adding cash into or out of the market. And it's not like banks who trade with it's just a very select elite group of what are called primary dealers who buy and sell these treasury bills with the Fed. Yeah. They don't have a choice in this. If you want to be a primary dealer, you have to buy or sell depending on what the Fed wants to do at any given time. Right? Yeah. And so by doing that, they say, all right, we want to buy a bunch of treasury bills because we want to inject cash into the market. Like sell those to us. Here's the cash. And by the way, we're not actually giving you this cash to go do anything with. This cash goes into your Federal Reserve account. Remember, and this is really important, Chuck, that account is non interest bearing. It makes zero sense in both senses of the word, to leave money in there when you as a bank could make some money off of it, loaning it to other banks. Right. So the more money that the Fed has put into those accounts, the more money there is to loan. Meaning that interest rate drops. And this is also arcane. And again, this is like a dozen people who deal with this on a day to day basis. But it has a ripple effect in that when you lower the federal funds rate, those banks in turn end up lowering their rates to people like you and me. It has a cascading effect throughout the economy. Yeah, I think I used to look at the Fed rate and when they would move that and think that's the home mortgage loan rate essentially it translates into that. It does in a certain way, for sure. But I thought the Fed sort of set that until last week. Yeah, same here. But it's just passed along, like you said, both ways, either in better interest rates or worse interest rates for everything across the board. For regular smokes like us, there's also you can also buy. We'll talk about inflation, the stock market, which is where I get really confused. But remember how I was talking about the interest rates have to do with nothing but risk? Basically, if you want to get out of the stock market and just say, I'm only going to invest in bonds and things like that in securities then you're not going to make much money. The return on those is very, very low because they are government backed which means the risk is very very low. People play the stock market because ideally you can get like 8% more money every year that you're doing it whereas you're making half of a percent off of a bond or something. And that's the same way you make interest when you have money in the bank because the bank wants to use your money. So they're kind of taking a loan from you every day. You just don't realize it but you get just a tiny less. That's why it doesn't pay to keep a ton of money in the bank because you're making a tiny amount there too. Yeah and so the federal funds rate has an effect on that as well right. In the real world with the stock market. So if the Fed takes a bunch of money out of the market and floods the market with treasury bills right, those treasury bills are easy peasy to come by which means that they're worth less which means that people are going to get less money from investing in them which means they're going to turn to the stock market because you're going to make more money. Right. Even though it's riskier that juices the stock market when interest rates are low. When interest rates are high meaning the Fed has soaked up a bunch of money and they have sold a bunch of those treasury bills. Yeah, I think I'm right. That means that the interest rate has gone up which means that you can get more money from those treasury bills which makes the stock market less attractive to people who are investing in it which usually signals a cooler economy. That's right. And I guess the final effect here before we break and then talk about inflation, which is so fun is if the Fed lowers the funds rate it's going to decrease the value of the dollar on the exchange market, on the foreign exchange market and that is a little counterintuitive but a little bit of like a long term drop is not good. You don't want the dollar to decrease and stay low. But on the short term, on the near term it can be good for the American economy because if the dollar drops then our money is not going to be worth as much elsewhere. So buying things like products or goods or services from overseas it's going to be more expensive. So they might turn to the home front to buy some of those goods and services which can actually inject kind of supercharge the local American economy on the near term. Right. And so that actually can in turn lead to inflation accidentally. So if you have low interest rates that means that money is abundant and cheap borrowing is cheap. A lot of people are out spending because interest rates are low, so the dollar is actually deflating, which means that prices are going up. Right. In some cases. Like this is actually good. The Fed wants to keep inflation at about 2% growth per year. Yeah. So prices are going up. And the reason why the Fed would want to do that, as we'll see, is because if you know that prices are going to generally continue going up, you're going to buy something today rather than putting it off for later. Right. They love you spending money. Right. That's what they want as Americans, buying things constantly. Exactly. So you want prices to go up at a steady rate and a manageable rate. Yeah. The problem is, if money becomes too abundant in the economy, prices start to go up really quick because a lot of people have money, but there's not enough supply to satisfy that demand. That's right. Which drives prices up even further, which is pretty much the situation that we find ourselves in now. Right. So to deal with this, the Fed has raised interest rates in the hope that it becomes more expensive to borrow money, people will spend less, and then it becomes more lucrative to save money because interest rates are for CDs, for savings accounts, all that stuff goes up. Right. And so you're spending less, prices hopefully come down, but not so much that people start to get laid off because consumer demand has bottomed out. That's right. That's where we're at right now. This is the tightrope that we're watching, the Fed kind of transverse right now. That's right. They're on a penny farthing on a tight rope. Yeah. With a little tiny umbrella. That's comically small. Comically small. All right, well, let's take our final break and we'll finish up with a little bit on inflation and how the interest rate continues to affect that right after this. 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, 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 SYSK and you'll get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain that's squarespace.com. SYSK. Squarespace. Hey, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify, the all in one commerce platform to start, run and grow your business, isn't it, Chuck? That's right. Shopify gives entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business, so upstart startups and established businesses alike can sell everywhere, synchronize online and in person sales, and effortlessly stay informed. Scaling your business is a journey of endless possibility. You can reach customers online and across social networks with an ever growing suite of channel integrations and apps, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and more. And you can synchronize your online and in person sales so you gain insights as you grow with detailed reporting of conversion rates, profit margins, and beyond. It's more than a store. Shopify grows with you. So just go to shopify. comStuff, all lower case for a free 14 day trial, and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. Grow your business with Shopify today. Go to shopify. comStuff right now. So I have a feeling I'm trying to think of the stuff you should know audience right now. All of our friends out there, and I feel that 90% of them will not hear this part, okay? The ones in that 90% that managed to stick this one out are probably like, I'm sort of learning this guy, but it's really confusing. And then there's 10% are economists and people that are sitting back and laughing and going, nope, I got that part wrong again. Sorry, guys. Yeah, I feel like if you took all of the information in this episode and cut and pasted into a more coherent way that's Jerry's job, it would be like, we got it. I think we just explained it in a really confusing way, probably. So we're a little all over the place. All right, so we talked a little bit about inflation, that inflation is good in a slow and steady way. Would you say 2% a year? Yeah, that's what the Fed shoots for. Shoots for 2%. No inflation at all is not good because that means you're looking at deflation. We talked about stagflation in one of those a long time ago. What is Stagflation? Was that it? Yeah. So stagflation is no good. I think that's when the rate is above, like a certain percentage, and unemployment is below a certain percentage. And there's one other indicator, productivity, I think maybe decline. Maybe. So prices remain high and keep going higher, but the wages are tumbling and people are getting laid off, and the economy is starting to cool, but prices are staying high. Yeah. Because ideally with inflation, wages are kind of going up in lockstep. That's what you want. That's what you want, ideally. I don't know the last time that actually happened. You're probably right, you do want some inflation, but you don't want too much inflation as the upshot of it. And that's right. We also did one on inflation too. I can't remember what the name of it, but it was just this past June, I think I looked at. Really? Yeah. So there's a couple of explanations about how inflation works and I don't know that one is necessarily right and the other is wrong. I think it just depends on the context. Yeah. Or the way you're looking at it, it seems like. But they both seem really familiar. So I think we talked about them in the inflation episode we would have had to have. But one is called the demand pole theory. And that's kind of the explanation for what's going on right now. Because of government stimulus checks, because of productivity being through the roof, because interest rates being really low, the economy has been a wash in easy money and people are buying, spending, buying. A lot of people have a lot of money and are ready to spend it. Also, I think there was a lot of probably pen up demand from hanging around your house to the covet. Now you're like, Take my money, I want to do something interesting, you know, I'm so bored. It's unprecedented stuff these past couple of years. I don't think anyone really knew what the overall effect was going to be. Right. So the tightrope, if you look closely, is actually an ultra sharp razor blade that the Fed is on thanks to this unprecedented event that we've just gone through. That's what they're trying to do with. So the idea of a bunch of people having a bunch of money, wanting everything all at once, from houses to cars to Game Boys, maybe some vintage Game Boys to poison T shirts, that means that we're all competing with one another for the finite supply of those things, which means that people selling them, thanks to just supply and demand, basic capitalism and economics, those prices rise. That's right. That's inflation. That's the demand pull theory. That's right. The other is cost push. And this is basically kind of the opposite of that in some ways. The cost of doing business is going up. It is sort of separated from demand in that way. And there are all kinds of reasons this might happen. Dave mentioned a couple that labor unions might have to pay people a lot more money because they negotiated a new contract or something. Exporting foreign goods shoots through the roof or something. Or maybe there's a new administration. All of a sudden there are new taxes going on. But basically it's cost push because the rise in cost of doing that business, any business is going to push the price of the products higher and higher and higher. Right. But it has nothing to do with demand necessarily. No, it's become the cost of doing businesses become more expensive. Right. And now this is where, like, I did pretty good with this stuff until interest rates affecting inflation because it seemed I don't know, it just seemed so rigged and like I hate saying that word now, but that's the whole thing. That's the entire point of what the Fed is doing. By raising that interest rate by half of a percent, manipulated, I guess they're trying to manipulate the economy and they're trying to do it in just the right way so that they can keep inflation, slow it down, they can keep it in check, but at the same time, they don't want to bring prices down so much that businesses have less incentive to produce goods. Right. Because right now, with prices really high, businesses are doing everything they can to get out as many widgets as possible because they can sell them for historically high prices. Right. Now, if prices fall eventually you get to a point where businesses are like, it's not really worth the investment. I don't need this many people to make this many widgets anymore. Start laying people off. So unemployment starts to go up and all of a sudden you've overstepped. You've cooled the economy too much. By adjusting or by targeting inflation, by adjusting the interest rate. That's the precarious position that they're in right now. They're trying to create that soft landing to get prices back down to a normal rate of inflation without cooling off the economy inadvertently. That's right. And what I meant to look up to see is it always by quarters of a point. No. I mean, they just did a half of a point. No, but that's two quarters. I see. Yeah. Is there an increment that's less than that? Not that I've ever seen. Okay, so they go a quarter at a time, I feel like three quarters. Yes. I think the most I saw was 1.75 or something like that. Really? That was back in 2000, I think so the last time they had such a huge hike as a half of a percent, it was actually like two and three quarters of a percent. Oh, wow. Because I think of the.com bubble. Right. And they probably overstepped because there's a recession after that. Right. And then the housing situation. Yeah, that came later. Right. But I'm sure all of that has affected all the tendrils affect one another, I'm sure. I think there was somebody who had a theory that every recession was connected to the last one somehow. Well, they say we're headed for one. Since the 1950s, there are economists that say every time we've exceeded 4% inflation, unemployment was below 5%. Then recession comes within two years of that moment. And that has happened here in April 2022. Right. So they're saying, like, recession is probably coming, historically speaking. Yeah. And so there are some tips if you want to prepare for recession. It's not necessarily the end of the world. One thing is, because job market is so hot right now, if you've been sitting there thinking, like, maybe I'll get a job. Go get a job now. So you don't have to try to get a job during a recession. You can already have the job if you're thinking of selling your house, especially if you can downsize. This is a good time to sell because the housing market is really high right now. But you can expect it to come down if we go into a recession. Right. Set a little cash aside if you can. Sure. And then if you're an investor, if you have stocks, stick to your plan. Don't panic, don't worry. Just stay the course. You can weather a recession and your stock prices will eventually go back up on the other side. Yeah. You know what? There was one thing I meant to mention before, it's worth pointing out real quick, is that remember we were talking about the Fed sets this rate that banks, they lend each other money and stuff. Yeah. The federal something federal funds rate. Yeah. They don't actually say, you have to use this rate. Like, banks still negotiate that with each other. Right. But they're saying, like, that's the target rate. And then they do things to try and nudge these banks toward that rate. Right. And that's what they're doing when they're buying or selling bonds on the market they're injecting or removing cash to make that the banks actually charge closer to that target rate. They said that's how they manipulate. Right, but it's not like a bank says, well, we can only charge this because the Fed said so. That's what I'm saying. It'd be so much easier and so much more straightforward. The Fed said this is what you can charge each other for the overnight rate and then adjust that rather than setting a target and then manipulating the markets. Yeah, but then that takes negotiation out of the deal and, like, this is no fun. Yeah, that's probably it, actually. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, that was a good first take. Let's start over and try it again. Well, since Chuck made that sound, of course that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this new gin and tonic recipe. Yeah, sounds good. It just came in. Hey, guys. Been listening for a few years down under and was keen to learn about more about champagne as a fan of the bubbly beverage, but I got an extra treat. When you went on a tangent about gin, this must have been a select champagne. Yes, our champagne one came out this past Saturday. In real life, IRL so. Although I must say, the best gen in the world now comes from Australia. Arguably Tasmania. I'm also a big fan of the St. George, Charlotte and Chuck. It does not taste like feet. Maybe you should stop soaking your socks, your lime and your socks. So this is a cocktail recipe I'm going to try because it all sounds lovely. This is from Meg. Just get your basic London dry gin and tonic. But instead of just squirting a lime in there, squeeze some orange in there and add a full rind. And then rub a fresh rosemary stick. Get that thing activated and then put that in there and stir it around. You sound like you're making this listener mail up. No. And cracked pepper. So you basically got a gin and tonic with orange, rosemary and black pepper. Yeah. Be careful with the pepper, though. I've had it before with even just not crack, but whole peppercorns. You can accidentally burn your throat pretty good. Oh, really? Yeah, because the gym gets it ready and the black pepper finishes the job. Okay, well, I'm going to try it out. That's from Meg and Australia. Just remember, a little goes a long way. Little goes a long way. Thanks a lot, Meg. We appreciate that. We love new gin recipes. Really? Any kind of recipe. Yeah. If you want to get in touch with us, like Meg did, and give us a recipe or just say hi or whatever, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@iheartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts myheartradio, visit the 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 hey, it's Delilah. We can all use a hug now and again. I wish I could deliver them all in person, but since that's not possible, my daily podcast, hey It's Delilah is the next best thing. 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41ad9f68-53a3-11e8-bdec-df7cdd315b53 | How Trampolines Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-trampolines-work | The world’s loved trampolines since they were invented by a pair of acrobats in Iowa in the 30s – so much so, trampolining is now an Olympic event. What people don’t love about trampolines is their propensity to cause paralysis, brain injuries and death. | The world’s loved trampolines since they were invented by a pair of acrobats in Iowa in the 30s – so much so, trampolining is now an Olympic event. What people don’t love about trampolines is their propensity to cause paralysis, brain injuries and death. | Tue, 14 May 2019 13:30:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2019, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=14, tm_hour=13, tm_min=30, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=134, tm_isdst=0) | 52003807 | 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. Brian. There's Jerry over there. We're just bouncing around with getting this about this episode on trampoline. I saw that coming from a mile away. You did not. And I knew there would be some jumpy bouncy metaphor. Well, you know me very well after these eleven years. Eleven years. Good. You didn't disappoint. Good. I don't like disappointing you, Chuck. It feels really rotten. Yeah, especially since I'm wearing a T shirt that says, you've disappointed me again, Josh. And it's got that pointing finger right at me. Oh, my gosh. Yes. It actually is three dimensional. Comes out of the shirt. Just so you know. I'm pointing at you. I can see it's like a Magic Guy poster. Oh, goodness. So speaking of goodness, Chuck, we're talking about trampolines, but it's funny that I would say goodness, because it turns out trampolines have a lot of badness to them. They're dangerous pits. Yeah, they are. Big time. Well, pits if it's one of those built into the ground things. Yeah, trampoline and a pit. Have you ever been on a trampoline? Sure. I had one in high school. Oh, really? You owned one? It was inherited from the people who previously owned the house. That old move. And they took maybe half of the springs with them when they moved, apparently, because you could make contact with the ground. Pretty easy on that one. Yeah. And actually, if you go onto my Instagram, Josh Clark, you can see a little photo spread of me bouncing around a trampoline park, totally oblivious to the amount of danger I was actually in. What? What do you mean, what? I mean, I got to look that up. I didn't know that existed. I talked to you about my Instagram account, like, every couple of days. Well, I mean, pictures of the trampoline, A and B, I'm not on Instagram at all. So I got to like you know what? You have to what? Well, I don't know. How do you find something on Instagram if you're not on Instagram? I think you have to go now. You can you can just Google it, I believe. Okay. I'll show you later. I'll show you after this. But anyway, it's pretty great. You're going to love it. But there was one point in time where I landed flat, and this is in the photos, flat on the back of my head, upside down, and there was a crack and everything, and I was like, whoa, that was crazy. But after researching this truck, I can't wait to die and go to heaven, if there is such a thing in a place. So I can be like, I've got to know, how close was I to full body paralysis that one time at that trampoline park. And I guarantee when they tell me I'm going to shutter with just, I don't know, some sort of proximity fear, maybe. I don't know what else you would call that kind of thing. Or what if they say, here, I'm going to issue a ticket number and you're going to have to go down that wing where they handle near death experiences? That's fine. I go spend some time. It's eternity after all. I've got time to kill. It feels like it would be very bureaucratic. I could see that. Sure. Yeah. A lot of pencil pushing. I had trampoline experience, and my only trampoline experience really was elementary school when we had a you know how in elementary school, at least at mine, you do like, one sport for a month or something. Yeah, I remember that. We did trampolines for a little while, and our gym teacher was a legit gymnast of some kind, and he could do all the things. And we had the 1980s rectangular they weren't even the mats. As we'll learn, we'll learn all about the trampoline in a minute. But the little bouncy part you bounce on, it was not solid. It was like a checkerboard. I don't understand. Well, it wasn't a solid piece of fabric. It was visible. It was a weave. Okay. Like little tiny with little squares in between. So like a net. Yeah. I have never seen what you're describing. Yeah. Wow. Tow could go through it. So, Chuck, let me ask you this, then. When you would rotate out for new things, like, every month yeah. Did you guys ever do the thing where you'd have a parachute and everybody would pull and lift the parachute up at once and it would be somebody's turn to run underneath and you