Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Chairs

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedians/writers Laurie Kilmartin (Conan, ‘The Jackie and Laurie Show’ podcast) and Danielle Radford (Honest Trailers, ‘Tights & Fights’ podcast) for a look at why chairs are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Chairs. Known for being sat in. Famous for being sat on. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why chairs are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. My guests today are two amazing podcasters, comedians, so much more, Laurie Kilmartin and Danielle Radford. Laurie is a comic and a writer for Conan and a bestselling author and co-hosts the Jackie and Laurie Show with friend of this show, Jackie Cation.

That's a podcast over on the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. And Danielle Radford is a comic and a writer for Honest Trailers and one of the co-hosts of Tights and Fights. And Tights and Fights is another great podcast over on MaxFun. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and I used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Lori and Danielle each recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino or Tongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and today's episode is about chairs. You probably have chairs. They're an intensely common item, and yet they are secretly related to ancient history, and to outer space, and to Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh. Okay, that's less exciting than the other two, but maybe if you're there, it's amazing. Anyway, please sit back or stand fully at attention for no good reason. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Laurie Kilmartin and Danielle Radford. I'll be back after we wrap up.

Talk to you then. Danielle, Lori, thank you so much for being here, doing this, talking chairs. Obviously the hot topic everyone's talking about on every show, but I appreciate you making time for this one too. Thank you. I love sitting, man. It's just, it's so good. It is. I, and I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Either of you can start, but what's your relationship or opinion of chairs that, that might be it. But if there's more, please, please feel free.

please, please feel free. I'm pro I am pro chair. I hadn't, uh, ever considered chairs until you, uh, announced that I would be thinking about it for an hour. So then I, uh, my favorite chair is the one I have in my, uh, whatever in the living room, family room, whatever it is, it's a, it's a giant chase chair so that my legs stick out. And, um, I sit in it every night and watch television and get heart disease. So that's what I love about it. Hell yeah. Sitting is bad for humans. It really is. Like I have to crawl out of the chair. I can't just swing my legs around. I have to do some, a lot of work. So, so that, that, that leads to me just being in it. Like, I'm like, Oh, I won't get that thing. I'll just, I'm just here for another two hours. I do. I feel like it's, it's chairs and it's eggs. There's like a couple of things that the

internet will just occasionally tell you are, are like the worst thing you can possibly do to yourself. And then you'll read another article that says, Oh, actually it's fine. Like we did another study. It's fine. And then it goes back and forth, which is hard because I love both. I have also pro chair. I'm on a stool right now, but otherwise. Oh, okay. Whatever poser. Do you have a, Danielle, do you have a back and an arm rest as well right now? Oh, hell yeah, I do. And I have a lower back cushion because I was once hit by a bus. And so you kind of have to be really careful when you sit in chairs after you have like an accident.

Yeah. So, yeah, I have all kinds of like back braces, lower back. That was in the last couple of years, right? That was when I first couple of years, right? That was when I first moved here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It turns out that stays with you forever. And it changes the way that you think about chairs

because every chair I look at now, I'm like, are you going to support my not back? Cause I don't have one of those anymore. So everything that, so I have to like buy cushions and like all this other stuff. It's not a bummer. It's just the way that my life is from now on. It's fine. It's not. Your chairs need a separate spine for you to really feel comfortable in them. You know, someday when we're, when I'm talking to my dogs and grand dogs, or I guess in this

case, cats and grand cats about what we went through this year, when I am talking to my dogs and grand dogs, or I guess in this case, cats and grand cats, about what we went through this year when I'm in my own supported spine chair, all of this will be very funny. Not to overshare about myself, but I was once, I guess I would call it mildly hit by a car in LA. I don't know if we're three for three on hit by vehicles in LA,

but one clipped me in the legs and I was thrown into the air and landed on the ground. Oh my God. Yeah, that sucks. Yeah, I'm fine. It worked out okay. But it was jarring right after I got there. Yeah, it happens. Yeah, LA doesn't care about you.

Yeah. But that's fine. It'll just hit you with its cars and chairs. It'll just hit you with its cars and chairs. Well, we got a few segments here, and I'll take us on the first one here, because on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics, and that's in a segment called, There's Simply the Stats, bow, bow, bow, bow, giving you all the facts. And that name was submitted by Caitlin Reed.

