SYSK Selects: How Marijuana Works

For millennia people used marijuana for fun and medicine. Not until the 20th century that was it vilified, unfairly say many. Weed has done lots of good things, from alleviating cancer symptoms to unlocking secrets of the brain. Learn all about pot here.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, everybody, Happy Saturday. This is Chuck here to introduce
you to this week's Saturday Select, and we are going
with a classic from the archives, How Marijuana Works. Why
are we releasing this today on a Oh because we're juveniles,
that's why, everybody. I hope you enjoy. It's very insightful episode.
And here we go with how Marijuana Works. Welcome to

(00:26):
stuff you should know from how stuff works dot com. Hey,

(00:54):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Tuck Bride getting his demons out, man. And how about
this music? Yeah, this is a thanks to our guest
producer Noel. Yeah, who is Jerry's actually producing, but he's
got the musical touch. He's if you want to, he's
our dub producer. Yeah, if you want to reggae. If

(01:14):
I your podcast, Nol is the man. Yes, the big
thanks to Noel. Yeah, and great idea by you. I
and I yeah, yeah, I and I love that. How
you doing, man, I'm great. You've got some good feelings
going on. Yeah. I mean we've covered grow houses and um,
we had a medical marijuana right I don't think so. No, no,

(01:37):
because a lot of it didn't seem familiar when I
was looking into it in this article. So we've definitely
done grow houses, which is kind of backwards. Yes, well
not really. You gotta grow up. That's the first two.
So chuck, here we are. We're talking about pot, and
as is our thing. We're gonna talk about pot in
a very like above the boards mature way, are we?

(02:01):
I think we can. We've talked about some other stuff
before poop. We've talked about poop plenty of times. Yeah, well,
I think booze. Every time we cover drugs, we like
to cover the scientific aspects, social ramifications, how it's impacted culture.
Why would this one be any different? Well, and this
is probably the biggest, you know, it's the most ubiquitous.
I would say, yeah, you know, yeah, maybe the gateway

(02:23):
to all the other episodes. Very funny, So, uh, I
guess if you we should start at the beginning. How
about that? Let's talk about pot and its history. It's
very long, long, long history, UM, and actually for most
of that history it has been widely beloved and appreciated.

(02:47):
The apparently pot has been cultivated or marijuana. We're going
to use all that, um and interchangeably, we'd pot marijuana,
but cannabis, that's probably where it will stop. Like if
either want of us as ganja or sticky, it's in
this article, we should just shut it down it right then,
all right, all right, we'll do the Hey take that back. Yeah,

(03:11):
one of us will say that. Okay, uh yeah, But
like you said, I mean, this is gonna be an
overview because we could do honestly, four shows on the
history of pot. There's quite a rabbit hole we could
go down here. Yeah, we got to avoid it. Yeah,
but we're just we'll give you a historical overview about that.
So um, like I said, pot has been cultivated for years,

(03:32):
and like I also said that it's mostly been appreciated
most of that time for two reasons. One it is
um in industrial or it was, until the rise of
the synthetics, a major industrial fiber hemp. And then secondly
it was a um or it still is a medicinal

(03:54):
herb that kind of spills over into recreational use as well.
So in the century in China, uh, it looks like
it was probably used medicinally yea, and not recreationally. But
they're definitely records written records of the cultivation of cannabis. Well, yeah,
a guy named shen Nung, who was an emperor but
was also China's first physician, wrote about how ma that's

(04:19):
what they called pot back then in China. H was
good for the yin and the yang, both of them, right,
which is actually is we'll see. Um, that's a pretty
astute observation early on, because what he's talking about is
balance or homeostasis, which pot definitely affects. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Uh.
They have found a mummy, a three thousand year old

(04:40):
Egyptian mummy, and looked into this and it it contained
quite a few drugs, but it definitely contained th HC.
So the Egyptians were getting down. Yeah, maybe medicinally, who knows.
In a thousand and one Arabian Nights, it makes an
appearance called bang g Sambad apparently loves this stuff, but

(05:02):
supposedly his was hash mixed with opium, which is way
more hardcore than what we're talking about. Uh yeah, yeah
probably so. Um they think it originated perhaps in India
and um north of the Himalayas is their best guess. Yeah,
they really have no idea. And actually there's like a
lot of debate still over whether there's more than one

(05:26):
um type of plant. What do you mean, So there's
Cannabis indica, Cannabis sativa. Yeah, they're different. There's another one
called Cannabis rude or alice um. And there's there's an
ongoing debate among botanists over whether they're all actually just

(05:46):
a different like um varieties of the same plant, or
if they really are different species of plants in the
same family. Interesting. Yeah, but I think the the current
common wisdom is that there's at least two Cannabis sativa
and Cannabis indica. Uh. Yeah, we may as well get
into that a little bit. Um. The indica is uh,

(06:08):
the plan itself is shorter and fatter and better suited
for indoor growing. And the uh sativa is taller, it
can get really tall like um yeah, and thinner um.
Although I think for cultivation, I don't think uh, even
though it's grown outdoors, I don't think they're growing the
twenty five ft plants. No. I would imagine the helicopters

(06:30):
can see them a lot more easily. Yeah, And the
indica is known for more of a a body high
um quote unquote, couch locked, yeah, mellow, and the sativa
is more known for more energetic and cerebral and creative,
more of a brain high. Right, and then conversely, one
can make you more paranoid, one can make you more druy.

(06:51):
Uh yeah. And typically these days, um, if you are
a recreational or medicinal user, you're probably getting some sort
of a uh hybrid strain. Good point. And actually some
of the strains, those hybrid strains are have some of
the best names, like green crack. It's a pretty good name.
A K forty seven white widow. White Widow is actually

(07:14):
uh pure strain, isn't it of Indica. I'm not sure.
I think it is? Yeah, Maui wowie. The pot names are,
they're pretty funny. They've definitely gotten better from the seventies.
Like Maui wowie. Yeah, that sounds very slapping. Yeah. Um,
so should we talk about we should we talk a
little bit about um its history in this country, in

(07:36):
the United States. Yeah, so, I think we should get
to that because, as I said, Chuck, when you look
back on pot all of these years, and um, it's
how it was used. It was generally like appreciated, used, medicinally, used, recreationally,
not vilified. It wasn't until it hit North America that
it really started to become vilified. Yeah, well it had

(07:58):
a good run here too, Uh in the States for
a couple of hundred years. Um, it was hemp was
grown and cultivated and widely used. Some people say it's,
you know, the most versatile plant on earth as far
as the different uses you can get out of it.
And it was in the sixty nineteen Virginia Assembly Assembly

