November 12, 2013 • 32 mins
Everybody knows that cosmologist Stephen Hawking has an enormous brain, but did you also know he has an equal wit? Learn about some of the lesser-known details about the celebrated physicist in this episode.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the all new Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to you stuff you should know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and with us today
(00:20):
is our friend and rotating guest producer Matt. That's right,
stuff they don't want you to know. Yeah. At Frederick,
he winsome and charming. At Frederick, yeah, he wins some.
He drunk texts me, Oh my god, you can't tell
people there. Sure again, Oh that's not very nice. He
sober texts me too. So uh, we're Matt. He's all right,
(00:44):
he's great, dude, and we're glad you're here. Matt. Can
you see us here? You Before we get started, I
feel like we should um give a shout out to
our buddies over at co ED. Yeah, you want to
tell everybody about COED real quick? Who doesn't know? Yes,
the Cooperaate for Education. We went on a trip to
them with Guatemala a few years ago and they are
(01:04):
a nonprofit who tries to break the cycle of poverty
through education for school children in Guatemala and the model. Yeah,
it's very it's good stuff. And UM, we'd like to
give them shout outs because we genuinely believe in their organization.
And we said that any stuff you should know listener
who became a scholarship sponsor with co ED, UM, we
(01:28):
would read your name on the heirs. Thanks, that's right.
So we're going to do that now because we've already
done it once and stuff you should know listeners, just
keep continuing to give. So we have another batch of people.
And if you're interested in giving, you don't have to.
We don't have to read your name on the air.
I mean I think you need to give permission to
co ED to tell us, like, yes, read these people's names. Um,
you can do it anonymously. You can do whatever you want.
(01:50):
But just go to uh C, O E d UC
dot org and you'll learn all about co ED and
there's all sorts of places for you to sign up
to help in a lot of different ways. Um. So
we've got some people some stuff you should know listeners
that became scholarship sponsors, UM, starting with Chris Marino, Way
to go, Chris, Linda McCarty and Mike Trick. I knew
(02:12):
you were gonna give me this way, Cameron. Yes, nice,
Is that right? Viceness or that viciness? Yeah, the W
is pronounced like a V in Germanic languages from what
I understand. Yeah, well you know, yeah, who else, Chuck,
(02:33):
I've got Raymond Breen. You skipped over justin Sechina. That's why,
that's why c H E n A justin Sechina, and
I think we have we got one more on their,
Caleb Weeks. Hey, we know Caleb. We know Caleb. He's
all over like Twitter and Facebook and emails us and
hey Caleb, Yeah, he's he's he's a big fan and
(02:55):
a big supporter of us as well. That's very nice.
And finally we have Joe Barkovich. That's right. Thanks a lot, guys,
we appreciate you giving the co ed and uh we
hope that more of you who are just hearing about this.
Now we'll go out and do it yourself. C O
E d U see dot org. That's right, all right,
so Chuck, Yes, we're talking about a guy, very special,
(03:20):
guy special. His name is Stephen Hawking with a pH
that's right, with a pH d like that. Uh, brilliant physicists,
brilliant mind. If you haven't seen the Errol Morris documentary. Oh,
I didn't know there was one on him. Yeah, he
did The Brief History of Time, which is neat a
documentary about Stephen Hawking, not really about the book. I
(03:43):
think there's a movie version of the book. I think
I have heard that too, but I haven't seen that.
I haven't either, But that was his best seller. Um
basically explaining making kind of doing what we do, explaining
things in a more accessible way that are complex. But
he doesn't way better than I. That's why he's like
a darling of the media and of everybody, basically, because
(04:05):
he's really really good typically at explaining really complex stuff
in in a way that the average joke can kind
of understand, which is that is, I mean, what we
strive to do. They're making a movie about him now, actually,
oh yeah, played by Jared Leto No good guess played
by Eddie Redmaine. Who U. He sounds like a World
(04:29):
War One ace pilot or something. It kind of looks
like one. Yeah, have you seen the lay Miss movie? No?
Have you seen My Week with Maryland? No? Okay, he
was in those anything else he was another stuff, But
those are the two most notable things. It's called The
Theory of Everything. It's the new one, and it's really
about the love story between he and his first wife.
(04:50):
And I saw pictures of him, and he looks just
like him. They did a really good job. Yeah, I
think they gave him some different teeth than you know,
put on the glasses and messed up his hair and
but then the wheelchair and yeah, yeah you're now Stephen Hawking.
But I think they're shooting that like literally right now.
So I'm looking forward to that one. And he released
stayed on that. I have no idea. Okay, it seems
(05:12):
like a long time for that. Yeah, they're really putting
their heart and soul into it, I guess. So. So
there's plenty of stuff that, I mean, everybody's heard of
Stephen Hawking, but there's um some pretty interesting little tidbits
about the man, the myth, his life, um that I
didn't know about until we read this article that I
think is worth sharing frankly, because if we don't share it,
(05:35):
what are we doing here? That's right. So one of
the things, um, just to start off, is that he
never won the Nobel Prize. As smart as the stude is, Yeah,
has not yet won the Nobel Prize. He's still got time.
Oh yeah, for sure, I think I said has never Yeah,
I hope I did. It sounded like there was some finality.
(05:57):
It's just never gonna happen. Try all you on, but
this pillar of the physics and mathematics community has never
won a Nobel Prize. Yeah, it is surprising. We're gonna
rely on punts for this one, okay. Uh. He was
born on January eight, nine two, which was also the
three anniversary of Galileo's death, right, which is just mere coincidence,
(06:21):
but it's a nice did bit, he says, who uh
And he is obviously was diagnosed with ALS at the
age of twenty one, Luke Garrig's disease and given just
a few years to live. And um, that was a
long time ago. It was. Um. He was born in
nineteen forty two, so he's what, um, seventy one now. Um. No,
(06:45):
he'll be seventy four very soon, in about a month
or so. Anyway, he um. When he was just before
his twenty one birthday, he started noticing. He was in
grad school at Oxford, and he started noticing that he
was getting clumsier running into stuff, having like tripping that
kind of thing, and it was apparently pronounced enough that
(07:06):
his family said, you're going to the doctor while you're
home visiting for Christmas break and so he um went
into the hospital for a battery of tests for two weeks.
That's an awful experience as in and of itself, I'm sure.
