Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - WD-40

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why WD-40 is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

WD-40. Known for being useful. Famous for being sprayful. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why WD-40 is 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 because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie, what is your relationship to or opinion of WD-40? It's a magic elixir that fixes everything. Doors, boats, toilets, machines, cars, lives, you know. I mean it's I mostly know it As the thing you put In the door

When the door is getting squeaky Yeah As like a Noise fixer And thing loosener That is also my experience of it I've thought about Making a slip and slide

Where it's all WD-40 But I'm pretty sure That would be like Polluting somehow A biohazard somehow. So I won't do it, but I think about it. You could get going real fast. I feel, you know, that, like that viral slide where the cop went down the slide and like, it just spits out the cop, like a bullet goes so fast. That must've been WD-40. I think WD-40 was behind it.

It's useful for so many different things. Greasing slides. Greasing slides, specifically to mess up the police. And this was one of many listener-suggested topics, and a particularly passionate one for Cleomancer. Thank you, Cleomancer, for the idea, and many folks on the Discord being very excited about this. And it reminds me of a little while back when we did a duct tape episode, because those are kind of the

two magic home improvement items in my mind, at least in the US. It's duct tape as an adhesive and then WD-40 as a loosener. Yeah, when I think of a home improvement superhero, I think of the utility belt having WD-40, duct tape, some pliers, maybe a little bit of electrical tape too. Why not? For some reason, when you said pliers, my mind thought distant third. Like somehow it was like, no, not even close, even though very useful for so many things. Yeah. Q-tips. Oh, surprisingly useful. Wood glue. I'm just listing things that are in my toolbox. And WD-40 is one for lots of people. Also, shout out to the Discord for showing me a GIF I love that we'll link because there's a

scene in the show King of the Hill, the animated show, where Hank Hill is struggling to open the can of WD-40 and then reaches into his belt holster for a smaller can of WD-40 to loosen the bigger can of WD-40. It's very good. It's a great joke. And yeah, we definitely had WD-40 kind of always on hand. You know what our third home improvement hero was? Was twine. Twine.

My dad loves twine in addition to WD-40 and duct tape. Yeah. Because twine, you can very painlessly tie things and it doesn't make abrasive marks on them or anything. Right. Twine was weirdly big for us. But shout out WD-40 for being great. And on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics.

This week, that's in a segment called... Numbers Man. Numbers Man numbers man share statistics and numbers man that's it and that was submitted by peanuts initiative on the discord that was the short that was a short one that was a short and sweet one like wd-40 we're zipping along yeah slipped right past and we have a new name for this every week. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Short is always nice, too.

And submit yours through Discord or to SifPod at gmail.com. The first number this week is 80%. 80% is a rough estimate of how many U.S. households had WD-40 as of the early 1980s. Wow. That is ubiquitous. If I've ever heard of a thing that's ubiquitous, it's WD-40. Right, because it's not food, you know, or it's not something you have to have. That is an unambitious mindset, Alex. That's true. I'm not getting enough oils in my diet.

That is not a growth mindset, Alex. You're saying this is definitely not food. Could it be food? That's the question. Definitely not. So, but this is according to a 1983 U.S. survey, you know, not super scientific, but 80% of responding households owned a can of WD-40. And I find that amazing because next number here, WD-40 was invented in 1953. What?

So invented in 1953, and then 30 years later in 1983, it was in about 80% of households in the U.S. Wow. Huge. Wow. How did it catch on so fast? Slipped into people's hands, you know? I'm just going to be saying a lot of slip things, like being slippery, being slidey, being greasy. That's, yeah.

Look, it's a penetrating oil, folks. It lubricates stuff, and that's going to be on our minds. Right. And how it spread this much is kind of the whole rest of the show. There's too many reasons to just sum up right here. Okay. Good marketing. Because WD-40 just rolls right off the tongue.

It is a weird name. I think sort of along with duct tape, like we talked the other day about how that name sounds like it relates to the animal ducks and it's kind of weird. This is another weird name product and that helped build a cult around it. Yeah. That it's so mechanical sounding. Yeah. Yeah.

It sounds very technical. It makes you feel good. It's like, ah, the door is squeaky. Well, I better use some WD-40. Like I know doors really well. I'm an engineer about door hinges and I know just the sauce to put on this door. It's very technical sauce. It makes you feel like an expert. I mean, door sauce is somewhat appealing to me somehow. I don't know. I don't know. Door sauce. Yeah, it could have been called door sauce. That might have been a better name. And we'll talk about why they didn't choose that name. Right. But also that 80% number is sort of a past number. Since then,

in the 40 years since then, this product has grown even more. According to the Business Management Magazine Management Today, the market cap at WD-40 went from $250 million in the year 2000 to $1.6 billion in the year 2018. I know that was a lot of numbers all in a row, but from the year 2000 to the year 2018, their market cap went up more than six times, which is way more than inflation. That's huge growth. And according to the company, they now sell their spray in 173 countries. Wow. There are less than 200 countries in the whole world. Yeah, I was going to ask, do we even have that many countries?