had to make it to the other side before the parachute covered you? I remember that. Sort of, yes. Okay. Now, had your gym teacher done the opposite of that, where you put somebody in the middle of the parachute on top and everybody pulls it taught so that the person is launched in the air? The Lebowski. Yes. Yes. The Lebowski. You would have been doing what is one of the only things that somebody can point to as a predecessor to the trampoline, because it is almost virtually its own invention. Yeah. I love how you brought that around. Thank you. The Grabster wrote this for us. And he does make a point that even before that, people just liked anything they could bounce on. It's just sort of seems intuitive as a human. That's fun and thrilling. Right. Whether it's like, hey, this log that fell across the creek has some spring to it, and that's fun. What? Sure. Or this board that spans an opening. What was the opening called in that horror story? Have you lost your mind? Now, remember the Halloween horror thing that we did with the creek and the what was that called? I don't remember. There was a word and you even looked it up. Yeah. And it was a specific place. Anyway, the board spanning that. You're talking about bridges, we're talking about trampolines today. You realize we're talking trampoline. I'm so tired. I'm like hallucinating. So it's coming through loud and clear, buddy. Good. So there's the cloth or fabric that you could launch somebody up in the air. The Lewis, there was a log, apparently, that people jumped on, but there was this kind of people figured out that it was kind of fun to get up into the air. And I saw it was one of those things, you know, we're always warning people when they ask us how to research that. If you see the same thing everywhere on the Internet, it's probably wrong. I saw that about how in China, Iran and Egypt, there are depictions of people using trampoline like devices. Didn't see anything beyond that. So it's probably made up. But we can point to when the trampoline was invented, and it was actually fairly recent. Like, what we think of the trampoline came about, and I think, like, the 1930s over the period of a few years. Yeah. Now, are we going to tell people what a trampoline is first, or are we going to talk about the history and then tell people what a trampoline is? No, I'm glad you did this, Chuck, because yes, not only do we have what a trampoline is, I got a little bit of physics, too, to throw into. I had a feeling. Okay, so a trampoline, if you've never driven out into rural Georgia, that's where I see them. Yet the people in the rural areas, like the trampolines, there's not a lot to do out in rural areas. That's the deal. I was kind of wondering, why do I see those when I drive out to the country, but I don't see them as much in urban areas, and I think of space A and B. It's just a very cheap way to be like, here you go, kids. Knock yourself out for the next ten years. Literally. Literally, yeah. All right. So trampoline is a frame that has a bouncy surface in the middle of it. The frame is very rigid, usually steel frame, and then the mat, as it's called, is held together with these tight coiled springs, or not held together, but strapped to the frame and the springs is where you get the bounce. It's not the actual material, although that could have a little bounce to it. It's got a little give because it's woven. It's like a seatbelt. Yeah. Super tightly woven fabric. That Matt is. Right. And that's the larger trampolines. They do have the little smaller, like, I guess people used to use them to exercise and stuff like that. Did you not have one of those? No, we never had one of those. I think I had to do jazzercise maybe, or something. I think so. I've seen those more often at, like, NBA games when they bring the guys out between the timeouts or whatever, and they do the high flying dunks. Yeah. Those are awesome to see. Do you like those? I love watching those. Sure. I never get up during halftime because of that. All right. And strapped to my seat. You know what they should do to me, in my opinion, at every sports game ever during the half time? Yeah. The only thing they should do is have the Little League teams play. Oh, that gets you, huh? It's just the cutest thing ever. Like, I don't need to see a dance routine or some corny, anything, but whenever they have, like, the five year olds out there playing basketball in the big court or football, that's all I need. What about the guy who climbs an increasingly high stack of chairs? I like that guy a lot. Not bad. Okay. But spinning a plate, no, sometimes he'll do handstands on the top. It's really thrilling. Yeah. You need to watch more half time shows. Okay. So basically what you described was a trampoline. That's a trampoline. There's, like, variations to it, for sure. There's competition trampolines, they tend to be rectangular. Right. They actually have specific dimensions because they're competition. So they have to all kind of have, like, a universal size, but usually something like 10ft by 17ft. I think the ones that they use in college are a little smaller, but not too much. Did you watch any of that stuff? Yeah, it's entrancing. Yeah. It's kind of cool because it's not slow motion when you're the one doing the bouncing, but when you're watching it from afar, because the mind kind of makes the point from when you bounce to when you next bounce again is kind of like one complete cycle. It does kind of take a second. So it does kind of seem like the whole thing is happening in slow motion. To the mind. That is very lulling. Maybe that's why I'm tired. I think it is. Because you were lulled to sleep by trampoline watching. So yeah, the rectangular ones are the competition, but when you go out to the country is when you'll see the round ones, the octagonal ones, and the hexagonal ones. Yeah. The ones that you see that people have bought for their home use very frequently, they're going to have nets around the sides. Yeah. So that if you start to go off the side of the trampoline, the net catches you and throws you back into the center. The mat of the trampoline, which we did not have when we were children. No, we did not. It's called thinning. The herd, I think, was the model. I had the herd thinner. Yeah. In fact, they even had a land moat full of nails and sharp glass surrounding the trampoline. That's right. And Armadillas with leprosy. Oh, wow. But the ones in competition, they don't have nets, and there's a really good reason why. Not because they're devils and thrill seekers, but because the people in competitions tend to jump so high that their nets wouldn't do any good. They just go right over the side unless they had super tall nets. I guess so. But once you get into nets that are too tall, it becomes kind of cost prohibitive. Yeah. Plus, it ended up looking like one of those indoor skydiving tubes. Right. Which we've done was fun. It was kind of fun. And that footage is lost forever. I can't find it anywhere. Oh, thank God. I like that one. Was it me or you that got thrown against the side at the end? It was me. For those of you that don't know we're talking about we did some Toyota commercials years ago. It was funny. We were much more marketable early on than we are now. But, yeah, they flew us out to California and we did Toyota commercial as we were both indoor skydiving. And it was pretty interesting and fun. Yeah. I think my line was you're just telling me that now and then I lose control and bump into the side of the wall. That's harder than it looks. It's very taxing on the muscles. Really is. It was fun, though, too. I had a good time. Should we take a break? No, no, because we're not done with this part yet. Okay. Are you ready? Yes. We're getting there. Chuck. By the way, I should probably explain to everybody. Chuck thinks that this is going to be like the oh, no, the Jackhammer episode, which he and I agree is our worst episode ever. I think that it's patently wrong. So let's prove them wrong, everybody. Okay. Okay. So there's one other thing I wanted to talk about before we go to break. Chuck. Okay. Aside from where the trampoline is, which I feel like we've done a pretty good job of defining it to this point, right? Yes. The physics of a trampoline are actually pretty fascinating because if you look at the outside of the trampoline, it's like you said that, Matte, that fabric that you actually jump on has a little bit of give. But where the trampoline gets the most give is from those springs that are attaching the fabric mat to the frame. Correct? Correct. So what that means then is because there's all these springs working together, the trampoline itself is actually, physics wise, a giant spring. And the reason why when you jump on a trampoline, it shoots you back up into the air is because you're combining two kinds of energy, kinetic energy, which is the movement, the energy from you jumping up and down on something. And then there's also elastic, potential energy, which is the stored energy those springs have. When they're extended, they want to go back to their normal shape. And so as all of this energy gets stretched out and then goes back to its normal tension, it directs all that stored energy and that energy that's turned into actual energy toward the center, which is where you happen to be, and it launches you back up into the air somewhere. Tracy Wilson is smiling. Right, exactly. One more thing. Mouth parts. So I think now we can take a break, don't you? Yes. Okay. All right, Chuck, we're back, and I think it's time to talk a little history of trampolines. Yeah. So earlier UTs that this was sort of an invention of its own, like, there was no predecessor, really, to the trampoline, aside from Inuit people tossing people up in the air lebowski style. Right. So the credit for the trampoline is roundly. I don't think there's anyone that disputes this. Right. No, it's George Nissan for sure. Yeah. George Nissan and a man named Larry Clark griswold. Right. We'll get to their story and how Larry figured in, but it was really George Nissan's brainchild between 1930 and 1936. Like you said earlier, it took a little while to get it just right, but when George was a little boy in 1930, he was 16, I guess. Medium sized boy. Sure. And he was watching the trapeze artist. And you know how they have that net and they leap off the trapeze at the end and they do a flourish and they land on the net. And then they usually do a couple of little flips and then land on the net again. And then that cool move where they hold onto the net and flip out and land on their feet very gracefully. Right. Little George saw this and was like, everyone's wild about this trapeze. He's like, the best part is that end when they get on that net, I should make one of those. Yeah, he wanted one where you didn't just bounce once, basically get one bounce out, but that you could just keep bouncing and bouncing and bouncing. And he's like, I'm going to go home and make something like this. Because he was a gymnast at the time already. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense once you know that, I think. Exactly. He was a gymnast who went to circus performances and then was inspired by that net. And so he actually went home, got, I guess, spare metal parts from, like, a junkyard, from what I can tell, got his hands on a canvas mat and fixed the two things together, and he broke his ankles, basically. It did not work very well at first. I mean, it had some bounce to it as far as, like, an early proof of concept goes. It worked in that respect, but that was about it. And he called it a bouncing rig, and he put it down in his parents basement, I believe, and then went off to the University of Iowa to study business and joined the gymnastics team. And joining the gymnastics team at the University of Iowa turned out to be pretty faithful because it was there that he met the man who would become his co inventor in the trampoline. Larry Griswald. Yeah. I wonder if leaving that trampoline prototype in his parents basement, it had to be the first instance of what would be hundreds of thousands of many trampolines left in their parents basements. Yeah. Apparently, George Nissan's dad was not all that happy about the trampoline thing. He's not a true believer as far as the trampoline was concerned. All right, so he goes to school, like you said. He met Coach Larry Griswald. We call him Clark around here. And I guess he thought this was a good idea. He shared it with his coach, and he's like, you know what? I'm a little older. I have a little more experience. Why don't you let me help you with this thing? And they built a different prototype this time. They had a nylon mat. They used grommets, which obviously made it a little sturdier. Right. And the springs, they subbed in bicycle inner tubes. Yeah, because I'm not even sure that he used springs. He just somehow attached the canvas to the frame. So when they added bicycle tubes, that gave it way more give, and it worked a lot better. And they knew that they were onto something just with this. I'm sure they knew it could be improved. But this is a pretty good first start that they worked on at the university of Iowa. Yeah. So between then and, I guess, 1937, they introduced the steel coils in 1934, and they really had the trampoline going at this point, although it was not called the trampoline until Nissan, in 1937, traveled all over North America performing routines under the name with two of his friends, under the name the three Leonardos. It really is. And they went to Mexico, and they learned that there was a name, a Spanish name for this bouncing rig, like the springboard called a trampoline, or I guess an e without the e on the end. Right. And he said, hey, I'm just going to add an e on the end. Trademark that thing. And I've appropriated something from another culture. I read on educatorpages.com that while down in Mexico, he learned the Mexican word for springboard was trample in. Yeah, the Mexican word. That's what they said on educatorpages.com. I was just disappointed enough that I wanted to point it out. Well, I mean, sure, there are Mexican specific words. This is not one of them. Okay? This is a Spanish word. I got you. I was just trying to make that clear. George, this is great. I've been calling this thing a bouncing rig, but this trampoline word is way better. I'm going to call this a trampoline, like Chuck said, and trade market. And that was a huge improvement for this thing, because they had something by this time, they had a really great invention going, but now they had a name and kind of a catchy name, and one that even made sense as well. A springboard, by the way, is one of those little things you jump on to get onto the pummel horse. Yeah. That's a springboard. Yeah. What's it called? The vault. Is that what they use for the vault? Yes. Right. Yeah. Okay. So this is kind of what inspired him to say that is somewhat tied to this. It's a great name. I'll probably never sell one of these in Mexico. I'm just going to take it and like you said, appropriate it. So now he had a great invention. He had a name, and he and Griswald founded the Griswald Nissan trampoline and tumbling company in 1942 and started selling these things. Not exactly like hotcakes at first. I believe they sold ten in their first year. And George Nelson's dad suggested that they had satisfied the world's need for trampolines by this time in the first ten, I'm telling you, he wasn't really on board. He's gotten snarky. But his son ended up really rubbing the dog poop in his dad's face because trampoline started to take off pretty quick. So they both agreed, though, the two partners, griswold, Nissan, that in order to sell this thing, they had to demonstrate it. It's not the kind of thing you can just it was so revolutionary, my friend, that they couldn't just throw an ad up. Right. But at the time, Griswald, the former coach, had a little touring routine, a diving. They were both divers. I don't think we mentioned that. Like competitive divers. George Nissan was, too. Oh, yeah. Nissan not a competitive not a professional, but he did two things. He did gymnastics and diving. Okay. So Griswald was touring the country doing a comedy act, a diving board comedy act called what was it? The diving fool. The diving pool. It has to be seen to be believed. Yeah. So I kind of do the same routine every summer at neighborhood pools. He'd stagger around, pretending to be, like, drunk at a pool and falling off the diving board and doing all these tricks and things like that. The difference is you're not pretending. Right. I am. A drunken diving pool. Get a couple of bloody caesars in you. That's right. Although you're just calling bloody mary's right. Well, what was the caesar part? Clemado. Oh, yeah. I never knew that. Yes, you did. I told you that. No, I mean, I never knew it until you told me years ago. Okay, got you. But in any case, the drunken or the diving pool was something that Griswald was actually making a little bit of money at, and I guess he was touring the country and wooing the ladies. So he was like, I kind of like this over trampolining. And so are you interested in buying out the shares of this company? And Nissan said, sure, yeah, thanks a lot, chump. I will take over this company myself. And then Nissan started touring around, and this is when the demonstrations really took hold. He and his wife, who was an acrobat name Annie Debris. She's like a Dutch high wire artist, I believe. And you have to understand now, in the world we live, in, the world we were born into, chuck trampolines. There's a thing it seems like they've always been around. This is at a time where you had to go take them places to demonstrate them, or when Larry Griswald was doing his diving pool thing. When he gets to the end, it looks like he's going to dive into a pool, and when he dives in, it turns out there's a trampoline hidden behind this thing that looks like a pool. So he would bounce back up. That's probably pretty great if you're a kid. Yes. But also, I think even adults at the time were like, what just happened? Exactly. He just produced magic. And you can actually see it. There's a bit of him doing it on the Sinatra show in 1951. It's pretty great. And you can hear the crowds going berserk over this kind of stuff. But anyway, so like you said, he decides that he's better off doing that, sells out to Nissan, and then Nissan starts touring to demonstrate the trampoline. And he had a real flair for this. He studied business, like I said at University of Iowa. I'm sure the trampoline probably would have taken off regardless. But thanks to George Nissan, he really did a good job at promoting it and making it catch on, especially in the yeah, he went around the world, actually, and he would do things like in Central Park, he would bounce with a kangaroo. I'm sure that got some pretty good attention. Yeah, he rented a kangaroo for this photo shoot and then basically shared the photo with the Associated Press, who spread it around the world. Absolutely. He went to Russia, he went to Egypt and did tricks atop the pyramids. And as a result, of course, because it's the kind of when something like this would really it just makes sense that it took hold then, and that's when it became a legit fad. And there were people buying trampolines. There were trampoline bounce centers, which apparently are big now, again, which I didn't know. Yes. Have you ever been to one of those? I told you that's where my Instagram photo spread was taken. I thought yours was just a regular trampoline. No, it's at one of those bounce centers. So what, are they just trampolines everywhere? Yes, there's a whole floor trampoline. No, they're everywhere built into the floors. There are places that you kind of walk in between them, but for the most part, it's like these giant you know, the bags that like a stuntman falls onto from high above. Sure. They have those built into the floor. They have trampolines everywhere. Trampolines in the walls at angles. I would say you got to go, but don't. Or if you go, just poke your head in and just leave. Yes. I don't want to say weak ankles, because I don't know how that makes me sound. It makes you sound like a third bred horse, but I don't like it. Okay, well, thanks, but yeah, if I step off a curb wrong, it's not fun. So you don't need to be trampoline. Trampoline? Not at this age, you shouldn't. But earlier, I guess we should mention that his idea was, like, all good business people, wasn't just so singular like, hey, maybe we can sell these to kids. He thought, because he was a gymnast, we can use these for training and gymnastics. Anything where there's tumbling or falling, we think we can sell this, including to the military and to NASA. Yeah. There were two things that he really saw early on that they could be used for for training, like you said, tumbling or that kind of thing, but also, like, diving, where you're doing aerial tricks. And it's not like you just know how to do those tricks. It takes a ton of practice. Well, it really sucks to have to go, get out of the pool, climb back up the ladder, walk down and try it again every time. Dry off, have a smoke, right, take a beer, do it again. If you have, like, a harness on, you can practice this stuff in mid air just from a trampoline. With every bounce, you don't have to climb back up the ladder. You can practice bounce after bounce, and then you could take it up onto the diving board. So that was one and then the other, like you said. The military and eventually NASA to get pilots adjusted to disorienting body positions, like tumbling head over heels through the air and learning how to keep their orientation even when their bodies flipping all over the place. And the military bought into it, they said, yeah, that's a really good idea. So much so that when George Nissan was assigned to a pre flight center in the Navy, I think, St. Mary's College outside of Oakland, he found that they were already using trampolines for training before he even got there. So his invention preceded him before he even showed up to proselytize it. Yeah. And if you think about getting on a trampoline, if it's been a lot of years, you probably remember, like, yeah, it's easy. Just get on it and jump. Dumb, dumb. But if you're, like, seriously trampolining like we were doing in elementary school, we would learn tricks and stuff like that. It's aerobic. It improves your agility and balance. There's a lot of muscle work going on, so it's not sure you can just jump up and down like Tom Hanks and big, sure. But if you want to do tricks and things like that and jumps and spins, there's athleticism involved, for sure. Yeah. You can get really good at it. In other words, there's one other thing that you want to take a break in a second. Yeah. So trampoline is one of. My favorite things. Now it's a proprietary epinym, right? Yeah. Which means it's generic, but it used to be a trademark name, like you said, and then it got so popular that by the 60s, george Nissan just got tired of trying to fight unauthorized use of it, so he stopped enforcing his trademark and it became generic. But up to the 60s, anytime somebody in the news was describing a trampoline, they had to call it like bounce tumbling or just make up some words to get the point across without using the term trampoline because it was trademarked at the time. Yeah, rebound tumbling was a pretty good one, I thought. It's not bad. So how about that break? Yeah, let's do it. I thought you were going to get me back and say no. All right, let's do it. All right, Chuck. So trampolining is an actual sport, like you said. It requires a lot of, like, fitness, and you can get really good at it, and there's a lot of tricks you can learn and do. And although it's not technically an NCAA sport, you can find it competitively in colleges, enough colleges, so that there are colleges that compete against one another in trampoline matches. It's just not sanctioned by the NCAA, like, say, basketball or softball or football is. Yeah, I get the feeling it's one of those fringe sports that if enough people, and in