Stuff You Should Know - 10 Accidental Inventions: By the Numbers

Episode Date: June 21, 2012

Every once in a while Chuck and Josh do things by the numbers and here's a good example. Turns out a surprising amount of ubiquitous items in our everyday lives were stumbled upon by accident. This episode explores a few of the more noteworthy ones. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Centaurier together. You can't see us, but we are here.

Don't be so solipsistic. I swear. Thanks. Did I get that right? I think so. Okay. It's Stuff You Should Know. Ta-da. Yeah, here we are. How you doing? I'm great. Oh, I'm glad. I like these little top tens. I think they're a nice digestible light form of, hey, I'm going to tell a couple of these at the next dinner party I throw. Yes, they're like hors d'oeuvres. Yeah, exactly. They're like pigs in a blanket. Yeah. Oh, good. How made pigs in a blanket? They're like cocktail weenies in that particular barbecue ketchup mixture.

Yeah, that stuff. I love that stuff. Yeah, they're all that and more, Chuck. That's right. I've got one for you. Let's hear it. We're talking about 10 accidental inventions. And I know we've talked about this a lot, but I think it bears repeating. The accidental discovery of LSD of acid. Yeah. Probably one of the funniest things that's ever happened to a chemist ever. Yeah, sure. Albie Hoffman, back in the, I think like 1929, he started working at Sandos Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland. Yeah.

And he decided he was going to get to the bottom of Ergot. And Ergot is a, it's a mold, I believe, or fungus, I'm sorry, that grows on Rye in particular, and has long been known to like make people do crazy weird stuff. And I think that maybe the Salem Witch Trials were the result of Ergot poisoning. Sure. Or the Enlightenment was the result of Ergot poisoning. It's possible. It's a quote unquote poisoning. Right. Ergot craziness. And Albie Hoffman is trying to- Albie? You like Albie? Yeah, he's dead. He can't hear me. Okay.

He was trying to figure out, you know, what you can do with this. He's been studying it for a while and he came up with lysergic acid diethyletamide. And he made several attempts at it. And on his derivative, LSD-25, he got some on his hands, I guess, ingested it somehow. Yeah, finger tips. So he has it on his fingers. Yeah. And he goes home to lay down. He starts seeing like fractals and colors in a kaleidoscope. And the, I interested him, I guess you could say. Sure.

So he started researching heavily, like injecting it and getting bike rides from his assistant and all that stuff. Yeah, he took it on accident. And then three days later, he was like, maybe I should try that for real. And then he got a ride home on a bike from his assistant. And April 16th is now referred to as Bicycle Day. Yeah. About those hippies. Yeah.

And one of his quotes that I thought was really great when he first described it, he said it was quote, a not unpleasant intoxicated like state. Yeah. And that was on the first time. Apparently, the bicycle trip got a little hairy. Oh, really? Yeah. But then, you know, he passed through that wave into the wave of not unpleasant once again. Right. And then he started wearing captain's. So he would say it was an accidental discovery of the nature of the psychedelic nature.

And he said we should start using this stuff for like medicine. Yeah. Well, the hippies had other ideas. Yeah, sure. He ultimately referred to LSD as his problem child. He wrote a book. Yeah. Called My Problem Child in 1980. I think it was kind of one of those ones where it's like, you're my problem child.

Come here, here's some money. He wrote that in 1980? Yeah, I believe so. Boy, I didn't realize he lived that long. That's pretty cool. Yeah. He was an old guy. Well, I mean, he drank a tablespoon of LSD every day. And that's what gave him his longevity, I think.

So that's number one, right? Or that's actually number 10. That was the intro. Well, it counts. I don't think it should count. So you got another one then, an extra? Yeah, I'll just make it up as apparently as what we do. Josh, number nine, Corn Flakes.

Is fictionalized in the T.C. Boyle book, The Road to Wellville. Was that a T.C. Boyle book? Yeah. I didn't know that. He's great. Oh, I love him. Ed, did you see the movie? Yeah.

I've not seen the movie or read the book. Yeah. Matthew Broderick, Anthony Hopkins. Yeah. It was good. Yeah. I've been to Battle Creek before that. Oh, you really have? Yeah, when I was a kid.

