Chuck
Appearances
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
But then when you scale up to 100 to 1,000 to 10,000, it becomes less manageable. And you're... infrastructure cost also is scaling up fairly proportionally.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
So the issue that I've seen is when a microservice stops becoming a microservice and it becomes a monolith service. to where you have now these 20 different or 40 different microservices that just have grown and grown and grown.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
And now you have 40 separate full-fledged Ruby on Rails applications that are so highly coupled and dependent on each other that would it have been better to just have built it into one beautiful, majestic monolith?
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
I think that's where Netflix is at. I don't know how many they have, but I've seen their data map of their microservices and communications. It looks like a whole globe of just jumbled spaghetti mess.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
The infrastructure scaling pricing that I was referring to is more on the database side. Because on a small tier database, that's really all the application needs. But because you have scaled it up to 50 or 100 microservices, you're not going to be able to connect to that same database instance.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
with the lower tier plan because of the number of max connections that's available on those various plans. You would have to either spin up multiple database servers, in which case you incur scaling costs there, or have one really large database server where you have multiple databases within there. And then you still incur a higher cost just for that max number of connections.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Now, AWS may have something different now where you can allow more connections, but each microservice would need at least its one own dedicated connection to the database instance.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Yeah, and the whole container idea instead of the virtual machines, I really do like. And I think that especially, even if you stick with a monolith version of your application to do auto scaling, you can more instantaneously respond to the demand coming in, opposed to provisioning a whole new virtual machine. So I'm really with you on there with using Docker containers and stuff like that.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Because I think that's... the proper way to do auto-scaling because you get instant reaction to your users instead of having to wait. Okay, we're at a 50% CPU usage load across all our VMs. We need to hurry up and add more servers, all automatically, of course. But then 15 minutes later, the server's provisioned and now it's ready. Well, that traffic's all said and done now.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Until you get half the developers using ARM, the other half using x86 platforms.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Yeah. I couldn't have said it better myself. I have an 8-core Mac Pro, 192 gigs of RAM. Thing is a monster. Then I have a 13-inch MacBook Pro M1 with 16 gigs of RAM, whatever it comes with. I can't tell a difference in performance. On my day-to-day tasks, I really cannot tell. The difference there is a huge price tag difference. It's insane.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
So the M1, the whole arm movement that Apple is doing, I think is amazing. And if they can keep it cost effective, then it's going to really make a huge difference in how we approach things.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
So I basically have a general rule of thumb when it comes to microservices. If this feature, so let's give a real world example. Let's say if I'm in the business of PDFs and whether I'm a government or whomever, and I want to have the ability to take in a PDF and then have it automatically do the form fill out based on the parameters that are coming in.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
So this is a very useful feature for one of the applications I'm developing. Within our same organization, this feature is also very useful for five other applications that we're developing. So because this feature can provide a lot of usefulness to these five different applications. And we can come to some kind of compromise or agreement on its API of how it should look.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
It should be taking a form post with a list of parameters. It should have an ID of a PDF that is stored on the database or wherever it's stored. Then we can have one code base that serves five applications. So I think that's a good use case of a microservice. It does one thing. It does it really well. And it is highly reusable, not only in my application, but in multiple other applications.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Yeah. So I have a little story that I'll try to make tangible to this. So I've had a number of dogs growing up and one of the dogs, you know, was a Border Collie. So the nature of the Border Collie is a herding animal.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
And if we had installed an invisible fence around our yard, it really would have confused the dog because that dog is meant to be more free and it would have hurt its nature, essentially. So we got a chain link fence, which was a physical, visible boundary around the yard. And I had another dog who was not a herding dog. They're more of a guard dog.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
So that dog wanted to be around me all the time. It was a Rottweiler Doberman mix, which I named her Kitty. But that's a different story. And I could let that dog... out of the yard, you know, into a open backyard and run free. And we never had to worry about her because she always quickly came right back to us because she wanted to be right there next to us.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
She wasn't interested in hunting or herding. So the idea of, in translating this back over to what we're talking about with microservices versus monoliths, I think that the monolith is more like that big open backyard without any boundaries.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
And if you're not careful, it's not a matter of if, but just a matter of when are you going to have an accident or a mistake on your hands because you have now gotten too much cross-contamination within your application. You weren't careful with the boundaries and And you broke a lot of single responsibility principles.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
And now things are too tightly coupled and intertwined in together and you have a mess. Whereas the fenced-in backyard is more like the microservices where you are forced to stay within this confined area. Which means you are forced to... think about and write the single responsibility principles because you don't have access to the outside world beyond your gated fence.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
And I think that if we are talking about a single application, that its code base is never reused anywhere else. So I think that we can train ourselves as developers to have more responsibility in how we are writing our code to not introduce a lot of this cross-contamination of logic, which really should be separated out.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
And by doing that, like Chuck said, with the lib or app services or interactors, whatever kind of naming you want to call it, but these plain old Ruby objects where you're encapsulating and building these virtual fences around that bit of logic, then you're able to create the idea of the microservices without breaking up the majestic monolith.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
I mean, let's face it. If you have a really pro team that follows wonderful practices, they're very consistent. And there's no hidden surprises. And if you create a monolith, then it's going to be very maintainable. It's going to be well-tested. And you're not going to have any problems. Take that and compare it to a team that is not very well-versed. They...
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
are not consistent and they're creating microservices, now you have an application which consists of 100 microservices and each one is its own nightmare. And it can go either way. You can have a team that's great with microservices, they're great with practices, and everything is consistent and isolated in these microservices, and this could be a great application.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
But then you have a team that's not as well-versed, and they are just creating an insane monolith that is just unmaintainable. So it's a healthy balance of choosing the right tool for the job and making sure that you have the team and budget to match as well as the infrastructure budget to host, because as we said, there could be differences in which direction you go.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
So overall, I think that because I work primarily on Ruby on Rails applications,
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
microservices doesn't really have a fit in my world because i think the convention over configuration that rails has provided me plus the practices that i have developed over the past 10 12 years has really negated the need for microservices in my world but that could be a different story for someone else where microservices is the answer for them yeah i also just want to uh
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Yeah, sure. So my first pick is a Pack Tool Gecko Gauge. If you've ever had to work with hardy board, which is the cement fiber boards that you put on the side of houses, then this tool is amazing. It allows you to just clamp on to the previous fiber board that you installed and then set the new one just right on top. It'll be completely leveled to the other one.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
It is a life-saving tool for working with hardy board. And the whole reason why I picked this up is because I'm building a shed underneath our deck. And I'm now getting around to the part where I'm doing the siding to make it look like the rest of the house. I was not going to be able to do this job without that tool. So it's amazing. And on the date of recording this podcast, today is April 1st.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
I launched a new tutorial site. So I've been doing Drift and Ruby for many, many years, over 280 episodes I've recorded on Ruby and Ruby on Rails. And so today I've launched a new training site and that is Drifting Cobalt. So you can go to driftingcobalt.com and you'll see that it's a completely satire site for April 1st. But...
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Hey, if it picks up one subscriber, that's like 10% of the entire Cobalt user base. So I'd say that's when.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Nice. It's not a real punch card. The real punch cards were more like the... This is... This looks like a copybook description.
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
And so just because I can, I want to push back just a little bit and just to get some more clarification. So when we deploy a now isolated bit of code as a microservice,
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
infrastructure speaking what is that going to look like as far as the database level is concerned are we going to spin up an additional database so now we have a whole new database server with a new database on there or would we just create a new database within a server and
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
So if we're running Postgres, we have one instance of Postgres or a cluster, and then we have a new database for this microservice, and that microservice only communicates to the one database, or do they all share the same global database?
Ruby Rogues
Architectures and Microservices with Darren Broemmer - RUBY 657
Yeah, so kind of where I'm going with the whole database side of things, because I agree, if you do have a microservices environment, then you should have a separate database for each microservice. But the issue kind of comes into play is when you start off with just a few microservices, it's fine. It's easy to manage.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Yeah, I've never understood this whole thing of rewriting stuff that does the exact same thing, but in a new stack. I'm like, what's the point? It's just wasted effort. So yeah, if it works, just leave it, let it work.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Yeah, the simplicity side of things is huge for me. And I also have an allergy for dependencies. I hate pulling dependencies. I will need to have a really, really good reason before I add something to my gem file. it would be like, literally, I do not want to solve this problem by myself. And that's when I'll pull in a gym.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Because I think most of the time, you could just spend two or three hours and build something yourself that specifically solves your problem. And it'll save you so much time in the long run, because you don't have an external dependency that you don't control.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Yeah, just pulling on this dependency thread a little bit more, like going back to your authentication example, I do my own auth. I don't like devices. I don't like pulling in anything for that, but the way I see it,
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Once I've built it once, I can then, I know this is blasphemous to some people, but just copy paste the code into other apps and then tweak it as necessary because sometimes you need to just tweak things a little bit for the use case at hand is, And once you have something working, if you've written it well, that code should be reusable, I think.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
And that's something I kind of think about a lot is that trying to maximize the reusability of code. That's not necessarily... in a way that it can be extracted to a library because it's different when you've got code living in your app and when you're kind of extracting something because when you put it in the gem, it's more of a black box. But yeah, copy paste code.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Once you've solved the problem of authentication on your own, you know everything about how that code works and you can just copy it into other projects. I don't know what you think about that kind of approach.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Feels like it maybe should. There's going to be something in Rails 8, some kind of generator, I think, that gives you a skeleton of authentication. And I think I remember seeing a tweet from DHH a couple of years ago that they might do something similar to has secure password, but for one-time pass keys. There's an authenticator app. What's it called? TOTP, I think, the time-based ones. Yeah.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
I think there's some, I saw some chatter about like a has secure password flavor of that kind of thing. I don't think anything's actually gone in, but yeah, it'd be good to have for sure.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Yeah, most apps are crud apps. I think it's just something people don't like saying. My client at the moment is actually is a startup and we're completely rails. So there is at least one startup. And I had briefly spoken to another startup a couple of months ago about working with them and they were going to be completely Rails as well.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
The way I see it, if there's something that you can't really do in Ruby or in Rails, it's usually something with quite a small footprint and you can just extract that into its own service and build it using something else. Like the PDF thing you said, you can't do that in Ruby. Build that one tiny thing using something else and then just call it.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Yeah, I think boot camps have just kind of generally moved away from teaching web fundamentals. It'd be good just to have them go back to teaching literally the basics of web development, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and obviously I'm biased, but Ruby and Rails. Because last year I helped out with the Rails World website because the Rails Foundation wanted a junior developer to build it.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
And they wanted someone to mentor the juniors. I helped out with the mentoring. And she was a boot camp graduate. She graduated from LeWagon quite recently. And they had a little bit of Rails and quite a lot of React in the curriculum, if I remember correctly. And I remember showing her what you could do with just a custom element in JavaScript. And it was like, whoa, this is so easy.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
And it's like, yeah, I just wish boot camps would teach that kind of stuff a bit more. Yeah.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Yeah, it's also adding a little bit of just short-term versus long-term. Like, yeah, learning React will get you a job in the short-term, but then when React goes out of vogue, you won't have that foundation of basics to kind of fall back on and then learn something else. But that's a different discussion, I think.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Yeah, I'm a customer and I just love it because I'm completely technical. This bookkeeping accounting stuff is just so alien to me and I can just click around and learn stuff from free agents. So it's been a boon for me as a freelancer to have that. So what was the motivation behind going to the cloud? Because obviously with 37signals, all the rage is going the other way.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
then it would that's it it's kind of like it's almost game over at that point i think but yep i'm a big fan of render.com they're a bit expensive but uh in terms of like ease of deployment i just uh i find it to be heroku but for 2024 right yeah seems to be pretty popular
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Yeah, easy one this week. Haggis Ruby, new conference in Edinburgh on the 24th of October. Both Oli and I are speaking, so come for his talk, stay for mine. what else is there anything else I'm about to re-watch the big short with my friend this evening so non-tech big short if you haven't seen it go watch it yeah I think don't think about anything else today awesome Valentino what are your picks
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Now that's very, very thorough. And so yeah, you left in 2022, and then did you go immediately to 37signals after that?
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
The reason I asked about the timing was because I was curious about, did you just help free agent get onto the cloud, then switch jobs and help another company get off the cloud?
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
Fair enough. So I'm not saying this just to blow smoke up your ass, but FreeAgent has one of the best web UIs of modern software as a service app that I've used. And I was chatting with some of the FreeAgent guys at Brighton Ruby a couple of months ago, and I said this to them as well. I'm curious from your point of view as a leader, because you grew the company through the 2010s.
Ruby Rogues
Cloud Migration, Server Costs, and CDN Challenges - RUBY 650
How did you avoid this whole hype cycle of React and stuff? Because the way I see it, most web UIs are shit because people use React and shoved it where it has no business being. It's a great tool for the right job. But obviously, I'll avoid the rant right now. But how did you avoid the hype cycle? Just keep things simple. And as such, it's got a very snappy UI.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
Sounds like it was a people problem because they snoozed the alert.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
Yeah, I think we've all been there before where we get an alert from whatever monitoring that we're doing and the error looks serious, but you kind of read it and like, oh, you know what, this is probably just a one-off situation. And then turns out it is actually a big deal that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. So I know I've been there before and
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
And, you know, the hard times to really track this, I use Sentry for my error tracking. And so I get email text notifications with that. And one of the nice things about it is that it'll show the number of occurrences, whether they are unique or not. So I can see if, okay, this particular error is only coming from one user.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
Or I could see we're getting 100 errors that's coming from 100 different users. So there's a more widespread problem. So I think definitely getting the notifications, but then having proper analytics on your errors so you can actually see the scope of how big this is can really kind of weigh in on the importance.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
I think it all depends on what you're doing. So if you have a heavy JavaScript front end kind of deal, and if you also have a lot of Ruby backend code, I know Sentry can handle both of those situations. Other people will go with another solution. So I personally found Sentry to be my flavor of choice, but mileage will vary based on what other people have.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
And if you're going to use Slack for your error notification, I'm not dissing that at all. I have a few applications that actually do that. It just triggers a Slack notification. But if you're only capturing the error message and not a stack trace along with it, then that error message is pretty much useless.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
Because it tells you you have a problem somewhere in your millions of lines of code, but we're not going to tell you where it's at.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
There's a little off topic, but you know what issue I found with that is I use my cell phone for everything. It's where I have my email, get my text messages, phone calls, and all that stuff. And so I would like to keep it on full volume late at night when I'm sleeping. So if a critical does arrive, then I can get notified.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
But my issue is that I would never get any sleep because my phone would just go off. So I need to figure out some way that I can set up for a particular phone number or something to override any kind of sleep mode or whatever that I have on my phone right now or get a different phone for that purpose. That seems a bit overkill.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
All right. I need to quit being lazy then and just do that.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
Well, that's no fun.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
Yeah, that should work well for my use case because no one ever calls me.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
Now, I have the Verizon call filter, which actually works pretty well. It's reduced the 15, 20 phone calls I would get a day down to like one.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
Yeah, I got burned by that pretty bad one time. My wife was over at the pool. She had forgotten her phone or she had lost it. And so she borrowed someone's phone there. And because that random person wasn't in my contacts, I never got her phone call. My phone just stayed silent. So I had to disable that pretty quick. That'll teach you.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
Yeah, sure. So went to the doctor the other week and they said I had high blood pressure, which I attribute to raising kids and them stressing me out. So I got this blood pressure monitor that syncs up with my iPhone. So it keeps a historical track of it. And it's been really nice. And I guess it's accurate. I don't know. It says it's high. So I guess it's doing something.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
So it is the Withings and it's a wireless rechargeable blood pressure monitor.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
No, it's just like the doctor's one where they put it, roll up your sleeve, put it on your arm and, you know, it starts to squeeze your arm. It's not like a wristwatch or anything. So I do it a couple of times a day. That'll raise your blood pressure.
Ruby Rogues
The Sounds of Silence: Lessons From an API Outage with Paul Zaich - RUBY 652
And so was this something that could have been caught by automated tests?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Yeah, and the Boddingtons, Murphys, Beamish, Tetleys, what else, Wexford, Bellhaven, and I'm sure we've missed some, but they all use the widget technology to deliver that pub-drawn flavor to your lips right there at home.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
You got anything else? I got nothing else. I'm sure we got some stuff wrong. There's some beer aficionados that are like, not quite right, guys. Whatever. I think you should say the thing. Okay. Short Stuff is out.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
That's right. They make it really easy to sell access to content on your websites like online courses, blogs, videos, and memberships. You can earn recurring revenue by gating your content behind a paywall even. Simply set the price and choose whether to charge a one-time fee or subscription for access.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
OK. Anyway, get widgets. Everybody thinks it's basically a spinoff of the word gadget, which is probably true. We don't know the true etymology, but I believe it was in a play in 1924 where they specifically in the play talked about, like, we're in the widget business. And that may be, like, the first time that anyone had ever used it like that. But then Guinness came along and said –
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
well, you know what, everyone talks about widgets as just a thing you make, a nameless thing you make at any company. We're going to make a real thing, and we're really going to call it a widget and get it patented as such.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
That's right. I think we should prep people that this simple, simple little short stuff was a cause of a lot of emails and consternation between us today, right? Is it simple?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
I doubt it because it's not full of air. Okay. And it's heavier. I was just making a joke.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
I bet they've done that in Ireland. And by the way, Guinness calls these officially within the Guinness company. They call it a smoothifier.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Well, let's talk a little bit about a guy named Michael Ash. In 1951, Michael Ash joined the Guinness Company. He was a mathematician. He was a master brewer. He was a big believer in science. And he was like, hey, there's all these beers that are made with carbon dioxide, and it's that CO2 that dissolves in the beer. that makes it fizzy when you open it up.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
When the can is closed, the pressure inside is much higher than the pressure outside. So when you open that thing up, there's a pressure drop, and the agitation of pouring it makes that CO2 come bubbling out, and that's where you get your foamy head on a beer.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
He was like, this cask Guinness is smooth and creamy, and CO2 just doesn't do it if we're going to try and put this stuff in pubs and eventually in cans. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
That's right. And you know what? I think that's a good little cliffhanger.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
So let's take a break and we'll talk about the magic inside the Guinness can and glass right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
That's right. Just go to squarespace.com slash stuff for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code stuff to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
All right. So where we left off, Michael Ash had discovered that nitrogen, along with – it doesn't replace the CO2. It's a mixture of the carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Right. But nitrogen isn't absorbed into the beer like carbon dioxide is. So it has the same pressure of just a regular beer, but it has a lot less – CO2.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
And so it's not as fizzy, which is not what you want out of a Guinness anyway, because that nitrogen is making up a great deal of that pressure inside the can.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
That's right. So the next step was like, how do I make this happen in a can? It seemed like an impossibility until a guy named John Lunn, L-U-N-N, a master distiller, created the widget. The patent, I believe Guinness eventually filed for the patent in 69. for an improved method of and means of dispensing carbonated liquids from containers.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
It began as Project Dynamite, but apparently that was problematic for customs because it said Project Dynamite on all the paperwork and stuff. Are you serious? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So they changed it to Project Oak Tree.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Right. They changed it to Project Nuclear Waste. No, Project Oak Tree I think was a reference to the original Project Acorn from Guinness. So – They wanted to get these cans right. You can get Guinness in a bottle, but it's not the same beer at all. It's a completely different beer.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Oh, Josh. I'm taking you to England next week.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Well, maybe you just don't understand the concept of Guinness. I mean, Guinness is supposed to go down like a milk and not a fizzy carbonated beverage. They call it the surge and settle. It pours in and you just see it gently falling to the bottom and you get this milky foam at the top.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Yeah. And like that's why I could always drink a lot of Guinness because it didn't it didn't fill you up and make you super gassy and burpy.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Yeah. Oh, man. Go out and get a four-pack and crack the can open and then just dump it in the glass as hard as you can. Just turn it upside down.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
And it won't overflow or anything. It will get to the top and just stop and then start settling.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Yeah, I saw the Nitro Surge. I don't think they sell them here yet. But it's like a – I think it's like a mechanical device. Like does it have a battery in it even? I'm not fully sure. I stopped looking into it when I realized how much further it was taking me away from the widget. You know what I mean?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Yeah, I mean, there was the word, first of all, we need to thank our old buddy Brian Didsbury. Oh, right. The boom operator on the Stuff You Should Know TV show. So great. Who comes to our live shows, still a friend. He texts me all the time trying to get me to play Red Dead Redemption with him online. He texts me Simpsons quotes. Does he really? Mm-hmm. Oh, did he text you about this too?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
All right. Let's get back to the widget. Okay. So the widget is a little plastic ball. And I think this is where we got hung up earlier. I don't know if you saw my most recent email. I think it's a matter of semantics because I kept saying that the – and Guinness on their website says it's a nitrogen-filled sphere. And you're like, it's not filled with nitrogen.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
I think it's just semantics because they don't literally fill this ball with nitrogen and then drop it in the can. Okay.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
It is – because it has a hole in it. You drop it in there and then fill the can with nitrogen, and then that ball fills up with nitrogen and beer.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
And it stays in this tiny, it's basically a little mini turbo jet. So when you crack that beer, it's a little mini ball with higher pressure than the rest, than even what's inside the rest of the can.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
And so when you crack that beer and all that pressure changes, just like a regular beer, it comes shooting out of that little tiny hole in the plastic ball and provides this little extra boost of nitrogen, like a little beer jet, agitating everything to create even more bubbles.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
I think it was the semantical thing when people say it's filled with nitrogen. It is. But as a virtue of the canning process.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
They don't like fill it up and go like, quick, throw it in there.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Yeah, it's really ingenious, though. I mean, it's got this tiny little hole. And imagine a little ball filled with like nitrogen infused beer being jetted out of this tiny little hole as you're pouring as you open and pouring this beer. It's so simple.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
It's ingenious and so ingenious that in 2004, they did a survey of almost 9000 people and they voted that the Guinness widget was a greater invention than the Internet.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
I mean, it's something to put on your website.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
Let me ask you this. Have you ever had any like cream stouts? Yeah. Like Boddington's or Murphy's or any of those?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
I think that's, to my mind, it's a misnomer because stout sounds heavy because it's a big dark beer. But it's because it's not heavily carbonated like a lager. Like it doesn't fill you up like that. It doesn't make you gassy and burpy. It's like drinking a big thick milk, which may make you feel full, but it's not from like gassy full.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
I haven't. I mean, I don't drink a lot of beer anymore, period. And I went through a big Guinness phase in the 90s, starting in college and through New Jersey. And in fact, that brings me to another little factoid here. The Guinness uses a floating widget since 1997. And I was like, oh, that explains it. Because in the 90s, we cut open the can because we were like, what is that in there?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
OK. Yeah. He texted me a couple of days ago and he's like, hey, man, how about one on the Guinness widget? I was like, done, buddy. It's a good idea for sure. It is. And thanks to Guinness dot com. How stuff works. Conservable, conversable economist, petroleum service company. Where else? YouTube.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Guinness Widget
And it was fixed to the bottom of the can. So it was pre-97. And during COVID with supply issues, they fixed it to the bottom of the can then as well. But otherwise, it's been a floating widget.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
And he actually was one of those deals where you sell the patent rights, but then you come on board. as a sort of spokesman and salesperson. So he led the Rovetta Bakery machine division, selling these things to more and more bakeries. But he never became like some huge name. I think there are many, many more inventors of very common items that are much more well-known.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
He lived a very quiet life in Louisiana. And I think he retired in 71 and passed away at, what, close to 80?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
I don't know what year it was, though. Do you know?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Yeah, so there you have it with sliced bread, right?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
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Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
That's amazing. I think it's pronounced bink.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Well, it may have been since they were in Iowa. A lot of people, you know, change their very German or French or whatever pronounced names to more American sounding. Sure. Like Clark. What was Clark? Flark. I think Bryant was probably O'Brient at some point.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Well, how weirdly inappropriate.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
I said tens of thousands, but yeah, that's a little more specific.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Yeah. So, I mean, you can listen to our bread episode. We don't need to go over all that. But suffice it to say, for 29,900 years-ish, people were generally tearing off chunks of bread. That's where we get the term breaking bread. There were sandwiches. I believe the first, like –
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Credit for the real sandwich goes to Rabbi Hillel the Elder, who put lamb and bitter herbs in between two pieces of matzo, the Hillel sandwich. And then in 1840, a woman, Miss Leslie, Eliza Leslie, published Directions for Cookery, in which she talked about what's thought to be the first ham sandwich. where she talks about cutting slices of bread very neatly.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
So people were slicing their bread at home. It's not like they were like, I want to make a sandwich, but I just tear it off in these big chunks and I don't understand. People were home slicing bread to make sandwiches. But that all changed on July 7th, 1928, right?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
You're calling him Rohwetter.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
That's right. It's very sad. It took him a long time to get back up to speed. I do think we should point out that this guy was a jeweler. He was not in the food business at all. He had an ophthalmology degree. Yet he became a jeweler and had three jewelry stores that he owned. But he was an inventor and he would sell those jewelry stores.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
And that's what financed his, I guess, just strange idea to slice and package bread.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Should we take a break? Yes. All right. I'll be right back.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
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Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Yeah, they were half inch slices because he did a lot of research and came up with a half inch is sort of like the perfect uniform width for a piece of bread for a sandwich or whatever else you want to do with it, I guess. Yeah. And he sold that first slicer to a guy named a friend of his named Frank Bench, who was a baker in Missouri at a place called the Chillicothe Baking Company.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
And that was the first one sold. The second was sold to another baker named Gustav Poppendick. And this is the guy who improved it. He was like, hey, you got these slices that are coming out, but they're all falling apart. He came up with a way to slice it where they stayed, you know, packaged together. They stayed fresher longer, and it just made the wrapping process much easier.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
That's right. Big thanks to historyofbread.com, history.com, our old friends at howstuffworks.com, and the surprisingly instructive goldmedalbakery.com.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Yeah, I wonder if Rowbetter was like, have you seen a king cake? They got a freaking plastic baby in those things. Right. You can deal with a hat pin.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
It wouldn't surprise me. So the reference, the first reference to sliced bread in print apparently was in 1928 when that local paper from Frank Bench's bread company there in Missouri had an article that said sliced bread is made here. That was the headline. I'm sorry. It was an advertisement. Sliced bread is made here.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
And they are, of course, the home of the original sliced bread there in Missouri, which is quite a claim to fame, I'm sure. But when this stuff came out, it wasn't like everyone was like, oh, my God, this is the best thing since whatever the previous best thing was. People are like, this is weird because they had been slicing their own bread. They didn't know what to think about it.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
They had to convince people to get on board, to get bakeries on board. And who got on board was – And generally, homemakers, which at the time was largely women, these women who were packing lunches for husbands and kids, they were like, this is incredible. You have no idea how much easier this is. And I don't have kids arguing about different size slices. And Johnny's thing is bigger than me.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
And this sandwich looks janky because the bread slopes at the end. And I got a small piece and a big piece. And it's made everything quicker and streamlined my routine. And this is the new best thing.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Great, because this is about sliced bread. You've heard the term, of course, the best thing since sliced bread. And oddly enough, well, not oddly, but sliced bread has been around less than 100 years, even though bread has been around for tens of thousands of years.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Yeah, I got six kids. I got a husband. I got a divorced neighbor who doesn't understand how to make a sandwich. Art. Yeah, Art's divorced. He doesn't know how to make a sandwich. Everyone wants toast. Everyone wants sandwiches. You can't take this away from us.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Yeah. I mean, didn't the government step in and literally try to stop sliced bread?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Best Episode Since Sliced Bread
Yeah. He put on his canvas wax, his wax canvas field jacket. Right. And he marched out of the room. His veiled backet. Thank you for getting on board. So back to Roveta. He sold his patent rights to a company called the Micro Westo Company in Iowa. I think we didn't mention he was – I think he was from Iowa, right? Davenport. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
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Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Yeah, for sure. If you look at the current use of the term, as we know and love it, it came about in the 18th century, pretty late in 18, well, I guess kind of mid. In 1853, that's when they were talking about feed and starve as far as cold and fever go.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Yeah. You know, that is proof to me that people back then were dumb. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Yeah, I guess they were basing it on if you have a fever, then you don't want to eat hot food. I guess they didn't eat a lot of cold foods back then.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
And if you're cold, you want to warm yourself up because there was only hot food available.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
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Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
That's right. Squarespace also makes it really easy to sell access to content on the website that you build, like online courses, blogs, videos, and memberships.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
S-Y-Y-Y-Y-S-K-S-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K Okay, so people have basically always said that this was a bad idea. There was a writer in Gentleman's Magazine in 1785 that said it was perhaps more destructive to mankind than the plague itself, this advice, which is definitely overstating things. But – People these days say, no, that's not good advice.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
That's right. Call it old wives tale edition because this is about feeding a cold and starving a fever, which is the old wives tale that when you have a cold, you should, and originally started out as stuff a cold, like eat as much as you can. And then if you have a fever, you should try and not eat very much at all.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
First of all, if you have a cold, you may not want to eat very much. You may not be very hungry. So, like, for God's sake, don't just make someone stuff themselves full just because they're sick with a cold. It's not going to do anything for you.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Yeah, if your metabolism is kicking in in a substantial way, it's going to, you know, if you're just laying around in bed, that'll make you eat up more of your calories and nutrients than you that you have in your body. So you're going to want as much as you can. So if you're hungry, cold, fever or whatever, by God, eat something or drink something.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
You definitely need to stay hydrated, even if you're not hungry. There are plenty of ways to get, you know, nutrients and liquid into you.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Yeah. Pretty neat. Fevers are no fun, but I love when I'm sick and the fever happens, I'm like, okay, this is my body doing its thing, so I feel good about it.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Exactly. It didn't feel great, but there's no better feeling than like breaking that fever, you know?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Yeah, that same article from Gentleman's Magazine from way back when suggested some other things of the time. Barley water, which sounds not too bad. Small beer. You ever seen those little baby beers that are like eight ounces or whatever?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Well, I don't know, but that makes sense.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
We called, me and my friends, Eddie and Allison, called those tiny beers queets. I don't know. I think Allison made up the word, and it just kind of stuck. And the fun thing about drinking those is you look like Andre the Giant.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
What else? Apple water, linseed tea, toast in water. That may be the toast in water. Remember that?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
That's right. They starved. Well, I guess fasted. Same thing. Sure. For both groups for 24 hours. And then the cold feeders, they gave a meal replacement drink. So not hot food in this case. And so after they had this sustenance, I guess, their blood levels of an immune protein called interferon gamma increased. Went really, really sky high. Average increase of 450 percent.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
And interferon plays a role in regulating our response to infections in our immune system. So you would think like, hey, eating is like exactly what you want to do.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Yeah, by an average of almost 400 percent compared to the 450 for the other. And I think there was one patient whose fasting levels rose more than 1100 percent.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
And this is also an important part of our immune response, but it's different kinds of immune responses. So if you're thinking like – Well, hey, if I starve myself, then this one's going to go up. You don't know which cells you need. So it's not sort of a roulette game you should try and play by starving yourself.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Yeah, because what you want is a little bit of both and ideally more of both, but not a whole lot of one and a lot less of the other.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Feed A Cold, Starve a Fever
Yeah, I'm not sure about this one. He said the most exquisitely slender diet you should have when the disease is very sharp. So I'm not quite sure what disease he's talking about there. So I'm not sure if that counts.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
Can you believe that? I mean, they're venomous, they're giant, and they are invading, but come on.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
Yeah, for sure. So the scientific name of these beautiful, beautiful spiders are Nephila clavata. And they are from East Asia. And they got over here like a lot of things get over here, which is in like shipping containers and stuff. A lot of times it's like lumber. That's how you get a lot of insects coming in.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
And they came over from East Asia and really made a home here in the southeast since I think 2013 is when they first spotted them in Georgia.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
Well, you're also seeing a lot of them now because the adults come out and spin their webs in August, September, October.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
Yeah, I mean, they're big, they're orb weavers, so they're going to weave those big, beautiful webs that, I mean, their webs can be 10 feet wide. The one I almost walked into the other day, like face first, was probably about four feet wide and strung between two outdoor umbrellas that were not close to each other. So I don't know if that part counts as the width or not.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
If that does, it was more like eight feet wide. But if you've seen these things and you said like, oh, that's just a garden spider. We have those when I was growing up. What are you talking about, guys? Not the same spider. The garden spider looks a lot like it, but there are some differences because they're, well, different spiders. Garden spiders, the females are bigger than the males.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
And as far as the markings go, the garden spiders have yellow and black basically only. And the Joros have yellow and dark blue with a little bit of red on their belly.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
Um, I mean, I've walked through some some spider webs in my day. Like you do that a lot when you're like backup backpacking because you don't see him on the trail. So that happens a lot. And here that like I walked through one earlier just kind of on my arms. But it wasn't, you know, the nightmare scene where it's you realize it three inches from the spider being on your face kind of thing.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
That is. Is that a good time for a break? I think so. All right. We'll take a break and we'll be right back after I go take a quick shower.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
That's right. And if you think, you know, how far north are they going to get right now? And I read an article, I think, from June 24 that said West Virginia is about as far north as they've gone so far, except for a satellite population in Baltimore. So they, I guess, got on a container, went to Baltimore, and were like, this isn't so bad.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
I think one of the things we didn't mention that, you know, since they're so native to Georgia especially, or not native, I guess, but invaded in Georgia first, the University of Georgia has done a lot of studying on them. And they found that it turns out these guys can live in a lot colder weather than they previously thought they could. So they'll be to you soon, New Jersey, New York, and beyond.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
You know, I just saw a Joro spider today eating, either eating a bee or fighting a bee. I don't know what was going on, but it was tangling with a bee.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
I think a lot of people have that reaction. There's something. And not only that, but the phrase, take a lover, it's just like. Yes. It's so gross to me.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
Oh, goodness me. You need some of that. Eye bleach. Studio 54 joke.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
Oh, goodness. How did this get so dirty all of a sudden? All right. So they live close to each other. The males are trying to get the attention. They may float on little cobwebby type things and just be like, hey, look over here. And the reason they don't just jump up in a web and say, let's get this thing over with. is because the female will probably kill the male and eat it.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
So they're walking a very fine line trying to get some attention without being eaten. So the University of Georgia professor said, you know, a lot of times, like while the female is eating something, they might just walk up and say, hey, are you enjoying that? What do you think of me?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
But, my friend, should people be killing these things because they're invasive?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
No. I think they're basically saying, hey, there's plenty of stink bugs, so that's fine. It's not like they're killing off the honeybees. And if they do bite you, you might get a little local reaction, but it's not the kind of venom that's going to do any kind of harm to you, really.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: Joro Spiders
You should reach into all the hidey holes with those things on.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
I think one foot was bigger than the other one too. Good Lord. I thought it was a very strange little add on.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
So they contend he was never like a Swedish resident? No.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Yeah. So he could have spoke Swedish. That's what I just wonder about like ice wall climbing and stuff. He could probably do that in Sweden.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Yes. Yeah. All right. So maybe one day we'll know. Maybe. I mean, we found out the Somerton man's identity, right?