We have a new name for this segment every week. Make them silly and wacky and bad. Please send to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com. The first number we have here, I just wanted to start with what's the world's largest chair? Because why not? And it turns out the world's largest chair is 98 feet and five inches tall, which is about 30 meters. 98 feet, five inches tall is the world's largest chair.

It's in Austria. That's just like out in the world because it's huge. Can I jump in and add something here? Yes, please. Oh, yeah, yeah. My kid and I went to Ireland a while ago, and they have a national leprechaun museum, which is a massive good. If you're, if you're a parent, your eyes glaze over as soon as you walk in. Cause it's,

it's really cheesy and poorly done, but kids love it, but you can tell they haven't cleaned it or updated it in like 40 years. Like most of the attraction are just oversized furniture that leprechauns sit on. And I'm like, wait, I paid like 30 bucks to see a big chair. Oh, OK. And they're oversized furniture. Like it's like a larger leprechaun. The leprechauns were super tiny and the chairs were super big. And, you know, I mean, they just may have gotten, you know, oversized furniture at a

sale in like 1910 or something. And that just started the museum but it's quite the tourist trap for families with young kids you can call stuff anything yes if you look if you are pale enough and maybe tall enough as a man you can just call stuff stuff. It's amazing. Yeah, there's no pushback. There's just an acceptance. And, you know, well, I guess this will make my kid happy for an hour. Did he like it? Yeah, he did. He had a good time.

Yeah. I like it. And Tourist Trap is dead on for the overall existence of these giant chairs. We'll have a picture linked of it's in St. Florian, Austria. It's this chair that's like 10 stories tall, and it just looks like somebody plopped it in a parking lot because they wanted to have the Guinness Book of World Records record for the tallest chair. That's just it. You can't sit on it. It's too big. Is that just an unfinished apartment building or is it actually a a chair it definitely has a frames of like a building with a very tiny bathroom where it's like oh no you can kind of use the clawfoot tub like it's definitely not it's one of those hot plate buildings right um but maybe you share with four other people.

It's like, oh, you all get your own bathroom, but your kitchen, you're all going to live there together. Right. Why have doors when curtains are an option? And then you really want a door. Yeah. But also with other chairs, apparently there's just been a long running race between world cities to hold this record for the world's largest chair. According to Atlas Obscura, before this one, there was an 85 foot tall chair in Spain, and a 65 foot tall chair in Italy. And then the largest US chair is 56 feet tall. And it's a rocking chair in the town of Casey, Illinois, in Eastern Illinois,

which seems to just be a town where they build giant things to win Guinness Book of World Records. Like they also have a wind chime and knitting needles, and a mailbox and a pencil and a birdcage. They're all like hilariously large statues to win records. I want a Christopher Guest movie about this place so badly. I'm uncomfortable when Austrians try to win things. World domination. Oh, I am German and I agree.

Yeah. Not comfortable. You all need to take it down a notch. We were told to. We didn't listen. That was the problem was the problem right right i am a schmidt and i feel normal size chairs let's just do that sounds good uh let's let's stick to that one uh next number here is twelve thousand five hundred dollars and twelve thousand five hundred dollars is the approximate price of a chair from what's called a furniture farm.

And we'll have a link to Mental Floss so people can see pictures because there's a farm in the UK where they do what they call farming furniture, which is they grow trees and then shape the branches of the tree with molds so that, and I say it as a picture, but it's probably not clear exactly what it is. It's just a chair made of a bunch of tree branches being guided into that shape. There's no like sawing or nailing or anything. I don't know what it's like sitting on it, but it just looks like kind of a weird, very natural like Lord of the Rings chair.

It would be natural to try to make one branch just go right up into your um to your anus right that's a natural way right for at your farm after dark yeah sure why not yeah if you're if you're gonna grow the the perfect chair you might as well you might as well. You might as well. They do a lot of work to make a chair that looks like every wicker chair in every grandma's house I've ever been in. That is kind of a bummer. Right. I thought it would look more natural somehow.

It just looks like a prop from a fairy tale, even though they worked so hard on it and grew an entire tree to do it yeah uh but spend your money on it folks it's near manchester if you want to go there they also do tables and lamps so you can just get some grown furniture from this from this farm it's an option i feel like you really have to run out of things to see in england the chair farm. Big Ben, no thank you. Chairs, yeah. They've got like palaces and towers and such. Dad, we're passing Stonehenge.

