Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Socks

Episode Date: November 2, 2020

Alex Schmidt is joined by writer/actress Dani Fernandez (Netflix, HBO Max) and writer/podcaster Dave Schilling (‘Full Court Chat’, The New Yorker) for a look at why socks are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Socks. Known for being a garment. Famous for nothing else, really. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why socks 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. Two amazing guests join me this week. One of them is Dani Fernandez, who's a writer and an actress. You've seen Dani's work on Netflix and HBO and Comedy Central and more places from there. Also, Dani co-hosted a great podcast called Nerdificent, and I'm so glad she's on this podcast. I'm also joined by Dave Schilling. Dave is a writer and a podcaster with bylines everywhere. He just wrote a great humor

piece for the New Yorker's Daily Shouts section. We'll have that linked. And Dave just put out the second season of his improvised comedy sports podcast, Full Court Chat. I hope you know Danny and Dave's work. If you don't, you get to meet them through this show, and I'm so glad they're both here. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and 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 Danny and Dave each recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Ortongva 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 socks, a topic that I'm really excited to get into. It's so universal, it's so basic, it's so the title of the show. to. It's so universal. It's so basic. It's so the title of the show. So please sit back or return to your sock drawer to wear your special podcast listening socks, if that exists. I would love to know if there's a type that's the most cozy for it. Probably the warm type, right? Winter's coming. Yeah, that makes sense. And either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Danny Fernandez and Dave Schilling. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Danny Fernandez, Dave Schilling, it is so good to be here talking about Sox with you. Yeah, why are you so excited about this? This is a very mundane topic. So I'm like,

what's going on with you? You want to talk about Sox? What's your deal, man? Is there like a Sox? Like there's WikiFeed. Is there like a WikiSox? This guy just goes into HappyFeed on Sunset, just touches everything. Oh, no. in a happy feet on sunset just touches everything oh no all this stuff i was gonna say i somebody i'm with found out that i'm on wiki feet but somebody got docked because they uploaded ones of me in socks and i think you get like docked for that because that's not real feet so little weird factoid yes that is a interesting world terrifying stuff i will say i hope i'm never on any of those websites i don't have nice feet i have beautiful hands and that's it well there you go perfect for the zoom era i know right i feel like a traitor um

because i'm not wearing socks right now so i feel oh all right i didn't even bother to put them on for this. You can show us the feet now, and I promise I will not screen cap this Zoom call and then post it immediately on WikiFeet. I promise I would not do that. This is a safe space for your feet. It's going to cost you $200.

Oh, geez. Is there a money thing involved? Sorry. No, not with that. This has gone off the rails. Yeah, Alex, I'm so sorry.'m so sorry you were you knew what you were getting into when you asked this is called digital jazz that's what this is baby we're just we're just freestyling i know i well because socks are so universal because we all have feet

right uh but i i start every episode by asking the guests what your it's your relationship to this topic and and either of you how do you feel about socks in a general way? What do they mean to you? Danny, you go first, please. Well, okay, so I, I never match my socks. It just I don't care enough. So I have, I have a bin, I would say just of socks. It's in my closet, and I just throw them in there clean, but I just pull whatever comes out.

So if it's like a striped long one and like a short, like nobody really sees them. And even if they did, I wouldn't care. So I never match them, but I have a lot of athletic socks. Those are my favorite. Like the little low cut. Is that what I'm thinking of? Yeah, yeah. How I use I'm thinking of? Yeah. How I use terms of like low rise jeans.

It's like the low cut ones that are for like working out. I wear those for everything. So whether I'm working out or not. Cool. But they never match. It'll be like a Puma and a Nike one, but they're pretty cheap. So I just buy them in like bundles. And that's my relationship to socks. socks oh we just lost both those sponsors now they're like you can't match our socks that's terrible our socks are the best they have the

thickest thread count of any sock um i have a similar relationship to socks and that i also do not match them i i don't have the time. I don't have the inclination. It's just, it's a hassle. I just shove them into a drawer. It's like, okay, this is a clean sock. This is also a clean sock. No one's going to see them, you know, except for, you know, intimates,

significant others and stuff. Just going in the drawer. I also prefer the no-show sock. I'm from California. So I think because I'm so used to the weather being warm and sandal culture and getting to show off your nice ankles, I always wear a no-show sock even in the wintertime. I just think it looks better. I think I have decent ankles, and I'd just rather the world get to see them. I like to air them out. decent ankles and I'd just rather the world get to see them. I like to air them out.

So I will mismatch those all the time and no one will know that I'm wearing red stripes with blue polka dots and that kind of thing. I will wear normal socks, obviously, for formal situations. If I'm going to a wedding, I'm going to court because I've never been to court, but if I had to go to court, I'd wear real socks tell you that um but yeah socks are just the most utilitarian thing even underwear i feel like i take more pride in than socks i so if folks don't know you're both very talented do many things and also you're both so stylish to me thank you thanks but i think of you both as very very stylish people and i'm also excited to learn that you'll just throw them on like socks. Yeah, sure. Like the rest of the things, what I'm doing and then socks, any two I grab. Amazing. Great. But I feel like Dave, cause you do like, if you're

interviewing or doing events or whatever, like you, I feel like men have to have those like long socks. I always see them with like the stripeped socks because when they fold, when they cross their legs or whatever, like you can see it. Like even when I'm doing interviews, I pay attention to like the actors and stuff that I'm interviewing. Like, do you feel that you have to bring your A game for those? For socks? No, I really don't feel that that's important. Like, I understand what you're saying. When you cross your legs, people are going to see your socks, you know, there are going to see your socks. There's going to be some sock peeking. So it is more visible than underwear.