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Yeah, it's not like Somerton, man, because that was the most interesting thing about that was the mystery of who he was. It wouldn't care. It wouldn't matter if this guy was indeed Albert Johnson, who was his alias. It's a remarkable story that started in July 1931 when this guy, Albert Johnson, came and moved there. They think he may have come from Sweden.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Yeah, I think we read a listener mail because we got like 10,000 Australians writing us.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
according to certain people who talked to him here and there. But he was a man of very few words, as we'll see, when he arrived in the vast remote area of the Northwest Territories near Fort McPherson and built a little 8-by-10-foot cabin near the Rat River.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Yeah, I mean, these are the Mounties. So these guys are not messing around. The story is a little confusing because everywhere you look, it's a little different. But from what I gathered, there were three total visits. One visit when he basically said, get the heck out of here and pointed a gun at them. A second visit when two guys came back. And this time he supposedly refused to talk at all.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
And when they went to look through his windows, he just covered his windows up and ignored them.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
I guess four total because the third one was when those two guys plus two more, I think it was Alfred King and Joe Bernard and two more guys, came back with warrants, forced the door over, and he shot King and a brief firefight ensued. And then finally the fourth visit when they brought a bunch of guys with dynamite and camped out for three days outside his cabin.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Yeah, I saw that it was like a 60-mile hike just to get to his place. So the fact that they came back four times when this guy probably could have opened the door the first time and said, all right, I won't mess with their traps anymore. And that probably would have been the end of it.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
But, yeah, he managed to evade them on this manhunt by stepping in caribou tracks and from these storms that would come through. And maybe that's a good time for a break.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Hey, everybody. Chuck and Josh here. And I was recently a guest once again on one of my favorite podcasts. It's called The Puzzler with old pal and friend of the show, AJ Jacobs. AJ gives really fun and funny word puzzles to guests like me, like Ken Jennings, like Dax Shepard, and hopefully like Josh because he would be so great on this show.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Oh, you got to be on it. It's a lot of fun. It's sort of like Wordle or Connections, but for your ears. And I think we should play everyone just a little clip. It's a puzzle that I have to convert movie titles from the metric system back to their actual title. Oh, wow. From my second appearance on the puzzler right now. Nice.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
That's right. The mad trapper of Rat River, a.k.a. perhaps, I don't even know about perhaps, almost certainly Canada's most infamous unknown person on the lam and the largest manhunt in Canada's history conducted to try and get this guy.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
All right, this is going to be great.
Stuff You Should Know
Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
So subscribe to The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs to tease your mind and tickle your funny bone.
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Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
That's right. They got a pretty legendary WW1 Canadian fighter pilot named Wilfred Wap May to come in. A little side note here, Wap May was in the dogfight that ended the Red Baron's life. So a very sort of famous Canadian fighter pilot flying above for the first time, seeing if he could just spot trails from above.
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Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Yeah, supposedly this is one of the really first big news stories to be broken via electronic media. So you've got your first search and rescue, or I guess not search and rescue, search and destroy mission featuring a plane. You've got the first big news stories breaking on radio for the first time.
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Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
One of the weird parts of this case, I said he was a man of few words, is as the story goes, this guy didn't say a word. The whole time. Like there was never like, you know, it's my right to be here. You know, get away. I'm just trying to live. Like supposedly this guy said nothing to any of them.
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Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Yeah, I think the Lusho people were the ones who initially filed the complaint. Did you see which tribes helped out in the search?
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Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
So another part of the kind of a fun fact of this story is or at least part of the lore is that at one point they had him pinned in a steep canyon and he supposedly scaled a near vertical wall of ice basically to get out of there.
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Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
That's right. They got him finally after this long, long manhunt, a very successful evasion for a long time. But, yeah, they eventually got him. No one. I mean, part of the you know, the second part of this is just the mystery. Like not only who was he literally, but like who was this guy to move way out there?
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Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
To not, you know, they supposedly back, you know, closer to town, even though I'm sure that was super small as well. It was like a very friendly place. And he was known as a loner and very unfriendly, which was not the norm. And like, who was this guy who just moved out to the middle of nowhere and like didn't speak a word this entire time? Right. Yeah. Why would he do this?
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Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
Yeah, for sure. I wouldn't would want nothing to do with this guy.
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Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
So like you said, they exhumed his body in 2007 once DNA sampling was, you know, a viable thing. And that has enabled some genetic comparisons to possible relatives. They obviously didn't, you know, no one has come forward with it like a perfect match or anything. But they made comparisons with more than two dozen families.
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Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
And they have some strong circumstantial evidence that what family he may have been from and where they have landed now is that they're pretty sure that his background is Swedish. And he has been linked to multiple descendants of Jews. A gentleman named Gustav Magnusson, who died in 1853, and Britta Svendater, who passed away in 1846. And they are pretty sure that he's a descendant of them.
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Short Stuff: The Mad Trapper of Rat River
But nobody from any of those bloodlines has come forward either.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Hey guys, it's Chuck from Stuff You Should Know. When it comes to finding the best financial products, have you ever wished someone would do the heavy lifting for you? Take all that research off your plate? Same. Let me introduce NerdWallet's 2025 Best Of Awards.
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The Gullibility Episode
I think you're great. They did another study at the University of Leicester where they found that childhood traumas can really affect you later in life in terms of gullibility, like any kind of bullying, a death of a family member or something like that. It leads you more susceptible to fall for tricks later in life.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
And apparently they say it could be because that kind of trauma just makes it hard to trust your own judgments and, you know, I guess everyone else's intent.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Oh, I know. I mean, we're pretty good parents, but I often think, like, how are we messing her up? Because I know we are in some way.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, I think just try to limit that stuff as a parent. Like, you can't be perfect. I mean, my brother's a perfect parent, but there's only one. Scott. Another thing I thought was interesting, and this makes total sense, is if you rely on your intuition a lot, you're a lot more vulnerable to being duped by something.
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The Gullibility Episode
Just like, you know, some people have a good gut and some people think they have a good gut, but do not.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, it's funny. I'm okay. You know, things subside in the early afternoon, so I'm actually feeling a little better than I was like 20 minutes ago even.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah. And I think, you know, that kind of suggests that if there's like a country with an authoritarian leader in place, like the simple sort of easy to understand radical solutions that are pitched out oftentimes in those situations are very easy to fall for if you're a gullible person, because that itself is a mental shortcut. Well, we just got we just got to do this.
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The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, I just got to go to the doctor and just get it over with.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah. Should we take a break? Yeah. All right. We'll take a break and talk about mood right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
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Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
All right, we're back. We promised to talk a little bit about mood because the fact is you are not always gullible or always not gullible. Everybody could get duped at any time from, you know, that changes from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, depending on a lot of factors like mood. If you're really, really tired, if you're super distracted, if you're upset.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
You may not notice something that can, you know, make you fall for a scam. Also, the same holds if you're in a really good mood. You know, if you're just feeling great about everything, you're like, yeah, yes to life, yes to everything. There was a study in 1938 by a researcher named Gregory Razran. who found that giving a free lunch made people more receptive to a political message.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
I'll try. But I'm hanging in there. I am working on less than 300 calories a day for five days now. So I am a shell of a human.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
And apparently that is sort of where like the sales lunch started, taking people out to sell them something and feeding them. You were more likely to close a deal. And I'm sure the same thing, like golf course sales things, like the salesperson's not out there beating the person in golf that they're selling to. I guarantee it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
I don't know how that works, but I imagine you're letting them win and feel good about stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Right. So overall, if you think about people who might be gullible, you might think, you know, if you're going to stereotype it like people like kids, very young people, very old people and people that aren't very well educated.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
But it's not necessarily true. What? Yeah. There is a lot of factors, one of which I mentioned earlier. You can get a lot of skewed studies about the gullibility of someone who's older because if you're older, you're more likely to have a cognitive ability that's literally keeping you from being able to determine whether something is true.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Have you been doing push-ups? I can't do one push-up right now.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
But they've also conversely found that sometimes they're a little more protected because they're constantly have their children and everyone else saying like, no, no, no, watch out for scams. They're trying to scam you. Everyone's trying to scam you.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, thankfully, nothing like that's ever happened to my parents. But it's you hear the stories all the time and it's just, you know, it's tragic and shameful.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
There was a study in 2018 that I thought was pretty interesting. A woman named Monica T. Witte, another Aussie. When you talk about like being catfished, which is if I guess I threw that word out, assuming everyone knows it. That's like when you get scammed in a sort of a romantic thing online by someone who's pretending to be someone they're not generally.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah. Let's put that down. That would be super interesting.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
No, I don't think he's in the league anymore. He played in the NFL for a little while, but he was a linebacker for Notre Dame that was famously catfished and like, you know, smart, handsome, young athlete guy. So it's not like just, you know, the lonely loser in the basement that falls for stuff like that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Oh, man. Little River Man. So good. 2018, Monica Witte did one on sort of catfishing, but really just romance scams is what they called it. And she said if you fall for something like that, you obviously will be a little more impulsive and sensation seeking. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
And so if someone's building up about all these great stories and these big travels and, you know, it's always it's never just like, well, I just kind of sit around at home like,
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
they always present themselves as offering some uh new exciting life it seems like right uh but she also found that they were more highly educated than average uh and livia i think is on the money kind of speculates that could be uh i and i think it's true when we did our thing on online dating it's generally people that are college educated that participate in online dating a little more right statistically but um also maybe that
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
If you're more educated, you just think like, I'm not going to fall for catfishing. I know all about that. And this is not that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
I agree with that. In the old days, I think that's changing because I've never seen a generation as phone addicted as boomers are. Oh, really? Oh, man. You don't hang around a lot of boomers, do you? They have Gen Z beat? Every boomer I know just obsessively stares at their phone and looks things up and, yeah. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
No, no, no. They want to show you all the information in the moment.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Right in the middle of dinner at a nice restaurant even.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
That's right. This is on gullibility. We were just talking offline that there are, I think, a hundred different ways to approach this kind of topic, and sometimes that's freeing, and sometimes that's really frustrating. And I think this one is a little frustrating. Livia put together a great article, I think, but It's just a hard one. When I pitched it to her, I was like, you know what?
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, which I think we'll get to in a minute before or after the next break. But can we talk about science? Because this is one thing when I sent Libby the idea, I was like, I think I'd read an article about scientists being gullible. And I was like, no, not scientists.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
But it turns out they very much can be because a lot of times when you are that well versed in a field, you might kind of think you know it all. And like, oh, no, I know what I'm doing. And so you might be more apt to believe a result that isn't accurate because you think you did it the right way. Like, that's just one aspect of it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Well, that was probably a scientific method, huh? Maybe.
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The Gullibility Episode
Yeah. Or like the little student in Rushmore that picked the results.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
You know, Max has his sort of little budding girlfriend at the end. And he says something about she won some science award, and I think she had to give it back or something. And he's like, why? She said, I faked the results. It didn't work, so I faked it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
No, I don't think she does. They were on Charlie's Angels together and had some words.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, I was being sort of opposite with my Lucy Liu joke.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
You know, I'm not firing on all cylinders. I'm doing my best. I'm not either, apparently. All right, we'll be right back, and Josh will lead off with a little bit on trust.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
I feel like, especially here in America, we're at peak gullibility as a nation. And I just wondered, is there any science to that? Are people more gullible than others? And can science be gullible? And this is what we came up with.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
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The Gullibility Episode
So post your job for free at linkedin.com slash sysk. That's linkedin.com slash sysk to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
You can trust people and think the best of people and still not be gullible.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, I kind of understand this, but not 100 percent. But I think I get it. So what he would say is, Bill, your friend Bill stayed at a hotel for a week. He was only charged one day. Do you think he would tell the cashier about this, even though there's like no chance? Let's say there's no chance of him getting caught later on. Do you think he would do that?
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
And people who scored high on their trustworthy score, like people who were trustworthy, they were more likely to say that Bill would do the honest thing. But when he added in a twist here, which is to tell them some negative things about Bill, like, by the way, just want to let you know, Bill also cut in line the other day.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
It makes his stepson feel stupid. But if they added in a couple of nuggets like that, negative things about Bill, the people who had high trust in people generally put a lot more weight on that additional information than the other people did, the people that were low in trustworthiness.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah. And that can be a very freeing thing. And that's how Yamagishi sort of thought about it when he talked about his emancipation theory, which is if you're trusting, you're kind of or if you're untrusting, I guess you're kind of shackled in a way. Because you may just be stuck in a place because why hire a different person to do it because they're just going to be a scammer too.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
And so you can get stuck in this cycle. But if you free yourself from that with his emancipation theory and you break those shackles and you start trusting people, it makes you much more apt to make a positive change in life because you trust somebody or something or some situation.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, for sure. There are people that think we are actually not as gullible as everyone thinks. There's this writer, Hugo Mercier, who wrote a book in 2020 called Not Born Yesterday. Great title for a book like that. And he's like, people are less gullible than we think.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
And there are a lot of criteria people use to work out if they believe something or not, and we're better at it than we all think we are. Most people, or I guess in his idea, most people are actually looking for well-informed or well-intentioned information or if it has logic to it, if it's logically strong information.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
That's right. I guess we can start by talking about, I mean, we're going to talk about a lot of different people, a lot of different people that study this kind of stuff, a lot of different studies, some of which make more sense than others. But this guy, Stephen Greenspan, is an author. He wrote a book. He wrote the book on it, Annals of Gullibility, colon, Why We Are Duped and How to Avoid It.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Or, you know, maybe people are less like this, which is I'm just going to accept something or I'm sorry, I'm not going to accept something as a new piece of information because it's not something that I have found to be true. He argues that people are less like that than they say.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, exactly. He also points out in the book when it comes to like propaganda, that propaganda isn't something that can usually really completely changed someone's mind. What propaganda is good at is taking someone who already has those beliefs and putting them on turbo speed and reinforcing them. Even like the Nazi propaganda machine, he contends probably wasn't making someone anti-Semitic.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
But if you were anti-Semitic, then it really drove you down that road at a pretty fast pace.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah. I mean, I think political ads are terrible and ridiculous and so overvalued. But I feel like these days it's less like it's more just beating that drum of like, aren't you mad? Aren't you mad? Go vote. Go vote. I know, man. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
And one sort of important thing he does up front is say, hey, there's a difference between credulity and gullibility. Credulity is if, you know, you'll believe something just without looking at all the evidence. And gullibility means you have an active response to perhaps being conned.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Uh, we get, I'm sure anyone, um, who works for big companies get these and maybe even small companies do this, but when they send out the, the test, like the test fishing emails and then like the next day you'll get an email that's like, did you fall for it? Right. Uh, it's always, I'm always nervous. I'm like, Oh God, did I click on that thing that, you know, from, you know, facebook.gold.au.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
I got nothing else. I think, you know, we did a pretty good job on this one.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
This is a great current listener mail from Thursday's episode yesterday to us on Automats. Hey, guys. Two friends and I gave each other a graduation present from high school in 1970 and spent a week by ourselves in New York where we went to the Automat, and it was still great in 70. Four years later, this gets so good.
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The Gullibility Episode
Four years later, as a senior in college, a group of us did an independent study in humor and music as an excuse to do a concert of Bach stuff. I got to be the soloist in the concerto for horn and hard art. Nice. And he sent a video. Unfortunately, it was just audio. I mean, it sounded like a hoot, and really, it was great, but I wanted to see everything. Because here's what they did.
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The Gullibility Episode
This piece is for orchestra and also a table filled with various household items to play. Ideally, they should have been picked out of an automat on stage in order to play them. However, this is beyond our set construction abilities. We did have the recommended...
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The Gullibility Episode
We did at least have the recommended banner overhead reading, in Latin, Less Work for Mother, along with trying to master the rather challenging music. It involved me running around Gettysburg with a pitch pipe, trying to find bells, pots, uh... Ooga horns and lots of other items that played specific notes. This is so great. Thanks for speaking those wonder, sparking those wonderful memories.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
I discovered you during COVID and have been an extremely faithful listener ever since. Nice. And that is from the Reverend Dr. Mark Oldenburg, Steckmiller Professor Emeritus of the Art of Worship and the music chair at Gettysburg United Lutheran Cemetery. Pronouns he, him.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
I totally agree. I thought that definition was really weird. And I'm glad both are in here, though, because sometimes it's a nice contrast. But along the lines of what you were saying, there's a group of researchers, social psychologists from Macquarie University. There can be a lot of Aussies in this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Alessandra K. Tunis, maybe? That's what I'm going with. Defined it much in the way you would and I would and I think a lot of people would, which is simply the propensity to accept a false premise in the presence of untrustworthy clues. That's it. That's it. You don't have to act on it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
No. And there's a lot of factors. And this is where I think Greenspan did kind of hit on something is four factors of gullibility situational. Like if there's a lot of if everyone else is doing it and there's a lot of social pressure, like all the bros are investing in the same cryptocurrency and it's at a great price. And you're like, oh, man, I got to get in there. All the guys are right.
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The Gullibility Episode
You know, everyone's in on that. So there's social pressure where you can fall for something. And cognitive issues like, well, as we'll get to later with, you know, our senior friends, sometimes there's like legit brain cognitive issues. That's a different thing than this. But this is just lacking expertise.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
And, you know, you can't evaluate what you're being told because you're just not I don't want to say smart enough. You're just not an expert in whatever that is.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, I totally think it makes sense, you know, because it happened to his cousin. That's right. Emotion can play a big factor in a lot of ways. And we'll talk about some of those with some studies later on. But one way is like if if let's say we're specifically talking about being kind, if it gives you a positive feeling, whether it's a.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
So somebody catfishing you and making you feel loved or, you know, some sort of financial thing that you think might provide for your long term security or like, oh, man, no one else knows about this deal but me. I'm so smart for getting in on the ground floor here. That kind of thing.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
I love that you barely use an accent. You just say it seriously. And that gets the point across.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
uh yeah so this gullibility scale was self-reported uh basically like do you self-reported meaning um do you think others do you perceive yourself as gullible and do you think others perceive you as gullible uh and then they you know they filled in with some other questions like how persuadable are you and stuff like that and it actually for a self-reported study which you know a lot of those can be tough um this seemed to work out pretty good for them don't you think
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
I didn't think you would take advantage of this today.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
It's okay, buddy. All for the show. On that scale, they found some traits that were common among those that scored high in gullibility. Social intelligence was one of them. That'll keep coming back over and over. Vulnerability, emotionality, which we've talked about a little bit. Weak sense of self, which also comes up in different ways.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
I think you found an article about how parents can wreck kids by not giving them self-confidence, right? And they'll end up gullible.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, I have a good friend who had a pretty bad stepfather, and the abuse in this situation was exclusively he made him feel stupid at every opportunity.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, I mean, this is kind of, I mean, I don't like playing it this close, but it's kind of fun to be a little more current with, like, listener mails and updates and stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
he's passed on now, but it's, I can't think of any, I mean, there are all kinds of things that are worse, obviously, but something so damaging for such a small person to do that to a child.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
And literally like, oh, you think so? Like, you know, just that's how he was talked to his whole life growing up. It's awful.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
One thing we should mention, though, because this pops up a couple of times and I think it's super fascinating, is another trait they found on the gullibility scale, if you're very gullible, was belief in paranormal activity.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah, so this will be out on Tuesday, I guess. And in real time, this is the day after the automat oyster stew debacle. I don't know if it was a debacle. That turned out to be a pretty good ep. And Aaron Cooper already came through. Oh, good.
Stuff You Should Know
The Gullibility Episode
Yeah. And it's a trait I think that you can't necessarily teach, but is really beneficial to have as a human.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Did you ever, I mean, I'm going to ask you two questions. Did you ever read High Times much, and did you ever subscribe? Yes.
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The Ballad of High Times Magazine
That's right. I love my Bombas socks. They are super cozy and the secret is in their fabrics. We're talking about the really good stuff like Merino wool, which feels as cozy as a ski lodge. But if you want to brave the cold on the slopes or on a snowy run, Bombas has athletic socks built for that, too.
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The Ballad of High Times Magazine
That's right. And if you get cold feet, then you got to try those slippers that they have. They're warm because they have that fluffy, sharp aligning and the marshmallow-like cushioning. Really good stuff.
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The Ballad of High Times Magazine
All right. So we've introduced our protagonist, I guess, in the in the first act. We can't. And, you know, Dave helped us put together this article. And he he points out that if you try to get I mean, you could do a whole article on this guy and talk about all the all the wacky things he did over the years, like concert festival promotion.
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The Ballad of High Times Magazine
He snuck allegedly pipe bombs into the 72 Republican convention.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, so he was a busy guy doing a lot of stuff. But this is about High Times. So the origin story officially for High Times magazine is that he thought of it with his friends while he was huffing nitrous oxide. Other people say it might have been an acid trip. But either way, the early idea was, hey, how about a magazine, like a marijuana-themed magazine? They've got Playboy.
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The Ballad of High Times Magazine
And some people say, like, the initial idea was just a one-off kind of spoof of Playboy. Right. Everyone that worked there said, no, no, no. The idea was always to have like a real magazine that was cheeky and fun, but also like real journalism and tackle real topics about activism and marijuana and growing it and all that stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, I think for one year in college, I actually subscribed because and this is High Times magazine. We're talking about everybody. I was going to say notorious, but not really notorious. The infamous Weed magazine. Sure. But I subscribed for, I think, a year because it just seemed like, you know, I wanted to have that house that had that on the coffee table with our address on it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
And I think I mean, I think it absolutely did that. I think one of the missions was, hey, let's really convince people that. Not convinced, but let's really show people what the truth is, which is that this is a plant that can be grown like plant versus, you know, illicit drug, you know.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, absolutely. So that very first issue came out summer of 74 is when it debuted. I had a 10,000 copy print run and it didn't really light the world on fire. I guess no pun intended at first. It was it had like an excerpt from a Timothy Leary novel, of course, articles about hemp and marijuana and how great they thought it was.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Um, there were some interviews and very importantly, they had a, uh, something that would, you know, stay in the magazine, which was a feature called the trans high market, uh, market quotation, which is a, uh, a listing of like, Hey, in Chicago, this is how much a dime bag costs. This is how much it costs in New York. This is what an ounce of weed cost in Phoenix.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Um, you know what they use, I guess they still call it street value, which I always thought was really funny.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I just thought it was like the cool thing to do, you know.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
But that's what it was, and it stayed in there for a long time, even though, as we'll talk about later, it changed a little bit over the years. But this first issue, like I said, was not – I mean, they did eventually sell out of that $10,000, but it wasn't through – it was through a lot of hustling. It wasn't like, hey, it's on your newsstand. Farsad said – Here, let me get it into head shops.
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The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Let me send them to record stores. Apparently, drug dealers bought copies and gave them away to people. So it eventually did sell out the two printings. But it was the second issue is when it really, really took off because of their, you know, kind of ingenious promotion.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I could see that. Apparently it was also, if not the first, one of the first times live television showed people doing drugs. There was one of the local news stations, according to Rolling Stone, showed people on camera, on the news, snorting cocaine, And I'm sure people at home are watching this just going like, what is going on? But it was huge publicity.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
And they sold out their 50, this time 50,000 copy run in four weeks. And it became like a genuine sensation. That's when also the second issue is when they started Also as an homage to Playboy magazine, their centerfold. But of course, their centerfold was always these big, beautifully photographed pictures of buds, marijuana buds.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Hey, that could have been the original lyric. You never know. It depends on the day, probably.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Have you seen the Yacht Rock documentary yet on Max?
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Well, I mean, the people who came up with the term yacht rock are featured in it, but it's about the genre of music.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Watch what you say, though. I've learned from recent emails there may be a 50-year-old out there that thinks side time is cool that's going to be very upset.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Oh, you mean like the Yacht Rock Review? Yes. No, no, no, no.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
The term Yacht Rock came about in the early 2000s from a web comedy series. Okay. Which I never knew until I saw this documentary. But no, it's about just, you know, Christopher Cross and Michael McDonald and Seals and Croft. All the great people. You'd enjoy it, I think.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I mean, you can say more, but I just mean I'm into that kind of thing.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Well, see, I always say these things in a recording, and then I don't remember afterward.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Why don't you text me right now while I talk? Black does.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I'm sorry. That's right. So mid-70s, when high times rolls out, Those very first years, the magazine was doing really well as sort of a new magazine, but Forsad was not. He was on the FBI surveillance list. He was very paranoid because of the massive amounts of drugs that he was taking.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, absolutely. The magazine itself was doing well. Like I said, the staff, I mean, it was just, I mean, if you think like the Lampoon and Mad Magazine was kind of crazy in their office, like everybody in the High Times office was huffing nitrous and smoking weed and snorting blow. Like as they were working. But it was, you know, it was creating like some really relevant journalism.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Even when I did read it occasionally, I even at the time was like, this is the articles, the way they're written. There were so many puns. So kind of corny. Yeah. And so it never felt like as good as I think they might have thought it was. Does that make sense?
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
They were exposing, you know, government activities as far as the drug war goes. Like when putting Paraquat, which I cannot help but think of Big Lebowski when I hear that word. I don't remember that part. It's when the dude called the real Lebowski a human paraquat when he was mad. I think he said human even. Human paraquat.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
But paraquat was the pesticide that was in marijuana fields under orders from the U.S. And this article helped promote a congressional investigation. They interviewed the Dalai Lama about drugs. There was Hunter S. Thompson and Of course, William S. Burroughs doing writing. There was Truman Capote did a guest interview with Andy Warhol. Bob Marley was in it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Like it was really the heyday of that magazine as far as being like a real like they achieve what they wanted to achieve in the first few years.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, I mean, by year four, they had a subscribership that was about the same as Rolling Stone magazine.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Which is, yeah, it's just nuts. In 1978, Forsythe had previous attempts at suicide, but he succeeded in November of 1978, very sadly, when he was just 33 years old. I saw different things that he, you know, it was after the death of a friend. that had him really upset. And like I said, there were previous attempts. So he was a troubled guy, to say the least.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
But they held his memorial atop the World Trade Center at the Windows of the World restaurant. And as legend has it, smoked, I think Keith Richards snorted his dad's ashes supposedly, but they rolled up some of Forsad's ashes in joints and smoked them as a staff.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
It's weird for Claire to be judgy like that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I wonder if she was upset about her art class at the time.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
So High Times, this is before, as far as the magazine itself, before Forsyth died, they did start to sort of stray from their mission statement a little bit as far as coverage of harder drugs. They started writing a lot about cocaine.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Like in a big, big way, they even started including cocaine and and meth and LSD in that trans high market quotation as far as how much it should cost in different cities. And it was sort of like I think the adherence of the magazine even were a little bit like, hey, this is not what I signed up for. Like this was a weed magazine. So they kind of got back to the weed thing more in the 80s.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Cocaine, you know, the reputation started to get a little bit more like, hey, wait a minute. This stuff is, like, really dangerous, and there's a lot of violence attached to it in the trade. And so they really got back to the pot thing again in a big way.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
And they were just getting going again in the 80s, back to their mission statement, when the DEA launched something called Operation Green Merchant,
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
in which they really wanted to target marijuana growth and not the growth of marijuana, like growing marijuana plants and advertisements for this equipment that was sort of thinly veiled as like, oh no, these lights just help you grow your oregano at home or whatever, your lettuce.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
And so Operation Green Merchant was to target those ads and the publications that sort of taught you step-by-step how to do this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah. And High Times Magazine, I mean, they rolled right with it. I mean, right into the 90s, all of a sudden it's like, oh, well, now we can put Ice Cube on the cover and, you know, write about this other sort of I mean, I guess you call it a subculture that, you know, we hadn't been highlighting in the past.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
And, you know, beyond making it relevant again, I think they they found out they were missing out on an entire like readership that they had never targeted before.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I was talking to my friend Clay the other day because he is who introduced us to the Chronic when we would, I think I've said this before, but we went over to his house and played like the Nintendo, whatever the system was. What was the one back then?
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, so we'd go over there and play Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, and Clay one day was like, dude, listen to this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Puts on the Chronic, and Snoop Dogg's voice came out of the speaker. And we were all into hip-hop at the time, but Snoop Dogg, he didn't sound like anybody else at the time.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
So when his voice came out, we were like, who is this guy? Yeah. It's like, oh, my God. And, like, how funny. And I was talking to him the other day. I was like, how funny. And back then, like, would you ever think that now Snoop Dogg is like this – I mean, one of the most famous people in the world.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah. I mean, working with Martha Stewart, it's like I don't think anybody saw that coming.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Oh, I haven't seen that one yet. It's good. Is it good? Hey, I don't know if everyone knows this. Jerry's been to Martha Stewart's house.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, she told us a while ago. At one point she was doing something with the company. I don't know if whatever happened with that, but Jerry, like, went to her house. And she said it was a real mess.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Hodgepodge bottles just spilled all over the place. No, it was perfect. So high times, back to high times. From 88 to 2013, there was an editor-in-chief named Stephen Hager that ran the joint. And he was, God, man, I'm not even meaning to. I swear I'm not. He ran High Times Magazine.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
This is when they I mean, they had always talked about legalization, but this is when they really, really got into writing and beating that drum about about not decriminalizing, but like legalizing weed for everybody.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah. The normal N-O-R-M-L. That was it, right?