(08:19):
they even said, do you have to grow hemp if
you're a farmer in Virginia. So not only was it encouraged,
it was actually law in Virginia at least. So I
had had a good run until the early nineteen hundreds
and nineteen twenties. Well, what's what's interesting is back in
this time, you remember that part in Days and Confused,

(08:40):
where um the like the this the biggest owner of
the whole group is talking about George Washington like, oh yeah,
like planning camp all day and then comes home and
smokes Martha. It's not clear whether or not any of
them were smoking pot, and it's entirely possible that they
weren't because the idea of smoking pot was law to

(09:00):
the ages for a very long time. Um and the
Greeks actually grew marijuana, but they didn't smoke it. They
just used it for its fibers. And it almost appears
like they had no idea you could smoke it and
it was psychoactive. So it's possible that they our forefathers
didn't smoke pot, you know, and they were they were
just growing it for industrial uses. And meanwhile Native Americans

(09:21):
were like, you guys are crazy. Rope rope is nice,
but you know it can be both, that's right. Uh.
In um the early nineteen hundreds, the Mexican Revolution of
nineteen ten, this is one of the big turning points
because a lot of Mexican immigrants came to the US
and they were like, hey, you know, you can smoke

(09:41):
this stuff. It's pretty nice. And because Mexican immigrants had
a UM, we're sort of looked down upon all all
of a sudden, putt was looked down upon. Really, Mexican
immigrants were looked down upon somewhere in the US history. Yeah.
The the whole thing about um pot being very ified
or UM. I guess there was a moral panic basically

(10:04):
is what they call it, that erupted around it. Yeah,
and a lot of it was based in racism towards um,
Mexican Americans or Mexican immigrants. Yeah, in the nineteen thirties,
especially in the depression, UM, they were sort of had
a bad name because you know, they're immigrants in this
country and we're Americans and we're in depression and we
want the work and uh, kind of a lot of

(10:26):
the same arguments here these days. But um, the association
with Pott was definitely a part of it. It definitely was.
But also I read this um, this MPR blog code
Switch about this very topic, and they were saying, like, yes,
there's a lot of racism that led to the criminalization
of pot, but Mexico was twenty years ahead of the

(10:47):
US and criminalizing pot as well. So you can't just say, well,
it was just Americans disdain or dislike or distrust of Mexicans.
It was you know, it's more complex than that. And
this guy was saying that, really you could conclude there
was a fear of what this drug did. And the
reason why there was a fear of what the drug
did was because the newspaper reports at the time had

(11:09):
people like killing entire families and like wandering around the
streets like with somebody's head, right, um, covered in blood
because they just smoked a joint. And um, they were
really trying to unpack this, like why would that happen?
Did it happen? Where all of them just overblown reports.
The fact was when you picked up the Los Angeles
Times of the New York Times, there were front page

(11:33):
stories about this, and they were like brown skin, Mexican kills,
white family of eight on marijuana cigarette and that's why.
And actually the word marijuana was kind of used as
a derogatory term to kind of Mexican afi cannabis, which
is what it had been called prior to that. I
did not know that. I'm off my soapbox. Look at

(11:54):
you teaching me. Well. Movies like Reefer Madness definitely didn't help.
In n six The Family, a propaganda movie from French
director Louis Gasnier, it's, you know, required viewing for any
college student at some Yeah, it's it's not very good
and it's not very enjoyable, but it is kind of
funny showing the the reefer addicts, you know, driven to

(12:15):
insanity by the marijuana cigarettes. And somebody gets murdered, right,
I think someone murders somebody else because they smoked pot. Uh.
And then a n seven um a year after refer madness,
Congress packs past the Marijuana Tacks Act, and this is
basically where the tide turn, and it was essentially criminalized

(12:38):
because it called for restricting possession just two individuals who
paid attacks, which is like a thousand dollars for medical
or industrial use. So in other words, if you're just
you know, Sammy pod head, you can't live that way
anymore in this country. Now. You would basically have to
show set up a shell organization, pay the thousand dollar tax,

(12:58):
and then you'd be able to impore marijuana. But if
you were caught with smoking it, you'd still get busted.
It was a big deal when that happened. And you
can kind of lay all of this at the feet
of one guy, a moral crusader who ran the Federal
Bureau of Narcotics in the thirties, well the thirties until
the sixties. His name was Harry Anslinger, and he was
the one who really kind of started this crusade against

(13:20):
Pott and got the government to um turn against it,
got the press to turn against it, and got the
Marijuana Tacks Act passed. But even while this guy's like
sitting there shouting like all marijuana is gonna kill us
all as a horrible drug and it's it's as bad
as it gets. There were studies, independent studies that were
um funded by the government that we're showing, like, you

(13:43):
guys are kind of overstating this a little bit. Yeah,
in Mayor Leaguardia of New York issued a report that
basically said that it doesn't induce violence, insanity, or sex crimes. Yeah,
and he was a moral reformer himself, remember doing on
after the Minsky brother there's the burlesque episode. Yeah, so
it's not like he was just some big pothead, Like

(14:04):
he was a moral reformer himself and he still founded
this report. Yeah, that's good point that led to um
the The sentence and laws over time have kind of
waffled back and forth. Uh. In the fifties they were
pretty strict because of the Bogs Act and the Narcotics
Control Act, and that's when they started setting mandatory minimums

(14:26):
for basically any drug but including marijuana of course. Yeah,
like you would go to prison for a long time
if you got caught with pot. Yeah, two to ten
years for a first uh, first time offender in the
nineteen fifties getting caught with pot. Yeah, that's it, any
any amount. Uh. And in the sixties, things relaxed a
little bit, um in every way you can imagine in

(14:49):
this country. And uh, you know, President Kennedy and UH
and lb J issued reports that found kind of the
same thing as they found out in the forties. It
doesn't induce islands. Uh. And then these reports it said
it didn't wasn't a gateway drug either. Yeah. In the
nineteen sixties, which is still up for debate. Really, Yeah,

(15:11):
I've ever been definitively because you read every other report
you read, it's going to say something a little different
about what the gateway drug is. And plus I think
defining what makes a gateway drug two has never been
fully established. Yeah you can how can you test something
scientifically if it's you can't have it defined, you know. Yeah. Uh.
And the that led to the nineteen sixties led to

