December 26, 2013 • 31 mins
As part of their strange, ongoing suite on circus arts, Chuck and Josh discuss one of the more dangerous crowd favorites, aspirating extremely flammable chemicals from one's mouth onto a flame, creating a ball of fire. It's straightforward, yes, and stunningly hazardous.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the all new Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant and this is stuff you should
Know too. Hot addition, this is an addition to our
(00:25):
long standing circus arts suite. What else have we done then?
Human cannonball? Sure, we've done lion taming. Yeah, lion taming, Goodwin,
or animal tamming in general? Maybe I think it was
called um that there seems to be like a couple more. Yeah,
maybe to we do the you know that sphere that
(00:48):
the motorcycle guys right in the what did they call
that thing? The probably the cage of death because it's
the most dangerous thing ever. It's a pretty dangerous. Yeah,
Gosling did it though in that movie? Did he actually
do it? Okay? Of course not what movie was that? Um?
Pines one? Yeah, place beyond the pines, among the pines,
(01:10):
beside the pines around the pines has something to do
with the pines, had a pine smell to it. Yeah,
that was a great opening shot, though, I have to say, Oh,
is that I haven't seen that movie. It's this long,
continuous shot that eventually takes him from like his trailer
into that sphere of death. Well, now the whole movie
spoil You might as well tell everybody what the what
the final final part of the plot is. They called
(01:31):
the Daniu Mall resolution. Yeah, the last act called Daniu
Mall Frenchie. All right. Circus Arts continued with fire breathing.
I just did it? Did you see that, Chuck or
what are some of the other names, because breathing is
technically kind of a weird thing to call it. The
fire blowing is the one fire aspirating, And apparently I
(01:53):
read something on how some somepoi dot com, which is
basically a fire arts website. Um, they were saying, like,
there's two there's a medical term for aspirating, which is
to introduce air into the lungs, and they wanted to
go out of their way to point out that that's
not what they were talking about when they call it asperating.
They were using the other definition, which is, uh, exhaling,
(02:15):
a missed vaporous missed. So aspiating is probably the best
term technically for it, but everybody calls it fire breathing. Yeah,
because a circus, uh what do they call the people
that yell a barker, isn't gonna say step right up
and see the fire aspirator. Yeah, they may have. Some
of those old timing circus barkers were like they were
(02:35):
into big words fire aspiration. You'd have to say it
like that, exactly, like Walter Winstel exactly. For some reason.
Uh chuck, Yes, have you ever seen somebody breath fire?
Sure you have in real life? Yeah, okay, yeah, like
the smaller circuses lollapalooza. Well, well I did see the
(02:56):
gym Row show. Do they have a fire breath? Then?
I don't remember. Just remember the guy that hung from
needles through his and I remember dudes eating glass and stuff.
But there had to be a fire breather in there. Well,
apparently that was around the time of the fire breathing Revival.
There was a They think that it's possible people were
fire breathing back in ancient Persia. Apparently that's where naphtha
(03:20):
was um discovered, which we'll talk about um and the
fire breathing as we know it probably came about around
the nineteenth century, around the time when circuses started, as
we understand them, medieval traveling players gave way to traveling circuses,
which gave way to right uh, and then it just
(03:43):
kind of died off for a little while until a
little known guy named Gene Simmons started doing it at
shows for the band called k I S S. Yes,
what is it stand for? Nights in Satan's Service? That's
not a rumor? Is a rumor? Yeah? That's not true?
At are you getting me there? Like they just want
(04:04):
to party to Jewish guys from New York that or makeup.
So yeah, Jean Simmons used to do it on stage
at Kiss shows. I didn't know that, did you that
he did that? And say, oh yeah, that was a
big trick. So you've been in a Kiss tribute band before?
Did we dressed up as Kiss for a Halloween concert?
(04:26):
That we did the same thing. We did not play
a single Kiss song though, Oh gotcha, because they're kind
of crappy. Well, did Dan go in brief fire? I
should have. I should have had the blood capsules too,
you know. So Gene Simmons taught a guy who was
in a tribute band called Black Diamond Um how to
breathe fire, so he could do a better tribute act.
(04:46):
And that guy eventually started this whole well, he kind
of introduced fire breathing to the whole urban tribalism raver
goth culture, and then there you have it. Now, now
we have fire breathing. Jeans Emmons is responsible for the
resurgence in the nineteen seventies and fire breathing pretty much
all right. So, um, if Gene Simmons can do what
(05:07):
you say, anybody can do it, and you're pretty much right.
But the thing is that it takes a certain kind
of person to breathe fire. And with that, I feel
like we should see away here, like this is fire breathing.
So there's actually stuff called fire arts. It is a
subsection of the circus arts, and it's basically anything dangerous
(05:28):
to do with fire, juggling, breathing, eating, eating, anything you
can do with fire is pretty dangerous. Fire breathing is
far and away the most dangerous of the fire arts.
It is extraordinarily dangerous. It is you could say, extremely
dumb to do. And I used to think that when
(05:49):
I saw it, I was like I could do that.
You know, you just put it in your mouth and
you just blow the fine mist just spit it out.
But that's you will end up burned and disfigured if
you just try that on a whim, which we'll get into. UM.
I was reading an article by Pendult about fire eating,
and the whole time he was talking about you know
how dumb it was, and don't do it, but then
(06:10):
he's giving a step by step which is what we're
gonna do kind of um. But he was saying that
fire eating and fire breathing, any of the fire arts
are one of those rare things where even if you
do it right, you're still going to get hurt, if
you're not gonna come away unscathed. And in addition to
the immediate problems you're gonna have, you can have long
(06:30):
term problems, which we'll get into as well. But we
should say that just from the outset, people who are
fire breathers typically won't teach you how to do it
if you ask them to, and they will also tell
you don't listen to podcasts, don't read magazines, don't read books,
don't go to websites, like, all of those things have problems,
(06:51):
and you if you really do want to learn how
to breathe fire, then go find somebody who does this
and has done it for years and knows what they're doing,
and ask if they will teach you how to do it.
That's the only way you can possibly even remotely safely
learn how to breathe fire. That's right. And for this article, um,
who wrote this? Uh, this is a Tracy Wilson jam
(07:12):
Well you know it's thorough, but um, she interviewed a
couple of professional fire breathers, Mike Garner and a lady
with the stage name of Pelee, And so we're gonna
be quoting from them and a lot of this is
their expertise on the page. So we just want to
shout out to them. Yeah. I don't know if they're
still doing this, but um a bit they are, Like
(07:35):
who hangs up their boots their spurs If you're a
fire breather, I think when your mouth falls out. Well
they've both been hurt. Yeah, all right, so let's get
into it, all right. So, um, with fire breathing, Uh,
you've got basically two things that you need. You need
a fuel source and a flame source and a mouth. Yeah,
(07:56):
that's pretty much it. Yeah, you don't even take thickly
need a hand you could use some sort of robotic
arm to hold your flame source. So really you just
need a mouth, a fuel source, and a flame. Um.