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I went to one of the Atlanta Piedmont Park used to have in the 90s, the normal pot rally concerts. You went to that? I went to one of them one year when the Black Crows played, and it was a lot of fun. It was a great show. I liked them for a little while back then, and it was really good.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah. Well, nobody was smoking weed. It was really weird.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
So, yeah, they were advocating it such that there was an article in 2013 in The Nation that said High Times Magazine may be the most influential publication of our era. So it wasn't just, you know, cheeky articles and pictures of beautiful buds. It was like they were doing real work toward sea change, and it worked.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
No, no, no. It's funny. I'm not saying it wasn't. I'm just saying like, yeah, that's got to be the sketches that he he has no memory.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I feel like I saw it back then. But I do remember that one of the issues I had and this had to be from the 2000s was Tenacious D was on the cover.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, let's just get into it then. Okay. No more needs to be added.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Well, I mean, he is one half of Tenacious D. But I mean, just without Kyle, he's like, let me do one without that guy. Yes. All right. We have been remiss and not taking a second break. So we're going to do that now. And we're going to talk about what has happened over the last decade or 20 years or so right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Hey guys, it's Chuck and Josh from Stuff You Should Know. If you're anything like us, you've got a lot on your plate this new year. You've got summer beach trips to plan, a work-life balance to balance, and pickleball opponents to beat.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
That's right. The nerds have done the work for you, everybody, researching and reviewing over 1,100 financial products to bring you only the best of the best. Looking for a lower rate on your auto insurance? They've got a winner for that. Or a balance transfer credit card with 0% APR? They've got a winner for that, too.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
You know, we've all been there. You're sick, you're trying to schedule a doctor's appointment only to spend hours on hold, and then you find yourself crammed into a crowded waiting room with other sick people. And don't get me started about the prescriptions. That's a whole other story.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
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Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, I might have said 2013, too, which was it was probably 2003.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I thought you were going to talk about editor-in-chief bona fides.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, it was ill-conceived. I think they didn't quite know where to go after the sort of – it's not like the hip-hop era ended any mention of weed or anything like that. But it was sort of past that. You know, everything changes from decade to decade culturally, and they didn't quite know what to do, I think. So they said, hey, why don't we do this?
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Why don't we try and sort of change the image of the magazine and become just more of a sort of a cultural magazine? Like, essentially, let's stop writing about weed exclusively and let's really stop writing about weed almost altogether. And that lasted for about a year. They did not stop.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
like that the readership was like what are you doing the whole point of this magazine is that it's high times and it's not you know about freedom it's about freedom to smoke weed specifically and grow it specifically and like i said about a year later in fact it was one year later i think they were like we really screwed up here and so they went back in 2005 with a big cover that said the buds are back
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
All right. Great. He looks like if you look up this guy, you know, when I went to look up, I'd never seen a picture of him. I expected I didn't expect to see someone so cool looking. I mean, he looks like he stepped right out of the Allman Brothers band or something.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
and 30 pages of pot picks on the inside. And everyone was like, oh, thank God. And it was one of their best-selling issues of all time.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, I mean, that's the irony of this whole thing is right when they achieved all that is when they tanked because of what's called the green gold rush. Wall Street, of course, anytime they're like, oh, wait a minute, somebody's making money over there doing something? A lot of money? Well, how can we get involved? And that's exactly what happened.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Investors started throwing money at every cannabis startup you could think of as states were rolling out legalization and making tons and tons of money. And so they realize, hey, this High Times magazine is just sitting there. It's a very recognizable brand. The magazine's okay. Their website's all right.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
But they make like 80% of their dough from what's called the cannabis cup, which is, I think it started out as a smaller thing in Amsterdam, but then became the official High Times Cannabis Cup in the United States in 2010, which is a weed-growing competition. So bring in your new strains of exotic crossbreeds and high-potency buds, and you can win the Cannabis Cup, and it's a big deal.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
It received a lot of coverage. They did concerts. They did festivals. They did trade shows. And it was a big moneymaker. So I think they were like, hey, we can invest in High Times. We can open up a casino in Vegas maybe. They bought up a dozen dispensaries and made them high-time smoke shops. They talked about delivery services. And they talked about an IPO for a while, which never happened.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
But all of this stuff – A lot of these big deals never came to fruition. And so they found themselves eventually $100 million in debt as these deals fell apart after going through just a string of CEOs, which is never, it's always a bad sign for a company, you know, when you have that kind of CEO turnover.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, for sure. And if you're thinking like, what do you mean? It was like a pot magazine. Why do you think it'd be cool? It's because I usually expect them to look sort of like wavy gravy. Any like weed activists to be just decked out in tie dye and kind of just wearing some sort of wacky handmade hat.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
And a lot of those dispensaries closed. And in the middle of the boom of the real marijuana industry, High Times was struggling and basically dead.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah. Seven million bucks will get you the magazine, the cannabis cup, the dispensaries that we still have open. Nobody came forward, which is shocking. I think the most shocking thing to me, and I'm going to say this publicly, I'm going to call out publicly even. Why hasn't Snoop Dogg and and freaking Martha Stewart? They would miss seven million dollars. They wouldn't even know it's gone.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Why have they not bought this brand? Because that sort of public like purchase with those two names or even if it's just a Snoop Dogg. But Martha Stewart would add a funny sort of cachet to it. Yeah. Like it would all of a sudden be a relevant thing again. And I don't know. It's just it's shocking that nobody came forward to buy it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Maybe somebody who knows Snoop hears this and they're like, hey, Snoop, he may not even know it's for sale, you know?
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
And this guy, like he looked like he could jump off of a chopper and like hit the stage or something, you know?
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, for sure. I also just realized with the ultimate 50-something-year-old white guy, I think it would probably be for shizzle and not for schnizzle. Because for sure would be for shizzle, right?
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
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Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Ignominious? Ignominious? Ignoramus, I think is what you meant.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah. Maybe Jack Black, he's not going to miss seven million bucks. Maybe. Maybe. I mean, he might miss it for the afternoon, but then he would say, but I've got this magazine now.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, this is from Rosalie, and it's just a very kind sort of gentle reminder, which is always nice to hear. Hey, guys, it's taken me a while to get this into words, and I hope it comes across with care. It does.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, he's wearing his own handmade knit hat.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, exactly. As a woman in science who does science every day, I just want to point out that technicians are still scientists. In your episode on chemistry sets, you rightly pointed out all the sexism in the past and present and how science is presented to girls versus boys.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
But you also feed into it a little bit when you said that girls were funneled into technician jobs instead of being the scientists. There are a lot of ways to be a scientist, and technician is definitely one of them. That's like saying that nurses aren't healers like doctors are.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
A more accurate description is that women were and are funneled into technician and now communication jobs in the sciences and men to the professors and principal investigators. It is better than it has ever been, I have to say, but academia still hasn't figured it out, among other things. And that I'm glad to know that, Rosalie. And that's from Rosalie Maltmead.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, so, I mean, regardless of how you feel about that or him or any of it, he wasn't just some guy saying, like, hey, let's try and make a little dough off of this marijuana people are smoking. Like, he was knee-deep in the business. Right. This was after coming out of...
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
seemingly to avoid the Vietnam draft, a short stint in the Air Guard, where he was discharged after convincing them that he had schizophrenia. And at that point, he went back to Arizona in Phoenix, changed that name, which was his mother's, I'm sorry, grandmother's maiden name, And, you know, got into the underground zine scene.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
You know, that was a big thing back in the late 60s because of the ubiquity of like being able to print your own stuff in an office or I don't know if they had Kinkos back then, but he got into those and founded his own first underground magazine called Orpheus, which had some politics to it, but it was kind of just a little groovy psychedelic thing that covered like music and pot and stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, there was a peace sign on the cover that actually had a real bullet hole. So instead of just drawing a bullet hole, he shot them up himself.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I'm not sure. I always saw it called UPS. UPS.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, and he eventually worked his way up to national coordinator for the Underground Press Syndicate. And that's where he learned how to run a magazine, basically. That's how he learned about ad deals, distribution, printing, like efficient printing, real printing, for a little while. And I figure we should probably do something on Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies at some point. All right.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
You don't want to highlight boomers, do you?
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Hey, if you want to learn about Abbie Hoffman, you're not going to learn about it here, everybody. Go steal his book. Yeah. Very nice. I got that one. So he did join up with Hoffman, though, and his yippies.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Again, if you want to read about them, they were a group that did a lot of like kind of social pranks and media grab, you know, activist stuff for their radical causes in 1970 for said for side, he said.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
I think you're probably right. But I'm just I've been saying it wrong all day. So it's in my head. So it's going to take a minute.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
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Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Wow. You also sent me a lot of fun ads for cocaine paraphernalia. Dude. That was crazy.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, and then McDonald's hired them to develop their Happy Meal prizes.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
They're like, this guy's really good at these tiny little baubles.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
All right. So 1970, that's where we were for Saad testified before Nixon's presidential commission on obscenity and pornography. And this is when he got a real chance to, you know, take the national stage and talk about, well, the quote was the only obscenity is censorship. And it's the first and I feel like we talked about this in our pie in the face episode. It had to.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
But it's the first incident that we know of where a protest pie in the face happened when he pulled out a cream pie and face pied Dr. Dr. Larson, Dr. Otto Larson.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah. And that must be the first one. I mean, it's cited as the first time, you know, not in a Marx Brothers movie. Somebody's like, let me make a point with this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
Yeah, and he also let that pie sit out the day before in Phoenix, so it was rotten green.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
All right. Let's take a break, and we'll talk about the beginnings of the magazine right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
That's right. They make it really easy to sell access to content on your websites like online courses, blogs, videos, and memberships. You can earn recurring revenue by gating your content behind a paywall even. Simply set the price and choose whether to charge a one-time fee or subscription for access.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
That's right. Just go to squarespace.com slash stuff for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code stuff to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. Hey guys, it's Chuck and Josh from Stuff You Should Know. If you're anything like us, you've got a lot on your plate this new year.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
You've got summer beach trips to plan, a work-life balance to balance, and pickleball opponents to beat.
Stuff You Should Know
The Ballad of High Times Magazine
That's right. The nerds have done the work for you, everybody, researching and reviewing over 1,100 financial products to bring you only the best of the best. Looking for a lower rate on your auto insurance? They've got a winner for that. Or a balance transfer credit card with 0% APR? They've got a winner for that, too.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah. No, I just feel like I'm the one that's like 45 minutes and you're like, no, let's make it three hours.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
That's right. In this anecdote that he sort of preached around as if it were real, he said, then I did this. It worked so great. Schmidt was so happy and rolling in dough.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
I got all of his coworkers to jump aboard because I showed them what a Mr. Big Boy pants look like. And everybody wanted big boy pants. And so everybody, as long as you just do what your boss says, then you're going to make more dough. And forget the fact that I'm choosing, you know, the very strongest workers to set the standard for everyone. And then in 1911, a U.S.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
House committee said, yeah, but we can't just forget that because you can't just pick the strongest worker and say that's the standard for everyone. And so he got into a bit of a tit for tat in that process. committee meeting, I guess, with Chairman William Balshop Wilson. And he said, you know, what about if you don't have big boy pants men on your staff and like or all big boy pants men?
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
And he said, well, it has no place for a bird that can sing, but won't. And he kind of got smacked down for that because he was just lifting lines out of books that he had written.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
That's right. The long and short with Bethlehem Steel, at least, was that they fired him. They quit the Taylorism methods that he had brought in. And he said, all right, pay me $100,000 and we'll call it even. Yeah. Which is about three and a half million bucks today. And that's probably a good time for a break, eh? Agreed. All right.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
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Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Big thanks to Livia because she pushed out another banger here. Thanks in part by this great, great article in The New Yorker from Jill Lepore, who Livia calls a genius. Absolute genius, in fact, is a quote.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah, for sure. And two of their kids wrote that book in 1948. And, you know, it was fun. It's a classic for a reason. They remade it for a reason. For sure. To make money. Frank was a bricklayer in his earlier life, and he was one of these people that thought, including too, but not limited to cat skinning, that there was one best way to do any task.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
And so he was one of those guys where he was like, hey, that scaffold for laying bricks is kind of great. But what if there was a shelf on the scaffold for those bricks and mortar? You don't got to bend over and pick that stuff up. And what if you had some really low paid laborers that would stack the bricks on the frames for them positioned in the right direction?
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
So they don't even have to turn the bricks like really drilling down on these efficiencies.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Do you think when they met Taylor initially, they were just like, oh, my God, you're into efficiency and so are we. And Taylor said, I think you mean a fish. And they just like fainted.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah, Thurbligs. So they were also big into Rich Hall and Sniglets. Not to date myself, but yeah, they made up a word and they said, any action you can take is a Thurblig. And we want to get rid of as many Thurbligs as possible to make efficiency the most, to maximize it as much as one possibly can.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Great article anyway. I think the setup that Livia gave is kind of worthy of going over a little bit, because when you look at the, you know, 1900 through the 1920s and 30s, you looked at an America that was really changing in that these huge industrial revolution born industries were all of a sudden like, hey, now we're.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah. I mean, Taylor, you kind of talked about a little bit early on, but he did think it was a win-win. He was like, this is great because it'll run more efficiently and it'll trickle down, essentially.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
They didn't call it that yet, but that's sort of the same notion that it'll just trickle down to the worker, all this efficiency, and they'll get better wages and stuff will be cheaper and stuff like that. Management will never, ever take advantage of that and make you work harder just to increase profits. Exactly. And of course, that's exactly what happened in every case. But Um, I don't know.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Like, I'm kind of wondering about Taylor's heart and like what was in there, you know?
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
I don't know. I think he's one of those guys that was so brain obsessed on efficiency. I don't know that he had like, I don't know if he thought that part through such that he was like some evil person set out to exploit a worker.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
I wonder if he might have been in an age where there weren't certain diagnoses available for what he, you know, may have had going on.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
It'll be interesting. You mean like there's no perfect person and everyone has an issue that they're dealing with?
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I don't know. I think sometimes that thing empowers people.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
I'll tell you all fair. Okay. Ironically, it was a Supreme Court justice who we've talked about, I feel like, quite a bit on this show, who kind of bumped Taylor up to celebrity status. Yeah. How did we pronounce his name the first 25 times we said it? It's Brandeis. Okay, that sounds right.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Now we're kind of corporations and now we have middle managers and CEOs and things. It's a little different than it used to be.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
What does it do with that? Ice brewed? What even was that?
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Oh, okay. All right. Anyway, back to 1910. Brandeis, Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice, called a meeting with the Gilbreths. And the Taylorites, Taylor couldn't come, but he sent his representatives and said, I want to talk about what I'm calling scientific management. And I am concerned because I see what's happening with big business. And I think it's getting out of hand.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
I want to break up these monopolies. And I think the consumer and the worker should be served. And I think I called one couple here who's probably interested in that and another group of people who sounds like they probably aren't.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
And so we need to start kind of really thinking about how to squeeze every dime out of this company we can and make these workers. We'll call it efficiency. But between us, let's say let's call it working them to the bone until they're near exhaustion so we can maximize profits.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah, and there was a lot of press coverage on this, and this is really what pushed Taylor over the edge as far as becoming kind of famous for what he was doing. And that is the year – I'm sorry, the next year is when he put out The Principles of Scientific Management, which was –
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Probably easily the biggest business book, maybe at the 20th century, but at least the first half of the 20th century.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
That's right. And one thing about Taylorism that we would learn soon enough, and I guess Gilbreathism, did they even call it that?
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Well, I'm going to call it that. Gilbreathism was that it didn't have to be kept to the workforce because Lillian Gilbreath found herself alone for the last 48 years of her life when Frank died of a heart attack at the age of 55 in 1924. And she said, all right, Don't tell anybody. I'm no homemaker myself. Not into it at all. I don't even do the cooking in my house.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
But I think I can shift these efficiency ideas to the house and make the home place a more efficient workplace for getting everything done from like vacuuming to baking biscuits.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah, and eventually you could even find Taylorism in public schools. And it's interesting to think of it this way. There was a Massachusetts superintendent who told the National Education Association that educators needed to analyze the returns of their investment rationally. We ought to purchase no more Greek instruction at the rate of 5.9 pupil recitations for a dollar.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
The price must go down or we shall invest in something else. And it sounds silly, but I get that. It just sounds like a funny way to talk about it. Right. But it's basically like we need to invest in these kids the things that really matter and not necessarily reciting a Greek poem or something like that.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Shop, yeah. Yeah. I had shop. We didn't have auto shop, though. Did you guys have that?
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
It felt like something that was in generations previous to us. We just had shop class where you made lamps and stuff like that.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Okay, we're back. By the way, I think the kitchen triangle is probably the fridge and not the dishwasher would be my guess.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Thank you. I bet you're right, though. I bet it's sink, stove, oven, and fridge would be my guess.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
All right, so we're going to talk a little bit about just sort of what did Taylorism accomplish ultimately. There is a lot of irony in that, you know, a lot of it was so scientific supposedly, but a lot of the stuff was made up or just sort of, you know. Yeah. Made up or kind of a sham. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
This wasn't new stuff like timing people on tasks and teaching people to do more specific things had been around for a long time. But one of the effects of Taylorism is definitely like. You know, de-skilling a worker, making them feel and not that working is all about emotions, but you don't want to make your employee feel like a robot that can be replaced by a robot.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
You want to give them a little bit of agency, ideally, in a job and not just say, move your body this way, move your hand that way, punch that thing and then return back to position one.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah. Another effect. I mean, I guess we've kind of said it in several different ways from the beginning. But, you know, the idea that the Gilbreths had that there would be a happiness quotient involved and where you could do work more efficiently so you could just have more time and better wages to spend with your family.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
That's right. And a lot of the work being done on efficiency can be laid at the feet of a person and then some other people. But initially, at least this guy that you mentioned, Frederick Winslow Taylor, who was from Philadelphia, born in 1856, had an attorney father, an abolitionist mother, a very smart guy and was all set to take Harvard by storm before his eyesight started to fail. Right.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
It just, you know, it didn't work out that way, even though the whole idea of Taylorism and it's at its base isn't. inherently anti-worker, it sort of ends up being that way when the profits are being spread around the top tier and all they want is more and more of those profits.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah, for sure. I mean, probably the most, you know, the biggest contribution was it just raised the awareness and an obsession with productivity and productivity is great. It's not like that's a bad thing. But again, like when you're dealing with human beings to feel like a cog and to feel completely replaceable.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
There's no way like you're not serving your own purpose as a as a business owner because you're not going to have good and happy employees ultimately and replacing employee after employee, even if you're just training them to put the oven door on. That's still an inefficiency, you know.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah, for sure. And it created the management consultant industry. I think we should do one on that. I don't I'm sure you remember. And I won't be very specific here, but because we've been owned by a lot of companies over the years. But one of one time, one of the companies that just hired a dude that came in and we're like, who's this guy?
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
After that got better, he may not have gone to Harvard, but he was still a really smart guy and ended up studying engineering at night and became a chief engineer for the Enterprise Hydraulic Works in Philly and then Midvale Steel Company.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
And I can't remember someone who knows how these things work took us aside and they were like, he's, I guess, I don't know if he was a management consultant or what his official job was, but they're like, his job is to come in here and fire people and rip this place apart and then probably get a nice exit and move on to another job where he'll do that exact same thing.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
I know Jerry is like screaming his name off air right now.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
That wouldn't have worked with the other guy that I mentioned. He was unflappable.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
This is just a nice thank you. Hey, guys. Heartfelt thank you. Started listening in 2012, and although my time spent listening to podcasts has fluctuated, yours has been one of the constants.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Started listening to keep my mind occupied when I had hours of mundane tasks in the lab where I worked after college, and I've continued to listen through a career change, relationship changes, getting my first dog, Luna. He sent a picture of Luna this week. And becoming a homeowner. I'm listening still as I'm planning a second career change and going through a little lonelier stretch of my life.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
And your podcast has kept me laughing and feeling connected to the world through challenging times. And I sometimes feel like there isn't the right combination of words to express my gratitude completely.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
I feel like you're right. Some of my favorite moments in recent shows have been Chuck's throwaway line about a fairy hoax confession happening at a Men Without Hats concert. I got Josh chuckled not once, twice, but three times.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
And in the 15th annual SYSK Halloween Spooktacular, the curious sound like laughter, yet not laughter that Josh made, which sounded like it had Chuck literally crying with laughter, which is absolutely true. That may be the... Most I've ever laughed at something that you did. I think it is, man.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
I hope that you know for some of your listeners, your podcast has been as meaningful to us as The Simpsons or Peanuts may have been to you.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Stanley knows how to drive it home. He signs it all the best. Stanley, a hayseed.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah, I think this is a certain kind of brain because I am on that spectrum a little bit in trying to weed out inefficiencies with certain things. But I'm on the side of the spectrum that is also it comes from laziness. So I'll try and do that because I'm inherently kind of lazy, I think. So I'm like, I look for ways to cut corners to still get the job done.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
And I've had people compliment me in the old days, like on film sets. Like, hey, you know, I see what you're doing there and you're the kid I would hire twice. Whereas the guy next to you who's just like, no, man, let's just make eight trips and just hump it and do it.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
He's like, I know he thinks he's getting it done just the old fashioned way. He's like, but you're the guy we would hire a second time.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
But that was always my aim. But it's interesting that, you know, I had that a little bit in my brain. But not like this guy did. Like he was obsessed with efficiencies such that he thought and he's kind of right in some ways that one of the biggest threats to getting something done in a productive, efficient way was slacking off and what he called systematic soldiering.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah. And to be clear, because I think it seems like I might have been mischaracterized here. The film set thing, I was I wasn't like, let's just do the minimum. I was I was in a situation in this specific incident where I was trying to do a little extra work by getting a cart loaded rather than just making a ton of trips. And the guys and he was like, no, don't mess with getting that card out.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Let's just hump all this stuff back and forth. Right. And they were like, hey, guys, or to me, hey, guy. And I said, my name's Chuck.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
And they said, hey, Chuck, you're the guy I would hire twice because you were taking the time to do it more efficiently. Not like, hey, I admire like the lazy side of you. Right.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Right. But it was lazy and that I didn't want to do all those trips. That's where it initially sprang from was I don't want to have to tote all that stuff eight times. Does that make sense?
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah, but you only do that if you've got a little laziness in you.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Uh, well, I'm going to look it up. Go ahead. We'll do a rare, uh, a rare look. Okay.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Oh, well, no, that doesn't make any sense either. Like soldiering on. Right. Persevering. Yeah, I don't, doesn't make any sense to me officially as well.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
That's right. So he was at Midvale and he sort of started breaking down the operations of the jobs that they had there at Midvale. And he was like, you know, there are some elementary operations that happen here. So we're going to form an estimating department where we're going to sit around and do time studies, which he got from class at Phillips Exeter.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
And we're going to time workers doing all these little small tasks. We're going to add that up to the to the whole. And kind of average it out and say, hey, you should be able to do this in that amount of time. And we'll adjust accordingly. We'll incentivize accordingly. And he said, and you know what else? This is now a new career. I'm going to be a consulting engineer in management.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
And I'm going to charge you to tell you how bad you're doing things.
Stuff You Should Know
Taylorism: Work Faster!
Yeah. And you know what? We should we should give a good example here, because what he was really most or not most well known for, but something he became very well known for was his work at Bethlehem Steel.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
And he started looking at the process of loading iron onto rail cars, pig iron, and said, all right, we need to figure out how much of this stuff is reasonable for one of these men to load onto a rail car. The average right now is 12 and a half tons a day. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to get 10 large, powerful Hungarian workers to and say, hey, load as much as you can, as fast as you can.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
16 and a half tons is your goal. And they did that in 14 minutes, whereas 12 and a half tons was the daily rate for their average worker. So that's 71 tons in a 10-hour day. He rounds it up to 75 and then said, yeah, but you know what? People get tired and they need breaks. So let's whack off 40% of that.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
And we'll just call it even at 47.5 tons per day, which is four times as much as you've usually been doing. That's the new expectation.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
All right. So when this happened, some people said, I ain't doing this. They quit. They got fired. Some people tried and couldn't do it. Some people were so tired from trying to load that much or that they couldn't come back the next day. And things got really heated. He needed he hired armed guards to walk him home at night. Taylor did because he was so worried.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
And then he said, all right, I'm going to create a new fake scenario. And this is something that I've seen businesses do that I hate when they create like, you know, here's our worker, Todd. And Todd, you know, and it's all just made up BS. And that's what he did with Schmidt.
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Taylorism: Work Faster!
Was that me or Jerry? That was Jerry. Okay. I'm usually the timekeeper.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Look around, everyone. Every car you see is probably on AutoTrader. Like that sleek convertible that turned heads when it picked you up from the airport, or the custom ride from your favorite van life couple on social media. Even that vintage sports car that's tailing you a little too closely. New cars, used cars, electric cars, even flying cars.
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The Catacombs of Paris
You're going to go a long way, baby. Stick with me. Should we take a break or you got something else?
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The Catacombs of Paris
Dear diary, today I went to the catacombs. I found my solace there.
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The Catacombs of Paris
Hey, everyone. As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early. Your business is on your mind 24-7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that grinds just as hard as you do. And that hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs.
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The Catacombs of Paris
That's right. Those qualified candidates, you know, at the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is going to be the quality of those candidates. And with LinkedIn, you can feel confident that you're going to be getting the best.
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The Catacombs of Paris
Just post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash S-Y-S-K. That's LinkedIn.com slash S-Y-S-K. And you can post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.
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The Catacombs of Paris
That's right. Big thanks to Anna for the contribution here on the Paris Catacombs. Have you ever toured the Paris Catacombs? Yes, I have. Have you? I have not, and I think I remember you telling me that you had. I've been to Paris three times, have not yet done this. It was not on my radar. The first two, didn't have time the third trip. So if and when I ever get back to Paris, it's on the list.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yes, for sure. And I don't want to make you feel self-conscious. I was laughing at a dirty joke that I couldn't say out loud.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
I'll tell you later. Oh, I know. Yeah, yeah. So a lot of, I mean, monks used to make chartreuse down there. Was that the birthplace of chartreuse? Yeah. In the catacombs?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, for sure. So that's one thing that happened back then. Mushroom farming, there's been a great tradition of alcohol brewing actually over the years. Because, I mean, one of the great things about having an underground system like that is it's very stable temperature wise. It's about 60 degrees Fahrenheit always.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
That's right. And so that means you can do a lot of stuff from like storing wine to brewing beer. Storing beer.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Mushroom farming was another big deal because one thing you don't need a ton of for most mushrooms is light. Sometimes, you know, you want them to fruit. You may be able to manipulate light or something like that. But generally, mushroom growing can be done in very dark places.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
And so starting in the 19th century, actual mushroom farming and not just like I'm going to grow a few mushrooms like they were producing about a thousand tons of catacomb mushrooms a year.
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The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, I'm finally feeling well. I had some fruity mushrooms and everything's fine.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
It's also been a good hidey spot over the years, depending on what's going on with the government during the French Revolution. Revolutionaries hid out down there and were chased down there. Sure. There was an alt-right group in the 30s called... How would you pronounce that, Josh?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
La Cagoule. They... not only hid down there, but would use it as a way to get around and potentially break into government buildings, I guess, from, you know, from the bottom.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
No, of course not. During World War II, obviously, there's going to be either Nazis down there or the French resistance might be down there.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
But what they're most famous for now is being able to go down there with your niece, the movie star. Yeah. It's been a tourist attraction since Napoleon said, you know what would be great? The year is 1809. I think it's high time we start letting people down there to tour this pretty cool thing. And it's sort of... Uh, vacillated over the years.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
It used to be like, you know, you could go down there once a month. If you were a citizen of Paris only, uh, sometimes it was like quarterly. Um, finally, uh, they said, you know what, let's just, let's just make money on this. And it's open what, uh, Tuesday to Sunday. I guess they close on Monday. Like a lot of museums do, uh, nine 45 to eight 30. It'll cost you 31 euros these days.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
which is about the same in dollars, I think, right, right now?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Okay, so pretty close. Man, you really keep up with that. Not bad. Thanks. Let me see how my Euro stocks are doing.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Well, I just came back from Mexico City, so I basically just divide by 20.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Oh, I don't know. But I think you divide by 20-ish now. But my friends that we were with were like, I can't even think of it that way. I heard all you have to do is drop a zero and then divide that in half. So everyone has their own way of thinking about it. And shout, how much is this? Exactly.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Okay. That sounds about right. You go down a big spiral staircase. There's a lot of stair climbing, obviously, right?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, so you're walking down, down, down. Before you enter, you go through something called the Port Mahon Corridor, which has a replica of the Port Mahon Fortress. I imagine that looks kind of cool, right? Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Oh, so many skulls that it's just like, whatever, there's another skull?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
You can just stay right there if you die. Like you mentioned, 72 is when electricity came along. There is something called Ariadne's Thread, a black line. to ensure that you don't get lost. And I thought, well, what a strange name that is.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Okay, no flying cars yet, but as soon as those things get invented, they'll be on AutoTrader. If you see a car you like, it's probably on AutoTrader. That's kind of their thing. AutoTrader.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
So Ariadne was the daughter of King Minus and was associated with mazes and labyrinths. And while it is a literal thing painted there, it's also, you know, ties back to Ariadne and the While she was a person, it's also like a logic, like applying logic to all possible routes of a maze to get out is Ariadne as well.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, what does this look like, though? I couldn't find any pictures of this actually in the catacombs.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
You mentioned, well, let's talk about some of these chambers. A lot of them are like the coolest parts of the catacombs are not open to the public and technically, officially illegal and off limits.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Because they weren't the super cool ones were not on the tour.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Well, I looked at some pictures of some of these. The La Plage, which means the beach, is a really cool room because it's got a sandy floor and they painted like a beach scene on the wall. But it looks, I mean, all these places look like where the Lost Boys might hang out, you know?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
That's totally what it was. Super cool. Yeah. What else? What other cool rooms are off limits?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, that is super cool. That was... a subset of a group called UX short for urban experiment. And there are these, it's an artist collective in Paris founded in 1981 and by a group of teenagers back then that like, they'll do this cool stuff. Like they snuck into the Pantheon for months in a row to restore a clock there, but like on the, on the down low.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, just like the group that did the movie theater. They were a subgroup.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, that is really something. But all of these people who sneak down there and do stuff are known as cataphiles. And those are the people, the urban adventurers, who illegally find their way into the catacombs to party, to hang out, to show movies, to have concerts and parties. And show movies. All kinds of things are going on down there over the decades. And it seems to have really kicked off.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
So the JSAT, the Josh SAT would be Moulin Rouge is to boobs as the Paris catacombs is to blank.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
I mean, they've been doing it since the 1800s. I think they had a Chopin, like 45-piece orchestra did a Chopin concert down there.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
In the 70s and 80s is when it seems like the the cataphiles really kind of, you know, took roost down there because it was a great place to go hide. Like the punk rock movement kind of moved downstairs underground, literally underground. Hey. And they tried to keep people out over the years. But like you said, people are going to find a way in if they want to.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Oh, man. I don't know. I haven't taken a test like that in so long. That'd be fun to take the SAT again. Would it? I think so.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
So, yeah, people do find their way in, like I said, and they've been doing that a lot since the beginning. And, you know, besides partying and doing drugs, like there are all kinds of like cool works of art. There's murals painted on some walls, obviously all kinds of graffiti. Sometimes they leave messages and leaflets and things for each other to find and try to avoid.