But then to top it off, they said, oh, well
we found out what's wrong with you. You have a LS,
which stands for immo trophic lateral sclerosis YEA or Luke
(07:30):
Garrig's disease, because Luke Garret most famously had it. That's right,
And it's just a neurological condition where you're voluntary muscle
control is lost, right, Yeah, and uh, typically you will
die a few years after contracting it from a couple
of things. Well, after symptoms show up, but what motor
(07:50):
neurons running your breathing muscles start to fail for uh,
deterioration of your swallowing muscles. That's a big one. So
basically you drown like it ends up being respiratory. Yeah,
usually go, but it's there's a lot of forms of it,
and he doesn't have either one of those conditions, so
he's good to go. Basically and has or has been
for a long time, especially with this talking box. Yeah,
(08:13):
he controls that with his cheek. Now, I have no
idea how that works though. So Um, he's got the
A L. S. Luke Garrig's disease, that's right, Um, but
he hasn't really let it slow him down. Prior to that,
he wasn't exactly like a real athletic type anyway. But
he was on the rowing team at Oxford, which was
(08:33):
a huge deal. Rowing team at Oxford equals um football
team at Georgia, sure, maybe even more. What's more than
that football team in Ohio state? Even Oh that's more lately?
Did you see the Vanderbilt came Yeah, I don't want
to talk about that. I don't neither. So um, he
was the coxswain on the rowing team. He's the guy
(08:56):
who goes stroke stroke stroke, And I did know this
until I read this article. The coxwain doesn't just set
the rhythm for a rowing they also steer. You didn't
know that, No, I had no idea. Yeah, I thought
it was strictly um being basically like a human metronome,
you know. But he, Um, this little pip squeaky guy
(09:17):
was on the rowing team as the coxwain and like
really became popular, so much so that while he was
at Oxford, he kind of threw himself into the rowing
team or crew as we call it in America. Yeah,
to the detriment of his studies, even for a while.
Um and speaking of studies, he getting an Oxford wasn't
(09:38):
a foregone conclusion for this guy because he wasn't a
great student in grade school. And um, I wasn't so
surprised by that that he was average too poor in
grade school, because I think a lot of these super geniuses,
it's like it's so not even beneath them, but they're
still beyond that. They might have a hard time and
(09:59):
just in regular class room settings, you know. Oh yeah,
so it was challenged, like you're probably not going to
do very well in school. So those of you who
are board in school and don't have good grades, don't
go up. Hope you may be a genius. Yeah, But
even at the time, uh, there was something about him,
like he was obviously a smart kid even though he
(10:19):
wasn't getting good grades. Because his school his classmates named him,
nicknamed him Einstein, which is about as pression as you
can get and it wasn't because of his fluffy white
mustache in the fourth grade. But his parents both went
to Oxford and they wanted him to go there. And um,
he was a great test taker and he aced his exams,
(10:40):
almost got a perfect score on the physics exam unsurprisingly,
but rather than going into physics, his father, Frank I
believe his name is, said, no, I want you to
be a doctor. You're going to serve the world by
being a doctor. And so uh, a little Stephen goes
and tries to take some biology classes and says, this
is sciences is imprecise, it's descriptive, it's subjective, Like I
(11:05):
can't be no, I don't want to do this. Yeah.
He was not into biology. Um, and I wasn't either,
but he was way into physics, whereas I was not.
Um And when he went to Oxford, they were like, well,
we got a couple of programs. We have the traditional
particle physics where you study sub atomic particles and that's
old school, where we have this newish kind of thing
(11:27):
called cosmology, which isn't even a isn't even a real
field yet, like we're trying it out here. Yeah, and
he was like, I am all over that because I
want to learn about bigger things, not smaller things. Yeah,
because they're basically the two different approaches to the same thing.
Like particles studies the very small parts that make up
(11:48):
the universe, and cosmology is the sum of those parts
and how they interact. Yeah, of course he would get
into both eventually. Yeah, well, I think you kind of
have to have an understanding both else you're just Although
bet if your particle physicist, you can just kind of
be in your lab running tests and setting out data,
and the cosmologists use that as well. Yeah, but because back,
(12:10):
I'm sure it's I bet cosmology. I bet they study
particle physics more than particle physics. People study cosmology. We'll
prove us wrong. People prove us wrong. That was the
nerdiest like exchange we've ever had. I think it's up
there for sure. So out of the study of cosmology, UM,
his probably his biggest contribution to date to science to
(12:32):
cosmology popular culture would be A Brief History of Time,
But his biggest contribution to his field is UM something
that the author of this article calls the boundless universe theory,
which I couldn't really find anywhere else every everywhere else
on the internet. If the type in boundless universe theory,
it just brings up this article and like people copying
(12:54):
and pasting this article in the body. Yeah, did this
guy invent this title? And I don't. Yeah, I guess so,
because there is something out there that describes this, but
nobody else calls it boundless universe theory. Really yeah, but
this is the big contribution. And here it's about the
time that your brain will start to melt. Uh. Yes,
(13:18):
he worked with the guy named Jim Hartle and came
up with a theory in that the universe is limitless.
Yet why is that funny? I could actually hear the
hyphen in the Yeah. Uh, it is a contained thing
yet it has no boundaries. Right, So, like I said,
(13:41):
your mind melts. But wait, this is why Stephen Hawking
is awesome. How can that be? Josh, Well, he says,
visualize the Earth, the service of the Earth. It's it's contained,
but it's also boundless. Like if you travel across the
edge of the Earth, you never reached the edge. True,
So he said, it's just visualize the surface of the Earth.
(14:02):
But the surface of the Earth is you know, two dimensional,
This is four dimensional. See, that's where my mind is
already blown. Yeah. I didn't even try to follow that.
But what what they're saying is um and the larger
implication of this is that what Um, Hardle and Hawking
did was they took Richard Feynman's quantum theory of the
(14:24):
universe and married it to Einstein's theory of relativity to
come up with this idea that the universe didn't emerge
from a black hole. Um. Instead, it it came out
of the Big Bang, and as a result, spacetime, which
is exactly what it sounds like, travels if you're looking
(14:45):
at it like a a the Earth, the Big Bank
takes place of the north pole. So as you're traveling
southward towards the equator, these lines of latitude get bigger, right,
and Um, those represents space time. So it's kind of
like time doesn't exist. And I don't think that's true,
So don't email me. I'm just saying my own interpretation
(15:07):
of this. At the Big Bang Big Bang happens, time
and space start to exist. They go outward expanding, and
then once you hit the equator, that's the apex, that's
the peak, and then they start to come back in.