(15:32):
a repeal of a lot of the mandatory minimums in
the seventies. Um. But then, of course Ronald Reagan in
the nineteen eighties brought a lot of that stuff back,
and Nixon too, he fought that tooth and nail like,
even though the tide in the country was turning one way,
Nixon was like, Nope, we're going to keep pot as
illegal as possible, and as a matter of fact, we're

(15:53):
going to put it on the same level as heroin
and cocaine. Yeah. And during the Nixon administration, the Schaefer Commission,
it was a bipartisan commission, found again that it should
be decriminalized. And Nixon was just like, well, I don't
I don't want to hear that. Sorry, I'm gonna make
up my own mind about it. I'm the president exactly. Yeah. So,
like you said, the Reagan era brought it back. Um,

(16:15):
not brought pot back, No, brought back any kind of um.
Anti government sentiment toward pot itself was redoubled in the eighties.
Under the Reagan administration, mandatory minimums were or mandatory sentences
were reenacted. Um in six things to the Anti Drug
Abuse Act. If you got caught with a hundred marijuana plants,

(16:39):
you got the same um jale time as if you
were caught with a hundred grams of heroin. Yeah, that's
interesting plants versus grahams. That's sort of a apples orange
in comparison. Yeah, plants versus heroin. It's like plants versus zombies.
I know at one point this is sort of off
topic topic, but I don't know if they've changed, But

(17:00):
at one point they were sentencing LSD users by the weight, right,
and when that the deal is like they would like
if you were an LSD dealer and you had twenty
sheets of acid, they would weigh it. And they were like, well,
wait a minute, you can't weigh the paper. That's like
weighing the suitcase the cocaine comes. Yeah, and uh, I

(17:21):
think that's still the same though, didn't it. I don't know,
but I do know what you're talking about. And apparently
like if they would if you had it mixed in
with liquid or something like diluted into liquid form, they'd
take the weight of all the liquid rather than the
proportion of it. Yeah. I don't know. It could be
we could be like showing our gullibility for urban legend
or not, but I know that's the case. I don't

(17:42):
know if it still is, but I know it definitely was.
Definitely was yeah, because I saw like an HBO special
on he's LSD dealers, So we're basically serving like life
sentences for dealing acid right alongside murders and rapists. Um. Yeah,
I'll have to check into that and people who were
caught with pott in the thirties. That's right. So pot
these days, costwise, um, varies a lot depending on quality.

(18:06):
Obviously it ranges. Um. I love that in this article
it says a dollar seventy seven to seventeen dollars and
sixty six cents per graham, like one gram of marijuana. Please. Yeah,
that's interesting. Um, but these days you can expect to
pay um for you know, what people consider good marijuana
about a hundred and twenty dollars for uh a quarterback,

(18:29):
which is a quarter of an ounce, right, which is
seven grams, right, because there's twenty eight grahams in and out. Yeah,
I think between seven eight grams. But um, it depends
on if the dealer likes you exactly. Yeah. But that's
generally how it breaks down. As you know, you have
it by the pound, which is you know the pot,
uh dealer, I guess, and then they break it down

(18:50):
into ounces and then to quarterbacks and dime bags and
whatever people can afford. I guess. Well. It's funny because
in the state of the country right now, Like you
can take dealer and dispensary and basically flip them and
interchange them, and no matter what you're talking about, the
virtually the sentence is going to remain unchanged basically, you know,

(19:10):
because the marijuana dispensaries are following like basically the same
format that marijuana dealers in this country have for decades,
you know what I mean, like pricing and yeah, the pricing, um,
the way it's sold by weight, like I think you
still't buy like like quarters and half ounces and ounces
and stuff, which makes sense. But they're also getting a

(19:32):
lot of this stuff from people who are growing at
indoors in their basement. And it's like now they have
licenses for all this, but it's basically like all the
people who were doing it illegally before or some of
the people who are doing illegally before point and applied
for licenses and now they're doing the same thing, but
they just have like a a license to do it
in a frame on their wall. Yeah, and dispensaries, you're

(19:52):
gonna find a lot of other things, uh, like edibles
and um, they even have now cannabis strips, like you know,
the little listing breath strips. They have a little cannabis strips.
It's just a little uh edible strip of concentrated cannabis.
And I guess you put it under your tongue and

(20:13):
that's better for your lungs. I would imagine if you're
a oh, yeah, a cancer patient or something. Yeah, And
we'll talk about that in a little bit. Let's let's
talk about the planet itself, chuck. Um. Maybe the most
recognizable plant that leaf, you know, yeah, which is um.
Here's a little fact for you. The botanical description of

(20:34):
the way that marijuana leaves are arranged is groovy called
palmately like the palm of a hand with five fingers outstretched.
That's the pot leaf. That's you. You can find on
lighters and baseball caps, that gas stations, um and the like.

(20:54):
You said. The planet itself, depending on which variety it
is either very tall or kind of tall, depending on
whether it's trimmed or not. UM. And the the buds
or whatever that are smoked are actually the flowers of
the plants, the flowers of the female which apparently are
that's sentemia. So the definition of the word sentema are

(21:18):
female flowers that have reached maturity without being um pollinated.
I can't hear that word without thinking of Caddyshack. What
I don't remember that part Bill Murray A little California
sens to me. Yeah, yeah, so that's what that means. Yes,
that's the term sense of mea means. So basically, unless
you're like fourteen, if you're smoking pot, you're smoking centemia.

(21:40):
So yes, the term centemia means pot, the pot that's smoked.
Although the male flowers do have some THHD, it's just
far far less of female than female. Yeah. As a cultivator,
males are not what you want. In fact, males can
can disturb the cycle of the female plan. So the

(22:01):
goal of the cultivators to get the mail out of
there as quickly as it can be identified. Basically. Yeah,
and weed's actually good moniker for pop because it's it
spreads very easily there. Um pollen is like twenty four microns,
which apparently is very easily wind born and goes very
great distances. There's very few obstacles to pollenization. Um. So,

(22:23):
if you have female plants and you have what you
suspect to be a male plan anywhere nearby, you want
to get rid of the mail plant and then tell
the officer, Uh, they must have just blown over here
and taken roots. Are right, These d plants in my
backyard came from my neighbor. The pollens is twenty four microns.

