September 6, 2018 • 46 mins
What started out as an egg timer at a London pub became a furnishing for bachelor pads before it took its rightful place as the most recognizable icon of psychedelia. The lava lamp became popular with people on LSD not once, but twice, decades apart.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should Know from house stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there. Lights
are turned down here. We got our croovy pad going
(00:24):
super swinging style. Why I couldn't get square? Could I
couldn't get more squares? That what you're saying? Square? Square? Yeah? Square?
Well could I answer my question? Uh, you're not square?
I bet you got a lava lamp in your house.
I don't. Actually I never have, really never have had
(00:46):
one of you. I've I would love one. I think
I had one. I think we had one in college
and one of our houses. I doubt very seriously it
was a uh trademark original lava lamp. Lava lamp. Yeah,
but um it was probably a knockoff because I don't
think it worked great. There's a lot of knockoffs from
those you can get little cheapis now that there's no
(01:06):
good right you want the real one? Yeah? And I
think if for no other reason than to support the original,
the o G stuff handmade in the UK. Yeah, still, yeah,
you believe that I do. Actually that's great based on
on the woman who owns it now. She seems like
the type who would just be like sticking to it. Yep.
I could make way more money, but I'm not going
(01:28):
to because it's the way it should be done. That
is how it started. I'm staying with tradition. That's how
she does it. So we're talking about lavelmps and actually, Chuck,
can you just give me a second here before we
get started? Can I give a little plug? Okay? So, um,
as you know, but I want to share with everybody else.
On October eight, I will be doing a live show
(01:52):
on existential risks. It's called Existential Risks or How I
Learned to Start worrying and Love Humanity. It's pretty great show. Um,
there's slides involved, there's um doom and gloom, maybe a
little bit of optimism. Who knows, there's some humor mixed in.
It's gonna be a pretty good show. Um. I did
(02:12):
a similar show at the Bellhouse a couple of years back.
This is a totally brand new show, so even if
you saw it then this will be new to you.
But it's October eight at the Bellhouse and if you
happen to want to go, Tickets are available at the
Bellhouse ny dot Com. Dude, I would be there with
Bells on. I will list you, but I'll be in California.
(02:34):
Well I'm gonna list you anyway. Yeah. Like, uh, former
Falcons coach Jerry Glanville used to leave tickets for Elvis
at every Falcons game. That's smart, it's stupid because those
are two tickets. It could have gone to me. Oh
that's a good point, just dumb. Oh hey did you
uh are you gonna be on the radio for the Chiefs?
Do you know you turn it down? I kept forgetting
(02:55):
to respond. I was out of town, so it already
came and went. Yeah. It was just for those of
you wondering why we're just talking and chit chatting. Uh,
And I wish I had his name? Can you find it?
The some of the guys from the voice of the
Kansas City Chiefs radio that they played a preseason game
against the Falcons this last Friday in Atlanta and invited
(03:17):
us to be on the field and in the booth.
And I was out of town for my niece's wedding.
Congratulations Shelby and Dan. Oh hey yeah, congrats and uh
it was two family weddings, two out of town family
wedding weekends in a row. So congratulations also to Alex
and Catherine, Alex's Emily's cousin. Okay, so we went to Columbus, Ohio,
(03:40):
and then Jacksonville, North Carolina. Lucky went to these weddings,
and uh, I was not able to go to the
Falcons game. Well that's quite a sacrifice because a guy
named Dan Israel Dan Dan invited us to hang out
in the broadcast for the preseason game between the Falcons,
and it should have been so all over that and
I presumed to help call the game something. Oh yeah,
(04:02):
I would guess. I'm pretty sure he would have put
us on. Well I told him at email them back
said thanks, but if you ever come back, let me
know do it. I just remembered I got to respond
to him and say thanks, can I come? I just
needed fire up the way back machine. So so that's
a lot of chit chat. Yeah, if you don't like
our sides and tangents and stuff, I'll bet you hate
(04:24):
this episode already. But the net net of all that
is I'm doing a live show. If done a live show,
the net net of all that is that we're about
to talk lava lamps. Dude, that's the net Net corporate goon.
This was I think you've wanted to do this one
for a bit, right, No, No, okay, I just made
that up then, no I I Um, I was like
(04:46):
trying to come up with an episode idea. Sometimes it's
harder than others. I don't know if you've noticed he's
getting tougher, but um, the world's getting smaller. I remembered
we did that one on food fads. I was like,
that was an interesting episode. Let me go see if
I can find another fat and one of them that
came up with this pet Rocks article about laval app
(05:07):
maybe we should do pet Rocks one day. So I
was like, all right, let me see if this is
any good and it was okay, But then I found
an article by Zachary Crockett on prisonomics, which is one
of the better websites of all time. Zachary Crockett is
one of the better like nonfiction magazine writers of all time.
Agreed on the web and um, this article the lava
(05:29):
imp just Won't Quit really kind of gave a boost
to the stuff on how stuff works. Yeah, so let's
go back in time. Let's hop in the old way
Back Machine. Well, and speaking of we actually have way
Back Machine T shirts now, I know in our t
public dot com store. Yeah, I got a bunch of
(05:49):
different merch now. Alright, but we're on our own version
of the way Back Machine, which is better than what's
on that T shirt. Okay, And we're going back to
in the County of Dorset in England, and a little
boy named Edward Craven Walker is born. He would grow
up and we follow him in the way Back Machine
(06:11):
as he's growing. He eventually becomes an r AF pilot
in World War Two. Looks like everything's going normal and smoothly. Yeah.
He he actually flew recon missions, photographic missions where they
would you know, go up in planes and take pictures
of what the enemy is doing. And uh. He eventually
the war ended, and after the war he said, I'm
(06:32):
gonna go live in this little trailer in London behind
a pub and build us uh travel agency. Yeah. He
actually created a home swapping program like Airbnb. This is
in like the fifties. Interesting. Yeah, he's pretty ahead of
his time. He was in a lot of ways. It
seemed like, so again, everything's going pretty normally, right, Yeah,
(06:53):
he's just he's just travel agent ing and doing quite
well at it, I think. And uh, he goes to
the southern coast of France and what this author calls
a life changing trip. Uh, and he comes back a
nudist filmmaker, underwater nudist filmmaker. I think he did drugs
down there. What do you think what that means? I
(07:14):
just think he took his clothes off for the first
time ever and was like, I had never really noticed
the breeze before. This is nice. You think it just
feels like drugs were involved. It's possible, but he seemed
to not really think too highly of drugs, so I
think it was more just like act. You're probably right.
He became a nudist, is what it was. Yeah, I
think you're right. So he took his clothes off for
(07:36):
the first time. He was a never nude before that.
And uh. In nineteen sixty he actually, under a pseudonym,
made a movie called Traveling Light. It was a short
film with a naked lady performing underwater ballet that, believe
it or not, did okay in London had a six
month run. When's the Last Movie You Knew? Had a
six month run at a major theater in London. Titanic,
(07:58):
maybe it was Luck. Probably Avatar is the last one,
but probably so so. That was actually Chuck part of
a trilogy Tatanic, No we Traveling Light? Oh what were
the other two? Sun Swept? Because I was trying to
get information. I was trying to watch it and I
couldn't find anything. I'll bet you were Um, I know
I couldn't find it either, but I found some mention
(08:20):
of it and I saw the movie poster forward or whatever. Um,
but it was. It was I think preceded by a
movie called eaves On skis New to Skiing Trip. Sun
Swept sounded like what what this is describing as um
traveling Light? And then Traveling Light was actually I think
the second of the three. It's actually a sweet little
(08:42):
trilogy pre porn, time and humanity when like, yeah, like, hey,
here's just a naked person skiing as titilating as we get.
I've seen it referred to as new to propaganda films,
which is basically like, look, this is like this is
the life I went to the South of France. Now
you can too, and it's certainly not pre porn. I
(09:03):
was kidding about that. We should do an episode on pornography.
I was gonna say, we've done one on nudism New
Beaches at least. Yeah, we should do one I porn.
That'd be good. We should that. That could be a
two parter. That's maybe even like three or four, Yeah,
maybe five or six. Yeah, alright, I'm a rusty porn
(09:27):
you should know. So. Um, here's the thing about Edwin
Craven Walkers film um film career. Yes, he he was
very successful at it. He became something of a legend,
and he invested his money in building a nudist camp. Yeah,
He's like, I got all this dough and here's what
(09:49):
I want to do with it. So I'm sure a
few of you are like, hose about lava lamps. Chill
out now we've reached the part where the lava lamps coming,
that's right, and lava apps come in one day. And
I think the mid fifties where um Edward Craven Walker
and I believe it's hyphenated. Actually craven Walker is his
last name. Oh is that the deal? And he's hanging
(10:12):
out in a pub called the Queen's Head. The Queen's
Head that's a new forest in the southwest of London
and he's sitting at a bar ordering a beer pint
and um, he notices on the bar along with the
liquor bottles, there's a cocktail shaker. But there's weird bubbles
floating around in it. Yeah, glass one too, not like
(10:34):
a steel one. Right, And there's actually you can see
pictures of it on the matha most site. Oh really
the original thing? Wow? Yeah. Yeah. So he's sitting there
about to drink, like you said, and it's got water
and oil and there's a little camp stove underneath it
heating it and uh it, you know, it looks like
a little what would become a lava lamp. It's got
(10:56):
the oils and little blobs and it's floating around. It's
the thing. It we all recognize now. But when this
dude sees it back then and no one had ever
seen anything like this, he was like, wow, what what
is that? Right? And the bartender was like, that's an
egg timer. Yeah, kind of a weird answer, but that's weird.
