November 1, 2011 • 53 mins
The autobahn has an international reputation, and people around the world love the notion of driving on a road with no speed limits -- but how true is this reputation? Join Josh and Chuck as they tell you everything you need to know about the autobahn.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant
(00:21):
room a zoom zoom Chuck who gets psychnic care Clark
sounds good, Chuck. I was hoping you bust out a
lot of German Bill. We are going to do an
episode on the Audubon, as you probably noticed when you
clicked play right, Yes, um and uh, We're going to
(00:41):
get to the bottom of the age old question. Who zooming?
Who Chuck? Or me? Who was that? Aretha Franklin one
of her late career pop um songs. She also did
the Freeway of Love, so that's interesting. She took up
like a you know, the highway theme later in her career.
(01:03):
Although who zuiming? Who had nothing to do with Auto Bond?
Did it? Uh? No? No? I think I think you
could make a case they had to do with sc
X Maybe interesting. Didn't every song in the eighties have
to do with that or cocaine? Get Out of My Dreams,
Get into My Car? What do you think the car
is of course, get in the fast lane, baby. Yeah. Yeah,
(01:28):
see this is already better than you thought it was
gonna be. Let's begin the auto bon Chuck Fodd and
Fodd and Botten on the at bond. So we'll get
to that in a second. Does a matter of fact,
let's get to it now. Who is that Chuck? That's
craft work or craft work? Craft work? They you know,
they're a German. I actually saw them at the Coachella Festival,
(01:51):
and I'm not a fan, so I wasn't that big
of a deal to me. I understand their place. It's
like the biggest build their own instruments. No, trust me.
They were so ahead of their time they had to
build their own instrument. The early seventies they were doing
techno music. But yeah, I'm just not a fan of
that kind of music, so I didn't dig it. But
I get it. They're great guys. They seemed like it.
(02:14):
Nice dudes. And they had a song called Autobon Yeah,
and which was eight in The Big Lebowski. Oh yeah,
by the Nihilists. Now well they were Nihilists, but they
were the name of the band in The Big Lebowski
was Autobon. The name of their album was naggle Beet,
which I looked up today. That is the perion perionum,
(02:38):
which is the tissue surrounding the fingernail and toe nail.
And that was the name of their album. Which eight
craft Works album cover The Man Machine. Oh there's some
kid whose head just exploded. Yeah, exactly. Um. Also, kraft
Work has a play since the Simpsons Pantheon. They made
(02:59):
an appear. It's verbally uh in the Fighting Hellfish episode,
remember the the German air shows up to claim the
artwork and he tells the farm boys to get a room.
He's tells everybody to hurry up because he has to
go see Kroft. Stop. We should just end it, wrap
it up right here, all right, thank you everybody, Um Chuck,
(03:20):
let's begin all Uh. You know my brother Bill, I
don't know if you've ever met him or not. Okay,
Well Bill um got into Porsches for a little while
and he got himself a brand new nine eleven Carrera
set in like the late nineties. It was sweet. It
was silver. The moment it hit fifty five, a spoiler
(03:42):
automatically came up. It was just nice, sweet cars and
it had like a little sticker on the front and
it said it had like a guy's signature on it,
and it was like a pen in hand signature. It's
a real thing, um And basically it was like I've
I've driven this car and this thing is a okay.
And he said, you see that that's a German race
car driver's signature. This car had like fifteen miles on
(04:03):
it when I got it, because they've taken it out
on the auto bonn they do that to every single one.
So I did a little research. This is the late
nineties and from six to today, I thought that Porsche
did that with every car. Doing a little research, I
figured out that that's not the case. Bill may have
(04:23):
been mistaken. It's a myth, or he could have just
gotten lucky and just happened to get the car that somebody,
uh test drove on the auto bon I think I've
heard that before, actually, that Porsche does every single one
or yeah, or that they they test, you know, test
drive their fleet. Yeah, maybe not all of them. But
I didn't see any evidence whatsoever that they do anything.
(04:46):
But they do use the auto bon this is the
cool part to road test like new models. Or they'll say, hey,
you're you're a auto journalist. Why don't you come on
over to Germany and drive this thing? And they use
would be like us taking a car out on I
eighty five or seventy five or probably more appropriately to
(05:07):
eight five and just going as fast as we can
and then going home and writing about it. I just
read an article, like you said, the auto writers. It
was car and Driver. I think some dude got a
Lamborghini Aventa door and drove and wrote an article about
driving two miles an hour on there's a stretch outside
of Garmish. Oh yes, garmisht miles of of awesome roadway
(05:34):
and it's not like flattened straight, it's curvy and mountainous
and apparently that's like one of the great places to
go drive fast. Yes, okay, well look for stuff you
should know quiz in the future with the answer of Garmish. Yeah,
all right, I've been I've been coming up with questions
in my head. I can write these. Well yeah, okay, no,
I'm gonna I'm going to telepathically beam the quiz to
(05:57):
everybody who listens to be should I was writing those
quizzes for a while. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. About that.
I'm a little testy about this one. I'm not a
car guy. You've seen my car. I'm not a car
guy either. So I drove a truck, that's true. So
are you a truck guy? No, I mean it's just handy.
You drive really fast though, and you're old, old beater. Yeah,
(06:20):
so I thought you might appreciate this. Uh yeah, No,
I'm not like a break a hundred miles an hour
kind of guy at all. You're just a break eight
within neighborhoods of Atlanta. No. I I've slowed down quite
a bit in my old age in residential areas. But yeah, no,
I still like to get from point A to point
But like being on the Highway, to me, is not
a lug street. It's not like a great experience. It's like, Okay,
(06:42):
now I can get there as fast as I possibly can. Sure,
because that's like an interruption of life, having to drive
from one place to know, teleportation, to me would be
one of the greatest inventions of all time. I could
dig that. Yeah. So, uh, you mentioned the myth that
Porsche does that. There's another myth was that Adolf Hitler
invented the auto bon Yeah, it's not really true. No,
(07:05):
he gets a lot of credit for that. And oh,
by the way, we should say to anybody who isn't
from Germany or America or any other country in the world,
if you don't know what the auto bon is, it
is the German UM federal highway system, the boonts auto
bon right, bunds thanks UM. That means in English federal highway,
(07:27):
motor federal motorway, right, that's yeah, And bond means track,
so federal motor track. Okay, strictly translated um and so yeah,
Adolf Hitler gets the the lion's share of the credit
as the father of the auto bon, but it's it's
not correct right now. I mean, the rise of the
(07:51):
Nazi war machine definitely had a lot to do with
the rise of the auto bon and the how extensive
it became. But it's began construction in n and I
think the first stretch between Colne, Cologne and Bono. Yeah,
but he apparently also gets credit as like the father
(08:13):
of the highway system in general. Uh, you know, the
U S highway system is UM is modeled after the Autobahn.
Most highway most federal interstate systems are UM and Hitler
gets the credit, but really, if you go back even
further to I think UM nineteen, there was this um
(08:34):
high this experimental highway called the avas A v U
S Highway in Berlin, right, so that was like arguably
the world's first highway because you know, Germans were the
world's first auto manufacturers, so they're the first ones to
need a highway and they do it right still. And
then also there is the Auto Strata in Italy that
(08:54):
was built um in the twenties that linked Milan to
the lakes in northern Italy. So Hitler may have been inspired,
um to to get this plan out the door, but
he didn't even come up with the plan. There was
another guy who was the pr head for the Berlin
I think it was Berlin or maybe just Germany as
(09:16):
a whole, the German Chamber of Commerce, and he coined
the term auto bonn in like, and the German Chamber
of Commerce came up with this plan for this whole thing, um,
and then the Nazis stole it, so you had another
reason to hate the Nazis. That's if we needed anymore. Yeah,
uh so that is true, Josh. They um the initial
(09:36):
first sections from Frankfurt to Darmstadt was very straight and
they did test Grand Prix racing cars way back when
on the stretch of road. Yea, that is true because
one dude died. Barrent Rosemeyer died in nineteen thirty eight
after setting the very brief record to sixty eight point
(09:58):
four three two. His little buddy Rudolphila, that's miles per hour.
Right after that, Rudolph Carraciola jumped in his car and
went to sixty eight point eight and then Burnt said,
oh yeah, let me try that again, and he got
in and he died. Yeah. His car lifted off the ground,
(10:20):
he got caught a cross wind and he was killed. Um.
What's interesting is those two speeds you just mentioned are
still the fastest speeds ever clocked down the Auto Bonn
in these old cars. Yeah, in one day. Um. And
the first guy, Burnt Rosemeyer, he was driving an out
of Auto Union V sixteen, which V sixteen Yeah, Um,
(10:43):
he in Auto Union eventually became Audi and then um Caracciola,
he was driving a Mercedes A V twelve Mercedes W
one and he'd beat he'd beat Rosemeyer by like four
hundreds of a second or four tenths of a second.
Did you see the scars. I mean they look sort
of like smaller versions of Chitty Chitty Bank Bank, Yeah,
(11:04):
kind of, and they're going two hundred and sixty miles
an hour. They look like old timey race cars driven
by like old timey race car drivers who died. The
guy died that day. That weird, it's weirdly, it's weirdly sad.
So um Hitler again, um, father of the auto bonn
in some respect, he definitely Um, he took road building
(11:28):
to new heights or two new extremes. Um. Apparently you
know the Cologne Bond stretch from ninety two, that was
the first stretch of highway in Germany, supposedly the first
real one. UM. Six years later, under Nazi rule, UM,
eighteen hundred and sixty miles of roadway had been completed.
(11:48):
So they were like roadmaking machines. Well they were, and
that kind of well, he didn't like backfire. But it
went into disrepair in a lot of places after the
war because the German citizens weren't in such great shape
financially after the war. No, and they didn't even get
used during the war, which is the whole reason Hitler
was building and was for military transport. But a lot
(12:10):
of the roads were like two steep, two mountainous, so
they didn't use them. So they fell in disrepair and
it took a long time. You know, some points were
even impassable, and it took a long time before they
really got on a campaign to reconstruct them and build
them back up to the Great Road. Yes, great road.
That's uh, that's the road. This is our second Holy boy,
(12:33):
that's shameful. We both just realized that at the same
exact podcasts on the Road. Okay, I think this will
be the last. Um, yeah, chuck it. It wasn't until
the nineties, after East Germany and West Germany got back together, um,
that the autobon really started to take the take the
(12:54):
legendary form. I think that that we have now that
we have of it now, which is now see I
got the fourth largest behind America, China and India. Oh
is that right? But it says the third. But I'm
not sure which one is more recent or or it.