And like you said, it's just you thought you could
just do that. You put a little fuel in your
mouth and you spit it at the flame and you're fine.
(08:17):
I was just gonna do a tiny bit too. Well,
apparently that's all you want. You want about a shots worth. UM,
so I already would have done too much, probably thinking
it was little and I have a huge beard, which yeah,
that's another big one to Some people say that you
should do this, um unclothed from the waist up, just
to prevent your shirt from catching on fire or whatever. Um.
(08:39):
But the the the key to fire breathing, apparently is
the mist you produce. You don't want to the fuel
to be You want to kind of atomize the fuel
in your mouth with the spit. You want to create
this mist because if it's not misty enough, the fuel
will be too heavy or catch fire and land on
the ground and just burn the grounds. Right And if um,
(09:00):
this is something that eventually you want to try and
do professionally, and you get hooked up with a professional
and they're gonna give you lessons. They're not gonna hand
you a cup of Colman fuel and say let's give
this a try. They're gonna hand you a cup of
water and then say we're gonna be getting this missed
correct and the angle correct for the next two years
(09:21):
until you ever touch fuel to mouth. And uh, speaking
of angle, that angle needs to be between sixty and
eighty degrees because if it's too low might get on
your body. It's too high, it might fall back onto
your face. And that's that's really important angle. That's the
angle of the miss coming out of your mouth in
relation to the ground. Yeah, okay, is that confusing? Okay,
(09:45):
They're like, what are you supposed to lay on a
board at a certain angle? Uh? So the first thing
you want to do, or the first thing the professionals do,
is examine their surroundings. They gotta check the wind, of course,
even if they're indoors um and Gardner says, uh. Actually,
Pale says, to actually watch the flame on the torch
(10:06):
is the best way to tell what the wind is doing. Yeah,
but it can all change in a moment. Oh yeah,
it definitely can. Win. Wind changes correct a direction and
you're in trouble. Yeah. Um, you also want to This
is not something you want to show up to. You
just put the fuel in your mouth and blow into
a flame. You want to do a little recon work first. Um,
you want to make sure there's no power lines around
(10:28):
where you're gonna be blowing fire. Um that you want
to make sure that you know where the people are
going to be and where they're not going to be.
You want to know which direction you're standing, the wind direction,
wind speed, all of that kind of stuff. Trees, Yeah, no,
low hanging fruit nearby, that's right. Uh. And then once
you've kind of got your your miss down, your angle
(10:49):
of your head, and the knowledge that you don't want
to blow fire toward power lines. H, it's time to
investigate what kind of fuel to use. That's right. There
are all kinds of fuels. Um. One thing that you
want to always avoid is gasoline or just straight up alcohol.
It's not safe. Yeah. Methyl alcohols are extremely toxic, and
(11:13):
Pale points out ethyl alcohols can induce drunkenness. You do
not want anything approaching drunkenness while you're You want to
be a sober as a judge, A sober judge while
you're while you're fire breathing. Yeah, And both those alcohols
are very low um flash points to which makes them
more dangerous. And here's why. So there's something called blowback. Um.
(11:35):
If something has a low flash point, that means it
ignites at a low temperature. Right, So if you're spitting
fuel at a fire source of flame source, that fuel
that's close to your mouth, if it has a low
flash point, could conceivably catch fire. So the trail of
fire can follow the path back to your mouth and
then catch your mouth on fire while you have a
(11:56):
mouthful of fuel. Yeah, like, uh, you know the trick
that you also should never do, which is what the
aerosol can and making that into a flame torch. I've
seen it crawl back up towards the nozzle when someone
else was doing it, and that's really dangerous. That's the
same thing, same exact thing, right, But imagine you don't
have a cap that closes a valve with your mouth
(12:17):
and you have fuel all around your mouth from the
little spittle miss that you've been making with it. It's
a bad scene when blowback happens. And so to avoid that,
you you I should say, fire breathers use um fuels.
With high flash points. Yeah, so you want to look
at your flash point. You want to look at the toxicity,
even though most of these are going to be fairly
toxic because you're putting this in your mouth. You know, Well,
(12:39):
there actually is one that's non toxic that works. Corn
starch y. Yeah. Apparently corn starch processing plants used to
blow up in the nineteenth century a lot um. Do
you remember that sugar plant blew up in Savannah? Well,
a sugar plant blew up in Savannah, and it blew
up because of sugar dust. Anything that's that small can explode,
(12:59):
can not. So corn starch can as well. So it's
non toxic. But the problem is if you get it
into your lungs, then it can cause problems. But they
actually use that professional fire. But I saw it on
house some poy Yeah, ok, and hey they know what
they're talking about. Love You said that like it was
the National Archives or something, I mean, and pretty it
pretty much is. It's the National Archives of fire breathing.
(13:21):
Uh So the taste in the smell, you know, because
like we said, you're gonna put this in your mouth
and there's also going to be people around, and you
don't want to you know, offend people with some malodorous,
toxic fumes. You don't want all kinds of awful smoke, uh,
and you want it to make a nice plain that
has nice color and it's very visible. All this goes
into choosing your fuel, that's right. Um. The fuel, The
(13:44):
most prevalent fuel that I came across and researching is kerostene,
which is also known as paraffin um and it's toxic,
but as far as the fire breathing fuels go, it's
one of the least toxic ones. Paraffin's actually used medicinally
is a LA positive, which means that you can suffer
anal seepage as a fire breather if you use paraffin
(14:07):
as that's one of the side effects of paraffin laxative use.
But that's not all right, never mind. Um. They both
have kerosene in lamp oils another one. They both have
high flash points, so they're a little bit safer, um,
and they burn a low temperature but they're bright. Yeah,
but they are smoky, and they do have a pretty
(14:28):
nasty smell, and neither one of them is really safe
to ingest um. And they do have toxins in the additive.
So like you know, nothing's like perfect. No, I like
choosing the lesser of the evils. I think there was
a um A lamp oil that was colorless and odorless,
but it turned out to be extremely carcinogenic. Carcinogenic because
(14:50):
whoever was making this stuff used additives to make it
colorless and odorless, and those things were very deadly. Isn't
that weird? Yeah, that's weird. I mentioned Coleman fuel earlier.
That's what I use. Like camping, a lot of camp
stoves and stuff use common fuel. That's what pend you
let uses for fire reading a k A white gas
or lighter fluid or naptha and that has a low
(15:11):
flash point. UM. So it's more volatile and its toxical
course um and a lot of people say it is
more dangerous inside with the kerosene over the common fuel.