this case is probably gymnastics or gymnastics, they would say, hey. They go to the school and say, hey, we got like twelve people here who want to get on the trampoline and compete. Right. Can we do this? And they'll say, sure we can. Allocate you like $600 a year and I've got trampoline at my house. Right. But yeah, they compete and that's great. However, early on this was actually, that seems like something that would have happened more recently. All the way back in 1964, they held the World Championship in London at Royal Albert Hall, of all places. Right. And this was when Nissan was still trying to the 50s, they really sold well, the 60s, they were selling. Okay, but like all fads, I think he saw the writing on the wall. So things like the World Championships and trying to get sports, legitimate sports leagues or whatever going, was pretty important to him. Yeah. I guess from that first fad, though, in the 60s, like the real heyday of trampolines, it started to become a sport, but rather than people saying like, this is a thing, let's get together, it's like you're saying like one school, like one group of gymnasts went to their school and said, hey, we want to do this. And that happened at other schools and other schools. Before you know it, there are enough schools to compete against one another. And so there is actual events. There are now, like collegiate trampling events that, again, aren't sanctioned by the NCAA, as far as I know. Or they didn't used to be. They may be now, because beginning in 2000, the biggest of the big happen to trampolining. And what started out as just a training thing became an actual Olympic event. There's now a trampoline event in the Olympics starting as of 2000. And Sydney. Yeah. Which Nissan lived to see that, which was kind of cool. The little kind of silly invention that he had so many years earlier became an Olympic sport. And that was, I'm sure, a very big day for him. Yeah. Because not only was he the inventor, he was like a tireless. What is it called when people promote? Yes, thank you. Thank you, Chuck. We're not very good at that part either. No. So he was a tireless. Now we're talking. He was a tireless promoter of it, too. So I think it meant quite a bit to him to see, like, his invention become an actual Olympic sport because he was a trained gymnast. Like, this was his thing. He wasn't like the inventor of the Etch a Sketch or something like that, whereas he just accidentally happened to come across this idea. This is, like, really important to him, and it became an Olympic sport, this thing that he invented. I think that's really cool. Plus, also, he was such a gymnast through and through. I read that he was still able to do handstands in his 80s wow. And headstands into his ninety s. Well, maybe they just couldn't tell his head from his butt at that point, and they thought he was doing a headstand, maybe. So that's usually how it goes by then. Oh, boy. So if you're at a collegiate trampoline event, you may see synchronized tramping. Did you watch that? Yeah, it's cool. Like any synchronized event, it's all about trying to exactly mirror one another, doing the same thing side by side on two different trampolines. Yeah. Very cool. I'm such a brad. I was watching. I'm like, oh, they're not in sync. Again, out of sync. And you're like, maybe I'm not watching the synchronized, or I'm looking at it from the wrong angle. Is my Internet working? Because you guys are not on the same page in the Olympics. So they don't have that. They have two events, and you're not likely to see these on TV. This is not burning up the airwaves. You probably have to have I'm sure you can get some Olympic package where you get everything. But Olympic trampolining has two events the men's and the women's, individual. And like most sports like this, there's a compulsory routine where they say, all right, you've got to do these predetermined tricks. And then the voluntary routine where you really let your creative juices as a trampoliner show right, and shine, and you get ten bounces and you can do whatever you want. Well, I don't know about whatever you want, but you do these fancy combinations of tricks in those ten bounces. I also noticed on the Olympic trampoline. There was like a target in the center and another box around that. And I didn't look it up, but I got the feeling that you kind of had to stay within that. Unless that's just for the benefit of the jumper. Because I saw the land outside of it a couple of times and I heard the announcers go, oh, yeah, I don't know if that's a penalty deduction, like vaulting off the mat or something. Yeah, no, I could totally see that for sure. Yeah. I'm not really sure, but they are judged on flight time, which is awesome execution and difficulty. Right. And then if they bounce, if they go through a bounce and don't do a trick on that bounce, they lose points for that, too. Yeah. They're like, what are you doing at the rec center? It was a waste of everyone's time. And of course it's highest cumulative score wins. Yeah. So originally it looked like Russia was going to be the big trampoliners in the world. Of course, the Russians won the men's and women's gold in Sydney. So the first ever gold for trampolining, the Russians won. And then all of a sudden China comes out of nowhere and they start dominating. I believe Dongdong is the world's most decorated trampoline athlete with gold, silver and bronze to his name. Nice. Not bad. But if you're talking women's trampoline, you want to go to Canada because they are as good as it gets. Starring Rosanna McClellan and Karen Cockburn, who are Canada's two big trampolineist. Trampolineists. Is that it's in trampoliner? Oh, I think it's whatever you want it to be. It's only very recently an Olympic event, so it's kind of a free for all to call it whatever you like. Yeah. So before we get into the downer, which is injuries and sadly deaths from trampolining, we will mention a few other kind of crazy sports that like the NBA. During half time or timeouts, people have tried to incorporate trampolines into other sports or maybe just invented sports out of whole cloth. And they're always a little goofy, right? A little. So 1964 spaceball, which I had never heard of before, just YouTube this and check it out. It's much less impressive than it sounds when you finally watch it. Yeah, because spaceball has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that it was created during the height of the space race. The only reason I can possibly come up with that is called baseball. Yeah. And I said in here it says baseball had teams of two. I only saw one person at a time. So would they sub in and out? I don't know because I think we saw the same video. Really? Off puttingly lighted black and white video. Yeah. And it's almost like I think one guy checks his watch in the middle of the match. Well, they were goofing around and one guy hid the ball under his shirt. And was like, what? What happened? Yeah, but they're all bouncing this whole time. And the point is, there's like a trampoline. There's two different trampolines. Each guy is on a trampoline. In between their two trampolines, the thing they're facing is a net. In between the net is a tunnel, and that's where the ball goes through. And the point is to try to get the ball through the tunnel to hit the other guy's backstop. Trampoline. Yeah. Which is from what I saw in that video, and I guess you did, too, is utterly impossible to get it past the person. It's not a great game. I don't know if George Nissan created it or helped develop it or what, but it was one of those things where it's like the fad starting to wane. Let's come up with new uses for the trampoline. So baseball didn't catch on, but then years later, other people have been like, hey, let's not give up the ghost. There are other things you can do with the trampoline, like slam ball, which actually is kind of awesome to watch. Now, see, I didn't find slam ball that. All I saw was people doing dunks. I didn't see a real four on four basketball game. It's not exactly like four on four basketball in that you can it's more like rugby mixed with basketball. With trampolines, you're not dribbling, probably, right? No, you're not. And somebody can just knock you right off of your feet and stop the ball from moving. But the point isn't what everybody comes to see is right in front of the net, there's a big ground level trampoline that you jump on and do like, an amazing dunk. I'm not a fan. It's not bad. Then there's boss a ball. This is crazy. Literally, it is crazy. Yeah, it is. One part volleyball, one part soccer, ten parts trampoline. Well, and there's trampoline, but also the whole imagine you should just watch this one, too, but imagine a big inflatable volleyball court. So instead of sand, let's say the whole thing is like a big sort of bouncy inflatable area. And then the center part of that. And around the net, our actual trampolines built into that. Right. So people are bouncing around the outside. They're doing sets and stuff. And then if you're on the trampoline part, you jump up and you can use your feet. That's where the soccer comes in. Yeah. So you can do like bicycle and rainbow kicks. Yeah. Or you can use your hands. Right. So you can spike it really hard from high up above the net. Yeah. And I get the impression that using your feet just gets you extra points or something. Yeah. And otherwise, why would you there's also well, just to show off, I think there's a lot of glory involved there. But also, the reason it's called boss ball is because it's named after bossanova type of samba music. And you have to play two samba musicals. It's not an official bossleball match. So yeah, it's like you said, you just have to go watch it. And this is in Spain, by the way. I don't think we pointed that out. Spain, I think also Brazil, too. Yeah, well, of course, yeah, but it's fun to watch. It's great. It's another thing you can do with trampoline. It's the coolest of all of them, I think. I don't know. I like my slam ball. No one likes baseball, though. You know what I don't like about slamball is it's the same thing at the NBA games. These guys do these big dunks and they're, like, beating their chest, like, yeah. And I'm just like, dude, you used to trampoline. I mean, it's still impressive. I couldn't go out there and do that right off the bat. But it took you two, three tries. I don't know. They're just acting like their ballers and stuff. And I'm sure the players on the court are just like, god, get these guys out of here. Yeah, I know what you mean. So that's my gripe. I'm with you. I feel you, man. But you're like but it's just so fun. I like watching it. How about this? This is how you'd like it. If they had elementary school basketball, I'd be into that. So you would never want to put an elementary school player on a slam ball, trampoline or trampoline at all. At least according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. And by the way, I want to just put my shirt lapels a little bit here. My segues are killing it in this episode. I don't know if you've noticed. I know you have. I just stumbled all over my segue just now with that. So. The American Academy of Pediatrics. Get this. It says, do not let kids six or under on a trampoline. Just don't. That's what they open with their guidelines for trampolines. If you're under six or six or under, don't go on a trampoline. Your bones are too underdeveloped and trampoline is too dangerous. And until I researched this, I knew trampolines are dangerous, but they're, like, funny ha ha dangerous. Like that one episode of The Simpsons where Homer gets a free trampoline and turns his backyard into a trampoline park and every kid who jumps on it, like, breaks an arm or breaks their back or something like that. So it's funny like that. No, actually, it's dangerous. It's like lawn dart level dangerous, basically. Yeah. I mean, nothing will drive that home like some 18 year old statistics. But in the early 2000s, this is what we have. I've got newer ones. Well, I imagine it's about the same over a four year period. There were 93,000 emergency room visits, and I guess this is the United States over a four year period. And here's the thing. Like a broken arm, that's not great, but it's not the worst thing in the world. Right? But over 2000 of those 93,000 were traumatic brain injuries. Those are pretty bad. Yes. Between children between the ages of five and 18. And the American Academy of Pediatrics basically says it's the risk, like the risk of catastrophic injury. That's the differentiator between this and just like playing baseball or whatever. If you get hurt on a trampoline, it's very good chance that you might really, really be hurt. Yeah. Because nobody trampolines with a helmet on or with shoulder pads on. You're getting you can't be that kid at the park. No, you can't. Your parents would just be like, I'd rather you get a brain injury than have to look like that kid on the trampoline at the trampoline part. The padding that you put on the trampoline that goes around, like the springs in the frame and everything that's supposed to be replaced, like, every year or two. Yeah. No one ever does that. So that's actually like a really dangerous invention. Like, much more dangerous than people realize. And some people will point to it and say, no, actually, like bikes, swimming, these things put more kids in the hospital every year than trampolines. True. But it's much more likely that kids are going to be biking or swimming than they are going to be trampolining. And so it's possible that, comparatively speaking, trampolines are the most dangerous activity kids can engage in. It's possible. It's not proven, but the statistics are there that it would be not surprising to a lot of people if that pand out to be the case. Yes. And by far the most dangerous thing as far as trampolines go, that you can let your kids do is get on there with five or six other kids and it's fun and it looks like a big party and kids love it. But 80% of these injuries are when there are multiple users on there at the same time. Yes. Because you bounce into one another, you crack heads mayhem. There's that, errant, bounce that you weren't expecting and it shoots you off in a direction that you want. You try to do that as a kid. Exactly. You try and double jump people so they'll jump higher. And kids don't understand angles in physics. They understand physics enough that they try to counteract and other kids bounce and time it perfectly so that the frequency is the opposite, so that the kid who's coming down and rather than bouncing, they're just hitting the upward momentum of that trampoline mat just so that it's like hitting the ground. Right. Yeah. And there's actually something called trampoline ankle, where in kids, the growth plate, the plate where their ankle bones are growing together still, if that gets fractured, and it can get fractured from that very same kind of thing where the bounce is going back as they're coming down, apparently, it can be like hitting landing on the concrete from a nine foot drop. Yeah. And these little fragile bones that are still growing can be broken. And when they start to grow again, their development can be all kinds of messed up. So there's something called trampoline ankle that I think physicians in Ottawa, in Canada have identified. That is an actual thing. Well, American Academy of Pediatrics does have a list of things you already mentioned. No kids under six at all. Safety netting, of course, all that padding, padding on the ground. This is a good one. No ladders near the trampoline people because the little kid is going to find that and climb up. Don't try flips and big tricks like that unless you're trained to do so. And only one person at a time. That's the big rule. Yes, don't get on there with a bunch of kids. You're just asking for it. Right? Which is why some people point to these trampoline parks. It's like, well, wait a minute, a lot of the kids here are under six. The whole point is to stuff as many kids under a trampoline or bounce pit or whatever as possible. That's where most of the fun comes from. And there have been a lot of I don't want to say a lot, but there have been some very high profile deaths of mostly adults at these places where grown men have broken their necks, suffered traumatic spinal injuries, have become paralyzed and died. A New York Yankees pitcher had a compound fracture of his ankle. Yes, don't do it. And almost died from blood loss. So there is an advocacy group that went away. I think their last post was 2016, but they're called Think Before You Bounce. But even without looking them up, go research this before you go to your next trampoline park, and I guarantee you, you will second guess it. I thought that group was for recommendations before you decide to leave a party. No. Interesting dad joke alert. They're coming harder and faster these days. Have you noticed? Yeah. By the way, I said I had more up to date statistics. Get this, an Indiana University study found that between 2002 and 2011, not 93,000 in four years, a million plus Er visits in the US. Nine years. Wow, that's a lot of Er visits from trampoline. Well, hopefully that number is going down because trampoline sales for people in homes have been going down since 2004. So maybe people are just realizing it's too dangerous. Who knows? Or at least think them into the ground so you don't have as far to fall. That is one thing. Well, if you want to know more about trampolines, I guess go read up on it. I would say go jump on it, but just don't. And since I said just don't, that means it's time for listener mail. Yeah, this is a two parter. The first part is just going to be us issuing sort of retraction apology. During the Michael Dylan episode recently transpioneer Michael Dylan, we decided, which was not a good idea to mirror dylan's own experience in life and his own transition, using the pronouns that he himself used, trying to make a point that there weren't even names for this stuff back then. And we had quite a few trans listeners that wrote in all very kind about it and said, hey, listen, what you do now is you refer to that person from their moment of birth. It doesn't matter about their journey and even what pronouns they used at the time. What you really need to do is just refer to that person by the gender they identify with from conception on or not from birth on. Right. And yeah, like you said, everybody who wrote in was very nice and gentle about it. Yeah. They know he meant well, right? Exactly. So thanks to everybody who wrote in to let us know. Yeah, for sure. Okay, what's part two? Well, part two is along the same lines, and this is just a good tip. I always love getting these just sort of nudges about current best practices for language. This is from Anne. Hey, guys and Jerry. I've been listening for at least a decade and I've really enjoyed learning so much over the years. I really appreciate how you handle language. I'm an english teacher and you're always trying to use the most appropriate and sensitive term for any group. Recently, I listened to the black loyalist episode and was reminded of something I read a little while ago which recommended using the term enslaved person rather than slave to help express that the state of slavery was not some quality of these humans, but the result of an action by enslavers. She said, I'd never thought of that, but had been trying to use that language in my classroom and I thought I'd pass it along, keep up the good work and thanks for all the knowledge. And that is from Anne. Thanks, Anne. That's a good one. And it really goes to the heart of like, language does so much. We use it to justify things, legitimize things, to diminish people. It's crazy how important language is. So that was a good tip, too. Yeah. So to the people out there that think, big deal, it's not important. Language is important. It's more than just words, it's how we communicate. Chump. Yeah. You really shouldn't use the word chump, though, because nowadays we say you chumped person. A chumped person. Thank you. What were you going to say? I didn't have one. I'm glad you came through. I swooped in at the last moment. Yeah. If you want to get in touch with us, like and did, or like all the people who let us know what we got way wrong on the Michael Dylan episode. And again, thanks for that. You can go to our website called STUFFYou shino.com, and there you will find all of our social links. You can also send us all 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 are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 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 or 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." | |