Maybe there may have to do with how to how
to do with how Indy accounts the road. They count
it all twice. Well, if it's like a major expressway
(13:17):
or what because India's is way bigger than any of them,
I think, but that they might Germans might say like no, no, no,
we're talking highways only. Um well look look how about
some stats man, it's it's your time to shine. How
big is this thing? Uh? I have as of two
thousand ten, this pretty recent well thousand, eight hundred and
(13:39):
thirteen clicks? Wow? Really yeah, that's the kilometers. Okay, it's
actually decreased in size then, because this article has it
as twelve thou d kios. But when was that? Maybe
that's newer or else it's shrinking and might be actually
it's shrinking and it's age. It's it's got sarcopenia. And
(14:00):
we should say for our American friends, that's eight thousand
miles of right roadway. Very nice. There'll be more stats
scatter amount okaysisting exciting. What's another myth? Josh, you can
just drive as fast as you want on this thing
all over the place? Right? Well, um, no you you can't.
You can. But the Germans are very sensible people. They're
(14:22):
very efficient. Uh, they're very um really as sensible is
a really good word to describe the German people. What
might even say rigid, you could say that, UM, and
they are well aware that you should not be driving
unfettered speed limit wise through congested areas, like through a
(14:43):
city or something like that. So in a lot of
parts of the Audubon you're going to find speed limits
which are called tempo limits UM in German tempo limits
tempo limits that which is of course one word. Yeah.
So congested areas, areas where like the the terrain is
really rough um during certain types of weather. Uh. There's
(15:06):
a lot of UM factors that go into it, but
it's not unlimited. For about three quarters of the eight
thousand miles you'll find speed limits. But then there's about
two thousand miles of autobon, about a quarter of the
whole thing, where there really isn't any speed limit. Not bad.
You can drive as fast as you want, but there
(15:26):
is a suggested uh speed limit of UM. I believe
a hundred and thirty kilometers per hour, which is eighty
miles an hour, But that's suggested. Nobody's gonna pull you
over for that. Uh. There is a minimum speed limit
of thirty seven miles per hour, which is about sixty
kilometers per hour, and that just keeps the riff raff
(15:48):
off the road that will get blown away, including mopeds
and stuff like that, and well horses, horses which were
banned outright from the beginning German highways early on that
they wanted this thing to cook, or at least it
seems like. But even if it is unlimited, they still can.
You can still get a fine if you're driving too
(16:10):
fast for like weather conditions. You can also, I mean,
if you're going to pass um an autobon cop which
are called the auto bon politze. Again one long wordlitz,
you you don't want to taunt him, especially if you're
holding like a big mac. Yeah, because the Germans consider
(16:31):
um driving while eating or drinking a distracted drivers state,
and they will pull you over in a heartbeat and
find you, and they do it routinely. Yeah. Can I
just go ahead and take my hat off to the
German people for their sensible and common sense rules when
it comes to driving, Sure, chuck, because that is one
(16:53):
All of these rules to me should be worldwide because
they just make sense. For instance, the two second rule.
If you don't follow the two second rule, which means
you give yourself two seconds worth of stopping time for
the car in front of you. Then you can get
a ticket and that's suspended license. Yeah, we should explain
that to our younger listeners, maybe ones who don't drive yet. Uh.
(17:17):
Say you're following a car and a car passes a
street lamp, right, Uh, if you should be able to
count off two seconds before you pass that street lamp.
That means there's two seconds of space between two seconds
of reaction time between you and the car in front
of you. That's the two second rule. Yeah, that's a
great way to do it. Nice suggestion. Another rule, Josh,
(17:38):
which should be adhered here in the United States, travel
fast in the left lane only pass on the right only.
It just makes sense. Well, so apparently the Germans are
extremely well instructed in the art of passing and respecting
the passing lane. So, um, I've met so many people
(18:01):
on the highway that I really genuinely wanted to take
the lives of you've met them. I met him by
making eye contact, really angry, vicious eye contact, waiting at them. Um, yeah,
on the road because they just not only won't get over,
they maybe slow down a little bit when you try
(18:23):
to pass them in the in the left lane and
they're going too slow. Apparently the Germans do not have
this problem. If you are not getting over, if you're
in the left lane and you don't get over for
a faster driver, you can be fined because they consider
that coercion. You were coercing a driver who drives faster
than you to drive slower, and that is messed up.
(18:43):
And not only that, but if you're going a hundred
and twenty miles an hour in that left lane and
your Mercedes and going through behind you is in his
force and he wants to go one ninety, you gotta
get over because you're the slower driver. And also whether
whether it's you orgoon turn the left lane, you're not
supposed to be in there unless you're passing. The right
(19:05):
lanes are for traveling, the left lane is for passing,
and you don't drive in the left lane and you
can get a fine for that. Um. You're you're allowed
to flash your lights and honk your horn at somebody
who's going slower to basically say, hey, I don't want
to use up my brakes. Get over. If they don't
get over, they can get a ticket if you UM,
if you do it excessively, supposedly, that's coercient as well,
(19:29):
so you can both get a ticket if you find
a grumpy auto pullets. That's right, auto bomb pullets. I
think anytime you're not sure, just like, do it quiet? Uh?
And you mentioned that you know the left lane is
for passing. You can also be stopped in fine if
you pass on the right. If your excuse was but hey,
(19:52):
the guy wouldn't get over, they can say, I'm sorry,
you're still getting a ticket, but we'll give him a
ticket to if we happen to see that you're you're
both gonna get tickets, right, just likes, can it be
any more fair than that? And women have to get
a license to wear lipstick? What else? Uh? The emergency
(20:12):
lane um is for emergencies only here in the United States.
When traffic backs up in certain places like l A,
people will drive in the emergency lane because they can't wait. Yeah,
that's that makes me want to kill two. But they said,
I love this part. Even if you run out of gas,
that's no excuse because that's an avoidable thing. So that's
(20:35):
very sensible as well. I get the feeling that you're
it's very shameful as well. In Germany, to run out
of gas because they're just so like on top of everything,
they're like, you know, if you run out of gas, room,
you're you're not worthy of being on the road. Like
they have like like page eight of the local papers,
just like mug shots of people who ran out of
gas in the emergency yesterday. Uh, should we talk about
(20:58):
some of these fines? And that's kind of the least
interesting part. Yeah, how about this? This will this will
drive people on the website after this. If you want
to see some fines, some some infractions and the corresponding
finds in Euros, look up auto Bonn on how stuffworks
dot com. We'll remind you again later at the end
of this episode. Another cool thing I like about the system, Josh,
(21:18):
it is it's all consistent with how they letter and
number everything. Everything on the auto Bonn system has a
capital A followed by a number. Even numbers go east west,
odd numbers go north south. Same exact thing in the US,
is that right? Yes? Seventy five north south, eighty five
north south, ninety five north south twenty forty sixty eighty
(21:40):
all east west. Same thing is it was modeled on
the autobon Eisenhower is like, I love these Nazis. I
don't think they're all like that, though, are they? It
seems like California had some for interstate for federal highways only,
So what about rings. I don't know, UM two eighty
five probably larger, I want. I don't know this, but
(22:01):
I would suspect that the larger orientation, whether it's east,
west or north south, would guide the people naming it
giving it a name. So like, I'll bet two eighty
five it has longer stretches going east and west or
north and south than east and west, which is why
it has an odd number. But it's not a perfect circles.
(22:24):
I tend to make stuff up, and that could be
an example of uh You would think that because of
the excessive speeds that the auto bon would be a
death trap. I would, and for a while there it
was pretty unsafe, like uh N. I think was the
all time high when they had more than one deaths
(22:46):
that year, which is staggering. It is, but it's less
than the United States standard of about forty thousand a year. Yeah,
but we have a lot more highway we we we
do know. UM. In two thousand eight, though, that number
fell to fewer than because of a few things, better
(23:08):
engineering in the cars, safety obviously, better engineering of the
roadway very much. My dad taught me this. My dad's
a mechanical engineer, but engineers. Any type of engineer appreciates
the work of any other type of engineer. Um And
he taught me to really appreciate a curve where you
don't have to move your steering wheel, You just you
(23:28):
just tilted slightly and then you just hold it and
placed for the whole curve. You don't have to turn
it to stay into the curve is a perfectly engineered
and perfectly constructed curve. I have driven on a race
track and that's how it is. But you can you'll
if you pay attention, you'll find that some curves on
some highways are better than others, for sure. And every
(23:48):
and when you when you're looking out for it, you
really appreciate that one curve where you just pull into it.
You're like, hat's off to you, guys, It's like, way
to go, This is a perfect curve. Yeah. Yeah. When
I did Atlanta Motor Speedway, I actually got the feeling
that I didn't even need to turn my wheel because
the bank it felt like the car just kind of
turned itself. I'm sure that's not the case, but I'll
bet it is. It was pretty cool. Yeah, what were
(24:09):
you doing on at Lant. We did a commercial shoot
there years ago and I got I had to go
the day before to like get some paper signed from someone.
And the guy that worked there said, he's like he did.
He literally did. He's like, hey man, he won't take
a lap went heck, yeah I do. He's like, you're
have any money? It was Unfortunately I was in a
production vehicle, so it was a like a GMC yukon
(24:33):
suv want like ninety and it felt on the on
the high on that track, it felt like I was
going about thirty really, so it wasn't actually a thrill.
It was just like this is neat. But the banks, man,
those are scary, Like I thought I was gonna tip over.
That's how steep it I would imagine, so, especially in
like an suv, especially in a big suv. Yeah, well
(24:53):
it's very fun though. Uh So. Yeah, the autobun is
one of the safest roadways in the in the world
nowadays United States, but it's not it's in Germany. It's right,
don't try and fool me. Uh. There's been talking recent years, Josh,
about imposing some speed limits because of environmental factors more
than safety. Yeah, apparently if you propose, um putting speed
(25:18):
limits on the auto bonn for safety reasons, you're just
chided and derided and upbraided like by everyone, like, oh,
shut up, you don't know what you're talking about. You
clearly just moved here from Spain or something like that,
you know. Um, it's all about environment though. And in fact,
there's three cities in Germany Bond, Cologne and I think
(25:38):
Berlin who have instituted um, what are called oom lot zones. No,
I don't think they're room lout zones, boom welt zone,
which is an environment zone. And basically it's like you
have to have a sticker that shows that your car
was um inspected and meets approved a mission standard to
(26:00):
be able to drive in this environment zone. So if
you drive a nasty diesel car, you can't drive in
certain sections of Bond or Cologner I think. Well, speaking
of stickers too, you have to have a tire rated
for for speed as well, which is another great rule. Well, yeah,
you can't if you have a really fast car. You
can't have really cheap tires, like your tire has to
(26:20):
be rated for your car's top speed or you can
be pulled over for that too. Right, But they do
allow exceptions, I think for certain kind of winter tires,
which you need the sticker for though, to show the
cop the pullet side that you're like, I can have
these winter tires. Yeah. So obviously they're going to post
speed limits all over the autobon for carbon emissions. Right, sure, Wrong,
(26:42):
Chancellor Angela merkel Um in this country, you would call
her Angela merkel Um. She said in two thousand seven
that she would not support any speed limit uh measures
for the autobon. I love that. Instead, she said, automakers,
why don't you just go make the car as um
more efficient? Yeah, with fewer emissions. That's what I love.