Who cares? Like just blowing by stuff on the A1 or whatever it's called, whatever the highway is. Next number here is an American number. This is 11 minutes and 23 seconds. And 11 minutes and 23 seconds is the length, including applause breaks, because there were many of them. That's the length of Clint Eastwood's speech at the 2012 republican national convention oh lord uh when he i don't know if people remember listening but he his whole speech there was a chair already set up next to the podium on stage and he just talked to the chair as if it was uh current president barack obama at the time and told him how bad of a president he was via chair like to to look at that moment and think that's the last time the GOP was saying is really.

The fact that they didn't just put a white guy in blackface and have him be Barack Obama, we're like, good for you, an empty chair. Good for you. You know, that was a 51-49 vote. That's fair. good for you you know that was a 51 49 vote right like you read about other historical conventions there's like the smoke-filled room for who the nominee is and this one it was like who's the prop is it a person like it's not a good scene room versus chair unfilled stage. Mark Rubio, you got through it again.

No blackface for you this year. And yeah, that was all to get Mitt Romney nominated, and then he lost, and Obama kept being there. And I double-checked the video, too, because I was curious. Was it a stool with a bottle of water, like a stand-up-up comedy thing no it was like a prop chair ready to go so somebody signed off on this this whole chair situation yeah very strange I bet he he just brought it up about four minutes before his speech and he grabbed like someone had to get up they were sitting and and they're like look Clint needs that chair and they had to, look, Clint needs that chair. And they had to resentfully stand through his entire speech. Um, are you going to say no to Clint? No,

you're going to be like, Oh, I, you know what? He's a director. He's a visionary genius. This is going to be amazing. And he didn't practice it. He thought of it on the way over, but like, sometimes you trust your talent so much when when you should workshop something. And you just and you just go for it. That's a great message. Don't always trust your talent. I like it. Well, also, I've got two more numbers here. The next number is one. Very simple. And the number one is the number of belly buttons you will find on a monoblock plastic chair. Belly button is not a technical term. But do you know of that?

Monoblock is sort of a technical term. It's like those cheap plastic chairs that are just one solid block of plastic. Like they're usually white and kind of in a garden or something. Oh, right, right, right. Just standard plastic chair that you can get. Those are mass produced by injecting a bunch of hot plastic into a mold. And then the mold kind of spits it out. Apparently, and this is mainly coming from a great podcast called Every Little Thing from Gimlet.

But if you look at the bottom, usually of one of those chairs, you will see a little like round marking where the nozzle for the plastic went. And so there's a leftover that is sort of like a belly button of the creation of those cheap plastic chairs. You can just find it. Alex, I can't imagine a time in my life when I will seek this out. I'm always glad to know about it. That's cool. And next time I see you laurie if i see you rubbing the bottom of a chair trying to find the belly button i will know what's going on

and it'll just be between you and me i won't tell the other comics i'll just look at you and you'll look at me and we'll wink and we'll know we'll know please i i totally appreciate this response i also because I also like I heard this fact and then I was like I should go check oh the world's not safe I really wanted to go check it out as like a geeky thing and then I was like where am I gonna go into a building to

like mess with their chairs no way but later people check it out or a garden do you have do you have any neighbors who walked into their private property without being attacked or shot? I should do it by night at the anus furniture farm hour. I will go and I will explore. Yeah, go to the anus farmhouse and say,

I was trying to massage the belly button of your chairs. And let's just see how that police report pans out. Last, one last number we have here, and it takes us into the first of a couple takeaways for the episode. My last number here is $8.99. And that is the price of a set of 10 action figure sized toy folding chairs.

You get 10 toy folding chairs that are action figure sized from ringsidecollectibles.com. So if you like wrestling action figures, you can also buy a set of 10 folding chairs for them to hit each other with. Okay, now you're talking my language. Wrestling, which I already love and is fake, and then you take it to like a micro size

where it's like this thing is already fake and then these chairs are fake. And then you could like beat people up into these fake tiny chairs. Yeah, I'm in. I'll buy those. I'll buy that for what? Eight dollars? Yes.

Less than a dollar a chair. Yeah, $8.99. Yeah, I got that. $8.99. Yeah. Not to brag. I have $9 for fake wrestling folding chairs. Because it's like of all the wrestling accessories, you'd actually need a ring and then I guess these chairs, right?

There's not a ton of other stuff, maybe a cage. You just need the people to fight each other. You can do it with a laundry hamper or any of that other stuff like I used to do when I was a kid with Barbies and I would make them do cage matches in the laundry hamper. You don't need anything else. You staged fights between your Barbies? Oh, I absolutely did.