And that's the home of cereals, right? Kellogg's cereal. Basically. Kellogg's cereal. Here we go. Will Keith Kellogg. He was interested in medicine and he was working as a doctor at the Battle Creek Sanitarium with his brother,

helping him out with, and this is in the movie, you know, like with their diets, he was trying out sorts of weird treatments. Animus, big on animus. Oh yeah, huge on animus. He also discovered or created the first acidophilus soy milk. Oh, really? Yeah, and some sort of meat alternative that ultimately led

something to something like American tofu or something. Huh. Yeah. Boy, what a genius. And he is responsible by accident for corn flakes. Oh, Will was, and I'm sorry, John Harvey, his brother was the responsible for those two things. Well, it runs in the family.

Yeah. He was making bread one day at the old sanitarium there in Battle Creek. He left boiled wheat sitting out for a little too long. And he came back and he rolled into the dough and it became flaky, which is not what he was looking for, but he was like, you know what, I'm going to throw this in the oven anyway. I'm going to see what happens.

Right. And it baked these little flakes that the patients here were like, boy, these are delicious. We should pour some milk over this stuff and cut a banana into it. Yeah. And put it in a box. Can we get some freeze dried strawberries added? Exactly.

And eventually he tinkered with it and switched it over to corn as the main ingredient instead of wheat. And that was corn flakes, my friend. That's how I took off. Yeah. Once he added or used corn, I'm sure it was kind of like, this isn't good, but what is this? Wheaties?

These are terrible. Yeah, exactly. And then he tried it with corn and they were like, oh, that's really good. And that formed the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flakes Company, which eventually became Kellogg's, Accidental Serial. The guy who, whenever he came up with the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flakes Company name, you know he's wearing spats.

That name just screams spats. What are spats? The little white covers that go over your shoes, if you're like Mr. Monopoly or Sylvester Stallone in that terrible movie where he plays a good gangster. Oh yeah, Oscar. Yeah. I thought spats might have been the little sock leggings,

but those are probably just called sock leggings. I think those are called Spendings or Garters. We should bring that back. No. No. No, let's die down for a good reason. All right. Moving on, or do you have any other Kellogg's facts?

I have neither Kellogg's facts nor any more spats jokes. So I think we should go on. Because this next one is dynamite. Named for the Greek root, meaning connected with power. Alfred Nobel, Swedish scientist, accidentally discovered dynamite when he was working on basically with nitroglycerin. He's working on explosives, trying to make it stable. Well, his father built mines.

Oh, is that how that started? And you built mines using explosives, specifically nitroglycerin. But back then it was kind of like, okay, 80 people died because this nitroglycerin just exploded because someone looked at it wrong. Yeah. Well, because we have it in a jar in the back of a horse cart. Right. That's part of the problem too.

But he lost a brother and three other people at his lab in Stockholm when he was trying to figure out how to stabilize it. Very sad. But he kept with it. And so in the article, it says that he was transporting it and saw it packed in the stuff, this mud that we like to call Kieselger. Yeah. Dynamite is Earth.

Right. But I read elsewhere that it wasn't that ultimately he came up with using Kieselger. Yeah. I read that he dropped it. On the sawdust. That's what I read too. He thought he was going to die as he watched this vile fall, vile of nitroglycerin fall out of his hand.

But it landed on sawdust and was absorbed. And he went, huh, that's weird. So then he started figuring out that if you mixed it with an inert material, you could conceivably blast it by adding a fuse to it. He finally came up with Kieselger, which is like this kind of, it's like sedimentary mud, right? Yeah, it's like, it's real powdery. It's a combination of crushed fossil and marine life.

Gotcha. Like it's what they use. Actually, you'll probably see it. It's what they use on film sets when they want to make stuff look dirty. Oh, okay. Because it's just like super light and powdery and makes it look really super dirty. Gotcha. Yeah.

Kieselger. Yeah. Fuller's Earth. Well, he also, that would be something he figured out how to stabilize nitroglycerin and created a stable explosive. Sure. But he combined it with another previous invention of his based on the initial ignition principle, which is not just using a fuse, but having a fuse go to a blasting cap and

having a smaller explosive blow up your bigger explosive. Yeah. He put all that together and that was dynamite. Truly dynamite. It was. And he, again, he was doing this to build mines. But in his lifetime, he saw his invention used to like destroy human lives. Yeah, he, he blew up a lot of things himself by accident.