(22:45):
Come on, yeah, he says, He says, tell your story
to the judge, my friend, Um, there are about uh
we should also say they are hermaphroditic plants. Hermaphroditic plants
that feature both male and female flowers are probably a mess. Yeah,
I think that maybe that's a good thing. I think
that's like a lot of hybrid ones are hermaphroditic. Okay, yeah, Well,

(23:07):
there are hundreds of chemicals in the marijuana plant. Um,
a hundred and nine of which are cannabinoids. About thirty
three are cancer causing, and we'll we'll get to that
stuff later too. But ironically they also are cancer killing
some of them. It is an odd plant. But we're

(23:28):
gonna get to all that stuff too, right, Um, And
your th HC is really the main psychoactive ingredient. What's
the long name for it, Delta nine tetra hydro cannabin
all that is th HC. That is what the high
that you're seeking. It lies within that chemical. Yeah, and
actually you can point to the part of the plant

(23:50):
where it is. UM. If you've ever seen a marijuana
plant and it has kind of this hazy a period
appearance from far away and you get up close and
you realize that haze is actually made up of a
into a little clear, sticky protrusions coming off the leaves.
Those are called tri combs, and that is where the
th HC is stored. That's right. And depending on the plant,

(24:11):
in the variety and how it's grown and when it's harvested,
in the genetics and how you process it, it's that's
all gonna affect the THHC level. And it's a cultivator.
Your goal is to have the th HC level as
how as you can get it. Yeah, that is up
for debate as well. From what I've seen there, UM,
apparently they're just going higher and higher and higher as

(24:34):
far as th HC content goes. And there's a lot
of recreational pot users and um medicinal pot users, so
we're saying too much. Dude like K has a bit
about how when he was in like the in the seventies,
he can smoke like a whole joint and be like
totally mellor cool. Now he's saying, it takes like one
hit and you go totally insane. Um. And apparently there

(24:56):
is like a point where it's just like that's too much. Well,
Louis c cake in for better pot these days to now.
But you're right, it all depends on the the end user,
you know what they're into. But generally speaking, uh, the
cultivator wants to deliver the most bang for the buck,
you would think so. Sure, so, Chuck, let's figuratively smoke
some pot and follow it through the body. Okay, okay,

(25:20):
you know what, we probably shouldn't do this ourselves. No,
we we like our jobs exactly, and we might be
fired for even figuratively smoking pot. Well, yeah, and who
wants to Let's let's get how about that scruffy looking
guy farmer Ted. Yeah, he's he's look at him. He's game.
So a lot of people don't know this, but we
have a friend named farmer Ted who has the very
strange um characteristic of having entirely translucent skin. He's kind

(25:45):
of like the Invisible Man or something like that. Yeah,
and what better person than to follow the trail of
THHC And the human body. Then you can actually see yeah,
because the rest of his organs or anything aren't translucent.
It's just a skin. Yeah, and uh, thank you for
coming in, Ted. Um. So Ted is going to smoke
a joint, a marijuana cigarette. Yes, and uh, He's going

(26:07):
to smoke what is a typical marijuana cigarette, approximately five
milligrams of marijuana, which translates to roughly, um, I don't know,
maybe ten milligrams of th HC. So he's going to
take a lighter and take it to the end of
this joint. I'm making air quotes here because it's that's vernacular.

(26:31):
Uh and uh. The th HC is going to be
burned and carried into his lungs, so farmer Ted is
kind of high already. Um. The the th HC in
the smoke is carried to the a viola in the lungs,
and the aviola is where gas exchange occurs. It's where
your oxygen to pride blood comes to get a refill
of oxygen to be replenished. And since there's th HC

(26:52):
smoke present in that oxygen in the lungs, the t
HC is gonna hit your ride into the bloodstream and
travel through the body, so it just takes seconds. Yeah,
one of the places it's going to go is the brain. Uh.
And when it hits the brain, it starts doing some
pretty funky stuff. That's right. We could ask farmer ted
how he's feeling right now, and he'll probably say, yeah,

(27:14):
he can't talk. He might say that my eyes are
dilating and the colors are a lot more vivid. Yeah, um,
I'll be hungry soon. I'll be hungry soon. My other
senses are enhanced as well. But hold on, I'm starting
to feel at paranoid. Yes, let's let's get into this.
Let's let's get into how pot affects the brain, because

(27:36):
it is pretty gosh darn interesting if you ask me. Yeah,
And and this is how it the physiological effects. Um,
the end user might have different reactions to it. Didn't
make everyone paranoid necessarily, No, And I really looked into
it hard to find out why some people are paranoid
and some people don't. Part of it is it? Well,
there's two things. One and I didn't find anything definitive,

(27:59):
which I'm I'm sad about. But one the two things
I came up with, it's one. It depends on the pot.
Sure if if there is a difference between indica and sativa,
the prevailing wisdom is that if you smoke indicate, you're
going to be less likely to be paranoid. Okay. Uh.
The other reason is it would depend probably on the
existing brain chemistry of the user. My brain chemistry is

(28:22):
not the same as yours, um, and neither one of
ours are just the same as Jerry, So of course
when we introduce the psychoactive chemical into that chemistry, it's
going to affect it differently. So that's what I came
up with. Basically, I wonder if one of the reasons
indica is less likely is because that's the couch bound one,
and you're less likely to be a paranoid sitting on
your couch rather than the more active one like smoking

(28:45):
and going to the Renaissance festival where you'd be freaked
out stone sober, where you'd meet John Strickland and he
would mess with you if he found out your stone anyway.
I'm curious, Um, Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. I've also
found there's research um that shows the the cannabin als

(29:05):
there's a precursor um chemical to them that's called cannabin
dialoic acid CBD and cbd UM has been found that
to actually counteract the schizoid effects of pot, like the
stuff that makes you paranoid, that symptom if you get
if you smoke a pot that has a higher CBD

(29:27):
T th HC ratio maybe it's even or something like that. Uh,
the CBD is going to cut down on the schizophrenic
symptoms while leaving like the rest of the stuff intact
interesting and that weird. So I wonder if if indicate
just by nature has a higher CBD content. Yeah maybe, so, yeah,
there are people that know this. Okay. So back in

(29:48):
the sixties, there was a researcher his name escapes Me
who started looking into what the heck made pot make
you loco? Right, right, and he found th HC. So
TC was isolated in the sixties, and from that they
reverse engineered um how th HC affected the brain and

(30:10):
effectively discovered an entire system that we didn't know existed
thanks to pot research. It's called the endocannabinoid system, and
it's a very ancient system that's found in everything from
C squirts to every vertebrate on the planet squirts C squirts,
very primitive animals, all the way up to us. Well