c4757822-5460-11e8-b38c-03006111f9c7 | SYSK Selects: How Landfills Work | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/sysk-selects-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. | Sat, 11 Jul 2020 09:00:00 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2020, tm_mon=7, tm_mday=11, tm_hour=9, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=5, tm_yday=193, tm_isdst=0) | 40030542 | audio/mpeg | "Hello, everybody. Chuck here with your Saturday selects pick how landfills work. June 23, 2015. This was a good one, everyone. This is part of our, I guess, cityworks suite of public podcasts and how things like landfills work is super important and very interesting and not quite as depressing as you might think a little bit. But it's also kind of a marvel of engineering how these things actually get pulled off. So take a listen. Take a relisten, even how landfills work right now. 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 Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know. 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 stupid. 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 isn't perfect, it's 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. 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. Yeah, well, we talked about the great Pacific garbage bag. And then between the 1930s and the 1970s, they had what they call dumps, which is a big hole in the ground right. Covered in rats and birds. And you would just dump garbage yes. 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. So 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, 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. And 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. Do you remember when Sam the Butcher brought Alice the Meat BC boys reference. I was just about to say freshman stone driving around with 2ft tall feet. Yes. Which is, I guess, a really weird way of putting it as barefoot. Well, it didn't rhyme. Bald feet. Anyway, he would bring it to her 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 don't know this. Yeah. It's not to compost trash such that it breaks down super quickly and biodegrades it is the opposite of that. It is to keep it as dry as possible in an airtight 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 them 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 yeah. And 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? Yeah. 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, like, 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 last year's 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 a 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 used the Northwest County landfill in Raleigh, North Carolina, as their go to example in this article. That's our house. The first 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? Right, exactly. And then the impact it's going to have on local wildlife. Sure. And if it's an historic site, like an archeological 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, 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 study 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 Kilns 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, kills is a Dutch word for stream. Okay. Because I was about to say that's like the worst 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. 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. I wondered about that for years now, you know? 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, aka marsh. Like Fresh Kills. Landonfill 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 Lanfield. Okay, apparently, I think it was they did it all wrong. Henry David Thoreau said that arrowheads were the surest crop to dig from the ground at Fresh Kills 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 it. So once you've figured it out, this is not Fresh Kills. 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 after 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 the 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 a kaboom. 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 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 a cell is basically the days garbage. Yeah. 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 work went through back in the day sells 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. Oh, 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 the map of Asia from the because you raised that one lady from hellraiser from the dead. Yes. So you take out all that stuff and make it all the yard waste and make it as compactable 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 created that sell, you've just completed a portion of the landfill, right? Yes. For the day. One day trash. It's so weird. It's like yours Tuesdays whole, right. 365 days a year. Yeah. Well, the Ponte 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 days sell by like 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 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. It'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. The other way that they want to keep liquids 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. 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 shepherds. What else? Gutters. Yeah. Habitat er. 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. Like 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 into like whatever river or whatever. Yeah. And sometimes it's gravity or sometimes they use a pump. Right. Depends on the way 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. Talk about fascinating. Yes. You poop in the water, and eventually you drink that water. It's pretty remarkable what we've learned to do. 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, I guess 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, actually. There's a lot of money in it. They're finding, too. Sure. Especially if you go to the trouble of building an onsite 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. 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. So 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. And 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. Oh, 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. It'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 Leeche kind of looks like. Yeah. Bubbles up. But you have to keep an eye on this place for decades and decades and decades. Yeah. I think they said in here like 30 years, it needs to be maintained and monitored. Yeah. At least. I think that's definitely on the line. So we'll talk a little more about operating a landfill and how to well, I guess alternatives to landfills is the way to put it. Yeah. 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 Lanfield 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, 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. Right. And I will drive up onto a platform is 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 landfill? Is it on two wheels? Showing off car? You drive up on the way 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 handful items. Catholic school carnival, the one in the Cab County. There's actually free mulch and compost if you want to pick up stuff, which is kind of neat. But then eventually you will 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 songs. 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 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 to 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 tomb 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 tube. No matter how much you try to keep it out, there's going to be about 10% to 15%. They figured out that if you add another 2020 5% water, you're going to greatly increase anaerobic decomposition. Yeah. And it can be leachate. It's not like they have spring water or anything. 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. That 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. So 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 venting it. Sure. Just venting methane. Methane is much more potent greenhouse gas than even, like CO2, like by far. So 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 thing is not going to settle anymore, and you can walk away without monitoring it for the next 50 years. Yeah. 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, he 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. Yeah. And apparently there was a game at Kaminsky park in Chicago where there was, I a think 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 it 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. So fast moving that 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 if you were 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 say 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 trash 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. No. I think it's either. New Hampshire. Vermont one of those. No. New Hampshire. Live for your die. 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 the cut up snake. Right? That's a tea party adopted. Remember? Did they adopt that? Yeah. 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. Iron Ran. I'm thinking of Jack Reacher. If you want to know more about landfills, you can type that word into the search BARHOW stuffworks.com. And I said, search bar. So it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this very sad email. Okay. But uplifting it at the same time. Okay. 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 for 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 and 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 even 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 syscape podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com stuffychnow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web. Stuffyshow.com. Stuffysheanow to 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." | |
96d02a48-440c-11e8-82c5-87a7af6410ac | How Drowning Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-drowning-works | Hundreds of thousands of people drown around the world every year, and yet it can be easily prevented and is widely misunderstood – like how you can officially drown but live to tell the tale, or how you can drown but die days later. | Hundreds of thousands of people drown around the world every year, and yet it can be easily prevented and is widely misunderstood – like how you can officially drown but live to tell the tale, or how you can drown but die days later. | Thu, 10 May 2018 13:38:15 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2018, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=10, tm_hour=13, tm_min=38, tm_sec=15, tm_wday=3, tm_yday=130, tm_isdst=0) | 49463031 | audio/mpeg | "Welcome to stuff you should know from housetopworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there. So that makes this stuff. You should you should know. Hi. How are you feeling? Kind of upbeat. Positive. Well, I will say that this topic I felt like I was having a panic attack while researching and reading this stuff. Me too. I noticed. I felt like I couldn't breathe at some point. Yeah. And we covered a little bit of this in worse ways to die many years ago. Yeah. But boy, oh, boy. Drowning is no picnic. No, it's not. And one of the things that I'd always heard about drowning is that it was actually a very peaceful experience. I don't think that's the case. Yeah. Obviously, no one can say for certain, but it doesn't seem to be no at all. And it seems to be actually not a good way to go. Well, I mean, you probably could and this is giving something away early, but one of the possible outcomes aside from death and morbidity, which is you develop an injury or disability because of what happened. Aren't you on record for hating that word? Morbidity? Yeah. I don't know. I don't like it. Well, my apologies. Go ahead. And no morbidity. So you could ask someone who suffered drowning with no morbidity, like, was it peaceful? And they'll probably be like, no. Well, that's where I got that from, was online. If you go and you got to take it all with a grain of salt, because there's plenty of 14 year olds who like to just make stuff up. Sure. But there are threads on reddit and other places that basically are supposedly people who have survived drowning, and I didn't find any that were like it was actually very peaceful. My brain flooded with endorphins, and I was ready to go into the light. Instead, it was more like I saw one that said it burned like lava, which, I mean, if you think about it, if you've ever had something go down the wrong pipe or whatever, how much that hurts your chest. Yeah. Well, Chuck, we're here to tell everybody that what you experienced, where you took a drink of coke and it went down the wrong pipe, that didn't go anywhere near your lungs. Right. That was the least of what can happen to you. And it just hit your epiglottis, which is that flap that converts your trachea into your esophagus. Right? Yeah. That flap that's like, sometimes I want to work, and sometimes I want to scare you to death. Right. But zero coke went into your lungs when that happened, so imagine how bad that is. That was just your epic lotus. It actually gets way worse when you actually are drowning. You said something that we really need to point out here, because for as long as people have been drowning, basically yeah. Since people have been people. Right, exactly. So for as long as people have been drowning, we still have only very recently begun to make universal definitions of what drowning is. Yeah. It's 2002. The World Congress of Drowning. That's a thing. Then they at least had the good sense to hold it in Amsterdam, at least so they could get their good time on. Sure. Afterwards, after the meetings, they're awful. But what they did there was they decided, hey, we need to really codify this, because 350,000 people a year die, and it's the third most common cause of accidental death around the world. So let's really kind of classify this stuff. So everyone is on the same page moving forward? Yeah, because everyone wasn't on the same page. And actually, if you follow media reports, people still aren't on the same page. A lot of unclear terminology that the medical community doesn't recognize, but that the media uses pretty frequently. There's pretty widespread misunderstanding that drowning is not death. It's a way you can die, but it's actually a specific type of injury that starts with your epiglottis, as we'll see, or your larynx. I'm sorry, but it's like an injury that can happen to you that you can die from, but you can actually have drowned and survive. Yeah, that's very misleading because that's the actual definition. But in everyday parlance, if you say, I went to the pool last weekend and my child drowned and someone said, oh, my God, no, they're fine, right. It's not a very fair thing to say to a friend. No, it's not. But if you're following the definition of the 2002 World Congress of Drowning, that would be the right thing for you to say. Yeah, but that kind of pedantry in just everyday conversation, you should lead by saying, I had a close call. My child technically drowned, according to the World Congress of Drowning. Right. They're doing fine. Push the glasses up your nose. Right, exactly. So I gave away a little bit here. With drowning, the whole process starts when water or liquid comes in contact with your larynx, your voice box. As far as human evolution goes, something about that flips your reptilian brain out and your motor takes over. Like, your motor instincts take over and there's very little you can do from that point on as far as conscious thought and movement. Yeah, I mean, we'll get to that last part later, but you're totally right, man. Like, your body is trying to do one thing, and that is survive this experience. And like I said, we'll get in a little more of what drowning looks like. But during drowning, you're right. That first contact with water and the larynx, you have that gasp initially, and then you were in charge for a short time because you tried to hold your breath voluntarily, but then your larynx just starts spasming and hypoxiamia. Hypoxemia. hypoexmia. Hypoxemia, I'll bet. Hypoxymia. No, hypoxemia. Hypoxymia. That's what it said, right? Oh, my God. Hypoxymia. It's funny, I looked up a bunch of word pronunciations today, but that one flew right by it. I'll tell you what I've got down is quintinueda. Yeah, that's next. Right? How about hypoexemia? Sure. Basically what that is is decreased levels of oxygen in your bloodstream. Your body is trying to fight that, right. So your larynx, whether you like it or not, your larynx has closed. You're not breathing. You're holding your breath because your larynx is trying to prevent liquid from going into your lungs. Right. And so as this is going on, you're losing oxygen concentration in your lungs. You're having a buildup of CO2. I got this from a reference to a passage from the book The Perfect Storm. Okay. But supposedly, studies have shown that after about 87 seconds, your body says, okay, to hell with this. I can't spasm any longer. I'm going to try to take a breath. Right. If you happen to be underwater, then you've just taken in water, and now a whole different set of events is happening. Right. So you're already starting to become sluggish, to lose consciousness a little bit from that lack of oxygen, because you haven't been breathing for, say, the last almost minute and a half. But now you've taken in water onto your lungs. Like I said, this changes things and it makes it way worse. Well, yeah. And before that even happens, your body becomes something called acidotic. How would you pronounce that? Probably that way. Yeah, I actually listen to that one. Okay. What is it? It's acidotic. Oh, it is? Yeah. I actually probably would have made it a long. Oh, yeah. No long o, apparently. Okay, well, thanks for going the extra mile on that one. Yeah, I had to make up for the last one. But that's basically when if that happens, it can disrupt the electrical, your wiring to your heart, and you can go into cardiac arrest. And that's sort of near the beginning of this process. Right. So just bookmark that, everybody, because all of this is happening before your larynx stops spasming and you open up your airway and take a deep breath. And then if you happen to be underwater or your mouth is just below water level, then you've just taken in a bunch of water in your lungs. Yeah. Not good. So what happens when you take water into your lungs is when you look at your lungs, if you can just peer at your lungs, everyone, for a second, you're going to find that they are actually branching increasingly smaller tubes. Right? Yeah. This like elementary school science. Like everyone learned about the bronchi. The bronchioles, the alveolas. That was all kind of elementary school stuff. Right. The point is that in the alveolis, or the alveoli, the little tiny air sacs where you exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide with the capillaries that bring blood to your lungs, there's a little something called surfactant, and it's this chemical coating around your little tiny air sacks that allow them to open and close, which pumps the oxygen and carbon dioxide in and out. Right. It allows for gas exchange. Yeah. It's a very key part of the whole system of staying alive. Yeah. Because if your surfactin isn't working, then the alveoli can't open or close. And so you're not breathing because that's really where the rubber meets the road when you breathe. So if the surfactant is damaged, you can't breathe. And when you take water into your lungs, it goes to the end to those air sacs. And depending on the type of water, it messes with the surfactant one way or another. And all of a sudden, now you are not exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide, which you weren't doing very well already for the last minute and a half. But now the water is totally screwing up that jam. Well, yeah. In the case of fresh water, and this is something I didn't know, it is different depending on salt water or fresh water. But fresh water, if you're in a swimming pool or a lake or something, it actually destroys that surfactant and the alveoli collapse or just kind of destroyed in salt water. It actually doesn't destroy the surfactant, but it washes it away, which to me is sort of like splitting hairs. Yeah. It makes the surfactant it doesn't work anymore no matter which way you slice it. Right. Exactly. Two real differences between taking in fresh water and taking in salt water in your lungs. Because fresh water bears a pretty strong resemblance to the water in your body and specifically in your blood. When that water enters your lungs, it actually passes very easily from your lungs into your bloodstream. And so what happens is the dilution, the concentration of water in your blood, it becomes overrun with water to where you end up. I saw apparently one World War II study found that people's blood or animals blood, which I hate to think of how they found this out, you know, how they found that out. But animals blood within three minutes had an equal part of water and blood, or whatever, is not water in the blood within three minutes, which is way more of a dilution than we normally have. So you've gone from not breathing very well because you're holding your breath to suddenly, not only are you not exchanging air, your blood is diluted within, like three minutes in a fresh water drowning. Yeah. You're really disrupting the balance of your blood and the water in your body. Everything is just thrown out of whack. And then with salt water, something else different happens too, that saltiness in the water in your lungs actually draws water out of your blood so that your blood becomes more concentrated rather than more dilute if you drown in saltwater. The upshot of all of this is you are in big trouble once water hits your lungs. Yeah. In the case of saltwater, again, in three minutes. And you know what's happening to the animals because they called it experimental animals. So in other words, they drowned animals. I was hoping to dance around that, but, yeah, that's what they did. That's the reality. In three minutes with salt water, experimental animals lost 40% of their normal water volume in their blood. Yeah, it just thickened, which can't feel good. The thing is, it takes, like, from what I saw, eight minutes to die. This is actually as bad as that sounds. This is actually a less quickly fatal process than what happens to you with fresh water in your lungs. Wow. But get this, Chuck, here's where drowning gets really odd. You can die of drowning without a single drop of water ever touching your lungs. That sounds like a good place to take a break. Oh, are we going to cliffhanger this mama JAMA? I think we should hang it off the cliff. Okay, let's do it. All right, we'll be right back. Only 45% of high school students feel they are prepared for college or careers. Stride career prep is helping change that. Stride Career Prep let students take charge of their education and their future. By combining real world skills training and traditional academics, students can earn college credit while in high school or get the training needed to land a job right after graduation. Stride Career Prep prepares your team for in demand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get 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. Man, Chuck, good call. Because even I'm, like, a little on the edge of my seat and I know it's coming next. And you know how this thing ends. Yeah. Well, you're exactly right. That can happen. But to drown and die, you don't need to be the TV or movie drowning where you're floating in the water. You're fully submerged. Right. You went down with the ship or something like that. Yeah. I mean, they used to call it dry drowning, and in the media, they still call it dry drowning. It was coined in the but those are drowning deaths in which the larynx spasmed from exposure to water, but they died from asphyxiation. No water entered the lungs. Right. And it makes sense to call it dry drowning, but the CDC and everyone else basically said, this is just drowning. Right. It's drowning. Just because there's no water in your lungs doesn't mean you didn't drown. Right. Because whether it's the water in your lungs or the fact that you haven't been breathing, you're dying from asphyxiation. And it's a water related asphyxiation. Right? Correct. But it doesn't have to be water in your lungs, but that happens to something like 10% to 20% of people who die of drowning. Yeah. They don't have any water in their lungs whatsoever. They die before their larynx stop spasming. Yeah. There have been some really sad cases. This one that's referenced in the article you sent just last year, in 2017, a four year old boy in Texas was knocked over by a wave just playing out in the ocean, like knee deep in water. His head did go under for a few seconds, but dad brings him out of the water. The kid recovers. He gets smacked on the butt and goes off and plays, and everything seems fine. Over the next few days, they think he has his stomach flu. He complains of a pain in his shoulder. And the parents did not get him to the doctor fast enough, and he died in his sleep. And then doctors found a very small amount of water in his lungs. Yeah. Apparently it doesn't take much. Something like most drowning victims have something like four CCS per kilogram of water in their lungs. So if you're a kid who weighs \u00a350, it's 3oz of water to die from that. Right. But the thing that scared everybody, scared the bejesus out of parents everywhere about this poor kid named Frankie Delgado. He died, like, days after he had his drowning incident. Right. No one knew that could happen. And this is one of the ways the media is not helping things. They call this dry drowning too. Right. That was never even called dry drowning. This one is called secondary drowning. But again, if you go to, like, the CDC or the World Health Organization, those don't exist. Stop calling them that. It's drowning. And you can actually die of drowning days afterward. But the thing that was really misreported about Frankie Delgado and then other kids like him, it gives the impression that dad picked him up, spanked him on the bottom, and he went along his way, and he was totally fine. Then all of a sudden drops dead three days later. Right. That's not how it works. The kids starts their health starts to decline. And usually in cases where this is happening, where it's like a delayed drowning death, their health declines very obviously within two or 3 hours of the incident. And it's really bad. It's like they become sluggish because they're becoming hypoxic. They throw up a lot, they vomit a lot. They might defecate themselves. Their behavior changes. It's very obvious that something is very wrong with them. But the problem is, most parents don't say, oh, yeah, my kid took in some water in the pool a day before. And they just think like, Frankie Delgado's parents did that it's a stomach bug or something like that, when in fact, they're actually dying from drowning right in front of their very eye. Yeah, it's like the head injury that you die of a week later because of whatever, some kind of internal hemorrhaging that you don't even know what's going on. Right. Yeah. It is very much like that. Liam Neeson's wife, right? Yes. Right. She died in, like, a ski accident. Right. Yeah. Natasha Richardson and I didn't look it up, but I know it was not to that day. Oh, I didn't know that. I don't know how many days later it was, but same kind of thing where there's something going on in the body because of an incident that you don't realize is going on. And in this kid's case, I think he had edema. Right. His lung tissue started swelling. Right. Swell. It collapsed. The little avioli collapsed. The gastric exchange wasn't going on. So he had a decrease in oxygen and an increase in CO2. And that's what you ultimately die from, from drowning. Right. Right. But you can also get injured. Brain damage is usually the major complication. If you don't die from drowning, you can have that tissue damage in your lungs. You can get pneumonia or something called Ards. Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. Right. And there's also usually a Co. Well, not usually, but it's frequently there's a comorbidity with a drowning, which is like a head or neck injury or spinal injury. If you dive into the shallow end of the pool and you break your neck, you're going to start drowning, like, immediately, because you just lost consciousness and you're underwater, as we'll see. In talking about treating drowning, you want to be aware that there's a good possibility that the person's neck is not quite right. Yeah. So here's one other thing that I knew before, but I had learned at one point, and it really opened my eyes. Every representation of drowning I've ever seen in any movie, on every TV show, in every book, in every song about drowning, they got it wrong. It's just wrong. It doesn't look anything like what we've all been led to believe it looks like or sounds like. Well, yeah. I mean, that is true if you are actually drowning. But what you're talking about that you usually see in the movies, if they end up getting pulled out of water and they're fine, it's just called aquatic distress. So when you're splashing around and yelling, you aren't drowning at that point? No. You could call it pre drowning. Yeah, it's aquatic distress. That means you can't swim. You're panicking, and you feel like I'm in big trouble. So you're waving your arms and screaming when you actually start drowning. This guy named Francisco a PIA. He's a PhD. He defines what's called the instinctive drowning response, which is nothing like you see in the movies. It's very quiet, and your body, like we mentioned earlier, your body's instinct kicks into gear. And it's not trying to wait for help or yell. It's just trying to survive and get another breath and keep that face above water. Right. All hands are on deck to keep you upright in the water. Literally all hands are on deck. The deck is the water. Right? Yeah. No, it's true. That's why I said it. So the thing is, though, Chuck, with that aquatic distress thing, it doesn't always precede drowning. So much so that drowning can come on without aquatic distress. And people are so conditioned to think of drowning as aquatic distress or vice versa, that this is about the most heartbreaking thing I've ever heard. There are kids who will drown. A substantial amount of kids who drown drown within 25 yards of a parent or whoever is supposed to be watching them. And a significant portion of those kids drown with the parent or supervising adult actually watching them drown and not realizing what they're seeing because it doesn't look like what they think drowning looks like. Yeah, 10% I wouldn't overstate it, but yeah, 10% of the parents actually watched this happening. Right. So this is what drowning looks like. Right. If you're not going to once drowning starts, if you've gone through aquatic distress, once the drowning starts, your mouth is about at water level and you can't call out for help because there's one of two things going on. Either you are trying to catch your breath every time your mouth comes above water and it's happening so infrequently that all you can do is work on inhaling and exhaling, or your larynx is spasming and you're not breathing at all. And if you're not breathing at all, you obviously physiologically can't shout or speak or do anything, but either way, you're not able to shout or yell or call for help or say anything. Yes. The way I read it, though, is it's not like you're working on breathing. You have no choice in the matter. Yeah. Like, your body has taken over, and it's not like you're like, oh, I need to get my breath. You may want to yell right. But your body is saying no. Breathing is speech is secondary in this whole situation. We need to get you to breathe. Yeah. And then, very similarly, you can't control your arms any longer. Whatever you want to do with your arms, you can't. All you can do is kind of flap at the water. And the whole point of that is to keep your head above water as much as possible. One thing that I saw, Chuck, that I don't know if you figured out I can't figure it out, but one of the things about the instinctive drowning response is you're not kicking, you're just using your arms. I don't get that at all. Yeah, it says no evidence of a supporting kick. I don't know about that. It just seems weird that your body wouldn't be like, oh, yeah, let's get the legs in on this, too, and maybe that'll actually help keep us above water. That's kind of the most important part of treading water. I wonder also if it's because as you're getting a lower concentration of oxygen and you're becoming a little more sluggish, kicking your legs is actually harder than flapping your arms. So you just can't like your muscles won't do it. I don't know. It's weird. It seems like that would be part of that natural instinct. I would think so, too. But another part of the fact that you can't control your arms is that if somebody holds a poll out right in front of your hand, you can't say, hand grab pole. You can't grab, like, a lifesaver ring. You can't do anything but flap your arms up and down, and you're not doing that. Your body has taken over. And this is this instinctive response that Dr. P is talking about. Yeah. And when they say you're not using your legs, that you're completely vertical in water, this is the part that doesn't make sense to me. You can still be vertical in water and, like, treading water and kicking. Yeah. I don't understand it either. Yeah. Maybe someone can fill us in on that one. So this whole instinctive drowning response, supposedly most people can last between 20 and 60 seconds of doing this, basically bobbing and using every bit of your strength to get your mouth above water. But eventually you start to lose that battle and your mouth comes above water less and less frequently, and then eventually you are submerged. And if you see somebody whose head is low in the water and their mouth is at water level and their eyes are closed, or they're just kind of blank and glassy, or their hair is over their eyes, you're looking at drowning person and you want to help them. Yeah. I thought that hair over the eyes was interesting because there must be just an immediate response when you get out of the water to wipe the hair from your eyes. Think about how annoying it is. That's got to be it. So if you see someone come out, like the creature of the black lagoon, that's not a good sign. Yes. If they're gasping and they're doing this, that's another one, too. If they're trying to swim but they're not actually moving anywhere. Really? Or if they're trying to roll over on their back and they're unsuccessful. These are all signs of drowning. Yeah. I mean, I was a lifeguard for a few years, and they tell you in class that you're used to the movies and you got to really keep your eyes out. You can't just be flirting with the girls oh, yeah. Waiting for someone to yell and scream because they're kicking in aquatic distress. Right. You have to keep your eyes peeled. A good lifeguard is very vigilant. Well, I remember hearing that. That when they interview most lifeguards about somebody who drowned in their pool, they're like, I had no idea they were there a second, and then they were gone. And I didn't even notice it didn't make a sound. Yeah. So, yeah, you just hit the nail in the head. Whether you're a lifeguard or whether you're a mum or dad or a pair or whoever, your focus has to be on the person in the pool that you're in charge of. Should we take a break? Yeah, let. All right, we'll come back and we'll talk about what to do and how to treat a drowning victim. If you are so unlucky. 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 indemand careers in business, tech, health, science, criminal justice and more. Students can take courses developed by industry professionals, prepare for certifications, get hands on experience network, and most importantly, gain the confidence they need to succeed. Stride Career Prep is backed by over 20 plus years of experience in online learning and education. Take charge at K. Twelvecom podcast. That's K twelve.com podcast. And start taking charge of your future today. All right, so let's say someone has drowned. Let's just say you're at a pool. Just to make this easy, because that's kind of best case scenario. Because it's contained, there's usually some sort of rescue equipment on hand. It's not like you're on the beach and you're like, I need a defibrillator. Most pools have this kind of stuff now. Plus, you can also see the bottom. There's not usually like an underwater hazard or anything like that. It is about a best case scenario. Yeah. So the, AHA, the American Heart Association said that if possible, like, if you're not by yourself, do the common sense thing, which is to send one person for help or to call 911. These days, with phones everywhere, it's increased response times. And if you have a defibrillator, go get that thing or have your buddy do it. Bring it to the victim's side. Assess the situation. Like, are they breathing? Do they have a pulse? And this is one of the few situations they point out where because I know we covered CPR and the hands only CPR is kind of what's recommended now. But that is not the case with drowning. No. Apparently you still want to do mouth to mouth, is how I took that, right? Yeah, I think so. Which has never made sense to me, because if you're blowing into somebody's mouth, aren't you blowing carbon dioxide into their body? What's the point of that? Is it just to get the lungs opening and closing? I don't know. Maybe I've never understood that. Yeah, because I think that's the case. It's not saying your body needs CO2. I think your lungs need to be expanding and contracting. Got you. It's. Been a while, though, since I lifeguarded. Yeah. And it used to be like, yeah, you do chest compressions in the mouth to mouth. And then they said, no, just do chest compression. So I was surprised to see that with drowning, they're like, do both. Right. They're back with that. And then also, don't forget while you're doing all this, keep in mind that the person's neck might need to be supported or kept at a certain straight angle because they may have injured themselves. That may have caused the drowning to begin with. Yeah. Like if they dove in or whatever. Right. So if they're breathing but they're not awake, then roll them over on their side because they might vomit and fixate that way, which the way Bon Scott went out, and I believe some other rock stars have gone out that way. John Bonham, janice Joplin. Oh, did they all Africa from vomit? Yeah. Irving Berlin. Really? No. I don't know. I was just trying to think of musician least likely to fixate on his own vomit. Well, I think that's Benny Goodman. Yeah. Although he partied did he? I'm just being contrary. Okay, we have to lighten this thing up a little bit. Right. I know it's hard looking for jokes in here. It's tough. So let's see. You got somebody who's breathing, but unconscious, roll them on their side. Somebody who's not breathing and doesn't have a pulse. You do CPR, you want the EMS to get there as fast as possible, but CPR, whether it's a heart attack or whether it's a drowning, if you can do CPR, you can prolong the amount of time it takes for the EMS to get there. You're just staving off, like, irreversible damage by doing, at the very least, chest compressions. Yeah, absolutely. So one thing that I did not know, that I ran across, Chuck, is there's actually a tremendous amount of racial disparities when it comes to drowning. There are far greater numbers of African Americans, and this is the US. Strictly African Americans and then Native Americans and Alaskan Natives who drown compared to white kids. And depending on the venue and the age group, it can actually get shocking how great the difference is yeah. Between the age range of eleven to twelve years old. African Americans drown in swimming pools ten times the rate of white kids. Ten times. And this is something I did know because the pool I lifeguarded for three years was majority African American kids, and we got not special training, but we were told that by the lifeguard company. It was a huge lifeguard company that supplied lifeguards all over the city. Like taxi. Yeah, exactly. So at my pool and pools like that, we had little breakout sessions for us, we were like, hey, listen. It is a systemic thing in this country where little black kids don't learn how to swim as often. And the CDC has done studies, and there's a professor in montana named Jeff Wilst, who wrote Contested Waters colon a Social History of Swimming Pools in America. And it all makes perfect sense because of discrimination and segregation. When swimming pools and recreational swimming and sports swimming started to come around, these black families couldn't go to the pools, so they didn't take swim lessons. They didn't learn how to swim. If your grandparents didn't learn how to swim, then they're what is it like? I think they even have a stat. You have a 13% chance to take swimming lessons and learn how to swim if your parents did not. Only a 13% chance. Right. So it's just passed down. Yeah. And it's just odd that it coincided with a surge in popularity of pools and swimming in America coincided with two of the times when segregation was most strictly enforced in America, too. The yeah. As a result, African Americans missed out on swimming, and it's intergenerational and passed down still to this day among African American families. Not all of them, obviously, but there are plenty out there who are like, I don't know how to swim, and I'm very much afraid that if I get you near a pool, you're going to drown. Right. So I don't even want you taking swimming lessons because I don't want to mess with that kind of thing. And so, like you said, it becomes intergenerational. Yeah. And there are plenty of programs now, thankfully, and even when I was lifeguarding a thousand years ago, plenty of programs to try and give reduced rate or free swimming lessons in communities like that and basically get everyone trained up. Swimming lessons help. It is. One of the ways to prevent drownings is knowing how to swim. Yeah, it sounds like a no brainer. It does. But you can drown even when you can swim. So that's the reason they point out that one of the best ways to prevent drowning is learning how to swim. Right, it is. But they also make a very big point. Once your kid knows how to swim, you can't just be like, oh, you're fine. You go to the pool by yourself. This one article put it like, learning to swim doesn't drown proof your kid. Now, something like a quarter of deaths by drowning are from kids who knew how to swim or people who knew how to swim. So it's good to know how to swim, and it probably will help at some point, like, any time you get into a pool, but it doesn't drown proof you and you need to also be smart in other ways too. Yeah. We're literally right in the middle of swim lessons for our daughter at approaching three years old, and it's tough, man. She doesn't like getting her face in the water. That's just smart. Well, yeah, that's a good instinct, probably, but not when you're trying to teach your kid how to swim. That's problematic. So it's a slow process. In our case, other kids take to it like a duck in the water, as they say. Yeah, I still remember taking swim lessons, and I was a pretty little kid myself. But I remember the one thing I hated about swim lessons is that I had to leave in the middle of Thundar the Barbarian on Saturday morning cartoon, so I never really got to watch a single full episode of Thunder. Then the other thing I remember is realizing that as I was swimming toward the swim instructor, I wasn't getting any closer. And it finally dawned on me. I was like, you're moving further away. That old trick? And she's like, no, I'm not. And suddenly I was like, there. But I remember being like, oh, there's such a thing as guile and deception. I had no idea. Now I learned it, thanks to my swim instructor. Yeah. My deal was I was terrified of swimming and swim class. What were you terrified about? Drowning. Oh. Were you okay? Yeah. My brother and sister went to swim class. They learned how to swim. I refused. I was really scared I would not go out of the shallow end for many years. I know I was a little scaredy cat, but my mom I remember very distinctly when I was I guess I was kind of old, man. I was, like, six years old. And she didn't threaten me, but she said, hey, listen, you're going to take swim lessons in, like, July. You've got to learn how to swim. July is go time, and I'm making updates. But let's say it was July, and then in June, we went to visit my grandparents, whose neighbor had a pool, and we were doing that thing where you hold on to the edge of the pool and get a bunch of kids and go around and around and create, like, a little whirlpool. And I remember very distinctly taking my hands off earlier and earlier and taught myself to swim that day. Oh, cool. Because it was kind of a current and people in front of me and behind me, and I just started letting go a little sooner and a little sooner in the deep end. And before you know it, I was doing a very rudimentary dog paddle, and that led to very poor swimming, which I still have today. Are you swimming around and you're, like, self taught? Yeah, at his T shirt that said self taught. Back off, swim. I'm still not a good swimmer. I mean, I can swim fine, but as far as swimming strokes and proper swimming, I'm terrible. I can do a swimming stroke. It's not any good, but I can do the technique of it. But I was on a swim team. I never was. It was the worst swim team in the league, and I was the worst member of the team yesterday in the county. That was your nickname. Pretty much. My worst was the backstroke, and the coaches would always put me in a backstroke would be like, please don't. Why are you doing this? And now, as a grown up, I know, because they were just like, we're losing anyway. We're going to watch Josh do the backstroke. Every time I did the backstroke, I would end up, like, two lanes over. I was just about to bump. Yeah. And when I bumped into the other kids, they would inevitably stand up, and so we'd both be disqualified because I couldn't stay in my own lane. And then the coaches just thought that was hilarious. Yeah. I was never on a swim team, and that's where you learn how to do it properly. I can ace those strokes from watching the Olympics, but it's nothing close to I mean, I can't do butterfly, obviously, because I'll teach you this summer. Okay. Butterfly is definitely the hardest, man. But the breaststroke, it's nice. It's a good stroke. I'm teaching you to swim this summer. Some strokes. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I can do a rudimentary breaststroke, but it looks more like I'm just kind of bobbing up and down. I'm not really not going very far. Yeah, but if you do it, you're like, oh, this is what it's supposed to feel like. I know what you're talking about. I've had that sensation before, too. But you're just like a frog. That isn't quite right. All right, so here's some other handy rules. If you have a newborn or a toddler, anyone basically up to about four, they say to they call it touch supervision. So never be more than an Arm link away, because it can happen very fast in a swimming pool, in a bathtub. Get off your cell phone. Put down your Marie Claire and your Red Book and your Reader's Digest or your Men's Health. Sure. Or your Body Builders Weekly or your Mad magazine. Pay attention to your kid. If you have a pool, you need to have that thing fenced in. Oh, yeah. Or even better, these days, they have those excellent it's not a hard top, but it's between hard and the little soft top that are retractable. So you get out and you go inside, and you can cover that pool right up. Yeah. Although I think by law, you have to have a fence around, like, four sided fence with, like, a self closing gate that also self latches, too. Yeah. And you have to grease it with crisco so little kids can't climb it. Well, you do that anyway, right? But it is fun to watch them try. You should learn CPR. You should have all the little life saving implements at your pool. Oh, another one. I had not thought about this, but if you have a pool, you want to have a landline, too, because you need to keep a phone that works right by your pool at all times. Yeah. So you need to be like thirst and howl and have a pool that's made out of a clam shell that a guy in a white tuxedo can bring over and sit down on a side table. Right. Or like Hunter Thompson at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Oh, I need to bring up Hunter Thompson at some point in this episode. One other thing I want to say, too, also. If your kid has an episode that looks like a close call to you yeah. But they seem fine, then yes, keep an eye on them for the idea that they could conceivably have drowned and they could be developing symptoms. And if they start to develop any symptoms and take them to the Er, and the Er, doctors will very kindly listen to their lungs to see if they hear any water. Easy peasy. Right. At the same time, don't freak out. Like, if your kid just coughs and sputters a little bit and they're fine and they don't develop any symptoms at all, they're fine, most likely. Right. But it does pay to be vigilant, and it is better safe than sorry. Just don't be terrified if your kid you know, as long as they didn't have anything that you could be like, that was kind of a drowning episode that just happened, you're probably in the clear. Yeah. It's a rare case, that kid in Texas, but because it does happen, keep an eye out. For sure. On the other hand, though, the media talking about this stuff supposedly has saved at least one other kid's life from the publicity that went around that case. It happened to another kid later on, and the parents had heard about this and took their kids into the Er and saved her life, I believe. Well, there you have it. You also don't necessarily just drown in a pool, either. No. I mean, this stuff is horrifying. The thought of an infant drowning in a dog water bowl is a nightmare scenario. Yeah. Dog water bowl, open cooler that has melted ice, toilets, a cleaning bucket. Anything that can hold something like one inch of water is enough to drown an infant and possibly a toddler, I think, too, people drowning cars as well. Yeah. Bathtubs are actually another one. So get this, ma'am. Usually people who drown in bathtubs are infants and the elderly, but there's a lot of adults who drown in bathtubs and specifically hot tubs. Did you know about this? Well, I mean, yeah, you get a little drunk, you stand up too fast, and you're dizzy from the temperature. It's not a good combo. No. And that's supposedly what happened to Orville Reddenbacher. He was in a hot bath and suffered a heart attack and ended up drowning. Whitney Houston died in a bathtub. And I think every year in the US. About 330 people drown in their bathtub in a year. Seems like a normal amount, right? Yeah. Guess how many die in bathtubs in Japan in a year? How many? 14,000. Why? I don't know. I think they take more hot baths. They have those soaker tubs too. Yes. It's like part of the culture. That's the only thing I can think of because they also have like one third of the population of the US. Too. That's a lot of drowning deaths and bathtubs, man. Yeah, well, they