(11:16):
I mean, that's what That's what the lava lamp started
out as, is an egg timer. There was a guy
named Great Trivia Question. It is a guy named Alfred Dunnett,
who was a regular at the Queen's Head in New Forest,
Um had built this thing where it was this glass
cocktail shaker on a camp stove, just a little tiny
camp stove, Um, and he put oil in the water
(11:40):
and when the oil rose to the top, by the
time it took the heat up and rise to the top,
it meant that your egg was fully hard boiled. It
was an egg timer. But Edward craven Walker saw this
and said, no, no, no, this is way more than
an egg timer. This is the most mesmerizing thing I've
ever seen. And so he did it right. He found
(12:00):
out that Alfred Unnat had passed away, but apparently he
had a patent on the same timer. So Edward craven
Walker went to to Um, the widow of Alfred Dunnet,
and said, hey, how about you saw me this patent
the history of bad deals. But here's the thing. You
go ahead and I'm going to retort. Well, I mean
(12:22):
I might even retort for you, because when you look
at the history of business and bad deals. He got
this patent for less than twenty pounds. But at the
same time, Dunnett's widow was probably like what in the world.
Why would anyone ever care about this? Right, it's just
sitting there. And not only that, this guy doesn't want
(12:42):
to make an egg timer. He wants to make something
bigger out of this thing. So he actually rescued a
patent from obscurity and improved on it. And by the way,
West Egg doesn't convert for pounds and strictly USD. But
there's a site called I am kate which does um
inflation calculation for pounds. Oh interesting, So twenty pounds according
(13:06):
to I am kate says, it would be about seven
three pounds today, which is about a thousand dollars roughly.
So that's not bad. Yeah, here's a thousand bucks that
you were totally not expecting for something you were never
going to do anything with. I'm going to take it
and presented to the world. Yeah. So he gets a
(13:28):
bottle um. It's called Treetop Orange Squash. It was a
drink that he used to drink as a kid and
stud I think, so, I don't think it has this
original shape, but the shape of that bottle more or
less is sort of what the shape of the glass
of the any lava lamp that you see today. Looks
like yeah, you look at it and you're like, oh, yeah,
of course that would be the prototype. And so he
(13:50):
gets a thing. He gets a couple of liquids. It
is not oil and water like I probably thought before
I researched this. It is water and why acts and
they are what's known and we'll get into the science
in a minute. But mutually insoluble, meaning uh that they
don't dissolve into one another like oil and water. And
he adds a few other little chemicals here and there,
(14:13):
and it got a little light bulb, screwed it into
a base and kind of hooked it all up and
bought a being bought a boom. The astro lamp, the
astro lamp, as he called it, was born. Yeah, there
was an astro light astro lamp. Okay, the astro lamp.
That's another trivia question for you. The original name of
(14:33):
the lava lamp was the astro lamp. Should we take
a break, I think so. All right, we'll be back
right after this and talk about science. All right, Chuck, science,
(15:10):
We're gonna talk science because there's actually some physics behind
the lava lamp, and we're going to explain it because
it's actually understandable. Yeah, who was the guy who wrote
this again, Zachary Crockett. But this is a how stuff
works article that explains the physics. Oh the inside the
lamp part, because I thought that was kind of cute. Actually,
the bullet points for that are. The things that you
(15:31):
need are a compound that makes up floating blobs blobs
and quotes, a compound that the blob floats in. There
wasn't in quotes that time, and then a lamp that
illuminates the display and provides the necessary heat to move
the blobs again no quotes. Yeah, that's it though, But
that's what, Yeah, what you need. But we're gonna talk
about more science as far as mutually insoluble liquids go. Right,
(15:54):
because it sounds really easy, right, You got your blobs,
you got your liquid, the blobs floating, you got your
light to heat the whole thing up. Easy peasy. It's
actually really hard because what you're walking is a very
fine line between something that will work as a lava
lamp and something that will just not work at all
and look like a lava lamp gone bad, right, exactly. Um,
(16:17):
So you've got you've got admissible compounds compounds that don't
um dissolve into one another, but you need to have them.
They need to have pretty similar densities, not exactly the
same because then it won't work, but not too different
either because then that won't work either. And you'll understand
(16:38):
why in a second. They need to be fairly close.
And so the reason why UM Edward Edward Craven Walker
used wax and water is because water plane old fresh
water has a density of one point Oh, it's basically
the set point for densities. Paraffin Wax has a density
of point eight, which means that it's slightly less dense
(16:58):
than water, but right very close. So if you heat
up UH something, it tends to expand right correct. When
it expands, it becomes less dense, which means that something
that was more dense before will be less dense, meaning
that if it's in some other liquid that's denser, this
(17:19):
less dense thing will float to the top. Yeah. If
it's less dense, it rises. If it's more dense, it
will fall. Uh. And that's why you know, if you
want to change this density and then make these molecules
UH spread out. One of the things you can do,
especially in the case of a lava lamp, is to
heat it up. That's the point of that bulb at
(17:41):
the bottom of the lava lamp. Yeah, because if you
see lava lamp, it's not turned on. You just see
the blob at the bottom and the fluid. It's not water,
of course, uh, sitting at the top, and they're separated,
but they're just sitting on top of one another. Right,
And it actually is water. Oh is it really? I
thought it was something else too, the some other some
(18:02):
other stuff, but the liquid that the blobs are in
is mostly water. Yeah. So here's the thing. When you
turn on the lava lamp. You turn that that heat
that you start the heat of the light bulb, and
that wax begins to warm up and it liquefies. And
as it liquefies, it becomes less dense, and things get
really exciting at that point, right, And then it starts
(18:24):
to flow to the top. Right, You're like, all right,
things are happening. It actually forms what are called stalagtites. Yeah,
and everyone's like you feeling it yet, right, right? And
as it starts to form stealactites, they eventually the tops
of them break off and it floats up to the
top and you're like, I'm definitely feeling it. And then um,
(18:45):
as it gets to the top of the lamp, it's
far enough away from the heat source that it starts
to cool down, and so it sinks again to the bottom,
and as it does, it passes another globe that's on
the way to the top, and when it reaches the bottom,
the whole process starts over again, and that wax glob
gets reheated, and it goes back up and it passes
(19:05):
on the way up the glob that it just passed
coming back down, and that's a lava lamp. And it's
again it sounds simple, but to get the wax density
and the water density just right, you have to add
some other ingredients. And so, going back to the original
prototype that was created by Edward Craven Walker, it's really
(19:26):
impressive that this guy with zero chemistry training whatsoever, managed
to do this, ever, let alone, and just less than
a decade. Yeah, I mean, I imagine there was a
lot of trial and error trying to get that thing
just right. Because again, like I said, if I mean
you think it sounds easy to build one on your
own and prepared to be disappointed, and you can you
(19:48):
can make one with oil water food coloring and then
alca seltzer. It's called it's called a Yankee lava lamp.
It's terrible. But this is nothing like this, Yeah, because
what the whole point of a lava lamp is to
create this mood and to have these amorphous blobs separating
and floating around and rising and falling, and that's the
(20:10):
whole effect. You know. It wasn't meant to be a
lamp to give much light. It's to create mood and atmosphere.
And as we will see, we keep making little druggy jokes. Uh.
That was a big part of why they sold. But
we'll get to that in a minute. But you were
talking about the fact that it was impressive. Uh. It
says only five or six people actually know that this
(20:32):
exact formulas still that who worked for the real lava
lamp company, And there are plenty of knockoffs, but that original, uh,
that original lava lamp recipe is is not known by
many people, very closely guarded. Yeah. Even in Craven Walker's
original patent, it has the ingredients, but it doesn't say
(20:54):
in what quantities or anything like that. It's still a
trade secret to this day. Yeah. And you also he
figured you had to uh, there was a lot of
trial and error because he had to add the water
um very slowly apparently, or else it becomes what's known
as an emulsion, meaning it's just sort of mixed together. Yeah,
Like you can conceivably mix oil and water together, especially
(21:15):
if you have an emulsive fire, but you can also
do it by stirring it really really fast, and it'll
it'll mix together, and that's not what you want. You
want them to be separate from the first moment they
come in contact together in the lamp globe. Right, So
nine h three years I think it took him to
finally get the design right. He called it the astro lamp.
He built a little factory in his backyard and his
(21:39):
wife at the time, I think he's married four times,
but she was like, you know, he was the type
of guy that would finish this thing once he started it,
and he did, and originally he decided that it was
it fit really well in with this post World War
two British demand for very flamboyant, colorful home furnishings. Yeah,
(22:00):
He's like, this is nothing if not flamboyant and colorful.
The original Lava lamp was yellow liquid water and red
wax globs on a gold base. Great looking, groovy as
groovy gets right, Um, But he originally envisioned it is like,
this is something for a cool bachelor pad. If you
(22:22):
were a wealthy bachelor and you're looking to put something
that's very interesting and high end as a home furnishing,
try the Astro lamp. It was originally envisioned as a
high end home furnishing. Yeah. There there's this one great
ad that had a the scene of a bachelor pad
on a magazine page and the caption said, the perfect
(22:43):
gift for one's relatives, one's friends, and dash it all
oneself by three yeah, exactly, by three of them. So
this actually didn't work out very well for Craven Walker
because he and his wife were driving around in their
vein in going to places like Herod's and getting a
very chilly reception to these things. Apparently the Herod's buyer
(23:07):
thought the lamps were disgusting and ordered them taken away.
I don't know why. I can't imagine seeing them as disgusting.