(30:32):
I know that, Uh, I didn't quite get the indocannabinoid parts,
so take it away, Okay, So I know it works backwards. Yes,
that's a very important point. So you know when like um,
when we do anything from our brain says grab coffee
mug right to um, to us thinking about how we're
feeling at any given point, all of that is based

(30:53):
on the transmission among neurons, right, Yeah, we've covered that
a lot. The neurotrans ter's kind of cover that gap
between the neurons and deliver the message, and then depending
on where the neuroprint transmitter is and what chemical has
come across, then different things happen. Right. Well, the endocannabinoid

(31:14):
system is this kind of dimmer switch, uh that is
around all neurons that works backward to kind of say whoa, whoa,
let's not pump those neurochemicals out as frequently or in
as much abundance. And the whole point of the endocannabinoid
system is to maintain homeostasis or good for your in,

(31:35):
good for your yang and that weird. Okay, So when
you smoke pot, your endocannabinoid system, which has receptors all
throughout the body. There's cbtwo receptors which are mainly associated
with your immune system, and then CB one receptors are
throughout the brain. And when you smoke pot, the cannabinoids,
the phytocannabinoids, which is THHC in this case, go into

(31:58):
these reasons of your brain and stick to your brain,
to your endocannabinoid receptors. Yeah, they basically just kind of
hijacked the system. So these the systems that the endocannabinoid
receptors are meant to regulate are no longer being regulated
by our bodies endocannabinoids. They're being hijacked by th HC,

(32:19):
which is not subject to our bodies whims and and
all that. We just basically have to ride that snake
out until it's over. So you end up with all
these different weirdo symptoms that you normally wouldn't have, which
is basically the result of your endocannabinoid system going hey
whire because it's been hijacked by th HC. So like
your hippocampus, yes, we've talked about that that's good for learning,

(32:40):
and when the endocannabinoid receptors are full of th HC, uh,
you're not learning or making memories as well as normal. Yeah,
we're talking short term memory. It definitely impairs that. And um,
that's why if you've ever hung out with a bunch
of pot heads, you'll hear the phrase what were we
just talking about quite a lot. Because it's gonna affect
the hippocamp us in that way, you're not forming memories.

(33:02):
It's also gonna affect your coordination, which is the cerebellum,
so you may be a little clumsier. And then you
have the basil ganglia and that directs your unconscious muscle movements. Yeah.
Uh so the reason farmer Ted is paranoid. He doesn't
like that plant looking at him the way it is right. Uh,
he's paranoid because his bazo medial um amygdala has been affected.

(33:28):
It's uh, endocannabinoid receptors have been hijacked by THHC, and
it's this region of the brain where we learn to
fear dangerous situations. Farmer Ted is learning to fear things
he normally wouldn't fear because the endocannabinoids that the body
normally makes there not um operating the way that they're
supposed to be. So he's now afraid of that plant. Now,

(33:51):
isn't that this aren't the endocannabinoids the same system that
they have finally been pointed the munchies activates the munchies. Yeah,
and your hypothalum miss um. You're grilling production. Remember grilling,
it's that chemical that makes you feel hungry, so you
go eat. You're grilling production and absorption UH is mediated

(34:12):
by endocannabinoids in the hypothalamus, which gets hijacked by THHC,
which suddenly all food looks irresistible. Yeah, and which is
why it is prescribed for people going through chemotherapy and
other things, because they lose our appetite and lose a
lot of weight and UH, aside from helping the stem nausea,
it also will stimulate the appetite. Yeah. So that's the

(34:34):
endocannabinoid system, and that is how pot affects it. I
feel like that. Yeah, we left out the biggest part.
It also causes a release in dopamine, which is what
makes you feel high. Any euphoric feeling comes from that
release of dopamine. But it's also possible that any paranoia
or those schizoid symptoms that come along with it are

(34:55):
from too much dopamine. Right, So that too high a
release of dopamine can lead to feelings of paranoia and anxiety. Yeah,
and these feelings. Um, the effect of THHC period is
gonna last a couple of hours, depending on obviously how
good the pot is and how much you smoked. Um,
but the chemicals are going to be in your body

(35:16):
a lot longer than that, with a terminal half life
of twenty hours to ten days after you've smoked it.
So um, if you get you know, if you're one
of the how many percentage of companies drug test fifty yeah,
fifty some and fifty three maybe yeah, depending on your
weight and how much you smoked, on how long you smoked, Uh,

(35:38):
you're gonna either pass that drug test here or not.
It can stain your body for you know, weeks though, Yeah. Yeah,
and there's no way to tell because it depends on
you your metabolism and the pot potency of the pot too. Um.
But yeah, your body breaks it down into five metabolites
and they test for all five to just using a
basic immuno essay where they introduce an antibody to your

(36:01):
urine and it reacts or doesn't react and turns it
a pretty color, a pretty bad color, right, Okay, farmer Ted. Um,

(36:34):
stand back up, let's abuse you some more. Although he
seems like he's enjoying it, he's a little he's a
little cooler now. He was petting that plant. I mean,
and I think they made up. So if you can
see his liver right here right there. Um, so farmer
Ted is going to eat some pot this time. Okay,
So what's going to happen. He's ingested pot orally one

(36:56):
way or another, whether cooked in a brownie or just
eating the pot. And the body is going to take
this and break it down, metabolize it and send it
to the liver. And when this happens, it's going to
the th HC is going to hit the bloodstream in
this stomach anyway, so he's gonna get some sort of
buzz or whatever. But in the liver he's going to

(37:18):
metabolize it into another psychoactive chemical that isn't really present
when you smoke it, so it doesn't it's the effects
aren't quite as pronounced, but they last longer. And there's
an additional weirdo thing to it. Well, it's gonna take longer,
but lasts longer, and um, the effects of it, yeah exactly, Yeah,
But there's also the extra psychoactive chemical that's produced in

(37:41):
the liver that's not really produced when you smoke it. Yeah,
and that weird. It is weird, and it's also the
reason why um, new young travelers to Amsterdam, you know,
I want to try their first pot brownie. They don't
think it's working. Then they try another one. And this
is the ones you see like sitting alongside the canal,

(38:01):
like rocking themselves. Yes, because it takes a little while.
It does when you when you ingested via smoke, it's
almost instantaneous. When you ingest it by eating it, it's
going to take a lot longer, that's right. So, UM,
I guess we should talk a little bit about whether
or not it's addictive, because that's another raging debate for

(38:22):
years and years. How addictive is pot? Uh? There are
all kinds of studies that contradict one another, and UM,
I think it's one of these things that probably comes
down to the person somewhat if you have that addictive personality.
But they do see effects of pot cessation, um, irritability, anxiety, depression,