A lot of it was like Mad Max Thunderdome, like two Barbies enter and one Barbie leaves. Yeah, my mom was real worried about me for a second. Was it Barbie v. Barbie or Barbie v. Skipper or Barbie v. Ken? It was always Barbie versus Barbie because I think I wanted it to be fair. Sure. We have an innate sense of honor. That's what I like about these fights.

Thank you. Thank you. They are honorable fights between honorable Barbies. When folding chairs takes us into the first of three takeaways on the episode, takeaway number one. Folding chairs have been with us for thousands of years. It's not that precise design that you think of as like the stacked metal folding chairs, but we've had that as kind of a main chair for a lot of human history, it turns out. Just on voyages, on treks, on death marches, how do people use their folding chairs? Kind of that. Yeah, that's a lot of it.

We've got two main sources here. One is an article in Scientific American that's actually about the history of the recliner. And then also an NPR interview with an architect and professor named Weetold Ribchinski, who has written an entire book about the history of chairs. It's called Now I Sit Me Down. Daniel, I'm guessing he's single. Yes. Oh, God. I will be on it as soon as we are done with this. Take me away to your magical land of chairs, sexy man. Yeah, we'll lick wetoldsmatch.com in the links for the show. So you can just find it there.

How do you fact check that book? Because I would just believe anything he said. I don't think there's a way to look it up. Yeah, he's the whole field. He's unstoppable. He's like, I am the chairologist. So there's like kind of three big findings that he talks about in this interview as far as the whole history of chairs and one is that he believes

chairs don't really get better in especially the last few centuries according to him quote if you're sitting in a windsor wooden chair that's the same chair for all practical purposes that george washington and benjamin franklin sat in nothing else from that time other than the U.S. Constitution has survived in such usable form, end quote. Which I think is true. Like a wooden backed chair is basically what it was 300 years ago. It's not that different. Yeah. In fact, the Constitution has had actually more work done on it than those chairs, right? Yeah. A lot of repairs and fixes there yeah it's true yeah yeah nothing big nothing major nothing significant yeah sure just little tweaks here and there and the second second big finding he talks about is that chairs are amazingly ancient

the earliest historical record he could find of one was not an actual chair, but that somebody did a sculpture of a chair. And that's from around 2800 BC. So we've had chairs for several millennia now. It's one of the first things people like built and bothered to make. Because like we said, we love sitting. It's great. And then the third thing from this interview is he says that as far as chairs go, folding chairs were probably the first ones people made. And it's a lot for what you kind of said, Laurie, of like people going on big distances. He cites nomadic tribes in ancient China in particular. And he says, quote, there are lots of occasions where you want to walk somewhere and then you want to sit. Like if it's like events, like a comedy show, I wonder if it's like at the end, everyone asks,

hey, if you could just grab a chair and like fold it and put it like on the side on your way out. Like if it was that kind of thing throughout history, you know, like while you're watching the Shakespearean play, if you could just grab your chair on the way out and just stack it over in the corner so we don't have to do it. Yeah. Or as you're colonizing another nation when you after you you finish sitting uh just stack your chair uh on the people that you're you're subjugating thank you guys thank you so much but yeah and the uh also a lot of these historical chairs are sort of what we think of as stools. Like a lot of times it's just sort of a frame that folds open, like kind of a camping stool sort of thing.

But basically, throughout a lot of the world, they found one in King Tut's tomb in 1922 when that was sort of excavated and stuff taken from it. 1922 when that was sort of excavated and stuff taken from it. And three to 4000 year old chairs have been found in Scandinavia, Rome, Egypt, and the Mediterranean, like kind of all over the place people. A lot of people's like first possessions where I have some clothes and I have a chair that folds. And like maybe later I will have a house like that's kind of down the line in this part of ancient history. I imagine a lot of teachers like Socrates, you just like unfold the chair, sit down in it backwards, like, Hey, we should rap. Let's have a talk. That kind of thing. The beginning of the,

the beginning of the gangstas paradise video has existed throughout millennia. Dangerous Greek minds. That's how civilization began. And it's, I mean, it ultimately led to climate change and the destruction of earth. So maybe we should be a little more harsh on chairs. What did they, what did they start? What did they kick off what did they know like a chair tries to tell us but our butt is muffling it so you can't hear it you know it's just sorry it's cries into a tight abyss linda and from there we have another pretty historical one here. This is takeaway number two. You don't have to live in a chair-based society.