Maybe there was like pubic care stuck to the outside
of or something that can make a lava lamp disgusting, right, well,
I imagined at the time, especially in stuffy old England. Uh,
this postwar transition wasn't uh met with open arms by everybody.
(23:28):
I'm sure the traditionalist thought it was disgusting, this blobby
thing floating around, especially with the pubic care. So um
Craven Walker, Uh, he was like, well, fine, I'm just
gonna create my own company and I'll market it myself.
So we formed crest Worth, which is the original company
that put out the astro lamp, which we know and
(23:49):
love is lava lamps. And I should say, there are
a lot of different names for lava lamps and it's
really tough to distinguish which one is actual trademarks. So
lava lamp seems to be a generic term, lava light,
it seems to be generic. But Lava all caps is
(24:10):
a trademark name for the American version. But there doesn't
seem to be a trademark name for the lava lamp,
the original one in England. They just call it a
lava lamp. I thought it was lava lamp was the
trademarked because not that I can see our dumb article
caused them motion lamps. Well that I thought that was
to avoid the generic term. Yeah, I thought they were
(24:33):
doing that to avoid saying lava lamp. No, that's so
like two thousand five how stuff works, Like call it
the generic term. You know, it's not kleenex, it's facial tissue.
You know, that's that's totally where why they call it that?
Oh goodness, you're so right. Alright, so these things aren't
selling to the rich and powerful. They did not see
(24:55):
his luxury at him. But then the nineteen sixties are
rolling along l st. He comes on the scene. Pink
Floyd is in the back room, the Yardbirds are upfront.
Sid Barrett is for freaking out. He's freaking out. And
this thing, really, the astro lamp really fit in uh
to this whole scene, Like he was just he was
(25:18):
miss marketing this thing from the beginning. He was. I
I think he didn't predict the sixties psychedelicy. He was
more into like the swinging Austin Powers bachelor stuff that
was pre psychedelic and moved into psychedelia. Um, but he
should thank his lucky stars, and I'm sure he did
more than once that the psychedelic thing happened. Because when
(25:40):
that happened and the hippies in London found out about
lava lamps, lava lamps took off, just shot off like
a rocket. And at first Edward Craven Walker was not
not entirely cool with this. I mean he was happy
to have the money and his lamp was finally a
six US, but he knew what people were buying these
(26:02):
four They were buying them so that they could take
acid and stare at him for eight hours, right, And
he actually had an ad where he said, if you
buy my lamp, you won't need drugs, which is l seven. Yeah,
because the ed should have read this goes great with drugs,
Like drugs, you're gonna love my lamp. Like that is
the level of dedication this guy should have had to LSD,
(26:25):
because LSD made him a very wealthy person. Like in
a very short amount of time. Should we take a break,
all right, we're gonna talk about how they hit America
right after this, all right, So they're taking off in England.
(27:06):
He takes these things to a trade show in Germany,
and a couple of dudes named Adolf Votheima and William
Rubinstein I'm pretty sure they didn't say their names like that.
They're from Chicago. Yeah, so they were just good Midwestern Germans.
And they said, I'm gonna I want to buy to
I want to buy the North American manufacturing rights. We're
(27:29):
gonna call it the Lava LIGHTE L I T E.
And we have our own drug culture that's starting to
boom over here. And I think he used to be
a big hit, and they were, and they got him
on TV, they got placement, they got him in Doctor
Who that was huge, got in The Avengers, uh not,
you know the old TV show The Avengers. Yeah, it
(27:49):
says here though it was on James Bond. And I
looked high and low for what they were talking about,
and I actually came across a post on the Internet
of all places by a m a guy who who
runs a website. Oh, Anthony Vaz runs a website. I
can't remember the name of it. I think maybe Lava
(28:12):
Love or something like that, but he was on there
saying I saw this in an article that it says
it was in a James Bond film. What James Bond
film are they talking about. I'm like a James Bond
like fan for him. They're like, no idea, Bud, And
if we don't know, it didn't happen. So I have
no idea what what James Bond film? It was in
the first giveaway to me that that's bogus is here's
(28:33):
the sentence. A red model debut in the nineteen seventy
I'm Sorry sixty eight episode of Dr Who. This is
followed by appearances in The Prisoner, The Avengers, and James Bond.
Talk about generic Remember the movie James Bond. We should
ask the great Mett Gorley does he know James Bond
at the Super Ego podcast? Yeah? Okay, he's an officient
(28:54):
not he hosts there you go tast called James Bonding.
There you go. I bet Gorley would now so on
that for him. Somebody's like, maybe that wouldy allan spoof
Casino Royal. But I couldn't find any mention of lava
lamps in that movie either, So who knows. But they
made some product placement, uh they were They were starting
to pop up all over the place, and apparently Edward
(29:17):
Craven Walker knew that he'd made it. His wife later
recounted when they found out that Ringo Starr had just
bought one in n I love it. He also might
know he made it by the fact that he sold
seven million of them annually by the end of the sixties.
Apparently he was so h eccentric that he would he
(29:40):
drove a fire truck. Yeah, he'd rid around in a
fire truck. Yeah. He also, um drove nothing if it
was a car, nothing but British made jaguars. Well, yeah,
nothing wrong with that. Sure, Um, well, it depends on
the year, because they had some pretty terrible jaguars for
a while. They're in the eighties. Uh so these uh,
(30:01):
like any fad would go away, and in the late seventies,
the lava lamp, I remember the lava lamps kind of
just worn't around that much anymore. By the time we
were kids, they didn't even have like kitchy appeal any longer.
They were just like like everyone became the Herod's buyer,
like these are disgusting, get them out of here. But
(30:21):
he was smart enough to know that fads come back around.
He did not shut down the business. He did not
just sell it off for pennies on the dollar. No,
he kept releasing new stuff. Yeah, nothing really took I
tried to find any like his other little inventions, but
I couldn't really get much. So nothing made the waves
that the astro lamp did. And by the late nineteen
(30:43):
eighties they declined to about a thousand lamps per year.
That is so few from seven million a year. Yeah,
I mean even you would think you'd get a thousand
like white elephant gift purchases, like, look, this is the
dumbest thing I could find. I mean, I guess that's
what they were, So a thousand year at that point.
And uh. Then a woman that we mentioned earlier name
(31:04):
Cressida Granger or Cressida Granger, she's twenty two years old,
ran an antique booth and saw these things were selling,
like the vintage ones. These use lava lamps. This is
back in I think, yeah, And so she was like,
these things are kind of selling. She got in touch
with the guy with Craven Walker and said, hey, I'd
like to buy your company, your partner with you and
(31:26):
crest Worth. If you're open to it. He said, fine,
meet me at this newdist camp and she went, all right,
keep your pants on and I'll do so. And by
all accounts, they were fully clothed and struck up a
deal where she would take over operations and managing as
managing director, and they had a deal in place and
(31:48):
a great deal for her where she could slowly buy
his company from him over time. Right, So, so think
about being twenty two and having that kind of like
get up and go. I love it that you're like,
I'm starting to sell some intage lava lamps. I'll go
see if I can buy the company. But then from
from Craven Walker's perspective, You're like, I'm down to selling
a thousand of easy year nothing trying. Yeah, if this
(32:10):
person wants to like like invest in the company, why not.
And so Crescitter Granger's timing could not have been better,
Like she was really prescient to notice that, like the
vintage lava lamps were selling, The reason the vintage lava
lamps were selling was because there was an acid revival
going on the same reason lava lamps sold the first
(32:34):
time around is the reason they sold the second time around.
Everybody discovered that they really really like LSD and Lava
lamps go really really well with LSD well, And not
only that, but that was with you know, the House
of Music and Ecstasy and Raves and uh, Austin Powers,
like that whole thing kind of came back. Well, Austin
(32:56):
Austin Powers was like a kind of a third wave. Yeah,
that was mid to late nineties. Yeah, like I think seven.
So she oversaw a revival of the Lava lamp, a
resurgence in it, and like I saw the manufacturing uptick
in it too in the late eighties early nineties, and
then managed to ride that wave through to the late
(33:18):
nineties when it ticked up even further because of Austin Powers,
and they started to sell so much crested. Granger says,
they sold more in the nineties than they did in
the sixties. That's amazing. Yeah, And she started the whole
thing at twenty two, going up to Edward Craven Walker
Insaine how about it partner, Yeah, and so uh in
nineteen one, the twenty year patent expired and Granger said that,
(33:44):
you know, no one realized this, thankfully, and so we
just kind of kept monopolizing the business and she slowly
bought it out over time, and I think by ninety
two she renamed the company Mathmas, which apparently was a
to of the cap to Barbarella of the film. Yeah,
that's there's like an energy bubble that it lives underneath
(34:05):
the city or something, and that's what it's called today
if you go to the website. Uh, she moved into
the manufacturing facilities. So she didn't say, hey, let's take
this state side or take it to China. She said,
we're gonna keep doing it right here Endorset. And like
you said at the beginning, that is still where these
things are made today by hand by British workers. Like
(34:31):
I think they said, how many of them can a
good worker making a day amazing filling these bottles by hand? Right?
So that's if you look at the mathmas Um lava
lamps and compare the price to when you just find
online like a knockoff um, which technically they're not a
knockoff because the patent wore off, but um still a knockoffs.
(34:52):
It's like eighty bucks compared to like fifteen or twenty
bucks for what looks to be the same thing. And
we're actually more like a hundred seven seven pounds. That's
how much Mathemas is now. Yeah, like their standard the
original classic lava lamp is seventy seven pounds. Got the
reason why they're that much more is because they're handmade
in the UK, just as they have been since the sixties.