(27:05):
She's like, no change your cars. And apparently she's she's uh,
she's a standard bear for the rest of the country
as far as the Audubon goes. You got anything else?
I mean no, I don't have anything else. Really, I
got I have one thing and this this makes sense? Um.
During the Cold War, obviously, the roads were neglected more
(27:27):
in East Germany. In West Germany and so that was
sort of in a state of disarray, lots of potholes, um,
impassable places, major obstacles and um. A lot of these
roads were just used for military traffic for a little while.
But since the end of the Cold World, since the
Wall fell, I think they've tried to help out East
(27:47):
Germany a little bit there, Yeah, make the roads a
little better so they can be a Germany united in
road and spirit. Yes, and they are, yes there, so uh,
there you have at the autobon. It's our companion piece
to Root sixty six. I remember when I was a kid,
it was did you just heard a lot about the autobon?
(28:09):
It was like, I don't know, maybe that was the
big when cars were really going fast because I just
remember the auto well yeah, but that was also the
same age where you were, you know, eight to nine
times likelier to have a poster of a Lamborghini on
the back of your bedroom door with a mug. Yeah,
I remember tho. I remember that Garfield one where it
(28:30):
was like a real shot of a mansion and like
a Lamborghini and all this a boat and all that,
but Garfield like super imposed over it was like whoever
dies with the most toys wins. Can you imagine a
more eighties motto than that? Material? Phil, what are you doing?
You've gone astray? He's back though everybody, and he's dead.
(28:52):
You don't know what I'm talking about. Look up, is
Garfield actually dead? It'll bring up some pretty cool stuff. Um.
If you want to know more about the Audubon, including
some other trafficing fractions and their corresponding finds in Euros,
you want to type in autobon A U, T O,
B A H N in the search bar how stuff
works dot com. Uh. And since I said search bar
(29:14):
in there somewhere, Ah, that means it's time for not
listener mail. Sometimes it means it's time for Facebook questions.
That's right. And this week, Josh, it's a very special
edition of Facebook Questions because these aren't questions about us
for a change. We're not gonna sit here and talk
(29:36):
about each other, which we love to do. I find
it off putting when we do that. Yeah, it's intrusive.
How I love it? Uh? These are Facebook questions for
our special guest who was here in the studio with
this Actually it's me John Hodgman. Everyone, Yeah, I'm here again.
But actually, guys, I gotta tell you I'm I'm not
actually here. What what do you mean you're sitting here?
I'm no, I am I'm currently a hologram. John Hodgeman
(30:00):
actual is currently in Brooklyn, New York. So Jerry busted
you out? How did that go? She busted you out
of the safe room. Oh, that went fine, and I
was able to make it back home. You just left.
And John Hodgeman actual is in Brooklyn, New York right
now promoting, well, actually at the Bellhouse tonight, getting ready
to to present the launch of his new book That
(30:24):
Is All, which I guess came out today. It came
out today, November one, two thousand eleven. So John Hodgeman
actual had to be in Brooklyn to begin his book tour,
and so he sent me his holographic representation. So should
we congratulate you or can you send it? Can you
send a message to I can convey a message to
(30:45):
Hodgeman Actual? Okay, so we have breakfast this morning. Was
that you or was that the actual John Hodge That
was me the hologram. Okay, the hologram really puts away
the sausage links. Well, you know, when you're a hologram,
you can eat whatever you want. Okay, So are you
prerecorded or I am an interactive program that responds to
(31:07):
stimulus in a very similar way. And yet I see me,
Chuck is moving his hand through your head right now,
so it looks you look totally solid, but obviously you're not.
I am an interactive program that responds to stimulus in
a very similar way. I thought I detected odors, John
Hodgman odors, but that must just be in my head.
(31:27):
I am an interactive program that responds to various stimulus
and a in I forget what I was going to say. Well,
you know, I guess that's good enough for Facebook questions. Well,
I yes, I have a question. Can you feel love?
K just let me like this? There? We alright, Hello,
(31:50):
I am a holographic John Hodgment. How may I be
of service? Well, John, holographic John. We had some fans
right in of yours on Facebook because we said, hey,
John the hollow Graham is going to be in the office.
That's great because John Hodgman usually uses a robot to
answer his email perfect then, so this works perfectly. And
they responded in kind, and we're you don't know these questions,
(32:10):
is not pre prepared. And even if Hodgeman actual did,
I don't believe Hodgeman Virtual would be preloaded with these
and there's yeah, there's no way that these could be predicted.
The due random I'm looking forward to hearing the questions
from the millions of fake accounts and offshore banks that
are registered at your website. When we will, we will
(32:31):
ask it. Now, do you want me to kick off?
Are we gonna? Are we gonna call out the people
who asked the questions? I think we should. Yeah, we
always do so John John the hologram, Yes, I don't
know if you know this, but John the actual loves
the podcast, love stuff. You should know. He always talked
(32:53):
about it's almost to an embarrassing degree. Um, I am
aware of his affection for the podcast. Choose not to
comment on it, Okay, that's fine, that's fine, But you
can you basically have access to all of John the
actual thoughts and feelings about certain things. Okay, So, um,
we did a podcast, an episode on the Muppets. It's
a much beloved episode. I am aware. So this question
(33:16):
I think pertains to that. This is from Josh Bailey
and he asks which Muppet is your favorite? There can
be no question that John Hodgman's favorite Muppet is Kermit.
He is an incredible character in American fiction that I
adore and also John Hodgman does too. Okay, it's convenient. Um,
(33:40):
there is for the most part a consensus on the
Internet that I resemble Benson Bunsen Honeydew. Yeah, now that
you mentioned that there's a very famous picture of you
with said Muppet, is there there is? I've seen it
on on my phone. I have Well, I cannot, as
(34:02):
a hologram, I cannot confirm whether or not that picture exists.
You're you're speaking of something that falls into a nondisclosure
agreement that you signed pertaining to the New Muppets movie,
of which John Hodgman has no part except visiting a
table read. But that but that is that's that. Yes,
(34:26):
I think probably the Muppet Movie is one of the
sort of most overlooked great film of the seventies, you
know what I mean of the great films of the seventies,
And I'm including so we're talking you know, The Godfather
and Chinatown and you know those those great hard weird
(34:50):
complex unsparing French connection. French connection, you know, adult sophisticated,
and I don't mean an adult in story, yeah right.
Empire Strikes Back obviously falls in that category as well,
sort of morally nebulous and and dark. The Muppet Movie
is is equally that it is a movie about puppets
(35:14):
that go on a journey to Hollywood to make a
movie about puppets. And at the end of the movie,
all of the puppets seeing about how life is a
movie while they're surrounded by fake props that are imitating
the fake props from the earlier part of the movie,
and then the theater, the ceiling of the theater smashes,
(35:34):
and a real rainbow comes in and touches them all.
And then Kermit looks directly into the camera, breaks the
fourth wall and says to you, the viewer, life is
a movie. Write your own ending spoiler alert. Well this
is as you know. This is the only movie on
which the literary critic Roland Bart was given a screenplay credit,
(35:56):
because it's so in Henseley meta and beautiful and yet
and yet also emotionally very affecting. I love Kermit the Frog.
I love Beaker two put Beaker down, Kermit and Beaker
josh Bailey. All right, this is from Joshua Charles Knowles.
(36:17):
Favorite board game, favorite cartoon, and favorite Pulletzer recipient. Favorite
board game obviously is scrabble, of course. Favorite cartoon animated
or or strip cartoon, comic strip work cartoons. Favorite cartoon
Let's go with television or flipbook? Yeah? Uh, favorite cartoon
watership down? Okay, favorite fun this hysterical? Yeah, it's slapstick.
(36:45):
Rabbits are funny? Uh? Favorite? And what was the last part?
Pulletzer Prize recipient David Lindsay A bear the Pulleitzer Prize
winning play right, David Lindsay a beart? All right? Who
am I made fun of? Two podcasts? That's right. That's
from Joshua Nols. Thank you, Joshua. Who is the next
josh to ask me a question? The next Joshua to
ask you a question is bridget reef shop Bell. She's
(37:07):
got three names. Well, I guess her question is this
follows is judge John Hodgman? Which is a podcast? Is
ever going to be a regular weekly or more podcast?
I asked that question because it's a question and a
bit of a dig. Yeah, I get it, okay, Joshua Bridget,
(37:29):
I feel that that hurts. You've probably heard a lot
of that lately. Yeah, you know what, Here's some things
that happened in my life. I worked for the Daily
Show with John Stewart with John Stewart from time to time.
I wrote a book that I'm publishing called That Is
All That comes out Today. I have, I have human children,
(37:50):
I have a cat that needs feeding and tending. And
I do a podcast that I love very much called
Judge John Hodgman where people call in and I and
I and they tell me their disputes and I tell
them who's right and he was wrong, and and Jesse
Thorne the bailiff, Jesse the producer of j Thorne excuse me,
and he recently had a baby. So you know, I've
(38:11):
been busy. And also I'm a deranged millionaire. And I
took two months off over the summer, sue me, to
sit around and and uh and work on my on
my inventions. So here's the thing. I was a little busy.
We fell off our regular weekly thing. It's hard to
get good disputes. It's hard to get disputes where people
(38:31):
aren't simply buzz marketing Facebook all the time like we're
doing today. Um, we will put that thing out as
as often as we can, and I hope it will
be weekly, but it will never ever be twice a
week because we all know that's podcast death, especially after
three years. So that was Joshua Bridget and the other
(38:54):
Joshua's out there. Yeah, this is from uh Josh Ginger
snap dragon and he writing from second life. Should we
eliminate pennies in our currency system? No? Pennies are delightful
if any of you if if there were not pennies there,
(39:18):
there would not be the great Paul F. Tompkins routine
smashed pennies available on his c D freak wharf. Are
you're a good friend? He has a good comedian. You ready, Yeah,
this one comes flighting lightning round. I'll be fast. Well,
we've got we We have a lot of quick A
lot of people want to know stuff. I'm happy to
(39:40):
tell them from you. Um, there are a lot of
people who asked questions about your mustache. Some of them
are stupid questions like what's up with the mustache? But
what mustache do you look up to the most is
on my list? It's Okay, it's better than what's up
with the mustache? But I'm choosing this one from Joshua J. McCracken,
(40:02):
who has Um Bullwinkle as his avatar. Is your mustache?
