Good Job, Brain! - 76: Hey, Hot Stuff

Episode Date: August 28, 2013

We're going to make your skull-stuffing sweat with some trivia that is hot, hot, hot! How hot is the world's hottest chili pepper? And what is the most efficient remedy to cool of a scorched tongue? Find out all the "tricks" to fire-walking, and don't forget to get some delicious hot anagrams. Learn another nightmare animal that practically boils up the competition. And Chris is a really good Donna Summer. ALSO: Bizarre headlines, The Peppermaster Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, bodice and brilliant Brain biscuits. Welcome to Good Job Brain, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. This is episode 76, and of course, I'm your humble host, Karen, and we are your darling and sometimes dopey double-duo digging for delicious data and details. I'm Colin. I'm Dana. I'm Chris.

So I have something. We have the occasionally recurring segment in the headlines, in the news. And I saw a piece of news that reminded me of the good old good job brain podcast. Yeah, Chris, you like send a very passionate email to all of us when you read this. Yes, if you were a longtime listener, or, you know, just because you know about these sorts of things. Copi Luwak, which is the. The coffee, the Indonesian coffee, that is tasty and delicious and... The most expensive.

The most expensive coffee anywhere. And it is all these things because, or perhaps in spite of the fact that it is passed through the entire digestive tract of the civet cat, a weasel-like animal, that eats the coffee fruit and poops the coffee beans. And that's where it's collected. Then they collect the poop and they wash the beans are not digested, but they are the structure of them is changed somehow through the passing through and the bacteria and the gut and the intestines or whatever it is, it is actually made more delicious. It is a delicious type

coffee. And all the Civic Hat thought it was doing was, you know, eating fruit and having like the worst corn poops, basically. But here's the thing. So now that you've heard it on good job brain and in various other places, demand is increasing for Kope-Lewak. People want to try this. But the problem is, okay, sure, you're paying hundreds of dollars an ounce for coffee that has been pooped out the butthole of some exotic animal. But how do you know? How do you know you're not simply being taken for a ride and that someone is not just telling you that these are poop beans? Or feeding it to a regular cat. Yes. Or a person. Right. Or anything. Well, science and important scientists have now developed a test.

And they can, they have identified a certain chemical fingerprint, as the telegraph said in the U.K., chemical fingerprint that only exists in coffee that has been pooped out the butthole of this particular cat. Oh, of the civet. And of the civet. So it's like a spot test for the coffee. Indeed. You can now get your verified, tested coffee. Typically, these tests ensure that your food is not contaminated. And it's not been in contact with poop, but this is a test to make sure that it is 100% positive.

Yes. Poop touched your coffee. We know it for a fact. Yeah. Science. Thanks for that enlightening tidbit. I'm trying to save you people money. Yeah.

That's a public service announcement. Verified poop coffee. All right. Let's jump into our first general trivia segment, Pop Quiz, Hot Shot. And I got Trivial Pursuit Cards. So here we go. You guys got your barnyard buzzers ready, and I just picked a card randomly from the box.

Here we go. Blue Wedge for Geography. What country is famous for its Gouda and Edom Cheeses? Chris. Is it Switzerland? Incorrect. I think it's the Netherlands. Yes.

Oh, wow. Dutch cheeses. Dutch. Pink Wedge for pop culture. Who is Lysol? Manelli's mother. Dana. Judy Garland.

Yes, Judy Garland. Yellow Wedge? What are the titles of Barack Obama's first two books? Chris. Those are Dreams from My Father and the Audacity of Hope. Correct. Purple Wedge. What's the name for the placeholder text used in the printing and publishing industry?

Colin. That is Lorham Ipsum. Yes. Lerum Ipsum. Do you know the first five words of Loram Ipsum placeholder text? I do. The classic is Loram Ipsum Dolor Sitt Amet. Yes!

We're like, yeah, we're surprised. It's been a long time. Green Wedge for Science, this is a good one. What company unveiled the first cell phone in 1983? Chris. I believe that it's Motorola. Correct. Good bit of trivia to know.

How much did it cost? one scabillion dollars three thousand nine hundred ninety five dollars okay well it's affordable it's just it's just under four thousand wow wow and it weighed like 30 pounds okay it's equivalent to 12 blueies yeah you know for certain businesses I'm sure that was a huge bargain that's true to get done what they could then do yeah yeah all right orange wedge last question what sauce is used in traditional Eggs Benedict. Dana.

Bernays sauce. Incorrect. Colonnese. Hollande. Oh, no. So many of you listeners may know that we've been doing this kind of community project. And we're asking listeners to submit pictures or videos of where they are when they're listening to this show. And we got a whole bunch of awesome photos around the world.