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The Catacombs of Paris
The cataflicks, which is literally translated as catacops.
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The Catacombs of Paris
The raspberry. The fine, the 60 euros you mentioned, I saw 65. I mean, that's just like double the cost of legal entry. So it's not the biggest fine.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
There's got to be one close one. Like grave site or something.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, for sure. The IGC, that inspection group with the French name, still maintains it. They've been doing so since 1777. And there are still collapses here and there, but it is mainly shored up. Oh, this other thing I thought was fun, the ways that people have found their way in. When they close off an area, sometimes the cataphiles will go in there and reopen it and make a way to get in.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
And they're called... I don't know how you would say it in French, but it translates as cat flaps, like a cat door.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah. It's been in a bunch of movies and stuff too, right?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Do you remember that from back in the day? Is that the human goop that seeps out?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Do you know if the water, is it continually filling up?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
You ruined the story, but... Gamers might recognize... The catacombs from Assassin's Creed Unity.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
No, I didn't play that one. Do you play any of them? Assassin's Creed? No. Do you have something against them? No, I just, you know, my gaming is limited.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
I'm playing a horror game right now called Alan Wake 2. It's the second Alan Wake. And I'd never played a horror game before. And it is pretty scary.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, like when you're playing this game, they look so good now and they're so realistic. So you're creeping around with a flashlight in these rooms and you hear noises and see things and it's like, it's super creepy.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
All right. That's a great JSAT. We should have our own Stuff You Should Know SAT. That'd be a fun thing to design.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
That's masterful. Definitely ongoing dread. And then when the jump scare happens, when a bad person comes out, it's just, yeah, it scares big grown boy Chucky. Fantastic.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Here's one cool thing, and this guy might be worth a podcast on his own. But there was a photographer. He went by the name Nadar, I guess, N-A-D-A-R. And this is in the 1860s. His real name is Felix, I guess. How would you pronounce that last name?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Tournachon. He was a very accomplished dude, sort of the pioneer of the medium. This is early photography and the guy in Paris photography wise at the time. But he invented a battery operated light, basically, and is one of the first people ever in the history of photography to use artificial light to take a picture.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
And over the course of three months, starting in 1861, he went down into the catacombs. with 18 minutes per exposure, took a lot of pictures of the catacombs, and they are super cool and creepy pictures from 1861. They are creepy.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, and those head bones weren't moving, so they're fine.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah. Well, at the very least, it's going to up the creep factor because that just dead-eyed expression of a dummy is pretty great.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
I'm going to have to ask Emily. You know, she took a solo trip there a couple of years ago. I need to see if she went there.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Probably not because I feel like I would have remembered her telling me about that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah. She was like, were there paintings there? Then I didn't go.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Oh, that's true. What about crime? There's been a lot of crime there over the years because, like you said, that's a good place to pop underground and then pop up into somebody's expensive wine cellar or something.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah. Not cool. People have been stealing bones down there since there have been bones down there. Highly illegal.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, I think that a lot of them back in the day were to sell to sort of like cadavers, sell to medical students like, hey, here's a headband for however many Franks.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, of course there's going to be ghosts down there. There's a couple of more well-known than others. I think the most well-known is a guy named Philibert Aspert.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
No, and you didn't shout that one out, so I'm glad you are.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
I know I'm wrong, but when it comes to French, I just want to drop the last letter of everything.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Anyway, he worked at a military hospital in the late 18th century and apparently in 1793 got lost in the catacombs with his own lone candle and never found his way out and just like Like I said, the convenient thing about dying down there is you just stay there. And apparently if you bring a candle there, you hear his voice just before the candle goes out.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Were you creeped out down there or was it just like, oh, this is a cool thing?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, I got to go check it out next time. Did you look at that video, by the way, the one that's like highly likely faked?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
No, there's this videotape that I think it was like 2017 that circulated that was like, you know, it's like a Blair Witch thing. Like, is it real? Is it not? It was a guy walking through the catacombs and apparently gets lost and starts to freak out and run and hear sounds. And then the last shot you see is like the camera falling to the ground and into like a puddle.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
And some people say it's real. Some people say it's not. I don't know. It feels like it's probably faked. But I wasn't like, oh, my God. It was kind of not that interesting.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Here's a correction to our gong show episode. Hey, guys, there was one big error in this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
I thought we had, but apparently we didn't. But yeah, big shout out to Gene Gene, a legend of that show.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, no disrespect intended. We both loved Gene Gene. How do you not? Exactly. So this was an error, though. Chuck Beres, guys, did not invent syndication. It has been around in television forever, with some notable 1950s shows such as Sea Hunt and Life with Elizabeth. Nor was The Parent Game the first syndicated game show or even Chuck's first syndicated show.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
First syndicated game shows came in 1965, Everything's Relative and PDQ, and Chuck Beres' first foray in 1969, The Game Game. Initially, that was to give local stations some color options since old sitcoms wouldn't be in color. But syndication exploded in 1972 because the FCC gave the 7.30 time slot back to the local stations.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
And for those stations, it was cheaper to buy a game show than to make local content. I know this, guys, because I'm a bit of a semi-pro TV historian. Oh, yeah? Yeah, with an emphasis on game shows in particular, so I feel a duty when something is broadly misstated. As that was, I have to try and correct the record.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
I had hoped you'd use Gong, this book, as one of your sources, as it was written by a real-life TV historian named Adam Nediff, who I've done some research for in the past. Okay. Hope you're enjoying the snow today. So this came a little while ago. But that is from Mike Berger in Livonia, Michigan.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
And Mike, I'm going to hang on to your email, and we might hit you up if we ever need any insight on TV history.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
I have to check it out. And I'm also going to forgive you for when I said Mary, Mary, for not saying.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
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Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, so this is, I mean, let's go back in time, I guess. I mean, we know already what it is. It's a series of underground tunnels where more than 6 million Parisians are there, you know, forever. Unless they decide to move them again.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, yeah. So if you go back in time, let's say 45 million years during the Lutetian period, there was an erosion event that caused a lot of what became to be known as Lutetian or Paris rock or Paris limestone or Parisian limestone deposited there.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
And that is, if you go to Paris and you see everything as that sort of creamy gray, that's what that is. And that's what gives Paris its distinct look because they had loads and loads and loads of it. And the reason we're starting with this is because the mining of that lutetian limestone is where these tunnels started.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
About 2,000 years ago, on the banks of the rivers there, they had these quarries where they would mine the heck out of this stuff. And before you know it, Paris is sitting on top of a vast network of tunnels.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
That's right. And that presents a couple of very big problems. First of all, if you've got a city growing and growing and getting built on and built on and getting heavier and heavier, and a lot of the underground has been dug out, that is a problem. And there were numerous incidents of...
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
sinkholes of buildings collapsing into themselves of all kinds of you know tragedies happening over the years throughout the history of Paris because it was built on you know hollow ground in a lot of places right that's why another very famous nickname for Paris is the Florida of Europe right I'm sure they love that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
The other big problem is that Parisians used to love burying themselves in Paris. Like you wanted to be laid to rest in the city where you grew up and lived your life.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Yeah, like very, very locally. And by the 18th century, late 18th century, this was a big, big problem. There were too many bodies. Disease was being spread. So this led to a couple of things. I think in the 1730s, there was an actual... A parliamentary commission study about how disease from these, you know, dead people everywhere in Paris was hurting the city. And then it took about 40 years.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Eventually, in 1777, King Louis, what is that, 16th, created the IGC. You want to pronounce that?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Right. So basically, hey, we got this report 40 years ago that no one's acted on. So we need to really start looking into this stuff. And Chief Inspector, can you pronounce his name?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
He came along as the chief inspector and said, all right, you know what? We're going to shore up these mines and make sure that they're not going to keep collapsing. And also, we're going to start moving bodies out of here. We got a body problem, not a three body problem. We have a millions body problem. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
And we're going to start moving bodies out of, let's start with the oldest one, the Holy Innocence Cemetery, which has been around since 1186. Let's start moving things out of here and from other cemeteries, close these things down and start moving them into these old mine shafts.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
That's right. Just go to squarespace.com slash stuff for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code stuff to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
That's right. To the tunnels. And people are like, you're doing what? Yeah. And they said, don't worry about it. Just go back to sleep. And from 1785 to 1787, over a couple of years, not only from Holy Innocence, but all the nearby cemeteries, they moved these bodies. In April of 1786, the catacombs were consecrated officially.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
It was called the Paris Ossuary at first, but catacombs sounds creepier, I guess. Hey, have I been saying ossuary before?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Well, I wasn't sure how it was pronounced, to be honest.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
So catacombs took over as the sort of, you know, the go-to word. And they kind of just dumped them in there for a while until in 1810, there was a new quarry inspector who said, maybe we can have a little fun with this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
That's right. And I think from now to the end of time, a skull should be known as a head bone.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
So like you mentioned, there are no headstones there. So you don't know who is who. We do know there are some famous is there like Robespierre. Very famous statesman is there. There's a painter named Simon Vouet. Probably.
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
Oh, okay. And then this guy, I think we should maybe do a show on at some point. Charles, I would say Peralt as an American, but what is that, Peral?
Stuff You Should Know
The Catacombs of Paris
I say ossuary, so I don't know why you're asking me. Well, you took French. I didn't. This guy was like the granddaddy of the modern fairy tale. So he wrote Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and Puss in Boots and didn't know about this guy.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Well, I think the Beatles one has the least amount of meat on the bone.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
It's a very, very famous story. But the one that's really interesting to me is Ford vs. Ferrari because that is a terrific movie that I highly recommend.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
I doubt it, but I'm sure you can stream it somewhere. The great James Mangold directed it, and I'm always a fan of his work. He did the new Bob Dylan movie. What else? He did the last Indiana Jones movie, which was better than the one before. What else? I don't know. James Mangold's good. He sort of has a very varied resume, which I always appreciate in a director.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
I am, and I do recommend it. He also did the Wolverine movie and the Logan movie. So yeah, he's all over the place.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That's right. And their very famous founder, Enzo Ferrari, pitched a deal for 18 million bucks for 90 percent interest in the company. And as the movie portrays it, this isn't in this article, but as the movie portrays it, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm not sure if it's true or not, but at least it was in the movie.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
I don't see why they would make this part up, is that he was using that deal to get a better deal from Fiat. Right. So playing one against the other, which will really make someone mad in business. Sure.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Oh, it's fine. It's a top ten. We haven't done those in forever.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Apparently, when Ford showed up to sign the paperwork, Ferrari said that, you know what, you're this Ford assembly line, this bureaucracy that you've got in this company is this is not how we do it over here. So no deal.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
It's always kind of a fun throwback, and it seems like we never do ten. With our three-act structure, nine is probably a great number, but I guess we'll see what happens, right?
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
So they won first, second, and third. So they really bested Ferrari. They also won in subsequent years. So they swept, or not swept, but they won in 66, 67, 68, and 69. That's a sweep. Well, I meant not sweep first, second and third place necessarily. Or they may have. I don't know.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
But I think we should do one on the 24 hours of Le Mans because that's that's I'm not a car race guy, but that to me is the most interesting one.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
And it's not just like a circular NASCAR thing. They're driving through streets.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. Apparently the founder of Lamborghini, John Smith... His name was Ferruccio Lamborghini. He was a tractor maker in the 60s, and he had a Ferrari. And he was like, this clutch is kind of janky.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
And as the story goes, he got in touch with Enzo Ferrari and was like, hey, you know, I think I can help make your clutch better because you got this problem here with this spawn divot, and I can help make that thing better. And apparently, as the story goes, Ferrari did not receive that phone call well and was basically like, get lost.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Exactly. What a weird name for a car.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
You and I are not car guys, but like if I see a Lamborghini on the street or something or like the old Magnum Ferrari, I'd love that stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
A little bit. I mean, you know, I'm not a sports car guy, but I just can't help but see those and think, like, what an amazing machine that is.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yes. And I feel like we did this on an Internet roundup or something. Maybe it sounded really familiar. This story did. It did. OK. Not to you.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, I mean, considering how much they were, that is a song, you know.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, I mean, I think every guy, I mean, Thomas Magna fitted him.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Really? Well, when it showed him in the car, his knees were up toward his chin a bit.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, because he was a tall guy. But that Ferrari, I feel like for guys of our generation, that Ferrari and the Porsche from Risky Business are like two of the top five probably dream cars.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, it had the lights that popped up. It was one of the not as lauded versions, I think. But man, it's something about that movie. It just sort of locked it in. I mean, it's like a little hatchback. It's not even that special. When you look at it now.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Oh, yeah. We got to get going.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That's right. And I feel like I've seen this in more than one place in the world where. Oh, really? Yeah, not even necessarily a road, but like where like, well, you don't want to give up your house. So we're just going to build these skyscrapers all around it.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Oh, yeah. This is the extreme because this happened in China to this couple in 2012. The man's name was Luo Bogan. Bogan? Bogan. He and his wife refused to – they tried to come in and take their house to make a highway. And they were like, no, we're not going to do it. You didn't offer us enough money. And so we're not going anywhere. And so they built –
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, but you would remember this one because it involves self-mutilation.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
I mean, if you're visualizing a house literally sort of in the middle of a road and the road just goes around it, that's what they did.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
I mean, this is the most extreme case of something like this that I've heard. You know, it didn't take long for them to give in, obviously, because it was, well, dangerous and awful. Yeah. And so they got they did eventually give in and got a larger offer than they originally asked for. But I don't get the feeling that they thought they won.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. I mean, it's really egregious when you look at this picture.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. Through it practically.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That was a spiteful road, and now we're going to talk about a spiteful statue.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Because in Germany, between the towns of Bonn and Buehl, there's the old Rhine River and the Rhine River Bridge that connects the two.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
And so the Little Bridge Man or the Brückenmanken, it's kind of a mouthful, is the Little Bridge Man. And that is a sculpture of a guy sort of bent over, sticking his butt out. And that became the subject of a lot of contention, eventually backfiring. Is that right?
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
But like I said, it backfired because that statue became a bit of a local icon. So it was on banknotes. It was on people took pictures of it. It was on local postcards. It was a little tourist attraction. But what they did was they put attacks on the bridge, but only attacks going one way and not back into your own place. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
So what happened was from the Buell side, they could see the statue because it was pointing, you know, their butt was pointing at them. So they got all the benefits of seeing this thing without having to pay to cross the bridge to see it. If you're on the other side and you wanted to go like actually see this statue, you had to pay to get across.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
And that's what Bonnebule.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yes, there is a book, and this is, as the story goes, the book in 1904 called A Dictionary of Saintly Women. Mm-hmm. The story is that Viking, you know, berserker raider types came pillaging southward to the British Isles at one point. Well, not at one point, in 867 CE specifically.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
All right. And I think that's break number two. And we'll be back to finish up with three more right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
And while they were doing their berserkering and ravaging of the villages and things, there was obviously the kind of thing that would happen would be assaults on people physically, sexually, and otherwise. And so when they went to a monastery in Scotland, the Coldingham Monastery, the lead nun, St. A.B. the Younger, said, hey, here's what we'll do.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
All right, we're going to talk about, and I've seen stories sort of like this, but this one seems to take the cake. When a Christmas display goes too far and all of a sudden people or neighbors are like, hey, this is getting out of hand. It's too bright or it's, you know, people are driving in to see these things now and I can't even get down my own street. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
And this happened in the mid-2000s in Ross Township, Pennsylvania, when a dude named Bill, an electrician, key, named Bill Ansell did a pretty, you know, audacious Christmas display in his front yard there in Ross Township such that people were driving in and neighbors started to get annoyed.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That's right. And apparently left it up year round. Santa urinating in the front yard. A choir that was beheaded. Frosty the Snowman getting run over by a car. Also up in lights, F. Ross Township. Yeah. Yeah. Just just right there in string lights. A sign that said this display is dedicated to Ross Township.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Shame on you for destroying my display that brought so much joy and happiness to so many people.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. And then he built a kill desert.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. Be a good neighbor, everyone. Be a good neighbor to your neighbor. That's all you got to do. You don't have to. You can go above and beyond if you want, but just be like base level good.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
We want to keep our chastity and our covenant to God. It's a big deal for us nuns. We should cut off our noses to keep that from happening because they won't assault us then.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. And let's not tank everyone's property values. We're all in this together.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That's right. This is super spite.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That's right. We'll move on to Prince Rogers Nelson, a.k.a. Prince, a.k.a. for a little while, the artist formerly known as Prince. Mm-hmm. Because very famously, Prince changed his name in 1993 to an unrecognizable symbol. It was sort of the symbol for man and woman. And it had some other flourishes and had kind of been tweaked and redesigned over the years. It was on different pieces.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
You know, he had a guitar shaped like that previously. I think it was on his motorcycle in Purple Rain, maybe. Oh, yeah. But it was a symbol that had been around his world for a while. And Prince said, yep, that's my name now. Don't wear it out. Don't wear it out because you can't say it. So that's impossible.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
But I think at the time, I remember everyone just thought it was Prince being Prince and being strange and being eccentric. But it is now pretty widely accepted that he did that to spite Warner Brothers records. Because he was in a record contract he didn't like for numerous reasons.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
He had re-signed it too, by the way.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
No, no, no. He re-signed before this one. This was the second version. He re-signed a third time later.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. Not even to spite, I think. I think it's to protect themselves from sexual assault. Sure. I mean, this is all horrific.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That's right. He also wrote the word slave on his cheek in a lot of performances at the time. And it didn't work. He had to see the contract through, which just another few years, I think in 2000, it expired. And then he was Prince again. And like you said, you know, bygones were bygones, I guess, because he re-signed yet again 20 years later with Warner Brothers.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
it right work around yeah exactly so rip prince man he was pretty great yes uh my friend and your friend scotty got to go to his final performance the solo atlanta performance at the fox theater just days before he died yeah and it always makes me so mad because scotty didn't even really love prince yeah I'm glad he got to go.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
No, no, no. I didn't think you were.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
So that's one of those. We almost went and pulled the trigger to scalp tickets. And it was just like, I don't know why we didn't, because it was special enough to be a piano solo concert by Prince. I was like, man, we got to go. And we didn't. And then he died.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
I saw Prince when I lived in L.A. in the late 90s or I'm sorry. Yeah, I guess it was early 2000s. And that was amazing just being able to see him once with a full band. It was something else.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
He was. I also saw Tom Petty on that last tour. I saw him quite a few times, but I was really glad to be at that last one.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
One of the best. He's one of my faves.
Stuff You Should Know
10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That's right. This is another image search quality or image search worthy kind of thing to look up. If you're in a place where you can do that, just type in Plum Island pink house and you will see a quite large pink house sitting in the middle of nothing.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Made out of spite. A lot of times these spite houses happen when a couple gets divorced. It should come as no surprise. Or I should say probably couples with a lot of money get divorced. Because what I've learned is in order to have a spite house, you have to be rich. Well, I'm just going to build that huge house to get back at someone. It's a very privileged position to be in. For sure.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
So, you know, I am judging. But in 2015, there was a New York Times article that talked about this thing that was built, like you said, in the middle of nowhere. It said it was overlooking a vast landscape of pristine salt marsh. And it apparently happened in 1925 when a couple got divorced and the wife said, all right, we can get a divorce.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
But you have to rebuild an exact duplicate of the house we live in if you're kicking me out of it because I love it so much. And he went, no problem. And so he built it and he said, you didn't say where. And he said it just like that, I bet.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Just clapping the dust off your hands.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, I mean, I guess if you're a loner and you like nature, it's not the worst place to be. I just saw a sunset picture. It looked pretty nice.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, and I'm sure upkeep on that thing is you're probably repainting that thing every couple of years, right?
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, you would have to. Apparently, it was lived in until 2011 and then eventually was sold to the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge in 2012. And you can't get to it now. It's off limits to the public. But they're trying to make it an official protected house so it will stand forever. Yeah.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
I don't know. Well, some people say that that was just an urban legend and it was just a family who lived out there.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
So another recent one from Automatt. I love this real-time stuff. This, you know, I mentioned some sort of episode on currency and how it affects things. And this is from Tree. Tree, okay, awesome. Not a tree, but Tree. Tree. Hey guys, Chuck. Specifically, you mentioned in the Automat episode you were trying to formulate something around how change affects things, or currency rather.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Look into the situation in Zimbabwe, that might help, where it was too expensive to import metal coins. They had adopted the US dollar. It was too expensive to import the metal because of weight. So there was a huge change shortage because store owners couldn't give shoppers change.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Shoppers would have to purchase additional items to try and get their total purchase as close to the whole dollar amount. And he sent a New York Times article. And that, my friend, Tree, is exactly what I was talking about as something that could be a part of that episode. So I appreciate that direction. And that is specifically Tree Marchink. Great name, Tree.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
That was crazy. I remember that.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, there's got to be more to it.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, it gets even worse because what the Vikings did was burn the place down with them inside and killed them all.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. And they just burned them down. They didn't spite anybody.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. Oh, wait, but doesn't it mean to spite your own face? Right. So you're harming yourself. Yeah, I got you.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, I just got confused.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Wow, that's really good. I like that.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
All right. Let's talk about Henry Clay Frick because he was a Gilded Age character. I don't know about Robert Barron, but he was very least a mogul. And along with Andrew Carnegie, they made quite a lot of money together as partners in the steel industry. That relationship went south and Carnegie got him out of the picture, got Frick out of the picture.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
And, you know, to the point where he was, Carnegie was sued and Frick actually won a lawsuit and won compensation and everything. But it wasn't like he was like, all right, we're all even now. He hated Andrew Carnegie for the rest of his life.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, for sure. Anything you can do, I can do bigger and better. And so you would think at the end of their lives, they could just let bygones be bygones. And that's what Andrew Carnegie tried to do when he was in failing health.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
He said, can you get in touch with my old partner, Frick, Mr. Henry Clay Frick, and tell him he's got a great name and tell him that I'd like to meet up with him and patch this thing up before we're gone off of this earth. And so they brought the letter. He dispatched his personal secretary, James Bridge, to send this to Frick personally.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
And Frick apparently balled up the letter and threw it back at him and said, tell him I'll see him in hell where we were both going.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Oh, man, if you I know you're getting into some old TV and you always have been. But if you do you have Criterion, the Criterion channel streamer?
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Highly recommended, by the way. Sure. Like it's really the only great one out there as far as quality stuff. But they have old Mary Tyler Moore or maybe that was on Max. I can't remember, but anyway, Emily and I started watching old Mary Tyler Moore episodes.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah. And it is, I watched a little bit when I was a kid, but man, it is so good and it's so funny and charming and witty and like still great.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
So good. Ted Knight and who's the woman who played Rhoda?
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Oh, it's killing me. Valerie Harper. There you go. Valerie Harper. Ed Asner. It's really a great, great show. And Mary Tyler Moore is just a gem of a human. I hope she's still good as a person.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
I watched the documentary about her. It's worthwhile.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Yeah, it's excellent, in fact.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Hey, sure. I feel like we've killed some time. Should we do a third and then take a break? I think that's a great idea, Chuck. All right, we're going to talk about Saddam Hussein. And Saddam Hussein didn't like one George H.W. Bush, who was the guy who said his name that way because of the first Gulf War.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Right. And if you walked around it, you were given a bad room.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
Did you look at a picture of this?
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
You totally tell who it is. It's big old George Bush senior right there on the floor of the hotel of the lobby. It's a very strange thing to see in a nice hotel. Yeah. But W came along later on, went back to Iraq for the, you know, the war there on the basis of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. Right. And he had them smash that up.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
He's like, Daddy, I'm not going to let him do that to you. here's some sledgehammers. And so they went in there and they smashed that thing up and chiseled it up and supposedly laid a portrait of Saddam. They didn't do that in mosaic tile, did they?
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
He's like, here's some sledgehammers and I need a good tile guy in Baghdad.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
I think so. To ruin your hotel lobby, your nicest hotel lobby. Yeah.
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10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite
All right. We'll be right back with three more.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
They weren't quite chiclet white, but they were enough to where they looked a little different than the others, and the others are just going to, as teeth do, continue to stain a bit. So it's like, yeah, why don't we go ahead and knock it down a notch?
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
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Forensic Dentistry
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, and with something this old, if DNA isn't readily available, mDNA, mitochondrial DNA, can also be very useful.
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Forensic Dentistry
All right. So now this is where things get a little hinky because we're going to talk about the other aspect of forensic dentistry, which is the very controversial, very complex bite mark analysis, which and we'll get to the admissibility of it now in a bit. But they still do collect the evidence, which, you know, you should do.
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Forensic Dentistry
I don't think these implants will – that's the problem is they don't stain while the others are.
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Forensic Dentistry
I don't think anyone's saying like, hey, stop even doing this as far as evidence collection goes. Right. But here's how they do that. If you see a bite mark or anything you think is a bite mark in a like a murder case, let's say you call in that forensic dentist who's just sitting around like so happy they don't have their hands in a live human being's mouth at the time. Right.
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Forensic Dentistry
And they got to do it quick because time is of the essence because bite marks can change a lot pretty quickly, especially if a body has been deteriorating for a few days. Like the location of that bite may be entirely different because the skin is slipping and shrinking.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah. They're going to take pictures with a ruler next to it. You've probably seen that in some movies.
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Forensic Dentistry
Oh, yeah, that's right. Bite photography is very specific and very precise, or at least it should be. And then you can magnify those photos and stuff. But while they're doing this, the first thing that they're going to identify is, like, was it a human bite or not? And it seems like a no-brainer. Like, I could even tell. Sure. But you found a study from 2015 that – doesn't quite hold up.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah. I'm like, why have I just smoked 80 cigarettes? So today, another and I thought we were done with forensics, but who knew that lurking out there was the topic of forensic dentistry.
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Forensic Dentistry
The easiest thing in the world. Was this a dog or an adult human biting this person?
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, I would think human and animal would be pretty easy to tell the difference of, but, you know, apparently not.
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Forensic Dentistry
Well, this is a pretty disturbing but I guess helpful thing that I never knew. After they inspect the body for the bite marks and all that stuff, they will actually cut out the bite mark and preserve it.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah. So they will cut the bite mark from the skin, preserve it in formaldehyde, and then make a silicone cast of the bite mark, which makes total sense. I just never thought about how gross that would seem.
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Forensic Dentistry
uh which we will learn very quickly as in right now um kind of can be divided up into two things which is um identification of uh deceased people or peoples from dental records like when you hear like you know they perished in the fire but they were able to identify the body uh and the much more controversial uh bite mark analysis
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, I was about to say Mike Tyson bite. He's got a fight on Friday. Oh, is he fighting that guy Friday? Yeah, on Netflix. Shoot, I'm not even going to be here. I wanted to see that.
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Forensic Dentistry
We also have avulsions. That is when just some of the skin is removed, and I guess not an entire piece of the body. You have contusions, which is, of course, a bruise. If it's profusely bleeding, it's a hemorrhage. If it's a nice, clean, neat wound, then you have a very precise biter, and they call that an incision. And then a puncture wound is a laceration.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, it should be obvious. Oh, my God. And... holy crap, for the love of God, what was this person doing?
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Well, I think forensic dentistry is a creepy enough title. Or maybe I'll title it forensic dentistry colon enter at your own risk or something like that.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, for sure. I mean, if I would have bitten somebody in a violent episode when I had my front tooth or my two front teeth missing, it would be pretty obvious when you saw that bite mark. Ted Bundy, like you said, had crooked teeth, and so that will leave a crooked impression. Obviously, any chips on your teeth are going to make a more sort of jagged impression.
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Forensic Dentistry
that had been widely used in court and is now generally thought of by most dentists and people in this line of work as junk science.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah. Here's an earlobe and some Dorito, so let's put that in an evidence baggie.
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Forensic Dentistry
And then braces, you know, braces or implants or something or a bridge that can leave a pretty distinctive impression. For sure. Once and this is sort of how it used to work. But once they identify a subject, they're going to get a warrant to take a mold of a suspect's teeth so they can compare it. They'll take a lot of pictures of their mouth and stuff. opening, closing, biting, stuff like that.
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Forensic Dentistry
And then in the old days, they would go to court and compare those and a forensic dentist would take the stand and say, hey, that bite mark looks like that person's mouth to me, jury. That can be a major reason why you convict.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, I mean, there are some professional dentists and forensic dentists that still believe that. I mean, that thing I sent you is from last year and is on the National Institutes of Health U.S. government website, and those four accredited dental experts flat out say like a person's bite mark is unique, like DNA or fingerprints.
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Forensic Dentistry
And I guess we should probably take a break and get into the studies and stuff like that. But it seems like study after study is kind of confirmed that it's just not the case.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
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Forensic Dentistry
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Forensic Dentistry
All right. So you did some extra digging and, you know, it's pretty clear from doing the research that this is basically known as junk science now to most most people, despite those four people who wrote the article on the National Institutes of Health. But there was a review in 2022 and a report from the NIST.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, okay, so they released this report that said, and there were previous reports that we'll talk about too, I guess, but this is the most recent, that said bite mark analysis is not real science, and it's based on these three sort of faulty premises. One, which you already mentioned, which is that a person's dental pattern is unique to that person.
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Forensic Dentistry
And, you know, there haven't been any studies that really confirm this. There was a 2013 study from the United Arab Emirates that found, and I think there's, is that a sort of a dental capital of the world? Because I saw a lot of dentists from like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
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Forensic Dentistry
I have a hunch that that's the case. So maybe someone will confirm or deny that. But that study found that 51% Of the 2,000 dental charts that they examined were unique, one more than half, and the rest were identical to at least one other.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
The only thing I'll say in defense is that it may not be truly unique, but if 49% are unique, then that's unique enough to talk about, maybe not to be used in court, but enough to talk about.
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Forensic Dentistry
Seems like about half of them are if you go by the data here.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah. And, you know, that's the kind of situation, too, where you also have to really educate a jury over like the data on what that really means. You know what I'm saying? And say like, hey, half the time these aren't unique. So you have to understand that going in. So, you know, that that was the first thing. And, you know, that there was that one case that you sent.
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Forensic Dentistry
Where and this kind of factors into number two. Number one was that they're unique. Number two is that the patterns can be accurately transferred to the human skin. Because we've already talked about the fact that there can be a lot of distortion by skin's elasticity. And if the person like sort of does a sawing motion, it completely distort the bite mark.
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Forensic Dentistry
But you said that one case of the guy who was convicted, who was. missing a tooth entirely, which should show a pretty clear like, hey, we can exclude this one because the bite mark didn't have a gap. But they were like, yeah, but if he grinded his teeth and kind of did a sawing motion, it could look like this. And he was found guilty, you know, and he was not guilty.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah. And and the both forensic dentists that worked on that case recanted their testimony. Right. Like completely.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, at least 26 that DNA evidence is now cleared where bite mark analysis was, if not the smoking gun, like a pretty key part of the jury's, you know, findings.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, the big change that you were talking about with just excluding that came about in 2016. We've mentioned some other studies. There was one we didn't mention in 2009 when the National Academy of Sciences released a report about a lot of problems with a lot of forensic science. But one of those was bite mark analysis.
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Forensic Dentistry
And they basically said, and this was in 2009, and it still took until 2016 to make that change official, was they said there's no scientific studies that support the assertion that bite marks provide sufficient detail for positive identification. And then a few years after that,
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Forensic Dentistry
Doctors from the American Board of Forensic Odontology, like we said, that's sort of the main body or is the main body. Participants in a study there of certified dentists, overwhelming number of them couldn't even agree whether they were looking at a bite mark at all.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, and even if the teeth themselves are struggling to hang in there, tooth pulp or dental tissue on the inside of that tooth is very resistant to environmental attacks like incineration, immersion. Like you can be underwater for, I was about to say a million years, but that's probably not true.