At the same time, again, I just love an ankle. I like an ankle. I don't like how itchy socks can be when they're longer. I don't like how they bunch up and then I have to pull them back up. My father was of the generation where you could still wear the stirrups that keep your socks up but i'm not gonna do that that's that's like i think he learned to do that in the military which he was in the air force but your dad was from the 1800s i yes no they had these little they had these little little fastener guys that like hooked around your ankle and they keep your socks up he was a weird guy that's why i'm the way that i am but um no i

i like i'm a california west coast kind of casual person that also wear suits all the time so the the dichotomy is what makes me fascinating that makes sense to me because i'm from like northern illinois upper midwest and i don't know if it was a climate thing or what, but I grew up always wearing socks all of the time. Bare feet situations were really rare. Maybe you're on vacation on the beach presently, otherwise socks no matter what, which is probably weird. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. I get it. It's definitely a climate and a cultural thing. And today's question, I wear socks, I think, about all of the time. If I don't have socks on, I'm about to shower or sleep.

And otherwise, socks. The foot does not touch the floor. Forget it. My ex-boyfriend would wear socks to bed, but I don't know how it didn't bother him. It would always be half coming off. One would be off and one would be half off. And I'm like, that would be so traumatizing to me. Yeah.

Saxon bed is chaos. I agree. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That is monstrous. I feel ill thinking about it. I could not sleep. I run very hot too.

So if I have any clothing on, say for a pair of underwear i'm not going to bed okay this is just a fact i need as much like draft and air and like i don't need separation between me and the world when i'm asleep the socks in bed that's like that's a crime that's depraved yeah i think jeffrey dahmer probably there's easily people listening who wear socks to bed i can guarantee that they will tweet at you and be like i wear them they keep me comfy email me at uh dave shilling at gmail.com and we can talk about how sick you are you're sick you're sick i love how everybody listening has their own specific answers to all of this. Like, it's such a universal item.

So we've got a few reasons here. The first set of them comes in the first segment. It is a set of quick numbers and statistics about this topic. And that's in a segment called, that's what she said. And that name was submitted by Emily. Thank you, Emily. There's a new name for this segment every week submitted by listeners like you please make them as silly and wacky and as bad as possible

submit to at saf pod on twitter or to sif pod at gmail.com uh but we got a couple big takeaways we'll get into first we have stats and numbers about socks and the first number is at least 1500 years old 1500 years old that is the age of the oldest surviving pair of socks in the world but we definitely think that they were that they existed before then like jesus had socks right now he's a sandals guy or that was a sandals guy right there but in all the photos we all know that he wore... In all the photos, I'm sorry. I need to warm up. You know, all those... The daguerreotypes of Jesus.

Right, right. My bad, I meant paintings. The photos of Jesus. In all of his interviews, he has stated he is a sandals man. Listen, wearing socks to bed is stupid. I would never do that that's my jesus impression it's pretty good i'm working on it but it's so far i'm workshopping it it's i'm auditioning for snl next year yeah we it's a weird thing where something like socks have been around

probably since the stone age according to the guardian cavemen used to use pelts or animal skins as like a foot wrapping and that's not really a shoe you know like that's a slipper or a sock or something like that um but the victoria and albert museum in london has a pair of wool socks that were knitted in egypt in either the 300s or 400s or 500s and they're still hanging together and i say you guys a picture of it's like a a weird red foot sock that has a big uh joint between the big toe and the other toes oh yeah it's terrifying like it looks like we used to be aliens at some point and it looks like a claw yeah It looks like a lobster claw.

There's a fashion house that makes shoes like this. They're called Maison Margiela, and they make shoes that have like an indentation between the, I guess, your first two toes and your last three toes. And it looks like, sort of like this, but not quite so claw-like in the sense that this literally looks like a lobster because of the color. But it is interesting that that kind of idea has now circled all the way back thousands of years to modern day Western civilization.

Yeah. I wonder if they knew something we didn't know because they have it separated in the middle of your toes. And you know, when we wear sandals, it's always your big toe is separated from all your other ones, like in flip-flops or whatever. So I wonder if they knew something. They seem to be way smarter than us at all times, like back in the old days. So I wonder if they knew something about balance or arch support with separating it between your two to three toes as opposed to your big toe. Yeah, it would be cool if we if we adjusted our sandals slightly, suddenly we're amazing at building pyramids or something like, oh, now we've unlocked the stability and strength now. Okay, I'm just gonna heave blocks. Yeah.

But and and you're right, Danny, that it is like a sandal based split in the toes. They styled their socks to have a split between the toe compartments for a thong type sandal to be their footwear and for it to be comfortable. So they were doing these socks and sandals look, you know, many, many, many years ago. Also, the socks were, I think, pretty popular, at least with wealthy people. Next number here is 47. Socks were, I think, pretty popular, at least with wealthy people. Next number here is 47. 47 is the number of pairs of socks that were buried with Tutankhamen, King Tut.