We're putting it on an interactive map. And there's this one particular email that I got. And it's from the team of Chris, Greg, Anders, Dominic, and Tina. And they wrote in, and they said, just to let you know that we are regular listeners to your podcast in the kitchen at Peppermaster in Regode Province of Quebec, Canada. It helps us pass the time in the excruciating heat of the production kitchen. And, well, what they mean by excruciating heat, not just that it's hot in temperature, but what they do at Pepper Master

is they make small batch Fair Trade hot sauces hot and spicy and he is their business and this inspired us for this week to talk about all things that are hot and spicy makes you sweat and all that awesome stuff

so thanks to the gang at Pepper Master this week we're talking about hot stuff looking for some hot stuff baby to say that's hot That's what you have to kick into that song immediately after you say that. So who would like to enlighten those of us who may not know? I believe it is called the Scoville Heat Unit.

Yeah. Right? The S-H-U. And what does that measure? What is measured by Scoville heat units? I think it's how much capsaicin or the concentration of capsaicin, which is the oil that makes hot pepper spicy. Yep. That is, yeah, the Scoville heat units developed by Wilbur, Schoville.

Mr. Scoville. Mr. Scoville, that's right. His brother Orville, Scoville. to measure basically the heat of chili peppers. Yeah, indirectly, it's just how hot is a chili pepper? It's assigned a number on the Scoville scale. But what it is really measuring is, yeah, the amount of capsaicum, which is the element that gives chili peppers, their heat.

And like all chili peppers, all hot peppers have some amount of capsicin in them that makes them hot. And what they'll do is they'll extract it from the pepper. And what the Scoville scale measures is how much do you have to dilute it before you can't taste it? Or until you can just barely taste the heat. With water. Right. Well, it's actually a mixture of sugar and water. Yeah, they extract the oil.

Oh, yes. If you put it in your eyeball, how many days are you taking before you can see again? That's the worst test. Until you go blind. So it goes from zero. So a zero on the Scoville scale for peppers would be like your average bell pepper. Yeah, your bell pepper, your average sweet pepper. No capsaicin in those at all.

So you eat it, you know, you don't need to dilute it at all. So that's got a zero value of dilution. And then it's an open-ended scale, so it just goes up with there. You know, because it's just the hotter it gets, the more capsaicin, the more you'd have to dilute it. So to give you an idea of sort of what the scale here that we're talking about, you know, so bell pepper's at zero. If you guys know, a Sri Rasha sauce, you know, just the ubiquitous red rooster sauce. That's right, a rooster sauce. That comes in around a couple thousand, you know, maybe right around 2000 on the Scoville scale.

So how much water? So you would have to dilute it by a factor of 2,000 to get it to a level of the same, that you would say this is about the same heat as a bell pepper. Got it. Right. You know, your habaneros are pretty hot pepper. Depending on the variety, those would range, you know, a few hundred thousand, you know. So 100,000, maybe up to 600,000, depending on the type of habanero pepper that you're talking about. Just in the last year, experts from the New Mexico State University Chili Pepper Institute, all right?

Wow. Yes, these are the world's leading authorities on chili pepper and chili pepper hotness. Can I, like, go to school there? I think you can. Oh, yes. Snap. Yeah, you know, it's not too late, Karen. Oh.

I majored in video games. You can do anything. Yeah, New Mexico State. Yeah, applications are going to be skyrocketing among chili pepper enthusiasts. And there is actually a more modern way of detecting the heat in peppers beyond the, the Scoville scale. You know, they use things like these days like liquid chromatography. Very highly specialized, computerized, much more consistent. With Scoville, you know, you can dilute it, but you still have to have to have

some person there to taste. Yeah, that's right. I mean, I didn't really make that part clear, but that's right. So, you know, if you were in the old school Scoville Scout, I mean, you know, this was developed in 1912. It was systematic, but it was a lot of variation. You would dilute it, and then you would have a panel of people all giving their ratings, and you know, you would sort of take the consensus from their ratings to put it on the scale. So they have a lot more high-tech advanced ways of measuring it, but they still will convert those measurements back to Scoville scale. Because, you know, we've kind of been using the system, but the results we get these days are a lot more scientific.

So, as I say, researchers from New Mexico State University, Chili Pepper Institute just last year finished a broad survey trying to establish, all right, what is the world's hottest pepper in terms of Scoville units? And it was one I had never heard of before. And I mean, and there were some funky ones

on this list. I mean, there's ghost peppers and Naga peppers. And, I mean, from every region of the world. Yeah. He sounded like World of Warcraft characters. They're supposed to and still fear into you when you mean. All the ones that I had heard of, you know, I mean, as I say, like, you know, like, Haboneros and Cayenne pepper is 30,000, 50,000, Scovilles.