did say too, like more people die in Florida in car drownings just because there are more waterfront roadways. And then earlier when we talked about the racial aspect, the whole deal, we kind of just kind of flew past it. But native Alaskans and Indigenous peoples died more than white people because they are more often in bodies of water that are probably far away and have logs and rocks and things underneath the surface. Yeah. So they have more exposure to natural bodies of water than the average American. Yeah. You got anything else? Nope. Well, that's drowning. Hopefully we helped in some way because summer is coming. OK. That's right. And I'm going to teach you the breaststroke. Sweet. If you want to know more about drowning, you can type that sad, sad word into the search bar at How Stuff Works and it'll bring up something. Since I said that, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this first thing. I just pulled up on my phone right here. Look at that. Nice. But it's about the Steve Miller Band in Peaches. Remember in the emojis episode, one of us probably you? I didn't say Steve Miller. I said all my brothers. Oh, well, he said someone mentioned the line from Steve Miller Band. I really like your peaches. I want to shake your tree. Didn't one of us not mention that? No. This person is out of their mind. Well, he has an email regardless. Okay, let's hear it. We all love the Steve Miller Band. Now, this story is probably not true, but I want you to believe it. Back in college, when my youngest daughter was born, I was driving a delivery truck for a small auto parts company. I worked with this old guy, and he was probably like 42. And his stories I worked with this old guy. He's probably like 42. That's me talking. Okay. So one time he told me that he worked in this auto shop years ago, and it was owned by this husband and wife, and he had played bass for a little while with Steve Miller Band. And her name was Peaches, his wife. So the story was that the line from Steve Miller really like your Peaches, want to shake your tree, with Steve Miller taunting his own bass player. Me. He says, I don't know if this is true, but the story is like it rang true enough. So I like to think that somewhere there's a couple that owns an auto parts store in Arizona and to stick it to Steve Miller, who doesn't want to stick it to Steve Miller, you know? And that's from Jared. Dude, I was in the local market near my house about a year ago, buying some artisan tonic. No. And my buddy Chris Cox, who plays bass in my band, he happened to be in there. We were kind of talking about music. His wife's name is Peaches, too. No, it's not. We're talking about music. And this guy who looked like an old Southern rocker came up and he was like, you guys in a band? Yeah. And he was like, Me too. I was like, oh, yeah. And he said, I'm the flute player in the Marshall Tucker band. No. And I was like, whoa. Wow. Like, if Marshall Tucker band is known for one thing, it's the flute. Like for Real name off a couple of other fluity songs. Well, herded and love song can't be wrong. That one has that famous flute part. What? No. You know that song? Sure, but I can't think of the flute part. This is the whole intro that's all flute. I guess they're never realized is that anyway, a bunch of their songs have the flute. And granted, he was not the original floutist. He's one of the Marshall Tucker bands. One of those deals where two original members, they've had 20 flute players, like The Temptations or something. Yeah. But I was still impressed. I was like, man, that's amazing. That is impressive. And then, like Anchorman, he whipped one out of his sleeve right there in the store. Kick some candles off the tables. Yeah. I'd say Marshall Tucker band is second only to Jethro Toll for flute innovation. Okay, that's who I'm thinking of. They did like Aqua Long. Hey, how about that? We just came full circle. All right? Let's just end it. If you want to get in touch with Chuck and me and Jerry, you can tweet to us. I'm at Josh Clark and S yskpodcast and Chuck is at Moviecrush Chuckson, facebook@facebook.com Charlesw, Chuck Bryant and atstado you can send us an email to stuffpodcast@houseteporks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web stuffyshotknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer. School's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime for days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon Music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Smalltown Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today." | |
How Sword Swallowing Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-sword-swallowing-works | Houdini suggested that sword swallowing was merely a trick. But there's no sleight of hand or throat to this ancient practice. Practitioners really do swallow swords, car axles and more. Learn more about sword swallowers in this gag-reflexive episode. | Houdini suggested that sword swallowing was merely a trick. But there's no sleight of hand or throat to this ancient practice. Practitioners really do swallow swords, car axles and more. Learn more about sword swallowers in this gag-reflexive episode. | Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:42:02 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2011, tm_mon=9, tm_mday=27, tm_hour=15, tm_min=42, tm_sec=2, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=270, tm_isdst=0) | 32242285 | audio/mpeg | "What if you were a global bank who wanted to crunch billions of transactions against thousands of compliance controls? So you tap IBM to UNSILO your data and now you can supercharge your audit system with AI. Let's create smarter ways of putting your data to work. IBM let's create learn more@ibm.com. Hey, everybody. I don't know about you, but I am excited that it's summer school's out, the sun is shining, and best of all, there's downtime four days. That's where true crime podcasts on Amazon music come in. They're the perfect activity for last minute road trips, long walks, or, if you're brave enough, late nights. With so many killer shows like Morbid, my Favorite Murder, and Small Town Murder, you'll never be bored to death again. So download the free Amazon Music app to start listening to all your favorite true crime podcasts. Plus, with Amazon Music, you can access new episodes early. Download the app today. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 camry. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know from housetofworkscom. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W, chuck Bryant. Which makes this stuff you should know like you didn't know. And if this is your first time, if you really didn't know, welcome to the dark side. Your life is just forever changed. You are officially addicted. That's right. Yeah. That's what I got. I'll take Shores for $500. Okay. Yeah. And that's what you said when I suggested this one. I typed it. Yeah. And I think you thought it was funny when I typed it. I heard it. Okay? I heard it in my head. It sounded much like that. Darryl Hammond, john Connery. Chuck. Yes. Have you ever seen the movie Daisy? Confused? Yeah. In fact, I remember the first time I saw that movie. Oh, yeah. I was here in Athens at the Georgia theater. That was a great place to see that movie. That was wonderful. Remember whenever they showed I think his name was Washington. No, which character? The black guy. I think you're thinking of the sweat hogs. That was Washington. Right, but I think his name was Washington, too. Okay. I think I'm not sure, but yes, clearly. I could just be thinking of that guy. Because they both have frozen. They're set in the 70s. Right. But he has that paddle. It says Soul pole on it. Do you remember the whole theater just erupting the first time it showed that it was awesome? I remember, I thought Matthew McConaughey was not an actor. Oh, like he was really waterson. I thought he was a real dude they just dug up in Texas. Oh, yeah. Because that was like the beginning of his career. First thing I ever saw him in Ben Affleck. Yeah. And that was just a great movie. Parker Posey. Yeah. Well, that brings me to my point. Parker Posey. You remember the part during the beer bust where Parker Posey is funneling beer through a beer bong, and she's got it for, like, a half a second, maybe a second and a half, and then it just pours out of her mouth and all over her face. Yes. At that moment, the first thing I thought of, as I'm sure everybody thought as well when they saw that very suggestive part, was Parker puzzle would be terrible at sword swallowing. That's what I thought, because it takes a certain amount of relaxation to swallow a sword, and after researching, I found that a sword swallower would make an excellent beer funneler. I haven't funneled the beer in a long time. Been a while for me to probably good when you're 40 to be able to say that I lost access to beer funnels. I think that's kind of what happens if you just don't go to places where there's a beer funnel. No, not anymore. But you can always shock in a beer as long as you have a pen and a beer can. I never got into any of that, to be honest. Keg stands, all that silliness wasn't big. I was just like, I'll just drink it. I don't prefer being upside down. I've never done a keg stand. Really? Never. Like, you know what it feels like to be torn apart by a gang of angry tubs because there's, like, a couple of guys, like, holding waterboarding goals. Yeah. It's really kind of scary. You're on the edge there. We don't recommend any of those things. No. And while we're at it, this is the ultimate COA. Please, anyone out there, never, ever, ever try to swallow a sword or anything. Except food, obviously, and beverage. Right. But no food larger than the end of a football. Yeah. Do not try this at home ever. Right. Okay. Yeah. Josh and Chuck officially think you're stupid if you try to swallow anything after listening to this. Or if you participate in backyard wrestling. Yes. Equally dangerous. Yes. All right, so, Chuck, let's talk about sword swallowing. I'm excited about this one. Kind of cool. Yeah. This is part of our ongoing circus arts collection. Have we already done one human cannonball? Okay, we got to get tightrope in there, and then we're all set. Well, we need to do, like, freaks, too. Yeah, just sideshow freaks. Or maybe even, like, history of the sideshow. That'd be pretty awesome. Agreed. All right, so what other kind of freaks would I have just been talking about? I don't know. The kind of meat on a Friday night. Have you seen that movie Freaks? Oh, yeah, we've talked about that one. All right, so, Chuck, let's talk about the history of swords following, shall we? Yes. I was kind of surprised to learn that it started out with sort of religious undertones. Or are they overtones? I think sword swallowing is so that it would be an overtone. An overtone, yes. It's not very subtle. Yeah. Early on in India, about 40 years ago. They kind of the same folks who are doing the fire walking and snake handling to sort of show their oneness with God. Would swallow swords. Yeah. Like they were protected. And they will be like, look what I can do. Yeah. I'm boastful fakirs is what they're called. F-A-K-I-R. Okay. And, yeah, sword swallowing has been around for 4000 years and there's apparently still a tribe. Although I couldn't find the name of the tribe but it's in the Indian state of Andra Pradesh and they apparently still pass down sword swallowing skills from father to son. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we know where it came from and we know it's ancient. Started in India. Started to move around the Far East, the Midi east. A typical path thing to follow. China, Japan, mid east language, civilization. Yes. It all just followed the same path as sword swallowing. It hit Japan in China in the 8th century Ad. In Japan, it became part of Sangu, one of those two which is basically like street performance. Right. And then apparently it got picked up again later on in India, again in the cradle of it by the Whirling dervishes. The rebirth of sword swallowing. Yes. The first one by the Dervishes. Right. Dervishes. A beggar of the Sufi mystic order of monks. And they would kind of whip themselves into a frenzy. Hence the term whirling dervish. And there's a specific order of dervishes called the order of refise. My Indians getting rusty and they eat glasswalk on coals. Swallow swords. Basically. It's like a revival of the original reason people would swallow swords. Okay. And then it comes to Europe. And as with all things that came to Europe from the outside the Catholic Church persecuted anyone who could swallow a sword. Man funkillers back in the day. But that was not enough to kill it. It was basically just a loss of enthusiasm by the public. By the 19th century in Europe, everybody's like, we've seen this before. We know what's going on. It's all an illusion, a trick, which we'll get to in a minute. But then it hits America and there's a guy from Madras, an Indian man named Senatama. And on November 24, 1817 which will henceforth in the SYSK pantheon of dates be referred to as sword swallowing Day. Yeah. In New York City at St. John's hall, for one dollars adults could see the first person to ever swallow a sword in the United States. For a dollar? For a dollar. It's a lot of money. Back then I agreed, but this is a big deal. And you would think it would have taken off right then. But no, it wasn't until 1893 at the Chicago World's Fair that it became very popular in the US. Yes. I wonder what else was big that year. That wasn't the ice cream year, was it? No, that was St. Louis in okay, so pre ice cream. Of course. Sword swallowers if ice cream had been around people. Right. I'd rather just eat ice cream. This was the year that electricity was a big 118 93. Yeah, that was the one that The Devil in the White City is set. Okay. I read that it's pretty good. You can wait for the movie now. Oh, is it coming out? Apparently Leo DiCaprio is playing the bad guy. Of course he is. Yeah. I don't know why I said that. He rarely plays bad guys. That's true. Although he wasn't that good of a guy in Shutter Island. Well, we don't want to ruin that. It doesn't matter. Okay. It died out again in the 1950s because it was on the carnival circuit, and I guess all these newfangled rides sort of took away from the whole sideshow aspect. And then I love how this points out that the Internet and video games also helped kill sword swallowing. Right? Really? Yeah. I didn't know that one had anything to do with the other. The Internet and video games pretty much killed everything but the Internet and video games and TV. Yeah. But now you can research and watch sword swallowing on the Internet. Now, that is gorgeous thinking. I'm very impressed with that one. All right, so that's pretty much the history of sword swallowing. I guess toward the beginning of the 20th century, when it became very popular in the US. There was also a lot of controversy over whether it was a trick or an illusion. And Harry Houdini himself said, it's a trick. There's a trick to it. And he wrote in his very famous book, The Miracle Mongers, and expose that people who swallow swords first backstage swallow a metal sheath that they slide the sword into. All right, I got to stop you here. You're still swallowing the thing that's just as long and it's made of metal. I agree. And you're pretending like it's not in there. You're walking around talking. I know it seems easier just to learn to swallow this. I mean, it's not like and we'll cover this. Actually, might as well go ahead and say it. The swords that they swallow aren't sharp edged. No, they are still pointy, but it's not like they're swallowing razor blades. I get the impression that they're pointy ish well, yeah, a dull point, I would say. Yes. But I mean, that can't be much worse than the sheath, right? I think the sheath is worse. Maybe Houdini was being funny and Tracy Wilson missed that. Maybe. So she goes on to point out that the Encyclopedia Britannica says that it's a magic trick as well, and that it is some sort of illusion or hoax or fraud. But really, apparently the basis of sword swallowing is quite real. Like the person is swallowing a sword. Yeah, right. What if you were a major transit system with billions of passengers taking millions of trips every year? You weren't about to let any cyber attacks slow you down. So you partner with IBM to build a security architecture to keep your data network and applications protected. Now you can tackle threats so they don't bring you to a grinding halt and everyone's going places, including you. Let's create cybersecurity that keeps your business on track. IBM, let's create learn more@ibm.com. 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. How do you do that? Well, Josh, if you're going to talk about swallowing a sword, then we need to talk about swallowing. And if you're going to talk about swallowing, you got to talk about the GI tract. Yes. Not the GI bill, the GI gastrointestinal tract. It's got a couple of types of muscle. It's got a skeletal muscle tissue and smooth muscle tissue, little lubrication layer called mucosa. And then skeletal muscle is involuntary. I'm sorry, voluntary. And if you're talking about your upper GI, you're talking about your mouth, your pharynx and your upper esophagus. The smooth muscle is involuntary and they work in concert to help you swallow junk. Right. So the top stuff is all voluntary. Like you can move your tongue. Yeah. You start off doing it on purpose when you chew and swallow. Right. But then it gets to a certain point past the what is it? The upper esophageal sphincter that just cracks me up. Once it gets past that, which is kind of high up toward the top of the esophagus yes. Then like you said, it becomes all involuntary. It's automatic, which makes it very difficult to control anything that happens after that. Yeah. Specifically, your epiglottis goes into action because that keeps stuff from going down into your lungs that you don't want. Yeah. Bolus is chewed food and saliva. It's the best word ever. Bolus. Yeah, bolus. And once you've done all the voluntary action, it does a pretty cool thing. It gets down to the part of your esophagus as the smooth muscle, the involuntary muscle, and parastalysis takes over. And that's basically it. Just squeezes it down like an inch at a time. Yeah. You know how your esophagus is ringed? Yeah. Right. Those rings are little bands of muscle and then they squeeze just above the bolus and just shut it down there. Finally it gets to the lower esophageal sphincter and that opens. You have to laugh every time that opens. And the bolus drops into the stomach to be digested and then eventually pooped out. Yeah. So that's what happens. That's swallowing food. That's life. That is, we just described life the trick here. Not trick, but on the way down, it passes by things like your trachea, your heart, your aorta, which I thought was part of the heart. Well, it's the main artery that connects to the heart. Yeah. And I saw the veni cava was also separate. It's the main vein. Fram is the muscle that moves up and down, which allows us to breathe. And we say all this because the sword is passing right through there. Yeah. It takes the same path as your food does. Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much, exactly. We have our ribs because we've got so many vital organs right there that they need extra protecting. And so we circumvent the ribs when we swallow swords and just go directly past all that stuff, all that soft tissue. Right. Yeah. But there's a big difference here. Swallowing food requires a lot of contraction of muscles. And what you want to do when you swallow a sword is you want to relax all those muscles, even the involuntary ones, which is we'll get in to how to do that in a minute here. Okay. But it's sort of the opposite of even though it follows the same path, the muscles are doing things they shouldn't do, aren't trained to do, at least. Well, that's kind of the point of sword swallowing. One of the reasons we warned you against sword swallowing is because you can't just swallow a sword the first time you try it. No, you could, but you would kill yourself. Yes. Sword swallowing actually takes a lot of practice and a lot of horrible practice, too. You have to train your involuntary muscle to work voluntarily right. Or to not volunteer at all. That's a great point. By relaxing. Yeah. So the voluntary stuff and let's talk about this. I guess now we've reached sword swallowing 101. The first part is easy because it's all voluntary muscle. You move your tongue out of the way, you open your throat, you tilt your head back. You always see a sword swallower tilts his head back. It's intuitive. But at the same time, the reason why is because they're lining up the pharynx, the throat with the esophagus, so that it's a straight shot, as straight as possible from the mouth all the way down, right? That's right. And then after that check. Well, you slip the sword down in there and it passes through the mouth and pharynx and upper esophagus sphincter into the esophagus itself. And the esophagus has got a little curve to it. So the sword is actually going to straighten it out and Tracey even points out that sometimes it's nudging organs out of the way as well on the way down. That's why you usually swallow sword slowly in the lubed sword as well. Yeah. And then lubed either by saliva or artificially. Right. Some people use petroleum jelly or vegetable or something, whatever your flavor is. So that's how it's done. Pretty cool. That's right. That's pretty much all there is to it. But again, it takes some tremendous practice. And also, depending on the type of the sword and the length of the sword, you said it was blunted. It's not sharp, still kind of pointy, but it's as dull as possible. But the length of the sword is also very important as well, usually from your teeth to the cardiac, which is basically where the stomach connects to the esophagus, where your lower esophageal sphincter is about 40 CM in the average person. Yeah. Okay. Sounds about right. So if you swallow a sword that's longer than 40 CM, it's going to have to go into your stomach. That's a big deal. Yeah. And what I've gotten is most sword swallowers don't do that. It's not by accident that the Sword Swallow Swallowers Association International defines that length at 38 qualify. So if it's 40 CM, they said, let's make it a couple of centimeters short. Right. But this is just a typical person. It could be much shorter. That's just to qualify. I don't know, I thought it had to be that long. No, I'm saying the distance to your cardiac could be shorter. So even with that shorter sword, you still may be in your stomach. But yes, if you get it all the way down to a couple of centimeters above your cardio, the SSAI is still considered you a sword swallower, which I think is nice. That is nice. But Chuck, if you are taking a sword all the way down to your cardia into your stomach, the sword is literally in your stomach. That's crazy. Not only have you relaxed, like all the voluntary muscles in your mouth, you've relaxed all the voluntary muscles on your larynx and then your esophagus. Right, all the involuntary muscles. But you've also managed to figure out how to relax both of your esophageal sphincters, the top one and the one above your stomach, so that you can pass a sword through without damaging it. And without is nuts. Yeah. And they do recommend, by the way, nothing over 24 inches, 61 CM, because at that point, you are well into your stomach. Yeah. That's the SSAI again. Yeah. And I guess anything over that, you might go hit the bottom of the stomach, which you don't want to do. Also, I want to point out that there is also a long tradition of sword swallowers who juggle, and often do this on horseback while juggling unicycles cartwheels. They do all sorts of crazy things. So really, to me, just standing stock still and swallowing a sword that's impressive. Have you ever seen the drop? No. I don't know if it's a new move, but it's a move where you put it down, like, halfway, and then you move your hands and you let it drop by itself and you actually catch it with your esophagal muscles. That is control. Pretty good control, yes. And they always take it out really quick, too, if you notice, because we'll talk about the gag reflex, but you're suspending that and you can only do that for so long. That's why you see them do it, and then it's like and they yank it back out really quickly because they want to live. That's right. Yeah. Well, speaking of the gag reflex, that's one of the things that has to be overcome in training. Yeah. Let's get into the reflexing. Okay. Well, reflexes exist outside of the brain. They're actually regulated by the brain stem. I didn't know that, actually. Well, it's how somebody can still be considered alive even though their higher faculties are gone, because they still have reflexes. It makes sense. I just never really thought about it that way. May I describe how a reflex work, please? So basically, you have a receptor nerve ending that detects, in this case, in your throat, detects some sort of object or intrusion that shouldn't be there, like a sword. Basically, the only stuff that should be there is fluid and chewed food as far as your receptors are concerned. But yes, if a sword or any other metal object makes its way into your throat, the receptors are going to figure this out, and they're going to send an electrical impulse to your central nervous system in the brain stem. The integration center is what it's called. Yeah. That's kind of like it kind of sounded to me like a call center. Like, literally, it happens so quick, but it's like, what's the nature of your emergency, sir? Exactly. I've got a sword in my throat, but this is the brain stem, so it's all done on, like, punch cards, like they used to play TicTacToe in the 70s, hanging jazz. So your brain stem says, okay, well, there shouldn't be a metal object there. Let's just go ahead and direct the muscles of the throat to gag. And that produces what's called a wretch, and that's meant to expel the foreign object. What sword swallowers do is mute or dull this reflex so that it doesn't happen at all. And they do it by setting it off time after time after time. Unbelievable. They make themselves gag as much as they can until it doesn't work. Yeah. Which is dangerous. It's very dangerous. And if you didn't get the idea before from the initial COA, sword swallowing is a very dangerous pastime profession. Whatever you're using it for, I would imagine they're at a higher risk for choking. Choking, yeah. Because the point of the gag reflex is to get that stuff out, that piece of steak comes flying out when you wretch it up. Yes. Ideally, if you don't have a gag reflex, then yeah, that's bad news, because that steak just stays in there and you die. I had a friend who, when I was in elementary school, his mom got an emergency trache out of me with a steak knife. Oh, yeah. How do you always hear about the stories she had the little scar and everything? Jeez. Yeah. Someone in a restaurant doctor. Oh, wow. Yeah. Gave her a steak knife. No anesthesia, no nothing. Steak knife and then a straw or a pen. Yeah. I've never seen anything good like that happen. I didn't see it happen. Yeah, but I'm just saying I've never seen any, like, awesome, life saving situation. I want to be a part of one one day, just not on the safe side. 