A lot of his factories, it wasn't just that one time. No, yeah. They basically said, you can't do this anymore on the mainland. So he started work on a barge. Yeah. And I think the barge might have even blown up. I'm sure everything blew up. He was like King Midas, but everything exploded.

That's right. But so as part of his legacy, he created the Nobel Peace Prize. Right. To, well, I guess he bequeathed it. To basically say, hey, I, I, a lot of people have died because of my invention. So let's, let's promote safety and harmony and peace. And then later the Ignobells. Yeah.

Which kind of brought it full circle in a way. They did. He first named it no, no bells blasting powder. Then eventually it became dynamite. Not to be confused with TNT. It's different. Okay. So ACDC was wrong.

TNT. I'm dynamite. That's not true. I know what you're saying. What they should have said was TNT. I'm not quite dynamite or I'm less effective than dynamite. That should have been the song. So what is TNT?

TNT is, um, is dynamite is 60% has 60% greater energy than TNT. Wow. That's, wow. So it's two totally different things. It's not just like a lesser degraded version. No, they're both high explosives, meaning they detonate instead of like burning. Yeah. But, um, yeah, two different things.

So Bon Scott was, he was on the drink as we all found out. Really? Well, he died because of the drink. The dude with the hat. No, that's, that's the second guy. Brian Johnson, the first lead singer, uh, for the first however many albums died in his, uh, uh, car, he passed out after a night drinking and did the old choke on the vomit thing. But he was the one that sang TNT dynamite.

I thought those two guys were like what I thought TNT and dynamite were up until a minute ago. Now, Brian Johnson came along later, uh, with, uh, Back in Black was his first album. So all that good early ACD's was Bon Scott. What do you think about Sammy Hager? The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs.

They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute, uh, 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly.

And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Where were you in 92?

Were you bouncing your butt to Sir Mix a lot? Wondering if you, like Billy Ray Cyrus, could pull off a mullet? Yes. 1992 was a crazier for music and a crazy time to be alive. And now iHeart has a podcast all about it. I'm Jason Launvie, and on my new show Where Were You in 92, we take a ride through the major hits, one hit wonders and irresistible scandals that shape what might be the wildest, most controversial 12 months in music and pop culture history. They were angry at me.

They thought I was uncontrollable and wild. I wanted to burst open. Well, the president came after me. Everybody, I'm Warner with madness. Can you imagine trying to put a record like that out right now? We canceled before it made it to the post office. Featuring interviews and special guests like Sir Mix a lot, Ice T, Tori Amos and Vanessa Williams.

This podcast poses the question, what was it about 1992 that made it so groundbreaking and so absolutely fabulous? So buckle up and tune into Where Were You in 92. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Listen and follow on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast, wherever you listen to your favorite shows. So, saccharine is up next, Chuck. I feel like we should talk about saccharine.

Let's do it. Well, we're just really going down the line here, aren't we? Yeah. It's an accidental invention. Number seven. Oh, okay. Well, so there's a guy who is named Constantine Fahlberg. Yeah.

He was working. He's a chemist working in the labs at Johns Hopkins under a guy named Ira Remsen. Yeah. Ira calls Constantine a jerk. He does, but not quite for the reasons that are displayed here. Right. Right. So, Fahlberg and Remsen are working on, apparently, a substitute for coal tar. Yeah.

It's all I could come across. That's what I found. His quote, he was saying like, I've made many discoveries in my search for coal tar, some of them accidental. And here's one, but he doesn't say like what I was doing was synthesizing chemicals in a search for substitute for coal tar. Right. So I'm not going to stand 100% behind it, but that's what I think, right?

Okay. Okay. He said he was in a great hurry and left the lab without washing his hands. Apparently, he wasn't wearing gloves or anything either while he was working in the lab with these chemicals that he didn't know what they were. Right. And he went home and he ate dinner. Right. And he was eating a piece of bread and his bread was like really sweet.