You know, Habanero is a few hundred thousand. They discovered, or they established that the, you know, yeah, I'll go ahead. Take a guess. Take a guess. I will be amazingly oppressed if you know this. There's like, well, I know this is one of the hottest, but it's not the hottest. The Scotch bonnet is pretty hot. I think the hottest pepper has like a name place, like the Jamaican something or the Tunisians

Or the Haitian... Wow, you really are... You must have come across us at some point. It is the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion pepper. It's like a D&D character. It's a monster. It's right there in the name. They had an average, okay, of 1.2 million

Skowl heat units. They had one particular pepper that hit over 2 million. So if it's 1.2 million, that means if you do a million parts water to one drop of that pepper's juice, you would still go like, oh, it's a little hot. Yeah, that would be just noticing it. Yeah, essentially. Wait, it's $1.2 million?

One point two million on average with the water. No, you do $1 million, and there's still the point two left. It's like a habanero. It's still very hot. Yeah, you think of like a swimming pool of water and one drop, and you drink it and you're like, oh, I got a rash. I'm just kidding. But it is.

I mean, like, all the ones that I had heard of sort of are like mid-range on the Scoville heat unit scale of chili peppers. And it's really fascinating to just to get into. And of course, there are people who are enthusiasts of the hotter the better. They're describing this pepper, like, you really, you could just take a bite of it. And just by day, you would not want to do that. You would not want to do that for obvious reasons. They said that when they were harvesting the pepper to do the research, they had to continually change their gloves. It had so much and such high, such strong concentrations of catsacin. It was penetrating through the latex blood.

loves and soaking into their skin. Oh, my God. Do they just grow them in Trinidad? Are they just in the mountains? Yeah, and a lot of these are... So they're like the poison peppers in the mountains. Well, I think it's one of those things where, like, if you're an animal unlucky enough to eat it, you're not going to make that mistake twice.

No. Well, what if you're a person or a kid? Well, people do it on purpose, yeah. Oh, man. And, you know, like a lot of other peppers, they're cultivated, you know, for spiciness over time, but they are just naturally a hot pepper. So, yeah, if you're in Trinidad, you may want to, or you may want to seek out the You may want to not.

The Moruga scorpion variety. Either way. But yeah, I mean, and that ties into something else about, you know, if you've ever cut up, you know, majoran hot sauce and cut up peppers, you know that even just a little bit on your finger. Oh, sure. You don't realize it. Oh, my God. It's, you rub your eyes.

You get it in your mouth, you know. And that's like normal hot sauce. Yeah. Just accidentally, yeah. Yeah. You know, that's in the thousands of Scoville heat units. And this is upwards of one million. One million.

One million Scoville heat units. It's not in your mouth. You can feel it on your skull. skin and your fingers and your eyes and all your pores. So I don't know if you guys have the same experience, but the first time I ever accidentally been to a hot pepper, I think maybe some Chinese food we had, and, you know, it just, it just didn't see it there. That was me too.

I was eating general, general sow's chicken. Yeah. And they put the giant red peppers in there. Yeah, and they kind of hide under a piece of chicken or something. Oh, God! And I quickly learned, like, drinking water does not help. You know what really doesn't? Drinking Sprite immediately follows.

Also, does not help. Oh, and then you got like the carbonation that tagging your tongue as well. Yeah. When you drink water, you wash away all of the food that's in there, so only the oils remain. You're getting rid of everything but the capsicazin. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. You know, water and oil don't mix. But it's cooling. I mean, your initial thought is like, I need a cool. Oh, sure.

I was taught that milk was good. And milk does kind of soothe it. And then, you know, later I learned that, like, a beer, for instance, is also kind of good because the alcohol can cut the oil. Oh, okay. Oh, so you just need anything to break down the oil of the capsaicin. A piece of bread. Oh, yeah, I got a piece of bread. Oh, yeah, bread is good, too, too. But, Karen, our friends, our friends at Pepper Master.

The Pepper Master. Sorry, the Pepper Master, as you mentioned at the top of the show, in addition to letting us know with us in the show, also sent in some awesome facts for us. They say that they've discovered the best way to cut that searing pain of the pepper oil on your tongue is a mix of cane sugar, maple syrup, and heavy cream. So Canadian. Yeah, the maple syrup. Pink sugar, maple syrup, and heavy cream.