(35:13):
I love it, man, it's pretty cool. And and she
said that there's a lot of pressure for her to
transfer production overseas where it's going to be way cheaper
and she can make way more money. And she's like, nope,
I'm keeping it here. Um, yeah, they're more expensive, and yeah,
we would sell more if they were cheaper, but I'm
just not doing it. If you haven't noticed someone rich woman, right,
I'm doing all right. I've been I've been pretty well
(35:34):
off since twenty two. I'm I've got all the acid
I can take. No, uh, all right, should we talk
about lava lamp tips? Well, I want to say. I
want to say one more thing. Um, another thing. That
another reason I think Kresso Granger is pretty awesome. She
kept Um Edward Craven Walker on as a consultant, yeah,
(35:57):
up until his death, even though she had full control
of the company. I think in whatever um and he
was done, she kept him on as a consultant until
he died. And it was two years later. But she
didn't no one who was going to die unless she
poisoned him with a lot of acid or something. She
probably didn't do that, but I thought that was a
(36:18):
pretty a mark in her favorite for sure, that she
kept the guy on the original Creator the second Creator
on as a consultant. I'd like to meet her one day. So, yeah,
I think we should give some Lava lamp tips because frankly,
if I were out there listening and this happened to
me during research, hearing all this stuff, I'd be like,
I want a Lava lamp. Yeah. So if you buy
a Lava lamps, there's actually some things you need to
(36:39):
know about how to use it correctly. Yeah. So the
h apparently the bottles are replaceable, so they do run
out after about two thousand hours of operating time, so
they sell replacement bottles, which is really nice. I don't
know about this. To to get rid of your old
bottle and make a hole in the metal cap with
a sharp point. Yeah. I also saw that you were
(37:01):
the liquid out. That seems a little unsafe. You're um,
that's what the Mathemas site recommends. Really, Yeah, to they
say you can recycle the glass, you just gotta get
rid of the contents inside. I also saw there's an
sf Gate article on how to revitalize vintage lava lamps,
and they say you can get that cap off with
(37:22):
vice cripts. You should not do that. Don't do that.
Josh and Chuck didn't tell you to do that. I'm
just saying I saw that on SF gate. I don't
know if I do that. Uh, so recycle it. You
can get the bottle replaced. The liquid eventually will fade
um at least the color in the liquid. Well, yeah,
over time. Like we said that, two thousand hours is um.
(37:43):
I mean it's a lot of hours. It's a lot
of acid, a lot of trips. Uh, here's another one.
The lamp the very first time you take it out
of the box, it may take up to an hour
and a half to start working, but once you have
used it, it doesn't take quite that long. Uh. You
should have your room be at least sixty decrease fahrenheit
(38:06):
celsius celsius because I think it's too cold. It won't work, right. Yeah,
and you don't want to near an air conditioner or
a draft or anything like that, or the sun necessarily. Well,
the sun will make the color fade that much faster. Yeah, right,
so you you if it's too cold, it won't work.
But then they also have a tendency to overheat too. Yeah,
if you come in your room and you're flying right
(38:30):
and you're lava lamp is just a single blob and
it's just a big blob, that means it's overheated or
the universe is ending around your right now. So eight
to ten hours, they said, is the max you want
to run that thing in a row. So yeah, and
in turn it often let it cool. Yeah, that's there,
you go, that's your fix. You let it cool and
then um so no more than eight hours usually for
(38:51):
normal operation. Um. And then in between uses, let it
cool completely. And that's just gonna extend the life of
your wax that much longer. Um. But then another reason
you don't want to overheat it is because it is possible,
and it's probably not possible for it to overheat with them,
but with the bulb itself like the glass. But one
(39:14):
thing they say is, never ever ever put that thing
on a stove, which some people have done. And you
can understand why you'd want to do that. You got
a hot date, or your assets kicking in faster than
you think it's it's taking too long, so you'd put
it on the stove. You don't want to do that.
And seriously, at least one person has died from putting
(39:37):
a lava lamp on a hot stove. Yeah. That it's
hard to believe, but you sent this over. In two
thousand four, a young man named Philip Quinn was twenty
four years old and Kent Washington put his lava lamp
on a stove. It exploded, uh, and shards of glass
shut into his heart. He stumbled in his bedroom and died.
(39:58):
And apparently no drugs or alcohol were involved, so it
wasn't like he was just like messed up and goofing around.
It sounds like he just wanted to heat it up faster. Yeah,
that's what I think. He's impatient, wanted his lava lamp
heat it up. And then some yahoo drank it right, Yeah,
some somebody in the In the article on the Annals
of Emergency Medicine, they describe a guy in his mid
(40:21):
sixties who drank the contents of a lava lamp. Yeah,
and then immediately regretted it because he spent three months
recovering from kidney failure. Man, what a dummy. And then
there's one more thing about lava lamps. This is pretty recent.
It's kind of awesome. Um, there's a company called cloud Flare.
I didn't understand this at all, So okay, So whenever
(40:42):
you're on the web, when you go into a new
a new website, you're actually I done. You're You're assigned
a code that you use on that website, and it's
supposed to be random or else For some somehow, hackers
can impersonate you if it's not a random code. Humans
are not capable of generating random numbers, and the computers
we program by extension aren't either. Okay, I can generate
(41:06):
a random number. You can't. It's not random. That would
be funny if you were like the new Internet security guy.
He just starts spitting out numbers and foil all the hackers,
well for now, until they employ you. This company, cloud Flare,
has a wall of a hundred lava lamps and a
camera recording their movement. And the the completely random, unpredictable
(41:31):
movement of these globs on the video screen gets turned
into pixels, and those pixels get turned into a random number.
So this random number is generated by the movement of
lava lamps. And that's how about fift of Internet traffic
gets their random number security codes generated by a bank
of lava lamps that cloud Flare's offices in San Francisco.
(41:54):
That's pretty cool. Of course is in San Francisco. Of
course they micro dose out there, which I think we've
been on the chord is looking down on Uh. Do
you want to hear an interesting tidbit about random numbers?
And I don't know if this is tricky works? Quick?
Give me another random number nine eight six seven five
three o nine. Well that's my story though. Apparently that
(42:16):
old song eight six seven five three o nine genny.
If you go to a store where you have a
rewards program and they say enter your number, Apparently enough
people sign up using that number that you can go
to any store in the country and spit that number
out and you will get the whatever discount. Try that. Yeah,
nice work. Like you're traveling, you go into the bev
(42:38):
Moo or bottle of wine, They're like, you got your
bevmo card, Like, oh, I'm just in town. We don't
have bedmos in Atlanta. Just say eight six seven five
three o nine. That's awesome. And what if they're like,
you're the one thousand customer or whatever, you're under arrest,
you're chipping and it's bad news from there. It's got
to be the last acid reference. I don't know, is
(43:00):
there one in this listener mail coming up? I bet
we can work one in. So if you want to
know more about Lava lamps, go get one, and maybe
you know if you've got the coin, splurge for a
handmade one from UK for math. Most if not get
one from Lava like here in the US, you won't judge,
or just get one on Ali Baba or Amazon. Whatever
floats your boat, Okay. Uh And since I said whatever
(43:20):
floats your boat, that means it's time for listener mail
called this board breaking follow up. Sometimes episodes that I
think like, yeah, it was fine, we get tons of reactions.
Well this one we just got something wrong, right, Physics,
well that too, but we had a lot of kata
(43:41):
te and martial arts. Okay, yeah, people right in enthusiast
about board breaking. They really were into this. Uh So
this is a kind of a two parter with a
little correction in the end. Hey, guys, listening to board Breaking,
it sounds like you had a confusing source. I hope
I can clear it up. You said that when breaking
a board with a karate chop, you want the grain
parallel to your hand, but you weren't sure what to
(44:02):
do with the grain when striking it with a close fist.
What matters isn't the orientation of the grain compared to
the hand, but the orientation relative to how the board
is supported. When stressed, the board naturally wants to crack
along the grain, not across it, So you want to
be sure that the grain isn't oriented so that the
fibers in the wood span from one support to the
other like the person holding it, or it will be
(44:23):
too strong. Yeah, when oriented correctly, the grain will be
parallel to the hand for an open handed chop, but
that's just coincidental with being oriented correctly compared to the supports.
I hope I was able to say this clearly, guys,
I can understand why your source had trouble putting it clearly.
I think that's from David Branson. And then we also
(44:45):
got a little bit of the formula wrong for force
equals mass times acceleration. Yes, he said it's force equals
mass times acceleration, not force equals mass times velocity. The
thing is with physics like most of those terms are interchangeable.
It means the same thing. Joe Dyer says, acceleration is
(45:05):
the derivative velocity. Velocity is the derivative of position. And
Joe also says, yes, I'm an engineer, so I won't
bust your chops over this. Too bad. Yeah, So thanks
Joe for being nice, and thanks to everyone who wrote
in with those corrections and your enthusiasm for board breaking.
So Joe wrote both of those no, no no, no, Joe
(45:25):
Dyer wrote that one, and then David Branson of Branson, Missouri, no,
I'm just kidding, Okay, he wrote, Well, maybe I don't know,
probably not nice. Missouri's are nice, that's true. Um. Well,
thank you David, and thank you Joe, and thank you,
like you said to everybody who wrote in, um, including
those of you who wrote in while you were on acid. Uh.