And he realized that that was weird. So he put the bread down and wiped his hands in his mouth and his beard with the napkin. He's like, the napkin's sweet. Yeah, he thought the napkin was super sweet. And he's like, okay, there's something we're going on. He put two and two together and realized it must have been that powder that he had on his hands from the chemical that he spilled on it. That he didn't think to wash off before he ate with his hands.

Exactly. Yeah. And it turned out to be saccharine. So what does he do? Well, he says, I can probably make some money off this. And I'm under the impression that he shut out Remsen. So what he did was Remsen was a total research. He was a total lab rat.

Okay. He didn't care a thing about patents. And he was apparently fine with the idea that Fallberg went off and independently patented this. Until it started making money. No, until he started telling people that he was the one that created this thing, that he was the senior researcher. Right. Then now he's screwing with Remsen's lab rat status.

That's when Remsen was like, shut your mouth. Oh, so it didn't have as much to do with money as his rep. Exactly. Interesting. Yeah, so Fallberg ended up with the patent for saccharine and years and years and years later, the 80s happened. People are all coked up. They're looking for ways to lose some weight.

And sweet and low comes along. Yeah. It's saccharine. And it has so few calories in it. Apparently five calories a gram that it's just listed as zero calories. Because those packets are a lot less than a gram. Yeah. And the reason why it's non-caloric is because it's never metabolized by the body.

It just goes out the way, in the same form it came in. Yeah. It has zero food energy value. It's like if you were trapped freezing in the woods and you had a big bucket of sweet and low, it wouldn't be the same as if you had a big bucket of sugar. Yeah. You'd want the big bucket of sugar. Trapped in the woods with a big bucket of sugar, huh?

Well, you got food energy. OK. Trapped in the woods with a big bucket of sweet and low, you're screwed. Yeah. Can you imagine like the fuzzy jackets on your teeth after eating a bucket of sugar in the woods? Since it was brought on the scene, it's kind of been added and removed quite a few times to the, you can eat this, it's fine, and it's probably not great for you list. But right now it's in good standing.

It is. It is, you know, approved. Because I remember in the late 80s, early 90s, like after everybody had been drinking it for a while, they took like a hard look at saccharin and we're like, well, it may cause cancer in lab rats. I put it in my unsweet iced tea. I've seen. Because that's the only thing I can find that, you know, you put sugar in there and it just sinks to the bottom.

Well, that's why you have to use simple syrup. Yeah, or put this sugar in the hot brewed tea where it will melt or dissolve. If you're not going to do that, then use simple syrup. It's fine. Works really well. Or just drink unsweet tea for God's sake. I'm on an unsweet tea kick right now. A little lemon.

Yeah. See, I like the sweet tea or if I drink green tea, obviously that's just straight up. Yeah. Not the same. Have you ever had this Oolong tea? Yeah, sure. Yeah. That is something.

Ooh, la la. It's crazy. All right, Josh. I didn't think the microwave. I feel like we've talked about that before. Like 800 times. We have. Yeah.

So let's skip it. Okay. Viagra. Yeah, I hadn't heard of this one. I didn't realize it was accidental. You haven't heard of Viagra. Please. I've heard of Viagra, yes.

But I haven't heard of the story behind it. Oh, gotcha. Oh, I see what you're insinuating. Oh, it's been coy. Simon Campbell and David Roberts were researching for Pfizer, trying to develop some blood pressure and heart medication for angina. Yeah. And they tested it on people, doing some trials.

And these guys were all like, I still have some angina and I have a massive erection. Hi. Which is a weird side effect. Yeah. You might want to look into this. Yeah, and they did. And they went, wow, this could pay dividends in the end, fellas. Yeah, they basically said, okay, FDA, forget everything we said.

Forget the angina. We're just going to stick to amyl nitrate. Yeah. Instead, we're going to just start over, do more clinical trials. But we're going to use this to treat ED. And we're going to target handsome, salt and pepper-haired men of a certain age who like to bathe in bathtubs outdoors next to their partners who are also in bathtubs watching sunrise.

I think that was jealous. That is our target market. That was it. Yeah, it's all the same, though. I wonder if it is all the same. You probably just got us sued by the pharmaceutical companies. Actually, they're not all the same. They have, each one has a different.