Attribute to Stanley Tucci's epic performance in The Lovely Bones that,
uh that is not the case? Uh, Doc Holiday played
by Val kilmar Oh. I totally see it now, ye
(40:24):
be dying alcoholic? Yeah, um, your huckle Billy, that was
your brilliant John. There was a time in my life
in the nineties when I love that performance so much
that I was like, maybe I should get tuberculosis. Maybe
(40:47):
I should sweat and drink all the time starting at
nine am and and cough because I'm already has matic.
So I'm halfway there. And look whatid it's them for you? Look,
I grew a mustache because that is the only facial
hair I could grow. And I wanted to grow some
facial hair. And this is what what every hair you
see on my face, That is the only hair that
(41:08):
I could grow. Like you're trying to grow a beard
right now as we speak, and heaven for months. Yeah,
that's why I see some stuff down there. No, no, no, no,
you don't want to see. I spend a lot of
time this summer when I went away as a deranged
millionaire experimenting with the beard, because truly, if I really
want to be a deranged millionaire, I gotta go full
Howard Hughes. Do you know what I mean? Mustache? And
why are soul patches? I mean dot Holiday soul patches
(41:31):
isn't gonna do it. But it's just not in me. Guys,
there's still a part of me that's not deranged and
not millionaire enough to do it. So that's the that's
the answer. Yeah, that's a lot of people wanted to
know that, John, Where do you go some you know,
it's like sometimes you wear a different shirt. Can a
guy grow a mustache? Yeah? People just want to know
why the guys wearing the concern that people have. And
(41:53):
there's another here's another perfectly true answer. You notice that
the mustache that I'm wearing looks fake because it was
so much darker than my regular topic. My whiskers are
very dark and my skin is very pale and pallid,
much like darc Holidays. And I got a little tired
(42:15):
as this happened once where someone came up to me
and said, I really like that you're growing a mustache.
And it was eleven o'clock in the morning and I
had shaved that day. Because when my whiskers would come
in they would be very dark. It always looked like
I was growing a mustache. So I decided to give
nature what it wanted, a right. So that's your answer,
(42:37):
thank you, Josh, Josh uh boring, boring, boring is from
this is from John Riddium. How do you feel about
asian carp that's not that's not the snakehead fishes it
I don't know. No, you're thinking of the worm faces
(43:01):
asian carpet predatory species. Is that the issue here? I
think you're thinking invasive? Invasive? Thank you. Yeah, you really
have lightened up a lot of I don't know how
to answer that question. I they're they're huge carp and
you know, generally I'm a I'm a fan of all. Well,
(43:22):
that's a little like Getty Lee's famous words, if you
choose not to decide, you still made a choice, John Hodgment,
refusing to answer is your answer. But here's one. Here's
what I'm gonna sayil Perts famous words and and speaking
speaking of of of giant freshwater fish. There is a
(43:45):
long section in this book that I have written that
comes out today entitled That Is All, the third in
the series of Complete World Knowledge, including information on wine
and sports and of the world. There's a long section
in this book that follows the path of a semi
professional noodler who who meets an unhappy end. Noodling, of course,
(44:09):
being the sport of sticking your hand down a catfish's
mouth um and catching it, yanking and yanking it out,
and then he later comes to face the ancient and
unspeakable one, the giant catfish, that is the entire Mississippi River.
That's another story, but that whole section is an homage
(44:30):
to the first episode of Stuff You Should Know I
ever listened to. That was the first. It was that
very thrilling. And you know what, John, When I was
reading your book, I noticed that there were some stuff
you should Know threads really well, well, just a couple
of things I noticed, like the Mayan calendar and prohibition,
prison wine drink taste, sinkhole zombies, flor hey hey hey hey, rogue, taxidermy,
(44:56):
odd town festivals, spontaneous human combustion. Wait a minute, Cristal
Skulls of the Many Worlds Theory one Near Death Experiences.
Do we get any money for this book? John, Look,
there's obviously a kinship in the way we look at
and think about the world. We're both trying to explain everything.
Give me the list and I'll tell you where it
came from. You're not getting this list, give me no
(45:18):
read it read It just doesn't even have to be
in the podcast Prison Prison Wine first revealed to me
at the offices of Twitter and two thousand eight. First
first came to my attention when I was writing an
article for Wired magazine in two thousand seven. Taxoplasmosis, taxoplasmosis,
I have a human child, I have a wife who
(45:39):
was pregnant. Of course I know that talxoplasmosis. Wait a minute,
you hadn't heard about prison wine until two eight. Yeah,
that's right. I did spend a night in jail, but
it wasn't long enough to make prison one. Crystal Skulls.
Go back to my first book, two thousand five, Secrets
of Yale University, where I talk about the rumor that
(46:00):
the Uh, the the the Whiffin pooss Uh gave the
skull of Benjamin Franklin to Dick Cabot on his TV show,
And it's not true. It was a crystal skull. Okay,
that goes back to the World Book of the Strange
that I read in two thousand four writing the first book?
(46:21):
Does that have trepen nation in it? Of course it does.
Tremp nation I got from from the Golden Compass. Give
me more. Come on, I'm not let the stand uh sinkholes.
That's from me? Okay. Odd town festivals, that's okay because
you actually gave us a thank you for that for noodling. Yeah,
(46:44):
we're cited as experts, even a thank you like experts. Yeah,
keep going. Really yeah, odd town festivals, that's that. That
one's yours. Not that I wasn't aware of a lot
of those odd town festivals. Zombies comedies, I know, we
didn't invent it. Yeah, no, you didn't. Let me. Let
me give you a little history lesson, right, Zombi has
(47:05):
been around for a long time. Check out a serpent
in the rainbow, dumb, dumb. Next, I saw that in
the theater rogue taxidermy bartering. Rogue taxidermy was probably you
bartering though that bartering we didn't do bartering house swapping.
You mean no, we talked about bartering, didn't we. I'm
(47:26):
sure we did in house swapping. Oh. Also, um conjunctions.
We use a lot of conjunctions. Bartering goes back to
my first my first year of college, when I would
tell other freshmen who were from out of states. I
went to college the University in Connecticut, and I would
just tell people that the Connecticut is the only state
(47:48):
in the Union where barter is still a legal form
of payment. And then you can go into any like
wah wah or convenience store and try to buy things
with shiny shells, and if they accept it, it's lead.
How would you like to be on the hall with
eighteen year old John Hodgmon, You know you'd be like,
shut up, nerd. Well, So we'll we'll release this separately
(48:10):
on the internet. Look, I think I span, I spand
my ground on this right all right. I guess that's
about all the time we have think just questions. Oh boy,
oh boy, that was beautiful. If any of you have
questions for me, or you doubt or you think that
I've ripped off stuff, you should know on other subjects
(48:33):
and are not willing to just accept that we think
about the same things a lot like your show. We're
both trying to explain everything, so there's found to be
some overlap. Yeah, but I've been at it since two
thousand five exactly, and I also don't care about facts.
But if any of you have questions for me and
wish to or for that matter, accusations for me, won't
(48:53):
you please come and see me. I am now on
book tour. At least Hodgeman actual is now on book tour. Yeah,
this is all right. So this is November one, right,
So November one, I am in Brooklyn at the Bellhouse.
November two, I am in Chicago at the Second City, Etc. Stage.
November three, I am in St. Louis, Missouri. Let me,
(49:17):
you're really getting around? How how will you beginning from
place to place in such a short amount of time?
I bought I traded Nick Mangold my burning Zeppelin for
his um penny Farthing motorcycle. Oh yeah, that seems even
because Zeppelin was burning. Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic. November three,
(49:37):
I'll be in St. Louis, Missouri at the Mad Art Gallery.
November four, I'll be in Los Angeles, California, with Mr
Paul F. Tompkins and Mr John Roderick November six. I'll
be in Portland, Oregon. I believe Roderick will be there,
and I know that will be in Seattle at town
Hall on November seventh. Is Roderick playing or anything? Or
is he? He'll be playing just and right then I
(50:04):
go down to Austin, Texas, site of your live stuff.
You should know podcasts UFO, which you mentioned in your
books book good point. Oh you got me, you got me?
Ancient astronauts, Yeah, you got me, you got me. November
eight that book People, one of the great independent book
stores of all time. Then Durham, h North Carolina at
(50:27):
the Durham Armory November nine with the Regulator at the
Regulator Bookshop with son of North Carolina, David Reese uh.
And then in Asheville, North Carolina, the college hometown of
famous Tracy. Yeah. And then that will be on the eleventh,
just a few hours drive from here Atlanta, by the way.
And you're not swinging, No, I can't. Unfortunately, I feel
(50:51):
very bad about it. But here I'm here now. Yeah.
Then I'm back in New York November four at the
Barnes and Noble in the November at the Coolidge Corner
of It in my hometown of Brookline, Massachusetts, and then
November six at the Fitzgerald Theater and St. Paul an
extra special episode of WITS, a public radio show hosted
by John Moe, starring me and special guest John Darniel
(51:14):
of The Mountain Goats, one of my favorites. Boy oh boy,
if you wanted a crazy couple, we gets a Crazy
Cuckoo tour. I really hope that people will come out.
You have to buy tickets, but you get a copy
of the book with the ticket, and I will sign
every book that that comes there. And I will talk
to you all and answer your questions, and I will
(51:34):
respond to your accusations and and and I will and
I will not be holographic. I will be Hodgeman actual.
That's great, So thank you very much for letting me
come buy again. Guys, of course, but it sounds like
I'm saying goodbye, but I'm not going anywhere. I'm gonna
come back the next one. Yeah, sorry, We're doing another one,
(51:56):
all right. Well, until then, what today's Tuesday, I'll see you. Well,
the holograph will re emerge, so we have to do
with the holograph again. You're making us do a fourth
one of these and you're not even coming down here,
right because when well when when are you on again?
Thursday the third, so you'll be aware. I'll be in St.
Louis Oka, gay Way to the west. All right. Well,
(52:17):
we'll see hodgements hologram again in a minute, and so
will you. I guess in a couple of days. All right,
I'm gonna power down now if you don't mind, Okay,
we'll see you a little bit. If you have a
question for John or for us, or you just want
to say hi, or you want to say please bring
back listener mail or anything but this, you can tweet
it to us at s y s K Podcast. You
(52:38):
can visit us on Facebook at facebook dot com, slash
stuff you Should Know, or you can send us a
good old fashioned email at Stuff Podcast at how Stuff
Works dot com. Be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
(53:01):
of tomorrow, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
twelve camera. It's ready, Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant
(00:21):
room a zoom zoom Chuck who gets psychnic care Clark
sounds good, Chuck. I was hoping you bust out a
lot of German Bill. We are going to do an
episode on the Audubon, as you probably noticed when you
clicked play right, Yes, um and uh, We're going to
(00:41):
get to the bottom of the age old question. Who zooming?