Like, did they have to create new countries to sell this to? Oh, like they're fomenting civil wars in various regions of the world so they can increase the number. wars in various regions of the world so they can increase the number. Creating new landmasses out of WD-40 just to sell the WD-40. Just lubricating deep sea rocks so they rise, you know? Yeah, and this is also a global product, and I assume most of you in most countries know this product. Right. The universal language. One is dance and music and the other is WD-40.

And the next number is three, because this is invented in America. And three is the total number of employees at the company that came up with it. That went like in the 1950s or still now, there's only three people making WD-40. What's going on, Alex? Oh, back then. Yeah. Now they're a very large company and publicly traded as stock and everything. You can buy stock in the WD-40 company if you want to. Nice. But in 1953, three people at the Rocket Chemical Company in San Diego, California, invented WD-40. Hey, that's where I'm from. Yeah. When I read that, I think I said out loud, oh, like Katie.

Like I said, I was like, hey. I'm actually the WD-40 heiress. You may not have known this about me. We reveal your middle name is less of a word than you would think. WD-40. Yeah, it's a series of letters and numbers. Katie WD-40 Golden. It's like a Kurt Vonnegut slapstick middle name for anybody who knows that reference. Anyway,

because in 1953, we don't know which of the three employees invented it. Officially, it's just a trade secret of this company. But employees Norm Larson, Gordon Dawson, and John Gregory did some kind of work to develop it. Larson often gets credited as the sole inventor, but that's debated. Either way, it was three engineers in San Diego, California came up with it. Just three guys in California and San Diego were like, what if you could spray smoothness out of a bottle? Was it like a byproduct of stuff they were already doing? Or were they specifically trying to figure out some kind of ultimate grease? Yeah, they were going for something that really surprised me. I never think of the product for

this purpose. We can totally use it for that. Because the next number here is 40. As in the name WD-40. 40 is how many numbered rounds of testing it took for the engineers to develop WD-40. And it turns out that's part of why it's named that. Because real quick takeaway, takeaway number one. The name WD-40 stands for water displacement formula 40. Ah, yes, of course. For displacing water, when you got too much water around, you just spray some WD-40 on it. Scares that water right off. Yeah, like today we mainly know it for loosening, I think.

But apparently many people use it as a moisture repellent and water remover. And that was the original purpose was to keep water off of metal. Ah, yes. I hate it when water gets on my metal stuff. And that's why I use a cool refreshing bottle of WD-40s. So what was this for? Like electronics and stuff that you don't want to get wet? Boats?

Engineers, I would assume, might need it to keep things from rusting? Or what's it being used for primarily? So it turns out this was hidden in the previous immediate story where we said this was invented by the Rocket Chemical Company. Ah. Because it turns out, takeaway number two, engineers created WD-40 to prevent rust from forming on the U.S.'s Cold War era ICBMs. Oh, okay. So I know that was a long takeaway. One more time.

Engineers created WD-40 to prevent rust from forming on the U.S.'s Cold War era ICBMs. Right. So in other words, they invented WD-40 to maintain huge nuclear missiles. Yeah, that makes sense. I guess you don't want a nuke to get rusty. So if you launch it, it doesn't like go up a few feet and then fall back down and explode your own country or something. That's what I'm assuming would happen if it got rusty. Kind of.

And especially with ICBMs, those are the huge nuclear missiles that just wait in a silo. Right. So that you and the Soviet Union can end all life on Earth if you need to. Yeah. Yeah, just like if you feel like it.

If you want to like, you know, like, well, you know, just kill everyone. So we'll just keep that on the table. We'll keep that option on the table forever now that we could just kill everything and we gotta keep that option from getting old and rusty just keep it fresh you know put it in essentially some tupperware and just save that little little detail for later ominous looming tupperware opening like oh no oh no they're launching oh no yeah and so these missiles their main job is to sit around and ideally to always sit around and

never be launched yeah so you need to do endless maintenance on the missiles and all metal will rust through exposure to air and water over time. And so they this rocket chemical company. There are some products that have rocket in the name for fun, you know? Yeah. Like the Rockettes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm in New York. I'm personal friends with every one of them. Yeah. But the rocket chemical company chose that name for extremely boring reasons of we're inventing chemicals for rockets. They didn't. It's not creative at all.