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, Chuck, it's summer, which means school is out, sun's shining, the daylight lasts longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story, isn't there? There sure is. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, you can tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music, My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right Media. That's right. Part true crime and part comedy, my Favorite Murder takes you on a journey through small town mysteries and major laughs all in the same week. That's Right hosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark Banter with each other, sharing their favorite true crime tales and explore unique hometown stories from friends and fans alike. And they're both great and it's a fun show, and you should listen. So listen to new episodes of my favorite murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. So what are the dangers? They actually did a study of and they want IG Nobel Prize for the study I found out in 2007. And they studied 110 English speaking sword swallowers and basically just ask them a bunch of questions about their health. And they called it sore to throat. When they get a sore throat. Yes, but that was kind of clever. It is very clever. So throat pain, lower chest pain, persistent lower chest pain, internal bleeding occasionally. I saw this one lady who was coughing up blood, and they found out that she had nicked part of her esophagus way down, which I imagine is common esophagal perforations, like we just talked about. How do you say that? Pleurisy pleurisy pleurisy inflammation of the lungs and pericarditis, which is inflammation of the sac that protects the heart, and that's in descending order of how often those things happened. Yeah. So everyone gets the sword throat, it seems like. But probably very few actually got inflammation of the pericardium. Right. They also figured out that there was a trend among sword swallowers where if they had a particularly rough performance, the inflammation that would result resulted in further injury. So they would be okay during the performance, but they had a little trouble getting it down. But then a day later or something, they broke their esophagus or something like that. Really? And then also, apparently sinus infections are common because you're passing the sword with petroleum jelly and whatever hair and gunk it picked up in between the time you put the petroleum jelly on and the time you swallowed it right past the sinuses, which can be sensitive. I can attest. And I imagine the circus sideshow isn't the cleanest area on the planet. You, I think. Imagine correctly. You know what I'm saying? There's also death is a side effect of sword swallowing from time to time. Another British medical journal study cited the death of a man who swallowed an umbrella or tried to and died. My first question was, did he accidentally try and open it? He hit the button. It's like Tom and Jerry. Yeah, totally. His body flares out like an umbrella. It's like Tom and Jerry, except real life and sad. That's right. Yeah. World sword Swallowers day Ten What it sounds like is that they gathered sword swallowers at Rifley's Believe It or not all over the country to do this all at once to perform. And Red Stewart, your buddy Red, he swallowed a world record 52 swords at a time. Oh, man. I don't know if that's official or unofficial Guinness certified, but George the Giant swallowed a 37 inch sword at the Hollywood Believe It or not. Jeez. So they recommend 24 inches max because you're in the stomach. 37 inches. That's longer than 3ft. That's crazy. Dan Meyer swallowed a giant straight razor and hedge clippers in Dallas to believe that they're not there. Travis Festler swallowed a sword with cockroaches crawling around it, crawling on the sword. And guess where this one happened? Gatlinburg. Oh, yeah. Tennessee. Wow. What else? 120 deg curve sword at the Ripley Believe It or not in Ocean City, Maryland. I'm just amazed over here. I know. And finally, Mike Harrison at the Orlando Believe It or not swallowed a sword that was driven down his throat by the discharge of a gun. I don't know how that happened, but wait, what happened? Apparently it was shot into his mouth from a gun. I'd like to see that one. Wow. Yeah. That's got to be on the Internet. Which has first killed and then now support sword swallowing. And also Red Stewart, who you mentioned, who swallowed 52 swords at once. I guess his former record was 25. But before. That this impresses me the most. In 1977, he swallowed a car axle. Well, they do. Tracy pointed out people swallow dipsticks and other straight metal things. Car axle. Yeah. It's pretty amazing stuff. Yeah. That's got to be pretty big around too. Yeah. And people have swallowed snakes. I found this guy. Well, that sucks for the snake. Yeah, I think the snake lives. Yeah, but still, he's like, well, sure. What are you doing? Well, the snake is probably like, I'm getting eaten by another snake. Yeah. Okay, so it's just desserts then. But this dude in the 1840s salomentro the snake swallower. I have a couple of good quotes from him. They fancy that it hurts you, but it don't. Or what a fool I should be to do it. I don't mean to say it don't hurt you at first because it do for my swallow was very bad, and I couldn't eat anything but liquids for two months whilst I was learning. I cured my swallow whilst I was stretching it with lemon and sugar. And then he learned to swallow that was swords. And he learned to swallow a snake and said, the snakes are about 18 inches long, and you must first cut the stingers out because it might hurt you. When I first began swallowing snakes, they tasted queer. Like, they draw the roof of your mouth a bit. It's a roughish taste. Apparently the scales, like, it's easier going down than it is coming back up. I could see that. The way the scales are laying. I could totally see that. So we don't recommend swallowing snakes either, and I don't know if anyone still does that. That might be a 19th century swallowing steaks snakes. Yeah, I swallow stakes a lot. Yes. It's not tough. Well, I guess that's it. You got anything else? No. Well, if you want to see some pretty cool images about sword swallowing with a strange kind of superhero worshippy man, he was buff. There's a period around how stuff works where comic book geeks kind of ruled the place. Right. And so this is acceptable in some way. Yeah, it's definitely a little different than our other illustrations. Right. So if you want to see those weird illustrations and learn as much as you possibly can about sword swallowing and the circus arts in general, we have a whole circus art section. Did you know that? I just let you say circus art. Yeah. Any of that stuff can be typed into the search bar@houseteporkworks.com, and that means now, Chuck, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this blood type follow up. Guys have just Googled good podcast and found your name, and I think he was serious. Although I googled good podcast and I didn't see anything. What comes up? There was one article about how to do a good podcast, and it was, like, enunciate very clearly. Stick to the point and keep it short. We're way off breaking rules so I just enjoyed your latest podcast and have a contribution on the subject of blood type. To put it simply, the transfusion rate is 60 to 90 ML per hour for the first 15 minutes, although each hospital has its own policy and an exact rate, but on average it is 60 to 90. After about 15 minutes, the rate can be advanced to 100 to 120. Rationale is that if an acute hemolytic reaction is going to occur, it will happen in the first 15 minutes of the transfusion, and the slow rate keeps the infused volume low. So using a little advanced math to answer your question, it takes as little as 16 to 22.5 incompatible blood to cause a reaction. Of course, these are rough estimates, but they do give you a hint of how a little bad blood can cause a big problem. Thanks for doing the show. I look forward to going back and listening to old shows as well as the current new ones. I hope I didn't just make myself look like an idiot. Far from it. Dan. You sounded pretty dang smart. I would say so, yeah. Also, it's really weird to get feedback that quickly. Like, we recorded that two days ago and bam, we've got an answer. I really enjoyed that. I kind of wish we could do this alive, but that wouldn't work. We tried that before. It never does work. Well, I guess it's it. Do you have anything? Do you want to call for anything? No. Okay. If you have any kind of circus arts background or your family does, we want to hear about it because we find that kind of stuff fascinating. Also, by the way, black guy ended confused. His name Melvin Spivey. Really? I was way off. So sorry about that. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can send us stuff on Facebook at facebook. Comstepynow. And you can also send us an old fashioned email to stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff From the Future. Join Housetofworks staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Summer school's out. The sun is shining. The daylight is longer. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music that's so good it's criminal Morbid. Part true crime and part comedy, Morbid takes you on a journey from murderous mysteries to major laughs, all in the same week. Hosted by autopsy technician Elena Ercart and hairstylist Ash Kelly, this chart topping series will have you hooked before you know it. Listen to new episodes of Morbid one week early, only on Amazon Music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today. You 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.com." | ||
How Propaganda Works | https://omny.fm/shows/stuff-you-should-know-1/how-propaganda-works | Propaganda, a persuasion tactic typically associated with deception, has been around for centuries. Explore the history of propaganda -- and learn how to spot it -- in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | Propaganda, a persuasion tactic typically associated with deception, has been around for centuries. Explore the history of propaganda -- and learn how to spot it -- in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. | Tue, 26 May 2009 17:50:27 +0000 | time.struct_time(tm_year=2009, tm_mon=5, tm_mday=26, tm_hour=17, tm_min=50, tm_sec=27, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=146, tm_isdst=0) | 33237858 | 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. Chuck Bryant's with me as usual. As a matter of fact, I don't know what I'd do if Chuck Bryant wasn't with me. I'd probably curl up in the fetal position in the corner and cut myself to sleep. I think he'd be just fine. I don't know, Chuck. I don't ever want to find out. Chuck. Well, thanks. Don't ever leave. I almost didn't make it today. Why? What's going on with you? I was out last night. I went out and saw Matt's band. As you know, Matt Frederick, handsome, young standing producer yeah, Matt Frederick of stuff of genius, fame. An awesome new video podcast we should mention. Chuck going. It's really good. You guys should check that out. Stuff of Genius. It's a video podcast video, and it's cool, and it has a little, like, Monty Python esque animation. I like it. Yes. And we don't want to hear any of this. I don't have time to watch that crap because it's like a minute 42, tops. Yeah, it's quick. Yeah. But I went and saw his band last night. Lions and Scissors. Yeah, good stuff. And I wanted to say that they have a MySpace page, and it's good music if you're into it's. Very Shoegaze. Shoe? Like Maguire. Yeah, Maguire is good. It's sort of a Radioheady component at times. Nice. Explosions in the sky. You ever heard of them? I have a big wall of sound, loud. My ears are ringing, and I'm slightly tired and imbibed a bit too much, but got you. That was my night. That's Chuck's Thursday, everybody. So keep rocking, Matt. We love it. Yeah. Way to go, Matt. So, can we get back to our podcast now, maybe? Yeah, but I just wanted to give Matt a shout out. I think you're a good guy for doing that. Talented drummer. Great drummer. Okay. So, Chuck, you grew up in the Cold War, right? Pretty funny. You did. You're a cold war baby like me. I'm a Cold War kid. Isn't it weird to think we actually work with people who weren't cognizant that the Soviets had nukes pointed at us at all times and vice versa? Yeah, that is weird to me. Yeah. But I remember being particularly unnerved from time to time. That like, dude, eventually they're going to come over and a missile is going to be sent over, and that's that. I can't help but think that we were definitely shaped, our personalities were shaped by that underlying, constant level of paranoia that we grew up with. Well, in the movies, a lot of great Cold War movies of that era. The Roostkies out to get us. Yeah. Do you remember the movie Ruskis? It was actually a counter propaganda movie where a bunch of kids that were probably my age, you would have been like, 20 by then. I think they found a Russian sailor who washed ashore and they had to hide them because, of course, the government would shoot him in the head if they found him. And they came to learn that the Soviets have hearts, too. They know how to love. Was it a real movie? Yeah. Okay. It wasn't very good, but somebody actually put out the effort to say, hey, we're all just people here. Sure. And what they were doing, actually, was counter propaganda. Right. That was right off the cuff, too, pal. That's good. All of the stuff we were told, I would say at least the vast majority of it was lopsided at best. Do you remember, what did you think of the Russians when you were growing up? That they were like, they cut your throat just as soon as they look at you. And they were always standing in these horrible bread lines, and every single one of them wanted to escape, but the Russian government wouldn't let them. They wanted a toilet paper. You always heard stories about they don't have blue jeans and they don't have toilet paper. Yeah, you could get five wives with a single pair of jeans if you went over there, kind of thing. Yeah, well, I remember when the Iron Curtain fell and, like, actual news started coming out of the former USSR state that I remember thinking, oh, yeah, what a surprise. All of that was lies. Right. And they're actually kind of nice folks, by and large. I'm not saying that they weren't trying to do bad things when we were trying to do bad things. Well, no, I think that was the Russian people were good people. That's what I figured out when the propaganda ended. The Cold War propaganda ended so abruptly is that we're all people. The average Russian is like the average American at heart, with the same dreams, goals, aspirations, same things that hurt him or her. It's the same thing. And we didn't want our stockpiles of weapons pointed in their direction either. Your average American probably didn't. No, certainly not. I didn't either. Let's just get along. All right. So, Chuck, what we're talking about clearly, is propaganda, right? And just that word. A very smart person once said that propaganda is not a dirty word and it didn't end with the Cold War. And that's actually true. But propaganda still has horrible connotations, just the word itself. Right. I mean, it elicits images of, like, brainwashed masses, lies. It's definitely the case in most cases when it comes to propaganda. But there's a more classical definition of propaganda, and essentially it's that it's simply a tool for persuasive arguments that use facts and beliefs, but omit facts and beliefs that would persuade people to the other side of the argument. Right, right. It's accentuating the positive in a way. And you never talk about the negative side of the things. Right. It's sort of like Facebook it is. It's very much like Facebook. I figured out that through reading this article, how Propaganda Works, that technically the Truth campaign to get people to quit smoking. Yeah, those are great commercials. That's propaganda because they omit the fact that cigarettes make you alive with pleasure and flavored country. Right. Newport. That's a little bit of both. Okay. I'm not sure we should say the brand, because I'm pretty sure Big Tobacco would sue our pants. Yeah, you're right. You've come a long way to me. Nice Chuck. So, yes, but the main hallmark of propaganda is that it includes omissions of facts. Right. And actually, where did the whole word come from? You got any info on that, dude? Yeah, it started with religion way back, and it started hundreds of years before it was officially coined. But in 1622, Pope Gregory 20 515, I need to work in my room in New York. Pope Gregory 15 established the Congregation of Propaganda in 1622, and that was basically trying to win back Catholics who had taken up the Protestant faith. Yes. Martin Luther made a real dent in the number of seats in the pews every Sunday. So Pope Gregory formed the what was it? The Congregation of Propaganda. Oh, you did say that. Yeah. Holy cow. That's okay, man, I got to pay more attention. Basically, this Congregation of propaganda, one Catholics back by pointing out that anyone who doesn't take communion every week is a loser. Right. And it worked. It did. Sure. I'm sure numbers increased so since then. From that point until, I don't know, the 1940s, there was absolutely no propaganda whatsoever. That's probably not true. No. You don't think so? Oh, okay. I need to read a little more clearly. World War I. We're going to go over the history now. I don't think we should get to that part yet. I think we should talk more about propaganda's implications. Right, okay. In the article you read that there was an interview with a guy named mlane Bruner. Right. Georgia State guy. Yeah. He's a professor of what? Rhetoric at Georgia State. Yeah. I didn't know that was such a thing. I didn't either, but it's interesting. Good for him. But Brunner said that the distinction for him between good and bad propaganda was whether or not the people perpetrating the propaganda have the best interests of their audience at heart. Right. Yeah, but that's subjective. I agree wholeheartedly. I take issue with that because I think that it's up to the individual to decide what his or her best interests are. Right, exactly. And to make that decision, you have to be fully informed. Right. Well, propaganda is based on an omission of facts. You're never fully informed when you're being propagandized. Right, right. So therefore there's no such thing as good propaganda. Sure. You never see both sides of the argument with propaganda. Right. So I don't think there is such a good thing as well, I take issue and he's a Georgia state. He's not too far. Maybe we should hop on the subway and go to him. Yeah. Take issue with him. Yeah. Take issue with this. Professor, I got some propaganda for you. Yeah. So, Chuck, how do you get propaganda across? Well, there's a lot of techniques, actually, and these are pretty cool. And I know that when people hear these are going to be very familiar, maybe not with the name, but with the results. Right. Name calling is a big one. Yeah. I found a poster I showed you. It's a takeoff on the shepherd fairy. Right. Obama political poster. But this one, it's a slightly different picture. He has his nose in the air and it says snob underneath. It's actually pretty funny. Yeah. Especially since he won. It's a lot funnier because he won, right? Yeah, true. I guess that was done before he won. Sure. And name calling is that's just typical playground stuff, but they do it on a large scale. Sure. Grown men and women in the political spectrum call people out. They'll use names to they'll use names like terrorist and traitor and like, evildoers stuff that nobody wants to be. Right. Not to pick too much on George Bush, but when you throw down words like axis of evil and evil doers, that's propaganda. Definitely purest form. Yes, it is. And it makes you wonder, like, what exactly is going on in Iran right now? How much propaganda we're experiencing from that. Sure. So that's one technique. Sure. You want to talk about the bandwagon? Well, bandwagon is pretty simple. It's like, get on the winning side, dummy. Right. Which actually that example makes name calling and bandwagon. Right. Nobody wants to feel left out. And again, this is pretty much a playground technique. Right. Which if you don't come with us, then you're in a group. Right. Or you're going to be left behind. All your friends and neighbors are going to be cooler than you, smarter than you, richer than you, whatever. Right. And everybody wants to be a part of something good. So yeah, basically, with the bandwagon technique, you're made to feel like you can