And that's a common brand name fuel by the way, right,
But it's so it's almost like tile and all fuel
or cleanex fuel. UM. So that we talked about avoiding
(15:35):
alcohols in general. You got your fuel, you got your
mouth at the right angle, and you get the miss
going on. Now you need a flame source. Just look
like a match, right, No, you'll catch your whole hand
on fire. You want something that you can you can
keep away from your hand. Uh So a torch. Usually
there's actually torches that I think are made for this
(15:57):
kind of stuff. You can make your own, but you
want to be uh I should say. Fire breathers can
make their own, but they want to be careful with
the the materials they use. Like for example, let's say
you had a lot of cotton and that was your
that you were gonna dip in naptha. Right, makes sense,
but the water of cotton is not going to stay there.
(16:17):
You need to wrap it around with something. Well, you
have to be careful what you wrap it around with.
If you wrapped around with rope, it can break and
fall into your mouth. If you're doing a fire eating trick. Um,
same thing with like nylon rope. That stuff will melt
and drip into your mouth and just burn until it
feels like going out. Um. So, you want to be
careful what you use. And from what I understand, you
want to kind of pony up for the torch, the
(16:40):
pre made torch that's designed by a professional not to
burn your face off if you're gonna if you're gonna
be a professional fire eater. You're not gonna cheap out
on the torch, right, and I mean really, that's gonna
be your most significant investment unless you have to pay
somebody to teach you. Because how much is lamp oil?
How much is your mouth? Your mouth is free, you know. Yeah, yeah,
(17:01):
this is pretty low buying. I guess it is, but
a high cost let you do it wrong. Well, let's
talk about the hy uh well dangers in safety. There's
one thing called fire eater pneumonia um, and that is
a condition that they're prone to called hydrocarbon uh pneumonitis.
Basically that's from inhaling fuel and they've nicknamed it fire
(17:23):
eater pneumonia because it must just be a common thing
in that trade. Yeah. Um, it can lead to coma.
One of the signs of it is stupor um collapsed
long You can also get a fluid build up in
the lining of the lungs. It's not it's not good,
no good. Um. That's not the only problem. We also
talked about blowback, because if you think about it like
(17:46):
you can, you can influence the direction of the flame,
but you're incapable of controlling it, especially outdoors. So first
of all, even without blowback, the wind can direct the
flame in a different direction that you wanted to and
all the sudden you or somebody you care about is
on fire, or maybe someone you don't even like that much.
(18:06):
But you don't want to be in the book for
setting exactly, you can still be liable trees on fire.
There's there's things that catch fire when you're fire breathing,
if if even under the most perfect of circumstances. Uh,
some of the lesser effects over time um skin irritation,
ulcers in the stomach, gum disease in dry mouth, poisoning,
(18:28):
and um general respiratory distress. Like if you're a pro
fire breathering, you know it's it's not a normal thing,
right to put this toxic fuel in your mouth and
blow it back out, So over time it's gonna catch
up to you. Yeah, and don't forget anal seepage. Who
can that's another for using paraffin. But they do take
(18:49):
a lot of safety precautions. Pale points out that they
work with partners who are very adept at putting out fires. Um,
they train them in how to put out, the tools,
how to put out the person, how to put out
the area around it if anything bad happens. And it's
basically just an assistant there in case anything goes wrong
(19:10):
with all of the accoutrement. Like fire A wet blanket, Yeah,
like literally a wet blanket. I guess that's where the
term came from. Fire breathing. Don't be a wet blanket. Uh.
In this case, we want someone to be a wet
blanket right at the right time. Um. And the person
is not only good at extinguishing a tree or a
loved one, Um, they're good at extinguishing the fire breather
(19:34):
himself or herself. Um, and calling nine on one. Yeah,
it's probably good idea. How the old cell phone handing.
But you want to have someone you trust and who's
not going to panic. Yeah. You also want to have
a first aid kit and make sure you have everything
you need. Um. You just don't drive up willy nilly.
If you're a pro, You've got all this stuff squared away,
You've talked to the local authorities, maybe the fire marshal.
(19:56):
You've said, here's what we're gonna do, is it okay?
Here's my fire plan? Um. One was saying like she
contacts the local fire department or the local fire marshal
and says, hey, I'm going to do this. Are we cool? Yeah?
And then yeah, here's what happens if if things go
out of control. That's that's the fire marshal says, ah, yeah,
(20:18):
that looks good to me. Hey, Jimmy, pass a lasagna
over here. Right, fire marshals are known for loving lasagna. Yeah, well,
I think that's all those guys do is eat, right,
eat lasagna? Well, just good food. Yeah, that's why people
go into that business, right, I don't know, hang out
with the dudes and eat good food. That Dalmatian that No,
they're saving lives, buddy. We talked about where Dalmatians became
(20:42):
associated with firefighting, right at some point we didn't. It
wasn't stand alone. I wonder what it was. I can't remember.
Uh So. Another thing you can do to minimize the
effects of fuel on the body is to, um, you
want to in between acts, you want to make sure
all that fuel is cleaned off of your face and hands.
(21:03):
Don't one forget any of that. I mean, like literally
what they do is they blow, they put the torch
down there, um, they wipe their mouth with a wet
rag and then they spit whatever fuel remains in their
mouth back into like the the fuel cup and wipe
their mouth and hands again. And then that's one blow
(21:23):
of the thing. That's one blow, ideally one breath. Uh.
They also recommend um, or some of the tricks of
the trade at least is to eat um like bread
and drink milk and an an acid. Yeah, I'm just
kind of funny anything about it. Pendela was saying, like
the burps that you will have after this there are
indescribable interesting and a little puff of smoke comes out
(21:45):
or I think it's worse than that. That be the
car smell and the taste of it are just horrible. Wow. Uh.
There are associations, real professional associations. The North American Fire
Artists Association and the National Fire Protection Association have guidelines
for all this stuff with performance safety. So does Home
of POI. M let's go ahead and get to the POI.
(22:07):
So the POI um we didn't even mention it in
the Maori episode, did we know? So? POI are two
heavy balls on a string that you've seen like hula
danswers um like swing and thanks to the centripy centripedal force.
They maintain this distance, although it takes a lot of
like agility and strengthen your arms to spin these things. Well.
(22:31):
Somewhere along the way, some Maori said, hey, let's light
these on fire because it will look really cool, and
it does so POI are one of the implements you
can use for fire arts. Yeah, it's a it's a
it's not juggling, but it's almost it's sort of like juggling,
you know, it's fire spinning. You can juggle with fire
as this one person points out, pretty much any juggling
(22:54):
prop you can catch, you can let fire. Yeah. And
we talked about fire eating too, um, which is basically
taking your torch or whatever. Um, you get your mouth
really really wet with spittle, apparently so wet that you
conform ast spit bubble very easily across your mouth when
you open it, and then you put the torch in there,
(23:15):
um and extinguish it, close your mouth around it without
touching it. So that apparently is where all the practice
comes in for fire eating, is you don't want the
torch to touch anything inside your mouth, and when you
close your lips to extinguish it. You don't want them
to have to touch the torch itself. It's probably hot,
it's very hot. Um. And then also if you have
(23:37):
just recently dunked your torch, um, some of the fumes
will stay in your mouth and catch fire, and you
can hold fire in your mouth and have somebody light
a cigarette or cigar or what have you off of it.