Who Chuck? Or me? Who was that? Aretha Franklin one
of her late career pop um songs. She also did
the Freeway of Love, so that's interesting. She took up
like a you know, the highway theme later in her career.
(01:03):
Although who zuiming? Who had nothing to do with Auto Bond?
Did it? Uh? No? No? I think I think you
could make a case they had to do with sc
X Maybe interesting. Didn't every song in the eighties have
to do with that or cocaine? Get Out of My Dreams,
Get into My Car? What do you think the car
is of course, get in the fast lane, baby. Yeah. Yeah,
(01:28):
see this is already better than you thought it was
gonna be. Let's begin the auto bon Chuck Fodd and
Fodd and Botten on the at bond. So we'll get
to that in a second. Does a matter of fact,
let's get to it now. Who is that Chuck? That's
craft work or craft work? Craft work? They you know,
they're a German. I actually saw them at the Coachella Festival,
(01:51):
and I'm not a fan, so I wasn't that big
of a deal to me. I understand their place. It's
like the biggest build their own instruments. No, trust me.
They were so ahead of their time they had to
build their own instrument. The early seventies they were doing
techno music. But yeah, I'm just not a fan of
that kind of music, so I didn't dig it. But
I get it. They're great guys. They seemed like it.
(02:14):
Nice dudes. And they had a song called Autobon Yeah,
and which was eight in The Big Lebowski. Oh yeah,
by the Nihilists. Now well they were Nihilists, but they
were the name of the band in The Big Lebowski
was Autobon. The name of their album was naggle Beet,
which I looked up today. That is the perion perionum,
(02:38):
which is the tissue surrounding the fingernail and toe nail.
And that was the name of their album. Which eight
craft Works album cover The Man Machine. Oh there's some
kid whose head just exploded. Yeah, exactly. Um. Also, kraft
Work has a play since the Simpsons Pantheon. They made
(02:59):
an appear. It's verbally uh in the Fighting Hellfish episode,
remember the the German air shows up to claim the
artwork and he tells the farm boys to get a room.
He's tells everybody to hurry up because he has to
go see Kroft. Stop. We should just end it, wrap
it up right here, all right, thank you everybody, Um Chuck,
(03:20):
let's begin all Uh. You know my brother Bill, I
don't know if you've ever met him or not. Okay,
Well Bill um got into Porsches for a little while
and he got himself a brand new nine eleven Carrera
set in like the late nineties. It was sweet. It
was silver. The moment it hit fifty five, a spoiler
(03:42):
automatically came up. It was just nice, sweet cars and
it had like a little sticker on the front and
it said it had like a guy's signature on it,
and it was like a pen in hand signature. It's
a real thing, um And basically it was like I've
I've driven this car and this thing is a okay.
And he said, you see that that's a German race
car driver's signature. This car had like fifteen miles on
(04:03):
it when I got it, because they've taken it out
on the auto bonn they do that to every single one.
So I did a little research. This is the late
nineties and from six to today, I thought that Porsche
did that with every car. Doing a little research, I
figured out that that's not the case. Bill may have
(04:23):
been mistaken. It's a myth, or he could have just
gotten lucky and just happened to get the car that somebody,
uh test drove on the auto bon I think I've
heard that before, actually, that Porsche does every single one
or yeah, or that they they test, you know, test
drive their fleet. Yeah, maybe not all of them. But
I didn't see any evidence whatsoever that they do anything.
(04:46):
But they do use the auto bon this is the
cool part to road test like new models. Or they'll say, hey,
you're you're a auto journalist. Why don't you come on
over to Germany and drive this thing? And they use
would be like us taking a car out on I
eighty five or seventy five or probably more appropriately to
(05:07):
eight five and just going as fast as we can
and then going home and writing about it. I just
read an article, like you said, the auto writers. It
was car and Driver. I think some dude got a
Lamborghini Aventa door and drove and wrote an article about
driving two miles an hour on there's a stretch outside
of Garmish. Oh yes, garmisht miles of of awesome roadway
(05:34):
and it's not like flattened straight, it's curvy and mountainous
and apparently that's like one of the great places to
go drive fast. Yes, okay, well look for stuff you
should know quiz in the future with the answer of Garmish. Yeah,
all right, I've been I've been coming up with questions
in my head. I can write these. Well yeah, okay, no,
I'm gonna I'm going to telepathically beam the quiz to
(05:57):
everybody who listens to be should I was writing those
quizzes for a while. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. About that.
I'm a little testy about this one. I'm not a
car guy. You've seen my car. I'm not a car
guy either. So I drove a truck, that's true. So
are you a truck guy? No, I mean it's just handy.
You drive really fast though, and you're old, old beater. Yeah,
(06:20):
so I thought you might appreciate this. Uh yeah, No,
I'm not like a break a hundred miles an hour
kind of guy at all. You're just a break eight
within neighborhoods of Atlanta. No. I I've slowed down quite
a bit in my old age in residential areas. But yeah, no,
I still like to get from point A to point
But like being on the Highway, to me, is not
a lug street. It's not like a great experience. It's like, Okay,
(06:42):
now I can get there as fast as I possibly can. Sure,
because that's like an interruption of life, having to drive
from one place to know, teleportation, to me would be
one of the greatest inventions of all time. I could
dig that. Yeah. So, uh, you mentioned the myth that
Porsche does that. There's another myth was that Adolf Hitler
invented the auto bon Yeah, it's not really true. No,
(07:05):
he gets a lot of credit for that. And oh,
by the way, we should say to anybody who isn't
from Germany or America or any other country in the world,
if you don't know what the auto bon is, it
is the German UM federal highway system, the boonts auto
bon right, bunds thanks UM. That means in English federal highway,
(07:27):
motor federal motorway, right, that's yeah, And bond means track,
so federal motor track. Okay, strictly translated um and so yeah,
Adolf Hitler gets the the lion's share of the credit
as the father of the auto bon, but it's it's
not correct right now. I mean, the rise of the
(07:51):
Nazi war machine definitely had a lot to do with
the rise of the auto bon and the how extensive
it became. But it's began construction in n and I
think the first stretch between Colne, Cologne and Bono. Yeah,
but he apparently also gets credit as like the father
(08:13):
of the highway system in general. Uh, you know, the
U S highway system is UM is modeled after the Autobahn.
Most highway most federal interstate systems are UM and Hitler
gets the credit, but really, if you go back even
further to I think UM nineteen, there was this um
(08:34):
high this experimental highway called the avas A v U
S Highway in Berlin, right, so that was like arguably
the world's first highway because you know, Germans were the
world's first auto manufacturers, so they're the first ones to
need a highway and they do it right still. And
then also there is the Auto Strata in Italy that
(08:54):
was built um in the twenties that linked Milan to
the lakes in northern Italy. So Hitler may have been inspired,
um to to get this plan out the door, but
he didn't even come up with the plan. There was
another guy who was the pr head for the Berlin
I think it was Berlin or maybe just Germany as
(09:16):
a whole, the German Chamber of Commerce, and he coined
the term auto bonn in like, and the German Chamber
of Commerce came up with this plan for this whole thing, um,
and then the Nazis stole it, so you had another
reason to hate the Nazis. That's if we needed anymore. Yeah,
uh so that is true, Josh. They um the initial
(09:36):
first sections from Frankfurt to Darmstadt was very straight and
they did test Grand Prix racing cars way back when
on the stretch of road. Yea, that is true because
one dude died. Barrent Rosemeyer died in nineteen thirty eight
after setting the very brief record to sixty eight point
(09:58):
four three two. His little buddy Rudolphila, that's miles per hour.
Right after that, Rudolph Carraciola jumped in his car and
went to sixty eight point eight and then Burnt said,
oh yeah, let me try that again, and he got
in and he died. Yeah. His car lifted off the ground,
(10:20):
he got caught a cross wind and he was killed. Um.
What's interesting is those two speeds you just mentioned are
still the fastest speeds ever clocked down the Auto Bonn
in these old cars. Yeah, in one day. Um. And
the first guy, Burnt Rosemeyer, he was driving an out
of Auto Union V sixteen, which V sixteen Yeah, Um,
(10:43):
he in Auto Union eventually became Audi and then um Caracciola,
he was driving a Mercedes A V twelve Mercedes W
one and he'd beat he'd beat Rosemeyer by like four
hundreds of a second or four tenths of a second.
Did you see the scars. I mean they look sort
of like smaller versions of Chitty Chitty Bank Bank, Yeah,
(11:04):
kind of, and they're going two hundred and sixty miles
an hour. They look like old timey race cars driven
by like old timey race car drivers who died. The
guy died that day. That weird, it's weirdly, it's weirdly sad.
So um Hitler again, um, father of the auto bonn
in some respect, he definitely Um, he took road building
(11:28):
to new heights or two new extremes. Um. Apparently you
know the Cologne Bond stretch from ninety two, that was
the first stretch of highway in Germany, supposedly the first
real one. UM. Six years later, under Nazi rule, UM,
eighteen hundred and sixty miles of roadway had been completed.
(11:48):
So they were like roadmaking machines. Well they were, and
that kind of well, he didn't like backfire. But it
went into disrepair in a lot of places after the
war because the German citizens weren't in such great shape
financially after the war. No, and they didn't even get
used during the war, which is the whole reason Hitler
was building and was for military transport. But a lot
(12:10):
of the roads were like two steep, two mountainous, so
they didn't use them. So they fell in disrepair and
it took a long time. You know, some points were
even impassable, and it took a long time before they
really got on a campaign to reconstruct them and build
them back up to the Great Road. Yes, great road.
That's uh, that's the road. This is our second Holy boy,
(12:33):
that's shameful. We both just realized that at the same
exact podcasts on the Road. Okay, I think this will
be the last. Um, yeah, chuck it. It wasn't until
the nineties, after East Germany and West Germany got back together, um,
that the autobon really started to take the take the
(12:54):
legendary form. I think that that we have now that
we have of it now, which is now see I
got the fourth largest behind America, China and India. Oh
is that right? But it says the third. But I'm
not sure which one is more recent or or it.