There are a lot of places in the world where sitting on the floor is much more common. And it is still, even to this day, either traditional or quote-unquote normal and a thing that people are up to. Not only societies where people tend not to sit in chairs at all, and then also we'll have a source from NASA about their, I think, on-purpose research into how the body naturally wants to rest because it doesn't really fit chairs. Is that the same as their squatty potty research or however we got to the idea that you need to use a stool for your feet when you shit?

Oh, I don't think so. I think it's separate, yeah. Okay, okay. Many experiments at NASA there. at NASA. There are a lot of labs, a lot of teams. Yeah. And I don't know if that was NASA. I just know that that's like, I saw that a unicorn pooping on Facebook and then I bought a stool. Do you like it? Oh, it's amazing. Apparently as humans, we're not supposed to poop the way that we would sit in a chair. And so you're supposed to like elevate and like squash. Yeah, it's amazing. Um, apparently as humans, we're not supposed to poop the way that we would sit in a chair. And so you're supposed to like elevate and like squash. Yeah.

It's great. I'm not a yuppie, but like, I'm trying to do the poor version where it's like, you just get like $12 things on Amazon. I am so close to a bidet. And then I have, I have reached the Zenith of,

um, of chairs and poop and cleanliness. It's amazing. Other, other places, they got it right. Other places do bidets. They get it. We invested in a Kickstarter for a new kind of bidet, I think a year ago now.

And we're just in limbo of it being late, but we still think it's going to come. And so we do not acquire a bidet because we bought one that's supposed to, you know? So we're just like in a very difficult limbo right now. It's been a hard time. You should you should get a bidet. I feel like the day we go buy a bidet, the other bidet will show up.

And then we're then we have like double bidet. It doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like you can gift it. You can't give away your like used bidet and be like, I'm done with it now. I upgraded, you know, it's not like with chairs where you can go and give them to a goodwill. You can't give away your squatty potty or your bidet.

People look at you weird. Guys, things do break. One day you will have a meal that will break your bidet. And then you bring in the new one. That's what I'm saying. I really, I really want that to be like the argument for a two bidet podcast sponsor. Like this is brought to you by two bidets.

Eat with confidence, folks. Because when we got a few things here about floor sitting societies, first source here is anthropologist Gordon W. Hughes of University of Colorado, who did a study of worldwide sitting. He said, how do people take the load off their feet? And according to him, quote, at least a fourth of mankind habitually takes the load off its feet by crouching in a deep squat, both at rest and at work. Deep squatting is favored by people in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America, but sitting cross-legged on the floor is almost as common, and many South Asians cook, dine, work, and relax in that position. So there's whole chunks of the world where floor sitting or squatting

is much more common than using a chair to this day. I feel like that has to start as a child because I remember reading a study and immediately squatting and going, oh, this, I can't, I need, I need to get up. So I, if you, if you haven't been doing, if you haven't conditioned your knees, it's not happening as a grownup, in my opinion. Yeah, that feels right. Yeah. And, and, and the U in the U S you only have a hope if you're from Houston, if you're Megan, the stallion, or if you're Beyonce, then you have the knees that can do that kind of squat.

But if you're not from Houston, give it up. Sorry, Americans. I didn't tie it to Houston, but now, yeah, I guess so. It's some Houston knees. We can't keep up. Squatting doesn't take the load off your feet at all it puts all the load on your feet um we're sitting cross-legged and does yeah he he also i guess in his study uh and i don't know exactly how the specifics worked but he says that he studied human posture around the world and

identified no fewer than a hundred common positions, either on a chair or on the floor. And so people are configuring themselves all kinds of different ways, but not necessarily in a chair. I think I was trained in Illinois to believe that's the way of sitting. And if you're on the floor, you're playing with blocks or something. But it's for life. You can do it that way. Yeah, I was not trained in that. I can do, I can still do cross-legged. Like I can still do, what are we calling it now? We're calling it, I've heard crisscross applesauce, which I am grown, so I can't say that. But I think we're just saying cross-legged. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I can, I can sit cross-legged still, which is nice. Yeah. Me too. I've taken yoga classes where they still say,

if you're just sitting, you know, thighs on on calves, it's Japanese style, which I don't know if that is Japanese style. I mean, it is one style, but they didn't invent it. Right. That's great. Because also these studies, I guess they couldn't figure out what made one country or culture versus the other choose chairs or floor. But Japan and Korea were two of their prime examples of what still tends to be a floor-sitting society. There's some westernization where people adopt chairs, but it's still very common there. But they also, since they take off their shoes, their floors are pretty clean.