So when he died in 1325 BC, the tomb was excavated in the 1920s, and they found the remains of a lot of pairs of socks and a bunch of other clothes. Get them toesies warm and toasty, you know, in the afterlife. Yeah, yeah. I get that. That makes sense. I wonder if they thought he would need them. That doesn't sound prepared enough for the afterlife, though, because whatever they give him is like,

this is supposed to last you in the afterlife, and 47 socks doesn't seem to last for infinity, if I'm doing my math correctly. That's like less than a year like that's not i'm sorry dave is shaking no no no no no no no no what i was gonna say is like they they didn't have a ton of time to put you know a thousand socks in there 47 is probably the best they could do under those circumstances. One sock a year. Yeah, we got to get this guy in the tomb. We got to shut that thing and we got to move on. We can't be making socks for this guy. He's dead.

He died. The next number here, this is a sports thing. The number is five. And five is the number of pairs of knee socks that were worn by the nba player jason terry during games he would wear five pairs of knee socks all at once stacked up on each other while playing nba basketball as a professional that is strange i i knew he did this um but i will say someone who's you know played basketball on a very low level pickup level the you're most concerned about your legs because you're jumping up and down yeah people are

stepping on your feet i rolled my ankle um the day i was supposed to go to um look at the venue for my wedding i was married once and i was playing basketball because I played basketball every Saturday morning. Yeah. For a few years. And I come down right by somebody else's leg and I just roll my ankle because I wasn't wearing enough ankle support. Or, you know, I have low, low top shoes. And so I was hobbling around Catalina Island with this giant swollen ankle trying cakes. It was horrible. But I think that's probably part of why Jason Terry did that. You know, he probably was concerned about his leg,

he's concerned about his ankles. And also, you know, it's just superstition too. I wore a bandaid on my finger when I played baseball. So I broke my finger. And I was like, I need to wrap this up. After it healed, I'm like, I'm just going to wear this bandaid. It'll make me feel a little safer. Just weird superstitions. A lot of athletes get into that kind of thing. Totally. Dave, rolling your ankle before looking at wedding venues is what some might call an omen.

An omen, yes. I don't know how superstitious my ex-wife is, but she is certainly aware that it was not a good idea to get married. Well, I just think mobility-wise, I was going to say this does not make sense. Like, it feels like having five pairs of socks. I mean, you know, I could maybe see it with baseball players, but NBA athletes who are, like you said, jumping around running, like, I just don't see how that would, if I have like three, two to three pairs, I'm very uncomfortable. Plus you're like putting that in your shoe. And like, I just don't think that you have as much mobility and movement, which I know you're saying like to protect the ankle, but like, it just seems too much. Yeah. I think it was probably a superstition on his part. It's like he did it once in high school or something. And he's like, well, I shot better because I was wearing five socks.

I'll never take these five socks off. We'll link people to a New York Times interview with Jason Terry, which is everything he said, Dave is right. And it's also gets stranger. They asked him, why do you wear a headband and five pairs of socks for every game? And he does a long explanation of the headband and then just says, the high sock style came from my father who I saw wore them high in a yearbook picture. The five pairs is just a comfort thing. quote that was like oh it just feels good um and then he also said that uh i guess his dad was not in his life very much growing up and then quote back in college

he got back into my life and now he lives with me in dallas the socks are definitely a tribute to him we are real close right now end quote see that's nice that's nice yeah i feel better about it's a whole like personal journey for his five pairs of high socks yeah yeah everybody has a weird story about the things that they do and why they do the things that they do and uh that's why i'm enjoying talking about socks is because we can learn about each other is that nice oh that felt great i feel like this is when he said it was his comfort i feel like that's his little weighted blanket. It's like his, because it's so, he has like five layers on. So it must be like a little nice, a little mini weighted blanket on his ankles.

Yeah. It's like, it's like me wearing my bandaid for no freaking reason. You and Nelly, to be honest. Yeah. I didn't wear mine on my face though, at least. What a weird guy. I love that being a fashion statement that he probably just nicked himself shaving, and then that's how it became an icon.

I think he said it was a prison thing. Is it, though? It was some sort of prison thing. That makes you tougher, but yeah, I bet it was like, I cut myself shaving. It's a prison. I've never been, but don't contact me now. I can't say he's wrong. I haven't been to prison.

That's true. But I feel things on your face in prison are more permanent than a band. Yeah, yeah. I agree. Nellie, you can also write Dave at Dave Shelley and at Gmail or whatever. Yeah, go for it, big guy. I love all your songs. Great. And very all your songs. Great.

And very last numbers here. This is basically based on my Googling, but I got very curious, what are the most expensive socks I can find online, right? Like what's the priciest sock we can do? And the most expensive I found, the price is $1,275 for one pair of socks from a brand called William Abraham. They're made of something called Survelt.

