Stuff You Should Know - Hibernation: Not a Snooze

Episode Date: October 11, 2016

When animals are faced with scarce food in the winter, they have two choices to stay alive: migrate or hibernate. For hibernators, their bodies undergo some mind-boggling physiological changes in the coldest months. Could humans ever do it too? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry, so this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast.

Can I start off with a request, another advice? A request of advice, some advice, which is in the form of a request. This sounds passive aggressive. No, it's not, it's to our listeners. We often get people that say, hey, I'm years behind, I'm writing you about the episode from 2008, 2009, and we love it when people go back

and listen to all the podcasts in order, right? But what really helps us out is if you wanna start at the beginning and also listen to the most recent episode. Does that work? Yeah, I call it sandwiching. Oh, really? Yeah.

It's the term for it, huh? Yeah, if you wanna start at the beginning, that's great, but it also really helps us out if you listen to the most recent one. Right. And so I just wanna throw it out there. We don't wanna tell you how to listen. I see what you're doing.

This is just a request. Or you could just go buy yourself a 2012 Camry. That's very true. But it does help us. And if you really don't wanna do that, of course, listen how you want. But it's good for us that the most recent episodes get listened to.

I think it's kinda cool then, because you can flash forward through time and see how bad we were then and how bad we are now. And just compare how little difference. Yeah, well put, man. Yeah, just a PSA. Appreciate that. That's a good PSA.

Thank you. How's your Facebook page? Wait a minute, it just occurred to me though. If people aren't listening to this recent one anyway, then they're not gonna know to do that. Maybe the people they live with who say which will tell them, hey man, you should be doing it a different way.

Didn't think this through. But what did you ask me? I asked how your Facebook page is going. Oh, Charles W. Chuck Bryant? Yes. It's going well. I'm on there a little bit and putting in insider stuff. Right.

Like occasionally even say what we are recording that day, which is, we've usually not, we've guarded that with like Fort Knox, but occasionally I'll throw that out there. Yeah, that's good. And then other stuff, you know, insider heads up on performances and ticket sales. Nice.

You know, dog and cat pictures. Right. That's what I'm doing. I've got my own Twitter account too, Josh Clark. Yeah, and where can they find you on Facebook? Same place? Yeah, I don't even bother. Okay.

All right. You're the Facebook guy. Sure. What's yours, Charles W. Chuck Bryant? Yeah. Yeah. It's like behind the scenes or just other stuff, you know, things that strike your fancy.

Yeah, that's a lot of admin stuff for us today. Yeah. Do you want to do administrative details right now while we're at it? Nope. You want to talk about hibernation? Yes. So, Charles, Chuck, if you will.

Right now you're sitting there. You're thinking? Yep. You're moving your papers around. Sure. Looking up and down, breathing. Yep. Heart speeding.

You've got an eye on Jerry. Always. Eating her Fritos. Yes. Eating her Fritos, Jerry's burning a lot of energy too, but she's also taking it in. Sure. And all of this energy expenditure

requires a ton of energy input. And in fact, we humans in particular are not really great at energy conversion, right? We lose like 60% of the energy. Like we break down glucose into CO2 and I think ATP and ATP's like this really powerful molecule that powers ourselves. Yeah.

When we do that, we lose like 60% of that potential energy to heat. What a waste. You'd think so. But it turns out we have evolved to channel that waste heat into keeping our bodies warm, which makes us warm-blooded, right? Yes.

The thing is is we have something really important, maybe one of the most overlooked important technologies humans ever came up with, clothing, which allows us to live outside of our normal habitat, which is the tropics and subtropical areas. Yeah, that's why we spread about the earth. Exactly. Thanks to clothing in large part.

And shoes to a lesser, but... That's part of clothing. Any important extent, sure. But it depends on who you ask, you know. Isn't it accessory? But if we were warm-blooded animals that didn't have clothing and had kind of spread out into colder climbs,

one strategy that we might have when it got really cold and food became scarce, therefore the energy input was a lot harder to come by, might be hibernation. That's right. Which is something some animals do. That's right. It's funny, I think a lot of people think

of bears immediately when they think of hibernation. But not only do a lot of animals hibernate, bears, if you want to get technical... Let's get technical, technical. Oh boy, that'll be in the brain forever now. Technically, bears do not hibernate. We are gonna call it hibernation. And a lot of people do say, you know,

any animal that undergoes like a period, sustained period of like a body temperature drop and metabolism change is hibernation. And that's what I think. Sure. But technically, the real, you know, if you get a pedantic biologist up in your grill, they might push the glasses back on their nose

and say that it's when the temperature is significantly decreased, long-term state. This is like a, this is a sexy biologist you're doing. Metabolism slows drastically and the animal enters a coma-like condition that takes some time to recover from. And bears are a little different because they aren't really in that coma-like state.

You can wake them up pretty easily, although you should not. Their temperature, yeah. I think that's important to add. You wake a little bear? Right. Hey, you hibernating, you stupid bear. And the body temperature of the bears don't drop very much, compared to some other animals.