Pretty cool. That's a that's a trick. Um. There are
different ways of breathing fire, uh different, you know, depending
(23:57):
on what kind of um plume you want. You can
alter your mouth and how you blow the stuff out
into different types of tricks like the basic pop or
the volcano or the fire breathing from palm flame. Oh
but that the old ground lifter or the old challenger
(24:18):
classic fire breathing moves. And if you go to which
one website was this probably home they have little video
demonstrations of each one of these the around the world.
The one beat weave connected, the shuffle to get the carousel,
and you can just you know, they're all they're a
little bit different, and I guess you know, if you're
a fire breather, then you want to master each one
(24:39):
of those. And there's a record chuck for the pillar,
the straight up pillar of fire. Um, somebody exhale the
twenty ft pillar of flame once. And it's all about
breathing too. I don't know if we mentioned that. It's
not just forming a mist like you have to do
breathing ex sizes so you can take a huge deep
(25:02):
breath first, because you can't breathe with that fuel in
your mouth. You'll aspirate the vapors. Like. You have to
be exhaling the entire time. Yeah, just exhale, So you
have to be able to um take a deep breath
and then exhale it at a steady rate or um
control it however you want, and also atomize this fuel
with your mouth. There's a lot to it. Yeah, it's
(25:22):
not it. It isn't something that anybody can just do
and know. It takes a lot of practice. Yeah, we've
got should we go over someone more of these world records? Yeah,
let's give these folks their due. Most flames blown in
one minute by preacher uh mua dib in Italy in
a minute that's like pooh pooh, pooh, pooh pooh pooh. Yeah?
(25:45):
Was that the was that the rhythm? I don't know
we'll get five at least most people at once two
participants in an event in two thousand nine in the Netherlands.
That seems very dangerous. Yeah, how about this one continuous
fireflame okay nine point nine six eight seconds by Frederick
Carlson in Sweden and November two thousand eleven. That's a
(26:08):
long breath. Heck, yeah, that's a real long breath. And
uh Antonio Restivo in January two twelve in Vegas breathe
a plume twenty six ft five inches. So I sawt
beaten out Antonio. Yeah, maybe you're else. Antonio is the
one that or Antonio has a rival and they continually
(26:32):
best each other by like six inches each year. It's
his older sister. One of them dies of mouth cancer probably,
And that's a nice plumber way to end this. Well,
I think I want to remind everybody. Yeah, it's dangerous.
It is very dangerous. Be careful out there. Yeah, and
you know, burning, We've talked about burning. It's not a
(26:53):
fun thing to go through. It's like it's not something
you should be playing around with. That's what we think,
that's what we hit upon is the worst way to die.
I remember, Yeah, if you want to hit on a
constant pain that won't go away, that morphine can't even
take away, then burn yourself really badly. All right. I'm
the one with the bummer ending. Huh. Hey if you're
into that, so you got anything else? Got anything else?
(27:15):
All right? If you want to learn more about fire
breathing type fire breathing into the search bar how stuff
works dot Com, it will bring up this awesome episode.
And since I said awesome episode, that means it's time
for a message break uh And another thing from us
to you now is listener mail. Hey, before I do
(27:40):
the listener mail, I think we've got a little something
special to announce. We do. So you know our friends
at COED, the Cooperative for Education. If you don't go
back and listen to our part one into Guatemala Adventure. Um,
but they help build literacy among school kids in Guatemala.
And remember we had callouts for people to go and
sponsor their scholar ship students. Well, they reached their goal
(28:03):
for the two thousand fourteen school year. Awesome, and we
said that we would read out all the stuff you
should know listeners who donated. We have the last one
of the year. Chaila Garcia Glenn Aw. Yes, so thank you, Chaila.
I hope I'm saying your name correctly and all of
you stuff. You should know listeners who went and helped
out students through co ED and if you're interested in
(28:24):
learning more about it and figure out how you can
help out. No matter what time of year, what goal
they've reached, they're always very happy to receive a donation
or help of any kind. Sure you can go to
co ED. You see c O E d U, see
dot org and that will lead you to all of
the places you need to go. Very cool. Alright, so
(28:45):
listener mail, Yes, I am going to call this American
werewolf in London. Dudes, guys who just listening to the
Wearwolf podcasts. And I'm also a huge fan of that
movie and I thought i'd share my experience of the
first time I saw it when I was eight years old.
It was a big family affair as we were the
only ones who had a VHS player at the time.
I remember that stuff, so my uncle and aunt came
(29:07):
to watch it too. My uncle was my hero at
the time as he was serving in the Navy and
also the Navy boxing champ. He told me that if
any werewolves came knocking on the door in the middle
of the night. Uh that he would be safe as
long as he stayed behind him. So anyway, we watched
the movie. I loved every minute of it. I was
only a little bit scared, not too much. But around
midnight that night, I went to bed, safe in the
knowledge to Uncle Allan was in the next room. Just
(29:29):
then I started to drift off and I heard a
blood curdling scream from outside my window, followed by shots
of help and he's going to kill me. I was
out of bed in a flash, getting ready to bravely
run away hide behind Uncle Alan, when I see a
figure running up to the front door through that weird
eighties bubble glass that was all the rage back then.
(29:49):
Then this figure starts frantically banging the door, shouting He's
gonna kill me, He's gonna get me, He's gonna kill me. Naturally,
I had brown underpants at this moment, as most eight
year olds would after watching that movie and then hearing
and seeing this person screaming through distorted shapes. By this time,
my uncle, along with the rest of us, were up
and he opened the door to see what all the
(30:09):
fuss was about. I was expecting to see a bloodyed
and torn to shreds victim of a werewolf attack. But
it turns out it was one of our neighbors. I
found out later I had mental health issues. I was
having a delusion that he was being chased by monsters.
It's pretty weird timing. Yeah, that took a really sad twist,
you know, the night this kid sees this though, it's
like bad, bad timing. Plus his neighbors like that bad
(30:32):
off mentally, it is sad. But guys, we calmed him
down and made him a nice cup of tea because
in England that solves everything. And mom took him home
when he was okay enough to think rationally. So they
took care of the guy. And that is from Al
who was now in Australia. Wow, that's a heck of
a story. Yeah, it beats my werewolf in Lindon story.
(30:56):
So I went to bed. Yeah it was pretty uneventful. Uh.