And the site says Survelt is the super fine down fiber of a rare species of New Zealand red deer. As someone who likes nice clothes, I feel this is obscene. Even though I think things, I like nice things. I like nice suits. I like, you know, nice glasses, nice shoes. Man. I don't buy nice underwear. I don't buy nice socks. I have Calvin Klein underwear. I got it Nordstrom rack and I have socks from H&M and that's good enough. Heels make sense to me. Like those

are a fashion statement. Women will spend, you know, I've never spent a thousand dollars on a heel, but I'm sure there are women that have, and those are very, like they make the outfit. It's very socks. Nobody sees, nobody is seeing this thousand dollar pair of socks. Like you could invest in a handbag or whatever. I'm just so confused. I already hated it. And then finding out that they're made by like this special type of deer that probably should be left alone also makes me hate it. But the thing that I hate most about these socks, listener, is they look just like every other sock. So you can't even tell. Like if they were neon and glowing and I don't know, made you jump higher or something,

I could maybe see you spending $1,000. But this is obscene. And they're just beige. They're beige of all colors, beige. Yeah, I think there's probably a mentality within the hyper rich of like, I can do it. Why wouldn't I? So for you and I, and you know, everybody listening to this, we see value in things, that there is a there's a reason why something is valuable. Rather than it just being expensive. It's nice, or it gets you

attention, or people think you look good in it, or it says something about your status. gets you attention or people think you look good in it or it says something about your status when you're hyper rich nothing has any value it has no meaning everything is disposable so it's like well yeah i'm not gonna buy a pack of you know haynes socks i'm not gonna go to kirkland signature at costco and get socks i'm gonna get expensive socks because guess what this money means nothing. Who cares? Like I want to know that I murdered a deer for these socks so that I can feel something again, some kind of joy or pleasure.

I don't know. I'm still kinked over the fact that nobody would know that you spent this money. I just would want like I want a dollar sign on them or something. And I just need people, like, I would casually bring it up in conversations. I would just cross my leg. I would pull out my wallet, unroll the receipt, and just be like, you see that? I would just, like, you know, I would cross my legs and my socks would show and just like, Oh, yeah, I got these socks from this New Zealand deer. Actually, they were $1,000 with tax actually $1,200. So I don't know, even if you had glasses, like I'm looking at y'all and you have glasses on, like, at least like I would tell maybe for like they were super expensive, you know, or something like the brand on the side or I don't know, but nobody, gosh, that's such a flex to just spend that much money and no one will ever know.

And it doesn't matter. Yeah. I mean, I only tell people the brands that I wear if they ask, like, where do you get your glasses? And then I'll say, or where'd you get your... Dave, we are not multimillionaires. That's what... I know. I know. It's tacky to talk about where you bought things and how much they cost. I'm not a tacky person, but I guarantee you, wealthy people are very tacky. They are tacky. Insanely wealthy people are the tackiest people on the planet. I'm also surprised because wealthy people are some of the cheapest people I know.

And that's why they have so much money. Like they don't tip. They like, they're so cheap. They're cheap to like their, like it's wild. I was a nanny for a couple of wealthier people, I would say. And it's just insane. I'm like, oh, this is why you have money, because you don't give it to anybody. I think it's also to be that successful, beyond success.

Like, we all want to be successful. But there's a level of success for someone like Jeff Bezos. And I'm not speaking about Jeff Bezos as though I know him, but I'm just saying you have to be a certain level of selfish in order to achieve that kind of level of success. You have to be thinking about yourself all the time. Right. So you're not thinking about other people when you tip. You're thinking about they didn't earn that. I earned my money.

And that constant need to prove what you earned is why I think people of wealth will spend money on themselves, on socks that are from a deer from New Zealand, but not tip and not be generous and not give back the way that they should. Yeah, that's right. The first thing I'm going to do when I get rich is buy these socks. But I'll tag the company i won't say anything but it'll be an instagram post where i tag the company so it's like a small flex where if people clicked on it they would see subtle flex i like it i love that idea yeah these socks the way I could relate to buying these socks was I thought about like,

yeah, you know, in like an RPG, when you've kind of beaten it, and you have all the items and the money, and then you're still playing and you just do some silly stuff. Like, but like the gold pieces now mean nothing to you. That's when I purchased these socks. That's when I do it. Now for clarification, it is the pair, correct? It's not one sock. Yeah, good question. It is both left and right. Yes. Okay.

Yeah. I'm just making sure. Yeah. Dave, I know you want to throw this into your random socks drawer so you can just wear one and then the other one's normal. I see it. I see the plan. This is all I can afford.

It's just the one. I'm working my way towards the match, but not, it's just that's stretching my budget a little bit. Well, I think from here we can get into the first big takeaway of the show. It's about normal socks. Takeaway number one. If you bought a pair of socks in the 2000s, If you bought a pair of socks in the 2000s, there's a pretty good chance those socks came from a Chinese sock production super city. That's a thing going on.

Especially in the 2000s, that first decade, there was a very specific town in China called Datang that was the center of world sock production for as far as I can tell, about a decade. And nobody knows about it. That reminds me of the sunglasses one. Did you guys see that little bit on like, it's actually like all of our sunglasses are made in the same town there. And like, literally, like, so they're not even when you're buying like expensive ones, they're really not that different from the production of the, they're like all made in the same town. So I think they have a couple of those in China,

where it's like that town is just dedicated to making that particular product and then like they'll change tiny specifications for different companies but that was fascinating yeah i learned that there is one city in russia that makes all the asbestos in the world oh yeah yeah and they're really desperate to sell to the americans so i guess it's just easier to concentrate all of that activity into the same place i guess that's why you know the entertainment business ended up being in basically one place is because all the costumes and you know camera equipment and people man manpower, people power, cars, trucks, whatever, blah, blah, blah. Yeah.