be a part of something good if you join in, or be left behind if you don't. You got it. Thanks. I like this one a lot. The Glittering Generalities. Yeah, it's a great name. Yeah. This is really common in political propaganda, and that's when you combine words that have positive connotations with a concept that is beloved. So basically, no one's going to come out and denounce something that you call. And I have another example, and again, not to pick on Bush, but he was in office for eight years. In office for eight years. There's a lot of recent things you can point to, like the Patriot Act. Like, anyone who would come out and say, oh, the Patriot Act is bad, then what? You're not a patriot. Right. Being a patriot. Yeah. And the worst part is it worked. Yeah. Although, do you remember one of the original provisions was basically to turn postal workers into spies and the post office said, no, we're not going to do that. Right. And it got left out. But they wanted postal workers to keep an eye on what was going on to report on communities and individual people. Right. Yeah. So other words you can use in the glittering generalities are words like liberty and dreams and family. And you throw these words in there and God forbid you step up and say something that's anti family. Sure. Just because they tag that name to it. Yeah. What kind of terrorists are you? Right. Exactly. And all politicians do this. We're not going to single things out. It happens all over the place on both sides of the spectrum. Yeah. It's just that Bush was in office for eight years. Sure. Which I just said. I know. You should listen. Car stacking. Card stacking is exactly what it sounds like. It's stacking the argument in the favor of one side over another. And again, this is the one that we're factor mission really comes into play. Right. And it's most often seen in political campaigns where one candidate is like Broadwater. Have you ever seen Ollie G? Yeah. Did you ever see the barratt where he falls around that candidate, Jim Broadwater? Now, it's hilarious. At one point he tells a voter that Broadwater is talking to that if you do not vote for Broadwater, Broadwater will take power. It's hilarious. And he compares them to Stalin. Really? Yeah. And this is poor Republican guy running for city council midshind. I bet he lost it and he I don't know, I'd like to find that out. But yeah, card Stacking is basically just saying, here's our candidates great, great attributes. Right. Leaving out any bad stuff. Well, details and statistics, too. Like they'll throw out legitimate studies, but studies that don't mention the other study that can point out the exact opposite. Nice point, Chuck. Card stacking. Facebook. Yeah, it's exactly like Facebook. And then here's my favorite fear. That's the big one. So Chuck, say we were to point out that the guys who host Tech Stuff steal babies in America and then sell them to human traffickers in the Balkans. You're saying that Jonathan Strickland and Chris Paulette would do that? I'm just saying I've heard things. Okay. So, I mean, don't you think it would be a good idea to not listen to their podcast and all the people who are text stuff fans maybe come over and listen to us instead? Because we certainly don't steal babies and we would never sell any of the human traffickers if we did. Right. Propaganda. Great example. Josh things. Of course we'd have to do that on the Tech Stuff podcast so they'd hear it. Yeah, good point. Subliminal subliminal messaging. I'm sorry, I should say it's subliminally subliminal messaging. I feel like doing your bidding all of a sudden. Exactly. And that's one of the oldest tricks in the book. And that's basically images and words whispering. Yes. The oldest trick in the book. No. You know how it is. It's images and words that are so quick and abstract that you don't consciously recognize it. Again, we keep going back to politics because it's just so obvious with politics. But any campaign poster for anyone, from somebody running for school board to somebody running for president, they always have red, white and blue in them. They'll often have a star, or there'll be a wavy graphic that's kind of reminiscent of a flag. And none of these things are concrete. Like, you never see the candidate dressed as a Statue of Liberty. They're actually wrapped in a flag. It's a little more subtle than that, but it has the same effect. Obama symbol was exactly like that. Sure. The one that they designed, it was kind of looked like the wavy flag in the circle. It makes the O and snob. Right. So it doesn't. It does. I'll show you more closely. Okay. Actually, a really good way to kind of pick out this kind of propaganda, which is called transfer. Right? Right. Is to pretend you're from another country. Right. So all of a sudden, that wave what's that wave for? Or what's that star for? Like stuff we just take for granted that immediately because our neurons are like patriot. Patriot. Right. If you imagine you're from another country, suddenly you deconstruct these abstract images, and it seems a little clunky, clumsy. It doesn't have the same effect. What is wavy star exactly. In Soviet Russia, wavy star doesn't understand you. That's good. Thank you. That was Jacob Smirnoff. Wonder what happened to that guy. And then lastly, there's plain folks propaganda, which is kind of weak, actually. Yeah. That didn't strike me as propaganda when I read it. Like kind of the politician trying to seem like your average, ordinary next door neighbor American. I guess it's propaganda if the article says so. But it never struck me as that. Well, technically it is, because it's an omission of facts. That's true. Sure, the candidate loves fishing, but is he really fishing in some rinky dink rowboat that he rented from a local fisherman? Or is he on, like, an 80 foot yacht using babies that he bought off? The tech stuff, guys'bait. Right. Or did they set up some TV commercial where they did take him to that farm in the rinky dink robot and said, hey, excellent point, Ken. Most decidedly propaganda. Yes. So plain folks is propaganda, too. And, Chuck, the more you start looking or thinking about propaganda, the more you realize it is everywhere. It is everywhere, Chuck. How? Well, it's where you would expect it to be, which is in print, on the Internet, TV, radio, movies, you name it. Like I was talking about with the eighties movies in the cold war. I mean, every action movie that came out, the Russians were the enemy, pretty much. And then kind of later on, it became Middle Easterners were the enemy. Like, look who Rambo fought and who Rocky fought. Those are prime examples. Oh, yeah. He fought Russian buddy, helped the mujahideen. True. Aka the Taliban. He did what? In one of the Rainbow movies, the third Rainbow movie. And at the very end, they said that they dedicated the movie to the mujahideen freedom fighters and the mujahideen who we were funding to help fight the Russians in Afghanistan, turned into the Taliban. Wow. Chuck Norris has to say about that. Chuck Norris is not happy about that at all. He's been after Stallone since then. Right. And show them a thing or two. Yeah. So apparently, according to one of the professors interviewed in this article, broadcast media, like radio or TV is the most dangerous propaganda medium. Right. Because people tend to believe it. Well, not just that. There's no discourse. It's all one sided. It's all here, you and just this. Right. And also, it's very entertaining. Sure. Your average TV shows usually more entertaining than your average AP News article. Yeah, that's true. You know what I mean? But ironically, it's the AP News articles that are generally the least propaganda. Yeah, you're right. Because think about it, it's like fact. Quote fact. That's actually a quote, in effect. And then that's it. Right. It's pretty bare bones. I like political commercials. Those are great. Which one the big time propaganda where this candidate, the phone rings, your family, stuff like that. Do you remember the phone ringing one? I think it was a Clinton ad against Obama. It was one of the last ones she ran during the primary. Oh, yeah. And it was just a phone ringing. When the phone rings in the middle of the night, who do you want as president to answer something like that? Right. Yeah. That's definitely fear propaganda. Yeah. Those crack me up, though. I mean, the people that buy into those, that's what scares me. Sure. The commercials themselves, I get a kick out of it. I think it's hysterical. Yeah. That anyone wouldn't say, this is someone sided. What's mind bogglingly frightening is that it actually works on some people. So, Chuck propaganda also sometimes is not necessarily contrived. It just kind of comes out like, I spent a few years as a journalist, right. And I realized that it is really easy for your beliefs to creep into a story. Right. It doesn't matter whether it's a story about somebody who just turned 100 or about the war in Iraq. As unbiased as you try to be. Right. It's impossible to be totally objective. You're right. In this very podcast, we get taken a task occasionally by people that think we're Communists. Sure. Communists, anti religious, sexist, army worshippers, that kind of thing. Yes. But we're not any of those things. No, not really. If we are. We're sure not aware of it anyway. But your belief system informs your outlook. Right? Yeah. So just the very position you're taking, just the very approach to an article. There's 8100 countless different ways to approach an article. The one you choose, even if you're trying to be objective, that's a choice. That's a bias right out of the gate. Right. And you're going to choose the one that you identify with, that you understand more. Yeah. So, again, I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you're getting news, only get it from AP. Not a bad idea. Thank you. Chuck. You want to move along different types of propaganda. Well, let's talk about the Internet real quick. Okay. Because I find this interesting. The Internet actually has the potential to totally undermine traditional propaganda. Right? How so? Well, think about it. Like if broadcast programming is the most dangerous form of propaganda because there's no feedback, then the Internet would be the least dangerous form because there's nothing but feedback. Right. Social media has just opened the Internet up to everybody. Any crackpot, normal person, saint can put this stuff on the Internet and get opposing viewpoints out there. Sure. So you can conceivably just be a fully informed person and make your own decisions, which completely undermines propaganda. Right, right. The problem is facts spreading lightning fast just as much as that undermines propaganda, uninformed ideas or facts that aren't really facts can spread just as quickly big time. And that helps propaganda. Yeah. And the Internet is just rife with that kind of thing. Well, my solution snopes.com. Yeah, they're pretty good. So let's talk about the different types of propaganda and wrap this puppy up like a Christmas present. Religious propaganda was kind of where it all began, like we said earlier. And missionaries yeah. For centuries have been trying and they've been traveling to other countries, trying to recruit others to their faith. And this is a form of propaganda pamphlets and the posters that they hand out. And we're not saying that they're bad people and that they're spreading lies. What we're saying is that's a form of propaganda when you only evangelize the one side of the coin, and they do, when you go to these countries, tell people that this is the answer right here. Well, you could also make the case that another kind of propaganda the article points out, but doesn't join to religion. Thought reform is actually a form of religious propaganda as well. If you're running around worshiping, like, 80 deities and the Christians come along and say, no, there's just one we're monotheistic. Now, that's thought reform. Right, right. Yeah. Although generally they don't give out koolaid that's laced with cyanide. No, that's a very culture. But you know, those types of political, religious well, especially political and religious propaganda, they kind of underscore our divisive nature. Right. Like us versus them. Yeah, true. And actually, I took an anthropology class once in college and the professor challenged us to go a day, just one day, without using the words us or them or any variation on that theme. And I defy you to do it successfully. You can't start now. The day is half over. You have to start tomorrow. Just those two words. You can say we. No, no variation on the theme of us and us or them. Okay. Try it. It's tough. I'm going to forget about that as soon as I leave this. Yes, Chuck. The big one, though, of all of them is government propaganda. Right? Right. Which is illegal since 1951, officially. And if you think about it, that government propaganda is taxpayers paying to be brainwashed, which is why it should be illegal. Right? Yeah. And it has been since 1951, technically. But W, Mr. Bush in 2005 actually signed the Stop Government Propaganda Now bill to keep some blatant outright acts of propaganda committed by government agencies. Like when you pay television reporters to skew a message, like planting stories. Planting stories, exactly. Yeah. It also established some the audio and printed press communication state who the agency is that funded it, like paid for by blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that kind of thing. And we see government propaganda most prominently during times of war. Right. Like Hitler and the Nazis were masters of propaganda. He was the king of propaganda. He was in world history, I think. Yeah. He cut Germany off from the outside world. He sold radios for next to nothing. I don't think he was driving around in the back of a truck selling them. He made sure the prices were low so every German could afford one, so they could tune into his radio addresses and hear how great they were and how awful the Jews and everybody else was. The portrayal of what was going on. Like Germans living in other parts of the world were being abused at the hands of their host countries and things like that. And it was effective. Yeah. And they also made movies, the famous Nazi propaganda movies where they made out Jews to be rats and Hitler to be Godlike. Yeah. And they didn't like the Gypsies much either. Really? Or gays or Catholics. Yeah. You forget sometimes it wasn't just the Jews that were persecuted in the Holocaust. There's a lot of other groups. Yeah, that's true. And here in the US. Here state side, we had our own propaganda as well. And also, we should say on our very enjoyable sister podcast, stuff you missed in history class. They actually did an entire podcast on the Nazi propaganda machine. Yeah, people should check that out. Yeah, you can get that on itunes, too. But again, stateside we had our own propaganda. Some that have become pop icons. Right, yes. In World War II was when it really kicked up. Like if you think of the famous Uncle Sam I want you posters with Uncle Sam pointing, trying to get young American men to enlist in the army. Yes. That was new in the 40s. Yeah. And that was a big time. Propaganda posters were very effective back then. My favorite, I had two favorites. I know what one of them is. Which one? Rosie, probably. Rosie is pretty cool. Okay. But there was one that had somebody riding in a car by himself. Yeah. And it said it was for carpooling. Right. Ration gas and stuff. When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler. I know. How great would it be to have one of those posters now? Oh, I'm sure you can find at least a replica. Yes, that's true. The other thing about them is they're like great art. Oh, yeah. Propaganda posters have the best art. Yeah, I like that era. The other one I like is just I just can't believe it like that. These were up and on public display during World War II. There's a Japanese soldier using the butt of his rifle to smack an American POW in the chin and it says, what are you going to do about it? And below is the answer. And the answer, according to this propaganda poster, is stay on the job until every murdering jap is wiped out. You're kidding. It even has a little Government Office of Propaganda logo at the bottom. Wow. Look, I kid you not. That's something else. Yeah, it's a little nuts. So yeah, we go a little overboard during times of war. I liked Rosie. The riveter. That's who I thought you were going to mention. Have you seen my favorite mechanic as a woman over in Decatur? Yeah, they riff on that successfully too. Sure. Yeah. Rosie the Riveter was famous, obviously, because women at the time, during World War II were encouraged to help the war at home, on the home front by working in the taking these factory jobs that the men had to leave. Yeah. And she became like an iconic character. And one of the posters read, longing won't bring him back sooner. Get a war job. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it is. It's pretty cool. I saw another one. It was a woman holding a giant key and it said, food rationing is the key to the war effort. Right. And actually that was one of the things that I don't think you could predict that came out of propaganda, was women suddenly were put into their proper position of power. They were elevated to that kind of power. They were no longer demure little housewives. They were empowered to actually help with the war effort, get a war job or to ration food or do whatever. They suddenly had a role. And not just women, but blacks as well. There was a propaganda poster that said, like, United we win. And it was a black guy and a white guy working side by side decades before the civil rights movement. Yeah. So sometimes it's foreshadowing of social change. And possibly even a mechanism of social change that follows. Whatever the issue is, it's being propagandized. I think definitely in the case of women, I think World War II probably had a lot of good benefits for women, kind of having a voice for the first time or not the first time, but probably a really big girl voice for the first time. Yeah. And Chuck. That's propaganda, baby. Yes. You know. I had a movie idea. Script idea. When I was doing my screenwriting days. About a film student that gets. Like. He wins the big Student Film Award. And then all of a sudden he gets whisked away by the government to the secret layer. And they recruit young filmmakers to the Ministry of Propaganda and. Like. The moon landing was fake and all these things have been faked while we talked about that in another podcast. Yes, but this kid gets caught up in making these movies that are all false. Have you seen Wag, the dog? Yeah, it's a great one, too. Yeah. Sort of a riff on that. And I never wrote it, and I'm not going to. So if anyone out there is a screenwriter likes that idea, feel free. Yes. Just give a shout out to Chuck at the premiere. Right? Yeah. So, again, that's propaganda. That is right. So are we plugging anything? Do we have an ad? Nothing? Holy cow. That means we get to go right to listener mail. Josh, today, I think, since it would be appropriate to talk about Molly Oscki. Yeah. Our last subject matter there, we were talking about the women in World War II. We were. And also we mentioned that we have been called sexist and mommy worshippers. You want to read the letter in question? Yes. We actually got a couple of letters. One which we're going to read now, and one that was kind of nasty and mean, and we're not going to read that or we're not going to say that nasty, mean person's name. But this one was much more above board. This says, you probably have received a bunch of emails about this, but I want to let you know that Molly or Shansky is a woman. If you recall, she is the woman who developed the poverty line. But in your podcast, how much money do I really need to live? You referenced Ms Oshansky as a key. As a female graduate student of public policy with a specialization in poverty, I was so excited to hear you mention a woman who was so influential to the field. But then I was extremely disappointed when you got the gender wrong. Obviously, she had a right, to be sure. And I hope you make this correction on your podcast. And that comes from Cheryl, master and public policy candidate at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. And I wrote Cheryl back and thanked her for being kind. Since we had gotten the nasty letter calling us misogynistic freaks. Yeah. Thank you, Lily. It was a big mistake. We were wrong. And the research that we got actually referenced Molly Rashancy as a he. So it wasn't some big assumption on our part that it had to be a man. Wait, Chuck. Chuck, I've been thinking about this. I think at this point, we should make up a research team and lay this out on their feet. I don't think we should take any responsibility whatsoever. You ready? Ready. So, Chuck, it was our research team that really dropped the ball on this one. It wasn't you or I. We were misinformed. We did not assume, like a couple of readers or listeners have thought that. We didn't assume that it was a man just because it was some big policy. It wasn't us at all. We don't do that. But to make up for the failings of our crack research team, who've been chastised since we got this pointed out to us, well, fired. We fired them both. It's a different way of putting it in this economy. You want to say chastise? We didn't fire anyone. I'm just kidding. So we did a little research into Molly Oshensky. We found out she is dead. She died in April 2007. And she actually was quite a pioneer in her field. She worked for the Social Security Administration from 1958 to 1982. And as historian Alice O'Connor wrote in Poverty Knowledge, she was one of a respected but mostly invisible coda of women research professionals based at Social Security Administration and other government agencies during the post war years. And I think that's part of the problem. I think we as early 30 something well, one of us is in early 30 something in 2009, kind of underestimated what women were allowed to do, I think, in the 60s. Right. That's fair enough. Sure. Why? Because you don't hear much about it. No, that is the travesty. And I even thought when we were doing that podcast, like, Molly is a weird name for a guy, but I did, too. Still. I thought it was an Irish thing, and I thought Molly Ochansky, I could see a guy being named Molly O'shinsky. Right. So it was a mistake. I would say much more notable or noteworthy than being invisible but successful was that she actually has helped countless impoverished people in the United States absolutely. By creating this poverty line, which basically forces the government's hand into saying, okay, if you're below this, we're going to help you. Right. And this is largely due to her work as a mathematician and statistician trailblazer. He was a great man. He was. That's off to you, Mr. Roshinsky. So if you want to send Chuck and email taking up the task or pointing out an error or just say hi, whatever, any kind of gender confusion, if you want to call a sexist, mommy worshippers, whatever, we accept all comers. You can send that to stuffpodcast@howstuff.com for more on this and thousands of other topics, visit houseworks.com and be sure to check out the Stuff you should Know blog on the Housetopworks.com homepage brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Hey, it's summer, everybody, which means school's out, the sun is shining, the daylights longer, and best of all, there's plenty of time to get lost in a good, thrilling story. So whether you're road tripping or relaxing poolside, tune into the podcast series on Amazon Music My Favorite Murder from Exactly Right media, My Favorite Murder has something for everyone. Hosted by Karen Kilguera and Georgia Hardstark, this true crime comedy podcast will share stories that will have you wanting more before you know it. Listen to new episodes of my favorite Murder. One week early on Amazon music. Download the free Amazon Music app and listen today." |
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