If you have a story about something that we've talked about,
I know that's vague and nebulous, but that's good. I
mean that it's a wide net basically is what we've
just cast. That's right. You can tweet to us at
s y s K Podcast. You can join us on
Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know, You can
(31:16):
send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and,
as always, check us out at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Does it How stuff works
dot com. Brought to you by the all new Toyota
(31:42):
Corolla
Brought to you by the all new Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant and this is stuff you should
Know too. Hot addition, this is an addition to our
(00:25):
long standing circus arts suite. What else have we done then?
Human cannonball? Sure, we've done lion taming. Yeah, lion taming, Goodwin,
or animal tamming in general? Maybe I think it was
called um that there seems to be like a couple more. Yeah,
maybe to we do the you know that sphere that
(00:48):
the motorcycle guys right in the what did they call
that thing? The probably the cage of death because it's
the most dangerous thing ever. It's a pretty dangerous. Yeah,
Gosling did it though in that movie? Did he actually
do it? Okay? Of course not what movie was that? Um?
Pines one? Yeah, place beyond the pines, among the pines,
(01:10):
beside the pines around the pines has something to do
with the pines, had a pine smell to it. Yeah,
that was a great opening shot, though, I have to say, Oh,
is that I haven't seen that movie. It's this long,
continuous shot that eventually takes him from like his trailer
into that sphere of death. Well, now the whole movie
spoil You might as well tell everybody what the what
the final final part of the plot is. They called
(01:31):
the Daniu Mall resolution. Yeah, the last act called Daniu
Mall Frenchie. All right. Circus Arts continued with fire breathing.
I just did it? Did you see that, Chuck or
what are some of the other names, because breathing is
technically kind of a weird thing to call it. The
fire blowing is the one fire aspirating, And apparently I
(01:53):
read something on how some somepoi dot com, which is
basically a fire arts website. Um, they were saying, like,
there's two there's a medical term for aspirating, which is
to introduce air into the lungs, and they wanted to
go out of their way to point out that that's
not what they were talking about when they call it asperating.
They were using the other definition, which is, uh, exhaling,
(02:15):
a missed vaporous missed. So aspiating is probably the best
term technically for it, but everybody calls it fire breathing. Yeah,
because a circus, uh what do they call the people
that yell a barker, isn't gonna say step right up
and see the fire aspirator. Yeah, they may have. Some
of those old timing circus barkers were like they were
(02:35):
into big words fire aspiration. You'd have to say it
like that, exactly, like Walter Winstel exactly. For some reason.
Uh chuck, Yes, have you ever seen somebody breath fire?
Sure you have in real life? Yeah, okay, yeah, like
the smaller circuses lollapalooza. Well, well I did see the
(02:56):
gym Row show. Do they have a fire breath? Then?
I don't remember. Just remember the guy that hung from
needles through his and I remember dudes eating glass and stuff.
But there had to be a fire breather in there. Well,
apparently that was around the time of the fire breathing Revival.
There was a They think that it's possible people were
fire breathing back in ancient Persia. Apparently that's where naphtha
(03:20):
was um discovered, which we'll talk about um and the
fire breathing as we know it probably came about around
the nineteenth century, around the time when circuses started, as
we understand them, medieval traveling players gave way to traveling circuses,
which gave way to right uh, and then it just
(03:43):
kind of died off for a little while until a
little known guy named Gene Simmons started doing it at
shows for the band called k I S S. Yes,
what is it stand for? Nights in Satan's Service? That's
not a rumor? Is a rumor? Yeah? That's not true?
At are you getting me there? Like they just want
(04:04):
to party to Jewish guys from New York that or makeup.
So yeah, Jean Simmons used to do it on stage
at Kiss shows. I didn't know that, did you that
he did that? And say, oh yeah, that was a
big trick. So you've been in a Kiss tribute band before?
Did we dressed up as Kiss for a Halloween concert?
(04:26):
That we did the same thing. We did not play
a single Kiss song though, Oh gotcha, because they're kind
of crappy. Well, did Dan go in brief fire? I
should have. I should have had the blood capsules too,
you know. So Gene Simmons taught a guy who was
in a tribute band called Black Diamond Um how to
breathe fire, so he could do a better tribute act.
(04:46):
And that guy eventually started this whole well, he kind
of introduced fire breathing to the whole urban tribalism raver
goth culture, and then there you have it. Now, now
we have fire breathing. Jeans Emmons is responsible for the
resurgence in the nineteen seventies and fire breathing pretty much
all right. So, um, if Gene Simmons can do what
(05:07):
you say, anybody can do it, and you're pretty much right.
But the thing is that it takes a certain kind
of person to breathe fire. And with that, I feel
like we should see away here, like this is fire breathing.
So there's actually stuff called fire arts. It is a
subsection of the circus arts, and it's basically anything dangerous
(05:28):
to do with fire, juggling, breathing, eating, eating, anything you
can do with fire is pretty dangerous. Fire breathing is
far and away the most dangerous of the fire arts.
It is extraordinarily dangerous. It is you could say, extremely
dumb to do. And I used to think that when
(05:49):
I saw it, I was like I could do that.
You know, you just put it in your mouth and
you just blow the fine mist just spit it out.
But that's you will end up burned and disfigured if
you just try that on a whim, which we'll get into. UM.
I was reading an article by Pendult about fire eating,
and the whole time he was talking about you know
how dumb it was, and don't do it, but then
(06:10):
he's giving a step by step which is what we're
gonna do kind of um. But he was saying that
fire eating and fire breathing, any of the fire arts
are one of those rare things where even if you
do it right, you're still going to get hurt, if
you're not gonna come away unscathed. And in addition to
the immediate problems you're gonna have, you can have long
(06:30):
term problems, which we'll get into as well. But we
should say that just from the outset, people who are
fire breathers typically won't teach you how to do it
if you ask them to, and they will also tell
you don't listen to podcasts, don't read magazines, don't read books,
don't go to websites, like, all of those things have problems,
(06:51):
and you if you really do want to learn how
to breathe fire, then go find somebody who does this
and has done it for years and knows what they're doing,
and ask if they will teach you how to do it.
That's the only way you can possibly even remotely safely
learn how to breathe fire. That's right. And for this article, um,
who wrote this? Uh, this is a Tracy Wilson jam
(07:12):
Well you know it's thorough, but um, she interviewed a
couple of professional fire breathers, Mike Garner and a lady
with the stage name of Pelee, And so we're gonna
be quoting from them and a lot of this is
their expertise on the page. So we just want to
shout out to them. Yeah. I don't know if they're
still doing this, but um a bit they are, Like
(07:35):
who hangs up their boots their spurs If you're a
fire breather, I think when your mouth falls out. Well
they've both been hurt. Yeah, all right, so let's get
into it, all right. So, um, with fire breathing, Uh,
you've got basically two things that you need. You need
a fuel source and a flame source and a mouth. Yeah,
(07:56):
that's pretty much it. Yeah, you don't even take thickly
need a hand you could use some sort of robotic
arm to hold your flame source. So really you just
need a mouth, a fuel source, and a flame. Um.