And the the upshot of this is that eventually, by
Hawkings reckoning, in about twenty billion years, spacetime will collapse
(15:29):
in on itself again, meaning our entire universe will collapse
upon itself. Yeah, it's finite, but it's boundless, mind blown, right,
And like Chuck, what we just did, like isn't even
It's probably the most rickety terrible interpretation of the of
that ever, but I think that that's generally the it's
(15:52):
it's an interpretation. Hey, I got one for you, okay,
if we're listening Hawking things, And I just found this
out today, did you know that he had a really
bad situation with his second wife. No, he married his
first wife, Jane, and credits her with giving him reasons
to live, like right after he was diagnosed, Like he
(16:13):
met her the week he was diagnosed, and that's what
they're making this love story about. And they were married
for quite a long time until the mid nineties and
they divorced and he married one of his nurses, Elaine Mason,
and reportedly she was an awful, awful person. Reportedly reportedly
(16:37):
like basically everybody who knew her, like he was sort
of strange from his family for a long time because
of her controlling, manipulative bullying and rumors and investigations into
the fact that she may have physically abused him. Yeah,
his wife and nurse uh fractured his wrists by slamming
it onto a wheelchair. And this is all allegedly because
(17:00):
he denied it. But people close to him said he
would never admit that, because that would admit that he
really screwed up by making this decision. Ah let him
pee himself by like not giving him his you know,
the means to do so. She uh submerged him in
(17:20):
a bathtub, like letting his tricky outomy tube fill up
with water. Oh my god, and left him out in
the sun and like the hottest days of the year.
He had heat stroke and severe sunburned. And he denied that.
They investigated, and basically the cops wal there was nothing
we can do. He's saying the stuff didn't happen. Yet
he would show up like bruises and cuts and things
(17:40):
and say, yeah, like I've ran into a door again today.
They're like, you're in a wheelchair. You can't really do that.
I guess you can. Um And they divorced in two
thousand six, when did they get married? So there's a
Vanity Fair article about it was like really disturbing. Any
of that true, that's awful, let alone all of it
(18:01):
combined together. Jeez. So there's that that was that was uplifting, Chuck,
I've got one for you. Um he. A couple of
years back, HuffPo reported that, um he was a frequent
visitor to a California sex club, Freedom Makers, and like
(18:24):
some somebody who went there said that like he, they'd
seen him there more than a handful of times. Interesting
like basically getting laft and it's pretty unmistakable guy. Yeah,
doubt he would confuse him. But Oxford, I believe it
was Oxford came out and said that is b s.
He did go to this place once basically like as
a joke, as the guest of a friend or something
(18:46):
like that. But he's certainly not a member. He's certainly
not a frequent visitor. And like this person who's saying
this is a liar. Thin got dropped after that, but he,
um he, he does have a great wit. That's another
thing he's known for being a charmer. Yeah, and um
the he was asked I think the Guardian asked him, like,
(19:07):
if there's anything that he didn't understand or that baffled
them in the universe. And his answer was women said,
they're a total mystery to me. So there is at
least one thing, but black holes not the case. Yeah,
he lost a bet on black holes and was man
enough to admit it. In two thousand four. Uh, he
(19:27):
made a bet with um, a fellow scientist named John Preskill. Yeah,
and they did well. I let's talk about black holes
for a second here. I guess. Stars are these big,
huge things that burned tons of energy, the sons of
star Son is a star. You should go back and
revisit our Sun podcast. That's a great one. Uh. And
(19:50):
they have a ton of mass and a ton of gravity,
which is great as long as they're burning and doing
fine because there are nuclear explosions pushing outward. Yeah, just
gravities ing it inwards. So they find this happy balance
massive amounts of mass and gravity. When they die, though,
something bad happens and the gravity says, I am funny,
(20:11):
something bad happened. That's hilarious. Well, if you're a star,
I guess, um, unless like that's the apex of being
a star. Maybe, man I get to be a black
hole to burn out. Well, that was a spoiler. They
become black holes because gravity wins out and becomes stronger
and it collapses on itself. And that that is what
a black hole is, right. It's just all the matter
(20:32):
in the star combined in this little dense ball that's
so dense and has such an amount of mass clustered
into one little part that it actually bends the fabric
of space and time. And so that's your black hole.
It's really a black well in the fabric of space
and time. Uh. And so that's a black hole. And supposedly, no, not,
(20:53):
not even light can escape once it passes an event horizon.
And um, who did he have the bet with pres Skill?
So press Skill and Hawking disagreed about whether or not
anything called information, which would be light, particles, anything, anything
at all escaping black holes. Hawking said no, Preskill said yes.
And then later on Hawking figured out that Prescoe was right, um,
(21:16):
that if you did go into a black hole, you
would get all jumbled up and distorted, but you information
about you, particles, whatever could escape. Um. And therefore there's
no such thing as a true event horizon. There's a
pseudo event horizon, because if you have a genuine event horizon,
nothing could ever come back out. I wonder what the
(21:37):
bet was. They don't, they don't say. I found out
it was a m because it was information escaping a
black hole. They they they bet um and an encyclopedia
of the winner's choice, and encyclopedia being a place from
which information is easily retrieved. And I think press Gil
(22:00):
wanted a baseball encyclopedia because you know, smart guys, they're
into sports. They're into baseball. Yeah, that's true. It's the
thinking man's game. Um. I thought it might have been
a trip back to the gentleman's club freedommakers. Yeah, you're
buying all right. Here's one that I didn't realize. Uh.
He's written to children's books with his daughter Lucy, and
(22:22):
they have a trilogy and uh, the first one in
two thousand and seven was called Georgia's Secret Key to
the Universe and it's about a little boy named George
who has these leadite parents that he can't stand, so
he kills them. He doesn't kill them, um, but technology
to kill him. Nobody has a neighbor who he really
(22:43):
cottons too because he's a physicist and has a computer.
It just happens to have the most powerful computer in
the world at his house, that's right. And that computer
offers offers portals that they can see into outer space.
So George is super stoked about this, right, So there's
Georgia's Secret Key of the Universe. They followed that with
George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt, and then in two eleven they
(23:03):
had George in The Big Bang. Yeah, and that was
their children's book trilogy. And I think when they interviewed
Lucy In and him, people are like, we shouldn't be
surprised because this is sort of just another extension of
what he's trying to do his whole life, which is
explained things. And that's what the book does for children.