And heavy cream. So it's interesting. The cream I can see. I didn't really know what the sugar is. But according to our friends of the Pepper Master, capsaicin crystals, I guess, are very sharp. It's a sharp crystal. Sugar crystal is a really blunt crystal, okay,

the shape of it on a microscopic level. So mixing in the bluntness of the sugar crystals with the casein of the dairy kind of neutralizes the feeling on the tongue. It neutralizes the sharpness of the crystals and soothes it and kind of that's the best way to cut the pain. So a mix of something sugary and creamy. Sounds pretty good. Yeah. I heard ice cream when you're eating hot spices instead of high ice cream.

You need a milkshake. Oh, it helps me manage the pain. Don't worry about it. Why are you drinking hot sauce? You just don't worry about that. So, of course, I was thinking about things that are hot, thinking about the word hot, and listening to Will Shorts, the crossword editor, the New York Times, So that's the Sunday puzzle on NPR.

Then he does this style of puzzle a lot. I'm like, oh, this works really well with the word hot. So I'm titling this, hot anagrams here. Get your hot anagrams. Oh, okay. So all of these little anagram questions are going to be the word hot, the letters H-O- and T, and then I'm going to add a letter into that mix and ask you what word that means. So, for example, if I were to say hot plus the letter B, the word would be.

Both. Both. Sorry. Both. Typically, we buzzed and then answer. I was like, sob. So if you listeners are in a convenient place to grab a paper and a pencil, go ahead and do that. If not, it's okay.

You can probably figure some of these out. It's just a little bit trickier. But here we go. Here we go. Oh, Dan's going to win. First question. No. Um, Karen.

Moth. Moth. My enemy. Okay. Okay. We're going to, all right. Maybe you're finding these easy. We're going to step it up a little bit to two extra letters.

Hot plus C-L. Dana. Cloth. Cloth. Hot plus G. Dena. Ghost. All right.

Oh, my God. Hot plus M-U. Dana again. Mouth. Oh, man. She's rocking it. I'm rain man. We're taking time to write them down.

I'm not. I'm not. I'm not what you said. I'm just staring at the weather. Hot plus N-R. Oh. Colin. North.

North. There's actually a second answer. Hot plus N-R. Anybody want to guess? Oh, oh, hold, whoa. Karen. Thorn. Yes.

Hot plus U-Y. Colin. Youth. All right. I think you're also smart. Stepping it up to three extra letters. Hot plus A-F-M. Karen.

Fathom. Fathom. Very good. Hot plus A-R-U. Colin. Author? Author, yes. Hot plus B-B-I.

Colin. Biff. Hobbit? It is a hobbit? It is a hobbit? Nice, nice. I was like, wait, is a proper noun? No, wait, no, it's not.

And finally, hot plus AMZ. Here's the tricky one. Hot plus AMZ. AMZ. It's not asthma. It's not asthma. Is it a... Oh!

Mata. Mata. All right. Good job, you guys. Killed it. All right, guys. It's time. to dip into

Karen's stash of nightmare animals I haven't shared any nightmare animals for a while I think the last one was coconut crab Oh yeah

A little goes a long way I think about that sometimes I do too It haunts me But this week I want to introduce you guys to The Bombardier Beetle

Oh Okay Have you heard of that? I think I've seen these on the Nature Channel before. Oh, okay. Now, the Bombardier Beetle is just for, like, size, it's tiny. It's like half an inch, one centimeter long, right? Kind of, like a big ant.

And they're found in most places in the world, probably more common in the southern half of the globe, but not Antarctica. This creature has one of the most unbelievable but awesome defense mechanism in the animal kingdom. And so what happens is when the bug is threatened, the beetle will, number one make a loud popping sound and number two it will fire a noxious boiling hot liquid from its butt where does it get the boiling hot liquid and it doesn't stop there their butt is like a gun turret it can rotate and swivel in any direction and not just straight out from behind and has a wide range so if a predator is coming from the side Even in front of the bug.

It can shoot things in front of it. Yes. Between legs. Wow. It's crazy. And it actually has a really good aim. Like the accuracy is pretty good. And serving up boiling spray.

When I say boiling, it's near boiling. The temperature is near 100 degrees Celsius, the boiling point of water. And we've come across, you know, lots of, lots of animals out there, especially with insects and bugs that they will secrete. sort of liquid. Right, right. It's smelling or it's foamy or it's sticky, whatever, but this is almost boiling hot. Okay, so the fluid itself is a mixture of two main things, hydroquinone and hydrogen peroxide. So these fluids are naturally occurring for the bug, and the fluids are stored separately in two different chambers in the beetle's body. It's like a little epoxy tube. It's like, yeah, it is. It's like a reserve. So when the beetle is threatened, the muscles contract and

causes both chambers to open. Oh! So then there's a third chamber, the mixing chamber, that these two liquids flow in. Now, when these two fluids come together, the reaction is super intense. It's a super exothermic reaction. That's where the heat, that it hurts. Yeah. And, you know.