So boring. Yawn. We're inventing chemicals for rockets. Yeah. OK, let me catch a few winks here. Boring. This even got invented in San Diego mainly because the rocket chemical company formed in San Diego to be near and part of lots of other military and industrial companies in San Diego. That's a big military city in the U.S. There's big Navy ships and everything. You know this, Katie. But yeah.

Yeah. I remember growing up like we would sometimes hear mysterious explosions from Camp Pendleton. Oh, really? Wow. I don't know if they were. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was like sonic booms from jets. Who knows? You just don't question it. You're just like, all right, keep it real, boys. So I think what you're saying is if we want nuclear disarmament, we got to get rid of all the WD-40. No, we're way past that now. Oh, no. But yeah, so this rocket chemical company, it was only three people because they were basically a subcontractor. And this was U.S. military industrial complex stuff, the creation of this chemical. Hmm.

And they called it WD-40, basically with the same creativity of rocket chemical company. Right. They wanted to make a water displacement chemical to treat the sides of ICBMs. And then on the 40th try, they came up with a formula that they liked. And so then they just named it WD-40. What was wrong with WD-39? It launches the missile. Oh, no. I don't know. We don't know. And also, I couldn't find great sourcing on it but apparently wd-40 has been reformulated a little bit over time and so there are the little fun joke is are we really using wd-41

or are we using wd-42 you know but they branded it wd-40 since then. Hilarious. I mean, hilarious specifically to any dad who is currently standing in a garage. They are loving this bit. Yeah. Alex, consider my knee to have been slapped. My knee has been slapped. Also, the invention year is pretty much primarily driven by the nuclear arms

race. 1953, that was a key year in the Korean War, so tensions are up in general. And then also in 1953, the Soviet Union exploded a test device that U.S. intelligence code named Joe 4.

What happened to Joe 1 through 3? They were also nuclear explosions. So they're gone. And I believe they chose Joe as a reference to Joseph Stalin. Either way, Joe-4 was the fourth ever Soviet nuclear test. It was also the first successful Soviet test of a thermonuclear device, also known as an H-bomb. And all you really need to know is much bigger bomb and one that the U.S. was working on, too. So once both countries could do that, they proceeded to build a huge nuclear arsenal to try to deter the other from doing anything and then, you know, accidentally be able to blow up the world. Right. Accidentally. Did you know that Joe is my middle name?

Yes. Oh, right. I forgot. It's not even a joke. It's next to WD-40, though. Katie, Joe, WD-40, golden. Wow. You're really interconnected with this topic. Really, indeed. San Diego culture and middle name culture, it's everything. It's great.

That's right. Everyone in San Diego has some obscure reference to a bomb in their name. That's right. Everyone in San Diego has some obscure reference to a bomb in their name. One year after the Soviet Jo-4 test, the U.S. military gave top priority to an existing research project to develop what they called the Atlas Missile. And the point was a huge missile that could deliver a bomb a long distance. And within a few years of focusing on it, the Atlas became the first intercontinental ballistic missile. Ah, good. You know, it's good when you have your death bombs that kill everyone, make sure they can go a long ways to kill everyone even further.

Yeah, and a whole nother continent. It's right in the name. Great. Yeah, and a whole nother continent. It's right in the name. Yeah. Cool. One great source this week is an article from Jalopnik by Jason Torchinsky. He said, quote, this is what the rocket chemical company figured out how to make, a coating for Atlas missiles that prevented rust and corrosion. Then the WD part of the name was descriptive for what the coating did to water, which was displace it. Right. People do still use it to treat the sides of boats and the home improvement version of keeping water off stuff,

but as a kid I only knew it as lubricating hinges and joints and stuff that needed to turn. I never thought about it for its original purpose. So it's bomb sauce, not door sauce. Yeah, bomb sauce. And if they were more creative in their naming, they would have picked a name like that. But they just kept...

No, no, no, no. WD-40 is much cooler than bomb sauce, Alex. That's true. It is science fiction spaceship stuff. Yeah. It sounds like. Water displacement. Very exciting.

Activate the WD-40 is cool. That's a cool thing to say. And in that voice, everyone has to do it that way. Not just like, hey, Joe, slather on some of that bomb sauce, won't you? Our ICBM's getting a little rusty. And Joseph Stalin says, yes, da, da, and runs over. Yeah. So, yeah, that's where this comes from.