(45:45):
If you want to get in touch with this, you
can follow us on social media. Go to our website
stuff you Should Know dot com and you'll find all
the links there. Uh. And you can also send us
an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom,
and send it off to Stuff podcast at how stuff
Where dot com for more on this and thousands of
(46:07):
other topics. Is it how stuff works? Dot com
Welcome to Stuff you should Know from house stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there. Lights
are turned down here. We got our croovy pad going
(00:24):
super swinging style. Why I couldn't get square? Could I
couldn't get more squares? That what you're saying? Square? Square? Yeah? Square?
Well could I answer my question? Uh, you're not square?
I bet you got a lava lamp in your house.
I don't. Actually I never have, really never have had
(00:46):
one of you. I've I would love one. I think
I had one. I think we had one in college
and one of our houses. I doubt very seriously it
was a uh trademark original lava lamp. Lava lamp. Yeah,
but um it was probably a knockoff because I don't
think it worked great. There's a lot of knockoffs from
those you can get little cheapis now that there's no
(01:06):
good right you want the real one? Yeah? And I
think if for no other reason than to support the original,
the o G stuff handmade in the UK. Yeah, still, yeah,
you believe that I do. Actually that's great based on
on the woman who owns it now. She seems like
the type who would just be like sticking to it. Yep.
I could make way more money, but I'm not going
(01:28):
to because it's the way it should be done. That
is how it started. I'm staying with tradition. That's how
she does it. So we're talking about lavelmps and actually, Chuck,
can you just give me a second here before we
get started? Can I give a little plug? Okay? So, um,
as you know, but I want to share with everybody else.
On October eight, I will be doing a live show
(01:52):
on existential risks. It's called Existential Risks or How I
Learned to Start worrying and Love Humanity. It's pretty great show. Um,
there's slides involved, there's um doom and gloom, maybe a
little bit of optimism. Who knows, there's some humor mixed in.
It's gonna be a pretty good show. Um. I did
(02:12):
a similar show at the Bellhouse a couple of years back.
This is a totally brand new show, so even if
you saw it then this will be new to you.
But it's October eight at the Bellhouse and if you
happen to want to go, Tickets are available at the
Bellhouse ny dot Com. Dude, I would be there with
Bells on. I will list you, but I'll be in California.
(02:34):
Well I'm gonna list you anyway. Yeah. Like, uh, former
Falcons coach Jerry Glanville used to leave tickets for Elvis
at every Falcons game. That's smart, it's stupid because those
are two tickets. It could have gone to me. Oh
that's a good point, just dumb. Oh hey did you
uh are you gonna be on the radio for the Chiefs?
Do you know you turn it down? I kept forgetting
(02:55):
to respond. I was out of town, so it already
came and went. Yeah. It was just for those of
you wondering why we're just talking and chit chatting. Uh,
And I wish I had his name? Can you find it?
The some of the guys from the voice of the
Kansas City Chiefs radio that they played a preseason game
against the Falcons this last Friday in Atlanta and invited
(03:17):
us to be on the field and in the booth.
And I was out of town for my niece's wedding.
Congratulations Shelby and Dan. Oh hey yeah, congrats and uh
it was two family weddings, two out of town family
wedding weekends in a row. So congratulations also to Alex
and Catherine, Alex's Emily's cousin. Okay, so we went to Columbus, Ohio,
(03:40):
and then Jacksonville, North Carolina. Lucky went to these weddings,
and uh, I was not able to go to the
Falcons game. Well that's quite a sacrifice because a guy
named Dan Israel Dan Dan invited us to hang out
in the broadcast for the preseason game between the Falcons,
and it should have been so all over that and
I presumed to help call the game something. Oh yeah,
(04:02):
I would guess. I'm pretty sure he would have put
us on. Well I told him at email them back
said thanks, but if you ever come back, let me
know do it. I just remembered I got to respond
to him and say thanks, can I come? I just
needed fire up the way back machine. So so that's
a lot of chit chat. Yeah, if you don't like
our sides and tangents and stuff, I'll bet you hate
(04:24):
this episode already. But the net net of all that
is I'm doing a live show. If done a live show,
the net net of all that is that we're about
to talk lava lamps. Dude, that's the net Net corporate goon.
This was I think you've wanted to do this one
for a bit, right, No, No, okay, I just made
that up then, no I I Um, I was like
(04:46):
trying to come up with an episode idea. Sometimes it's
harder than others. I don't know if you've noticed he's
getting tougher, but um, the world's getting smaller. I remembered
we did that one on food fads. I was like,
that was an interesting episode. Let me go see if
I can find another fat and one of them that
came up with this pet Rocks article about laval app
(05:07):
maybe we should do pet Rocks one day. So I
was like, all right, let me see if this is
any good and it was okay, But then I found
an article by Zachary Crockett on prisonomics, which is one
of the better websites of all time. Zachary Crockett is
one of the better like nonfiction magazine writers of all time.
Agreed on the web and um, this article the lava
(05:29):
imp just Won't Quit really kind of gave a boost
to the stuff on how stuff works. Yeah, so let's
go back in time. Let's hop in the old way
Back Machine. Well, and speaking of we actually have way
Back Machine T shirts now, I know in our t
public dot com store. Yeah, I got a bunch of
(05:49):
different merch now. Alright, but we're on our own version
of the way Back Machine, which is better than what's
on that T shirt. Okay, And we're going back to
in the County of Dorset in England, and a little
boy named Edward Craven Walker is born. He would grow
up and we follow him in the way Back Machine
(06:11):
as he's growing. He eventually becomes an r AF pilot
in World War Two. Looks like everything's going normal and smoothly. Yeah.
He he actually flew recon missions, photographic missions where they
would you know, go up in planes and take pictures
of what the enemy is doing. And uh. He eventually
the war ended, and after the war he said, I'm
(06:32):
gonna go live in this little trailer in London behind
a pub and build us uh travel agency. Yeah. He
actually created a home swapping program like Airbnb. This is
in like the fifties. Interesting. Yeah, he's pretty ahead of
his time. He was in a lot of ways. It
seemed like, so again, everything's going pretty normally, right, Yeah,
(06:53):
he's just he's just travel agent ing and doing quite
well at it, I think. And uh, he goes to
the southern coast of France and what this author calls
a life changing trip. Uh, and he comes back a
nudist filmmaker, underwater nudist filmmaker. I think he did drugs
down there. What do you think what that means? I
(07:14):
just think he took his clothes off for the first
time ever and was like, I had never really noticed
the breeze before. This is nice. You think it just
feels like drugs were involved. It's possible, but he seemed
to not really think too highly of drugs, so I
think it was more just like act. You're probably right.
He became a nudist, is what it was. Yeah, I
think you're right. So he took his clothes off for
(07:36):
the first time. He was a never nude before that.
And uh. In nineteen sixty he actually, under a pseudonym,
made a movie called Traveling Light. It was a short
film with a naked lady performing underwater ballet that, believe
it or not, did okay in London had a six
month run. When's the Last Movie You Knew? Had a
six month run at a major theater in London. Titanic,
(07:58):
maybe it was Luck. Probably Avatar is the last one,
but probably so so. That was actually Chuck part of
a trilogy Tatanic, No we Traveling Light? Oh what were
the other two? Sun Swept? Because I was trying to
get information. I was trying to watch it and I
couldn't find anything. I'll bet you were Um, I know
I couldn't find it either, but I found some mention
(08:20):
of it and I saw the movie poster forward or whatever. Um,
but it was. It was I think preceded by a
movie called eaves On skis New to Skiing Trip. Sun
Swept sounded like what what this is describing as um
traveling Light? And then Traveling Light was actually I think
the second of the three. It's actually a sweet little
(08:42):
trilogy pre porn, time and humanity when like, yeah, like, hey,
here's just a naked person skiing as titilating as we get.
I've seen it referred to as new to propaganda films,
which is basically like, look, this is like this is
the life I went to the South of France. Now
you can too, and it's certainly not pre porn. I
(09:03):
was kidding about that. We should do an episode on pornography.
I was gonna say, we've done one on nudism New
Beaches at least. Yeah, we should do one I porn.
That'd be good. We should that. That could be a
two parter. That's maybe even like three or four, Yeah,
maybe five or six. Yeah, alright, I'm a rusty porn
(09:27):
you should know. So. Um, here's the thing about Edwin
Craven Walkers film um film career. Yes, he he was
very successful at it. He became something of a legend,
and he invested his money in building a nudist camp. Yeah,
He's like, I got all this dough and here's what
(09:49):
I want to do with it. So I'm sure a
few of you are like, hose about lava lamps. Chill
out now we've reached the part where the lava lamps coming,
that's right, and lava apps come in one day. And
I think the mid fifties where um Edward Craven Walker
and I believe it's hyphenated. Actually craven Walker is his
last name. Oh is that the deal? And he's hanging
(10:12):
out in a pub called the Queen's Head. The Queen's
Head that's a new forest in the southwest of London
and he's sitting at a bar ordering a beer pint
and um, he notices on the bar along with the
liquor bottles, there's a cocktail shaker. But there's weird bubbles
floating around in it. Yeah, glass one too, not like
(10:34):
a steel one. Right, And there's actually you can see
pictures of it on the matha most site. Oh really
the original thing? Wow? Yeah. Yeah. So he's sitting there
about to drink, like you said, and it's got water
and oil and there's a little camp stove underneath it
heating it and uh it, you know, it looks like
a little what would become a lava lamp. It's got
(10:56):
the oils and little blobs and it's floating around. It's
the thing. It we all recognize now. But when this
dude sees it back then and no one had ever
seen anything like this, he was like, wow, what what
is that? Right? And the bartender was like, that's an
egg timer. Yeah, kind of a weird answer, but that's weird.