Covalent bond? I'll bet it's a covalent bond. Well, they just have different properties. Some work for like 24 hours. Some work for like two hours. Some you take every day just in case you happen to run into someone and need to have sex. That's right. Yeah.

But all of them. All of them. No, pre-opism is not funny. So I don't think it's funny because it's not. No, of course not. Okay. It's not. But it was popular.

Sales peaked, I think, in 2008 at $1.9 billion in the U.S. alone. And since then, obviously, Viagra was the first on the scene, but it has been chipped away at by its competitors. But like who? Cialis and we'll see that one. The Vitra or is that heart medication? I can't keep track. I think we found that there's a fine line.

Yeah. Anyway, I mean, this was originally for the treatment of angina and it works some. Sure. I think that that happens quite a bit, actually. Well, it's all about blood flow. So it makes sense that it had that side effect, I guess. It's all about blood flow and self-confidence. That's right.

Pacemaker? I thought this one, like my eyes started bleeding during this one. All right. We can skip it because as people know, when we do our top 10s, we generally do like six or seven of them. We like to drive traffic to the site. That's right. Velcro, this one, I have to give a shout out.

I want to tell everybody this is so amazing. So I first heard the story of Velcro when I was just a young, young pup. The story of Velcro. Yeah. You're aware, right? The real story? Yeah. Okay.

Not the fake N.A.S.A. story. No, not the NASA story, the Georgetown Mastral story. He was a Swiss, I don't remember what he was, but he turned out to be a Swiss inventor. Electrical engineer. Okay. And he was hiking the Alps with his dog one day and came home and there were birds attached to his dog.

And he said, that is ghastly. He said, what's going on here? Why are these birds attached to my dog? I'm going to take a closer look. And he realized that the birds were composed of little hooks and that his dog's fur were acting as little loops. Yeah. And the hooks went into the loops and stuck and attached.

And he said, I can recreate this. You know what? I'll recreate it with nylon. And that's what he did. And that's what all Velcro is, is a system of hooks and loops made of nylon. Yeah. Now, I first learned that story when I was probably like,

seriously, 11 or 12. Oh, wow. And I read it in Uncle John's bathroom reader. Yeah. And every Christmas, I would get a bathroom reader. And every December 29th, I'd be done with the 500-page bathroom reader. And we'd just wait another year.

Yeah. Like a lot. Just for this reason. Sure. And I would be reading this book over and over, just constantly. And so one of the reasons that we're here today, one of the reasons I'm here today, is because my curiosity was developed and honed through Uncle

John's bathroom reader. Oh, yeah? Yes. And it's been good and bad. Like they were also where I learned that Genghis Kahn supposedly killed like 1.87 million people in one hour, which kind of led to that article and all that. Cool.

But my eyes were open. We shouted out to them like recently. And they tweeted that we shouted out to them. And I realized that they listened to this podcast. Wow. That's pretty cool. It's like the highest honor I have ever enjoyed, as far as my career goes.

That's awesome. That was it. Like this group that made me, in part, in large part, who I am today, is a fan of what we're doing. That's awesome. Yeah. I imagine Mad Magazine could only come close if they got in touch with you, huh?

Yeah, they would definitely be up there as well. That's awesome. OK, so that's Velcro. Yeah, and a couple of more little factoids. It's a combination of two French words, velours, which means velvet, and crochet, which is hook. Yeah, and velour does not breathe very well as a fabric. That's right.

Nylon was very new at the time, so he had a hard time with it. And this is a lesson for all you kids up there who fashion yourselves as, or fancy yourselves, excuse me, as little inventors. Don't give up. It took him 10 years from the moment he discovered what Velcro could be till the time that he could manufacture it successfully.

And he worked, and he worked, and he worked. And 10 years later, he marketed it as the zipperless zipper, and the rest is history. And don't get cheap Velcro, because you can tell the difference. Oh, man, you really can't. Same as cheap duct tape. Yeah. You really get what you pay for.

Yeah, that's definitely true with duct tape. You don't want duct tape that doesn't have the threads clearly visible. Yes. That form like kind of the almost the rebar of it. That's exactly what it is. If you can't see it clearly, like in the roll, then just keep on moving.

Little advice from your uncle, Josh. But that stick to it advice. Yeah. Not the duct tape stick to it. Yeah. A decade. Perseverance. That was good advice.