And you wouldn't know at the hardware store today. WD-40 was for that. One other bright spot to say about the whole nuclear missile thing, because some people might be sad. say about the whole nuclear missile thing, because some people might be sad. It turns out that these Atlas missiles, almost immediately after being used as ICBMs, also became some of the first booster rockets for NASA missions to space. And the whole bonus show will be about NASA Atlas rockets. Now we can nuke the moon. Perfect. Right. That's how the moon was destroyed. Sorry to break that news to folks. There was a moon, but now the moon's just a projection of the old moon. You know, read up on it, people. Do your research.

And then the next takeaway here brings us from nukes and NASA to today, because takeaway number three. WD-40 is a unique marketing success story, partly led by one pioneering executive. Don Draper really got it to catch on with his whole WD-40. Got it to catch on with his whole WD-40. Got it. Got WD-40. And then like celebrities with the little mustache made out of WD-40. Remember that? Two fun things about this guy's name.

Because this guy's name is John Barry. Which has like Don Draper rhythm to me. It does. And then also I knew the name John Barry as the guy who wrote the James Bond theme music. So this is a different John Barry. And that's just fun. Yeah. Probably a lot of John Barrys.

But John S. Barry was a key executive for WD-40. He also built on a lot of really creative and successful marketing of this product. And that's really the main reason we know it today. According to Barry and others, there are other companies that can kind of make this stuff. But the reason that it succeeded is its marketing and name and how they put it out there. So how did they do it? If not, name it bomb sauce and show people eating burgers with it on the burger. I should say don't eat WD-40. Yeah, don't do it. I know I'm talking about it. I know I'm saying like jokes about eating it. Don't do it. Can't do it. Don't do it. Yeah, forget it. Don't do it. So 1953, the company invents this, and the rocket chemical company starts providing WD-40

to the military for missiles and then nukes. But along the way, these couple of employees start saying, hey, this seems useful. And so they start taking it home, and they use it for waterproofing their boats, for preventing wooden garden tool handles from splintering, for silencing squeaky hinges. One of them used it to deter wasps from building nests at a location of their house. And you can use it for all that. One of the main reasons it sells is flexibility. for all that. One of the main reasons it sells is flexibility. It's also very convenient that WD can stand for both water, what is it? Water displacement and wasp deterrent.

Oh, a wasp is taping a podcast about this and they're like, takeaway number one, it's actually for water. It's not for us. It's buzz, buzz, buzz. And so 1953, they invented and also start loving it for the home. And then we do know Norm Larson had a specific achievement here because in 1958, Norm Larson developed a way to put it in an aerosol can. Ah. It turns out, and you can also still buy it this way. I looked on Walmart's sales page and they still have it. The first WD-40 was in just a big oil can with a little screw top lid. And we'll have an old picture linked for people. But the first WD-40 was in big oil cans with a rocket drawn on the side.

Oh, that's cool. And it took a while for them to come up with the aerosol can that I have only ever seen. Which I don't know that the aerosol can has a rocket on it. I'm trying to remember it. It doesn't. I think it's yellow and blue, I think, with WD-40 written on it. It's yellow and blue, I think, with WD-40 written on it. And it's got like a red nozzle with a long straw at the end, presumably that you use as a proboscis to like squirt the WD-40 in places. That's right.

Am I remembering correctly? Exactly right. It's blue, yellow, red, almost like a sports team. They only do it that way. It's like a NASCAR. But that's it. It is how they started packaging it for themselves, basically. They just figured out, oh, we can do that too. And it took them a few more years to start selling it to anybody outside of the military. In 1960, they had a few more employees than three employees, and they started selling cases of it to hardware stores and to sporting goods stores. But even then, 1967, years after they invented this, they were selling it and delivering it

out of the trunks of employees' cars. They still weren't a business to consumers yet. Right. They were going down dark alleys with trench coats and saying, you want a little bit, you want some to help grease the wheels, and then opening up their trench coat, and they just have rows and rows of WD-40. I'm imagining that back alley trench coat transaction, but every element is too slippery. Like it's just falling over. Yeah.

Like they open the coat and all of it falls out like clang, clang, clang, clang, clang. So they begin to initially just in the San Diego area sell kind of extra WD-40 out of their car trunks. But this goes very well. And then also they have two huge PR wins in the early 1960s. One is Hurricane Relief in 1961. Now, Alex, you can't tell me that it displaces water good enough to fight a hurricane. Gentlemen, we're building the mega can. And everybody from the military is like, yes, yes, correct.