It's it's not just a fantastical story. It kind of
(23:24):
introduces them to things like physics and black holes and
or black wells. Right, you're gonna coin that, I think
if somebody else already has um. All right, well, chuck,
before we keep going. We got some more stuff up
our sleep, possibly the most surprising things you can think of,
That about Hawking coming up after this message break. All right,
(23:51):
so you're about to blow my doors with some surprises. Okay,
I think you know all this. You read the same
article I did, being coy okay. Um Hawking has said
publicly that he believed in the possibility of alien life,
and not just primitive alien life, which he suggests is
possibly common. He's actually a proponent of panspermia, which is
(24:13):
um basically like say a meteor bringing the basics of
life from Mars to Earth um, but also possibly intelligent life,
although he says it's probably few and far between. Yeah,
but the fact that he was on record for this
is pretty surprising. Sure, he said it to NASA. He was.
(24:33):
He came out as an alien life supporter to NASA.
I wonder if belon though, and told his wife he
was like, I get this. I told NASA I thought
there might be intelligent line over there. Here's where my
mind was blown a little bit. He says, we might
need to be uh wary of them though, if they come,
because they probably won't be DNA based, which you just
(24:54):
can't even wrap your head around. Well, yeah, you know, um,
I remember having my mind blown. The younger person, I
think it was Michael Crichton. In one of his books,
he just was mentioning off handedly how aliens might not
even be like might they might be intelligent crystals or
something like that. They can something we just had, we
(25:14):
wouldn't recommise at all. Yeah, which is I think probably
the likelier case. Like he's saying, d n A is
not essential a life. It can be a lot of
other things as long as you have some sort of
replicating basis of life. That there you go. That's sort
of old school like Lovecraft and all those early sci
fi horror writers. Remember, their common method was always to
(25:38):
be like it cannot even be described. That was always
their copse unnamable. Um. But the way he describes aliens
and potentially smart aliens is sort of just like you
would see in the movies, like, hey, they may be
nomads who ran out of resources and they're coming to
Earth for hours and then that's straight out of a
(26:00):
sci fi movie. Or are we the aliens? No, I'm
just saying like that's kind of what the we're at
the very cusp of that as well. Yeah, I remember
when like an elementary school, when at some point the
first mind blow is probably like we could be just
a speck on the fingernail, like some giant in some
(26:20):
other world. Wun't that neat that they ended? Um? Uh
the Grinch like that the movie? Yeah, I don't remember. Yeah,
that's how it ends. What do you mean like it?
He Ron Howard starts panning out out and out and
out from pulling out. Yeah, so pan is only going
in now. Panting is left and right okay, other where
(26:41):
you push interor pull out Okay, Well he's pulling out
and out and out now. And um you finally realize
that Whoville is part of like a Adam that makes
up a snowflake. Oh, I don't remember that. Yeah, that
was a great way to end it. Pretty brilliant. Um. Also,
Stephen Hawking believes in time travel. He's been on the
record about that. Remember in our time travel episode that
(27:02):
we did at Yeah, we he like theorized this huge
machine that you could use to travel forward in time. Yeah,
but not back when his Yeah? Yeah? Uh do you
have anything else any surprising Hawking Hawk facts? Uh? He
held a chair for thirty years, which is basically like
(27:24):
a position at Cambridge um the Lucazian Professor of Mathematics
at Cambridge in this chair of this position at this
university dates back to sixteen sixty three. He held it
for thirty years. The guy who held it the second position,
the second person to hold that was Isaac Newton. Yeah,
(27:45):
that's not bad. That's pretty cool. So his nickname was Einstein.
He had the same job literally as Isaac Newton. He's
doing pretty good for himself. Presidential Medal of Freedom here
and Commander of the British Empire, which is what non
brit skit I think, instead of being knighted. But still
James Bond is the commander. Oh yeah, but still no
(28:08):
Nobel prize. No for Bond or Hawking. Yeah, well, I
mean breaking bad wanted on their last season. That's funny.
Didn't they win the Nobel? I don't think so. I
don't think they did. They wanted to me. Uh. If
you want to learn more about Stephen Hawking, you can
type that into the search bar Stephen with the pH
(28:28):
remember um at how stuff works dot com. And since
I said search bar, friends, it is time for listener mail.
I'm gonna call this last call for alcohol. And this
guy Dan describes something that we're familiar with, but we're
gonna read it anyway in case people don't know. Hey, guys,
and Dan and I'm a big fan of live in
(28:49):
New York City and listen to you drop knowledge on
my way to and from work at an East Harlem
beer and wine bar called a b v uh. And
it was here where I discovered it unique use for
your work. I don't know if you guys are aware,
but bars have something called last call. That is when
the bartender offers folks one last drink before finishing up,
(29:10):
usually about fifteen minutes before standard closing time. The idea
is that the customer will use the remaining fifteen minutes
to finish up the drinks and then hit bricks. Uh.
This system has served quite well for quite some time
and is one of the unwritten rules of bar etiquette. But,
as Newton's Law would suggest, sometimes that the system breaks down.
(29:31):
Sometimes folks just don't get the whole idea of a
timely closed want to linger. Here in lies one of
the tougher spots for a bartender. How to get those
loiterers out without offending or upsetting anyone's delicate sensibilities. Um,
but most bartenders really didn't give a care about that
at closing time. Well, the bars that I went to
(29:52):
like in college, it was pretty rough. The Georgia Bar,
you know, it was profanities, consulting people will many families.
You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here,
or playing really awful music was a great mess, you know,
which is where we come in. Um. Yeah, you can
(30:14):
stop the music, you can flash the lights, you can
walk over and plainly tell them uh to leave. But
you can try my new method, peak oil. Nothing will
clear room of helpless, helpless drunks, philanderers and miscreants like
a thorough, thoughtful and well meaning discussion of the ins
and outs of peak oil from the middle of the
show and without warning our context. This tactic is subtle,
(30:36):
it is funny, and it is amazingly effective. I cannot
begin to describe the joy I experience watching the Dilly
Daliers suddenly gained self awareness and scurry for the exits
for climped but one can only hope better informed. But
in all seriousness, guys, you're doing the world in excellent service.
Information is rarely conveyed with such grace and wit, and
for that I thank you. And if you find yourselves
(30:58):
in need of a libation in New York, see seek
me out. Oh we will Dan Morton at A B
V and East Harlem. Awesome, we'll go do Peak Oil Live.
Let's all that is really cool. Yeah, what had great
use for that one man? Thanks a lot, Dan, thanks
for the invite to you and anybody hanging out in
New York. Go check out Dan and A B B
(31:20):
and you can get a little free stuff you should
Know action going on there at closing time, that's right. Yeah.