But yeah, for our intents and purposes, since we're gonna dig into the whole thing, when we say hibernation, we mean any time an animal goes into this kind of state beyond sleep. Right. With the goal of surviving a rough period of the year. Yeah, whether it's shortage of food or weather. And it could be cold,

usually you associate hibernation with wintertime. But actually in the tropics, there's something called estivation, which is hibernation during the hottest or driest times of the year. Pretty cool, never knew that. There are also reptiles who hibernate, it's called brumation.

And there's also torpor, which is a great word. It's another confusing term though, right? Yeah, for sure. Torpor can mean, it can be an umbrella term for any hibernation strategy. Yes. Right? Or it can refer to a specific type of hibernation

that usually happens on a daily basis. Yeah, like a few hours maybe. Right. And so like you're hearing all this Chuck, I can put myself in the mind of people listening. They're like, you guys are talking about sleep, you dummies. It's called sleep.

This is not sleep actually. No, and that's very important to point out because I think if you don't know about hibernation, like I probably used to think, yeah, bears go sleepy time for half the year. Right. It's like, none of that is correct at all. So it's very different from sleep.

Sleep is, when you hibernate, you're really undergoing some pretty drastic physiological changes. When you sleep, you undergo a little bit of a change. Like even when we sleep, our heart rate slows a bit. Body temperature drops a little bit. Yeah, breathing slows a little bit, but nothing, it's not anything drastic at all.

It's more of a mental change. Right, yeah, that's the big difference between sleep and hibernation. With sleep, your brain is taking time to rest even though there are plenty of phases of sleep where your brain's active. It's also very inactive for large parts of it. With hibernation, apparently when an animal

is in even deep hibernation, its brain is still reflecting the same type of waves, I believe alpha waves, that has when it's wakeful. Totally never knew that. They're just somewhat suppressed. And actually when animals come out of hibernation, they apparently have sleep deprivation and have to sleep for several days afterwards.

Yeah, that's the fact of the show for me. Oh yeah? I'm sorry for taking that off. No, no, no, you wake up from a six month hibernation with chipmunk. I'm sleepy. Yeah, so I gotta get some rest from laying around like this for six months.

But it's all because of those brainwaves, I think, it's pretty interesting. If you're in a zoo, you probably don't hibernate. I'm not talking about a guest and visitor at a zoo. If you're an animal living in a zoo, you probably don't hibernate because they're regulating your environment. Your food is not gonna be scarce.

But in order sometimes to give these animals a more natural life cycle, they will trigger hibernation on purpose. Yeah, they just like blast them with an ice ray or something. An ice ray? Yeah. And as far as when to hibernate,

like when it all depends on the animal, on when they do it, and it depends on the animal and how it's triggered, like when they know to do it. Yeah, yeah. So there's actually, there's a biologist whose name was Jurgen Aschoff. And Dr. Aschoff, I'm assuming doctor.

Sounds like a bad, a bond villain almost. Right. Or an actor playing a bond villain, too. True. Dr. Aschoff came up with a term for all the different kinds of triggers that can trigger hibernation. Sleepy Trigs?

Zeitgeiber. Oh. Does that make sense to you? Sure. Because you're in a German? Yeah. So Zeit means, like Zeitgeist?

Right. So this wonderful term is probably does mean in German sleepy time triggers. It's a good German band name, too. Yeah. But yeah, because there's not a third word. Yeah. The third word, the three word band names bother me.

They're really tough to pull off. And when they are pulled off, well, great. They're usually done very well, but it's also really easy to fumble a three word band name. I'm trying to think of three word band names now. Like Bachman Turner Overdrive? Yeah. Great one.

Brian Jonestown Massacre, great one. Fleetwood Big Mac. I'll bet there's a cover band out there named that. I actually just saw a Fleetwood Mac cover band. Oh yeah, what were they called? I don't go to those tribute cover bands ever, but. You just came to in the middle of one? No, I noticed there was a Smiths cover band playing

and they were opening up for rumors. They're from Atlanta, actually, the Fleetwood Mac one. And the Smiths one was tough. I had a hard time watching the guy. No, that's thanks. I mean, the band was great and he sounded good, but. What was the problem? He was more seeing around the stage

and you can't more see around the stage unless you're more seeing. So I just had to kind of look at the guitar player. Right. Was he Johnny Maaring on the stage? No, he was fine. But Fleetwood Mac rumors, they are great. Are they?

Dude, I mean, unbelievably great. Really? And if you like Fleetwood Mac and you don't want to pay $200 to go see them. Right. Pay 15 to go see rumors. That good, huh? Yeah, I mean, he sounds just like him.

Well, anyway, shout out to rumors. I guess so. I might be on a new cover band kick though. So I found myself kind of perusing like what's coming in Atlanta thinking, like, oh, that was kind of fun. Right. Who's coming?

Zoso, are they coming? No, but there's a night of it with ACDC, Van Halen, and one other classic rock band is going to be all playing together. I think I might go to that. Featuring the real Sammy Hagar. Maybe. You never know.

And Michael Anthony too. Yeah. Although my hats off to Sammy Hagar for stepping up to defend Michael Anthony like a year or so ago. Oh, I thought you were going to say hats off to him for not driving 55. Well, that too.