Good. So in 1961, a storm named Hurricane Carla swept through Texas and Louisiana, caused massive damage. The rocket chemical company fulfilled big orders for WD-40 for contractors and had enough of an actual shipment and logistics set up to get it to the Gulf Coast and also get it there despite hurricane damage. So wait, what was the WD-40 used for in the context of the hurricane? Wait, what was the WD-40 used for in the context of the hurricane? That was my question, too. It turns out they mainly used it to recondition vehicles and equipment that were damaged by the hurricane, you know, especially damaged by water. So if you had a hurricane-damaged, maybe rusty now, vehicle, you could fix it up to make it somewhat usable with WD-40.

now vehicle, you could fix it up to make it somewhat usable with WD-40. If I'm thinking of it in like Mucinex commercial type animation, it's like the WD, the little WD-40 molecules are going around chasing out the naughty water molecules out of the car. Basically, yeah. This also makes me realize I don't think I've ever seen an advertisement for WD-40. It was just described as lore by my dad. They don't even got, they don't got like a mascot. It really is sort of passed on down through the dad or the mom, whoever is the handy person of the house. Right, right. It's just you realize quickly as a kid, every problem with the house is usually solved with WD-40. Yeah, it just keeps getting mentioned as an important,

necessary item that is helpful in so many contexts. And it's surprising every time. You're like, really? Okay, great. It's just like, this chair is broken. Better get the Wd-40 you know so we can slide to the chair store and get a new one yeah and then uh the other big pr win was in 1962 they got attention because nasa used wD-40 on the space version of Atlas rockets. From there, WD-40 is

positioned to really be a consumer-facing business now. They have enough logistics and employees to sell it in stores, and they have a PR win of cool stuff like helping with a hurricane and helping NASA. In 1969, John S. Berry joins the Rocket Chemical Company as an executive. And one of his first decisions is to change the name of the Rocket Chemical Company. He says, great, our new name is the WD-40 Company. Okay. And the New York Times says he made that name change, quote, on the undisputable theory that they did not make rockets.

Yeah, that is true they just make stuff for rockets so you don't need to have rocket in there yeah no it is it's very confusing like if i hear something called the rocket company i'm like what i'm now i'm buying a rocket the hell are you talking about? How am I going to park it in my garage? I've got so much WD-40 in there. How would I fit a rocket? Yeah, and then from there, he helped develop the color scheme we talked about, the blue, yellow, red. He pushed development of the straw attachment.

That was not a thing with the early spray can. Make it more slurpableable like a Capri Sun. Wow, it's almost that exact straw, huh? Weird. Anyway, for the like 10th time, don't consume WD-40. Don't consume it. I mean, think about how much of your body is water, right? And this is water displacing. So if you put it in your body, I can only imagine you would explode

like some kind of water balloon made out of meat. The wasps told us it's bad and we should have learned. It's not for us. You should get rid of it. You should stop buying it. It's bad for you. And then Barry also made sure to pour company profits into mainly print advertising. They know their audience.

Their audience is too busy fixing chairs to watch TV. And they need old newspapers as a bladder and a surface for their home projects so that you see it. Right. They're gluing stuff together. They're doing it on newspaper and then they look on the newspaper and they see wd-40 and we we have not even joked about dads loving this product there's a thing i wish we could measure the impact of which is that the wd-40 company gave huge amounts of free wd-40 or just cheap sales of it to U.S. troops in the Vietnam War. Like some dads discovered it when they were serving in Vietnam because it was a very popular lubrication for small arms like rifles. Right. Yeah, because you got to make sure your rifle goes in smooth.

Wait, why do you need a... Okay, hang on. Is this some kind of... I guess does it make the bullet go faster? I don't know anything about guns. Oh, it's just like every little moving part has to be cleaned. Ah, the mechanisms. Yeah.

Some folks in the military take pride at the speed with which they can disassemble and clean and reassemble a small arm. All right. So WD-40, you can use it for that. Look, whatever floats and or waterproofs your boat. Yeah. And then maybe the most successful decision by John S. Barry was to make it so the company only made WD-40. Around the 1990s, they began to expand into some other products, in particular, the 2000

Flushes brand of toilet bowl cleaner. But they gained a lot of cachet in the 70s and 80s by not only making a weird product with a weird name, but also making that their only thing. It was sort of a marketing angle of this product is so amazing. We don't need to make anything else. Right. Like this is our specialty where there's no bells and whistles, only sauce. Just the sauce is what we're making.

Our full attention is on this beautiful, beautiful bomb sauce. And all of those approaches worked and it made it really a marketing success. At least if you ask Barry, he would tell interviewers that companies like DuPont and 3M that are much bigger than them do make penetrating oils and do make waterproofing oils, but quote, what they don't have is the name, end quote. And the name and brand and marketing is why everybody swears by this thing. On top of it working, it does do the job, but also it's kind of more of a cult legend than a product that is uniquely and possibly good. Yeah, it's interesting when a brand becomes so powerful, becomes synonymous with the object.