Uh so, if you have figured out a new use
for stuff you should Know, we always want to hear
about stuff like that. You can tweet to us at
s Y s K podcast. You can join us on
Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know So, you
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery
(31:42):
dot com, and as always, you can join us at
our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot com? Yeah. Brought to
(32:03):
you by the all new fourteen Toyota Corolla
Brought to you by the all new Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to you stuff you should know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and with us today
(00:20):
is our friend and rotating guest producer Matt. That's right,
stuff they don't want you to know. Yeah. At Frederick,
he winsome and charming. At Frederick, yeah, he wins some.
He drunk texts me, Oh my god, you can't tell
people there. Sure again, Oh that's not very nice. He
sober texts me too. So uh, we're Matt. He's all right,
(00:44):
he's great, dude, and we're glad you're here. Matt. Can
you see us here? You Before we get started, I
feel like we should um give a shout out to
our buddies over at co ED. Yeah, you want to
tell everybody about COED real quick? Who doesn't know? Yes,
the Cooperaate for Education. We went on a trip to
them with Guatemala a few years ago and they are
(01:04):
a nonprofit who tries to break the cycle of poverty
through education for school children in Guatemala and the model. Yeah,
it's very it's good stuff. And UM, we'd like to
give them shout outs because we genuinely believe in their organization.
And we said that any stuff you should know listener
who became a scholarship sponsor with co ED, UM, we
(01:28):
would read your name on the heirs. Thanks, that's right.
So we're going to do that now because we've already
done it once and stuff you should know listeners, just
keep continuing to give. So we have another batch of people.
And if you're interested in giving, you don't have to.
We don't have to read your name on the air.
I mean I think you need to give permission to
co ED to tell us, like, yes, read these people's names. Um,
you can do it anonymously. You can do whatever you want.
(01:50):
But just go to uh C, O E d UC
dot org and you'll learn all about co ED and
there's all sorts of places for you to sign up
to help in a lot of different ways. Um. So
we've got some people some stuff you should know listeners
that became scholarship sponsors, UM, starting with Chris Marino, Way
to go, Chris, Linda McCarty and Mike Trick. I knew
(02:12):
you were gonna give me this way, Cameron. Yes, nice,
Is that right? Viceness or that viciness? Yeah, the W
is pronounced like a V in Germanic languages from what
I understand. Yeah, well you know, yeah, who else, Chuck,
(02:33):
I've got Raymond Breen. You skipped over justin Sechina. That's why,
that's why c H E n A justin Sechina, and
I think we have we got one more on their,
Caleb Weeks. Hey, we know Caleb. We know Caleb. He's
all over like Twitter and Facebook and emails us and
hey Caleb, Yeah, he's he's he's a big fan and
(02:55):
a big supporter of us as well. That's very nice.
And finally we have Joe Barkovich. That's right. Thanks a lot, guys,
we appreciate you giving the co ed and uh we
hope that more of you who are just hearing about this.
Now we'll go out and do it yourself. C O
E d U see dot org. That's right, all right,
so Chuck, Yes, we're talking about a guy, very special,
(03:20):
guy special. His name is Stephen Hawking with a pH
that's right, with a pH d like that. Uh, brilliant physicists,
brilliant mind. If you haven't seen the Errol Morris documentary. Oh,
I didn't know there was one on him. Yeah, he
did The Brief History of Time, which is neat a
documentary about Stephen Hawking, not really about the book. I
(03:43):
think there's a movie version of the book. I think
I have heard that too, but I haven't seen that.
I haven't either, But that was his best seller. Um
basically explaining making kind of doing what we do, explaining
things in a more accessible way that are complex. But
he doesn't way better than I. That's why he's like
a darling of the media and of everybody, basically, because
(04:05):
he's really really good typically at explaining really complex stuff
in in a way that the average joke can kind
of understand, which is that is, I mean, what we
strive to do. They're making a movie about him now, actually,
oh yeah, played by Jared Leto No good guess played
by Eddie Redmaine. Who U. He sounds like a World
(04:29):
War One ace pilot or something. It kind of looks
like one. Yeah, have you seen the lay Miss movie? No?
Have you seen My Week with Maryland? No? Okay, he
was in those anything else he was another stuff, But
those are the two most notable things. It's called The
Theory of Everything. It's the new one, and it's really
about the love story between he and his first wife.
(04:50):
And I saw pictures of him, and he looks just
like him. They did a really good job. Yeah, I
think they gave him some different teeth than you know,
put on the glasses and messed up his hair and
but then the wheelchair and yeah, yeah you're now Stephen Hawking.
But I think they're shooting that like literally right now.
So I'm looking forward to that one. And he released
stayed on that. I have no idea. Okay, it seems
(05:12):
like a long time for that. Yeah, they're really putting
their heart and soul into it, I guess. So. So
there's plenty of stuff that, I mean, everybody's heard of
Stephen Hawking, but there's um some pretty interesting little tidbits
about the man, the myth, his life, um that I
didn't know about until we read this article that I
think is worth sharing frankly, because if we don't share it,
(05:35):
what are we doing here? That's right. So one of
the things, um, just to start off, is that he
never won the Nobel Prize. As smart as the stude is, Yeah,
has not yet won the Nobel Prize. He's still got time.
Oh yeah, for sure, I think I said has never Yeah,
I hope I did. It sounded like there was some finality.
(05:57):
It's just never gonna happen. Try all you on, but
this pillar of the physics and mathematics community has never
won a Nobel Prize. Yeah, it is surprising. We're gonna
rely on punts for this one, okay. Uh. He was
born on January eight, nine two, which was also the
three anniversary of Galileo's death, right, which is just mere coincidence,
(06:21):
but it's a nice did bit, he says, who uh
And he is obviously was diagnosed with ALS at the
age of twenty one, Luke Garrig's disease and given just
a few years to live. And um, that was a
long time ago. It was. Um. He was born in
nineteen forty two, so he's what, um, seventy one now. Um. No,
(06:45):
he'll be seventy four very soon, in about a month
or so. Anyway, he um. When he was just before
his twenty one birthday, he started noticing. He was in
grad school at Oxford, and he started noticing that he
was getting clumsier running into stuff, having like tripping that
kind of thing, and it was apparently pronounced enough that
(07:06):
his family said, you're going to the doctor while you're
home visiting for Christmas break and so he um went
into the hospital for a battery of tests for two weeks.
That's an awful experience as in and of itself, I'm sure.