Maybe there may have to do with how to how
to do with how Indy accounts the road. They count
it all twice. Well, if it's like a major expressway
(13:17):
or what because India's is way bigger than any of them,
I think, but that they might Germans might say like no, no, no,
we're talking highways only. Um well look look how about
some stats man, it's it's your time to shine. How
big is this thing? Uh? I have as of two
thousand ten, this pretty recent well thousand, eight hundred and
(13:39):
thirteen clicks? Wow? Really yeah, that's the kilometers. Okay, it's
actually decreased in size then, because this article has it
as twelve thou d kios. But when was that? Maybe
that's newer or else it's shrinking and might be actually
it's shrinking and it's age. It's it's got sarcopenia. And
(14:00):
we should say for our American friends, that's eight thousand
miles of right roadway. Very nice. There'll be more stats
scatter amount okaysisting exciting. What's another myth? Josh, you can
just drive as fast as you want on this thing
all over the place? Right? Well, um, no you you can't.
You can. But the Germans are very sensible people. They're
(14:22):
very efficient. Uh, they're very um really as sensible is
a really good word to describe the German people. What
might even say rigid, you could say that, UM, and
they are well aware that you should not be driving
unfettered speed limit wise through congested areas, like through a
(14:43):
city or something like that. So in a lot of
parts of the Audubon you're going to find speed limits
which are called tempo limits UM in German tempo limits
tempo limits that which is of course one word. Yeah.
So congested areas, areas where like the the terrain is
really rough um during certain types of weather. Uh. There's
(15:06):
a lot of UM factors that go into it, but
it's not unlimited. For about three quarters of the eight
thousand miles you'll find speed limits. But then there's about
two thousand miles of autobon, about a quarter of the
whole thing, where there really isn't any speed limit. Not bad.
You can drive as fast as you want, but there
(15:26):
is a suggested uh speed limit of UM. I believe
a hundred and thirty kilometers per hour, which is eighty
miles an hour, But that's suggested. Nobody's gonna pull you
over for that. Uh. There is a minimum speed limit
of thirty seven miles per hour, which is about sixty
kilometers per hour, and that just keeps the riff raff
(15:48):
off the road that will get blown away, including mopeds
and stuff like that, and well horses, horses which were
banned outright from the beginning German highways early on that
they wanted this thing to cook, or at least it
seems like. But even if it is unlimited, they still can.
You can still get a fine if you're driving too
(16:10):
fast for like weather conditions. You can also, I mean,
if you're going to pass um an autobon cop which
are called the auto bon politze. Again one long wordlitz,
you you don't want to taunt him, especially if you're
holding like a big mac. Yeah, because the Germans consider
(16:31):
um driving while eating or drinking a distracted drivers state,
and they will pull you over in a heartbeat and
find you, and they do it routinely. Yeah. Can I
just go ahead and take my hat off to the
German people for their sensible and common sense rules when
it comes to driving, Sure, chuck, because that is one
(16:53):
All of these rules to me should be worldwide because
they just make sense. For instance, the two second rule.
If you don't follow the two second rule, which means
you give yourself two seconds worth of stopping time for
the car in front of you. Then you can get
a ticket and that's suspended license. Yeah, we should explain
that to our younger listeners, maybe ones who don't drive yet. Uh.
(17:17):
Say you're following a car and a car passes a
street lamp, right, Uh, if you should be able to
count off two seconds before you pass that street lamp.
That means there's two seconds of space between two seconds
of reaction time between you and the car in front
of you. That's the two second rule. Yeah, that's a
great way to do it. Nice suggestion. Another rule, Josh,
(17:38):
which should be adhered here in the United States, travel
fast in the left lane only pass on the right only.
It just makes sense. Well, so apparently the Germans are
extremely well instructed in the art of passing and respecting
the passing lane. So, um, I've met so many people
(18:01):
on the highway that I really genuinely wanted to take
the lives of you've met them. I met him by
making eye contact, really angry, vicious eye contact, waiting at them. Um, yeah,
on the road because they just not only won't get over,
they maybe slow down a little bit when you try
(18:23):
to pass them in the in the left lane and
they're going too slow. Apparently the Germans do not have
this problem. If you are not getting over, if you're
in the left lane and you don't get over for
a faster driver, you can be fined because they consider
that coercion. You were coercing a driver who drives faster
than you to drive slower, and that is messed up.
(18:43):
And not only that, but if you're going a hundred
and twenty miles an hour in that left lane and
your Mercedes and going through behind you is in his
force and he wants to go one ninety, you gotta
get over because you're the slower driver. And also whether
whether it's you orgoon turn the left lane, you're not
supposed to be in there unless you're passing. The right
(19:05):
lanes are for traveling, the left lane is for passing,
and you don't drive in the left lane and you
can get a fine for that. Um. You're you're allowed
to flash your lights and honk your horn at somebody
who's going slower to basically say, hey, I don't want
to use up my brakes. Get over. If they don't
get over, they can get a ticket if you UM,
if you do it excessively, supposedly, that's coercient as well,
(19:29):
so you can both get a ticket if you find
a grumpy auto pullets. That's right, auto bomb pullets. I
think anytime you're not sure, just like, do it quiet? Uh?
And you mentioned that you know the left lane is
for passing. You can also be stopped in fine if
you pass on the right. If your excuse was but hey,
(19:52):
the guy wouldn't get over, they can say, I'm sorry,
you're still getting a ticket, but we'll give him a
ticket to if we happen to see that you're you're
both gonna get tickets, right, just likes, can it be
any more fair than that? And women have to get
a license to wear lipstick? What else? Uh? The emergency
(20:12):
lane um is for emergencies only here in the United States.
When traffic backs up in certain places like l A,
people will drive in the emergency lane because they can't wait. Yeah,
that's that makes me want to kill two. But they said,
I love this part. Even if you run out of gas,
that's no excuse because that's an avoidable thing. So that's
(20:35):
very sensible as well. I get the feeling that you're
it's very shameful as well. In Germany, to run out
of gas because they're just so like on top of everything,
they're like, you know, if you run out of gas, room,
you're you're not worthy of being on the road. Like
they have like like page eight of the local papers,
just like mug shots of people who ran out of
gas in the emergency yesterday. Uh, should we talk about
(20:58):
some of these fines? And that's kind of the least
interesting part. Yeah, how about this? This will this will
drive people on the website after this. If you want
to see some fines, some some infractions and the corresponding
finds in Euros, look up auto Bonn on how stuffworks
dot com. We'll remind you again later at the end
of this episode. Another cool thing I like about the system, Josh,
(21:18):
it is it's all consistent with how they letter and
number everything. Everything on the auto Bonn system has a
capital A followed by a number. Even numbers go east west,
odd numbers go north south. Same exact thing in the US,
is that right? Yes? Seventy five north south, eighty five
north south, ninety five north south twenty forty sixty eighty
(21:40):
all east west. Same thing is it was modeled on
the autobon Eisenhower is like, I love these Nazis. I
don't think they're all like that, though, are they? It
seems like California had some for interstate for federal highways only,
So what about rings. I don't know, UM two eighty
five probably larger, I want. I don't know this, but
(22:01):
I would suspect that the larger orientation, whether it's east,
west or north south, would guide the people naming it
giving it a name. So like, I'll bet two eighty
five it has longer stretches going east and west or
north and south than east and west, which is why
it has an odd number. But it's not a perfect circles.
(22:24):
I tend to make stuff up, and that could be
an example of uh You would think that because of
the excessive speeds that the auto bon would be a
death trap. I would, and for a while there it
was pretty unsafe, like uh N. I think was the
all time high when they had more than one deaths
(22:46):
that year, which is staggering. It is, but it's less
than the United States standard of about forty thousand a year. Yeah,
but we have a lot more highway we we we
do know. UM. In two thousand eight, though, that number
fell to fewer than because of a few things, better
(23:08):
engineering in the cars, safety obviously, better engineering of the
roadway very much. My dad taught me this. My dad's
a mechanical engineer, but engineers. Any type of engineer appreciates
the work of any other type of engineer. Um And
he taught me to really appreciate a curve where you
don't have to move your steering wheel, You just you
(23:28):
just tilted slightly and then you just hold it and
placed for the whole curve. You don't have to turn
it to stay into the curve is a perfectly engineered
and perfectly constructed curve. I have driven on a race
track and that's how it is. But you can you'll
if you pay attention, you'll find that some curves on
some highways are better than others, for sure. And every
(23:48):
and when you when you're looking out for it, you
really appreciate that one curve where you just pull into it.
You're like, hat's off to you, guys, It's like, way
to go, This is a perfect curve. Yeah. Yeah. When
I did Atlanta Motor Speedway, I actually got the feeling
that I didn't even need to turn my wheel because
the bank it felt like the car just kind of
turned itself. I'm sure that's not the case, but I'll
bet it is. It was pretty cool. Yeah, what were
(24:09):
you doing on at Lant. We did a commercial shoot
there years ago and I got I had to go
the day before to like get some paper signed from someone.
And the guy that worked there said, he's like he did.
He literally did. He's like, hey man, he won't take
a lap went heck, yeah I do. He's like, you're
have any money? It was Unfortunately I was in a
production vehicle, so it was a like a GMC yukon
(24:33):
suv want like ninety and it felt on the on
the high on that track, it felt like I was
going about thirty really, so it wasn't actually a thrill.
It was just like this is neat. But the banks, man,
those are scary, Like I thought I was gonna tip over.
That's how steep it I would imagine, so, especially in
like an suv, especially in a big suv. Yeah, well
(24:53):
it's very fun though. Uh So. Yeah, the autobun is
one of the safest roadways in the in the world
nowadays United States, but it's not it's in Germany. It's right,
don't try and fool me. Uh. There's been talking recent years, Josh,
about imposing some speed limits because of environmental factors more
than safety. Yeah, apparently if you propose, um putting speed
(25:18):
limits on the auto bonn for safety reasons, you're just
chided and derided and upbraided like by everyone, like, oh,
shut up, you don't know what you're talking about. You
clearly just moved here from Spain or something like that,
you know. Um, it's all about environment though. And in fact,
there's three cities in Germany Bond, Cologne and I think
(25:38):
Berlin who have instituted um, what are called oom lot zones. No,
I don't think they're room lout zones, boom welt zone,
which is an environment zone. And basically it's like you
have to have a sticker that shows that your car
was um inspected and meets approved a mission standard to
(26:00):
be able to drive in this environment zone. So if
you drive a nasty diesel car, you can't drive in
certain sections of Bond or Cologner I think. Well, speaking
of stickers too, you have to have a tire rated
for for speed as well, which is another great rule. Well, yeah,
you can't if you have a really fast car. You
can't have really cheap tires, like your tire has to
(26:20):
be rated for your car's top speed or you can
be pulled over for that too. Right, But they do
allow exceptions, I think for certain kind of winter tires,
which you need the sticker for though, to show the
cop the pullet side that you're like, I can have
these winter tires. Yeah. So obviously they're going to post
speed limits all over the autobon for carbon emissions. Right, sure, Wrong,
(26:42):
Chancellor Angela merkel Um in this country, you would call
her Angela merkel Um. She said in two thousand seven
that she would not support any speed limit uh measures
for the autobon. I love that. Instead, she said, automakers,
why don't you just go make the car as um
more efficient? Yeah, with fewer emissions. That's what I love.