(38:43):
maybe sleeplessness and insomnia, restlessness, And that's if you quit
the pot after having been a user, and it's you know,
psychologically addictive. Like any drug, you're gonna crave it if
you want it. Sure apparently, UM, it can have an
impact on your levels of anxiety, Like you might not
feel anxious when your stone, but you could feel anxious

(39:05):
when you're not stoned, so you get stone more often,
which while not necessarily a classic addiction because the addiction
model follows the strictly the limbic system and I think
activates it somewhat, but it's not really acting specifically on
that is acting more on the endocannabinoid system, right, So
indirectly it might be hitting the limbic system, but it's

(39:25):
not following that classic addiction route. But at the very least,
that's habitual. If you need to smoke something to get
back to normal, that's a habit and a bad one
because you have a crutch there. Yeah, unless you're Willie
Nelson and then you're just like, what's the problem? You
just keep smoking it? Um really know that? What are

(39:47):
some Uh? Well, I guess we can talk about some
of the medicinal uses. UM. We did talk about cancer
and AIDS patients to stimulate appetite. UM. The old glaucoma card.
It is a big one to play. Yeah, if you're
applying for your medical marijuana card, it relieves I pressure.
I couldn't find how it does that. Yeah, but it's

(40:08):
been that's one of the earliest uses of Hell. You remember,
remember when all this first started to hit California past
u UM legal medicinal marijuana. It was almost all glaucoma
at the time, in which it seems like everybody was like,
you are so facant glaucoma, you need pop for glaucoma.
And then it just became more and more established as

(40:30):
fact became associated with helping more and more maladies. And
of course if you go to get your card and
you go to the dispensary, they have a long list
of things that it can help, right, basically anything you
can think of they will they will put on their list.
As long as you have a prescription card. I think
they're cool with that. Well, no, that's to get the card.

(40:52):
Oh like the you know the Yeah that's what new
doctor wears Birkenstocks. Yeah, you can probably get a medicinal
marijuana car from him, but don't see him for anything else. Um.
It can help with epileptic seizures. In fact, here in
Georgia that's been on the table due to a famous

(41:13):
story of a boy here in Georgia who whose seizures
were like massively cut down by taking a marijuana oil
which has no THHC, like the kids not getting high.
Basically it doesn't have psychoactive properties. When Georgia is believe
it or not, trying to speed through. I know it
didn't go through initially a few weeks ago, just because

(41:36):
I think they didn't have time to get it through.
But there seems to be support for it. But just
for yeah, just for the marijuana oil though not uh
like dispensaries or anything like that. Yeah, well, I mean
it could be the beginning of it, or it could
be a sea change in how in Georgia states, you know,
legalized marijuana. I'd be surprised. Well, but I'm wondering if

(41:57):
it's a change like, Okay, this medicinal marijuana oil works,
We'll just we can legalize that and that's it and
it'll be like the model for other states or oh,
I see what you mean. Uh and then MS multiple
sclerosis UM decreases muscle spasms, And I've seen this firsthand
with a good friend. It really helps him out. And
Montell Williams is uh famously come out as an MS

(42:19):
sufferer who is a longtime advocate for using marijuana. Well,
it makes sense again. I mean, if you're having muscle spasms,
perhaps your endocannabinoid system is not functioning correctly and the
THHC goes in and actually supplements it, you know. And
also I remember I said that fights cancer. Yeah, if
you're going to cancer dot GOVN type cannabis and medicinal cannabis,

(42:40):
I think it brings up basically a laundry list of
all of the ways that marijuana helps. And it's been
found to fight to destroy cancer cells, like th HC
goes in and destroys cancer cells in the liver. Apparently
it's been shown to destroy cancer breast cancer cells like
not helps you feel better when you have cancer, can

(43:02):
actually cure cancer in some cases. Um it was a
carcinoma in the liver that it was shown to be
able to cure. It's definitely worth checking out too. That's awesome.
And it also alleviates pain and um uh inflammation associated
with um injury or disease. The way it does that
is what the other cannabinoid receptors. The CB two receptors

(43:25):
in the body are related to the um immune system,
so it goes in and messes with those and says, hey,
everybody calmed down, let's stop being so inflamed. Well that's uh, yeah,
I guess that's why it's prescribed a lot for um
arthritic conditions these days. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, rhuman
TOID arthritis and that's called Yeah. I don't know what
the what the differences between rheuma TOID and regular arthritis.

(43:49):
We should do one on arthritis, how about that? Um
it is still despite all the medical research, it is
still scheduled as a UM or classified as a Schedule
one substance, which is uh the most dangerous drugs that
currently have no accepted medical use and a high potential
for abuse. And there have been many pushes over the

(44:10):
years to get it reclassified uh and not in the
same group as heroin and cocaine and ecstasy, but um
that has not been successful as of yet, but I
think that will probably happen at some point soon. It
seems like it's going that way. But supposedly around the
time normal was found in the National Organization for the

(44:30):
re legalization of marijuana legislation is I'm pretty sure it's
quite a mouthful. Every festivals used to have in Piedmont
Park in the nineties, the normal rally hashbash. Yeah, I
saw the Black Crows there once. It was great, right,
um so, but yeah, normal was found in the seventies
at a time when it looked like, I mean, Carter

(44:51):
was president, Willie Nelson had smoked to join on the
White House roof, like it was the time for you know,
hot to be decrimin realized, and everybody thought like, it's
gonna happen. It's happening, it's happening, and apparently nope, it
didn't happen. They pulled back from the brink. So it's
entirely possible that what looks right now to be the
wind of change that is very much sweeping through the country.

(45:14):
It could could be stopped, baffled, I guess. So it's
the the fat Lady has not sung yet. Well, I
think the first step toward a federal and the difference
here is, you know, federal laws versus state laws. It's
still federally not accepted, but in states like of course
Colorado and Washington, and then how many states have medical

(45:35):
like eleven. Okay, Um, if anything's gonna happen federally, it's
got to be reclassified away from Schedule one first. Uh
So until that happens, you're probably not gonna see any
um federal laws enacted or repealed. And we should say
the mood of the country right now is about split
a little bit in favor toward um pot pro pot.