Like Kleenex is just a brand, but people say Kleenex when they just mean any old tissue. It doesn't have to be a Kleenex. You just mean you need a tissue, but the brand has inserted itself inside of your brain. And now when you try thinking tissue, you can only think Kleenex. It even got partway to my brain through my nose. Oh, no. But yeah, I feel like WD-40, it's just like I need some grease. like WD-40, it's just like, I need some grease. Like, so when I think, when I think door grease,

when I think like grease for my car, you know, for my boat, uh, which I have a boat, definitely got a boat. I think WD-40 as just the grease. But it's true. It's, it's easy to love something that's useful and there's a useful spray and, And it's such a fun thing to tape about. We've done three whole takeaways and some numbers. We have another takeaway and more numbers to come after a quick break. Grease yourselves up in the meantime. Don't put WD-40 on your bear skin. Yeah, don't eat it. Don't put it on yourself. Anyway, see you in a bit. Yeah, it's probably bad for you. Hey, folks, I mentioned this last week in the middle of the show,

and I'm just going to mention it again because it's awesome. We commissioned a gift poster for you. If you are one of the supporters of this show through Maximum Fun, you get to have digital art from artist Adam Koford. It celebrates the 150th episode of the show by drawing a funny character for each episode from 101 to 150. So a cavalcade of 50 funny characters in one poster. And I think it's a lot of fun. I think it's a nice trip through memory lane of all the different amazing stuff we've gotten to discover together. If you support SIF through Maximum Fun, that's in your BoCo.

You should have got an email to access it, or you can just go into your BoCo page and it'll be there with the other posters we did for episode 100 and for episode 50. And please consider beginning to support the show if you don't already. A very small group of people make the entire thing happen. And one of the benefits of joining up and supporting this show is getting to have that digital art. The main benefits I feel are intangible, but there is such an avalanche of tangible benefits. Bonus shows every week, digital art, a bunch of maximum fun bonus audio. It's the best deal in the internet, in my opinion. So please consider making this podcast possible

and making it something that can continue for a long, long time. Let's get another 50 episodes going. And in the meantime, enjoy your gift digital poster. 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 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. And we are back. And we have more numbers to go. But I want to do our one last takeaway first, because takeaway number four. The recipe of WD-40 is San Diego's most closely guarded secret. Oh, yeah, I know it. Oh, right. You're inside of it.

You know. Yeah, yeah. I'm on the inside. You want to know what it is? Sure. What is it? That was a trick. I can't tell you. It's a secret, Alex. I'm questioning your loyalty now. I was recruited by a nearby California city to try to get it out of you. Let's see. Encinitas? Encinitas recruited me. Encinitas is basically inside San Diego. Oh, okay.

Carmel. Carmel, yeah, sure. Isn't that the one where Clint Eastwood was the mayor? Anyway, he recruited me. That's the Lord out. Yes. So WD-40 is a trade secret. We know it's a penetrating oil, but the exact recipe is one of the most closely guarded secrets in American business. Now, you've used the term penetrating oil a lot,

Alex. What does that mean? It means you can use it for lubrication and also the chemical composition of it. Okay, you're making that... I'm trying to direct it... I'm trying to be very serious and direct this away from any kind of innuendo, and you're making it hard. So, like... I did take us into the break by telling listeners to grease themselves up. So I think it's over, you know? I think we're past fixing that. One of my first questions about this was what is this stuff though yeah what is it like i get it but what is it and that's a trade secret

another number here is 2009 because that is when wired magazine sent a can of wD-40 to a laboratory for chemical analysis. To reverse engineer it. Another kind of secret unknown thing is we just can't assume many other companies have attempted to reverse engineer the stuff. Because why not? You can just buy it and try. There's a lot of planktons out there trying to get their hands on the Krusty Krab, Krabby Patty secret formula. I was thinking about that.

You know, get this, because you've just started watching SpongeBob. And so now you understand when I say that Plankton's trying to steal the Krabby Patty recipe, much like DuPont is trying to steal the WD-40 recipe. You get it now. You get this important cultural touchstone. I really do. Welcome aboard. It's even kind of coastal culture. San Diego and SpongeBob, and it's all coming together.

Yeah. And this lab that Wired Magazine hired could not really deliver an exact breakdown, other than saying it's made of several chemicals called alkanes, which are a kind of hydrocarbon. And there was also some carbon dioxide in it, probably to make the spray function of the can work. We don't know if that's necessary chemically for the oil itself. All right. But so that's the gist of what's in it. And the company has proudly kept the exact composition secret. You know what would be funny?