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Forensic Dentistry
They throw tomatoes at them. For sure. There was another case you found, a pretty striking one, a guy named John Kunco. He was convicted of rape and assault in 1991, and the main evidence that got him convicted was identification of his voice by the victim, a comment he supposedly made at a party, and then bite marks on the victim's shoulder.
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Forensic Dentistry
all the evidence was was a problem the um the comment that the party that he supposedly made was not corroborated by i always have trouble with that word it's a hard word corroborated by any other people at the party. The voice ID was made from a police officer's imitation of Kunco and his lisp to the victim. So I have no idea how that got through.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
And then I believe the bite mark was infrared light analysis of a bite mark that had already healed.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
But immersion, trauma, decomposition, so extracting DNA from the inside of a tooth is a pretty viable thing. But before 1974, all you really had going was identifying victims of a disaster, usually a natural disaster or a human-caused disaster. They did not really get into crime scene stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
It was a picture of him with his looking at his hand and the bones.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, this is everything changed in 2016. One of the big things that happened, I think there was a case in Texas. A guy named Stephen Cheney was released by the Texas Court of Appeals. And this is the Texas Court of Appeals. They're not big on releasing. Right. You know, convicted criminals.
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Forensic Dentistry
But the Texas Forensic Science Commission in 2016, because of this, you know, kind of fraudulent bite mark evidence in Stephen Cheney's case, they were like, we need to stop this. And I think that was kind of a big case that kind of, you know, really jumpstarted the whole. We maybe not scrapped the whole thing, but where they ended up, which is it can exclude, but it can't positively identify.
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Forensic Dentistry
No, but hey, it's a good little historical cherry on top, right?
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, and man, that may be it for our long, long-running forensic suite. I can't believe that there could be anything else, but I also said that last time.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Maybe. I mean, someone will write in and be like, guys, you've covered crime scene cleanup, blood spatter analysis, fingerprinting, DNA. I mean, the list goes on and on.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
What I didn't know about. That's it. It was the dog. I smell Fritos.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, one of the rare articles that we didn't cover that is still good for us.
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Forensic Dentistry
All right, I'm going to call this another ADHD follow-up. This is a good one. Hey, guys, I had to write in after the ADHD episode during the first episode. I had to pull over into a parking lot because, honestly, guys, I started crying.
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Forensic Dentistry
Yeah. I have ADHD, and I have never had my life explained on a podcast before. Everyone's experiences are different for sure, and I think you did an incredible job explaining the base challenges. I also appreciated Chuck's hesitancy to call it a disorder. It is defined as a disorder, so there's nothing wrong medically with calling it one, but...
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Forensic Dentistry
It does hurt just a little even as an adult when people call it a disorder without thinking about the person who has it. I appreciated the optimism with which you both spoke about the challenges and how they can be managed, especially Josh. The only thing I would add to that is the subtopic would be to find people who accept you before they try and change you.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
When I feel that people love and accept me as me, I am far more willing to accept their help with managing my ADHD Don't approach someone like you're going to fix them. Approach them because you love them. And they will receive your honest offer to assist.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
And just good life advice. Your podcast reminded me that there are a lot of people out there like me. And I hope that a lot of people out there who are trying to take this particular challenge do amazingly positive things with it. And that is from Steve.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Because in 1975 is when that first became permissible in court where a murder victim had a bite on her nose and three forensic dentists came along and said, hey, it's pretty clear this bite came from this person. It should be maybe the exception to the rule, but we should allow it in court this time.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, appreciate it, Steve. Those episodes were a big deal for us for a lot of reasons, and it seems like people responded, so we're proud of them. For sure.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
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Forensic Dentistry
That's right. And if you get cold feet, then you got to try those slippers that they have. They're warm because they have that fluffy, sharp aligning and the marshmallow-like cushioning. Really good stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, dozens of people, according to the Innocence Project. And we should point out, from 1975 until just recently, 2016 is when they finally made a firm decision, which, we'll hold onto that one, but that's really when things changed. But I think the case that you were talking about is Ted Bundy.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
In 1978, notorious serial killer Ted Bundy would sort of wind up his serial killing career by wandering into the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University and bludgeoning and killing four students, sorority sisters there, including one victim where he bit her and left very clear bite marks And those bite marks were instrumental in Ted Bundy's conviction.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, that's right. So that's a good setup. We should just mention sort of as far as the identification, the non-controversial part. Adults usually have 32 teeth, four incisors, four canines, eight premolars, 12 molars and four wisdom, depending on if you still have those. And when you go to the dentist, they, you know, we've been to the dentist and they do a lot of notating.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
They notate your teeth, variations in your teeth, changes in your teeth. If you chip a tooth, any dental work you've gotten like crowns or fillings or bridges or in my case for implants. periodontal disease, receding gums. There are x-rays and there are just the tooth charts.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
And these are the dental records that we speak of when they say, you know, a body was identified, you know, via dental records. It's because of all this work that you get over the years at the dentist. I guess if you, well, this doesn't have so much to do with bite mark analysis. I guess it could, but the records it seemed like are mainly about identification.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, for sure. So, you know, we mentioned all the ways teeth can hang in there and stay, you know, a part of your skull when other parts of your body have deteriorated. Teeth can shrink. They can become fragile. But if you handle them gently and with care, you can preserve them in lacquer. And what will happen if you need to identify a corpse usually is a dentist will go to the morgue.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
They will surgically expose the jaw and examine things. That's if you have a pretty recent dead body that hasn't decomposed too much. If all you've got is a handful of teeth, That still may be enough due to those X-rays and charts. But if it's mass casualties, a dentist is going to and these are forensic dentists, by the way, it's a specialty. Right. They get a list of possible victims.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
And then, you know, you start comparing different records of the different people to try and sort out who is who.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, yeah, for sure. There's a lot of things you can sort of glean from looking at a person's teeth about that person. It's not the most exact science, but we know generally how fast teeth grow, about four micrometers per day. So you can estimate someone's age based on their teeth.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah, exactly. They can get it in a wheelhouse. Sometimes you can learn a little bit about someone's ethnicity because, you know, some ethnicities have teeth that are a little different. Apparently some Native Americans and some Asian people have incisors that have scooped out backs.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
You can determine sometimes some socioeconomic background if there's, you know, a lot of really expensive restoration work. That'll tell you that they probably had a lot of money or, you know, at least money to afford that. Also, the methods that are used are used in some parts of the world and not in others, like some geographic areas.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
That's right. Or in my case, the front four are my pearly off-whites because when they made me my new set of four teeth to go up front to replace my four teeth, they were too white and they looked weird. Oh, really? And they said, we can send them back and have them stained just a bit more. And I went, yeah, we're going to have to do that.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
A person's lifestyle, like if they were a smoker, this is kind of fun. If you're a pipe smoker or if you play the bagpipes, you have a very distinctive wear pattern on your teeth.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
Yeah. And then just sort of the obvious stuff, like a family member saying like, no, they were definitely missing that tooth or that that, you know, that distinctive crown with the diamond CWB for Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
That was definitely their mouth or that tooth was broken. So beyond just dental records like family members can sometimes help out.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
All right. We'll take a break and we'll talk about the Black Death and then dive into the more controversial bite mark analysis.
Stuff You Should Know
Forensic Dentistry
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Forensic Dentistry
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Forensic Dentistry
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Right. And we've never cut it this close. So first of all, my friend, thank you for your flexibility.
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Okay, we're back. I did not throw up. I think I'm good. It's been subsiding every day in the afternoon and I feel fine.
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How Automats Worked
And then in the morning again, I'm nauseous. So that's why I think it's a diverticulitis.
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How Automats Worked
We'll see. All right. No, I'll be okay. I'll be fine. Good. I'm going to do a lot of studying after this.
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How Automats Worked
All right, so we were talking about the busyness of New York and why it worked out there. And one of the other reasons it was really popular, because like I mentioned, it was a very clean place. They prided themselves, at least in the heyday decades, they did go downhill and kind of fall into a little bit of shabbiness.
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I last threw up about an hour ago. Man. And the main problem is it's just, I've been in like a fugue state, man. I have nothing in my body for three days now.
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But in the heyday, they were known as being really, really, really clean, safe places. And believe it or not, at the time, there were a lot of cafeterias that like, if you were an unaccompanied woman, They would not serve you. You had to be in there with your husband or they just serve men like businessmen. So a woman could go in by herself. Children could go in and it wasn't like a seedy thing.
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Families could feel safe and like they were in a clean place with good food. And also a lot of these are really, really beautiful restaurants on the inside.
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How Automats Worked
It's a beautiful, like I would love to find one of those on eBay.
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How Automats Worked
Well, I think in the, I mean, it's been a while since I've seen the doc, but I think there was someone that is getting like the automat machines too and collecting and restoring them.
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How Automats Worked
So I'm just like spacey and can, I told you on email, you guys will love this, that like I'll go 30 minutes where I just like, I'm just so zoned out. I can't have a, I don't even have a coherent thought for a half hour. I know. Josh said, well, that part sounds kind of nice.
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How Automats Worked
That's right. Burger King will come back again in this episode, believe it or not.
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Yeah, I think it was as fresh as food could be for that format.
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Let's say that. The coffee... was super fresh. Like, after 20 minutes, they would throw the coffee out and put new coffee in. The food, they did not sell the next day. And if you're thinking, God, what a lot of food waste, because they're pre-making this stuff, and, you know, we'll get to that in a sec, but a little bit of genius here is they had three different day-old shops
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In lower income neighborhoods in New York. So the next day they would sell the food there at a discount. So even if you didn't have the nickel for the piece of pie or whatever, you might be able to get it for like two or three cents the next day.
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That's right. They sold so much coffee that they ended up losing money on it because they kept it locked into that nickel price for 38 years? Yeah.
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Yeah, for sure. So they were losing money. They eventually had to raise the price. The only thing they could do was double it to 10 cents because their slots took nickels and their sales dropped a lot from 70 million cups a year to 45 million. They still came out on top revenue-wise, if you do the math. But I remember watching the documentary and they were talking about this.
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I've wondered, and I haven't found a way to wrap my head around how to actually do this topic, but something about change Like coins and how they established so much commerce, like a coin slot only taking a nickel. The only thing you can do is double it. So what does that mean to the economy? Like there's something there, but I'm just not quite sure how to frame it.
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Yeah. But, you know, I love that city. I'm going to keep going back. I'm going to maybe next time drink only bottled things and not even cocktails with ice. I'm trying to figure out what what's triggering me. It may just be my biome and some of the food. I don't know.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah, because, I mean, the idea of, like, doubling the cost of something is crazy, even if it's a nickel to a dime at the time. Like doubling your price is just insanity for a business, but there was nothing else it could do.
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They also sold a lot of pie. And I do remember this from the doc. Pie was a very big deal at H&H in 1964. Here's a pretty fun stat. They sold an average of 822 pieces of pie in New York City. between 8 and 11 a.m. And there are some people who said, some historians that have said that, I don't know about this, but maybe, that there was a desire for people to do things like eat pie for breakfast.
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How Automats Worked
But if you had to order it from a server, you might be like, oh, you know, I can't order apple pie for breakfast.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah, exactly. But at the automat, you could just do it on, you know, on the down low and be quiet about it. I just, I didn't know people would be judgy like that back then, but maybe.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah, because it's a dessert. It's a little weird. I mean, I like the idea, but it is a dessert.
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How Automats Worked
So after your steak dinner, you get a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit?
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All right. Still getting to know each other after all these years. All right. So let's talk a little bit about the nickel throwers, because if you're going to require a bunch of nickels, you're going to have to have a bunch of nickels and you don't often come in with a bunch of nickels as a consumer. So they had changed people. They were women. Basically, they called them nickel throwers.
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And they just sat there all day long shoving nickels across the counter, just like when I would go to the 99 cent movie when I was a kid. They had a big stack of tickets and a big stack of pennies, and they would just shove it back to you in the window. And it was always a lot of fun, I thought.
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Maybe. And I'm curious how much they would lose in a year on those pennies.
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It's not a bad idea, but I'm still going to go back. I'm going to try it again. This may have also triggered my diverticulitis. So that may be why it's extending here into day three. I don't know, but I'm here. And this gives us, dude, a rare opportunity to do anything newsy or like current, if you want to mention anything.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, like you said, it conveyed a sense of the future. Like kids loved it for that reason, because they were it was like being in the Jetsons or something. But kids also loved it because that gave them a sense of autonomy to to go in there and get a couple of nickels from their parents and to be able to walk up and pick something out.
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Neil Simon. I take issue with this quote, or the end of it.
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How Automats Worked
Neil Simon, the great Neil Simon, said this when he was a child about going there, or as an adult about going there as a child.
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To have your own stack of nickels placed in your tiny hands, to be able to choose your own food richly on display like museum pieces, to make quick and final decisions at the age of eight, that was a lesson in financial dealings that not even two years at the Wharton School could buy today. Yeah. Maybe a little hyperbole there.
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How Automats Worked
I bet it was pretty good if for no other reason than in the 1920s and 30s and 40s and 50s. They use real food. Right. And real ingredients. And it wasn't like it is today. So I just think by virtue of that, it was probably not bad.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah. And that was one of the selling points that, you know, another piece of pie on a tiny plate would pop into that window when one went out. It's not like it just stayed empty. I guess if they ran out of pie, it would or they probably put, you know, something else in there. But they had a huge actually a few different central commissaries in the city where they would make all this stuff.
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How Automats Worked
They would ship it over there. And they had tons and tons and tons of worker bees behind the scenes doing all that stuff. They had these rotating drums that would do the work of filling the actual slots, but there had to be someone filling those drums. So it wasn't a bunch of robots back there. It was not George Jetson.
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How Automats Worked
It was just a bunch of people plating stuff up and putting it in the drum to put in the window.
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How Automats Worked
I don't remember if it was a lever, but that sounds about right.
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How Automats Worked
Well, I didn't like you did, but sure, I saw the bad kids doing that.
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How Automats Worked
That's right. Automats. And we need to give a big shout out to a documentary called The Automat by from director Lisa Hurwitz. Because it's great. And I saw it a couple of years ago. And that's what inspired this episode. But I wanted to, I don't want to like right on the heels of this great doc, you know, kind of swoop in and do a podcast episode about it. But great documentary.
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How Automats Worked
I'm struggling. I'm sorry. I know you're doing it on purpose. It's all fun.
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For a while there, they didn't have hot windows. They just had the cold windows. So the hot food was served from a steam table. But it was not too long until they had the hot windows and the cold windows or the hot cases, probably.
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How Automats Worked
How they treated their workers is a matter of debate. They they struck a couple of times. In 1937, they struck. They had 3000 employees at the time that failed. That organizing effort did not hold. Then again, in 1952, they struck again and eventual New York State Supreme Court Justice Melvin Barash.
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uh was one of the people trying to organize at the time in 1952 and in 1991 he said the conditions were straight out of the 19th century um that effort failed other people if you watch the documentary the the son of the president of the company said no it was great we had company picnics and christmas parties and like every it was really really really great
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How Automats Worked
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. This reminds me of a childhood trauma that I suffered because growing up, my sister had a best friend whose father worked for Kraft Foods. And they had a big Kraft, like... They rented Six Flags or something. It was some big thing every year. My brother's best friend worked for Coca-Cola. And every year they had the big Coca-Cola picnic thing.
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I had nobody and I never got to go. And every single year I had to watch Scott and Michelle go to the craft event and the Coke event.
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How Automats Worked
Should we take another break? Yeah. All right, we'll take another break and talk about the inclusivity of the automat right after this.
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How Automats Worked
It's streaming on Max. Highly recommend it. She did a great job. I can't wait to see what she does next. And it was a big help here.
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You know, we've all been there. You're sick. You're trying to schedule a doctor's appointment only to spend hours on hold. And then you find yourself crammed into a crowded waiting room with other sick people. And don't get me started about the prescriptions. That's a whole other story.
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How Automats Worked
So, yeah, welcome aboard, Laura. Laura came to us through Livia, which is all the recommendation we needed, right?
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Hey folks, American Public University understands the challenges of balancing education with a busy, ever-changing life. Whether you're part of a military family, managing PCS moves, or a working professional juggling career and family, APU offers the flexibility you need to succeed.
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APU is committed to making education affordable for everyone. For active duty military and their families, the preferred military rate is just $250 per credit hour. Veterans and their families can benefit from the Veteran Grant, which provides 10% off undergrad and master's level tuition.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
And for everyone else, the Opportunity Grant offers the same 10% tuition savings, making higher education within reach for all.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Yeah, for sure. They had a motto, which was serve everybody and serve everybody in the same way, which is a great quote. And Colin Powell, former secretary of state, is in the documentary. And it's a great, really sweet interview. And he said the one we would usually go to is the automat on 42nd Street. I never even thought about the fact that I'm a black kid. Should I go into horn and hard art?
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How Automats Worked
Is it OK? To go to the automat, all the automats had that beautiful diversity that didn't exist in most of the rest of the country of economic standing, of color, of ethnicity, of language. You never knew what you'd run into in an automat.
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How Automats Worked
They were also known for their celebrity fans. They had those one very famous Esquire spread. Of course, this is for Esquire. So it was all set up. But in 1951, Audrey Hepburn was photographed for Esquire. So cute. Shopping at an automat. Very cute. But in the documentary, Reiner and Brooks, you know, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks love the automat.
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How Automats Worked
And they talk with great adoration about their childhood of going to those restaurants.
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How Automats Worked
So I guess we're at the sad point, like so many of these episodes that we do on a cool thing from the past where the decline begins. Right. The 1960s is when that started, although they were still like a huge deal culturally. You know, everyone knew about the automat.
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How Automats Worked
And I don't think we mentioned, you know, at a certain point in New York City, they were so famous that it was like when you go to visit New York, you would go to an automat just for that experience.
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How Automats Worked
Oh, yeah. My band did one gig at the Hard Rock Cafe here in Atlanta one time.
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How Automats Worked
But the 60s is where things really started to struggle, even though they were, again, still popular culturally. Stockholders were involved by that point, obviously. Just revenues started dropping, obviously. The suburbs was a big cause of it.
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How Automats Worked
You know, when people started moving out to the suburbs, offices and office complexes started getting built in the suburbs and people started shopping at malls in the suburbs. And there were fewer and fewer people just, you know, walking around New York doing things like shopping and going to their office.
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How Automats Worked
So it just it started to sort of slowly drop and slowly drop until they got a little weird with some of their ideas. Right.
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How Automats Worked
Not a wild restroom. That's every restroom in New York City.
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How Automats Worked
Right. They also tried a beer garden. They tried the roller skate waiters thing. They tried, you know, live bands and dancing and stuff like that. But eventually Horn and Hardart looked at each other and they said, well, this has clearly seen its best days. The silver lining is, is we are sitting on a bunch of really valuable real estate.
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How Automats Worked
I was just about to improvise one of those terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible Burger King commercial songs.
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How Automats Worked
Well, it's this whole new campaign with a guy that's singing.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah. Yeah. All right. So Burger Kings went in. Automats were going downhill. Another thing that happened was as they started going downhill, a different kind of shopper started coming in there. People that were itinerant to people that were.
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How Automats Worked
were unhoused, people that were vagrants and just sort of coming through town who knew that they could hang out there for that nickel cup of coffee for hours and hours and hours. And when that starts happening, families stop coming in and it just creates this sort of vicious cycle where your clientele is different and it's not seen as that safe middle class space any longer.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah, another big part of that is like these huge central commissary kitchens where they were cooking all this stuff is an excellent, excellent, efficient way to do it when you are booming with business. Right.
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How Automats Worked
Once business drops and you're not cooking, you're not needing to cook as much, all of a sudden the economy of scale isn't there any longer and you have these huge places with fewer employees and less food being pumped out.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah, basically. That last one that closed in 91, it was the last one starting in 1977 at 200 East 42nd Street. So right there, you know, sort of near Times Square. Sure. And it lasted 14 years on its own as a nostalgia piece, basically, before becoming a Gap.
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How Automats Worked
Where, is this in your off-grid panic room? Like, where are you watching antenna TV?
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How Automats Worked
That's right. The Flintstones, they even had a Flintstone automat in a 1962 episode.
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How Automats Worked
Oh, that's fun. And I did not know he totally. Yeah. Let's call an homage. You're kinder than I am.
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How Automats Worked
That's right. That's right. Pat Boone tried his version of the automat called the Dynomat in 1962, which was frozen food that was then microwaved. That did not work out too well. That's surprising. But there were a few other things over the years that were tried like this that did not take off like the automat did.
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How Automats Worked
Oh, that's funny. But that never happened at all, right? Just an idea.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah. I mean, there are things like this. I mean, Japan has stuff like this, right? They have what's called katin sushi. Okay. What's that?
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How Automats Worked
No, but I've seen little windows as well of things. It may not be hot food. Maybe it's other things.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah, there's a place in Brooklyn called the Brooklyn Dumpling Shop. I think there are like 12 of them in here in Canada. And they I just looked up a picture of them and they they had these little automat kind of like cubbies that you order through an app like a locker system.
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How Automats Worked
And I've also seen I think it was a shark tank product that I ended up seeing in a hotel where it's like a machine that gives you like a cheeseburger or a pizza like but made to order and. So, like, you can say what kind of pizza you want, and it's just got this machine inside that'll, you know, load it up with whatever and then bake it, and then it spits it out in 15 minutes or whatever.
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How Automats Worked
And then they have a hidden camera on you. Right. And spit out a picture of you going, ah!
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How Automats Worked
I have nothing else. I don't think I have to puke. I think this is the best I've felt in a few days. So hopefully that holds.
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How Automats Worked
Just a little Josh, a little side cup of oyster stew. I'm back on my feet again.
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How Automats Worked
That's right. This is short and sweet. This is kind of fun because this is coming out tomorrow and it's a correction on an episode that was just out. Awesome. So maybe for a change we won't get like 400 emails from crafters.
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How Automats Worked
Oh, yeah. Hey, guys. RE, the High Times episode and Martha Stewart. Hodgepodge is a big jumble of things that don't go together. Modgepodge is the craft supply. Just don't want you to embarrass yourselves at the craft store. That is from Kelly.
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Heck yeah, man. I've had free TV for many, many, many, many years. Yeah.
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How Automats Worked
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All right. I'll check it out. Should we talk automats or did you have another announcement?
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How Automats Worked
By the way, this is going to be a tough one for me to get through for obvious reasons. Yeah, yeah. Because in the first paragraph, I saw the words oyster stew earlier, and I almost vomited in my mouth.
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How Automats Worked
I have not eaten food in three days, but I used to eat food.
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How Automats Worked
That's right, and we've been at it for six minutes. We might as well go ahead and say that the automat was a grouping of chain restaurants, self-serve restaurants, sort of like a cafeteria, but instead of being served in a line where people would dump food on a tray, they had these walls filled with glass-fronted compartments, and you would put in some money.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
And a slot, and you would open the door and get your piece of pie or your chicken pot pie or your pot roast or whatever have you.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
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Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Yeah. I mean, the last one, this is remarkable. The very last one in New York closed in 91.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Which is hard to believe. They saw a couple of sad decades, a few sad decades before that. But we'll get to all that. But should we go to the beginning?
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
And where else are we going to go but our old friend, Germany? Because the first automat popped up in Berlin in 1895, and the word automat was just more of a general term for a vending machine in Germany. But it won a gold medal a couple of years later at the Brussels World Fair.
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How Automats Worked
Europe kind of got into them a little bit, and they spread around Europe over the next five or so years before making the leap to the United States.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Yeah, their first one in Philly, which was the first one overall, was 1902. But the equipment, you know, because it started in Europe, was in Europe. And they tried to get some of the stuff shipped over there. You know, these big, beautiful cases with the coin slots and the little windows and everything. And the ship sunk in the Atlantic. So they lost all that gear. They tried again.
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How Automats Worked
And these were victim to a warehouse fire, but salvageable. They repaired that stuff. They got them up and working, and they beat out their closest competitor. There was one card, Harcombe, in New York that went out of business. I think it was a little fancier. And H&H definitely leaned toward, as we'll see, serving just sort of solid, affordable comfort food to the masses. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
Yeah, and this is like – that's funny, by the way. This is like during the Great Depression, like people were going out of business right and left. And they actually – H&H thrived during the Depression because, again, everything was really cheap. It was comforting stuff. As you'll see, the coffee was great. The food was fresh.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
And, well, maybe not more than anything, but additionally, it was a great place to go. They were beautiful places, generally. They were clean and they were safe. And we'll get to a bunch of other ways that they were inclusive as we go on.
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How Automats Worked
Yeah. I mean, that's kind of hard to believe in a way because they were so successful there. You would think in the other places, like, of course, the obvious ones, they went to Chicago, Boston, D.C. and Detroit and some other places. But, you know, those are big cities and it's just odd that they didn't take off there.
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How Automats Worked
No. Well, that's good. Here's the story, everybody. I went to Mexico City again and got sick again, thankfully at the end, and... I couldn't record yesterday, but we were in danger of missing a publish date for the first time. Yes. In 17 years?
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
But we do have a quote here from New York history from a guy or an idea rather from this guy named Nicholas Brommel, who basically was like, you know what, in New York, it's so dense. And they they really concentrated the restaurants around offices like in the garment district, in the financial district, in Midtown, where people were either shopping or like going to work far less.
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How Automats Worked
And like, you know, the the quieter neighborhood streets and stuff like that. So it was just so densely packed and everyone knows how how busy New York foot traffic is around those places. And that was at least Nicholas Brommel's take on why they took off in New York and Philly.
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How Automats Worked
Oh, yeah. I mean, I kind of like the off-brand stuff, but yeah, that's definitely weirdly vague.
Stuff You Should Know
How Automats Worked
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And don't get me started about the prescriptions. That's a whole other story.
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The Barkley Marathons
But he'd need a ride back. Are you kidding? He said, it might take a while, but I could probably run a hundred miles. And I'm just like floored by this idea of, That people can do this. And he said, man, you should do a – I guess you should do an episode on the Barkley Marathons, which I had heard of before.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah. And they showed up there. There was a park ranger that was like, you guys should leave. Like, you shouldn't be out there. It's like it's not like you think you're going to get lost. You're going to get hurt. You're going to need rescue. They ignored him. They did make it through. They did an eight mile.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
uh they made this eight mile hike uh this loop but it took him a full day which is you know you should be able to hike much more than eight miles in a day and it required a lot of orienteering like you said and paying attention to that kind of thing and he said all right i think i have an idea here for a race uh let's make a nearly impossible to finish race um i think it's kind of hard to tell
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Because there's not a website for this. You can't get, like, historical. I mean, people have written about it since then. But you can't get, like, the official website documentation on this race in history because it doesn't exist. They keep it very much under wraps.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
So the way he tells it on the documentary, it was always supposed to be 100 miles, but no one ever did more than the first three loops out of the five. Yeah. I think, though, that maybe this first version was shorter. It was about a 50 to 55 mile course. It was held over April Fool's Day weekend, 1986. And the initial cutoff was 24 hours with 13 participants and zero people finishing.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, I mean, he changes the route every year a little bit. That's why it varies. But the year they did the documentary, it was documented at 130. And everybody is like, it's not 100. Just stop saying that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Which is this – yeah, which is this ultra marathon plus a trail run plus in the mountains of northeastern Tennessee that is known for just being a crazy – race, a crazy hard race, and having a really unusual origin story, an unusual founder, and just how it's all done. It's just this remarkable story, and I agree.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, and I guess we can go ahead and tell everybody the current iteration, like we said, is supposedly 100, but it's really more like 130 miles. It's got a 60-hour time limit. And the elevation is the total elevation climb over that race, if you finish it, is 60,000 feet, which is equivalent to walking up and back down Mount Everest twice. Yes.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, I mean, their legs are all just... Because these briars, they have to go through one part, which is a really heavy briar area.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Oh, yeah, like disgusting, bleeding. Their feet are disgusting and blistered and just riddled with... I think the one guy that... We'll get to the stops, but the one guy, they were like, it would take you eight hours to fully dry your feet out. So, you know, you can't... You're not going to get dry feet. Right. Which is a big problem. And... They're basically not sleeping. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
When you complete a loop, you have what's called an interlooper period where you can do whatever you want. You can take however much time you want. You can get first aid. You can eat. You can drink. You can rest. You can change your clothes and socks. You can take a nap if you want. But that clock is still running. So how long you wait is up to you. Mm-hmm.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
I think the winner that year said he slept about an hour total. So just try staying up and awake for 60 hours in a chair.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, exactly. People are doing this. And, you know, we say it's a run like a lot of this is hiking and bouldering and walking and crawling. So it's not like they're running the whole time, but it's just brutal.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, I think so. So finishing the three loops, if you finish three loops, that is considered a fun run, and that is a designation, and that is a huge accomplishment just to finish the fun run. We should add he also has a baby Barkley in the fall, the Barkley Fall Classic, which is a 50K, so 31 miles, and that has about 400 runners.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
But only about 35 to 40 participants are allowed per year to compete in this thing because of, you know, it's out in nature. So the state won't let them have like hundreds of people, like not a ton of people can go watch. It's just like family. And I think some, you know, former winners can be there.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
And, you know, it's a pretty small operation because they just can't, you know, run roughshod over the area. But they had the 60 hours to complete. Now, 12 hours per loop. The first loop is run clockwise. The second loop, which is at night, will go counterclockwise. And then again, day, night, clockwise, counterclockwise. And then this is pretty devious.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
The final fifth loop, if you get there, the first person to finish the fourth gets a choice which way they want to run. And then they start splitting people up because almost everybody runs with a buddy or two. It really, really helps to have someone out there and they're really helping each other. But at the end, he's like, you're going to lose your buddy. Which way do you want to run?
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
And the first person will say, I'll go clockwise. The next person has to go counterclockwise. And then they alternate. So at some point, if they finish that fifth loop, they're going to pass their former buddy going in the opposite direction. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, I think it's probably it makes it a lot tougher. But I get the idea that if you make it, if you're one of the maybe two, maybe three, maximum four people that are even on the fifth loop, then that's when things get serious. That's when it turns into an actual race.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, and it definitely doesn't seem like it gets easier because they were finishing, when they were fresh-legged at loop one, they were finishing in about eight or nine hours for the fastest times, and then those fastest people were doing like 12 and 13 hours on the next loop. Through the darkness.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
And we should mention the weather, you know. With these huge elevation changes, you're going to go from temperatures sometimes in April in the 80s where it's low to like 10 degrees at night. They have about 100 gallons of water they put out randomly on the course. Like there are no technical water stations, but you'll just happen upon a jug of water.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
And Laz said that, you know, one year they were 140. eight pound blocks of ice because it was 10 degrees at elevation.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Hey guys, it's Chuck and Josh from Stuff You Should Know. If you're anything like us, you've got a lot on your plate this new year. You've got summer beach trips to plan, a work-life balance to balance, and pickleball opponents to beat.