But then to top it off, they said, oh, well
we found out what's wrong with you. You have a LS,
which stands for immo trophic lateral sclerosis YEA or Luke
(07:30):
Garrig's disease, because Luke Garret most famously had it. That's right,
And it's just a neurological condition where you're voluntary muscle
control is lost, right, Yeah, and uh, typically you will
die a few years after contracting it from a couple
of things. Well, after symptoms show up, but what motor
(07:50):
neurons running your breathing muscles start to fail for uh,
deterioration of your swallowing muscles. That's a big one. So
basically you drown like it ends up being respiratory. Yeah,
usually go, but it's there's a lot of forms of it,
and he doesn't have either one of those conditions, so
he's good to go. Basically and has or has been
for a long time, especially with this talking box. Yeah,
(08:13):
he controls that with his cheek. Now, I have no
idea how that works though. So Um, he's got the
A L. S. Luke Garrig's disease, that's right, Um, but
he hasn't really let it slow him down. Prior to that,
he wasn't exactly like a real athletic type anyway. But
he was on the rowing team at Oxford, which was
(08:33):
a huge deal. Rowing team at Oxford equals um football
team at Georgia, sure, maybe even more. What's more than
that football team in Ohio state? Even Oh that's more lately?
Did you see the Vanderbilt came Yeah, I don't want
to talk about that. I don't neither. So um, he
was the coxswain on the rowing team. He's the guy
(08:56):
who goes stroke stroke stroke, And I did know this
until I read this article. The coxwain doesn't just set
the rhythm for a rowing they also steer. You didn't
know that, No, I had no idea. Yeah, I thought
it was strictly um being basically like a human metronome,
you know. But he, Um, this little pip squeaky guy
(09:17):
was on the rowing team as the coxwain and like
really became popular, so much so that while he was
at Oxford, he kind of threw himself into the rowing
team or crew as we call it in America. Yeah,
to the detriment of his studies, even for a while.
Um and speaking of studies, he getting an Oxford wasn't
(09:38):
a foregone conclusion for this guy because he wasn't a
great student in grade school. And um, I wasn't so
surprised by that that he was average too poor in
grade school, because I think a lot of these super geniuses,
it's like it's so not even beneath them, but they're
still beyond that. They might have a hard time and
(09:59):
just in regular class room settings, you know. Oh yeah,
so it was challenged, like you're probably not going to
do very well in school. So those of you who
are board in school and don't have good grades, don't
go up. Hope you may be a genius. Yeah, But
even at the time, uh, there was something about him,
like he was obviously a smart kid even though he
(10:19):
wasn't getting good grades. Because his school his classmates named him,
nicknamed him Einstein, which is about as pression as you
can get and it wasn't because of his fluffy white
mustache in the fourth grade. But his parents both went
to Oxford and they wanted him to go there. And um,
he was a great test taker and he aced his exams,
(10:40):
almost got a perfect score on the physics exam unsurprisingly,
but rather than going into physics, his father, Frank I
believe his name is, said, no, I want you to
be a doctor. You're going to serve the world by
being a doctor. And so uh, a little Stephen goes
and tries to take some biology classes and says, this
is sciences is imprecise, it's descriptive, it's subjective, Like I
(11:05):
can't be no, I don't want to do this. Yeah.
He was not into biology. Um, and I wasn't either,
but he was way into physics, whereas I was not.
Um And when he went to Oxford, they were like, well,
we got a couple of programs. We have the traditional
particle physics where you study sub atomic particles and that's
old school, where we have this newish kind of thing
(11:27):
called cosmology, which isn't even a isn't even a real
field yet, like we're trying it out here. Yeah, and
he was like, I am all over that because I
want to learn about bigger things, not smaller things. Yeah,
because they're basically the two different approaches to the same thing.
Like particles studies the very small parts that make up
(11:48):
the universe, and cosmology is the sum of those parts
and how they interact. Yeah, of course he would get
into both eventually. Yeah, well, I think you kind of
have to have an understanding both else you're just Although
bet if your particle physicist, you can just kind of
be in your lab running tests and setting out data,
and the cosmologists use that as well. Yeah, but because back,
(12:10):
I'm sure it's I bet cosmology. I bet they study
particle physics more than particle physics. People study cosmology. We'll
prove us wrong. People prove us wrong. That was the
nerdiest like exchange we've ever had. I think it's up
there for sure. So out of the study of cosmology, UM,
his probably his biggest contribution to date to science to
(12:32):
cosmology popular culture would be A Brief History of Time,
But his biggest contribution to his field is UM something
that the author of this article calls the boundless universe theory,
which I couldn't really find anywhere else every everywhere else
on the internet. If the type in boundless universe theory,
it just brings up this article and like people copying
(12:54):
and pasting this article in the body. Yeah, did this
guy invent this title? And I don't. Yeah, I guess so,
because there is something out there that describes this, but
nobody else calls it boundless universe theory. Really yeah, but
this is the big contribution. And here it's about the
time that your brain will start to melt. Uh. Yes,
(13:18):
he worked with the guy named Jim Hartle and came
up with a theory in that the universe is limitless.
Yet why is that funny? I could actually hear the
hyphen in the Yeah. Uh, it is a contained thing
yet it has no boundaries. Right, So, like I said,
(13:41):
your mind melts. But wait, this is why Stephen Hawking
is awesome. How can that be? Josh, Well, he says,
visualize the Earth, the service of the Earth. It's it's contained,
but it's also boundless. Like if you travel across the
edge of the Earth, you never reached the edge. True,
So he said, it's just visualize the surface of the Earth.
(14:02):
But the surface of the Earth is you know, two dimensional,
This is four dimensional. See, that's where my mind is
already blown. Yeah. I didn't even try to follow that.
But what what they're saying is um and the larger
implication of this is that what Um, Hardle and Hawking
did was they took Richard Feynman's quantum theory of the
(14:24):
universe and married it to Einstein's theory of relativity to
come up with this idea that the universe didn't emerge
from a black hole. Um. Instead, it it came out
of the Big Bang, and as a result, spacetime, which
is exactly what it sounds like, travels if you're looking
(14:45):
at it like a a the Earth, the Big Bank
takes place of the north pole. So as you're traveling
southward towards the equator, these lines of latitude get bigger, right,
and Um, those represents space time. So it's kind of
like time doesn't exist. And I don't think that's true,
So don't email me. I'm just saying my own interpretation
(15:07):
of this. At the Big Bang Big Bang happens, time
and space start to exist. They go outward expanding, and
then once you hit the equator, that's the apex, that's
the peak, and then they start to come back in.