And like you said, it's just you thought you could
just do that. You put a little fuel in your
mouth and you spit it at the flame and you're fine.
(08:17):
I was just gonna do a tiny bit too. Well,
apparently that's all you want. You want about a shots worth. UM,
so I already would have done too much, probably thinking
it was little and I have a huge beard, which yeah,
that's another big one to Some people say that you
should do this, um unclothed from the waist up, just
to prevent your shirt from catching on fire or whatever. Um.
(08:39):
But the the the key to fire breathing, apparently is
the mist you produce. You don't want to the fuel
to be You want to kind of atomize the fuel
in your mouth with the spit. You want to create
this mist because if it's not misty enough, the fuel
will be too heavy or catch fire and land on
the ground and just burn the grounds. Right And if um,
(09:00):
this is something that eventually you want to try and
do professionally, and you get hooked up with a professional
and they're gonna give you lessons. They're not gonna hand
you a cup of Colman fuel and say let's give
this a try. They're gonna hand you a cup of
water and then say we're gonna be getting this missed
correct and the angle correct for the next two years
(09:21):
until you ever touch fuel to mouth. And uh, speaking
of angle, that angle needs to be between sixty and
eighty degrees because if it's too low might get on
your body. It's too high, it might fall back onto
your face. And that's that's really important angle. That's the
angle of the miss coming out of your mouth in
relation to the ground. Yeah, okay, is that confusing? Okay,
(09:45):
They're like, what are you supposed to lay on a
board at a certain angle? Uh? So the first thing
you want to do, or the first thing the professionals do,
is examine their surroundings. They gotta check the wind, of course,
even if they're indoors um and Gardner says, uh. Actually,
Pale says, to actually watch the flame on the torch
(10:06):
is the best way to tell what the wind is doing. Yeah,
but it can all change in a moment. Oh yeah,
it definitely can. Win. Wind changes correct a direction and
you're in trouble. Yeah. Um, you also want to This
is not something you want to show up to. You
just put the fuel in your mouth and blow into
a flame. You want to do a little recon work first. Um,
you want to make sure there's no power lines around
(10:28):
where you're gonna be blowing fire. Um that you want
to make sure that you know where the people are
going to be and where they're not going to be.
You want to know which direction you're standing, the wind direction,
wind speed, all of that kind of stuff. Trees, Yeah, no,
low hanging fruit nearby, that's right. Uh. And then once
you've kind of got your your miss down, your angle
(10:49):
of your head, and the knowledge that you don't want
to blow fire toward power lines. H, it's time to
investigate what kind of fuel to use. That's right. There
are all kinds of fuels. Um. One thing that you
want to always avoid is gasoline or just straight up alcohol.
It's not safe. Yeah. Methyl alcohols are extremely toxic, and
(11:13):
Pale points out ethyl alcohols can induce drunkenness. You do
not want anything approaching drunkenness while you're You want to
be a sober as a judge, A sober judge while
you're while you're fire breathing. Yeah, And both those alcohols
are very low um flash points to which makes them
more dangerous. And here's why. So there's something called blowback. Um.
(11:35):
If something has a low flash point, that means it
ignites at a low temperature. Right, So if you're spitting
fuel at a fire source of flame source, that fuel
that's close to your mouth, if it has a low
flash point, could conceivably catch fire. So the trail of
fire can follow the path back to your mouth and
then catch your mouth on fire while you have a
(11:56):
mouthful of fuel. Yeah, like, uh, you know the trick
that you also should never do, which is what the
aerosol can and making that into a flame torch. I've
seen it crawl back up towards the nozzle when someone
else was doing it, and that's really dangerous. That's the
same thing, same exact thing, right, But imagine you don't
have a cap that closes a valve with your mouth
(12:17):
and you have fuel all around your mouth from the
little spittle miss that you've been making with it. It's
a bad scene when blowback happens. And so to avoid that,
you you I should say, fire breathers use um fuels.
With high flash points. Yeah, so you want to look
at your flash point. You want to look at the toxicity,
even though most of these are going to be fairly
toxic because you're putting this in your mouth. You know, Well,
(12:39):
there actually is one that's non toxic that works. Corn
starch y. Yeah. Apparently corn starch processing plants used to
blow up in the nineteenth century a lot um. Do
you remember that sugar plant blew up in Savannah? Well,
a sugar plant blew up in Savannah, and it blew
up because of sugar dust. Anything that's that small can explode,
(12:59):
can not. So corn starch can as well. So it's
non toxic. But the problem is if you get it
into your lungs, then it can cause problems. But they
actually use that professional fire. But I saw it on
house some poy Yeah, ok, and hey they know what
they're talking about. Love You said that like it was
the National Archives or something, I mean, and pretty it
pretty much is. It's the National Archives of fire breathing.
(13:21):
Uh So the taste in the smell, you know, because
like we said, you're gonna put this in your mouth
and there's also going to be people around, and you
don't want to you know, offend people with some malodorous,
toxic fumes. You don't want all kinds of awful smoke, uh,
and you want it to make a nice plain that
has nice color and it's very visible. All this goes
into choosing your fuel, that's right. Um. The fuel, The
(13:44):
most prevalent fuel that I came across and researching is kerostene,
which is also known as paraffin um and it's toxic,
but as far as the fire breathing fuels go, it's
one of the least toxic ones. Paraffin's actually used medicinally
is a LA positive, which means that you can suffer
anal seepage as a fire breather if you use paraffin
(14:07):
as that's one of the side effects of paraffin laxative use.
But that's not all right, never mind. Um. They both
have kerosene in lamp oils another one. They both have
high flash points, so they're a little bit safer, um,
and they burn a low temperature but they're bright. Yeah,
but they are smoky, and they do have a pretty
(14:28):
nasty smell, and neither one of them is really safe
to ingest um. And they do have toxins in the additive.
So like you know, nothing's like perfect. No, I like
choosing the lesser of the evils. I think there was
a um A lamp oil that was colorless and odorless,
but it turned out to be extremely carcinogenic. Carcinogenic because
(14:50):
whoever was making this stuff used additives to make it
colorless and odorless, and those things were very deadly. Isn't
that weird? Yeah, that's weird. I mentioned Coleman fuel earlier.
That's what I use. Like camping, a lot of camp
stoves and stuff use common fuel. That's what pend you
let uses for fire reading a k A white gas
or lighter fluid or naptha and that has a low
(15:11):
flash point. UM. So it's more volatile and its toxical
course um and a lot of people say it is
more dangerous inside with the kerosene over the common fuel.