(27:05):
She's like, no change your cars. And apparently she's she's uh,
she's a standard bear for the rest of the country
as far as the Audubon goes. You got anything else?
I mean no, I don't have anything else. Really, I
got I have one thing and this this makes sense? Um.
During the Cold War, obviously, the roads were neglected more
(27:27):
in East Germany. In West Germany and so that was
sort of in a state of disarray, lots of potholes, um,
impassable places, major obstacles and um. A lot of these
roads were just used for military traffic for a little while.
But since the end of the Cold World, since the
Wall fell, I think they've tried to help out East
(27:47):
Germany a little bit there, Yeah, make the roads a
little better so they can be a Germany united in
road and spirit. Yes, and they are, yes there, so uh,
there you have at the autobon. It's our companion piece
to Root sixty six. I remember when I was a kid,
it was did you just heard a lot about the autobon?
(28:09):
It was like, I don't know, maybe that was the
big when cars were really going fast because I just
remember the auto well yeah, but that was also the
same age where you were, you know, eight to nine
times likelier to have a poster of a Lamborghini on
the back of your bedroom door with a mug. Yeah,
I remember tho. I remember that Garfield one where it
(28:30):
was like a real shot of a mansion and like
a Lamborghini and all this a boat and all that,
but Garfield like super imposed over it was like whoever
dies with the most toys wins. Can you imagine a
more eighties motto than that? Material? Phil, what are you doing?
You've gone astray? He's back though everybody, and he's dead.
(28:52):
You don't know what I'm talking about. Look up, is
Garfield actually dead? It'll bring up some pretty cool stuff. Um.
If you want to know more about the Audubon, including
some other trafficing fractions and their corresponding finds in Euros,
you want to type in autobon A U, T O,
B A H N in the search bar how stuff
works dot com. Uh. And since I said search bar
(29:14):
in there somewhere, Ah, that means it's time for not
listener mail. Sometimes it means it's time for Facebook questions.
That's right. And this week, Josh, it's a very special
edition of Facebook Questions because these aren't questions about us
for a change. We're not gonna sit here and talk
(29:36):
about each other, which we love to do. I find
it off putting when we do that. Yeah, it's intrusive.
How I love it? Uh? These are Facebook questions for
our special guest who was here in the studio with
this Actually it's me John Hodgman. Everyone, Yeah, I'm here again.
But actually, guys, I gotta tell you I'm I'm not
actually here. What what do you mean you're sitting here?
I'm no, I am I'm currently a hologram. John Hodgeman
(30:00):
actual is currently in Brooklyn, New York. So Jerry busted
you out? How did that go? She busted you out
of the safe room. Oh, that went fine, and I
was able to make it back home. You just left.
And John Hodgeman actual is in Brooklyn, New York right
now promoting, well, actually at the Bellhouse tonight, getting ready
to to present the launch of his new book That
(30:24):
Is All, which I guess came out today. It came
out today, November one, two thousand eleven. So John Hodgeman
actual had to be in Brooklyn to begin his book tour,
and so he sent me his holographic representation. So should
we congratulate you or can you send it? Can you
send a message to I can convey a message to
(30:45):
Hodgeman Actual? Okay, so we have breakfast this morning. Was
that you or was that the actual John Hodge That
was me the hologram. Okay, the hologram really puts away
the sausage links. Well, you know, when you're a hologram,
you can eat whatever you want. Okay, So are you
prerecorded or I am an interactive program that responds to
(31:07):
stimulus in a very similar way. And yet I see me,
Chuck is moving his hand through your head right now,
so it looks you look totally solid, but obviously you're not.
I am an interactive program that responds to stimulus in
a very similar way. I thought I detected odors, John
Hodgman odors, but that must just be in my head.
(31:27):
I am an interactive program that responds to various stimulus
and a in I forget what I was going to say. Well,
you know, I guess that's good enough for Facebook questions. Well,
I yes, I have a question. Can you feel love?
K just let me like this? There? We alright, Hello,
(31:50):
I am a holographic John Hodgment. How may I be
of service? Well, John, holographic John. We had some fans
right in of yours on Facebook because we said, hey,
John the hollow Graham is going to be in the office.
That's great because John Hodgman usually uses a robot to
answer his email perfect then, so this works perfectly. And
they responded in kind, and we're you don't know these questions,
(32:10):
is not pre prepared. And even if Hodgeman actual did,
I don't believe Hodgeman Virtual would be preloaded with these
and there's yeah, there's no way that these could be predicted.
The due random I'm looking forward to hearing the questions
from the millions of fake accounts and offshore banks that
are registered at your website. When we will, we will
(32:31):
ask it. Now, do you want me to kick off?
Are we gonna? Are we gonna call out the people
who asked the questions? I think we should. Yeah, we
always do so John John the hologram, Yes, I don't
know if you know this, but John the actual loves
the podcast, love stuff. You should know. He always talked
(32:53):
about it's almost to an embarrassing degree. Um, I am
aware of his affection for the podcast. Choose not to
comment on it, Okay, that's fine, that's fine, But you
can you basically have access to all of John the
actual thoughts and feelings about certain things. Okay, So, um,
we did a podcast, an episode on the Muppets. It's
a much beloved episode. I am aware. So this question
(33:16):
I think pertains to that. This is from Josh Bailey
and he asks which Muppet is your favorite? There can
be no question that John Hodgman's favorite Muppet is Kermit.
He is an incredible character in American fiction that I
adore and also John Hodgman does too. Okay, it's convenient. Um,
(33:40):
there is for the most part a consensus on the
Internet that I resemble Benson Bunsen Honeydew. Yeah, now that
you mentioned that there's a very famous picture of you
with said Muppet, is there there is? I've seen it
on on my phone. I have Well, I cannot, as
(34:02):
a hologram, I cannot confirm whether or not that picture exists.
You're you're speaking of something that falls into a nondisclosure
agreement that you signed pertaining to the New Muppets movie,
of which John Hodgman has no part except visiting a
table read. But that but that is that's that. Yes,
(34:26):
I think probably the Muppet Movie is one of the
sort of most overlooked great film of the seventies, you
know what I mean of the great films of the seventies,
And I'm including so we're talking you know, The Godfather
and Chinatown and you know those those great hard weird
(34:50):
complex unsparing French connection. French connection, you know, adult sophisticated,
and I don't mean an adult in story, yeah right.
Empire Strikes Back obviously falls in that category as well,
sort of morally nebulous and and dark. The Muppet Movie
is is equally that it is a movie about puppets
(35:14):
that go on a journey to Hollywood to make a
movie about puppets. And at the end of the movie,
all of the puppets seeing about how life is a
movie while they're surrounded by fake props that are imitating
the fake props from the earlier part of the movie,
and then the theater, the ceiling of the theater smashes,
(35:34):
and a real rainbow comes in and touches them all.
And then Kermit looks directly into the camera, breaks the
fourth wall and says to you, the viewer, life is
a movie. Write your own ending spoiler alert. Well this
is as you know. This is the only movie on
which the literary critic Roland Bart was given a screenplay credit,
(35:56):
because it's so in Henseley meta and beautiful and yet
and yet also emotionally very affecting. I love Kermit the Frog.
I love Beaker two put Beaker down, Kermit and Beaker
josh Bailey. All right, this is from Joshua Charles Knowles.
(36:17):
Favorite board game, favorite cartoon, and favorite Pulletzer recipient. Favorite
board game obviously is scrabble, of course. Favorite cartoon animated
or or strip cartoon, comic strip work cartoons. Favorite cartoon
Let's go with television or flipbook? Yeah? Uh, favorite cartoon
watership down? Okay, favorite fun this hysterical? Yeah, it's slapstick.
(36:45):
Rabbits are funny? Uh? Favorite? And what was the last part?
Pulletzer Prize recipient David Lindsay A bear the Pulleitzer Prize
winning play right, David Lindsay a beart? All right? Who
am I made fun of? Two podcasts? That's right. That's
from Joshua Nols. Thank you, Joshua. Who is the next
josh to ask me a question? The next Joshua to
ask you a question is bridget reef shop Bell. She's
(37:07):
got three names. Well, I guess her question is this
follows is judge John Hodgman? Which is a podcast? Is
ever going to be a regular weekly or more podcast?
I asked that question because it's a question and a
bit of a dig. Yeah, I get it, okay, Joshua Bridget,
(37:29):
I feel that that hurts. You've probably heard a lot
of that lately. Yeah, you know what, Here's some things
that happened in my life. I worked for the Daily
Show with John Stewart with John Stewart from time to time.
I wrote a book that I'm publishing called That Is
All That comes out Today. I have, I have human children,
(37:50):
I have a cat that needs feeding and tending. And
I do a podcast that I love very much called
Judge John Hodgman where people call in and I and
I and they tell me their disputes and I tell
them who's right and he was wrong, and and Jesse
Thorne the bailiff, Jesse the producer of j Thorne excuse me,
and he recently had a baby. So you know, I've
(38:11):
been busy. And also I'm a deranged millionaire. And I
took two months off over the summer, sue me, to
sit around and and uh and work on my on
my inventions. So here's the thing. I was a little busy.
We fell off our regular weekly thing. It's hard to
get good disputes. It's hard to get disputes where people
(38:31):
aren't simply buzz marketing Facebook all the time like we're
doing today. Um, we will put that thing out as
as often as we can, and I hope it will
be weekly, but it will never ever be twice a
week because we all know that's podcast death, especially after
three years. So that was Joshua Bridget and the other
(38:54):
Joshua's out there. Yeah, this is from uh Josh Ginger
snap dragon and he writing from second life. Should we
eliminate pennies in our currency system? No? Pennies are delightful
if any of you if if there were not pennies there,
(39:18):
there would not be the great Paul F. Tompkins routine
smashed pennies available on his c D freak wharf. Are
you're a good friend? He has a good comedian. You ready, Yeah,
this one comes flighting lightning round. I'll be fast. Well,
we've got we We have a lot of quick A
lot of people want to know stuff. I'm happy to
(39:40):
tell them from you. Um, there are a lot of
people who asked questions about your mustache. Some of them
are stupid questions like what's up with the mustache? But
what mustache do you look up to the most is
on my list? It's Okay, it's better than what's up
with the mustache? But I'm choosing this one from Joshua J. McCracken,
(40:02):
who has Um Bullwinkle as his avatar. Is your mustache?