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The Barkley Marathons
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The Barkley Marathons
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Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
That's right. And if you get cold feet, then you got to try those slippers that they have. They're warm because they have that fluffy, sharp aligning and the marshmallow-like cushioning. Really good stuff.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
All right, so we're back. The race is about to begin. We should point out, too, the other thing to keep in mind is if you quit, quit near the start-finish line. Right. Because, like, a lot of people finish, like, a loop and are like, I'm out. Or maybe the two or a lot of people get to that third fun run and they say, that's good enough for me.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
The one guy in the documentary quit and it took him 10 hours to navigate back. Cause it's not like they send somebody out, you don't tap out on radio and they come and get you. Yeah. You just decide I can't do this anymore. And then you very slowly walk back to the finish line.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, no, totally. Or if there, I mean, it depends on where you are. If you're below the halfway point, a lot of people come back the way they came.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, it was really well done. It's on YouTube. And I recommend watching it because it really there's a lot of drama that takes place the year that they did the documentary. I think they did it on 2012 or 2013, maybe.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, that's a non-refundable application fee. I think most people send in two single dollar bills because he says they don't give change. And he every year chooses, you know, he chooses a range of people. Some of them are very experienced. Some of them are random. Every year he chooses one human sacrifice. that he said the runners even appreciate, even at the expense of not getting in themselves.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
He chooses one person that has no business being there. In the year of the documentary, that poor guy made it six hours. Yeah. And I knew as soon as that guy headed out in his camouflage cargo pants. Right. I was like, this guy, what is he doing? What's he wearing? So he didn't make it very far.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
No, I don't think so. No, it was pretty funny and sad. He took it on the chin like a big boy, though.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
A little bit more about the application process. Everyone knows it takes place generally around April Fool's Day. They send in an essay to get in with weird prompts. Like one year it was what's the most important vegetable group. And one of the women, I think she was in the documentary that year, Beverly Abs, who, by the way, that year completed the fun run. So quite an achievement.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
She said she was told to send the application in exactly at midnight on Christmas Day in the time zone where Lazarus Lake was. So she had to figure out where he was at the time. And then she wrote a poem as her essay and she got in.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
And then once you get in, you get a letter that says, I'm sorry to inform you that you have been accepted. Basically, misery awaits you.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
I think it was 2012 or 2013, and there's a lot of good drama, so we don't want to spoil some of the stories that happen. But I recommend watching, and here we go with Barkley Marathons.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, he's one of the great eccentrics of the world, and sometimes those people are hard to pin down, you know, because they don't fit into a box.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Right. Some other fun things. If you're a first-time runner, you bring a license plate from your home state or home country, and he makes these cool signs out of them and hangs them up. You have to bring a gift as well if you were part of the race. If you are... A first-time runner, you have to bring an article of clothing. In the documentary, it was very funny.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
He said it kind of depends on what he needs. One year it was a bunch of white Oxford shirts. Another year it was socks. Another year it was flannel shirts. And then if you have finished the race and you come back to race again, you have to bring him a pack of Camel cigarettes.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, when you get accepted, you know what day it's going to be on. You go, you camp out in the campground, and you're just sort of waiting for him to blow the conch. He blows a conch sometime between midnight and noon on the Saturday of that weekend. You don't know when it's coming. So if he blows it at, you know, 7 a.m. or sometime in the morning, you're up all night.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
You're not getting sleep because you're so amped up and ready for this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
And apprehensive because you don't know when it starts. Again, he's just sort of messing with people. Yeah. And so when he decides to blow the conch, he blows the conch. That means you have one hour. And everybody, you know, starts getting ready to go at that point. There is no prize, we should also mention. The prize is just finishing this thing.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, totally. I like that one dude, the long-haired guy from Arizona, in the documentary, that was his first one. He just had a cool vibe. Like, everyone had a pretty cool vibe. Like, it's a really... It has a great spirit of helping one another out, and during the interloper periods where they're, which is, by the way, the only time they're allowed to have their sort of aid crew with them.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Like, they don't, you know, they can't get help along the way.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
So this is when they see other people, and there's other former winners there, and when people drop out, they stick around, and they're really helping people get their feet together, and they're giving them dry socks, and... feeding them. And it's just a real great spirit of sort of camaraderie and helping one another out, it feels like.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
They can wear a little cheap or they're given a little cheap watch. And I think they banned altimeters in 2014 or 12 or something.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
To me, this is kind of one of the coolest things because the whole time until we had gotten to this part, I was like, well, how do they know that people are running that route? Because they're not staked out along the way.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
In the documentary, they had some people staked out a little bit just to get some footage, but it's not like they have people at checkpoints that are making sure they're on the route and all that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
He did something pretty lo-fi and genius, which was he puts 10 books out, 10 to 12, depending on the year, at different points along the way, and you have to rip the page out corresponding to your bib number, and that is the proof that you ran the real route.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
You have to show up with, depending on how many books, 10 or 11 pages when you touch that start-finish line, and you have to turn them over to Cantrell, and he has to look them over and verify it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah. I mean, the one guy, the year of the documentary that won and set the record, I think he said he spent a couple of hours looking for the book at one stop.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, and I think there was a story just last year, in fact, there was a French runner who got to the final loop to find that a book was gone. There was a day hiker that thought the race was over and took the book as a memento. So he's like, what do I do? He completed the race, and when he got back to the gate, they had turned the book in, so they counted that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
You know, I bet that he feels a great sense of accomplishment, though.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Like he finished that thing, six seconds be damned, you know?
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
I think there was one more piece of housekeeping here. Housekeeping? Oh, that's right. When a runner gives up, a guy named Dave Henn, who is a race volunteer, plays taps on a bugle.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah. It's really fun to watch. It was. Someone just like on their last leg, literally like you bleeding at the legs. And he's like, hit the button. Right. Because that was easy.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Oh, man. The one guy that couldn't in the documentary that that tapped out and was just like crying.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Oh boy, that was tough. He had kind of dark curly hair and he was pretty pumped up going into it about his chances. And yeah, I mean, what can you say about a race where like, whatever, probably 98% of the people never finish it. Right. Maybe more, maybe 99.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Let me see. Last – I'm sorry. This year there were a record five people completed it, and that is – I think the maximum before that may have been three, maybe four, but usually it's one, maybe two or zero. Last, I'm sorry, this year, a woman was a finisher for the first time. Yasmin Paris or Perry, I don't know how she pronounces it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
She came in two minutes short of the deadline to finish that race.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, I got that. And I don't know if I'm being an apologist, but I got the idea that a lot of that was sort of goading someone to finish.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, like deep down, he's like, there's going to be a woman that's going to do this, and maybe I need to stoke the fire a little bit.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Who else? In 2024, a mechanical engineer named Jared Campbell became the first four-time finisher. He's in the documentary. And an interesting just sort of side note in this, and Livia pointed it out, but then when you watch the documentary, it really hits home, is that it seems like this race and ultra-marathoning and this sort of endurance thing attracts people of very, very high intelligence.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
We're still getting emails on that one. So yes, I do. Okay. All right. Cool. What LA marathon are you talking about?
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
I felt like every person they interviewed were like, I'm an engineer, I'm a scientist. And they talked to, I almost called him Barkley, to Lazarus about this, to Cantrell in the documentary. And he said, yeah, he said, those are the achievers in life. Those are the people that go to graduate school and go to get their doctoral thesis and people who set hard goals and accomplish them.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
It just sort of fits, and I never really thought about that tie, but I don't think there's a lot of dum-dums that do stuff like this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
I do want to shout out the record, though. Brett Mahn, who has won it a few times now, I think he's a physicist. The current record right now lies with Brett at 52 hours, 3 minutes, and 8 seconds. Very nice. Just incredible.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
That's right. Sorry, John. Go back to sleep. Here's your chubby hubby.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
I can't find it anymore. I can't either. People say it exists. I get pictures, occasionally emails, but it doesn't exist in Atlanta.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
I don't know. I don't eat ice cream anymore anyway, which is the saddest part of this story. All right. I'm going to call this Lake versus Pond. We got quite a few emails. By the way, I want to mention one differentiator we saw said that the difference they heard between Lake versus Pond is if sunlight can reach the bottom. If it can, then it's a pond. If it can't, then it's a lake.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
But this comes from Mark. Hey, guys. The answer, I think, depends on who you ask. But as an ambassador from the land of 10,000 lakes, Minnesota, which is technically 11,842 lakes, perhaps I have a bit of clout. Most folks would assume the difference has something to do with size and depth. It's not quite that simple though.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
According to a 2012 CBS News article, a retired DNR water supervisor, Glenn Yackel, suggests that a lake needs to be large enough and deep enough to allow for wave action to be considered a lake that can clear vegetation from its shoreline. A pond, on the other hand, lacks this wave action, meaning its shoreline is typically surrounded by vegetation without clear boundaries.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
I don't remember what it was. Yeah. Oh, boy. People are just screaming at their – pod player right now.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
But guys, it gets even more complicated. Government agencies often have regulatory thresholds that lead to discrepancies per state. For example, here in Minnesota, with our 11,842 lakes, has fewer lakes than Wisconsin, And any Wisconsinite will gleefully point out that they have 15,000. But here's where the differences come into play.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
While they do have 15,000 lakes, their definition includes a body of water with an area of at least 2.5 acres. In Minnesota, our standards are higher. And to qualify as a lake here, we must cover at least 10 acres. If we lowered our threshold to match Wisconsin's, we wouldn't dare dream of it, though. We'd have over 20,000 lakes.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
For real. That is from Mark. Mark said, always a pleasure to listen to you guys with my boys who are six and seven and big fans. And Mark had replied with their names. And I'm very frustrated because I cannot find that reply. So let me just say, Mark and sons of Mark, thank you for the support.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Sorry, guys. But there's six and seven. So maybe that's for the best.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Anyway, let's not even do that. Marathon's been along a long time. Ultramarathon started in the 1970s, and that's what we're really talking about. And this guy, Gary Kintrell, a.k.a. Lazarus Lake, or Laz, he's in his 70s now. He is our... He is the creator, along with his friend of the Barkley Marathon, whom he named after his friend, a farmer named Barry Barkley.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
In the documentary, very sweetly over the end credits, they ask him with Barry why he named it after Barry. And he said, well, he used to help me with a lot of races. And I don't know. It just fit.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, so there's no real reason, but they're called the Barkley Marathons. And Cantrell has an interesting story in that he is a former athlete. He's run supposedly over about 150,000 miles in his life, but he smokes Camel cigarettes. He just floods his body with Dr. Pepper. He's an older gentleman now and has kind of wrecked his legs from all that running.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
So he hasn't run for a while, but he got interested in this as a Boy Scout in Tennessee as a teenager, or preteen, I guess, when he started doing backpacking trips that he hated until he found out there is a great joy in overcoming a hardship and doing something tough, physically and completing a goal and got kind of hooked on that feeling.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah, exactly. They first took the form of what he called journey runs, which is this all sounds fun. If I was into running, I would do something like this. But he and his friends would get together and be like, all right, let's run from Knoxville to Nashville or let's run. I love the through run.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Their idea of a through run was either from Alabama or Kentucky running to the other just straight through Tennessee. Let's run through the state of Tennessee.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Pretty fun idea. They were doing these. They led to some other kind of legit races. I think one of the two is still around. He called it, and he's always had a sense of humor. You can tell by the way he names these things. The last annual Vol State, obviously Volunteer State, road race, which is a 311-mile run from Missouri to Georgia in 10 days.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Exactly. A 10-day cutoff time, no comfort stations along the way. You have to source all your own food and water and shelter along the way. And then another one called the Idiot's Run, which I don't think is around, 123-mile gravel, all gravel road run. Oh, my God. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Yeah. I mean, many, many years, the Barkley marathon has no finisher at all. Uh, many years, no one makes it to the fifth loop. Uh, there are four loops that we'll get into all this in a second. Um, it's happening more and more now. I think just.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
There are more veterans that come back that once you kind of know the deal, I say it gets a little easier, but you know, a little easier in that it's possible to finish. It's never easy, but I think the veterans have an advantage for sure.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
No, totally. And if you look at, you know, they do these aerial shots in the documentary of this prison that we're about to talk about. And it's just, you know, it's in the middle of nowhere, like at the bottom of, you know, sort of a ravine and very inhospitable. I mean, you'd like to think about places like Alaska being like, you know, some of the most inhospitable places in the United States.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
But I mean, the mountains of northeastern Tennessee are no joke.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
That's right. Our friend Chad, we want to shout out our friend Chad Crowley, who we've talked about before, who was the producer and director and showrunner of our TV show back in the day. Right. I got this idea from Chad because we had coffee over the holidays and he is running ultra marathons now.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
Exactly. And they needed somewhere to put those prisoners. So our workers, I guess, slash prisoners. So they built a new prison. It is called Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. And in the 1930s, a lot of that land eventually became that great conservation area that we were talking about, those 24000 acres. And the New Deal era Civilian Conservation Corps built a lot of trails.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
it became a natural area you know officially in the 1970s but there are these trails there now um not like again like you said not like a lot of state park trails that you go to a lot of these trails are still pretty rough um the prison uh stayed open but what why we're telling you all this is for a couple of reasons uh one is at one point in the race they navigate through a
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
tunnel like a little water channel that goes under the prison and that's part of the race route where you're definitely gonna get your feet wet I don't think we mentioned you're running through rivers and things so like wet feet and it's just a part of the the challenge of this race yeah But the prison remained open.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
And James Earl Ray, the assassin of Martin Luther King Jr., was sent there with six other men. He escaped in 1977 from Brushy Mountain and spent 54 hours in that rugged terrain, eventually being recaptured about eight miles from the prison. And. And Lazarus Lake, old Laz Cantrell, heard this story, heard they made it only eight miles in that 54 hours.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
And he said, man, I could travel 100 miles through that terrain in 54 hours. So he invents this race.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
sort of inspired by this uh he said that he still gets hate mail every year and angry letters for people that think it's some sort of tribute to james earl ray and he's like no it's the opposite like it it was started because i'm making fun of the fact that this guy only made it eight miles and we're doing a hundred right right 130 really uh you want to take a break Yeah, let's take a break.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
We know the name of the marathon. We know where it takes place. We know who started it and where it came from. And we'll be back with more of the Barclay Marathons right after this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
which is a very Chad thing to do. Like he starts running a handful of years ago and then now he's running ultras. And I was like, Chad, how long is that? And he said, 60 miles generally. And I said, could you run to Athens? He said, how far is Athens? And I said, I don't know, I can't remember how far I said, like 80 miles. He said, I could run a hundred miles.
Stuff You Should Know
The Barkley Marathons
That's right. They make it really easy to sell access to content on your websites like online courses, blogs, videos, and memberships. You can earn recurring revenue by gating your content behind a paywall even. Simply set the price and choose whether to charge a one-time fee or subscription for access.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
And there was a bartender there named Betty who said he was a really well-dressed guy. He clearly had money. He was really sort of fascinating and charming. He asked me out like the second he met me, which is, I assume, what you do if you – Three days after you have left your wife and soon to be four kids. Oh, well, probably ask out the first woman you see.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
That's right. I don't want to give away what this one contains. So let's just say it is the strange tale of a man named Larry Bader.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah. I mean, didn't people see that coming?
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
OK, so this guy, John Johnson, a.k.a. Fritz, gets a job not there, but at Ross's Steakhouse. And basically it was like, hey, I came from an orphanage in Boston. There were 22 boys in this orphanage. They named us all John Johnson and gave us all nicknames so they could tell us apart instead of just naming us different things. It's very strange.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
But they called me Fritz because I reminded them of a character from a comic, the Cats and Jammer comic, Cats and Jammer Kids comic. Different times during that period, he also – would say that his Navy buddies thought his haircut made him look like a German soldier. So he went by Fritz. But either way, this is some new dude in town. And he was like, all of a sudden, the talk of Omaha.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
No, no, no. I know, but do you think he had it licensed as a hunting vehicle because he was hunting ladies and he just wanted to be able to tell people that?
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
He's an eccentric dude. He wears a leather beret. His apartment apparently was just a bunch of like beanbags and throw pillows. He had champagne parties. He had Siamese fighting fish. He was an archer. He said, you know, I hurt my back. And so archery really helps strengthen the back. And so I took up archery. And then five weeks later,
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
He's won a state championship in Nebraska and then won 13, I believe 12 more, 13 total archery titles in the state. And at parties would do the eat the whole chicken, including the bone trick.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Well, you just gave it away. Not really. This guy, Lawrence Joseph Bader, he was an Akron native. So shout out to my people, my wife's folks in Akron, Akron, Akron, Akron, as she says, because of that bridge. If you've been through there, you know what I'm talking about. He was born in 1926 to a Catholic, pretty well-to-do Catholic family. His father was a dentist.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Uh, that's right. So he's, uh, he's working at the bar, but he, he buddies up with a guy that works at a radio station, uh, KBO in, and he, he lets him come in there to kind of just monkey around because he was interested in broadcasting and he's monkeying around enough to where he figures it out and dears himself. Like he seems to be doing to everybody gets a job as a DJ, uh, reading the news.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah, for sure. Um, he, I mean, we can talk about some more of his flamboyance just because it's simply really funny and interesting. Um, when he wrote a personal check to someone, he would sign it Fritz only, and then he wouldn't put it in a date. I don't know why I love this so much. He wouldn't put a date. He would just put a season.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
So he would write a check to someone on the date of, you know, autumn. And then he would just sign it Fritz.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Well, it's the 1950s, I guess. Stuff like that would happen. It was also the 1950s. So you could collect your tip money as a bartender in a milk bottle and then just go hand that milk bottle to the uncounted, to the person working at the bank and fill out the deposit slip, one quart of money. And I'm sure they thought, oh, he's such a character, but like, now I got to count on this stuff.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah. So he's working part time at the radio station, eventually works full time there and then transfers over to TV when he got a job at KETV, the local affiliate there, eventually getting promoted up to sports director. And also on the side, he was advising like consulting, I guess, for archery companies because he was just so good at it.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I did some archery at the camp. We took a big family trip with a bunch of families, and I got the archery set out, and it was quite fun. And I'm a pretty good shot. Oh, yeah? Any bullseyes? Yeah, I was hitting some bullseyes on the rag, and I've never even done much archery. It just seems intuitive, you know? Just kind of hold it steady and aim at the thing and then let it go.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
And Livia dug up some dirt from a family friend who was like, you know, Larry and his brothers and sisters were spoiled little rich kids. Larry was pretty careless with his money because he could just get more anytime he needed it. Mm-hmm. But he was a pretty funny guy. He was a pretty fun dude. Had a lot of personality. And he used to do weird things.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I mean, I don't know what standard archery is. I was shooting, I bet, from about... Probably from about 35 feet would be my guess.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I don't know what standard is, but everyone's like, oh, yeah, you can come up here all the time and do this. I was like, I actually never do this. I'm just good at it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I know. Like, don't compliment me because you think I've worked at this.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Let me ask you something. Are you saying that there are people who wear eye patches just for attention that don't need them?
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Oh, man. I hope someone writes in that knows somebody or maybe that even did that for a time. If you did this in middle school, you get a pass. Like it seems like something John Hodgman might have done in middle school.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
All right, we've got another big reveal coming up right after this.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Like one of his party tricks, he would eat a whole chicken, including the bones.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
All right, so I promised a big reveal. Things are going great for old Fritzy. He's in a town. He's scoring with the ladies in the back of a hearse. He's eating chickens through the bone, and people think it's the best thing they've ever seen. He's on TV, for goodness sakes, with an eye patch. Can I say one more thing about the chicken-eating thing? Yeah, like how do you eat bones?
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah. But put a pin in that. We're not just mentioning that strange fact for no reason.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah. I mean, the only party trick I ever did is that thing with the hat against the wall, and that takes like two seconds.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
You put like a baseball cap on backwards, and then you kind of get up against a wall, and then you act like you're blowing your cheeks out. And what you're doing is putting the brim against the wall such that the hat kind of levitates off your head like you're blowing it off your head.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Hey, buddy. Next time I see you, the only... I mean, I haven't done it for years because I refuse to put a baseball cap on backwards because I'm a human adult. But I'll do it for you.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
The guys out there with their hat on backwards right now are like, what's wrong? Is that not cool? No, it's not.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I did it once, and this is something you should not do. It's dangerous.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Did you ever actually pass out? Yeah. Yeah, I did one time, and that was the only time I had ever passed out up until that point, and it was very, very strange.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah, do not try this. It is such a bad idea. I can't believe we were even talking about it.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
All right, so like I said, he's living his best life. Then on February 2nd, 1965, a guy who knew John Bader, disappeared man, saw Fritzie, at an archery demonstration at a sporting goods show in Chicago and was like, that's Larry Bader. Like, I would bet my life on it. And his niece lives nearby. And I know this. So I'm going to call her. She's 21 years old. Her name is Susanna.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
She drives over and she's like, Uncle Larry, basically.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
That's right. So Fritzie said it came as a literal physical shock. He said, I don't know anything about that other fellow. And he said, why would I have volunteered to give my fingerprint if I was trying to get some scam new double life and new identity? Like I wouldn't have gotten fingerprinted. It seemed genuinely like he didn't know and didn't realize this.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
He's like, I've got all these memories. I remember the orphanage. I remember growing up as Fritz Johnson. You're saying these memories are all fake. And this is really starting to bum me out, to be quite honest.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Oh, I could literally smell that. I was so in that scene.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Maybe. But he also didn't have wasn't like he had some awful family life like everyone. But by all accounts, he liked his wife and kids and enjoyed being around them as much as any dad did in the 1950s. I'm not saying he was doting, but he wasn't like, oh, God, I hate these kids and my wife's a real drag.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah, he's a little bit in debt, but it wasn't like his world was crumbling down around him such that he had to escape. It was all debt that he could get out of with a little bit of work. So none of this was making any sense.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I got to say, if you're known for money-making schemes after a semester, you must have been doing a lot of money-making. Well, highly visible money-making schemes.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah, let me see. The largest city? Omaha? I said a large-ish. Oh. I was like, oh, man, that's not what I know.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah. So none of this is adding up. He, yeah, you would want to keep a low profile.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
No, I liked it. The whole Omaha thing was great. So he hires an attorney, a guy named Harry Farnham. This attorney gets a team of psychologists on board. They examine Larry and test him along with the neurologist over about a week and a half. They used hypnosis on him. They're like, we can't see anything medically wrong with this guy. It doesn't seem like a scam.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Back home, Mary is or I'm sorry, Mary Lou is she gets this news. And she was like, oh, I mean, I'd kind of moved on with my life. I'm I'm engaged to somebody new who I've been dating for a few years. But I can't like I'm a good Catholic. I'm not going to like divorce Larry, who is seems to be back in my life now.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah, no, not at all. So Mary, all of a sudden, her life is upended with, you know, every regional news outlet is banging on her door. The insurance company was like, that $40,000, which will be $400,000 in 2024, basically life-changing money, we're going to need that back. All those Social Security payments, we're going to need that back.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Even Eddie and his boat rental company, it's like, you owe us for boat damages, right? Um, Johnson, uh, Fritzie, you know, he loses that job. The TV station fires him. He gets that marriage annulled. He moves into a YMCA. It starts working at the bar again, making a hundred bucks a week. And he's sending money to Mary Lou and Nancy.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
And I think keeping about, uh, what, like 70 or 30 bucks for himself to live on. And it's just, it's upheaval everywhere you look.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah. All my suits look like that. You know. Hey. Nothing?
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
The whole Akron thing. Yeah. I mean, and his kids, I don't think we mentioned their ages. They were two, four, six and unborn when he disappeared. So maybe that six year old has a memory. The others probably had not even any memory of former dad.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
You threw me off. All right. So he's not lasting in college. He didn't last long in the Navy. But while he was in college, he did accomplish something because he got married. He met a woman named Mary Lou Knapp with a K. They got married in 1952 and within five years had three kids with a fourth on the way. And he was doing pretty well for himself.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
The drugs started to kick in around Barstow. Right. But what are you doing at Barstow?
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Wow. I did not see that quote. Here's just the tip. Don't I'm not a big superstitious guy, but if you believe stuff like that, don't say it out loud.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
September 16th, 1966 is when he died. Did you say it was the tumor?
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah, that tumor came back, passed away. First Methodist Omaha had a memorial for him. Then he was transported back to Akron, buried in his family plot. And now how many of these explanations do you want to go over? Because I almost feel like we should. Just skip to the one that you dug up. That sounds the most plausible to me.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
That is super cool and a nice little footnote. But like we said, there were some theories that don't seem to hold water about different kinds of amnesia. But then you did some digging and then I went back and did some further digging once you gave me what you dug.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
and it seems like a lot of people on the internet uh and of course these are internet people so it's not like like science isn't studying this it's just sort of one of those things that's left to smart people on on reddit um but what the the general consensus seems to be on the internet is that he suffered from what is known as a disassociative fugue
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
which is a very strange syndrome in which you can have very, very sudden, really significant retrograde memory loss that can't be attributed to like being hit on the head really hard or something like other kinds of amnesia can be explained away in other ways. And this one can't.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
He was making the equivalent of about one hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year these days. as a cookware salesman. And that was about twice the median income at the time. So he's doing pretty good, but he still had some debts. He had a pretty hefty mortgage. He had a new car and was about $2,400 in debt.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
and stressed out from that or uh i mean here's what i think i think it could that whole boat trip and fishing expedition was just on the level and that's really just what he was doing he had all that cash and the briefcase the suitcase because maybe he just didn't want to keep that stuff in the car and he went out in a really bad storm and had a traumatic event happen out there
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
uh like maybe being tossed overboard uh i think that could have been the the stressful event um so that's one thing another thing too is when this disassociative fugue ends um you will probably remember your real life but you're not going to remember what happened in the fugue state my explanation there is that he died of a tumor so that might have happened to him given enough time and he just died before that that memory of the real life came back to him
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I mean, that seems plausible for what little I know about it.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah, this could I was wondering if this could be a movie, if there's enough there. And then I decided it probably couldn't be a movie, but it could be like probably like a 10 part Netflix show.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I got nothing else. Thanks to Olivia. This is a interesting one.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I am convinced. I know that this came from a listener, but I could not find it anywhere in email. So I don't think it did actually. I think I might've just been searching for like, you know, kind of crazy stories or something.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I'm going to call this Rare Shoutout. We don't really give shoutouts on Listener Mail. because we get inundated with people saying, like, hi, can you say my sister's name? But we're going to grant this one because it is for a nana, and we like to honor the nanas of the world. Hey, guys, hope this message found you well. I'm reaching out to request a shout-out for Nana, my nana.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Basically, you can multiply most stuff from this era by 10 and arrive at our modern conversion rate. So, you know, roughly $24,000 in debt is pretty hefty.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
She's such a huge fan of you both. Every time I call, she always mentions your show. And you would think you guys are family members. If you get into her car, the Bluetooth speaker automatically starts playing an episode.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Your show has brought her so much joy over the years and kept her sharp at the age of 81 and has given us something to connect over because Nana's high praise has got me hooked as well.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
For the last few years, she's always dreamed of going to one of your live shows, but it's never worked out. Now with her age, it would be difficult for her to travel to any future potential shows. My Nana is the most important person in my life, and I know it would mean the world to hear a message from you guys. It might be a shot in the dark, but I thought I would try...
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Thanks for your time and for considering the request. And that is from Nori Schalles or Schalles. I'm not sure how you pronounce it. But Nana, we just want to say thank you. And you're great. And we appreciate you. And I'm not sure where you live. Maybe either you or Nori can write in and we can find out kind of how close you are. and get you to a show somehow.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Maybe we'll go do one at your house or something.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Um, and he was also, and put a pin in this, we just, we're not mentioning this for no reason. He was also very good at archery, had won, uh, some, some competitions. So he was in archery. He was a fun guy and everything's swimming along in his life. making a pretty good living, a little bit in debt.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
And then on Wednesday, May 15th, 1957, he had collected some bad payment checks from vendors from his business and said, you know what, I got to go to Cleveland to kind of clear up these bad checks with these vendors. He tells this to his wife, Mary Lou, who was, keep in mind, four months pregnant. And he said, so I'm going up to Cleveland. It's going to be the morning.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
And then I'm going to probably do a little fishing in the afternoon in Lake Erie. And so I'll be home late. And she said what any partner should say in that situation, which is maybe you could also come home and be a father and husband instead of going fishing after you do your work. And he supposedly replied with, yeah, maybe I will. Maybe I won't. All right.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
So I'm not saying he's some really bad guy. It may have been a cheeky response. That may have been how things went in their marriage. But he just was a little vague. And that will come into play.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah, he paid it and he was like, all right, whatever, buddy. He did notice. And this is stuff that, you know, they interviewed Lawrence afterward for reasons that we still don't know because we're keeping this a secret. Well, we know. Well, we know. Yeah, sure. But he did notice that he had a suitcase with him. He thought that was a little bit weird. He said, you know. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
You got a storm coming. You might not want to be out there after dark. That is not what people in Cleveland sound like. Sure it is.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
So people don't go in there. That's why the Browns play. So he warned him about the storm. He goes out on Lake Erie. The Coast Guard sees him and says, hey, there you know, there's a big storm coming in after sunset. And I've noticed you have some running lights. So you clearly plan on being out after dark. And he was like, it's fine. And so they said, all right, go about your way.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Three hours later, that storm does come in. And Larry Bader has disappeared. They find the boat the next day about five miles away. The life jackets are all on board. There was a some scratches like it had hit some rocks. There was a bent propeller. And some accounts say that it was either a gas line had been disconnected or the gas cans were empty.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
But either way, and I guess it's the kind where the gas line runs directly into like a gas can. The sitting on the boat must have been. one of those kind of boats. But basically they were like, but nothing shows the kind of distress where a human would be completely missing. Like it wasn't capsized or sunk or anything like that.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Yeah, one of the oars was missing, but, you know, just do with that what you will.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
And you thought, I won't run into that body now. I might become one, but it's worth the risk. Right.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
What's Catawba Island like? What do you do there?
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
Oh, the vacation date. That's always great. Man, that's nice. I love young Josh stories. All right. So they look for Larry Bader for a couple of months. The Coast Guard was like, no one's going to survive that storm if they don't have a life jacket. But they looked anyway. And they were also were like, well, he was a strong swimmer, though.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
So it's a little weird that like the boat wasn't that damaged and he's just nowhere to be found. Some people thought, you know, he had this big wad of cash. I don't think we said, but he cashed a $400 check. So if you do the math, you know, that's probably like $4,000. A lot of dough. So he may have been, you know, robbed and murdered or something. And also the suitcase was gone.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
So that could also explain that. But either way, they said, we just got to put this one to rest. And so in 1960, he was declared dead. And his wife got that $40,000 insurance policy and Social Security started rolling in. She went kaching. That's right. And I believe that's where we should take a break and see what happened to Larry Bader.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
That's right. Just go to squarespace.com slash stuff for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code stuff to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain.
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The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
That's right. Oh, I was so busy trying to work up a Saturn joke about that 800 miles, but I couldn't do it in time. We'll wait. I'll give you an hour. 800 miles between Omaha and Akron, roughly one-third the size of the distance between, and then I couldn't remember what it was on Saturn. The Cassini Division? The Cassini Division.
Stuff You Should Know
The Mysterious Story of Larry Bader
I know. So here's what happens. Three days after Larry Bader disappears, 800 miles away, a dude shows up in Omaha at the Roundtable Bar. You said his name was John Johnson. He said, I got this driver's license here. It's got my name on it. I was a 14-year veteran of the Navy. It's a Navy license, as you'll see. I got out because of a bad back, and I go by the name Fritz.
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Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
Look around, everyone. Every car you see is probably on AutoTrader. Like that sleek convertible that turned heads when it picked you up from the airport, or the custom ride from your favorite van life couple on social media. Even that vintage sports car that's tailing you a little too closely. New cars, used cars, electric cars, even flying cars.
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Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
All right, so we're back. There were 25,000 total patients in the system in Michigan State, in Michigan State hospitals. And he went through all of these, you know, he sort of tried to cull them down to, ideally, to Christ figures. He found a man who thought he was Cinderella. He found a Mrs. God. And then about six people who thought they were Christ, and three of them
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Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
were really into this idea and really consistent with their belief that they were Jesus. And two of them happened to be at Ypsilanti. So he was like, this is perfect. I'll just transfer the third in and we'll get going.
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Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
Yeah, exactly. So they were willing participants. In so far as, yeah, they got these great perks. Worth pointing out. So he changed the names of the guys to protect their families and to protect them to some degree. But we should go over sort of the bios of the three men. Should we say who played them in the movies? Will that help people?
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Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
Well, I mean, the acting, they did a good job. It was just the material. They're all great actors, you know.
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Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
It's just when you write – I don't want to call out the script writer, but it wasn't that good.
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Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
The Queen movie, that's what I called it.