And that's a common brand name fuel by the way, right,
But it's so it's almost like tile and all fuel
or cleanex fuel. UM. So that we talked about avoiding
(15:35):
alcohols in general. You got your fuel, you got your
mouth at the right angle, and you get the miss
going on. Now you need a flame source. Just look
like a match, right, No, you'll catch your whole hand
on fire. You want something that you can you can
keep away from your hand. Uh So a torch. Usually
there's actually torches that I think are made for this
(15:57):
kind of stuff. You can make your own, but you
want to be uh I should say. Fire breathers can
make their own, but they want to be careful with
the the materials they use. Like for example, let's say
you had a lot of cotton and that was your
that you were gonna dip in naptha. Right, makes sense,
but the water of cotton is not going to stay there.
(16:17):
You need to wrap it around with something. Well, you
have to be careful what you wrap it around with.
If you wrapped around with rope, it can break and
fall into your mouth. If you're doing a fire eating trick. Um,
same thing with like nylon rope. That stuff will melt
and drip into your mouth and just burn until it
feels like going out. Um. So, you want to be
careful what you use. And from what I understand, you
want to kind of pony up for the torch, the
(16:40):
pre made torch that's designed by a professional not to
burn your face off if you're gonna if you're gonna
be a professional fire eater. You're not gonna cheap out
on the torch, right, and I mean really, that's gonna
be your most significant investment unless you have to pay
somebody to teach you. Because how much is lamp oil?
How much is your mouth? Your mouth is free, you know. Yeah, yeah,
(17:01):
this is pretty low buying. I guess it is, but
a high cost let you do it wrong. Well, let's
talk about the hy uh well dangers in safety. There's
one thing called fire eater pneumonia um, and that is
a condition that they're prone to called hydrocarbon uh pneumonitis.
Basically that's from inhaling fuel and they've nicknamed it fire
(17:23):
eater pneumonia because it must just be a common thing
in that trade. Yeah. Um, it can lead to coma.
One of the signs of it is stupor um collapsed
long You can also get a fluid build up in
the lining of the lungs. It's not it's not good,
no good. Um. That's not the only problem. We also
talked about blowback, because if you think about it like
(17:46):
you can, you can influence the direction of the flame,
but you're incapable of controlling it, especially outdoors. So first
of all, even without blowback, the wind can direct the
flame in a different direction that you wanted to and
all the sudden you or somebody you care about is
on fire, or maybe someone you don't even like that much.
(18:06):
But you don't want to be in the book for
setting exactly, you can still be liable trees on fire.
There's there's things that catch fire when you're fire breathing,
if if even under the most perfect of circumstances. Uh,
some of the lesser effects over time um skin irritation,
ulcers in the stomach, gum disease in dry mouth, poisoning,
(18:28):
and um general respiratory distress. Like if you're a pro
fire breathering, you know it's it's not a normal thing,
right to put this toxic fuel in your mouth and
blow it back out, So over time it's gonna catch
up to you. Yeah, and don't forget anal seepage. Who
can that's another for using paraffin. But they do take
(18:49):
a lot of safety precautions. Pale points out that they
work with partners who are very adept at putting out fires. Um,
they train them in how to put out, the tools,
how to put out the person, how to put out
the area around it if anything bad happens. And it's
basically just an assistant there in case anything goes wrong
(19:10):
with all of the accoutrement. Like fire A wet blanket, Yeah,
like literally a wet blanket. I guess that's where the
term came from. Fire breathing. Don't be a wet blanket. Uh.
In this case, we want someone to be a wet
blanket right at the right time. Um. And the person
is not only good at extinguishing a tree or a
loved one, Um, they're good at extinguishing the fire breather
(19:34):
himself or herself. Um, and calling nine on one. Yeah,
it's probably good idea. How the old cell phone handing.
But you want to have someone you trust and who's
not going to panic. Yeah. You also want to have
a first aid kit and make sure you have everything
you need. Um. You just don't drive up willy nilly.
If you're a pro, You've got all this stuff squared away,
You've talked to the local authorities, maybe the fire marshal.
(19:56):
You've said, here's what we're gonna do, is it okay?
Here's my fire plan? Um. One was saying like she
contacts the local fire department or the local fire marshal
and says, hey, I'm going to do this. Are we cool? Yeah?
And then yeah, here's what happens if if things go
out of control. That's that's the fire marshal says, ah, yeah,
(20:18):
that looks good to me. Hey, Jimmy, pass a lasagna
over here. Right, fire marshals are known for loving lasagna. Yeah, well,
I think that's all those guys do is eat, right,
eat lasagna? Well, just good food. Yeah, that's why people
go into that business, right, I don't know, hang out
with the dudes and eat good food. That Dalmatian that No,
they're saving lives, buddy. We talked about where Dalmatians became
(20:42):
associated with firefighting, right at some point we didn't. It
wasn't stand alone. I wonder what it was. I can't remember.
Uh So. Another thing you can do to minimize the
effects of fuel on the body is to, um, you
want to in between acts, you want to make sure
all that fuel is cleaned off of your face and hands.
(21:03):
Don't one forget any of that. I mean, like literally
what they do is they blow, they put the torch
down there, um, they wipe their mouth with a wet
rag and then they spit whatever fuel remains in their
mouth back into like the the fuel cup and wipe
their mouth and hands again. And then that's one blow
(21:23):
of the thing. That's one blow, ideally one breath. Uh.
They also recommend um, or some of the tricks of
the trade at least is to eat um like bread
and drink milk and an an acid. Yeah, I'm just
kind of funny anything about it. Pendela was saying, like
the burps that you will have after this there are
indescribable interesting and a little puff of smoke comes out
(21:45):
or I think it's worse than that. That be the
car smell and the taste of it are just horrible. Wow. Uh.
There are associations, real professional associations. The North American Fire
Artists Association and the National Fire Protection Association have guidelines
for all this stuff with performance safety. So does Home
of POI. M let's go ahead and get to the POI.
(22:07):
So the POI um we didn't even mention it in
the Maori episode, did we know? So? POI are two
heavy balls on a string that you've seen like hula
danswers um like swing and thanks to the centripy centripedal force.
They maintain this distance, although it takes a lot of
like agility and strengthen your arms to spin these things. Well.
(22:31):
Somewhere along the way, some Maori said, hey, let's light
these on fire because it will look really cool, and
it does so POI are one of the implements you
can use for fire arts. Yeah, it's a it's a
it's not juggling, but it's almost it's sort of like juggling,
you know, it's fire spinning. You can juggle with fire
as this one person points out, pretty much any juggling
(22:54):
prop you can catch, you can let fire. Yeah. And
we talked about fire eating too, um, which is basically
taking your torch or whatever. Um, you get your mouth
really really wet with spittle, apparently so wet that you
conform ast spit bubble very easily across your mouth when
you open it, and then you put the torch in there,
(23:15):
um and extinguish it, close your mouth around it without
touching it. So that apparently is where all the practice
comes in for fire eating, is you don't want the
torch to touch anything inside your mouth, and when you
close your lips to extinguish it. You don't want them
to have to touch the torch itself. It's probably hot,
it's very hot. Um. And then also if you have
(23:37):
just recently dunked your torch, um, some of the fumes
will stay in your mouth and catch fire, and you
can hold fire in your mouth and have somebody light
a cigarette or cigar or what have you off of it.