(46:00):
So like in Washington and Colorado, both votes were like
fifty four, fifty five, forty three, something like that. And
then a CBS poll from two thousand fourteen, I think
in January found about the same of Americans favor legalizing
pot um opposed to like, I think forty four. Yeah,

(46:23):
so it's it's clearly moved out of you know, just
the hippie stoners at the normal rally and two people
supporting that kind of legislation that don't even use marijuana
because there is a groundswell of support that hey, uh,
it's not a schedule wonder, it's not a Schedule one drug.
Alcohol is more destructive to uh, to your life and

(46:47):
your body. And why are you gonna outlaw this plant
uh and put people in prison with a war on
pot that isn't working. It's like wasting money, whereas we
can attack sit and raise money. So there's uh, there's
been a big title shift in the past decade, really
in the past twenty years, but in the past ten.

(47:10):
Like if you had asked me ten years ago if
there would be recreational use allowed in any state, I
would have said probably not. But here we are with
Washington and Colorado. Here we are like where you can
grow it, you can buy it and have it. I
don't know how much, but I think you're allowed to
have a certain small amount, right, Yeah, Like you can't
drive around to ten pounds in your trunk or anything.

(47:30):
I don't know how much you can um, but it's
it's definitely more than just like a small amount, but
you um and you can just literally go to the
store and buy pot. There's actually an awesome New Yorker
article called buzz Kill from late last year, and it's
about this economist that Washington State hired to basically create

(47:51):
the framework for their legal pot industry. Like the economic model. Yeah,
and like on a on a macro economic level and
a microeconomic level, it's like we're whether you like it
or not, you're going to be competing with dealers still,
and so you want to make your tax money, but
you don't want to make so much that you price
yourself out of the market and the black market stays open.

(48:11):
You want to get rid of the black market by
basically competing against them, competing amount of business. And there's
this all these different factors that this guy like was
kind of laying out, and it was really interesting. Buzz kill.
I have to check that out. Yeah, all right. There's

(48:49):
a debate that I don't quite understand about the potency
of marijuana in like the sixties and seventies versus today.
The debate is that that pot is much more potent
than it was in the sixties and seventies. And first
of all, they didn't they didn't test a wide variety
of marijuana strains in the sixties and seventies, right, it
was like stems and seeds Mexican like. Yeah, So that's

(49:11):
the only way you can tell a true test of
potency is to study a wide variety. They didn't. They
never did that. They didn't test the mauie wawie. They
never did that in the sixties seventies. And you can't
go back in a time machine. So what's the point
in debating it. The pot today is is how it is.
It is, And basically, what the best you could hope
to do is like have Dennis Hopper smokes some pot

(49:31):
and be like huh, and he can be like dead.
Hopper is dead, dude, since when Yeah, I just saw
him on like an insurance commercial he got years ago.
I didn't know that. Yeah, that's sad. It is sad. Sorry,
a state of Dennis Hopper. Um get Willie Nelson though.
Peter Fonda, Yeah he's alive, Okay, So you just have

(49:53):
Peter Fonda tell you. He can tell you. There's plenty
of people who could say the point is that is
largely irrelevant because we're not dealing with creating pot policy
based on the nineteen sixties. We're dealing with pot policy today.
And we know very clearly that pot is more potent
today than it was even a couple of decades ago.

(50:15):
And we know that in part because of something called
the University of Mississippi Potency Monitoring Project. Basically, they get
their hands on seized pot that the cops get their
hands on, they send some of it to Mississippi, and
Mississippi tests it for potency, and they said that between
two thousand and eight, the UM average, the average amount

(50:36):
of th HC across all samples rose from three point
four percent to eight point eight percent from two eight
and it's going up, up, up, apparently now with the
rise of dispensaries and the UM openly shared knowledge of
how to cultivate pot and do you know what you
want to genetically select for? It's up to a quarter

(50:59):
like twenty five percent supposedly, And I didn't see that
figure disputed th HC content. That's insane. That's that will
drive you and say, I can't imagine that if if
the average is eight point eight or was three point
four and is now up to that's potent and that's

(51:24):
I guess for the top of the line most expensive
pot you can buy. Yeah, but I predict that there's
going to be like kind of retro vintage push back,
not necessarily that, but something that's like way more toned down,
or it'll be like marketed to people who like don't
want like that level of high I guess like seventies weed. Yeah,

(51:48):
like all they have to do to market at green
leisure suit or something like that. Boom success. Although I
don't know if anybody would want to go back to
the seventies because I think it really was very potency
comparatively speaking. Yeah, all right, should we cover some of
the ways that it's smoked. Well, I already covered, um,

(52:08):
the joint, right, yes, that's what slim hand. Slim had
the joint. Um. I do know that slim happens to
prefer the blunt. Oh yeah, and that is a cigar
uh that is sliced open and U tobacco is taken
out and generally mixed back in with some of the
pot and it's um was there, right, it's called a blunt.

(52:29):
I didn't know that the tobacco is ever mixed back in.
It depends on I mean, you don't have to. Like
a spliff is popular in Europe, and that's with regular tobacco,
uh like drum yeah whatever, just any kind of loose
leaf tobacco mixed in with with the pot. Yeah. I
think the blunt's usually they take most of the cigar
tobacco out. I think you're probably right, and then you
don't even need to buy a cigar. Now they have

(52:50):
blunt wrappers like basically cigar rolling papers. Oh really Yeah,
And flavored ones too. Yeah, I've heard of those. Interesting man. Uh,
you can have your just traditional pipe. If you go
into any head shop, you're gonna find a big variety
of all sorts of handmade glass pipes. Or remember the
brass ones with the the little kind of tied eye

(53:13):
plastic thing in the middle for holding because the brass
would get so hot apparently remember that? Do you remember
that from the nineties, Like, did you go to Lalla Palouza. Yeah,
I went to Lallapaluza. Well then you saw those things.
I remember the first time I smell pot It was
at a concert and uh, he was like and it
was such a foreign I think I've talked about this

(53:33):
on the show. I was just like, what in the
world is that. It's like, I've never smelled anything like
that in my life. It's like someone burning a spare
tire or something. Uh. And then you've got the the
bong the or water pipes and uh that uses water
to uh to I guess cool down the smoke. And
I remember that from the Scott Bayo After school special

(53:56):
Stone Did you ever see that one? No? I saw
Zapped that was a regular movie, but he was growing
pot in that one he wasn't, so we're going to
it's school. Yeah, And Stone was one of the classic
capture school specials where he was a pothead that like
ended up accidentally killing his brother or something like he
went swimming and knocked him on the head with the
oar of a boat, but he may not have died,