Attribute to Stanley Tucci's epic performance in The Lovely Bones that,
uh that is not the case? Uh, Doc Holiday played
by Val kilmar Oh. I totally see it now, ye
(40:24):
be dying alcoholic? Yeah, um, your huckle Billy, that was
your brilliant John. There was a time in my life
in the nineties when I love that performance so much
that I was like, maybe I should get tuberculosis. Maybe
(40:47):
I should sweat and drink all the time starting at
nine am and and cough because I'm already has matic.
So I'm halfway there. And look whatid it's them for you? Look,
I grew a mustache because that is the only facial
hair I could grow. And I wanted to grow some
facial hair. And this is what what every hair you
see on my face, That is the only hair that
(41:08):
I could grow. Like you're trying to grow a beard
right now as we speak, and heaven for months. Yeah,
that's why I see some stuff down there. No, no, no, no,
you don't want to see. I spend a lot of
time this summer when I went away as a deranged
millionaire experimenting with the beard, because truly, if I really
want to be a deranged millionaire, I gotta go full
Howard Hughes. Do you know what I mean? Mustache? And
why are soul patches? I mean dot Holiday soul patches
(41:31):
isn't gonna do it. But it's just not in me. Guys,
there's still a part of me that's not deranged and
not millionaire enough to do it. So that's the that's
the answer. Yeah, that's a lot of people wanted to
know that, John, Where do you go some you know,
it's like sometimes you wear a different shirt. Can a
guy grow a mustache? Yeah? People just want to know
why the guys wearing the concern that people have. And
(41:53):
there's another here's another perfectly true answer. You notice that
the mustache that I'm wearing looks fake because it was
so much darker than my regular topic. My whiskers are
very dark and my skin is very pale and pallid,
much like darc Holidays. And I got a little tired
(42:15):
as this happened once where someone came up to me
and said, I really like that you're growing a mustache.
And it was eleven o'clock in the morning and I
had shaved that day. Because when my whiskers would come
in they would be very dark. It always looked like
I was growing a mustache. So I decided to give
nature what it wanted, a right. So that's your answer,
(42:37):
thank you, Josh, Josh uh boring, boring, boring is from
this is from John Riddium. How do you feel about
asian carp that's not that's not the snakehead fishes it
I don't know. No, you're thinking of the worm faces
(43:01):
asian carpet predatory species. Is that the issue here? I
think you're thinking invasive? Invasive? Thank you. Yeah, you really
have lightened up a lot of I don't know how
to answer that question. I they're they're huge carp and
you know, generally I'm a I'm a fan of all. Well,
(43:22):
that's a little like Getty Lee's famous words, if you
choose not to decide, you still made a choice, John Hodgment,
refusing to answer is your answer. But here's one. Here's
what I'm gonna sayil Perts famous words and and speaking
speaking of of of giant freshwater fish. There is a
(43:45):
long section in this book that I have written that
comes out today entitled That Is All, the third in
the series of Complete World Knowledge, including information on wine
and sports and of the world. There's a long section
in this book that follows the path of a semi
professional noodler who who meets an unhappy end. Noodling, of course,
(44:09):
being the sport of sticking your hand down a catfish's
mouth um and catching it, yanking and yanking it out,
and then he later comes to face the ancient and
unspeakable one, the giant catfish, that is the entire Mississippi River.
That's another story, but that whole section is an homage
(44:30):
to the first episode of Stuff You Should Know I
ever listened to. That was the first. It was that
very thrilling. And you know what, John, When I was
reading your book, I noticed that there were some stuff
you should Know threads really well, well, just a couple
of things I noticed, like the Mayan calendar and prohibition,
prison wine drink taste, sinkhole zombies, flor hey hey hey hey, rogue, taxidermy,
(44:56):
odd town festivals, spontaneous human combustion. Wait a minute, Cristal
Skulls of the Many Worlds Theory one Near Death Experiences.
Do we get any money for this book? John, Look,
there's obviously a kinship in the way we look at
and think about the world. We're both trying to explain everything.
Give me the list and I'll tell you where it
came from. You're not getting this list, give me no
(45:18):
read it read It just doesn't even have to be
in the podcast Prison Prison Wine first revealed to me
at the offices of Twitter and two thousand eight. First
first came to my attention when I was writing an
article for Wired magazine in two thousand seven. Taxoplasmosis, taxoplasmosis,
I have a human child, I have a wife who
(45:39):
was pregnant. Of course I know that talxoplasmosis. Wait a minute,
you hadn't heard about prison wine until two eight. Yeah,
that's right. I did spend a night in jail, but
it wasn't long enough to make prison one. Crystal Skulls.
Go back to my first book, two thousand five, Secrets
of Yale University, where I talk about the rumor that
(46:00):
the Uh, the the the Whiffin pooss Uh gave the
skull of Benjamin Franklin to Dick Cabot on his TV show,
And it's not true. It was a crystal skull. Okay,
that goes back to the World Book of the Strange
that I read in two thousand four writing the first book?
(46:21):
Does that have trepen nation in it? Of course it does.
Tremp nation I got from from the Golden Compass. Give
me more. Come on, I'm not let the stand uh sinkholes.
That's from me? Okay. Odd town festivals, that's okay because
you actually gave us a thank you for that for noodling. Yeah,
(46:44):
we're cited as experts, even a thank you like experts. Yeah,
keep going. Really yeah, odd town festivals, that's that. That
one's yours. Not that I wasn't aware of a lot
of those odd town festivals. Zombies comedies, I know, we
didn't invent it. Yeah, no, you didn't. Let me. Let
me give you a little history lesson, right, Zombi has
(47:05):
been around for a long time. Check out a serpent
in the rainbow, dumb, dumb. Next, I saw that in
the theater rogue taxidermy bartering. Rogue taxidermy was probably you
bartering though that bartering we didn't do bartering house swapping.
You mean no, we talked about bartering, didn't we. I'm
(47:26):
sure we did in house swapping. Oh. Also, um conjunctions.
We use a lot of conjunctions. Bartering goes back to
my first my first year of college, when I would
tell other freshmen who were from out of states. I
went to college the University in Connecticut, and I would
just tell people that the Connecticut is the only state
(47:48):
in the Union where barter is still a legal form
of payment. And then you can go into any like
wah wah or convenience store and try to buy things
with shiny shells, and if they accept it, it's lead.
How would you like to be on the hall with
eighteen year old John Hodgmon, You know you'd be like,
shut up, nerd. Well, So we'll we'll release this separately
(48:10):
on the internet. Look, I think I span, I spand
my ground on this right all right. I guess that's
about all the time we have think just questions. Oh boy,
oh boy, that was beautiful. If any of you have
questions for me, or you doubt or you think that
I've ripped off stuff, you should know on other subjects
(48:33):
and are not willing to just accept that we think
about the same things a lot like your show. We're
both trying to explain everything, so there's found to be
some overlap. Yeah, but I've been at it since two
thousand five exactly, and I also don't care about facts.
But if any of you have questions for me and
wish to or for that matter, accusations for me, won't
(48:53):
you please come and see me. I am now on
book tour. At least Hodgeman actual is now on book tour. Yeah,
this is all right. So this is November one, right,
So November one, I am in Brooklyn at the Bellhouse.
November two, I am in Chicago at the Second City, Etc. Stage.
November three, I am in St. Louis, Missouri. Let me,
(49:17):
you're really getting around? How how will you beginning from
place to place in such a short amount of time?
I bought I traded Nick Mangold my burning Zeppelin for
his um penny Farthing motorcycle. Oh yeah, that seems even
because Zeppelin was burning. Yeah, yeah, it's fantastic. November three,
(49:37):
I'll be in St. Louis, Missouri at the Mad Art Gallery.
November four, I'll be in Los Angeles, California, with Mr
Paul F. Tompkins and Mr John Roderick November six. I'll
be in Portland, Oregon. I believe Roderick will be there,
and I know that will be in Seattle at town
Hall on November seventh. Is Roderick playing or anything? Or
is he? He'll be playing just and right then I
(50:04):
go down to Austin, Texas, site of your live stuff.
You should know podcasts UFO, which you mentioned in your
books book good point. Oh you got me, you got me?
Ancient astronauts, Yeah, you got me, you got me. November
eight that book People, one of the great independent book
stores of all time. Then Durham, h North Carolina at
(50:27):
the Durham Armory November nine with the Regulator at the
Regulator Bookshop with son of North Carolina, David Reese uh.
And then in Asheville, North Carolina, the college hometown of
famous Tracy. Yeah. And then that will be on the eleventh,
just a few hours drive from here Atlanta, by the way.
And you're not swinging, No, I can't. Unfortunately, I feel
(50:51):
very bad about it. But here I'm here now. Yeah.
Then I'm back in New York November four at the
Barnes and Noble in the November at the Coolidge Corner
of It in my hometown of Brookline, Massachusetts, and then
November six at the Fitzgerald Theater and St. Paul an
extra special episode of WITS, a public radio show hosted
by John Moe, starring me and special guest John Darniel
(51:14):
of The Mountain Goats, one of my favorites. Boy oh boy,
if you wanted a crazy couple, we gets a Crazy
Cuckoo tour. I really hope that people will come out.
You have to buy tickets, but you get a copy
of the book with the ticket, and I will sign
every book that that comes there. And I will talk
to you all and answer your questions, and I will
(51:34):
respond to your accusations and and and I will and
I will not be holographic. I will be Hodgeman actual.
That's great, So thank you very much for letting me
come buy again. Guys, of course, but it sounds like
I'm saying goodbye, but I'm not going anywhere. I'm gonna
come back the next one. Yeah, sorry, We're doing another one,
(51:56):
all right. Well, until then, what today's Tuesday, I'll see you. Well,
the holograph will re emerge, so we have to do
with the holograph again. You're making us do a fourth
one of these and you're not even coming down here,
right because when well when when are you on again?
Thursday the third, so you'll be aware. I'll be in St.
Louis Oka, gay Way to the west. All right. Well,
(52:17):
we'll see hodgements hologram again in a minute, and so
will you. I guess in a couple of days. All right,
I'm gonna power down now if you don't mind, Okay,
we'll see you a little bit. If you have a
question for John or for us, or you just want
to say hi, or you want to say please bring
back listener mail or anything but this, you can tweet
it to us at s y s K Podcast. You
(52:38):
can visit us on Facebook at facebook dot com, slash
stuff you Should Know, or you can send us a
good old fashioned email at Stuff Podcast at how Stuff
Works dot com. Be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
(53:01):
of tomorrow, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand
twelve camera. It's ready, Are you
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