Like a baking zota volcano kind of thing. Yeah. So the reaction gives off a buttload of energy. If you will. EG. Quite literally. And what happens is that the liquid A, because of exothermic, heats up, and then the pressure and gas builds up, and the whole thing just explodes out from the butt valve.

Wow. And emitting a popping sound, and the sound is part of the reaction as well. Oh, it literally explodes out of its butt. Yeah, it explodes inside its butt. Fraction of a second. So I think this is where I think I had remember seeing it was on someone had done like a super high-speed film study of this beetle. And that was all I knew is they were studying, like, how fast it releases.

I had no idea that it was boiling hot, noxious fluid. There's videos of it, and you can see how hot it is, because you see kind of like steam or gas that comes out as the bug sprays. Does the bug die? No, it doesn't. Because what happens is the bug is structured so that the chambers where all these fluids are, they're padded or they're lying with something. So their organs are safe from...

It's got a fire wheeling hot. I'm so disappointed. Why? In the human butt. I know. We evolved all this stuff, but we don't have multidirectional explosive butts. How many times on this show have we talked about awesome things that come out from animal butts? Right.

Wow. Sounds kind of like a monster. No, he sounds great. Yeah. I'm so curious about the multidirectional thing. Is there like a tube or something that's? It's like they're doing crunches. Oh, I see.

It's cool strange. Oh, great. So they're more fit than we are. All right. Time for a quick break. A word from our sponsor. Steve Cubine and Nan McNamara's podcast from Beneath the Hollywood sign. Mary Astor has been keeping a diary.

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carve their peace out of this treacherous world and not just survive but rule. Enemy of my dreams is available wherever books are sold. And we're back. You're listening to Good Job, Bray, and this week we're tied about things that are Hot, hot, hot. So I'm going to talk about something that also happens in every continent except for Antarctica.

And that is firewalking. Every continent? Yes. There are groups in every continent that practice firewalking, some form of firewalking. I've never tried it. Have you guys tried it? No. I've never tried it. Never tried it. I mean, I was a trick.

I understand that it's, if done correctly, it's basically safe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean. My modifier being, if done correctly. If done correctly, yeah. If done correctly, everything is safe, though. Well, sure.

Yeah. But you're technically, you're not actually walking on fire. You're walking on, like, things that are heated up, like coal or something. Yeah. Like hot coals. Yeah. So, yes, you're walking across embers. And by coals or embers, it's not charcoal, coals, usually.

It's too hot. It's wood. There's, wood doesn't heat up super hot. So basically, I'll give you a little bit of information about how it happens or how you, how you can do it, how it works. So you get hot embers. They're on fire. Probably do wood.

It's a little bit safer. It doesn't get as hot as some of the other things. Don't use metal. Metal gets very hot. You could, stones are okay too, certain kinds of stones. Bele-bubble. I'm sorry. I'm giving you instructions like, I think you should do this in your backyard.

Don't do it in your backyard. I just tell you how, how people have. I've done it. Experts. People who are good at it. Okay. And then you build a runway. There's like a whole, you need to lay it all out and make sure that the embers have been burning for 20 minutes.

So that way they're not super hot anymore. There's kind of a layer of ash on them, which is part of the trick. Part of how it works. Not the trick. Yeah. Importantly, like, there is a reason it works with certain materials. Hucksters sell it as mind over matter. Like, oh, this would burn you.

But if you believe it won't burn you, you can walk across it. you'll be okay. Like, that is how flim-flam people basically sell firewall. Do you know, it's safe. It's actually safe if you do it the right way. So then you dip your feet in water because with the physics you need to, the water adds like a little layer of protection for your feet. It'll burn off. Here's probably the part where it's mind over matter. Do not run across it. Like you're freaking out. Your feet are warm. Like it's getting hot. If you run, you're putting more pressure in there. Your feet go deeper into the embers. You're going to burn the top of your. Yeah. You don't want to freak yourself out. If I had to do it, I'd be like, I need to get a

crosses the quickest way possible. No, don't do that. You're going to hurt yourself. Yeah, you're going to jam your foot. So you have to be centered. You have to be like, I am walking across this. Walk quickly. Yeah. Walk with a purpose. But walk gently. Yes. My understanding is that essentially that the embers are basically like, if you take a cake out of the oven and you touch the pan, you burn yourself. But you can put your fingers on the top of the cake and you're fine, even though it's all the same temperature, because the cake is porous, like the wood. A lot of air in it. But it's Yeah, but if you put the cake in your mouth, then close your mouth, then just hold it in there. Yeah, it would heat up.