And a decade of work. Penicillin. Yeah, this one is, I don't think I realized penicillin was an accident. Alexander Fleming, he was a bacteriologist in Scotland. He decided to get a little lazy and go on vacation for two weeks. Luckily for us in 1928. Comes home, seizes a petri dish with this weird mold

that he hadn't seen before growing in it. And he noticed like there's no bacteria around this mold. Right. It was like hugging the side of the petri dish like get it away from me. I don't know. This stuff is killing me. And he went, wow, I might be on something here.

Right. But the problem was the strain of penicillin mold that he discovered, he left his window open. The guy was a bacteriologist in the 20th century. He left his window open. Right. Anyway, the mold, the strain he found was, he couldn't reproduce it in mass quantity.

So therefore, by definition, it was useless as medicine. Sure. And then like 13 years later, a trio of guys, Florie, Heatley, and Moyer, found a strain of penicillin that they could just grow very quickly in large amounts. Bam. Antibiotics. Nice.

Millions and millions, possibly billion, lives saved. Agreed. But don't take too much of it. No. I think no group would prescribe it these days personally. You should always know your limits. Yeah, no. I'm just saying, I think penicillin is one of these.

They just, people get thrown on penicillin and amoxicillin like for everything these days. Right. Well, the other part of the problem, supposedly, is that they, if you don't finish your course, that makes it that much easier for bacteria. Yeah. That's what I hear.

Microbes to evolve immunity. Yeah. I almost never finish my course, though, because it gives me bad, bad, bad diarrhea. Well, you need to write it out as they say, get yourself an Uncle John's bathroom reader. In fact, when I'm on penicillin for one reason or another, I call them diarrhea pills.

I have to take my diarrhea pill because I take it and they say, you know, that's a possible side effect. But of course, with me, it's a certain side effect. At least you don't get a pre-epism from it. All right. Number one, Josh, our last one. I thought this was pretty interesting because going back all the way to the 1800s, we used to think people were all

stuffy, didn't know how to have a good time. All they did was just go to school, go to church, walk to work, and study hard. Turns out that they were having laughing gas parties. Yeah, in ether frolics. Ether frolics where they would sit around and suck on laughing gas and just laugh the night away. Right.

Which is where the phrase, it's a gas comes from. Oh, that's nice. That makes sense. Sure. Now, you're a big time into entomology, aren't you? Oh, yeah. And entomophogy. Yeah, that's right.

The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table.

Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Step out of piss y'all. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty.

It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like, what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

Where were you in 92? Were you bouncing your butt to Sir Mix-A-Lot? Wondering if you, like Billy Ray Cyrus, could pull off a mullet? Yes. 1992 was a crazier for music and a crazy time to be alive. And now I heart has a podcast all about it. I'm Jason Launfier, and on my new show, Where Were You in 92, we take a ride through the major hits One Hit Wonders

and Irresistible Scandals that shape what might be the wildest, most controversial 12 months in music and pop culture history. They were angry at me. They thought I was uncontrollable and wild. I wanted to burst open. Well, the president came after me. Everybody, I'm Warner with madness. Imagine trying to put a record like that out right now.

We'd be canceled before it made it to the post office. Featuring interviews and special guests like Sir Mix-A-Lot, Ice-T, Tori Amos and Vanessa Williams, this podcast poses the question, what was it about 1992 that made it so groundbreaking and so absolutely fabulous? So buckle up and tune into Where Were You in 92. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Listen and follow on the I Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. So what happened was Anastasia was accidentally discovered by, seems like a few different people realized. About the same time from those parties. Yeah, Crawford Long, he's an Atlanta guy, right? Yeah, he's somewhere around Atlanta, yeah. William Morton and Charles Jackson and Horace Wells, they had all experimented with nitrous oxide.

Maybe, maybe not went to some of these parties. I don't know if we can verify that. I have seen that they were at these parties. Okay. I went back in time and looked in the way back machine. At some point, someone said, hey, I just whacked my leg real hard and it didn't hurt at all. And it was bleeding.

Yeah. And there was no pain experience from it. And I think it was Crawford Long that was like, what do you mean you're not experiencing any pain? Do it again. Yeah, and let me hold your ether for a minute. Yeah, exactly. And then they started experimenting with it.