All that stuff could be in one place. It's just cheaper. It's just more efficient. Yeah, so back off Atlanta. Yeah, Atlanta. You think I'm going to move to Atlanta? Yeah, you would. I mean, I would.

Yeah, absolutely, I would. Yeah, I'm not. It's a nice, it's a very nice town. I like it. I've never seen that many black people in one place in my whole life, honestly. And I say that as a black person. I have never seen that many black people in one place in my whole life. Honestly. And I, that I say that as a black person, I have never seen that many black people in my life.

It's crazy. It's, it's a wonderful town. Yeah. It seems great. I'm still not over a city in Russia making all the asbestos. That sounds like it's like a mad libs of things. I don't want to be around.

Boy, oh boy. Yeah. I think it's called something similar to the word asbestos, and that's where they got the name. Wow. And they were devastated when we passed all those laws banning the use of asbestos.

So I think that's one of Putin's reasons for being so interested in our current president is... I feel the lifespan would have to be like 30 like yeah they have a lot of health problems there yeah what not a great place to grow up why it's that in cleveland yeah i don't know wow i'm just kidding cleveland's nice cleveland's very cute people in cleveland are very nice they're very um clevelandy. They can talk trash about their city, but you better not talk trash about their city, or they will throw a burning trash can at you. Well, this town is called Detang, but it is nicknamed Sox City

because it's producing all of the Sox it possibly can. And we have two main sources here. There's a 2004 New York Times article and a 2012 article in The Guardian. But they both talk about this town in Zhuatiang province in coastal eastern China. And as of 2004, it produced 9 billion pairs of socks per year. Billion with a B. It's obviously more than a pair of socks per person on Earth. And they are putting that out every year, all the time.

And I guess by 2011, they ramped up to about two pairs of socks per person on earth. And they were putting that out every year, all the time. And I guess by 2011, they ramped up to about two pairs of socks per person on earth. So I'm still like looking for sources that are more recent. But it seems like for at least about a decade there, just this one town, like you said, Danny, it was a city where they concentrated everything for making this one thing in a way you wouldn't think is possible. is what is filling our oceans everyone i just want you to know yeah i know there's a there's an island the size of delaware just with socks um i wonder what that's like though to grow up in a place like that because the expectation would be you are going to go into the sock business and by the sock business we mean you are going to at into the sock business. And by the sock business, we mean you are going to, at the age of 12, start making socks for someone rich.

That must, I can't imagine. They're not getting paid well. They're being paid, I'm sure, below a livable wage times a lot. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, in America, even though there is a very strong caste system like a class system there isn't that feeling i think for that many people of just like hopelessness of like this is it i want to make socks for the rest of my life in a factory but for some place like that that that must be it like that must be know, you're going to school to learn how to make

socks. You're not going to school to learn algebra or, you know, world history or something. You're learning about weights of various fabrics. I don't know. Or just how to press a button on a machine. Like, it's unbelievable. But I think, Dave, that you might be looking at it differently from a Western perspective, because I bet with them, it's like a stability. It's like, I know I'll have a job. Right. And therefore, I can focus on, you know, other things as far as like stability with their family or who they're going to marry or who, you know, their kids or whatever. If they know that that's their job, then like, imagine if you had like a set job that you knew wasn't going to change. And so you could take that off of your, if we look at it,

because we have, we actually are quote unquote, American dream is one that we're raised in a way of like, you can be anything and do anything. And I think that's also why we're really unhappy is because you're like, well, I could have been, you know, an equestrian and done this and that, because I can do anything. And actually, if we told our children, you can't do anything and be everything. Oh, no. I'm kidding. But I do think maybe some people should not be told, like, anyone can be president. And then it should be like, you know, maybe just some people, some people.

But I do think that's why we, some of us are, we compare ourselves, right. And so I think if you lived in a I'm just saying, like, I wonder if you if you knew, like, oh, I'm going to take this on. And you didn't know that there were other possibilities, you might just be okay with it that just, you know, growing up, just knowing that you were going to do that. That's all that's all great. And then the articles bring in one extra element where basically China introduced capitalism to this region. And then that's how it's kind of a sudden sock boom town in a lot of ways. Apparently, in the late 1970s, Detang was a rice farming village with about 1000 people in it. And then also, according to new york times a few locals just tried to like hand make socks and sell them by the road and the government told them to stop they said this is too capitalist cut

it out and now it's got like cookie cutter sock factories everywhere it's got a government financed marketplace for socks in the middle and produces more than a third of the world's output of socks because they flipped the switch and they said now capitalism now go and there's a bunch of people becoming like overnight sock factory millionaires because they owned and built a factory dang wow yeah wow yeah and it's also and these articles say they're making more than a third of the world's socks so i figured like most of us have worn them probably i don't have any proof, but just the way the numbers work, I would think all of us have worn them at some point. Yeah, if it's bigger than that many socks, I mean, good grief.

Something that connects us all. We're six degrees from Kevin. That's one degree from Kevin Bacon. Kevin Bacon probably wore those socks. And now we're all one degree from Kevin Bacon. Wow. Kevin, call me, baby. Let's make something happen.

We both wear socks. Nellie can come too. It's going to be great. It's going to be really good. No, we can't. No, we can't. No. No, Nellie.