(54:16):
though he may have rescued him. So the after school
special that I remember most vividly is the one where
Helen Hunt took PCP oh yeah and jumped out the
window like the second story over school. I mean, they
scared the pants off of us, which is the point
Nancy Reagan was like off on the set, like, but
I remember hearing the bong he smoked out of the
bong Scott bo did, and I heard that the bubbling sound,

(54:38):
and I was like, well, that's a weird sound. And
then you heard it on the Cypress Hill album years later,
and like hey Scott beyo. And then of course we've
talked about the edibles um and vaporizing, which is like
all the rage these days. Yeah, And I imagine it
just hit me the other day. I'll bet everyone who
smokes pot uses East cigarettes as like little vaporizer one hitters,

(55:01):
don't they? Uh, some do, I would imagine. So Yeah.
In fact, you can buy like pre made cartridges of
like hash oil and things to stick in your little cigarette.
I know they saw those in Colorado stick that in
your East cigarettes. But we should point out, we say
kids these days and teenagers. Um. Although marijuana use and

(55:22):
teenagers has escalated over the years, you can't pin it
down to one demographic. Um. I think you would be
surprised if everybody who smoked pot on a semi regular
basis was outed about. Who you would see. Um. I've
heard stories from friends whose fathers were like CEO executives,

(55:44):
and they had cannabis clubs where all the other CEOs
that they were friends with like grew their own specialty
pot and traded it among each other. So a wide
range of people, UH use it, although the vast majority supposedly,
I don't know, a fast majority. It's right. Although according
to polls or surveys, the vast majority are teenagers, followed

(56:07):
by post teens. Yeah, but in between nine and marijuana
used among teenagers doubled. And you know what, I lay
that almost exclusively, at least at first at the feet
of Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg. I think so, I'm

(56:27):
I put it out there. Yes, with the Chronic absolutely, Yeah,
that was a great album. Yeah, I listen. I can
when I hear that album, I think of street Fighter two?
Did you play a lot of that? Then? We least
we would sit around in college listen to the Chronic
and play street Fighter two. Yeah, it was a good album.
It was a great game. I never really played street Fighter.

(56:48):
They were really good. Uh So I found a study here. Um,
I have to interject one another thing. Um, have you
seen the YouTube of Mike Tyson clips set to street
Fighter sound effects? It's pretty awesome from his one man
show or No No, from his boxing career. It fits
like perfectly. He's like, shy are you getting? At one point?

(57:09):
I'll have to see that. Uh So, if you're smoking pot,
it's obviously not going to be great for your lungs
in your body because you're inhaling smoke. And like we
said earlier, there's they're thirty three cancer causing chemicals in marijuana,
and it's gonna deposit tar into your lungs just like cigarettes.
Uh And in fact, if you smoke equal amounts of

(57:30):
marijuana and regular tobacco, it's gonna deposit about four times
as much tar as regular tobacco. What's called the tar burden,
is it? Uh? However, there was a large scale long
term study UM released recently UM by the University of
Alabama at Birmingham, and they collected data from five thousand

(57:52):
adults for more than twenty years, which these are always
my favorite studies, you know, because you can tell stuff
long term. Uh. And they found that low to moderate
use of pot is less harmful to your lungs than
exposure to tobacco, and I think it's Uh. They measured
airflow rate, which is the speed which you can blow
out air, and then lung volume, which is the amount

(58:12):
of air you can hold UM in your lungs, and
they found that with tobacco there's a one to one relationship.
The more you lose, the more loss you have lung wise,
and with marijuana, up to a certain rate, it actually
increased the airflow rate and UM. Their rationale was that
a cigarette smoker, like a moderate to heavy smoke or

(58:35):
smoking like you know, twenty cigarettes a day, whereas no
one's going out there and smoking you know, well that's
not true twenty today, Yeah, but it would be probably
less than that because it's more concentrated. But you don't
see people smoking five joints a day either, unless they
have they're they're Willie Nelson, Snoop Dog. I'm sorry, snoop Lin.
Is he still on Snoop line? I think so? Um.

(58:58):
I could see how pot would have an effect on
your lungs though as well, especially compared to cigarettes, because
like no one uses a filter on their joints. Well yeah,
and they you inhale deeper with marijuana than you do
with tobacco. So those are both factors. But if you're
smoking a pack of day and you're smoking a lot
of weed, you're not doing yourself any favors in the

(59:18):
long department. Yes, even though it might help you fight
that cancer, it may give you cancer to begin with. Yeah,
just use some non psychoactive uh marijuana oil like they
give that little kid, Yeah, or marian all although that's psychoactive,
uh is it? It's a THHC pill, remember, like wasting

(59:38):
disease and um to increase appetite and that kind of stuff.
Just a mess with the endoconebinoid system of people who
need it. That's right, You got anything else. No, I
mean this could have been a two parter, but well,
this is a good, good overview, I think it is.
I hope everybody enjoyed it. Yeah, you learned a little something.
Anything else, nope. Uh. If you want to learn more

(59:59):
about arijuana a k A. Cannabis, type either of those
words into the search bar how stuff works dot com
and uh, let's see. Since we said uh, search bar,
it means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call
this Australian smoke jumper. Hey guys, just thought i'd write

(01:00:19):
to let you know how you've influenced a major change
in my life a couple of years ago. Now you
did a podcast on wildfires. Already had a strong interest
in firefighting, but never heard of the things like smoke
jumpers or some of the science involved. Uh. Since I
joined the Rural Fire Service UM last year as a volunteer,
and last week I completed my first full bush fire

(01:00:41):
fighter accreditation, it's been a great change and it's inspired
me to get fitter and more active with my community.
I'm now working towards getting fit and fast enough to
be a smoke jumper, which we call our a f
T units in Australia Remote Area Fire Task Force. So
thanks guys for giving me the inspi ration and drive
to get out there and challenge myself. I could imagine

(01:01:02):
do anything else in my spare time. Now has always
loved the show. You keep me mildly distracted through my
slow days at work, and that is Andrew from Australia. Nice.
Thanks a lot, Andrew, congratulations. Yeah, keep it up, but
it's pretty cool work, agreed. Be safe out there. If
you want to let us know about any life achievements
or successes that you'd like to celebrate by sharing them

(01:01:24):
with us, we want to hear about them. We are
all over social media. You can find us on Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.
Just search Stuff you Should Know, s Y, s K, Josh,
and Chuck in your favorite browser and it should bring
one or all of them up right. Yeah, and go
hang out at the coolest place on the entire web.
That is Stuff you Should Know dot com for more

(01:01:58):
on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how
stuff works? Dot Com? M hmm.