No more on that, right? Yeah. And that leads into the other thing they found is that if your society is chair-sitting No more in bed, right? is going to be on the floor more often and you don't want to touch that stuff. There's also other changes where you're more likely to wear sandals or slippers. You're more likely to wear loose clothing. It's easier to swat or sit cross-legged in. More likely to have closets that are lower and also more likely to sleep on mats if you tend to sit on the floor rather than having like an elevated bed because you're used to elevated chairs. I prefer an elevated bed, but the rest of what you described, loose fitting clothes and just

slippers is I feel like I was born in the wrong country and I'm very resentful of my parents. Yeah, I've gotten very into athleisure the last few months. Yes. I used to be very much like a yeah, like a mid century modern like Grace Kelly dresses. And now I'm like, No, just like put me in whatever your tie dye sweats look like. That's my day all day now. I bought skorts on land at Land's End. And they're my favorite things to wear in the house. They're great. That sounds amazing. Yeah, check them out. Yeah, I'm doing more flowing like baggy pants now and stuff it's great it's just it's just very like i'm i feel like a prince

you know in a good way it's like ah here i am yeah when you see like saudi men in the full long dresses you know it's like why don't why don't all men dress like that it looks way more comfortable than jeans and a shirt and tucking things in and belts and all that kind of stuff, you know? Yeah, that's reminding me when, Danielle, when you mentioned still able to sit cross-legged, I think the last time I tried to sit cross-legged, I was in relatively restrictive jeans. And I was like, I'm sure my body can do this, but I'm not in the right gear. Okay.

Like I had to double check. You would wind up poking out. Plus, you know, it's the US. Where would you put your gun holster? Like if you need like a gun in your phone holster, you can only do that with jeans. I think people should hold their guns in their mouths, Danielle. That's a really handy place to keep them.

It is. It's perfect shape. It really is. But I'm trying to smoke all my cigarettes. There's also one other chairs versus floors thing. I guess it really decides how your whole house and architecture is often, too. Chair-sitting societies will tend to develop a variety of furniture that goes with chairs, like having a dining table to sit at or a dressing table or desks or sideboards. And then floor sitting societies will tend to have smooth floors in their buildings. So then

you don't get like splinters on your butt, basically. And then they'll also tend to have windows that are not as tall and ceilings that are not as high. Because if you spend so much time sitting on the floor, you just don't expect as much clearance above you from that position. And the other thing with sitting is we have interesting information from NASA. Apparently, one of the very first things NASA used space stations to research is human posture. And the first U.S. space station was called Skylab. It was occupied from May of 1973 to February 1974. So just less than a year in the 70s there. And NASA took measurements of nine different people on board Skylab. And then

from there, they diagrammed neutral body posture, which is their name for what the human body does in microgravity or zero gravity, when there's like, oh oh if nothing's pulling or pushing on your body what does it do and because of how the body shapes in that situation the experts believe that the way you want to sit in a chair is kind of perched on the front edge of it so nasa just wants us to not be super comfortable most of the time yeah most of the time. Yeah. Truly revenge of the nerds on the rest of us. Yeah, I don't trust science.

Look, sitting uncomfortably in the chair, that's where they put the 5G. They put it at the front of the chair. And so you sit there and then the 5G wires get into your brain. All connected.

Don't trust them science chairs. I really wish the core of QAnon was not trusting chairs. They'd be so uncomfortable all the time. They couldn't use the internet as good. That would fix everything, man. Love it. They'll get there. They'll get there. Yeah, it's so close. Off of that, we are going to a short break, followed by a whole new takeaway. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters,

and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie,

Vicki Peterson, John Hodggman and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience one you have no choice but to embrace because yes listening is mandatory the jv club with janet varney is available every thursday on maximum fun or wherever you get your podcasts thank you and, no running in the halls. Well, and then we got one more totally unrelated takeaway here. Takeaway number three. Parking chairs are a beloved annual winter crime in several northern U.S. cities. Parking chairs are a very common technically illegal practice in a lot of northern cities in the U.S.