It's hot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is kind of in that in-between area between, like, real mind over matter and the hucksterism's part. You know what I think? Because, like, as you say, Dana, like, it is, you kind of have to just trust that you're going to be okay and believe in it. But I think you're right, Chris, like, I've always sort of associated with, you've got to just believe in that you're not going to get hurt and focus. There is no, there is no mysticism to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The thing with firewalking, though, is that people aren't convinced with the physical. like there is some controversy about why it works like is it what physical properties are coming into play with it and there's this there's this well-renowned quote-unquote i mean i was looking at firewalking dot com he's a Harvard trained physician and medical researcher and he said that the literature on firewalking is dreadful and there's there's no way that he's convinced that mental state is not the key variable in firewalking and i'm like so i don't know to believe about that but yeah well i mean the water like you say the water on your feet you get a little it burns that off before it burns your skin the ash kind of insulates the wood is cool isish compared to

other things being hot i may have seen this on myth busters or one of those type of shows but they're saying i think it's like one of the reason they tend to do this at night as well as so that just the ambient temperature is a lot lower as well the air is cooler yeah again it's not really a trick but it's just you want to do everything that you can to make it less likely that you burn yourself i guess I wonder if you could do it in Antarctica Like it's just too cold Yeah It's too cold

You probably could It's just there's nobody really lives there That's kind of what I was thinking There's a bunch of researchers Yeah Well it is actually a pretty warm day here I think it's very pretty warm It's hot

It is hot day I think it is appropriate Yeah I mean it doesn't get crazy hot By which we mean like what in the 80s Yeah I was just going to say I mean people in Texas You know They don't want to hear

We're in Berkeley It's a balmy high 70s Maybe 80s maybe 80s and I think it's fair to say air conditioning is one of those modern conveniences that we sometimes take for granted. I love the sound of it. It's so soothing, just growing. The smell of conditioned air.

There is that glorious moment when you're out in the streets of, you know, Phoenix or Houston or Las Vegas, wherever you are, and you come into a store and just that blast, that icy blast hits you. Like diving into a swimming pool. And I touched on, air conditioning before in a long ago episode of Good Job Brain. It was on our inventions episode. That's right. And we were talking about how, you know, one of the more modern systems of air conditioning was developed in the aftermath of President

James Garfield being shot in 1881 and they needed to find a way to cool his room off where they were trying to help him recuperate. And that was just like a series of tubes and ice. It was, yeah. I mean, you know, there have been a lot of sort of historical systems like this where you use some salt, you know, to an ice to bring the temperature. water below freezing and you run air past it and it cools the air and you know there are examples of the egyptians doing this and the chinese having various versions of this but what makes those kind of systems different from when we talk about modern air conditioning is do you guys like what is the primary feature of modern air conditioning compared to things like laying wet towels in the window

and just letting the air come in and cool which does in fact cool the air uh well there's a fan there is a fan And they've had earlier systems with bands. It's not wet. It is that it's dehumidified. You're right. It's exactly right. When we talk about modern air conditioning, it's not just cooling the air, but it's pulling the moisture out of the air as well so it can stay cooler and is a much more efficient

way of cooling. The first modern air conditioner was invented by Willis Carrier. Carrier air conditioning companies still in business today. He was the one who really came up with the first modern system. And he was an engineer. He was working for a heavy equipment manufacturer in New York State. And he was working on a problem for a printing company that they worked with. As you looked into it, you know, they realized it kind of came down to the humidity.

The humidity was affecting not only the paper. It was affecting the way the inks would dry, the way the inks would take to the paper. You know, there had been large-scale air control systems and ventilation systems before, but there hadn't been one that was specifically designed to control the humidity. So this was what Willis Carrier came up with. He came up with the first modern system that would, would cool the air and pull the humidity out and solve the printing company's problems. They could keep it at a nice, consistent, predictable, drier air.

But really, it's the dehumidifying part that it was the draw. That's what made it different from anything that came before. It was pulling the moisture out. Yeah, those people who worked at that press, this is pretty nice. I like this. This is great. But he kind of reasoned backward from steam heating. He's like, well, you know, we know that you can use steam, hot steam, to really heat up a room pretty well and make it nice and toasty.

Part of the reason that you can do that and to hold the heat so well, It's got a lot of water in the air. So he's like, well, let me go backward. I can, if I can take the humidity out of the air, I can cool it a lot more efficiently. He would run air through cold coils. You know, he would chill the coils. And as you know how condensation works, the water would condense on the coils. And then the air now dried, moves in and cools off the room.