And I think Horace Wells used it for dentistry. And Crawford Long, I was using it for surgery. Yeah, for minor surgery, Crawford Long. Like amputations and stuff like that. Because this was at a time when it was like, here's your broomstick, here's your bottle of whiskey. Bite down on this. You're going to cut your leg off.

And like the, the, a skilled surgeon was quick. That was the, that was the definition of a skilled surgeon. Somebody who could take your leg off in less than a minute. Well, I think what you, your best case scenarios that you'll pass out from the pain. Right, but they also loaded you up on like booze and drugs. Like you'd smoke a lot of opium first or take a lot of opium somehow.

Right, right. So you just wouldn't really care. Gotcha. Have you heard about the flesh-eating bacteria that's going around right now? Yeah. It's crazy. That's very sad story.

You better watch it out with the neti pots, dude. Yeah, I actually haven't netted it in a little while. Oh yeah? Just remember to still water and then maybe boil it already. Yeah. More boil it anyway. Yeah. Well, at the very least, I do a lot of camping

and fishing in rivers. I'm not getting in with any open sore anytime soon. No, but that girl in Georgia, she was on a zipline. She fell and created an open sore, aka a wound. And it got in there pretty good apparently. Yeah, Emily and I have been following that story closely. That's like the saddest thing ever. Yeah.

But she's got a great attitude apparently about it. Oh, really? Yeah, like she, you know, her dad went in and said, you know, finally told her we're going to have to amputate your hands, your other foot after her leg was already gone. And she was like, let's do it. So you may have been telling me about this. And she was saying like they just got her fingers,

that her hands are intact right now. I don't think so. Are her hands gone? I think so. Wow. Yeah, it's very sad. This one ended on a strange twist. I know.

Wow. Do you have any more accidental inventions? I know you do, but don't say them. Nope. There's a few more. Go to the website and read all about it. Yeah, type accidental inventions in the search bar at howstuffworks.com and it will bring up this fine article.

There's actually a few articles that have similar ones, but different ones too. Just read them all. You'll love them. I said search bar at howstuffworks.com again, which means it's time for listener mail. Actually, wait, wait. We can't do listener mail yet.

This again? Yeah. Okay. It's plug fest time. That's right. So Chuck, we have a horror fiction contest going on, don't we? That's right.

Real quick, give them the broad show. Well, if you're familiar with our Halloween episodes the past two years, we do readings from Poe last year. And what's his face the year before that? H.P. Lovecraft. H.P. Lovecraft. Yeah. And this year, we want to read a story written by you,

someone out there. So we are throwing a contest and Josh wrote a great blog post outlining the details that you can find at howstuffworks. Yeah, you can go to blogs at howstuffworks and it's called Stuff You Should Knows Horror Fiction Contest. Get your official rules right here. Yeah. It's got everything you need to know on there.

Everything. What's the highlight? Well, the highlights are that it started on June 18th and it runs until July 20th at 11.59 p.m. Okay. It has to have been previously unpublished. And that includes websites. If you put it up on your own blog, I think it's okay.

But like if you gave it to somebody else and they published it, sorry. Yeah. And it needs to be between 3,000 and 4,000 words no more, no less. Okay. And this is really, really, really, really important. Your state, in the email that you send this in,

you send it by the way to howstuffworks underscore contests at discovery.com. Okay. In that email, when you enter your submission, you need to write the words by entering this contest. I agree to abide by the contest rules. Okay. Without that, we have to disqualify you.

So that's basically your signing off that you understand the rules by acknowledging that statement. Right. Okay. Go to the blogs and read the rules first, take a quick glance at them. If you have a question, it's probably answered there. Yeah.

And sadly, we know and we understand that this is only for residents of the United States and we're sorry, but that's just how it goes. I've said it a million times, we can't win your country's contest either. Right. It's just how contests work. Yes.

Pick it up with the contest gods. Yes. If you're 17. Yeah. Even if you're going to turn 18 within the contest, you're out of luck. You have to be 18 as of Monday, July or June 18. People don't like rules.