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Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
It wasn't so much that. And again, I only watched the first act before I realized it was just really sanitized and like a feel-good type of thing.
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Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
No, I mean, there was some tough stuff in there. It's not like it was completely like, hey, this is great, but it kind of reeked of like an Awakenings kind of thing, and I liked Awakenings.
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Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
We're comfortable doing that at times.
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Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
So the first guy was in his late 50s, Joseph Cassell, 58. He had been in the hospital for about 20 years and was Canadian, born and raised in Quebec. And he was named after Josephine, his female relative in his family, named Joseph. And I think the... The big takeaway from his childhood was that it was not good.
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Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
A very abusive father, very quick-tempered man who abused his mom, and his mom actually died while giving birth to her ninth kid. And so he had a rough go of it from the beginning.
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Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
It's funny. My daughter finally lost her first tooth, and it's changing the way she talks. She's got a little funny little lisp, and she's always tonguing on it, and I'm like, I'm going to be there with you soon. I've got to get this front one redone.
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Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
Yeah, and by the time he got around to Rokic or Rokic found him, he was in a pretty bad state after those 20 years. He had about half of his teeth left in his mouth. He was still hoarding books, carrying around books everywhere. And when asked who he was, he said his name was Joseph. And he said that I am God. And I guess Rokic said, well, you'll do just fine.
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Selects: The Three Christs of Ypsilanti Experiment
Yeah, and it seems like the drinking was the – anytime you have an undiagnosed condition like this and you pour alcoholism on top of it or any kind of drug addiction, it's just going to be even worse. And eventually he was arrested for public drunkenness. It was a pretty violent arrest, and in jail he was violent, and he was saying he was Jesus Christ, that he was God.
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and that he was reborn through his first wife, Shirley. I believe she had passed away and he did get remarried. And it was Shirley, the queen of heaven. And at this point, they committed him to a mental hospital when he was 53, where he got that diagnosis. And he was the one that was easily the most far gone and toughest to reach and sort of walked around mumbling.
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Yeah, I'm going to wait until right before we have live shows so I can pull that front tooth again.
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He also didn't have many, if any, of his teeth. And but occasionally would like still had that violence in him where he would have these sort of violent outbursts, but then kind of calm down again.
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I don't think so. I think it just could be scary at times.
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Okay, no flying cars yet, but as soon as those things get invented, they'll be on AutoTrader. If you see a car you like, it's probably on AutoTrader. That's kind of their thing. AutoTrader.
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So Leon was perhaps one of the saddest of the three cases in that he was had only been hospitalized for about five years. He was younger. He was 38 years old. And he was the snap judgment is great because they had his two initial graduate assistants on Richard Bonnier and Ron Hoppe. So like real firsthand experience on the podcast.
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And they were saying that he was the one that broke their heart the most because he was the one that most likely could have been rehabilitated. And it just tore them up. And they liked him a lot. He was a real personable guy. And it was very engaging with his stories. And they really thought that they could have helped him had it not been, you know, in part by what happened with Rokeach.
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Yeah, so Leon's deal was his mother was almost certainly schizophrenic as well and had delusions, religious delusions. So he was raised in a household with basically a religious fanatic, and that impacted him from the very beginning. Of course, he ended up diagnosed with schizophrenia as well. But growing up in that kind of environment definitely, I think, led to the Christ thing.
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Yeah. I gave up after the first one on wearing that thing. I was just like, who cares?
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Right. And that was Walton Goggins.
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Yeah. So this is when he hires those two grad assistants is when he finds the guys, gets this experiment going in earnest. And, um, You know, his hypothesis was that if I can have these three men confront one another about them being the real Christ, that it could rock them into what he saw as reality and get them out of these delusions.
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It was, as is this podcast episode.
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And that didn't happen – well, it didn't happen at all through the experiment, but initially – They what they did was they really dug in and they each had their own way of doing so. But they each dug in and said, no, no, no. I am the real Christ. And they each had different sort of methods of dealing with the others. But none of them wavered initially. Right.
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Yeah, for sure. I think Joseph said Joseph was more one to sort of laugh it off. He said, there's nothing wrong. Yesterday, I knew I was what I am. Today, I am what I am. I'm not worried about losing my identity. And we also should point out that Joseph and this was portrayed in the movie, too, by Peter Dinklage. He was spoke with an English accent.
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He thought he was convinced himself that he was from England. that he was descendant of royalty, and that the hospital was an English stronghold.
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It is, and that was one of the things that came through on that snap judgment with the two research assistants. was that their take was that these men were generally, like after the initial sort of denial stuff, that they were generally pretty respectful and wanted to give each other the space to believe that they were Christ if they wanted to.
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And what that showed was empathy, and that's something that none of them saw coming. At this point, Rokic is being – kind of, uh, hassled by these two grad assistants saying, Hey, listen, man, these guys are kind of okay with this and you're taking this thing too far. And eventually he was, he ignored them basically. And eventually they quit before this next phase starts.
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Yeah, The Three Christs of Hypsilanti. And I studied this. I remember this from studying it in psychology class in college and got kind of into it at the time.
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And, uh, because they didn't agree with what was going on because they saw these three guys that were generally respectful for one another. They saw, um, Rokeach would do things like, uh, a journalist wrote a story about them at one point, uh, that was really, obviously not flattering at all to the three Christs.
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And Rokic read this aloud to them, like he was just trying to push their buttons and initiate this conflict. And the two grad assistants eventually were like, we're out of here.
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Totally. Should we take a break before phase two?
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All right, we'll be right back.
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I followed them on tour. It was great. I don't—for some reason, I thought I read the book, but— I don't think I read the book. I think we just covered the book in college and in a psychology class. Like, I don't think they made you read the whole book. We basically just kind of went over it. But I had been pretty fascinated for years.
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So before stage two starts, when things get really unethical, well, not before. This is kind of part of the unethical. The two grad assistants had left and he hires this new young pretty woman as a grad assistant and basically tells her to flirt with Leon and to see if he can make her make him fall in love with her. And that's exactly what happened.
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And, you know, eventually when Hollywood made a movie about it four years ago, I was excited and even paid to rent that thing.
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And Leon fell in love with her and was destroyed when he basically came to realize on his own that that was never going to happen for him.
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Yeah, this just kept getting worse and worse. So he identified these authority figures in all three of them. I guess, to his credit, he laid off of Clyde because, I mean, I don't know if it was so much empathy as it was he knew he wasn't getting very far with Clyde.
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Yeah, because Clyde definitely could be a little scary. So he laid off of Clyde, but he found that – Joseph said that a superintendent of the hospital named Dr. Yoder, Y-O-D-E-R, was his dad. And Leon said that he had a wife. He had a couple, his wife, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was an uncle reincarnated as Michael, the archangel. Archangel?
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pretty good i watched the first half hour and realized oh man they've just sort of disneyfied this thing and it's not good yeah although our buddy kevin pollack is in it and he's always great hey that guy can steal a scene better than the hamburglar yeah the movie uh just so everyone knows is called the three christs of hypsilani from john abnett starring richard gear is the name changed dr
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Right. It sounds a little confusing, but when you're dealing with stuff like this, I think it has to be a little confusing. Yeah.
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Yeah. And he we should point out that he supposedly had gotten not supposedly. I think he did get the hospital's permission to sign off on this as long as he said, listen, it's all going to be positive stuff. I'm not going to be writing them letters saying to go start a fight or anything like that.
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So I'm going to send them positive message messages and I'm going to stop if this becomes upsetting to these guys. And so they said, sure, go ahead.
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Yeah, and eventually what broke it was, as posing as Madame Yeti Woman, asked Leon to stop using the name Dr. Dung. The name thing seems to have been a sticking point with a lot of people. Or maybe he just thought that that would, since he... held onto that so strongly, that would have been like the toughest thing to make him do. And that was sort of it.
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He was asked about the letter and Leon doesn't really say anything about asking to be, to drop the name Dr. Dung. He just starts talking more and more about God being both male and female and insane and sane and said, I don't care for the insanity of God. And then said, I don't want any more letters and basically kind of shut it down.
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And then the three Christs in the movie are portrayed by Peter Dinklage, one of my favorite actors, Walton Goggins.
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Yeah, and when he said, I don't want these letters anymore, I don't want to receive them, you would think that that's when Rokic would say, all right, well, let's just stop this altogether. But he didn't because he remembered that Leon had another authority figure in his life, which was his uncle, George Bernard Brown, a.k.a. the Archangel Michael.
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And so he said, hey, I'll have someone call and pose as his uncle now. And this didn't work from the beginning. Leon – I guess the voice was just so far off or maybe Leon was just really wise to it at this point, said, you know, no, no, no, this isn't even close to the voice. Goodbye and hung up. And then they asked him about the call and he said, I don't believe in mental torture, sir.
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So it seems like he was sort of onto him at this point or, you know, was onto him from the beginning, but onto him about this ruse.
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I think that he— No, I mean from the beginning of the experiments. He was wary of him.
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Yeah. So this was the one where the superintendent, the fictional Dr. Yoder. was the authority figure for Joseph, who he saw as a father figure. And so, of course, Rokic is going to play up this whole father figure thing in the letters, saying that he loved him like a son. He just wanted the best things for him.
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And if you remember from the original sort of quick bio, Joseph's father was awful and abusive. So he's really playing into his deepest sort of insecurities here.
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It's really tough to even research this stuff.
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He's just the best. And then what's the guy's name? Bradley Whitford, who's also great. Everyone in it is good. It's just one of those movies that they – I think just over-sanitized and should have made a documentary instead.
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Yeah, so the stomach pills, placebos supposedly worked. And then he said, all right, well, that worked. So I'm going to give you pills to basically cure your mind. And if you want to fix yourself for good, take these pills, which is – I mean, this is so far off the charts of unethical. Like, I can't even describe how far off the charts it is.
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And he said, basically, I think he said he gave him an ultimatum. He says, I'm only going to continue to give these pills that will supposedly make your mind right. If you admit that you're in a mental hospital and it's not an English stronghold, And Joseph finally said, like signed something. And Joseph said, no, I'm not going to sign this.
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And he cut off this placebo medication that he believed might be fixing his brain. And it kind of petered out after that. And it was just like, it's just brutal to think about these guys going through this, like hope that they're getting better. And it was all fake.
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Yeah, it took Rokeach a long time, though, to really kind of come to terms with what he had done. And he eventually did, though. About 17 years later, they reissued the book in 1981. And he wrote a new foreword. He admitted in interviews and other places as well. that he was also, you know, in a sense suffering from godlike delusions and that he was playing God with these men and regretted it.
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He regretted publishing. He said, I regret having written and published a study when I did. I don't know if that means that he wishes he could have reflected more on it or what.
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He did sort of recant and say he didn't do the right thing. It's worth pointing out that this was – six years into his suffering from spinal cancer. So I don't know if that had, you know, if knowing the end was near for him had something to do with his sort of self-reflection. But he eventually died in 1988 at the age of 70 after a 13-year battle with spinal cancer and, you know, left the...
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Social psychology world sort of rocked. Like I said, I studied this in college and it became sort of like the Stanford prison experiment.
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It became worth studying, but not for the reasons that they initially launched the study to begin with.
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Yeah, and I got to tell you, when you read some of his – regret about it. Uh, he says things like, or he said things like, you know, and in, in, in the end someone was cured and it was me. Uh, it, it's, it just, that all bothered me a little bit too, how he, he still made it about himself somehow, even though he did say he regretted it and everything.
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I just, I never heard as much, um, regret about these three men, uh, And just in and putting them in the positions of like they were the ones who helped me out in the end. It was just I didn't like that.
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No. I mean, if you want to see some of his later work that you were talking about, the value stuff, there are all kinds of really wacky YouTube videos from people about that stuff.
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I'm going to call this a guy who has the same step on a crack thing as I do.
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This is from Jared Miller. Hey, guys. I've got to say, Chuck is the only other person I've heard to express the same compulsion that I have. If I step on a surface that is different from the majority of where I'm walking, I try to get my other foot to have the same sensation. This can be the line between the sidewalk segments or a traction sticker, an unpaved patch, etc.,
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I got to say, Jared, it's the same with me. It's not just cracks. It can be anything.
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Even which part of the foot is affected, same with me, dude. If I do it on my heel, I have to do the next one with my heel. It's very interesting. I've even found myself doing it with the colors of tiles on a patterned floor. Same here. For me, it's about symmetrical sensations. I sometimes realize I'm doing it when I'm eating and have equal chewing time on each side. I don't do that. Okay.
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You're like Jerry, you're so weird. Yeah, you're really out there. Once I became aware of it at a fully conscious level, I also became self-conscious about it and tried different things to break myself of the habit. At times it's been as extreme as forcing myself to maintain an even gait no matter what. Yeah, I've done that.
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While consciously reminding myself that sensations are temporary and that it will even out or go away, especially if I ignore it. Thanks for all the hours of entertainment. You were an early discovery of mine in the podcast world back in 2009, and almost none of the shows I started listening to back then are still going. That's our motto, Jared. Just keep doing it.
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So that's Jared in Anaheim by way of Idaho.
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Or was it Iowa? I don't remember. Sorry.
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That's the worst thing to confuse. I apologize.
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No, because we just listen to each other. Uh, yeah, at first, and it was a little fun game. And then I think the five-year-old even said, you know, this is just a game, right? Dad and dad said, no, it's real. And, uh, I hear him saying it in that voice and, you know, pretty soon they were begging for him to stop.
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And I can verify that this is a thing I've been, uh, I think as a parent, sometimes you'll call your kid by another name as a joke, like I know I've done it like called my daughter my dog's name. If she's like she'll come into the room and like bark or something as a joke. I'll say, oh, you're Nico. And she'll say, yeah, I'm Nico. And then for a few minutes later, I'm like, hey, come here, Nico.
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And then it's fun for about five minutes. And then she's like, no. I am not. So there is very much a thing to a child's identity, especially from their parents, where they kind of get their identity and seek their identity. When that is challenged, it is very quickly kind of traumatic.
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We just call each other Jerry. I think it would cancel each other out.
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Yeah. And that is the very bedrock and foundation of how we think about ourselves. And he already saw messing with that can be bad. So he was like, hey, why not take it a step further? Yeah.
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Yeah, there's a quote here from the book, and big thanks to Dave Ruse for putting this one together. I know this was a tough one to wrangle, but he did a great job. Here's the quote from the book.
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Because it is not feasible to study such phenomena with normal people, he didn't even put it in quotes, it seemed reasonable to focus on delusional systems of belief in the hope that in subjecting them to strain, there would be little to lose and hopefully a great deal to gain. And, like, I read that sentence, and I'm like, Stop there, dude.
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Yeah. He like indicted himself with that one quote.
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Yeah, there's – I don't know if you listened to the snap judgment on this. Did you hear that?
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It was good. Snap, you know, great podcast or public radio program turned podcast.
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I used to listen to a lot more of it.
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When is Terry Gross going to have us on? Do we need to get to 20 years?
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And then we just start asking.
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Yeah. So in that snap judgment, they pointed out that he that Rokic actually read a Harper's article about two women who believe they were the Virgin Mary. And that put an idea into his head. And I know that in his book, he also talked about being inspired a little bit by some some stuff that Voltaire wrote about it. Right.
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Yeah, and I'm sure he was, you know— He was turned on a little bit about the idea of three Christs or however many Christs he could find.
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Well, I mean, not even like that. You know what I mean, though? But as a social psychologist, he was probably like, you know, this would make for a pretty mind-blowing experiment.
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Yeah, it's not like the three Richard Nixons of Hispalanti.
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Yeah, I'm sure all three of those towns are like, is he insulting all of us or none of us?
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I know you don't. And I think generally back then that's where a lot of these institutions were because they needed like lots of land and so they'll just leave it at that. Okay. Maybe take a break.
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We'll take a break and we'll find out how he found his patients right after this.
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Okay, so we got a nice background on Mount St. Helens. It had been very active for about – or on and off active for 40,000 years, including I believe the last sort of big one was in 1857. Not too long after that, in 1908, about a million acres of land became part of Columbia National Forest, which was hence renamed Gifford Pinchot or Pinchot. I never know how to say that.
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National Forest, and that was in 1949, and Mount St. Helens is inside that National Forest. All this is sort of a long way of saying it wasn't, like, super populated. It didn't have – it wasn't surrounded by neighborhoods and suburbs and stuff like that. Right.
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But there was something – or is still something called Spirit Lake there near the base of the mountain, which is – they have, like, youth camps there. People had cabins here and there. There were – recreational activities that all over the place. So it's not like no one was there, but it wasn't heavily populated.
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Yeah. So they, you know, the word gets out and they did come running from far and wide and they, you know, set up camp there at various places. Other just sort of as I learned from watching this A&E special that there are like volcano chasers even that. They hear about this stuff. They're fascinated by it. I guess it's just sort of amateur geo enthusiasts.
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And people started kind of coming in there because they got wind that something may be brewing at Mount St. Helens, including – and this is – there are all kinds of people we could feature story-wise. But one gentleman we are going to feature, his name was David Johnston. And he was a volcanologist at the USGS, the United States Geographical Survey.
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I wish you all knew him, but we do, and so he's ours.
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And he was one of the – there were some great interviews with him in this A&E special. He was a very young guy, super excited to be there. And he was one of the ones kind of sounding the alarm along with his partner, this guy named Don Swanson, about, hey, like, you know, the S is getting real here, everybody. And it looks like people need to start leaving. Yeah.
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Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they did eventually set up what they called a red zone. And a lot of people did evacuate. There were some notable people who didn't. Certainly, we need to mention Harry Truman, obviously not the president, but he was this old codger who ran the lodge there.
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And he became a folk hero because he famously thumbed his nose and stayed and said, you know, I'm a part of this place. It's a part of me. If the mountain... goes, I'm going to go with it. Art Carney played him in the movie version.
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He got a lot of media attention, along with his 16 cats, which is the only part of the story like, hey, man, I'm all for people evacuating to keep people safe, but I'm also like... Some old mountain man wants to stay up there and go down with the volcano. Like, that's his right, but send the cats away. Don't say, like, I'm going to go down and kill these 16 cats at the same time.
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Yeah, I just, I don't know, man. Once I heard about the cats, because I was all into this guy.
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And then I heard about the cats. I was like, oh, dude, you should have at least sent the cats away.
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Yeah, this is a good one. This is, I mean, this is so bread and butter stuff you should know. It is. I don't know why it took us almost 16 years to get to it.
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Yeah, so this was, I mean, compared to what eventually ended up happening, you could call this sort of mini-eruption. even though it sent – it made a big boom. Apparently it was a pretty cloudy day, so it wasn't super visible. But the ash column went up 6,500 feet into the air. That's nothing to sneeze at. And a new crater formed at the summit, which grew to about 1,600 feet wide.
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So it was a major thing. There was another one on the 28th, again throwing ash into the air. And this is like basically from that point – through the big one in mid-May, it was just constant warning, constant upheaval, mudslides, avalanches, craters growing, and, like, the mountain is saying, like, it's going to happen, people. This is not a false alarm.
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Until things calm down, and that's what you were talking about earlier, like, things kind of settle down on, what was that, like,
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Yeah, around the 15th of May to where the people got antsy that were evacuated and said, hey, listen, we want to go back and check on our stuff.
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And the governor eventually was like, all right, I think, you know, at the time, and I think Washington still is a little bit of one of those, like, not quite live free or die, but, you know, like, all right, listen, these people pay taxes. They want to go back to their homes. Sign a waiver that you're not going to sue us and let them go back there. And that's what they did.
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Yeah. Well, I mean, just prior to this, I guess let's back up one half second and let you know about what happened when David Johnson and Don Swanson, they had moved from their initial base at Coldwater 1, which was about, I think, eight or nine miles away, to their second station, which was called Coldwater 2, which is about five to six miles from the mountain.
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And notably, it was on the northeast side of the mountain, which...
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turned out to be the wrong spot to be um but you know these guys knew what was going on uh they know it's a dangerous job and apparently they were swapping um taking shifts and don swanson got the call from johnston and he said hey listen i've got tonight and tomorrow if you come and relieve me the next day and then on may 18th 1980 is when johnston was there when everything went boom
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Yeah, mainly with like baking and cooking. It's like that's when it matters.
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Yeah. So, you know, like we said earlier, that pressure is building up a lot under the surface. There's a lot of moisture down there. Some of it was, like you mentioned, from that initial plate subduction. That's called magmatic water. Some of it is just regular old groundwater from rain and snow and everything because it is the mountains. That's called meteoric water.
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And all of that stuff is just heating up. It's got pressure from below because it's heating. It's got pressure from above because all of that weight of the rock is just pushing it down. Yeah. And all of this magma is just... like boiling under there.
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Oh, boy, it depends. I mean, I love to get the, I hate to be that guy, but I do love to get the local butter when we go to our farmer's market and get it from our CSA.
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But I know we talked about this before, I guess it was in one of the volcano episodes, but it's not allowed to turn to steam because there's no room for it. Like steam is expansive and it can't expand. So it's just this superheated beyond the boiling point level of liquid that's just distributed all throughout the upper half and notably sort of the north side of this mountain.
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Yeah, and it's like you should really go check out the footage of this stuff. It's some of the most amazing like natural geologic disaster footage I've ever seen. Just to see this mountain and then, you know, especially in the A&E thing to see people interviewed describing like seeing this with their eyeballs.
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It was just like it was incomprehensible what they were witnessing, like a mountain that large and part of it just going away immediately. Yeah.
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Well, I don't know, Pete. You can't just say parquet, can you?
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Yeah, where's her quote? Should we read that? Yeah. This is Dorothy Stoffel in 2019. She said, Amazing. I saw somebody else describe it as like a zipper opening along the mountain. Yeah, and, you know, there were amateur photographers around for some of this stuff.
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Some of these hikers, like that guy you mentioned that was telling the story in Funny Voices and Volcano Chasers, like, they got some, like, one guy got, like, 22 pictures in a row, and this is when it eventually blew. The other guy got, like, six or eight pictures.
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I do like that. What's the stuff, the Irish butter in the grocery store? That's my brand. Kerrygold. Kerrygold. That's good, too.
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there was a family camping with their two young daughters.
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And that guy, they were, you know, on the north side, you know, well below it, but, you know, within the range. And he was like, you know, speaking to how it didn't blow from the top, he said it looked like somebody shot a shotgun out of the side of this mountain pointed at us. So ash was raining down, but it was raining like at people and less down from the sky.
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Yeah, I mean it was – if you look at it, it looks almost like a controlled demolition blast or something. It definitely doesn't look like any kind of volcano blast that you might think of in your head. It happened kind of all at once, and it was a 24-megaton blast, which I know everyone always tries to compare it to like Hiroshima. It was 1,600 times as powerful as the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
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Yeah, he obviously didn't make it there. I think they found pieces of his trailer like a decade later. He had time to send out one signal, which was over his radio, Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it. The only person to pick that up was a ham radio operator nearby. And they renamed that area Johnston Ridge in his honor. Obviously, Harry Truman perished along with those 16 cats.
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And he was close enough to where I saw that they said that he and everything around him was basically instantly vaporized. Like he wouldn't have felt anything. It would have happened. His death and vaporization would have happened in like less than a second. Yeah.
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Yeah, I totally agree. I love Kerrygold. I take that stuff camping.
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Well, I like that you can get a tub. It's a smaller tub, but I do like a spreadable tub as opposed to a stick.
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Yeah, because what you've got, you know, beyond this avalanche happening is you've got all of a sudden all this heat happens in a place where there's a lot of snow. So that snow melts, all that glacier ice melts, and you have flooding and you have mudslides. And you have a word that I had never even heard of before Ed included it in here, which was lahar.
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which sounds like just a mudslide on steroids. Yeah. Like a mudslide carrying ammunition with it. Right. And this is just raining down everywhere and causing a path of destruction that hasn't been seen in modern times in this country.
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Yeah, we'll take a break and talk a little bit more about the After Effects right after this.
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You know, we've all been there. You're sick. You're trying to schedule a doctor's appointment only to spend hours on hold. And then you find yourself crammed into a crowded waiting room with other sick people. And don't get me started about the prescriptions. That's a whole other story.
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Yeah, I was nine and I remember it being a big deal. But it's funny when I was researching this and then watching, there's a really, really great thing on YouTube that I recommend that A&E put out recently. Years ago, it had to be. It was called Minute by Minute, colon, The Eruption of Mount St. Helens. Really gripping stuff, as A&E used to do. They probably still do that kind of stuff.
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Well, we talked a little bit about it. Obviously, Spirit Lake, which we mentioned at the beginning, which was at the base of the mountain. that has very strange effects on bodies of water. It did two things. It made the lake larger, but it also made it shallower because it just flooded all this water down there and raised it such that the outlet was basically dammed up.
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And so the lake got a whole lot bigger, but it reduced its depth by about 80 feet. I think five years later, they built a spillway tunnel to control the depth of the lake. 200 homes and cabins and about 200 miles of road and railways were completely obliterated.
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And I think it lowered the ultimate height of Mount St. Helens, right?
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And a young Trey Anastasio said, one day I shall play at the base of that amphitheater. Oh, did he? And bore people with noodling on my guitar.
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No, I don't think so. I don't think there's anything there. I was just kidding.
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Oh, yeah. I never will miss a chance to take a ticket fish. I'm with you. So ash is raining down and out. It literally darkened the skies. When this ash, if you were close enough to it, it would literally burn you alive. If you're far away, it can just create a lot of problems. Everything from... You know, just equipment not working, electrical outages and blackouts and brownouts.
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Visibility is obviously terrible. As far as crops go, certain crops were wiped out by this ash and the toxic gases. Some of them did a little bit better because they just got a little bit of the ash in it. Ash will help promote rainfall and hold moisture in the ground better. So apparently wheat crops and apple crops fared pretty well. Yeah, that was surprising. Yeah.
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All of the media around it, I was thinking, man, I don't know if it was more regional or if it truly was nationwide, but I remember the eruption, but I didn't remember the six weeks leading up to it, which was a very big deal.
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I mean, that's what will happen, right? If the earth ever just burns up into a fiery ball, that'll just become a big mushroom field, right?
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Yeah. The the other thing I want to point out, too, about Spirit Lake was if you look at footage of the lake and now these kind of rivers that were just happening and it literally like rerouted. you know, the Columbia River and the Cowlitz River in sections. But it looks like, it looks like a logging operation is happening.
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And like you could almost, and may have been able, well, obviously it would have been too dangerous, but it looks like you could have walked over these logs. They were so like packed and these were just trees, you know, an hour before.
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Yeah, they said it just picked them up and all of, they were driving and then they were floating. And they said that they're, you know, they're, she said like my instinct was to get out of the car, but there was like nowhere to go.
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Yeah. And this is, you know, these are just sort of that's what was so cool about the special is it really brought in the human element of these people that were around there.
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And, you know, they all survived because they were being interviewed, obviously. Dorothy Stoffel, who was the the geologist that was flying with, I guess, her husband, Keith. Was that her brother?
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Okay. They survived that plane flight. Like, they got out of there. There were stories of people that literally, it was like from a movie, drove, you know, 110 miles an hour, like, outrunning this ash debris slide coming at them.
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Yeah, it started sort of getting a little more active again. This time, though, you know, one of the things that to the benefit of the surrounding area when a volcano blows like that is that pressure is released. And it's going to take a long time to build back up to that level again, kind of depending on how it reforms on top of it. But this time, apparently, there are
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There are more ways for this pressure to be released. So I think it's just sort of the pressure is being released a little more gradually since 2004.
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But they do say that like, oh, no, like it will happen again. Like things are there is a new lava dome growing and the pressure is going to build up. And it could be in a thousand years or it could be in 10 years.
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No, but they are studying it. Like there's a lot of active research and study going on at Mount St. Helens now.
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This is following up on an email that you particularly liked from our Spooktacular.
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Hey, guys. Thoroughly enjoying the most recent Spooktacular. The accents are comedy genius. Meagle, do you want to pop in and say hi? Hello. Perfect. I'm going to bring Miegel back every now and then, by the way. I just want to prepare you and the audience.
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I wanted to address a couple of 1800s diction issues that cause some puzzlement. When you guys talked about toilet, it's basically what Josh said. I've always thought of it as freshening up in the bathroom, washing your face and hands when first waking up or going to bed. I double-checked with Merriam-Webster, though, and it's more generally dressing and grooming. Okay. That makes sense.
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Yeah, sure. On the other hand, the strangers in the beverage from the toll house is a lot more puzzling. I had no idea what it meant. And although Josh's guess that beverage meant the pub was clever, it doesn't really make sense.
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Just as a reminder, the sentence is talking about some men drinking tea in an inn and pausing to, quote, discover the sex and dates of arrival of the strangers, which floated in some numbers in the beverage, end quote. I think I found the answer, though, guys, in a dictionary of Scottish dialect. We love this stuff by the way. Yeah, this is amazing.
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Tea leaves floating on the surface of your drink are considered omens that you'll meet someone new. So these tea leaves are called strangers. If you pick up a stranger and bite it, the toughness will tell you whether the new acquaintance will be male or female.
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Amazing. I'm going to guess there's also a way to predict the date you meet this person, although I didn't see reference to that. So that's what the characters are doing, guys, using tea leaves to predict the future. By the way, other omens can also be strangers, like unburned candle wicks or soot on grates. I've loved the show for years, look forward to many more.
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Yeah. I mean, because like you said, Mount St. Helens is basically saying, it's coming, everyone. Would you like to document this?
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That is a great email, Nat Jacobs. Fantastic sleuthing, and we are super grateful.
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I'm telling you, again, it's coming. Yeah. And I'll show you in lots of different scary ways that it's coming. Yeah. And people left, people stayed, people came there.
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APU is committed to making education affordable for everyone. For active duty military and their families, the preferred military rate is just $250 per credit hour. Veterans and their families can benefit from the Veteran Grant, which provides 10% off undergrad and master's level tuition.
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And for everyone else, the Opportunity Grant offers the same 10% tuition savings, making higher education within reach for all.
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Like tourists came to see this thing. So for sure. Let's get into it.
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Yeah. 2010 was volcanoes. 2017 was super volcanoes.
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Yeah. It's a part of the Cascade Arc arranged there in the Pacific Northwest. And all of this happened. And, you know, geologically speaking, pretty quickly. Yeah. It happened over the course of about 40,000 years in the case of Mount St. Helens, which is pretty speedy. And Ed helped us out with this. We did a great job on this article.
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And Ed points out that, you know, in the Pacific Northwest, that's why you see so many, you know, sort of coney mountains like that is because of this Cascade Arc and how these mountains were formed, you know, not too long ago.
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40,000 for St. Helens, and I think the whole arc is less than 100.
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Yeah, this is pretty notable. This magma chamber is – well, is and was quite large. And like you said, it's looking for a place to go. But if it doesn't have a place to go, what will happen – and as you'll see, this is what happened in the case of Mount St. Helens – is it starts bulging. And like the mountain –
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If you're a geologist, it's super exciting to see this happen, even though it's very scary and dangerous. But when a geologist sees an actual mountain start to bulge out in a direction, and we're talking hundreds of feet of bulge over the course of a pretty short period of time, then it's a pretty notable thing.
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And that's exactly what was happening in the case of the magma chamber there in Washington. Yeah.
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Yeah, I mean, it had been an active volcano for 40,000 years, but the big one before 1980 was... Yeah, like you said, I was trying to look at a specific year, but let's just say 4,000 years ago. Yeah. Because once you get back that far, you know.
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Who cares? But it became, like you said, part of folklore. The indigenous people there, especially the Puyallup people, called the mountain Luit, L-O-O-W-I-T. And there is a Luit brewing company. So I wanted to shout them out. This is one of those things where – I thought, I wonder why, because there's been such a push to change names of things over the past decade or so.
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This is one that seems so sort of egregious. that we should call it Lewitt and not Mount St. Helens. Right. I'm pretty curious. I'm sure there's been pushes over the years to get it changed, but the Europeans, of course, named it Mount St. Helens in 1792 after Captain George Vancouver, if that name rings a bell, it should, gave the name of it because of a diplomat named Alan Fitzherbert.