Where does the water go? They have, you know, you collect it in a pan. You know, I mean, for example, if you ever see an air conditioner on a hot day dripping water on the outside, that's condensed water that's being pulled out of the air that it's conditioning. This was an expensive proposition at first, and it's not going to surprise you that for a long time, air conditioning was kind of the province of big factories or hospitals or things that could afford to set up to just the massive ducts that you would need and the electricity to run the thing all day. But it was clear that, like, wow, this can really transform business. He didn't call it an air conditioner at first. He called it just an apparatus for treating air.

Yeah, you know, he was industrial. He was industrial. After. Yeah, they did come up with the damn air conditioning a few years later. But at that time, it just sort of meant any treatment of air. In fact, the first air conditioner, with that name applied to it, was actually a humidifier. So it was actually putting humidity into the air. But it was not too long before it got to be that if you said air conditioning, you meant cooled air condition.

So it grew steadily, mostly industrial, Willis Carrier had an air-conditioned igloo at the 1939 World's Fair to kind of demonstrate and show off this technology for home use. I mean, this was really their hope was that they could get into home use. And the first units were expensive and big and loud. As late as like the 1940s, carrier company was selling the atmospheric cabinet that would go into your home. And it was roughly the size of an upright piano. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

So it was a slowly adopted technology until 1951 when they invented the window unit, the now seemingly ubiquitous window air conditioning unit. So it was tiny. The noisy part was on the outside. You didn't have to hear it as much. In 1952, they went from basically no sales of window air conditioning units to $250 million in sales. That's $1952, by the way. So the window air conditioning unit just, it transformed life. I mean, it's, and, you know, a lot of researchers and historians, they really credit the development

of the window air conditioning unit to booming populations in the southwest, you know, that it was really after this, there was a convenient, relatively affordable way of cooling a house to normal temperature that the population booms in, you know, what they call the sunbelt, and particularly the Southwest, really took off. That makes sense. Air conditioning and cars quickly took off, you know, it just become kind of a must-have. You know, again, if you lived in the West or the Southwest, you know, driving on a hot day, you'd much rather have the AC going.

When I was a kid, that was not, like, standard on cars yet, you know, it was a big deal. We got our first car and the air conditioner. I'm talking about taking it for granted. I was doing some research again, thinking, I was thinking about, all right, where do I most appreciate the air conditioning. On the train. It was on the train. It was on the subway.

The New York subway, they started trials of air conditioning in the 50s and 60s. They had a few kind of spot tests machines, and they worked pretty well. They brought the temperature down to bearable, the temperature and the humidity to bearable levels. By the mid-1980s,

only half of the trains in the New York subway had air conditioning. Yeah. And it wasn't until 1993 that as high as 90s, 99% of the cars in the system were covered. Wow. Jeez Louise.

And that is, I always took that for granted. And I can't even imagine riding a car in, say, you know, 1989, and there's a chance that you may not have air conditioning. Right. Ew. You're right, yeah. So we have Mr. Willis Carrier to thank for our modern, luxurious, conditioned cool air. Good thinking on his part.

Thanks, buddy. When Johann Rawl received the letter on Christmas Day 1776, he put it away to read later. Maybe he thought it was a season's greeting and wanted to save it for the fireside. But what it actually was was a warning, delivered to the Hessian colonel, letting him know that General George Washington was crossing the Delaware and would soon attack his forces. The next day, when Rawl lost the Battle of Trenton and died from two colonial Boxing Day musket balls, the letter was found, unopened in his vest pocket. As someone with 15,000 unread emails in his inbox, I feel like there's a lesson there.

Oh, well, this is the Constant, a history of getting things wrong. I'm Mark Chrysler. Every episode, we look at the bad ideas, mistakes, and accidents that misshaped our world. Find us at Constantpodcast.com or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, and we have one more hot segment, and Chris, you got a quiz for us. I do. This is a quiz. All structured around temperatures, the measuring of heat.

Thank you for spicy. Clarify. Yes. As opposed to Scovilles. So let me ask you this question. What is zero degrees on the Kelvin scale more commonly known as? That's, you know. Colin.

Is that absolute zero? That is absolute zero. Yes, it is roughly negative 460 degrees Fahrenheit. It is the coldest something can get, theoretically. True or false? According to the International Bureau of Wights and Measures, the Celsius scale is defined by the freezing point of water being zero Celsius, and the boiling point of water being set at 100 Celsius.

Oh, hello. Dana. True. False. It was a trick question. In the past, the Celsius scale was defined by that, but now, according to the I.B. of WM., the way that they do both the Celsius and the Kelvin scales is it is defined by,

the triple point of water, which is the point at which, at a certain temperature and a certain pressure, water is considered to be all three stages of water are within equilibrium. They are just on the line where minor, minor, minor changes in pressure and temperature would cause it to go from liquid to solid, solid to gas. That is marked at 273.16 degrees Kelvin, or 0.01 degrees Celsius. So basically they take a very, they have a standard for like super, super pure water, and then they measure the triple point of that, and they mark that as 273.16 degrees Kelvin. And then everything flows from that.