(11:16):
I mean, that's what That's what the lava lamp started
out as, is an egg timer. There was a guy
named Great Trivia Question. It is a guy named Alfred Dunnett,
who was a regular at the Queen's Head in New Forest,
Um had built this thing where it was this glass
cocktail shaker on a camp stove, just a little tiny
camp stove, Um, and he put oil in the water
(11:40):
and when the oil rose to the top, by the
time it took the heat up and rise to the top,
it meant that your egg was fully hard boiled. It
was an egg timer. But Edward craven Walker saw this
and said, no, no, no, this is way more than
an egg timer. This is the most mesmerizing thing I've
ever seen. And so he did it right. He found
(12:00):
out that Alfred Unnat had passed away, but apparently he
had a patent on the same timer. So Edward craven
Walker went to to Um, the widow of Alfred Dunnet,
and said, hey, how about you saw me this patent
the history of bad deals. But here's the thing. You
go ahead and I'm going to retort. Well, I mean
(12:22):
I might even retort for you, because when you look
at the history of business and bad deals. He got
this patent for less than twenty pounds. But at the
same time, Dunnett's widow was probably like what in the world.
Why would anyone ever care about this? Right, it's just
sitting there. And not only that, this guy doesn't want
(12:42):
to make an egg timer. He wants to make something
bigger out of this thing. So he actually rescued a
patent from obscurity and improved on it. And by the way,
West Egg doesn't convert for pounds and strictly USD. But
there's a site called I am kate which does um
inflation calculation for pounds. Oh interesting, So twenty pounds according
(13:06):
to I am kate says, it would be about seven
three pounds today, which is about a thousand dollars roughly.
So that's not bad. Yeah, here's a thousand bucks that
you were totally not expecting for something you were never
going to do anything with. I'm going to take it
and presented to the world. Yeah. So he gets a
(13:28):
bottle um. It's called Treetop Orange Squash. It was a
drink that he used to drink as a kid and
stud I think, so, I don't think it has this
original shape, but the shape of that bottle more or
less is sort of what the shape of the glass
of the any lava lamp that you see today. Looks
like yeah, you look at it and you're like, oh, yeah,
of course that would be the prototype. And so he
(13:50):
gets a thing. He gets a couple of liquids. It
is not oil and water like I probably thought before
I researched this. It is water and why acts and
they are what's known and we'll get into the science
in a minute. But mutually insoluble, meaning uh that they
don't dissolve into one another like oil and water. And
he adds a few other little chemicals here and there,
(14:13):
and it got a little light bulb, screwed it into
a base and kind of hooked it all up and
bought a being bought a boom. The astro lamp, the
astro lamp, as he called it, was born. Yeah, there
was an astro light astro lamp. Okay, the astro lamp.
That's another trivia question for you. The original name of
(14:33):
the lava lamp was the astro lamp. Should we take
a break, I think so. All right, we'll be back
right after this and talk about science. All right, Chuck, science,
(15:10):
We're gonna talk science because there's actually some physics behind
the lava lamp, and we're going to explain it because
it's actually understandable. Yeah, who was the guy who wrote
this again, Zachary Crockett. But this is a how stuff
works article that explains the physics. Oh the inside the
lamp part, because I thought that was kind of cute. Actually,
the bullet points for that are. The things that you
(15:31):
need are a compound that makes up floating blobs blobs
and quotes, a compound that the blob floats in. There
wasn't in quotes that time, and then a lamp that
illuminates the display and provides the necessary heat to move
the blobs again no quotes. Yeah, that's it though, But
that's what, Yeah, what you need. But we're gonna talk
about more science as far as mutually insoluble liquids go. Right,
(15:54):
because it sounds really easy, right, You got your blobs,
you got your liquid, the blobs floating, you got your
light to heat the whole thing up. Easy peasy. It's
actually really hard because what you're walking is a very
fine line between something that will work as a lava
lamp and something that will just not work at all
and look like a lava lamp gone bad, right, exactly. Um,
(16:17):
So you've got you've got admissible compounds compounds that don't
um dissolve into one another, but you need to have them.
They need to have pretty similar densities, not exactly the
same because then it won't work, but not too different
either because then that won't work either. And you'll understand
(16:38):
why in a second. They need to be fairly close.
And so the reason why UM Edward Edward Craven Walker
used wax and water is because water plane old fresh
water has a density of one point Oh, it's basically
the set point for densities. Paraffin Wax has a density
of point eight, which means that it's slightly less dense
(16:58):
than water, but right very close. So if you heat
up UH something, it tends to expand right correct. When
it expands, it becomes less dense, which means that something
that was more dense before will be less dense, meaning
that if it's in some other liquid that's denser, this
(17:19):
less dense thing will float to the top. Yeah. If
it's less dense, it rises. If it's more dense, it
will fall. Uh. And that's why you know, if you
want to change this density and then make these molecules
UH spread out. One of the things you can do,
especially in the case of a lava lamp, is to
heat it up. That's the point of that bulb at
(17:41):
the bottom of the lava lamp. Yeah, because if you
see lava lamp, it's not turned on. You just see
the blob at the bottom and the fluid. It's not water,
of course, uh, sitting at the top, and they're separated,
but they're just sitting on top of one another. Right,
And it actually is water. Oh is it really? I
thought it was something else too, the some other some
(18:02):
other stuff, but the liquid that the blobs are in
is mostly water. Yeah. So here's the thing. When you
turn on the lava lamp. You turn that that heat
that you start the heat of the light bulb, and
that wax begins to warm up and it liquefies. And
as it liquefies, it becomes less dense, and things get
really exciting at that point, right, And then it starts
(18:24):
to flow to the top. Right, You're like, all right,
things are happening. It actually forms what are called stalagtites. Yeah,
and everyone's like you feeling it yet, right, right? And
as it starts to form stealactites, they eventually the tops
of them break off and it floats up to the
top and you're like, I'm definitely feeling it. And then um,
(18:45):
as it gets to the top of the lamp, it's
far enough away from the heat source that it starts
to cool down, and so it sinks again to the bottom,
and as it does, it passes another globe that's on
the way to the top, and when it reaches the bottom,
the whole process starts over again, and that wax glob
gets reheated, and it goes back up and it passes
(19:05):
on the way up the glob that it just passed
coming back down, and that's a lava lamp. And it's
again it sounds simple, but to get the wax density
and the water density just right, you have to add
some other ingredients. And so, going back to the original
prototype that was created by Edward Craven Walker, it's really
(19:26):
impressive that this guy with zero chemistry training whatsoever, managed
to do this, ever, let alone, and just less than
a decade. Yeah, I mean, I imagine there was a
lot of trial and error trying to get that thing
just right. Because again, like I said, if I mean
you think it sounds easy to build one on your
own and prepared to be disappointed, and you can you
(19:48):
can make one with oil water food coloring and then
alca seltzer. It's called it's called a Yankee lava lamp.
It's terrible. But this is nothing like this, Yeah, because
what the whole point of a lava lamp is to
create this mood and to have these amorphous blobs separating
and floating around and rising and falling, and that's the
(20:10):
whole effect. You know. It wasn't meant to be a
lamp to give much light. It's to create mood and atmosphere.
And as we will see, we keep making little druggy jokes. Uh.
That was a big part of why they sold. But
we'll get to that in a minute. But you were
talking about the fact that it was impressive. Uh. It
says only five or six people actually know that this
(20:32):
exact formulas still that who worked for the real lava
lamp company, And there are plenty of knockoffs, but that original, uh,
that original lava lamp recipe is is not known by
many people, very closely guarded. Yeah. Even in Craven Walker's
original patent, it has the ingredients, but it doesn't say
(20:54):
in what quantities or anything like that. It's still a
trade secret to this day. Yeah. And you also he
figured you had to uh, there was a lot of
trial and error because he had to add the water
um very slowly apparently, or else it becomes what's known
as an emulsion, meaning it's just sort of mixed together. Yeah,
Like you can conceivably mix oil and water together, especially
(21:15):
if you have an emulsive fire, but you can also
do it by stirring it really really fast, and it'll
it'll mix together, and that's not what you want. You
want them to be separate from the first moment they
come in contact together in the lamp globe. Right, So
nine h three years I think it took him to
finally get the design right. He called it the astro lamp.
He built a little factory in his backyard and his
(21:39):
wife at the time, I think he's married four times,
but she was like, you know, he was the type
of guy that would finish this thing once he started it,
and he did, and originally he decided that it was
it fit really well in with this post World War
two British demand for very flamboyant, colorful home furnishings. Yeah,
(22:00):
He's like, this is nothing if not flamboyant and colorful.
The original Lava lamp was yellow liquid water and red
wax globs on a gold base. Great looking, groovy as
groovy gets right, Um, But he originally envisioned it is like,
this is something for a cool bachelor pad. If you
(22:22):
were a wealthy bachelor and you're looking to put something
that's very interesting and high end as a home furnishing,
try the Astro lamp. It was originally envisioned as a
high end home furnishing. Yeah. There there's this one great
ad that had a the scene of a bachelor pad
on a magazine page and the caption said, the perfect
(22:43):
gift for one's relatives, one's friends, and dash it all
oneself by three yeah, exactly, by three of them. So
this actually didn't work out very well for Craven Walker
because he and his wife were driving around in their
vein in going to places like Herod's and getting a
very chilly reception to these things. Apparently the Herod's buyer
(23:07):
thought the lamps were disgusting and ordered them taken away.
I don't know why. I can't imagine seeing them as disgusting.
Maybe there was like pubic care stuck to the outside
of or something that can make a lava lamp disgusting, right, well,
I imagined at the time, especially in stuffy old England. Uh,
this postwar transition wasn't uh met with open arms by everybody.