What's that? I know this. Yeah, I was curious if either of you know about them. It's big in Chicago. Huge in Chicago, yeah. So when you want a parking spot and you want it to be yours, you just like put a chair down and you're like, that's my spot. You can't, so you just take like whatever your lawn chair or any other chair and you put

it down in that spot. And that's your chair now. And people actually like respect it. It's like an unwritten rule in Chicago. It's like, well, no, I can't take that because someone else's chair is there. So like, you can't go and park your car there. Yeah.

Well, if you were to back into that chair, then it would become a folding chair, right? Yeah, it is. It's exactly what you described, Danielle. And I also, because I'm from around Chicago. And so when I was like, let's do this in the episode, I was like, parking chairs, I'm going to see a bunch of Chicago stuff. It turns out it's also big in Boston, also very big in Pittsburgh, in particular, like Pittsburgh, people are going to be way on top of this. I swear y'all are like cousins, those cities. Yeah, it's true. Well, Pittsburgh, they leave babies in the parking spot. They don't even leave chairs.

Right? I have extra babies, but like chairs, I only have a couple of nice ones. And so, yeah, we have sources mainly from Pittsburgh and Chicago media here. But the basic situation is in northern U.S. cities, especially ones east of the Great Lakes, we'll get a lot of snowfall in the winter and the snow plows clear out the middles of the streets, but not the parking spaces, because there's usually too many cars in them. And so in particular, when local residents spend a bunch of time shoveling out a parking space, they will then place a chair, usually not a nice chair, usually a chair they don't really need, but they will place a chair in the empty parking spot whenever they leave it for a short period of time. In Chicago, it's called calling dibs.

It's called a space saver in Boston. It's called a parking chair in most other places that do it. And it's this weird, technically illegal system of reserving a parking space that you shoveled out because you put in the work. And I think the rest of the country and the world doesn't know this is going on. Like it's, it's only common to these super specific, like Great Lakes cities in the U S. Yeah. That seems, that seems legit. I have no, I have no quarrel with anyone who would do that. I, I, if I, if I took the time to, uh, to, to take it, to shovel snow out of this space, I would, I would definitely want to own it for at least 48 hours. Yeah. And that's kind of the rule of thumb, actually. And then based on most city

laws, you're either littering or storing your property in a bad way, or like hogging a parking space, like in every city, it's illegal. But there's enough of a belief that it's a good system that people just keep doing it. I think I think this sort of disregard of municipal law leads to QAnon. So it needs to be legalized, right? Just legalize it. I want to see those signs at the next like protest was like legalize it. It's like, well, pot's legal. No, we mean parking chairs.

People had to pay a permit for a specific parking chair. I mean, maybe the city can make money off of it as well. Oh, there you go. Ooh, kind of like West Hollywood. Yeah. Good to know if you guys ever go to West Hollywood. It's really hard to find. Like, you can find some street parking,

but a lot of it is like uh if they find you there they will tow you because you have to have a sticker and you have to get it every two weeks you have to like or you used to i don't know what you have to do now but you would have to like go down to like the dmv and like get it wow and prove that you like live on that block yeah and i feel like it fits in with that this whole parking chair thing also comes out of just the basic situation where we built the cities in the u.s and then everybody got cars like uh the according to wbez between 1949 and 1969 the number of registered cars in illinois nearly doubled so in those 20 years cars doubled and there was the same amount of Chicago. And then shortly after this, Chicago starts the dibs system just anarchically among citizens because they were like, well, we have to do something.

Cars doubled and chairs tripled. So people responded. And there's also a kind of a fun thing where that idea of legalizing it makes sense and cities haven't quite done it in most places. But in 2018, Chicago had an election for mayor and all the candidates were asked about dibs. And people, they were like, will you make dibs illegal or will you like crack down on dibs? And all of them tried to not answer it for the most part. like crack down on dibs and all of them tried to not answer it for the most part and the the now mayor laurie lightfoot when press said that she was against dibs but then has proceeded to not touch it because it's like too it's too popular of a system and institution for anyone to to mess

with it it's just because become how the city works it's like partillos man it's like what portillo's like the place where you go when you get like your your italian sausages i i used to date someone who uh was i was in a relationship with someone from chicago for like a lot of years i know too much about chicago it's like uh uh it's like shake that's also a cake uh you just kind of like this is all allowed to touch it yeah yeah yeah we everybody that area, we all end up talking about it, I feel like, within a month of someone knowing us. It's like, oh, well, this is my name, Portillo's. I'm from, like, it really, it comes up fast. And then also in Boston, in 2005, the mayor said we got to do something and officially sanctions parking chairs, space savers.