And the the upshot of this is that eventually, by
Hawkings reckoning, in about twenty billion years, spacetime will collapse
(15:29):
in on itself again, meaning our entire universe will collapse
upon itself. Yeah, it's finite, but it's boundless, mind blown, right,
And like Chuck, what we just did, like isn't even
It's probably the most rickety terrible interpretation of the of
that ever, but I think that that's generally the it's
(15:52):
it's an interpretation. Hey, I got one for you, okay,
if we're listening Hawking things, And I just found this
out today, did you know that he had a really
bad situation with his second wife. No, he married his
first wife, Jane, and credits her with giving him reasons
to live, like right after he was diagnosed, Like he
(16:13):
met her the week he was diagnosed, and that's what
they're making this love story about. And they were married
for quite a long time until the mid nineties and
they divorced and he married one of his nurses, Elaine Mason,
and reportedly she was an awful, awful person. Reportedly reportedly
(16:37):
like basically everybody who knew her, like he was sort
of strange from his family for a long time because
of her controlling, manipulative bullying and rumors and investigations into
the fact that she may have physically abused him. Yeah,
his wife and nurse uh fractured his wrists by slamming
it onto a wheelchair. And this is all allegedly because
(17:00):
he denied it. But people close to him said he
would never admit that, because that would admit that he
really screwed up by making this decision. Ah let him
pee himself by like not giving him his you know,
the means to do so. She uh submerged him in
(17:20):
a bathtub, like letting his tricky outomy tube fill up
with water. Oh my god, and left him out in
the sun and like the hottest days of the year.
He had heat stroke and severe sunburned. And he denied that.
They investigated, and basically the cops wal there was nothing
we can do. He's saying the stuff didn't happen. Yet
he would show up like bruises and cuts and things
(17:40):
and say, yeah, like I've ran into a door again today.
They're like, you're in a wheelchair. You can't really do that.
I guess you can. Um And they divorced in two
thousand six, when did they get married? So there's a
Vanity Fair article about it was like really disturbing. Any
of that true, that's awful, let alone all of it
(18:01):
combined together. Jeez. So there's that that was that was uplifting, Chuck,
I've got one for you. Um he. A couple of
years back, HuffPo reported that, um he was a frequent
visitor to a California sex club, Freedom Makers, and like
(18:24):
some somebody who went there said that like he, they'd
seen him there more than a handful of times. Interesting
like basically getting laft and it's pretty unmistakable guy. Yeah,
doubt he would confuse him. But Oxford, I believe it
was Oxford came out and said that is b s.
He did go to this place once basically like as
a joke, as the guest of a friend or something
(18:46):
like that. But he's certainly not a member. He's certainly
not a frequent visitor. And like this person who's saying
this is a liar. Thin got dropped after that, but he,
um he, he does have a great wit. That's another
thing he's known for being a charmer. Yeah, and um
the he was asked I think the Guardian asked him, like,
(19:07):
if there's anything that he didn't understand or that baffled
them in the universe. And his answer was women said,
they're a total mystery to me. So there is at
least one thing, but black holes not the case. Yeah,
he lost a bet on black holes and was man
enough to admit it. In two thousand four. Uh, he
(19:27):
made a bet with um, a fellow scientist named John Preskill. Yeah,
and they did well. I let's talk about black holes
for a second here. I guess. Stars are these big,
huge things that burned tons of energy, the sons of
star Son is a star. You should go back and
revisit our Sun podcast. That's a great one. Uh. And
(19:50):
they have a ton of mass and a ton of gravity,
which is great as long as they're burning and doing
fine because there are nuclear explosions pushing outward. Yeah, just
gravities ing it inwards. So they find this happy balance
massive amounts of mass and gravity. When they die, though,
something bad happens and the gravity says, I am funny,
(20:11):
something bad happened. That's hilarious. Well, if you're a star,
I guess, um, unless like that's the apex of being
a star. Maybe, man I get to be a black
hole to burn out. Well, that was a spoiler. They
become black holes because gravity wins out and becomes stronger
and it collapses on itself. And that that is what
a black hole is, right. It's just all the matter
(20:32):
in the star combined in this little dense ball that's
so dense and has such an amount of mass clustered
into one little part that it actually bends the fabric
of space and time. And so that's your black hole.
It's really a black well in the fabric of space
and time. Uh. And so that's a black hole. And supposedly, no, not,
(20:53):
not even light can escape once it passes an event horizon.
And um, who did he have the bet with pres Skill?
So press Skill and Hawking disagreed about whether or not
anything called information, which would be light, particles, anything, anything
at all escaping black holes. Hawking said no, Preskill said yes.
And then later on Hawking figured out that Prescoe was right, um,
(21:16):
that if you did go into a black hole, you
would get all jumbled up and distorted, but you information
about you, particles, whatever could escape. Um. And therefore there's
no such thing as a true event horizon. There's a
pseudo event horizon, because if you have a genuine event horizon,
nothing could ever come back out. I wonder what the
(21:37):
bet was. They don't, they don't say. I found out
it was a m because it was information escaping a
black hole. They they they bet um and an encyclopedia
of the winner's choice, and encyclopedia being a place from
which information is easily retrieved. And I think press Gil
(22:00):
wanted a baseball encyclopedia because you know, smart guys, they're
into sports. They're into baseball. Yeah, that's true. It's the
thinking man's game. Um. I thought it might have been
a trip back to the gentleman's club freedommakers. Yeah, you're
buying all right. Here's one that I didn't realize. Uh.
He's written to children's books with his daughter Lucy, and
(22:22):
they have a trilogy and uh, the first one in
two thousand and seven was called Georgia's Secret Key to
the Universe and it's about a little boy named George
who has these leadite parents that he can't stand, so
he kills them. He doesn't kill them, um, but technology
to kill him. Nobody has a neighbor who he really
(22:43):
cottons too because he's a physicist and has a computer.
It just happens to have the most powerful computer in
the world at his house, that's right. And that computer
offers offers portals that they can see into outer space.
So George is super stoked about this, right, So there's
Georgia's Secret Key of the Universe. They followed that with
George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt, and then in two eleven they
(23:03):
had George in The Big Bang. Yeah, and that was
their children's book trilogy. And I think when they interviewed
Lucy In and him, people are like, we shouldn't be
surprised because this is sort of just another extension of
what he's trying to do his whole life, which is
explained things. And that's what the book does for children.
It's it's not just a fantastical story. It kind of
(23:24):
introduces them to things like physics and black holes and
or black wells. Right, you're gonna coin that, I think
if somebody else already has um. All right, well, chuck,
before we keep going. We got some more stuff up
our sleep, possibly the most surprising things you can think of,
That about Hawking coming up after this message break. All right,
(23:51):
so you're about to blow my doors with some surprises. Okay,
I think you know all this. You read the same
article I did, being coy okay. Um Hawking has said
publicly that he believed in the possibility of alien life,
and not just primitive alien life, which he suggests is
possibly common. He's actually a proponent of panspermia, which is
(24:13):
um basically like say a meteor bringing the basics of
life from Mars to Earth um, but also possibly intelligent life,
although he says it's probably few and far between. Yeah,
but the fact that he was on record for this
is pretty surprising. Sure, he said it to NASA. He was.