(23:28):
I'm sure the traditionalist thought it was disgusting, this blobby
thing floating around, especially with the pubic care. So um
Craven Walker, Uh, he was like, well, fine, I'm just
gonna create my own company and I'll market it myself.
So we formed crest Worth, which is the original company
that put out the astro lamp, which we know and
(23:49):
love is lava lamps. And I should say, there are
a lot of different names for lava lamps and it's
really tough to distinguish which one is actual trademarks. So
lava lamp seems to be a generic term, lava light,
it seems to be generic. But Lava all caps is
(24:10):
a trademark name for the American version. But there doesn't
seem to be a trademark name for the lava lamp,
the original one in England. They just call it a
lava lamp. I thought it was lava lamp was the
trademarked because not that I can see our dumb article
caused them motion lamps. Well that I thought that was
to avoid the generic term. Yeah, I thought they were
(24:33):
doing that to avoid saying lava lamp. No, that's so
like two thousand five how stuff works, Like call it
the generic term. You know, it's not kleenex, it's facial tissue.
You know, that's that's totally where why they call it that?
Oh goodness, you're so right. Alright, so these things aren't
selling to the rich and powerful. They did not see
(24:55):
his luxury at him. But then the nineteen sixties are
rolling along l st. He comes on the scene. Pink
Floyd is in the back room, the Yardbirds are upfront.
Sid Barrett is for freaking out. He's freaking out. And
this thing, really, the astro lamp really fit in uh
to this whole scene, Like he was just he was
(25:18):
miss marketing this thing from the beginning. He was. I
I think he didn't predict the sixties psychedelicy. He was
more into like the swinging Austin Powers bachelor stuff that
was pre psychedelic and moved into psychedelia. Um, but he
should thank his lucky stars, and I'm sure he did
more than once that the psychedelic thing happened. Because when
(25:40):
that happened and the hippies in London found out about
lava lamps, lava lamps took off, just shot off like
a rocket. And at first Edward Craven Walker was not
not entirely cool with this. I mean he was happy
to have the money and his lamp was finally a
six US, but he knew what people were buying these
(26:02):
four They were buying them so that they could take
acid and stare at him for eight hours, right, And
he actually had an ad where he said, if you
buy my lamp, you won't need drugs, which is l seven. Yeah,
because the ed should have read this goes great with drugs,
Like drugs, you're gonna love my lamp. Like that is
the level of dedication this guy should have had to LSD,
(26:25):
because LSD made him a very wealthy person. Like in
a very short amount of time. Should we take a break,
all right, we're gonna talk about how they hit America
right after this, all right, So they're taking off in England.
(27:06):
He takes these things to a trade show in Germany,
and a couple of dudes named Adolf Votheima and William
Rubinstein I'm pretty sure they didn't say their names like that.
They're from Chicago. Yeah, so they were just good Midwestern Germans.
And they said, I'm gonna I want to buy to
I want to buy the North American manufacturing rights. We're
(27:29):
gonna call it the Lava LIGHTE L I T E.
And we have our own drug culture that's starting to
boom over here. And I think he used to be
a big hit, and they were, and they got him
on TV, they got placement, they got him in Doctor
Who that was huge, got in The Avengers, uh not,
you know the old TV show The Avengers. Yeah, it
(27:49):
says here though it was on James Bond. And I
looked high and low for what they were talking about,
and I actually came across a post on the Internet
of all places by a m a guy who who
runs a website. Oh, Anthony Vaz runs a website. I
can't remember the name of it. I think maybe Lava
(28:12):
Love or something like that, but he was on there
saying I saw this in an article that it says
it was in a James Bond film. What James Bond
film are they talking about. I'm like a James Bond
like fan for him. They're like, no idea, Bud, And
if we don't know, it didn't happen. So I have
no idea what what James Bond film? It was in
the first giveaway to me that that's bogus is here's
(28:33):
the sentence. A red model debut in the nineteen seventy
I'm Sorry sixty eight episode of Dr Who. This is
followed by appearances in The Prisoner, The Avengers, and James Bond.
Talk about generic Remember the movie James Bond. We should
ask the great Mett Gorley does he know James Bond
at the Super Ego podcast? Yeah? Okay, he's an officient
(28:54):
not he hosts there you go tast called James Bonding.
There you go. I bet Gorley would now so on
that for him. Somebody's like, maybe that wouldy allan spoof
Casino Royal. But I couldn't find any mention of lava
lamps in that movie either, So who knows. But they
made some product placement, uh they were They were starting
to pop up all over the place, and apparently Edward
(29:17):
Craven Walker knew that he'd made it. His wife later
recounted when they found out that Ringo Starr had just
bought one in n I love it. He also might
know he made it by the fact that he sold
seven million of them annually by the end of the sixties.
Apparently he was so h eccentric that he would he
(29:40):
drove a fire truck. Yeah, he'd rid around in a
fire truck. Yeah. He also, um drove nothing if it
was a car, nothing but British made jaguars. Well, yeah,
nothing wrong with that. Sure, Um, well, it depends on
the year, because they had some pretty terrible jaguars for
a while. They're in the eighties. Uh so these uh,
(30:01):
like any fad would go away, and in the late seventies,
the lava lamp, I remember the lava lamps kind of
just worn't around that much anymore. By the time we
were kids, they didn't even have like kitchy appeal any longer.
They were just like like everyone became the Herod's buyer,
like these are disgusting, get them out of here. But
(30:21):
he was smart enough to know that fads come back around.
He did not shut down the business. He did not
just sell it off for pennies on the dollar. No,
he kept releasing new stuff. Yeah, nothing really took I
tried to find any like his other little inventions, but
I couldn't really get much. So nothing made the waves
that the astro lamp did. And by the late nineteen
(30:43):
eighties they declined to about a thousand lamps per year.
That is so few from seven million a year. Yeah,
I mean even you would think you'd get a thousand
like white elephant gift purchases, like, look, this is the
dumbest thing I could find. I mean, I guess that's
what they were, So a thousand year at that point.
And uh. Then a woman that we mentioned earlier name
(31:04):
Cressida Granger or Cressida Granger, she's twenty two years old,
ran an antique booth and saw these things were selling,
like the vintage ones. These use lava lamps. This is
back in I think, yeah, And so she was like,
these things are kind of selling. She got in touch
with the guy with Craven Walker and said, hey, I'd
like to buy your company, your partner with you and
(31:26):
crest Worth. If you're open to it. He said, fine,
meet me at this newdist camp and she went, all right,
keep your pants on and I'll do so. And by
all accounts, they were fully clothed and struck up a
deal where she would take over operations and managing as
managing director, and they had a deal in place and
(31:48):
a great deal for her where she could slowly buy
his company from him over time. Right, So, so think
about being twenty two and having that kind of like
get up and go. I love it that you're like,
I'm starting to sell some intage lava lamps. I'll go
see if I can buy the company. But then from
from Craven Walker's perspective, You're like, I'm down to selling
a thousand of easy year nothing trying. Yeah, if this
(32:10):
person wants to like like invest in the company, why not.
And so Crescitter Granger's timing could not have been better,
Like she was really prescient to notice that, like the
vintage lava lamps were selling, The reason the vintage lava
lamps were selling was because there was an acid revival
going on the same reason lava lamps sold the first
(32:34):
time around is the reason they sold the second time around.
Everybody discovered that they really really like LSD and Lava
lamps go really really well with LSD well, And not
only that, but that was with you know, the House
of Music and Ecstasy and Raves and uh, Austin Powers,
like that whole thing kind of came back. Well, Austin
(32:56):
Austin Powers was like a kind of a third wave. Yeah,
that was mid to late nineties. Yeah, like I think seven.
So she oversaw a revival of the Lava lamp, a
resurgence in it, and like I saw the manufacturing uptick
in it too in the late eighties early nineties, and
then managed to ride that wave through to the late
(33:18):
nineties when it ticked up even further because of Austin Powers,
and they started to sell so much crested. Granger says,
they sold more in the nineties than they did in
the sixties. That's amazing. Yeah, And she started the whole
thing at twenty two, going up to Edward Craven Walker
Insaine how about it partner, Yeah, and so uh in
nineteen one, the twenty year patent expired and Granger said that,
(33:44):
you know, no one realized this, thankfully, and so we
just kind of kept monopolizing the business and she slowly
bought it out over time, and I think by ninety
two she renamed the company Mathmas, which apparently was a
to of the cap to Barbarella of the film. Yeah,
that's there's like an energy bubble that it lives underneath
(34:05):
the city or something, and that's what it's called today
if you go to the website. Uh, she moved into
the manufacturing facilities. So she didn't say, hey, let's take
this state side or take it to China. She said,
we're gonna keep doing it right here Endorset. And like
you said at the beginning, that is still where these
things are made today by hand by British workers. Like
(34:31):
I think they said, how many of them can a
good worker making a day amazing filling these bottles by hand? Right?
So that's if you look at the mathmas Um lava
lamps and compare the price to when you just find
online like a knockoff um, which technically they're not a
knockoff because the patent wore off, but um still a knockoffs.
(34:52):
It's like eighty bucks compared to like fifteen or twenty
bucks for what looks to be the same thing. And
we're actually more like a hundred seven seven pounds. That's
how much Mathemas is now. Yeah, like their standard the
original classic lava lamp is seventy seven pounds. Got the
reason why they're that much more is because they're handmade
in the UK, just as they have been since the sixties.