And the way it works is if the city officially declares a snow emergency, you can do a space saver for the 48 hours after that. Because they that's, I think the first city I can find where they actually worked out something. And we're like, this is what everyone does. We have to actually acknowledge it. Yeah. Yeah. To go back to what you said, it's like legalizing pot. Like everyone's doing it and it's not, it's not really harmful. So let's not criminalize.

It's not, I guess it's not the same at all now that I work it out, but you know what I mean? I'm glad people are being sent to prison in Boston for putting a chair in a, in a spot. That's all. Yeah. You cheer the Celtics. That's what you deserve. Wow. Hardcore. I'm just mad. I'm from Seattle. We don't have a basketball team. I'm just jealous. Well, and also the Pittsburgh stories here. I'm not from Pittsburgh, but it seems like Pittsburgh really, really goes hard on this and is really, really into it. For one thing, there are local shops there that made officially branded parking chair chairs. It says official parking chair on it. It's like a gag.

It's not from the city. And there are some people decorating them with Christmas lights. There's also one resident who started setting up a parking chair and end table and lamp because they figured like if i erect more of a furniture situation people are less likely to take it down like it's not just the honor system it's like well it's that guy's house i can't mess no one's living there i can't park there yeah yeah and then it got it got to be enough of a big thing that in 2013, the Pittsburgh police officially warned people that it's illegal to do this and also threatened to fine the shop selling the novelty parking chair chairs. And it was a $350 fine if they decided to slap you with it, which is even for city tickets like a lot like that's really going for it you can celebrate a sports win by eating horse poop but you can't sell you can celebrate it by eating horse poop uh someone did i make fun of it all the time and then i had to take it back but this is a different podcast so i can start making fun of it again on this one not my podcast um yeah someone Yeah, someone, just like someone, gosh, it was after a sports win, a dude ate like horse poop off because they celebrate hard, hard out in like Philly and Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania when that happens.

I believed it was a Philly fan. Oh, boy. And yeah, dude, on camera, ate some horse poop. Yeah. To celebrate. Not as a punishment, just because he was really happy sports that's more of an indictment of pennsylvania i look i've already done a long apology for this if anybody comes after me for it i'll point you to it there's also the one uh i think the most extreme parking chair story i've seen, this is from way back in 1994, but there's like a town that's part of greater Pittsburgh called Dormont, Pennsylvania.

And the police sergeant of Dormont, Pennsylvania just got so annoyed by disputes over parking chairs. And I guess people arguing about whether their chair had been removed unfairly, that he had the police department impound more than 200 chairs and bring them to the impound lot and you had to pay to bust your chair out of the impound lot like it was a vehicle. And they just did a sting on all the parking chairs in town.

So they had a chair jail. I'm really into it. I don't know what to make of this. I'm so low on chair riffs at this point. And there might be no more meat on this bone. But I hope everyone gets a parking space this winter. I really do hope the best for everybody living in a tough town. Folks, that is the main episode for this week.

My thanks to Lori Kilmartin and Danielle Radford for pulling up a chair, two talk chairs, two listeners who might be sitting in chairs. It's chairs all the way down. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the Coronation Chair. And I will let that show explain what that is. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library and more than a dozen other bonus shows,

and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring chairs with us. and other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring chairs with us. Here is one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, folding chairs have been with us for thousands of years. Takeaway number two, you do not have to live in a chair-based society. And if you do live in one, you can take some advice on chair sitting from NASA. And takeaway number three, parking chairs are a beloved annual winter crime in several northern U.S. cities. Those are the takeaways. Also,

please follow my guests because we got tons of links for both these amazing comics, writers, podcasters, and so much more. Lori Kilmartin is an Emmy-nominated writer for Conan on TBS. She's co-host of The Jackie and Lori Show on Maximum Fun. Danielle Radford is seen all over the internet and co-hosts the Tights and Fights podcast, also on Maximum Fun. And there's more links from there, all to be found at sifpod.fun. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. There are a couple of interviews with the architect and University of Pennsylvania professor Witold Rybczynski. He's the author of Now I Sit Me Down, which is a history of the chair. Further links take you to NASA studies of neutral body posture, to local Pittsburgh and Chicago histories of the parking chair.

Find those and more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners.

I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.