Pretty cool. That's a that's a trick. Um. There are
different ways of breathing fire, uh different, you know, depending
(23:57):
on what kind of um plume you want. You can
alter your mouth and how you blow the stuff out
into different types of tricks like the basic pop or
the volcano or the fire breathing from palm flame. Oh
but that the old ground lifter or the old challenger
(24:18):
classic fire breathing moves. And if you go to which
one website was this probably home they have little video
demonstrations of each one of these the around the world.
The one beat weave connected, the shuffle to get the carousel,
and you can just you know, they're all they're a
little bit different, and I guess you know, if you're
a fire breather, then you want to master each one
(24:39):
of those. And there's a record chuck for the pillar,
the straight up pillar of fire. Um, somebody exhale the
twenty ft pillar of flame once. And it's all about
breathing too. I don't know if we mentioned that. It's
not just forming a mist like you have to do
breathing ex sizes so you can take a huge deep
(25:02):
breath first, because you can't breathe with that fuel in
your mouth. You'll aspirate the vapors. Like. You have to
be exhaling the entire time. Yeah, just exhale, So you
have to be able to um take a deep breath
and then exhale it at a steady rate or um
control it however you want, and also atomize this fuel
with your mouth. There's a lot to it. Yeah, it's
(25:22):
not it. It isn't something that anybody can just do
and know. It takes a lot of practice. Yeah, we've
got should we go over someone more of these world records? Yeah,
let's give these folks their due. Most flames blown in
one minute by preacher uh mua dib in Italy in
a minute that's like pooh pooh, pooh, pooh pooh pooh. Yeah?
(25:45):
Was that the was that the rhythm? I don't know
we'll get five at least most people at once two
participants in an event in two thousand nine in the Netherlands.
That seems very dangerous. Yeah, how about this one continuous
fireflame okay nine point nine six eight seconds by Frederick
Carlson in Sweden and November two thousand eleven. That's a
(26:08):
long breath. Heck, yeah, that's a real long breath. And
uh Antonio Restivo in January two twelve in Vegas breathe
a plume twenty six ft five inches. So I sawt
beaten out Antonio. Yeah, maybe you're else. Antonio is the
one that or Antonio has a rival and they continually
(26:32):
best each other by like six inches each year. It's
his older sister. One of them dies of mouth cancer probably,
And that's a nice plumber way to end this. Well,
I think I want to remind everybody. Yeah, it's dangerous.
It is very dangerous. Be careful out there. Yeah, and
you know, burning, We've talked about burning. It's not a
(26:53):
fun thing to go through. It's like it's not something
you should be playing around with. That's what we think,
that's what we hit upon is the worst way to die.
I remember, Yeah, if you want to hit on a
constant pain that won't go away, that morphine can't even
take away, then burn yourself really badly. All right. I'm
the one with the bummer ending. Huh. Hey if you're
into that, so you got anything else? Got anything else?
(27:15):
All right? If you want to learn more about fire
breathing type fire breathing into the search bar how stuff
works dot Com, it will bring up this awesome episode.
And since I said awesome episode, that means it's time
for a message break uh And another thing from us
to you now is listener mail. Hey, before I do
(27:40):
the listener mail, I think we've got a little something
special to announce. We do. So you know our friends
at COED, the Cooperative for Education. If you don't go
back and listen to our part one into Guatemala Adventure. Um,
but they help build literacy among school kids in Guatemala.
And remember we had callouts for people to go and
sponsor their scholar ship students. Well, they reached their goal
(28:03):
for the two thousand fourteen school year. Awesome, and we
said that we would read out all the stuff you
should know listeners who donated. We have the last one
of the year. Chaila Garcia Glenn Aw. Yes, so thank you, Chaila.
I hope I'm saying your name correctly and all of
you stuff. You should know listeners who went and helped
out students through co ED and if you're interested in
(28:24):
learning more about it and figure out how you can
help out. No matter what time of year, what goal
they've reached, they're always very happy to receive a donation
or help of any kind. Sure you can go to
co ED. You see c O E d U, see
dot org and that will lead you to all of
the places you need to go. Very cool. Alright, so
(28:45):
listener mail, Yes, I am going to call this American
werewolf in London. Dudes, guys who just listening to the
Wearwolf podcasts. And I'm also a huge fan of that
movie and I thought i'd share my experience of the
first time I saw it when I was eight years old.
It was a big family affair as we were the
only ones who had a VHS player at the time.
I remember that stuff, so my uncle and aunt came
(29:07):
to watch it too. My uncle was my hero at
the time as he was serving in the Navy and
also the Navy boxing champ. He told me that if
any werewolves came knocking on the door in the middle
of the night. Uh that he would be safe as
long as he stayed behind him. So anyway, we watched
the movie. I loved every minute of it. I was
only a little bit scared, not too much. But around
midnight that night, I went to bed, safe in the
knowledge to Uncle Allan was in the next room. Just
(29:29):
then I started to drift off and I heard a
blood curdling scream from outside my window, followed by shots
of help and he's going to kill me. I was
out of bed in a flash, getting ready to bravely
run away hide behind Uncle Alan, when I see a
figure running up to the front door through that weird
eighties bubble glass that was all the rage back then.
(29:49):
Then this figure starts frantically banging the door, shouting He's
gonna kill me, He's gonna get me, He's gonna kill me. Naturally,
I had brown underpants at this moment, as most eight
year olds would after watching that movie and then hearing
and seeing this person screaming through distorted shapes. By this time,
my uncle, along with the rest of us, were up
and he opened the door to see what all the
(30:09):
fuss was about. I was expecting to see a bloodyed
and torn to shreds victim of a werewolf attack. But
it turns out it was one of our neighbors. I
found out later I had mental health issues. I was
having a delusion that he was being chased by monsters.
It's pretty weird timing. Yeah, that took a really sad twist,
you know, the night this kid sees this though, it's
like bad, bad timing. Plus his neighbors like that bad
(30:32):
off mentally, it is sad. But guys, we calmed him
down and made him a nice cup of tea because
in England that solves everything. And mom took him home
when he was okay enough to think rationally. So they
took care of the guy. And that is from Al
who was now in Australia. Wow, that's a heck of
a story. Yeah, it beats my werewolf in Lindon story.
(30:56):
So I went to bed. Yeah it was pretty uneventful. Uh.
If you have a story about something that we've talked about,
I know that's vague and nebulous, but that's good. I
mean that it's a wide net basically is what we've
just cast. That's right. You can tweet to us at
s y s K Podcast. You can join us on
Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know, You can
(31:16):
send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and,
as always, check us out at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Does it How stuff works
dot com. Brought to you by the all new Toyota
(31:42):
Corolla
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