As if it was just like Vaseline and water. There is one bank vault in San Diego that contains the written recipe of WD-40. Oh, yeah, I've been in there. That's where San Diegans are baptized into the church of WD-40. You get a little bit, you just, the priest spritz spritz like in the shape of WD-40 on your forehead, like Simba. And then all of the San Diego zoo's animals cheer below you yeah yeah a lot of zebras stomping their feet and you get held up yeah that's why they made the zoo so good to do the ceremony when uh that's how it happened. Actual weird ceremony.

So this product was invented in 1953. And then in 2003, for the 50th anniversary, the company did an event where they elaborately removed the recipe from the bank vault. Kept it at a distance from everybody, but showed it off to prove that there is one secret recipe location and put it back in the vault. That was their 50th anniversary celebration of WD-40. Wow. Everyone must have been wearing cargo pants or khakis. That's what I'm imagining.

What nerds? The crowd didn't clap. They did the exact noises from Home Improvement and Tool Time. Yeah. And so this continues to be a trade secret. And trade secret is also just an interesting intellectual property and legal category. Some other famous ones in the U.S. are the KFC fried chicken recipe and the Coca-Cola soda recipe are trade secrets. Okay, now I'm starting to wonder, because have you ever tasted WD-40? I'm not saying you should. Don't do it. Do not do it. But because we don't do it, we don't know what it tastes like. And so we don't know if it tastes like the KFC secret recipe.

Folks, that is not the last time we will talk about WD-40 and food. But again, do not eat it. And do not eat it. I know it sounds like we don't sincerely mean that, but we really do. We really do. We don't want you to go to the hospital and be like, actually, this podcast kept telling me not to eat it, but I felt like they were being sarcastic. Yeah.

The thing with a trade secret is that it's different from a patent. WD-40 is not patented. And according to BYU professor of mechanical engineering, Chris Mattson, who's one source here, not patenting it is on purpose for secrecy. Because if you patent a product, you have to share a description of what's in it and how it's made. And instead, they made it a trade secret, which means you give up a lot of intellectual property protections. You can only sue somebody if they actively steal your idea, like if they send an industrial spy in. But if anybody parallel invents it, you're stuck. You can't stop them. You can't do anything. But they went with a trade secret to keep it secret and just hope nobody successfully reverse engineers it and beats their marketing.

I mean, on a serious note, I wonder if this is mostly marketing because it's exciting that it's a secret recipe. Because if someone like did reverse engineer it, who's going to buy that? You know what I mean? I don't think it matters if someone discovers the secret recipe and then calls it, you uh stolen sauce like people are gonna keep buying wd-40 because of the brand strength so maybe having i feel like a secret recipe type deal is more of a marketing strategy than it is an actual like strategy to try to protect your your secrets like i think that there are corporate secrets that are truly like trade secrets that are truly just, you know, because they want to keep them secret and not get scooped. But this feels more like a marketing thing of like, and I mean, especially because they pulled the stunt of like, like, here's the secret recipe.

It's going back in the vault now. You know, I think it feels this feels like marketing to me. You know, I think it feels this feels like marketing to me. I think you're dead on. And especially based on those parallel examples of KFC and Coca-Cola. Yeah. I'm surprised WD-40 has done less marketing of the vaults. Apparently with Coca-Cola, if you visit Coca-Cola World in Atlanta, they have a mock-up of a vault and a version of a recipe. They make a whole museum and entertainment events out of that idea.

My head's still spinning from the fact you said there's a Coca-Cola World. Yeah, it's a whole tourist thing you can visit at their headquarters in Atlanta. Oh, okay. I just learned that there's a Coca-Cola world. All right. But I guess if you had a WD-40 theme park, which I'm assuming they don't have, which is an oversight, you could get a goose to sloop up a WD-40 river and tube, which would go really fast. It'd be amazing. I hope they give you goggles for it. Yeah. Yeah, preferably goggles and like some kind of breathing equipment.

Because again, you shouldn't breathe WD-40 as well. I think we forgot to mention don't breathe it, don't eat it, and also don't use it like on your skin or hair or eyes or teeth. That's that last takeaway. And then we have a few more numbers that are basically all about the danger of ingesting or consuming WD-40. This part is called CYA.

Let's not get sued by someone who ingests WD-40. Yeah, we each have 10 lawyers behind us now, just standing, hovering. Falling over because the slippery WD-40. Take that, lawyers. The next number is 2005. It's the year 2005, and this is my least favorite use of WD-40 of all time. Uh-oh. In 2005, the WD-40 company had to get in a fight with local police in the southwest of England.

What? The police in Avon and Somerset. Those police told bar owners that they could use WD-40 as a deterrent for bathroom cocaine use. Huh? I know that doesn't make any sense. And it's because it's a terrible idea. Would they spray it on the sink?