No. This is my show, Nellie. There's two other things with the Sock City. One is that it is next to a bunch of other what are called lump economies like this a lump economy is a whole bunch of businesses do the same thing the guardian says sock city is northwest of tie town east of sweater town it's also near kids clothing city underwear city and button city so there's just all these different cities that have become

a super specific producer of millions and millions of a garment all the time i wonder and like we said the labor practices aren't great but but the scale is astonishing i wonder if there's a kid who's like i can't believe i grew up in button city i want to be a thai guy and it's like i'm gonna meet somebody who's gonna get me into the thai business and screw these buttons okay buttons are a hack job i'm gonna be in thais well and also the latest news i have on them is from around 2012 2013 because the last thing about them is it seems like the boom kind of slowed down like the the great recession started hitting in 080-09.

And then apparently the knock on effects started reaching China a few years later. And in 2012, 73 clothing firms in Sox City went under. The biggest one was a company called the Anli Sock Group, making 60 million pairs of socks a year. And an economist at China's State Information Center said that they could prove to be, quote, the Lehman Brothers of detang, end quote. So there was this like sudden worry that like, are our stock companies too big to fail, right? Like our giant stock economy, what do we do?

I hope it worked out okay, but I haven't been able to find newer sources than that. 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. 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. next bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, 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 remember, no running in the halls. We have another takeaway here, and I think it's exciting science news, so we can get into it. Takeaway number two. Smelly socks are a potential tool in the fight against malaria. And I know that sounds sort of random, but there have been a few studies in the last few years that use smelly socks as a tool for figuring out how the mosquitoes that transmit malaria work and what they are attracted to. So what are they attracted to? Is I guess the question the socks yeah so they there's three studies here but the gist of most of them is that not only are mosquitoes excited about smelly socks but they

are also even more excited about these smelly socks of people who have malaria which is a parasite and it's transmitted through mosquitoes biting people for the most part okay the scientists here in these various studies are using the many things we know about where like the smelliness of smelly socks come from, and then also doing some pretty strange experiments with the socks to check it out. I always thought mosquitoes were attracted to sweet. Like I always, my mom would always say they were attracted to me from like my sweet blood or whatever that I just, I sweet i smell sweet you know i feel they bite women more i have like you know especially the fruity like lotions or perfumes and stuff we wear

that they're more attracted to sweetness but i guess i'm smelly is my takeaway oh god oh no your mom was putting you on she'sanking your chain. I was a smelly kid in class. This is hard news to take. I'm terrified for how they found out about this study. It reminds me of those people that have to smell for deodorant. Somebody is smelling, like a smell tester is smelling these socks to determine if they're smelly or not. Like that's, somebody's doing the dirty work. So we'll link, it's a bunch of advanced chemistry stuff,

but we'll link a Discover Magazine article called Bacteria Give Feet Four Distinct Odors by Jason Tetreault that breaks down various chemicals that lead to various kinds of foot smell in a smelly sock. But, and then from there, first study we have here was done in 2011 at Tanzania's Ifekara Health Institute. And what they did is they went into a Tanzanian village and placed traps full of smelly socks throughout the village. And they found that mosquitoes were attracted to socks up to four times the rate they were attracted to humans, which is one study, but potentially that's a very useful tool for just like luring mosquitoes away from people. And their hope is if you combine that with mosquito netting, you can like tamp down the spread of malaria. Because mosquitoes, among many things I think they're attracted to apparently, one of them is stinky socks, if you just put them in like

a bucket and draw them away. Well, thank God, because I feel like there's more mosquitoes in Los Angeles than ever, and it's driving me nuts. My ankles, my bare ankles that don't have socks on them are constantly being bitten. No. When I lived in Texas, we had West Nile. It's like a thing you have to deal with there. Yeah. So like, and I'm sure that I think here too.

They like migrate. Yeah. Yeah, it and I'm sure that I think here too, they like migrate. Yeah. Yeah. It does happen here now. Um, and they have mosquito abatement districts where they spray, you know, pesticides that are supposedly not harmful for people, but are supposed to kill off mosquitoes that congregate around standing water and stuff like that. Yeah.

I guess socks and mosquitoes are two of the most universal things, huh? Like almost everywhere, people have both going on. So yeah, unfortunately, we have the tools, you know. The other two studies here real quick, one of them was in 2013 at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. It says the scientists collected human odor on nylon socks by having someone wear them for 20 hours. So there's the dirty work. And then they put those with clean socks into a mosquito enclosure and found that mosquitoes infected with malaria did much more landing on smelly socks. So this was a test of, oh, if a mosquito carries malaria, is it specifically

interested in smelly socks? Yes, it is. And then the other study is 2018 by that same team. They tested school children in Western Kenya for malaria, and then gave them all a pair of socks to wear overnight to soak up their body odor. And then when they did tests with the socks that the kids wore on mosquitoes, they found that mosquitoes were much more attracted to socks from children who currently had malaria and then much less attracted to the socks of kids who do not so so broadly there's some kind of uh smell that gives us tools on like okay mosquitoes go toward these chemicals from people with malaria this is this helps us know how the spread works and how to fight it great yeah you would never think so just smelly socks are a problem uh to everyone else all the time

what else can we solve with them i mean have we even tried smelly socks are going to save democracy in this country thank god smelly socks are going to like save small businesses or something it's the platform they're running on i'm gonna take these smelly socks and we're gonna make a plant-based artificial meat i'm gonna save everybody and they explain it all with sock puppets like here's how it would work um and just like stink lines like from brilliant stuff well and uh and we got one more takeaway for the main episode here let's do it takeaway number three baseball socks were designed to prevent baseball players from dying of leg wounds. Good God. Which I know sounds way too intense.