(24:33):
He came out as an alien life supporter to NASA.
I wonder if belon though, and told his wife he
was like, I get this. I told NASA I thought
there might be intelligent line over there. Here's where my
mind was blown a little bit. He says, we might
need to be uh wary of them though, if they come,
because they probably won't be DNA based, which you just
(24:54):
can't even wrap your head around. Well, yeah, you know, um,
I remember having my mind blown. The younger person, I
think it was Michael Crichton. In one of his books,
he just was mentioning off handedly how aliens might not
even be like might they might be intelligent crystals or
something like that. They can something we just had, we
(25:14):
wouldn't recommise at all. Yeah, which is I think probably
the likelier case. Like he's saying, d n A is
not essential a life. It can be a lot of
other things as long as you have some sort of
replicating basis of life. That there you go. That's sort
of old school like Lovecraft and all those early sci
fi horror writers. Remember, their common method was always to
(25:38):
be like it cannot even be described. That was always
their copse unnamable. Um. But the way he describes aliens
and potentially smart aliens is sort of just like you
would see in the movies, like, hey, they may be
nomads who ran out of resources and they're coming to
Earth for hours and then that's straight out of a
(26:00):
sci fi movie. Or are we the aliens? No, I'm
just saying like that's kind of what the we're at
the very cusp of that as well. Yeah, I remember
when like an elementary school, when at some point the
first mind blow is probably like we could be just
a speck on the fingernail, like some giant in some
(26:20):
other world. Wun't that neat that they ended? Um? Uh
the Grinch like that the movie? Yeah, I don't remember. Yeah,
that's how it ends. What do you mean like it?
He Ron Howard starts panning out out and out and
out from pulling out. Yeah, so pan is only going
in now. Panting is left and right okay, other where
(26:41):
you push interor pull out Okay, Well he's pulling out
and out and out now. And um you finally realize
that Whoville is part of like a Adam that makes
up a snowflake. Oh, I don't remember that. Yeah, that
was a great way to end it. Pretty brilliant. Um. Also,
Stephen Hawking believes in time travel. He's been on the
record about that. Remember in our time travel episode that
(27:02):
we did at Yeah, we he like theorized this huge
machine that you could use to travel forward in time. Yeah,
but not back when his Yeah? Yeah? Uh do you
have anything else any surprising Hawking Hawk facts? Uh? He
held a chair for thirty years, which is basically like
(27:24):
a position at Cambridge um the Lucazian Professor of Mathematics
at Cambridge in this chair of this position at this
university dates back to sixteen sixty three. He held it
for thirty years. The guy who held it the second position,
the second person to hold that was Isaac Newton. Yeah,
(27:45):
that's not bad. That's pretty cool. So his nickname was Einstein.
He had the same job literally as Isaac Newton. He's
doing pretty good for himself. Presidential Medal of Freedom here
and Commander of the British Empire, which is what non
brit skit I think, instead of being knighted. But still
James Bond is the commander. Oh yeah, but still no
(28:08):
Nobel prize. No for Bond or Hawking. Yeah, well, I
mean breaking bad wanted on their last season. That's funny.
Didn't they win the Nobel? I don't think so. I
don't think they did. They wanted to me. Uh. If
you want to learn more about Stephen Hawking, you can
type that into the search bar Stephen with the pH
(28:28):
remember um at how stuff works dot com. And since
I said search bar, friends, it is time for listener mail.
I'm gonna call this last call for alcohol. And this
guy Dan describes something that we're familiar with, but we're
gonna read it anyway in case people don't know. Hey, guys,
and Dan and I'm a big fan of live in
(28:49):
New York City and listen to you drop knowledge on
my way to and from work at an East Harlem
beer and wine bar called a b v uh. And
it was here where I discovered it unique use for
your work. I don't know if you guys are aware,
but bars have something called last call. That is when
the bartender offers folks one last drink before finishing up,
(29:10):
usually about fifteen minutes before standard closing time. The idea
is that the customer will use the remaining fifteen minutes
to finish up the drinks and then hit bricks. Uh.
This system has served quite well for quite some time
and is one of the unwritten rules of bar etiquette. But,
as Newton's Law would suggest, sometimes that the system breaks down.
(29:31):
Sometimes folks just don't get the whole idea of a
timely closed want to linger. Here in lies one of
the tougher spots for a bartender. How to get those
loiterers out without offending or upsetting anyone's delicate sensibilities. Um,
but most bartenders really didn't give a care about that
at closing time. Well, the bars that I went to
(29:52):
like in college, it was pretty rough. The Georgia Bar,
you know, it was profanities, consulting people will many families.
You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here,
or playing really awful music was a great mess, you know,
which is where we come in. Um. Yeah, you can
(30:14):
stop the music, you can flash the lights, you can
walk over and plainly tell them uh to leave. But
you can try my new method, peak oil. Nothing will
clear room of helpless, helpless drunks, philanderers and miscreants like
a thorough, thoughtful and well meaning discussion of the ins
and outs of peak oil from the middle of the
show and without warning our context. This tactic is subtle,
(30:36):
it is funny, and it is amazingly effective. I cannot
begin to describe the joy I experience watching the Dilly
Daliers suddenly gained self awareness and scurry for the exits
for climped but one can only hope better informed. But
in all seriousness, guys, you're doing the world in excellent service.
Information is rarely conveyed with such grace and wit, and
for that I thank you. And if you find yourselves
(30:58):
in need of a libation in New York, see seek
me out. Oh we will Dan Morton at A B
V and East Harlem. Awesome, we'll go do Peak Oil Live.
Let's all that is really cool. Yeah, what had great
use for that one man? Thanks a lot, Dan, thanks
for the invite to you and anybody hanging out in
New York. Go check out Dan and A B B
(31:20):
and you can get a little free stuff you should
Know action going on there at closing time, that's right. Yeah.
Uh so, if you have figured out a new use
for stuff you should Know, we always want to hear
about stuff like that. You can tweet to us at
s Y s K podcast. You can join us on
Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know So, you
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery
(31:42):
dot com, and as always, you can join us at
our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot com? Yeah. Brought to
(32:03):
you by the all new fourteen Toyota Corolla
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.