Yep. Like on the surfaces so that if you try to inhale cocaine, you'd get WD-40? That's right. Oh, come on. Yeah. All you need is pepper. Just get a little pepper on there. So they sneeze out the cocaine. That would be better. That's a better idea. Yeah. And it's safe to like, if you inhale pepper, it's not toxic. You just sneeze out all the cocaine. You I'm sorry, you dumb dumbs. You could have Looney Tunes-ed it and it would have been real cute. But instead, you probably poisoned people. Yeah, exactly.

Because these police claim that, hey, you should go into the bathroom of your bar in England and spray WD-40 on any surface that could be used to, like, chop up and ingest cocaine. And the claim from these police, I don't know how they got this weird story going. They said, hey, the cocaine powder, if WD-40 gets on it, it becomes too gummy and gooey to even be ingested. And so you've stopped people that way.

It'll be safe, is the claim. I mean, I'm no cocaine expert or, well, I'm soon becoming a WD-40 expert, but that doesn't sound right to me. Yeah. This pub owner phoned into BBC Radio to brag because they said, hey, I put WD-40 all over the surfaces of my bathroom. And this gave a nosebleed to a prospective cocaine user. OK, good. So now they just have a nosebleed. Like, oh, cocaine's bad for you.

Let me make it worse. Let me hurt you more. Exactly. And so then the WD-40 company got asked about this British news and they had to release many statements about the danger of ingesting or inhaling it. It's probably not lethal, but it's definitely bad for you and definitely irritates your passageways to have WD-40 go into it. your passageways to have WD-40 go into it. Again, a lot of our body is water. Our mucous membranes have a lot of moisture and stuff in it. I don't think you want a thing that's a moisture, what is it? It's a water-

Water displacement, yeah. Deterrent. Water dispersant. I don't know enough about the chemistry of WD-40. In fact, apparently we're banned from knowing about it because it's a secret. Yes. But yeah, I would just assume you don't want that in you or on you. It's probably very irritating, like Alex said, to your many moist insides.

Yeah. like Alex said, to your many moist insides. Yeah, that's just something you shouldn't eat or consume. And then surprisingly, WD-40 can be used for food styling and advertising. So some food that's in pictures that you're not eating, there might be WD-40 on it. So that's fun. Interesting. Is that to make it glisten more or what? Like, how do you make, because I know they put all sorts of weird stuff, like mashed potatoes are sometimes used as ice cream. There's a lot of glue. There's so it's, if you ate advertisement food, you would die immediately. Yeah, it would at minimum be super weird.

Like you're expecting ice cream and it's mashed potatoes. So that's a known thing. And there's a lot of internet lists about it. Which would kill me. If I was expecting ice cream and I ate mashed potatoes, I would simply die of disappointment. Yeah, I'd be so sad. And yeah, and in 2016, The Guardian did a report on various food stylist tricks and food stylist Kim Kredzka recommended WD-40 to make stuff glisten. I see. OK, so it is the glistening.

Yeah. And she shared a picture of some tacos that she had professionally photographed and she had used WD-40 to make the meat and vegetable fillings of the tacos glisten. And they look good. So, you know, good job. It's sauce for the eyes, not for the mouth. Yeah. Not, okay. Don't put the sauce in your eyes. It's visual sauce. Sauce to be enjoyed visually, not internally. A different lawyer keeps tackling each of us with, and also.

Folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the name WD-40 stands for Water Displacement Formula 40. Takeaway number two, engineers created WD-40 to prevent rust from forming on the U.S.'s Cold War era ICBM nuclear missiles. Takeaway number three, WD-40 is a unique marketing success story, partly led by one pioneering executive. Takeaway number four, the recipe of WD-40 is San Diego's most closely guarded secret. Plus a ton of numbers and stats about the world popularity of WD-40, the three guys who developed it, some really weird uses of it, and more. Those are the takeaways. 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 at MaximumFun.org.

Members 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 first WD-40'd NASA rockets and three heroic hominids they launched into space. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 13 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows. It is special audio just for members. Thank you for being somebody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include digital resources from the Smithsonian Air and

Space Museum, expertise from BYU professor of mechanical engineering Chris Mattson, and amazing articles from jalopnik.com by Jason Torchinski, tedium.co by David Buck, and more. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about native people and life. There is a link in

this episode's description to join that Discord. Come on over. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord. And hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 85. That is about the topic of hockey pucks. Fun fact, the U.S. National Zoo gave puck-shaped blocks of ice to their pandas as a birthday toy and treat.

So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals, like pandas, and science and more. 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 members. 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. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.