(35:13):
I love it, man, it's pretty cool. And and she
said that there's a lot of pressure for her to
transfer production overseas where it's going to be way cheaper
and she can make way more money. And she's like, nope,
I'm keeping it here. Um, yeah, they're more expensive, and yeah,
we would sell more if they were cheaper, but I'm
just not doing it. If you haven't noticed someone rich woman, right,
I'm doing all right. I've been I've been pretty well
(35:34):
off since twenty two. I'm I've got all the acid
I can take. No, uh, all right, should we talk
about lava lamp tips? Well, I want to say. I
want to say one more thing. Um, another thing. That
another reason I think Kresso Granger is pretty awesome. She
kept Um Edward Craven Walker on as a consultant, yeah,
(35:57):
up until his death, even though she had full control
of the company. I think in whatever um and he
was done, she kept him on as a consultant until
he died. And it was two years later. But she
didn't no one who was going to die unless she
poisoned him with a lot of acid or something. She
probably didn't do that, but I thought that was a
(36:18):
pretty a mark in her favorite for sure, that she
kept the guy on the original Creator the second Creator
on as a consultant. I'd like to meet her one day. So, yeah,
I think we should give some Lava lamp tips because frankly,
if I were out there listening and this happened to
me during research, hearing all this stuff, I'd be like,
I want a Lava lamp. Yeah. So if you buy
a Lava lamps, there's actually some things you need to
(36:39):
know about how to use it correctly. Yeah. So the
h apparently the bottles are replaceable, so they do run
out after about two thousand hours of operating time, so
they sell replacement bottles, which is really nice. I don't
know about this. To to get rid of your old
bottle and make a hole in the metal cap with
a sharp point. Yeah. I also saw that you were
(37:01):
the liquid out. That seems a little unsafe. You're um,
that's what the Mathemas site recommends. Really, Yeah, to they
say you can recycle the glass, you just gotta get
rid of the contents inside. I also saw there's an
sf Gate article on how to revitalize vintage lava lamps,
and they say you can get that cap off with
(37:22):
vice cripts. You should not do that. Don't do that.
Josh and Chuck didn't tell you to do that. I'm
just saying I saw that on SF gate. I don't
know if I do that. Uh, so recycle it. You
can get the bottle replaced. The liquid eventually will fade
um at least the color in the liquid. Well, yeah,
over time. Like we said that, two thousand hours is um.
(37:43):
I mean it's a lot of hours. It's a lot
of acid, a lot of trips. Uh, here's another one.
The lamp the very first time you take it out
of the box, it may take up to an hour
and a half to start working, but once you have
used it, it doesn't take quite that long. Uh. You
should have your room be at least sixty decrease fahrenheit
(38:06):
celsius celsius because I think it's too cold. It won't work, right. Yeah,
and you don't want to near an air conditioner or
a draft or anything like that, or the sun necessarily. Well,
the sun will make the color fade that much faster. Yeah, right,
so you you if it's too cold, it won't work.
But then they also have a tendency to overheat too. Yeah,
if you come in your room and you're flying right
(38:30):
and you're lava lamp is just a single blob and
it's just a big blob, that means it's overheated or
the universe is ending around your right now. So eight
to ten hours, they said, is the max you want
to run that thing in a row. So yeah, and
in turn it often let it cool. Yeah, that's there,
you go, that's your fix. You let it cool and
then um so no more than eight hours usually for
(38:51):
normal operation. Um. And then in between uses, let it
cool completely. And that's just gonna extend the life of
your wax that much longer. Um. But then another reason
you don't want to overheat it is because it is possible,
and it's probably not possible for it to overheat with them,
but with the bulb itself like the glass. But one
(39:14):
thing they say is, never ever ever put that thing
on a stove, which some people have done. And you
can understand why you'd want to do that. You got
a hot date, or your assets kicking in faster than
you think it's it's taking too long, so you'd put
it on the stove. You don't want to do that.
And seriously, at least one person has died from putting
(39:37):
a lava lamp on a hot stove. Yeah. That it's
hard to believe, but you sent this over. In two
thousand four, a young man named Philip Quinn was twenty
four years old and Kent Washington put his lava lamp
on a stove. It exploded, uh, and shards of glass
shut into his heart. He stumbled in his bedroom and died.
(39:58):
And apparently no drugs or alcohol were involved, so it
wasn't like he was just like messed up and goofing around.
It sounds like he just wanted to heat it up faster. Yeah,
that's what I think. He's impatient, wanted his lava lamp
heat it up. And then some yahoo drank it right, Yeah,
some somebody in the In the article on the Annals
of Emergency Medicine, they describe a guy in his mid
(40:21):
sixties who drank the contents of a lava lamp. Yeah,
and then immediately regretted it because he spent three months
recovering from kidney failure. Man, what a dummy. And then
there's one more thing about lava lamps. This is pretty recent.
It's kind of awesome. Um, there's a company called cloud Flare.
I didn't understand this at all, So okay, So whenever
(40:42):
you're on the web, when you go into a new
a new website, you're actually I done. You're You're assigned
a code that you use on that website, and it's
supposed to be random or else For some somehow, hackers
can impersonate you if it's not a random code. Humans
are not capable of generating random numbers, and the computers
we program by extension aren't either. Okay, I can generate
(41:06):
a random number. You can't. It's not random. That would
be funny if you were like the new Internet security guy.
He just starts spitting out numbers and foil all the hackers,
well for now, until they employ you. This company, cloud Flare,
has a wall of a hundred lava lamps and a
camera recording their movement. And the the completely random, unpredictable
(41:31):
movement of these globs on the video screen gets turned
into pixels, and those pixels get turned into a random number.
So this random number is generated by the movement of
lava lamps. And that's how about fift of Internet traffic
gets their random number security codes generated by a bank
of lava lamps that cloud Flare's offices in San Francisco.
(41:54):
That's pretty cool. Of course is in San Francisco. Of
course they micro dose out there, which I think we've
been on the chord is looking down on Uh. Do
you want to hear an interesting tidbit about random numbers?
And I don't know if this is tricky works? Quick?
Give me another random number nine eight six seven five
three o nine. Well that's my story though. Apparently that
(42:16):
old song eight six seven five three o nine genny.
If you go to a store where you have a
rewards program and they say enter your number, Apparently enough
people sign up using that number that you can go
to any store in the country and spit that number
out and you will get the whatever discount. Try that. Yeah,
nice work. Like you're traveling, you go into the bev
(42:38):
Moo or bottle of wine, They're like, you got your
bevmo card, Like, oh, I'm just in town. We don't
have bedmos in Atlanta. Just say eight six seven five
three o nine. That's awesome. And what if they're like,
you're the one thousand customer or whatever, you're under arrest,
you're chipping and it's bad news from there. It's got
to be the last acid reference. I don't know, is
(43:00):
there one in this listener mail coming up? I bet
we can work one in. So if you want to
know more about Lava lamps, go get one, and maybe
you know if you've got the coin, splurge for a
handmade one from UK for math. Most if not get
one from Lava like here in the US, you won't judge,
or just get one on Ali Baba or Amazon. Whatever
floats your boat, Okay. Uh And since I said whatever
(43:20):
floats your boat, that means it's time for listener mail
called this board breaking follow up. Sometimes episodes that I
think like, yeah, it was fine, we get tons of reactions.
Well this one we just got something wrong, right, Physics,
well that too, but we had a lot of kata
(43:41):
te and martial arts. Okay, yeah, people right in enthusiast
about board breaking. They really were into this. Uh So
this is a kind of a two parter with a
little correction in the end. Hey, guys, listening to board Breaking,
it sounds like you had a confusing source. I hope
I can clear it up. You said that when breaking
a board with a karate chop, you want the grain
parallel to your hand, but you weren't sure what to
(44:02):
do with the grain when striking it with a close fist.
What matters isn't the orientation of the grain compared to
the hand, but the orientation relative to how the board
is supported. When stressed, the board naturally wants to crack
along the grain, not across it, So you want to
be sure that the grain isn't oriented so that the
fibers in the wood span from one support to the
other like the person holding it, or it will be
(44:23):
too strong. Yeah, when oriented correctly, the grain will be
parallel to the hand for an open handed chop, but
that's just coincidental with being oriented correctly compared to the supports.
I hope I was able to say this clearly, guys,
I can understand why your source had trouble putting it clearly.
I think that's from David Branson. And then we also
(44:45):
got a little bit of the formula wrong for force
equals mass times acceleration. Yes, he said it's force equals
mass times acceleration, not force equals mass times velocity. The
thing is with physics like most of those terms are interchangeable.
It means the same thing. Joe Dyer says, acceleration is
(45:05):
the derivative velocity. Velocity is the derivative of position. And
Joe also says, yes, I'm an engineer, so I won't
bust your chops over this. Too bad. Yeah, So thanks
Joe for being nice, and thanks to everyone who wrote
in with those corrections and your enthusiasm for board breaking.
So Joe wrote both of those no, no no, no, Joe
(45:25):
Dyer wrote that one, and then David Branson of Branson, Missouri, no,
I'm just kidding, Okay, he wrote, Well, maybe I don't know,
probably not nice. Missouri's are nice, that's true. Um. Well,
thank you David, and thank you Joe, and thank you,
like you said to everybody who wrote in, um, including
those of you who wrote in while you were on acid. Uh.
(45:45):
If you want to get in touch with this, you
can follow us on social media. Go to our website
stuff you Should Know dot com and you'll find all
the links there. Uh. And you can also send us
an email, wrap it up, spank it on the bottom,
and send it off to Stuff podcast at how stuff
Where dot com for more on this and thousands of
(46:07):
other topics. Is it how stuff works? Dot com
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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