No, they don't. But we're not making them. You've got to have them. Yeah. So send it off us and maybe a couple of other writers or editors will judge these things. We're going to select the top 16 and then enter them into a bracket contest.

Then let the people vote and then we pick the and then the winner is chosen and we read it on Halloween. Yeah. All right. What else? We're going to Comic Con in San Diego. Yeah. For the first time ever.

Yeah. It's big deal. And Thursday, we don't have the time yet, but Thursday, July 12th, we will be doing a live podcast panel with special guests. Yeah. What are we doing it on? You want to say?

Do you want to keep it a surprise? Well, let's keep it a surprise for now. All right. So Comic Con, if you're going to be there, come see us Thursday afternoon, I think, right? Yeah, you'll be able to find out. We'll post it once we can reveal all the great details. Very cool.

So there you go. That's a plug fest. And now it's time for Listener Mail, right? Yes. Josh, I'm going to call this. What? What are you going to call it? Medical marijuana.

And by the way, on email, I've been answering more and more lately because I've had more time. But still, if you write in and I don't answer, we have read it, I promise. And if you have sent in just a simple suggestion for a show, we log those. But you may not get the email back on something like that. So just don't want anyone to feel bad if they email them

like we didn't respond. You're a valued member of our fan base. OK. Medical marijuana. Your show on MMJ is what some people have been calling it. I don't realize that. I always think it's like my deskie Martin and you or something like that.

And John. Yeah. It reminded me of a funny story I can share. During the early 80s, my father had a rare cancer. It's even rare these days from the surprise my doctors have when I give my medical history. At one point, my dad's doctor suggested he try marijuana to help with the chemo sickness.

Of course, there was no way to prescribe it back then. You had to get it on your own. My parents started asking around to see whose kids could get some trustworthy stuff. With no luck where we lived, my mom turned to a relative who lived in another state. So clearly like the stoner cousin like two states over. She could get it, but I don't know the details how.

Probably for the best. Yeah. The next problem was how to get it to us. She often flew to visit every few months, but it was a parade of putting it in her luggage or mailing it, even though everybody used to do that back then, I bet. Yeah. So one of her coworkers had an idea.

They worked in a doctor's office and decided she would hide it between her breasts and bandage her as if she had recently had breast surgery. She was sent with a note saying under no circumstances were the bandages to be removed. They thought that if she was hassled the airport, a note would get her out of trouble. They did this actually a few times and never got caught.

Oh my God. I know, isn't that crazy? As it turns out, my father couldn't smoke this stuff. It made him sicker. Oh my God. I know. So he decided to brew it in tea. And I'm sure there was a little baked snack

put in his lunch bag every now and then. Unfortunately, my father passed away in 1984. When I was 16, I wasn't completely involved in all this other stuff. The stories were retold later, but there were a lot of hijinks going on in the house over those years. So this is totally plausible.

I remember vividly the little tea ball sitting in the sink. And when I watched the dishes every night asking, can I clean this thing? And I would get a resounding no from about five people in the house at the same time. So that is from Cindy. Cindy Brady. Cindy Brady.

No, not Cindy Brady. But she asked if I could read this. And she said, yes. And then she wrote me back and said, you know, I ended up talking to my mom about this and we all had a good laugh all over again, you know, and remember my father fondly. Oh, that's nice.

She said her mom ended up smoking some for her anxiety. So you should probably wipe your hard drive clean of that email lest somebody. Sure. That feds come in and confiscate your computer. Yeah, that's serious stuff. Yeah, if you have like a wacky family history story, those are awesome.

Don't we all? That's pretty wacky, though, man. Yeah. That's like Little Miss Sunshine wacky. Oh, great. I haven't seen it. I just know one of it. It's funny.

Um, we want to hear it. So tweet to us at SYSKpodcast, facebook.com, slash stuff you should know, or email at stuffpodcast at discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready.

Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast Howler Back Now with Holland Rodin, take a trip back to Beacon Hills for the ultimate Teen Wolf rewatch with the cast and crew.

Because as if a hundred episodes wasn't enough, I am bringing you all the behind the scenes. There's going to be so much more from each episode. Nothing is off limits. And oh, that's right. Will we talk about Teen Wolf? The movie. Listen to Howler Back Now with Holland Rodin

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