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Didn't call it Fitz... Herbert Peake or anything like that because his noble title was Baron St. Helens. Thank God. But here's the rub is that Alan Fitzherbert never even saw Mount St. Helens, the mountain named after him. So, like, I don't know. Maybe let's call this one Lewitt.
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That's huge. And all this to say that Mount St. Helens, which has an S, by the way. Did you know that? Yeah, I did. You keep saying Helen. I just wondered.
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Oh, that's good. That reminds me of the guy in college who fell on the sidewalk and his books splayed out and then he acted like he was reading.
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All this to say is that Mount St. Helens had a long history of activity, so it's not like anyone ever thought, well, that thing is done and it's never going to happen again.
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All right. Shall we take a break? Yeah, that's a nice prelude. I think so, too. All right. We'll be back right after this.
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Just go to squarespace.com slash stuff for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code stuff to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. You know, we've all been there. You're sick. You're trying to schedule a doctor's appointment only to spend hours on hold. And then you find yourself crammed into a crowded waiting room with other sick people.
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You should have said that in a British accent.
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And don't get me started about the prescriptions. That's a whole other story.
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Yeah, one of the other causes, it can be from the onset of MS, from multiple sclerosis. This one woman that we'll talk about in more detail suffered from chronic migraines but had a migraine attack so severe that it spurred this, and we'll get to her. But all of these in a bucket from some sort of trauma or an event are called neurogenic type.
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And for a long time, they used to think that was the only way that you could get foreign accident syndrome.
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Yeah. So there's another kind called psychogenic, also non-organic or functional or psychosomatic. But one of the leading experts said that they prefer psychogenic.
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He said because, quote, this term has the advantage of stating positively based on an exploration of its causes that the disorder is a manifestation of psychological disequilibrium like anxiety, depression, personality disorder, or conversion reaction, end quote.
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Yeah, but what was the name of her character?
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And, you know, we're talking about Could be bipolar disorder. It could be some other form of mental illness. And this really kind of rocked. I mean, it's not a huge community studying this, but the people that do are obviously super fascinated by it.
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And it kind of rocked their world when they found out that someone that had no head injury, no stroke or anything like that would could have something like this.
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I knew I had some. Like they said that every time, right?
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That was pretty funny. She's great. Yeah, she was. Pretty lady.
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Yeah, it's also, the neurogenic is also much more common. Out of the cases, I think it's about 86% are from some sort of neurological damage.
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So what does that leave, 14%? Unless, I guess, you're accounting for the new super odd one that could be both.
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Yeah, this one's the most recent case, actually.
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Funny, smart. Yeah. Good actor. What else? That's all I got on her. She can macrame. Oh, really?
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Yeah, I wonder, I didn't see anything in there about her if she, like, had a, I mean, is it another personality? Is it multiple personality disorder?
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Oh, because that would make sense, you know, if you have just a British personality that came out that's violent maybe or something.
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Yeah. Another case that I said we were going to get to, this one is really weird and super sad. This woman named Sarah Caldwell in England She is the one that had the migraine that set it off. And this one is super odd because she's an English woman who now has a Chinese accent. I mean, just straight up sounds Chinese. And like broken English Chinese.
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Yeah, I mean, her case is really sad. It was, I think, 2010 when she was diagnosed after this migraine incident. And in 2015, she couldn't work anymore. And she has a lot more issues going on than just the speech with these migraines that have come on. She's got a whole range of physical problems. She's had to stop work. She's in a wheelchair.
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Even though her limbs completely work, her brain basically can't tell her limbs to do what they should do.
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Yeah, from, I think, these really extreme migraines. I think they even likened it to, like, having a stroke. They were so severe. So she's had to sell her house, and I think her husband is afflicted with something, too. It's just a really, really sad case. But, you know, there's all kinds of interviews with her, and it's just so strange to hear that accent coming out of this white lady.
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Oh, yeah. You know? And, you know, I saw videos where they would sit down and play her. And before I looked up further that she was having even more troubled times, it seemed like she was getting a little better throughout the interview through therapy because they were
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Playing her, one of the things they do is they play old recordings of herself, and she would sit down and listen to them and try and mimic it, which kind of brought up one of my questions is, can you even mimic an accent? Like, you know, people can fake an accent. Like, can you even do that?
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and I didn't get an answer on that but Then you're just mimicking an accent your entire life too, even if you could yeah, you know So that's problematic on its own sure, but um it seemed like she was getting a little bit better in that interview But apparently not it's really sad.
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So one of the other things that's really troubling is you can't just go to a neurologist and get it cleared up. There are a whole range of doctors that you'll probably see along the way, including a neurologist. You talked about a speech language pathologist. You might go to a clinical psychologist to deal with the fallout from everything. maybe a neuropsychologist, maybe a radiologist.
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You might see six and eight doctors and still not get anywhere.
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Yes, and we're specifically not talking about... There's a thing sometimes that certain people do when they meet someone with an accent different than their own, where they accidentally, or sometimes purposely, adopt it momentarily. Yes, it's called code switching. My mom's done this before. That I remember it happened when I was a kid. My brother and I thought it was so funny. Yeah? Yeah.
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You know, we've all been there. You're sick. You're trying to schedule a doctor's appointment only to spend hours on hold. And then you find yourself crammed into a crowded waiting room with other sick people. And don't get me started about the prescriptions. That's a whole other story.
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In Orlando, meetings reach another level thanks to a growing list of award-winning restaurants, a world-class convention center, a great hotel community, easy access through the airport, and, of course, the weather. That's right, Chuck.
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They are super cozy and the secret is in their fabrics. We're talking about the really good stuff like Merino wool, which feels as cozy as a ski lodge. But if you want to brave the cold on the slopes or on a snowy run, Bombas has athletic socks built for that, too.
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I don't know. Yeah, I think I have a little trouble wrapping my head around this whole idea that it's only in the ear of the person. Because, you know, that lady clearly has a Chinese accent. It's not, oh, I'm just hearing it that way.
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Yeah, I don't know. I mean, that makes sense in some cases, I think. But I don't see how anyone could hear this woman and say, she sounds British to me.
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And it seems like it's usually a parent of an embarrassed child. Sure. Is there an explanation behind it?
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that's the difference yeah i still don't get that what i do get though is we take second nature just when we open our mouth we talk we don't realize the complex uh series of events that's going on to make your voice come out the way it does so you know you're you're well in the brain they think um and again the mysteries of the brain they're the what how you create speech is really complex and involves all kind of uh areas of the brain but
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specifically damage in the left hemisphere and the cerebral artery, they know a lot of times can cause foreign accent syndrome.
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But when you're speaking, you're using your tongue, you're using your lips, your jaw, your larynx, and the way all these things combine and who you are is going to make you have, and we should do one on accents, period.
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It's going to control how your speech comes out. The one example they use in here is if you have a little too much to drink, you might lose some of that muscle control and you might slur your words or talk funny or differently.
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So that's a pretty basic way of understanding it. But I know vowels are sort of a big deal when it comes to foreign accent syndrome.
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Yeah, I get that, but that happens within the Mandarin accent between people, too.
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I just don't get it. All right. One thing I do get is that there's no, like... And this is probably what's so frustrating, or one of the things that's so frustrating, is it's not like they wake up with a new cultural identity, either.
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I mean, this woman... still wants to have her tea and biscuits every afternoon. But when she says that, she says it with, Chuck would call it a Chinese accent. A neurologist would say, well, you're just hearing that. Right, right. So, you know, like you said, people suffer a bit from their own, like, sense of self.
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You know? Because, see, here's what I wonder, is in their... Do they hear it in their head as their own regular accent?
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Well, because the reason I say that is because when, and I think I've talked about this, when my grandfather had a stroke, he still talked.
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but it just came out as gibberish but in his head he was saying the things that he was trying to say which is you know one of the most frustrating things I think yeah after a stroke victim is I remember seeing him talk and getting so frustrated yeah he would just you know say things out loud and it would come out as gibberish to us but in his head he's still saying you know his English words right it's got to make you feel trapped in your body yeah however
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FAS is a little all over the map because there have been other weird cases because we've been saying this whole time. There's not a new identity. It's the same. You're saying the same words and everything. But there have been cases where people do substitute out words like you would say lift instead of an elevator.
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Yeah, they'll just make up a new name. Yeah. This one other case I thought was interesting about the Dutch woman.
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She was Dutch, is Dutch, and she developed a French accent, but she spoke Dutch using French syntax and occasionally French words as if she was a French person learning Dutch. And it turns out that she was a Dutch language teacher who taught French people to speak Dutch. Right. And I don't know, was her psychogenic or neurogenic?
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Like you never use different words and things?
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That's right. I'm going to start off with Nathan Ferlazzo.
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He sent us some really lovely hand-drawn calendars and bookmarks, and you can find those at wildlife.com. Wildlife.mariniferlazzo.com.au. And that's M-A-R-I-N-I-F-E-R-L-A-Z-Z-O.com.au. And it was really, really beautiful work. And it's a cool thing because a portion of every sale is donated to a nonprofit wildlife organization.
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Well, I got a couple of more coffees. I'll just knock them both out. You have one sitting. Actually, you have two of them sitting on your desk right now, my friend.
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True Stone Coffee Roasters from St. Paul, Minnesota sent us their medium blend. And I can't vouch for the taste yet because it just got here, but it smells good. And then Devin from True Coffee Roasters in Fitchburg, Wisconsin sent us Dark Roasted Sumatra and a Mexico Alutra.
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We've got coffee coming out of our ears. That's great.
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Meg from Seattle, she sent me a card about Leron's passing, my cat, which I lost last year, which is very, very sweet. And while I'm on that. Buckley, my old boy, passed away a couple of weeks ago, and everyone on Facebook was beyond supportive and sweet, and that really helped out. So thanks for that.
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Thank you. It was a very dark time.
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That's okay. We'll always come back to them. Okay. Our buddy Jeff Barney was kind enough, and I still haven't tried it. It's in my fridge. But you said it's the best. He sent us Kewpie Japanese Mayo.
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Well, I'm finishing up a gallon of Duke's.
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Yeah, I'm just going to shoot it down, and then I'm going to dive into the Kewpie and see what's going on there. Got to see what the difference is.
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All right. Well, thanks, Jeff Barney, for that.
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Ian Newton of the Baltimore Whiskey Company sent us some ginger apple liqueur and gin.
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I think they got what they wanted out of this, which is for us to say Soylent 12 times. Soylent. This came in today. Thomas Kregel, K-R-E-G-E-L. He sent me a frigging monocle. Oh, that's neat. And he heard me talking about my eyes going and how I just need him to read things close up. And he said, buddy.
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Here's what you need to do because you will one day embarrass your daughter like I embarrass my children. You need to rock a monocle. And it's a monocle.
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Yeah, I mean, I tried it, and it's kind of like a reader. It works about the same as my prescription. But he uses one. He sent a little picture of himself.
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And I guess I should plug the company. It's Nearsights Monocles is what he used.
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And, yeah, I got a monocle now. Nice job, Chuck.
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Bridget Massoth, M-A-S-S-O-T-H, sent us some really cute, along with an extra large handwritten note, sent us some really cute Josh and Chuck cutouts, like kind of paper cut and paste cutouts. Nice. And yours is on your desk. Thank you. You've got to get out of this room and go over to your desk. You've got a bounty.
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Well, I got a few letters, actually. I'll just knock those out because Sandra, maybe this was because of International Correspondence Writing Month that we got these because apparently that happened.
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But Sandra sent us a nice handwritten letter in honor of that specifically. And then Austin from Bakersfield sent us a very nice handwritten note. And then Kristen Cook sent us a Valentine's Day card to all of us, including Harry Knoll. Not Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News, but our own Noel, who is just Harry.
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I got it. It's handwritten. You can't, you know.
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uh i've got two more um megan moon waltzman that's megan with two g's oddly she sent us a copy of uh this really cool thing she made it's a book it's called song book a book of music for all levels all ages and it is 11 songs uh kind of written out as chords and things and illustrated for different instruments like there'll be a song for guitar an intro song for
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Hopefully that doesn't happen because Doyle is one of our oldest, and I don't mean by age, but one of our longest time listeners.
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I got one more, and this one... Boy, you have no idea what's waiting in there. You just came right into the recording studio for a change. Yeah. On your desk right now, Josh. I can't wait. You have a handmade cutting board. Awesome. And it's really, really nice. This is from Christopher at The Timbered Wolf. And it's just, you know, it's gorgeous.
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He sent a couple of these in, and they're really, really nice.
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So you got to take care of it, though. I left the instructions for you.
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Yeah, someone needs to send Josh a wheelbarrow.
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They are super cozy and the secret is in their fabrics. We're talking about the really good stuff like Merino wool, which feels as cozy as a ski lodge. But if you want to brave the cold on the slopes or on a snowy run, Bombas has athletic socks built for that, too.
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Well, I just remember – The only one I remember specifically, and, you know, you just have these random childhood moments that sort of stick with you, was we were in Florida and we were talking with an Irish woman, I believe. She may have been from England, but I think she was Irish. And the other thing, too, is, you know,
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I don't think my mom had probably talked to a lot of Irish people at that point. She's from West Tennessee. They moved to Georgia. We didn't have Irish people all over the place. She wasn't super well-traveled back then, although she is much more now. So it was probably a bit novel to her. And I remember very specifically the woman said something about going to Disney instead of Disney World.
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And my mom said, she got kind of proper, and she says, you know, we haven't been to Disney yet. And I remember my brother and I just thought that was so funny. Instead of saying Disney World.
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No, I don't think so. We may have laughed a little under our breath. But, I mean, I don't think we even teased her. I'm teasing her now a bit.
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But I don't think, like, we made fun of her, really. I think we just kind of, like my brother and I want to do, very quietly looked at each other and in that way that brothers do.
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But it's funny. I was listening to the great Judge John Hodgman podcast with our pal John and Jesse Thorne, Bailiff Jesse. And they had an actual case a few weeks ago that was very funny where this mom does this on purpose. She's a trained actor and loves to put on accents when she goes to places. And the daughter was just she took her to the Internet court and was just like, stop doing this.
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Like, you've got to stop doing this. And the mom's whole thing, she was very just fun and whimsical and having a lot of fun with it. So it was really hard to. to rule against her. But I think Hodgman ultimately did rule against her. He's tough, but fair. Well, I think his whole thing was like, you know, I think he ruled partially in her favor.
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Like you got to let them know where you're from and you can't do it to like waiters and service people because their job is to like,
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take your dumb jokes and and have a stiff upper lip about it and it just kind of makes their job harder if they think maybe you're making fun of them and right you know like you may not realize the unintended consequence of this is somebody may feel uncomfortable that they have to put up with this
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No, it did. I mean, that's what's great about that show is they're funny cases, but he adjudicates seriously. I think that's why it works.
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Yeah. Beehaw. So anyway, I just thought it was pretty weird that this article came up and then that episode had just aired. But that's different than what we were talking about. Totally. Like I started saying, this is not that at all. This is a legitimate super rare. This reminded me of alien hand syndrome and its rarity. Yeah.
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Because I've seen different numbers, but the most I've seen is about 150 described official cases of foreign accent syndrome.
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Yeah, so I guess we should just go ahead and talk about a couple of cases so people know what we're talking about. The first one mentioned in our own article is really interesting for a few reasons, and it's the most recent case that's documented. Oh, I'm sorry, it's not the most recent, but it is fairly recent. A woman named Lisa Alamia, she had jaw surgery because of an overbite.
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And then when she came out of surgery, even though she was from Texas and had never been to England, she spoke with a British accent.
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Well, I'm known on the show for doing the bad accent, so I'm glad you're taking it. No, yours are good. No, I don't know. Mine are... They verge on decent at times.
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So she woke up, had that accent, and her husband and three kids thought it was a joke. She had only been outside the country to go to Mexico, and it was a real thing called foreign accent syndrome.
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Oh, really? I didn't hear. I didn't see this one on YouTube.
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Yeah, this one had a much darker turn because it was during World War II. A Norwegian woman named Astrid suffered injury. And the ironies here are really sad. She suffered a brain injury from shrapnel from a German bomb and a bombing raid. And then when she came to, she had a German accent.
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Yeah, she was shunned. She couldn't even speak German, but she had that accent and was... obviously very distraught by this, and she went to a neurologist named Jorg-Erman Monrad Krohn. Nice job. It's a great name. And he coined the first term for this, which is dysprosity, which is, prosody is like the tone and rhythm of your speech. Yeah. And the prefix dys, obviously, is like abnormal or ill.
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Yeah, but foreign accent syndrome is way more catchy. Oh, it's sexy. In 1982, a neurologist named Harry Whitaker came up with that. So Whitaker coined it in the 80s. I think 1982 was when he coined that official term.
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Well, yeah, because that's one of the factors in foreign accent syndrome. It's not like in a case where you might have a stroke and lose the ability to speak. You still can speak in perfect dialect, whatever that dialect is, as far as being articulate and coherent.
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In a droid rage? I think I was probably not the best husband, though. I see. Over that time period. Yeah. Judging from Emily saying... hey, you're a real a-hole. Get off the steroids. Get off the juice.
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So long story short, I experienced this recently, and it was awful, and I can't imagine like shooting a TV show or something or like doing anything or performing live.
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Like I would have to address it because I would scratch and smack it was what I usually do.
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Yeah, I didn't do – you know what really did it was the – We have a handheld implement in the shower along with a regular shower head.
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And put that sucker on the tightest, hardest, most penetrating flow. Right. And just put that hot water on it, man. And that was like... I think I spent half my days in the shower over that week and a half.
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No, it felt so good, man. I was just like I couldn't get enough of it. And then the cortisone and all that junk too.
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Yeah, well, we ran across that in Poison Ivy and Scabies for sure.
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And talked about some of this stuff, but I think itch. We had an itch we needed to scratch with this particular topic.
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I thought it was poison ivy because that area has some poison ivy. But each of us, Scotty and I, had it just on the arm that we sunk in cement. And then we researched and found out that could happen.
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Yeah, which C-fibers aren't just limited to itching. I think only about 5% handle that, and most of the rest are for pain.
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Yeah, you did a video about this, right? Yes. A short video.
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Okay. If I remember correctly. Does that mean we have to do this? Do I have to be here for the next four hours?
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Yeah, it was pretty interesting, too. There's a signature pattern in the brain when you get an itch, and a few specific areas light up. One is a cortex, and it all makes sense when you put it together. The cortex, in this case, just sort of geolocates where on your body you're getting that sensation.
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Yeah, or in my case, from right elbow to wrist. Right. And then a little bit in other places, but not too bad. That was the main area.
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Yeah. Very complex conversation going on. And then the region, I thought this was interesting, the region that governs emotional response. So basically this is your brain saying, I don't like this. This makes me feel bad. Yeah.
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And then finally, the limbic and motor areas, and I thought this was the most interesting. Those areas process irresistible urges. The same ones that say, I want to smoke crack or I want to eat too much cake, says... you have an itch that is unbearable and you need to scratch it.
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So I just, I don't know, I thought that was all very super interesting when you combine that pattern.
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Well, it is. You know, they kind of found that out. And Gawande, Dr. Gawande, pointed out something interesting, too, that I never thought about is that you can have like that short collar rubs against your neck all day and you might never notice it. But if there's like one little string that's just poking one little area, that might trigger an itch.
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Down to like millimeters. Yeah. And the other thing they found out too is that Not only can they sense it from a few inches away, but it's a very slow acting thing, which as opposed to like heat on the hand, like a candle on your hand. I almost said candle in the wind. That's super fast, but that explains why an itch is kind of slow to come and then slow to resolve by scratching.
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It's not like you scratch it and you're like, oh, it's all better now. It helps a little bit.
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Yeah, so I got that, but what does that do to sort of like... say, hey, body, don't worry about that for a minute. I think so. A pain receptor is now active.
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Folk prog? Well, they'd have to be German, probably.
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Another interesting thing they learned, too, was that – I guess we're kind of jumping around, but who cares, right? If you scratch, you don't have to scratch the point of the itch to relieve it, apparently. Right.
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Like, if you have, I had that itch on my right forearm, and I could scratch maybe, it doesn't even have to be the left forearm, so it's not like you have to mirror it, but I could scratch, like, my neck, and apparently that might help relieve it.
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Well, and I think they did find that, like, your back and your ankles, supposedly, are some of the most rewarding places to scratch. Exactly. And I don't know. I've never really thought about the ankles, but... My mom would give me back scratches when I was a kid. That's nice. And it was always like one of my favorite things ever. Sure.
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And so I don't get those anymore now that I'm a grown up because it's gross. Mom, scratch my back. I'm 46 years old. Lay down. But yeah, it was like I think I prefer to back scratch to a back rub even. when I was younger, but now a massage is probably way better. But if a masseuse could include a little back scratch in there, Get ready for a huge tip from me.
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Yeah, I get that. Once skin cells are involved under the nails, then you're a murder suspect.
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All right, well, should we take another break and talk a little bit about one of the most distressing articles I've ever read?
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All right, so we've referenced this article from The New Yorker from Dr. Atul Gawande. And he talked a lot about itching and just had good information on the science of it all.
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But most of the article was focused on a patient, a woman in Massachusetts that they named M for the article. Just M. The letter M. Right. In other words, you know, she's anonymous. And I think she was anonymous because she kind of had a rough go after her divorce. She ended up getting HIV from getting on heroin. Kind of spun out, it seems like. But then got her life back by all accounts.
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But ended up getting shingles as a result of HIV complications. Right. And... The shingles went away, but the itching did not, to say the least.
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Yeah, it was on her head, and she kind of managed to control it during the day, but like you said, at night she couldn't control it to the point where I think she was restrained in her sleep.
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Oh, okay. After they realized it's a problem because your brain is oozing out of your head.
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I don't even think that would excite mirror neurons like a leg break would. No.
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The doctor's like, very interesting. Just give me a second here. Oh, my God. Well, they gathered up all the other doctors and nurses. Sure. Yeah, you got to come see this.
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You sourced a couple of, well, we had our own article on HowStuffWorks.com, but you also sent this great New Yorker article written by Dr. Atul Gawande.
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I didn't see much follow-up on this. I did read one article that... a follow-up with Dr. Gawande because there were a lot of skeptics after that article came out that said it's impossible with your fingernail because she said she didn't use an implement. It's not like she got out a metal file to scratch through your skull.
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And he said that his theory was that bacteria that became infected had eaten it away such that the skull became soft.
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And then people also said, you know, you don't have men and women in the same room in hospitals or asylums. That's false. And he said that it was like the room next door and quit being pedantic. Yeah, really? Man. I think people just didn't believe it. So all these folks wrote into The New Yorker. All these coastal elites said, no way.
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Well, and they also then said at some point she had a psychogenic itch.
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So they basically covered three out of the four kinds of itches The last one being, man, I have such a hard time. Pre-receptive. And that's what you get from like a mosquito bite or if you have a skin disorder like eczema or something. Sure. So they basically ruled out the most common one and at various stages said, no, you've got this other one for the other three.
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yeah you can reduce that response and then your itch will go away well i took a benadryl at night and they also make this benadryl spray uh a topical spray that just it really helps right so between that and cortisone and then the benadryl at night i did okay right and those awesome showers so the like the pro-receptive itch we've got treatment for basically yeah
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Yeah, that one, what is it, can help regulate your blood pressure as well? Yeah, right. You can't just switch that off. Right. Just turn off the gene that produces that. You won't itch, but you might die early. Right. Not worth it. Right. The one that really, I mean, they're all sad, but the psychogenic, when you have a mental illness where you feel like you have parasites and bugs on your skin.
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I can't remember. I know that I said it the way everyone else says it, though. That's all I remember.
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Man, but all this stuff, it just had so much empathy for Em.
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Actually, I've never used an alias at a hotel. That's dumb. And I don't even know if you can, can you? I guess if you're a big shot, you can.
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And wanted to follow up so bad to see how she was doing. You know?
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Did you ever see the Todd Haynes movie, Safe, with Julianne Moore? No. It was one of his first movies after the Karen Carpenter thing he did. I mean, it was a real movie, but it wasn't released. But Safe was very disturbing. It was about a woman who kind of slowly drifted into madness from believing that the world was poisoning her. Wow.
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And household chemicals and everything, and it kind of started slow, and eventually she ended up at this kind of safe camp for people like her. Right. Very distressing movie. And one of her first movies, too.
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Yeah, it's really good. Oh, it's old? Yeah, it was... It was early 90s, I think.
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But we'll get to some of the more interesting aspects of that article later, specifically a very specific patient that's quite distressing.
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And that wasn't necessarily itching, but it was just like that psychogenic thing of like, I think everything in my house is killing me.
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No, I don't really get like that. Oh, no? No, I'm very easily kind of led on to the next shiny thing. I got you. I'm like a bird. Yeah, basically. That's probably for the best. It is. It has its drawbacks, though. What else you got? Well, one thing it says in here is that having someone else scratch your itch apparently does not do the trick. So you have to scratch your own itch.
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Oh, man. Not you, them saying. Oh, right. Like, I think it definitely helps.
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Oh, yeah. And if you could reach that area of your back, it would be better than that.
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No, it's metal, but it's telescoping, so it's not two feet long.
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Yeah, it looks like a bear claw. Not the pastry, but a real bear claw, which actually looks like the pastry.
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Why did you think it was called that? I'm just kidding. They actually should call it a bear paw. It looks more like a bear paw than a bear claw. I'm going to try and bring that around.
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Yes. And not just haphazardly scattered about the bear paw. Exactly. Yeah.
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He did include a couple of neat historical tidbits. Like in 1660, and Germans are all over this thing for some reason. Yeah. Researchers, they're all German.
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Well... Maybe the Germans will get active on this again.
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Nice work. Thanks, man. Same to you. Thank you. And you haven't scratched in a while, so.
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Man, there's nothing worse than a movie. I feel like I've seen this a few times in movies where someone is compulsively scratching until it becomes a sore, and then they're scratching it. It's just like, ugh, I can't watch that.
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I'm going to call this one of the many emails we got on the swearing episode. Did you notice that? People really seemed to like that one. Yeah, they did. Got a lot of response. Yeah. Mostly from fellow potty mouths, which were very filthy emails too, which were great.
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And I responded in turn by cursing at them in my replies. Sure. Which I hope they enjoyed. In all caps? No. I didn't want to be too aggressive. So this is from Emily Allen. Hey guys, long time listener. First time writing in. Um, writing about swearing, I should start by saying that it's funny I'm writing about this episode because I almost never curse.
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And when I do, it's normally not a very offensive swear. However, your intro made me think of something interesting I wanted to share. You talked about how you really censor yourself during recording in order to keep your show family friendly. It got me thinking about how our jobs really shape our vocabulary, how we express ourselves.
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I noticed a major change in the way I speak since becoming a teacher. I primarily teach kindergarten to second grade students, and I found this really changed the way I express myself. For example, I try to avoid even saying things are dumb or stupid around kids. I'll often say, well, isn't that silly instead?
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This works in the classroom, but I often get laughs from friends and family when I refer to a situation as silly, like a disagreement with a colleague or something a politician does. There are other expressions I use with the kids that often slip into regular conversation as well. The most embarrassing, when I'm out and excuse myself to go potty. That always gets a laugh.
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The itch. Right. But there was a physician in 1660 named Samuel Hoffenreffer. Actually, that's my new hotel name. Yeah, it is. That's a good one. He kind of, well, he defined it by saying an itch is an unpleasant sensation that provokes the desire to scratch. Pretty simple.
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Anyway, I just wanted to share and thank you for all the great work you do. I learn so much from listening each week, and I'm always excited to see the new episode offerings every Tuesday and Thursday. That is from Emily. Alan. Thank you, Ms.
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I think Haffenreffer, he felt that was implied. Right. He's like, it goes without saying.
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I don't know if I just noticed more because as I was doing it, I was thinking, well, now I'm scratching. Then I thought, do I always scratch this much or itch this much?
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Maybe we can get an intern to follow us around and just record our scratching.
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I don't notice it. All right, moving on to Dante's Inferno. It was in Dante's Inferno, the burning rage of fierce itching that nothing could relieve is how falsifiers were punished.
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Oh, I thought you were going to tell me. You were just wondering.
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All right. Well, I don't know what Dante meant, but they're bad people.
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Oh, very nice. So itching scientifically is known as pruritus. P-R-U-R-I-T-I-S. Yeah. It's one of those tough to pronounce things, for me at least. And for well actually they still believe that the evolution of the itch was to help humans survive basically because so many things that can kill you and nature
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or things like mosquitoes or flies or spiders or fleas that can have malaria or the plague or any number of diseases attached to their tiny little insect bodies. So, hey, human, you've got a mosquito on your neck that could kill you. You might want to slap it or scratch.
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who was the bear in jungle book was that baloo yes he would do the baloo where he would get up against a tree or a wall yeah and then i did it probably because of that i'm sure that's where i got it and realized that it works and i still do it every now and then oh yeah yeah i look kind of silly but do you sing while you do it yeah bear necessities right that's still my favorite what else are you gonna sing
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I'm going to start doing that, actually. You'd be like, I think something's wrong with Chuck. Yeah. So like you said, though, it was up until almost, what was it, 1987? The mid to late 80s.
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That another German, H.O. Handwerker. and his gang of toughs, they started to do actual research about it. They were puzzled and wanted to solve it.
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Hi, everybody. Chuck here. It's May 9th, 2017 and podcast time. I know it's really 2025, but we're going all the way back. to May of 2017 to talk about itching. Oh boy, just seeing that title probably makes you itch. And that's one of the deals with itching, if I remember correctly. So I hope you dig it and I hope you're not too itchy right now.
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Yeah, like even though they ramped it up to 11, no one ever said like, holy crap, that hurts.
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Yeah, they said this is not worth the five Deutschmarks that I'm getting for this lousy study.
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I traveled to Europe in 1997, and I was still on all that weird money. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, so it was a while after that. So now scientists... I think this sort of introduced an itch to the scientific community because after... hundreds and hundreds of years, Handvoca sort of disrupted the thought process of the itch and the scratch.
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And all of a sudden, scientists were like, oh, well, maybe we should start looking into this. Maybe we can actually isolate the nerve and figure this thing out.
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I wonder if all of this was under the notion that they were trying to cure itching.
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I wonder – I never really thought about it until just now, but I wonder what happens when a performer – or somebody that is in the public eye or on TV or on stage or the president giving an address, what do they do if they have poison ivy or some other kind of contact dermatitis? Have you ever thought about that? What if Lin-Manuel Miranda has a really bad case of poison ivy?
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I guess they can get an understudy in that case. But you can't have an understudy as president.
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Or like a news anchor when they're just like, oh my God, I'm dying. I don't know. I guess a news anchor can tape things. But I'm talking about live. What does Tom Petty do, for God's sakes?
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We're meeting for coffee. He's not performing. Anyway, I was just curious about that.
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No one can look at you anymore. People are writing in. You're disgusting them. It was gross. One thing that made me think of that is I had recently – you can still kind of see it on my forearm, the scars – But I did a cement job. I was building this fence, putting in a gate at my house. And Scotty, you know Scotty. Sure. Pippin. Huh?
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Not Scotty Pippin. He and I built this thing together. And we sank these huge posts for this gate. And I didn't know that cement could cause contact dermatitis or even burns. Never knew this. And we were... it was kind of a tight spot and we couldn't get shovels in there in the hole. So we were literally mixing this stuff like up to our elbows with our arms.
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And I was like, this kind of feels good. I even said like, you know, like oatmeal or something. And then two days later, my right arm was just covered in, The nastiest dermatitis I've ever seen.
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And then he got it. Yeah, it's still kind of hanging around. So I went and got a prescription for steroids, which made me a little crazy for a week and a half. Okay.