Got it. I'll roll into that. And yes, that does actually mean that to convert between Celsius and Kelvin, you just add or subtract 273.15. At about negative 108 degrees Fahrenheit, dry ice turns from a solid to a gas, skipping the liquid state. What is this process called? Colin? Isn't that called sublimation?

It is called sublimation. What? Yeah. What do you call it? Sublimation. Sublimation. Like sublimation. Oh, the band.

Yeah, exactly. Sublimation. What is dry ice? Karen. Oh. It is frozen carbon dioxide. Yes. Yes.

It was like, frozen carbon dioxide, solid carbon dioxide. Yes, okay. When I was a kid, I played around with it. Yeah. No. Now, I was always told you they'll burn you if you touch it. I like inhale. I don't know.

Sometimes they pack it in with ice cream and stuff to transport. I would always see it at, you know, homemade haunted houses and things like that. Oh, of course, yeah. You know, put it in the bucket with the water. Well, it sublimates right in front of you, basically, because it doesn't pass through the liquid phase, so it turns from the solid to smoke or vapor essentially. Yeah, but don't touch it.

It's really cold. Yeah, no, don't do that. No. Don't do what Karen did. At around 300 degrees Fahrenheit, the my-R reaction happens. That's M-A-I-L-A-R-D, my-R reaction. What is the my-R reaction? Karen.

It is when you bake, and that is when the sugar or... No, hold on. This is toast. This is something to do with baking and toast. This is when the toast becomes crunchy and brown. Yes, it is the browning of food.

So it took a while to get up. So when you bake bread and the outside becomes brown. It is different from caramelization. It's a different chemical process, but it's also when you sear a steak and the steak becomes brown. Or when you toast bread and it becomes brown. That is the my hour reaction. Oh. Yes. 300 degrees Fahrenheit approximately.

The temperature at which paper burns is 451 degrees. Fahrenheit. Yes. Oh, that's where the book title comes from? Yes, that is the temperature at which paper burns. Is that? That's 451 degrees, Fahrenheit. It's a science reference.

So is that temperature closer to 100, 200, or 300 degrees Celsius? Multiple choice. 100, 200 or 300. Yeah, it is. Because bowling in Fahrenheit is 212, I think, or is 200-something. Yeah, that's 100. Lots of ways to get there. Two hundred and thirty-two degrees Celsius is the equivalent.

You subtract 32 and divide by 1.8. That's one I can never, ever remember that conversion. Every time, I need to go over five. Yeah. Nine over five, yeah. Finally, according to Wikipedia, what is hotter? I'm going to be three things. You tell me what the hottest, the hottest of the three things is.

The core of the sun, the maximum peak temperature of a hydrogen bomb, or the core of a star about to go type 2 supernova. What is the hottest? I'm going to guess the last one, the core of the star about to go. The star about to go supernova? Well, the sun's core is 16 million degrees Celsius. Oh, balmy. A hydrogen bomb can actually peak out at 350 million degrees Celsius.

Yes, that is much hotter than the core of the sun. But a high-mass star right before it pops off is three, billion degrees Celsius It is hot That's one of those numbers It's I can't even It is fathom what that scale You have to use blue whales

Yeah How many blues is that What happens in that reaction is that You have metals in there In the star That start turning into heavier metals Because like the nuclear fusion is happening And finally they

And finally it explodes And you don't want to be there when it does I know I'm like when I was little I just why it does look so beautiful I like that voice I like that voice. I like Yon-Carran voice.

Awesome. Well, that's our hot show. Thank you guys for joining me. And thank you guys listeners for listening and hope you learned a lot about firewalking

about the crazy butt beetle of all-beater beetle, air conditioning, hot word quiz, and other stuff. You can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud,

and also on our website, goodjobbrain.com. And don't forget to check our sponsor Audible at audiblepodcast.com slash good job brain. And a very big special thank you to the gang at the Peppermaster for sending

us photos of your kitchen, but also giving us some trivia and the inspiration for today's show. And if you have a crazy hobby or a job, feel free to send us cool trivia tidbits. We'd love to share them on the show. And I guess we'll see you guys next week.

Bye. Have you ever wondered how inbred the Habsburgs really were, what women in the past used for birth control, or what Queen Victoria's nine children got up to. On the History Tea Time podcast, I profile remarkable queens and LGBTQ plus royals explore royal family trees and delve into women's medical history and other fascinating topics. Join me every Tuesday for history tea time, wherever fine podcasts are enjoyed.