But that was a thing they believed around the turn of the century, going into the design of those famous baseball stirrup socks. And I sent you guys a picture of a modern player wearing them. But the way traditional baseball socks look was for a specific medical purpose. Yeah. As someone who played baseball through high school, I played at a time, the early 2000s, when stirrups, showing your stirrups was still very cool. And people, you know, you'd wear your pant legs up to your knees and, you know, you'd

have the stirrups on. And that's kind of out of fashion for professional baseball players now is they all kind of wear their pants down to their their ankles but uh i would imagine not knowing this this origin of the stirrups just assuming that you're supposed to wear them because they look neat i assume it's because you're wearing sharp metal on your on the bottom of your feet, right? You're wearing cleats. And so if you slide, and this was a fear I had all the time, is either I'm going to get slid into or I'm going to slide into somebody

and I'm going to tear up their leg because you've got metal, sticky, like sharp metal. Now the cleats are kind of less of a projectile when i was playing they were kind of like flat they almost look like teeth but for a long time they were just like sharp like they were almost like the heads of darts and you can really cut somebody up so i assume that that was part of it was was the worry of someone sliding into your leg with their cleats up. Exactly right. Yeah. And I don't know if all the listeners or people know that, like when you see a baseball player sliding, it's usually feet first and throughout basically all

of the history of baseball, they've been wearing sharp metal cleats on their shoes. That's like guys get spiked kind of all the time. Yeah. It's not fun. It's it's no i don't like i did not like even being close to cleats but um i played first base so there wasn't a lot of sliding in the first thing oh i was the one sliding so i i avoided all of that kind of um danger well if you were a gentleman you would just mash a towering home run every time. And then it's not a problem. I think you should consider that. I never hit a home run in my life. Never. Okay.

I came very close. Me neither. I came very close. It was ninth grade. I think it was, it was little league. I'm going to playing on a field that did have a fence. It had an adult like baseball fence. It's hard to clear. This foolish man threw me a change up

it was like a 75 mile an hour change up and with a slow bat like mine i was ready and i just crushed it and i just narrowly missed the fence like it bounced right before the fence and then you know in high school like actual school baseball i didn't get to play very much yeah yeah i was on the bench to make jokes and entertain everybody i like that you said this foolish man like he wasn't also 13 yeah he was also 13 and he shouldn't have thrown me that change up i i used to make fun of him because we were on the same high school team and i was like i almost took you out. I almost hit a home run off of you. And he's like, that's because I threw a change up.

And you couldn't hit my fastball. I was like, doesn't matter. You shouldn't have thrown the change up, dude. You should know me better. And where is he now? Probably trying to do pyramid schemes or something. He's a firefighter. No, okay, wow.

He's a good person. Billy Elkhorn. Good man. Firefighter. Protecting people. They went in the other direction. It's like, no, he actually lives an amazing life, and he's a hero, and he's incredibly attractive.

I wouldn't go that far. But he's sacrificing himself for people. All fire people are hot just by association. Yeah, I guess so. They have to be attractive in order to be and or just putting on that suit makes them attractive. It's like a magical cape. That's why I wear suits all the time. But not firefighter suits, but they do make me look more attractive. And if you are a firefighter, you are allowed to wear socks in bed.

Gotta be efficient. Keep it up. Good. Great job. Yeah. Good point. Okay. I take it back about the socks in bed.

If it's a vocational thing. And with the, the baseball socks stuff, uh, we'll, we'll have a picture links, but the, the stirrup socks that we were talking about, it's a thing where baseball players, at least in the past had like a white sock and then over it a colored sock, but it was just a little stirrup down by their ankles and the color was all above it. And our main source here is a great like blog and show. It's called UniWatch. It's now part of ESPN. But they did a like flashback article about the evolution of socks in baseball. And in the 1850s, baseball uniforms were just long pants. They basically looked like they're wearing a business suit.

And then in 1868, a team in Cincinnati started wearing knickers. So their whole like calf and ankle was exposed and you could see their red socks. And that team eventually became the Cincinnati Reds. It was a big origin of colorful socks in baseball. But what happened is guys were spiking each other with their cleats all the time. And then around 1900, people started to wonder, hey, if I get a spike wound and the dye from my socks, like the really bright, not healthy dye gets into the wound, maybe it is infected somehow and maybe this harms me and for some reason there like aren't really any documented cases of this happening it just became

a fear and so then from there they started wearing a white sock underneath their colorful sock and then raising the colorful sock and doing a bunch of like preventative medical planning to make sure they didn't get a sock dye infection from a guy spiking them which is all pretty grisly but that's how like baseball uniforms became what they are whole thing wow i had no idea about the the aspect of the um infection i i just thought it was like extra padding but but yeah, I'm sure they didn't use very safe dyes at that point. Yeah. You can get infected really quickly though. Like who's that?

Dave, who's that football player? The quarterback who messed up his leg like last year or the year before. Alex Smith. Yes. It's Alex. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's insane. Like just from this injury, his, that's why his leg, it just, it got infected. And it, it overnight was just like horrible. I watched the little documentary they did on it and he's

back like playing now, but I mean, he almost lost his leg from that infection. You can get infected so quickly, uh, in these settings, especially like if you're surrounded by sweat and like the the bacteria of other people and whatever like yeah yeah totally anyways and especially turn of the century when medicine is just like a guy guessing or whatever you know it's a really difficult time to to keep things sanitary yeah that's why i was so surprised about, I mean, this is a millionaire, like a millionaire quarterback of a huge franchise. And he can't, he almost lost his leg. Like how far have we come with medical stuff? Like, I mean, I guess we have because now he's back to like, but I don't know, his leg will never be the same, but still it's like an infection can, can, we're still just human.

One degree from Kevin Bacon bacon kevin call me email me at dave at shilling at email kevin you and i are both human babies let's go that'll bring a bit yeah we're all part of the same human race, baby. Let's go. I want to start using that when I, like, want to talk to a celebrity and be like, I mean, we're both human. So, like, there we go. You know, I can't deny that that's true. You got me there.

Let's do it. Let's send that. What's a good experiment? What if we send that to every celebrity Chris? Cause there's several of them. Like every Chris, see how many Chris's return. I think we might do pretty good.

Yeah. I have my thoughts on the Chris's, but I'm going to keep those to myself. I feel like Hemsworth might be into it just cause he's into weird stuff. Oh, I am human. I feel like you could catch him on a good day and he'd be like, I am human. He seems like a nice. Was that a pirate? I am a pirate. Yeah. Oi, I am human. I feel like you could catch him on a good day and he'd be like, I am human.

He seems like a nice... Was that a pirate, Dave? I am a pirate. Yeah, I don't do voices. He seems like a nice guy. It was almost Jesus. It was like Australia Jesus. Oi.

I think. Wasn't that Mel Gibson? There you go. Oh, yeah. I'm just kidding. There's also, there's one very last baseball thing and again we'll have pictures for people the white sock was called a sanitary sock or a sani and then stirrups were worn so you still have a colorful thing on your leg and then people wore them kind of higher and higher over time but uh but like dave said by by

now especially starting in the 90s, players just started wearing pants long and not bothering with the special socks. And so today when players wear stirrups, often it's like a cool, exciting thing. And Curtis Granderson is a player who is known for wearing high stirrups and socks. And in 2017, he was acquired by the Los Angeles Dodgers and tweeted that, quote, each game I wear my socks high in honor of Jackie Robinson. Today I did it in a Dodgers uniform and it felt really special, end quote. Because it's like become a medical thing that's now a throwback thing that can now be, you know, signaling something specific about you. Because

the rest of the uniform is kind of the same, but the socks, people have options. Yeah, yeah. It does make sense because there's so little that you can change with your uniform that I feel a lot of players in other sports as well will change up their socks and their shoes because that's like the one singular thing that they can do. Yeah. To like have a little flair, their personality. Yeah, or their shoes. Yeah. Like have a little flair, their personality. Yeah. Are there shoes?

Yeah. You know, shoes, um, socks, everything else is kind of, this has got to be the same. It's got to be identical to everybody else.

Yeah. Too many rules, man. Forget it. That's why I stopped playing sports. All those rules. That was why. Not because I'm old,

but because there are too many rules. Dave's anti-establishment. I'm a rebel, baby. Kevin Bacon, you're a rebel too, right? Email me, dog. He is. You're a rebel, buddy. So much in common.

Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Danny Fernandez and Dave Schilling for fearlessly sharing the truth that neither of them match their socks up unless it's by chance. 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 there 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 Sox Clinton. That is a name. I wonder if you remember who Sox Clinton is. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for an entire library of other bonus shows,

and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring Sox with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, if you bought a pair of socks in the 2000s, there's a pretty good chance those socks came from a Chinese sock production super city. Takeaway number two, smelly socks are a potential tool in the fight against malaria. And takeaway number three, baseball socks were designed to prevent baseball players from dying of leg wounds.

Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. Dani Fernandez is at Miss Dani Fernandez, and that's like the abbreviation MS, Miss Dani Fernandez. She's Miss Dani Fernandez on Twitter and on Instagram. We'll have links for you to follow her there. Dave Schilling created Full Court Chat with Dave Schilling. Seasons one and two are out right now.

He's also got a new humor piece out in The New Yorker. All that comedy is linked in the episode links at sifpod.fun. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. There's a pair of Sox City articles. The one from 2004 in the New York Times is called In Roaring China, Sweaters Are West of Sox City. That's by David Barboza. There's also a 2012 article from The Guardian called Sox City's Decline May Reveal an Unraveling in China's Economy. And that's by Tanya Branigan. A great NPR article called What You Learn When You Put Smelly Socks in Front of Mosquitoes,

that's by Rina Sheiklesko. And an article from ESPN's UniWatch blog, which is an amazing sports thing. It's all by Paul Lucas, and this article's called Friday Flashback, MLB's Sock Evolution. 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. And special thanks to you if you are an American who is an eligible voter, because I know everyone has been telling you to vote.

The thing is, if you listen to this podcast, you are a saint and a genius. So I know if you're an eligible voter, you did it. This podcast comes out the day before a truly important election in the United States. Thank you so much for exercising your franchise and trying to steer it in the right direction, if that is something you were empowered to do. And an additional very different thanks goes to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show, which is about American politics in a very specific way. And thank you to all our listeners.

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