Yeah, he did take up for Michael Anthony. Yeah. All right. So we were talking about zeitgeber. And again, this is all the ways that hibernation can be triggered. And I think you said temperature is the big one, right? That's the main most common one.

We talked a little bit about food supplies. There are many animals who are triggered by food supplies. Birds, most notably. Although there's only one bird that goes into true hibernation. Oh, yeah? Yeah. The chickadee. Now, the common poor will actually

goes into real hibernation for like five months. And other birds just have a torpor like you were saying. Right. A few hours a day, that's all they need to conserve a little bit of energy. Yeah, I mean, again, that's the point. Like you're trying to save calories, right? Yeah.

That's the whole point. Exactly. So there's also something called photoperiod where the days start getting shorter and it triggers a hibernation response in animals, too. Yeah, and a really cool thing that this article pointed out was that they've done experiments where they've had animals in, I was about to say, in capture.

Locked away in rooms, condolence rooms. Studying animals that have no triggers like this going on, and they have this weird ability they don't understand triggered by their circannual rhythm where they just know this like internal biological clock where they just know it's time. Right. Pretty amazing.

It is amazing. And that's in contrast to the circadian rhythm, which we all know and love that makes us sleepy when the day ends. That's right. Let's take a break, man. All right. Are you ready? Yeah, I'm going to go listen to some Fleetwood Big Mac.

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And like you said, they just seem to know naturally when to go hibernate. And when they start getting these triggers, when they're like, oh, it's starting to be time, one of the first things they do is prepare a place to stay. Yeah, they fluff the pillow, shake out the sleeping bag. Yeah. What else?

If they're the hare bear bunch, they just basically settle into their awesome den. Do you remember them? The hare bear? The hare bear bunch from early 70s. They lived in a zoo, but they had the coolest. They had a TV and great recliners and a refrigerator. Sure.

Yeah, the hare bear bunch. You remember the bear with the cravat and the big afro? One of them had a camouflage hat that covered his eyes, like the guy from Cypress Hill? No, I don't remember that at all. Chuck, you got to check out the hare bear bunch. I think you might like them. That was my generation, too.

Yeah, that was right there. Interesting. Maybe my parents didn't let me watch it. They're like, that bear's obviously on the dope. Who knows? But you are correct. They prepare their little area. Depends on the animal and what they do.

Might be a cave, a little ground squirrel or a lemur might dig out their den and put some insulating material around it. We talked about polar bears. Yeah, the polar bear moms kind of combine hibernation and birth. Yes. Right?

They dig out like a Snowden, which, again, great movie. Sometimes they don't dig out a big area. Sometimes they'll just find a little tree hollow or a little shallow cave, and they're kind of partially exposed to the weather. Yeah, because I was thinking about that. When you think of a bear's hibernating, you think of a bear hibernating in a cave.

They couldn't be too far into the cave because the same triggers that put them to sleep and trigger hibernation. Also, bring them out of it. Sure. So it would make sense that they would need to be partially exposed to the weather. So as the days started to get longer,

they would wake up, or as the temperature got warmer, they would come out of it. I didn't think about that. Food storage is a big deal. Sometimes if it's non-perishable foods, you can actually keep it in there with you. And we bring this up because it's a bit of a misconception that some animals do knock out

for months and months at a time. But some will wake up occasionally just to shove some food in their mouths and then go back to sleep. Well, not sleep. Go back into hibernation mode. Yeah. So they should have some food in there. Or maybe they've just eaten so much,

prepared, fattened up for the winter months that they don't need to eat at all. Yeah. I saw somewhere that some bears go from eating an average of 8,000 calories a day to 20,000 calories a day to fatten up in the weeks leading up to hibernation. So we're talking about brown fat now, I guess?

Yeah. Sounds gross. It's delicious, though. Brown fat is different than white fat. When we typically process fat for energy and heat, there's something called shivering that it facilitates that helps us. Well, yeah, shivering, shivering, right?

Yeah. Yeah, just muscle contraction burns energy and releases heat. Yeah, but brown fat's great because we don't need to shiver. It actually, the brown fat is oxidized directly and it instantly produces the heat. It skips the whole middle part. Nice. So you don't need to shiver.

So it doesn't waste energy on muscle contraction? Not at all. Oh, that's pretty cool. Although it's called non-shivering thermogenesis. Nice. So that's why you want the brown fat. Yeah, and that's what the bears bulk up with? I guess, I guess all animals do.

Or maybe not all animals, but I know it's handy. Well, when you do have to burn that fat, whether it's brown fat or otherwise, you use up a lot of that stored energy. Yeah. Because fat is a great energy store, right? And if you're a pretty large animal, if you let your body temperature get too low,

because again, most of the time this is in very, very cold climates in the winter, right? Yeah. If you let your body temperature get too low, it's going to take a lot of energy to get it back to its normal warm-blooded state. Yeah. Even its normal hibernating temperature.

So animals have astoundingly something called a set point. And it's like an internal thermostat setting that says, when my body's temperature gets to this temperature, burn some fat and warm me back up. And I guess all warm-blooded animals have this set point, right? Yeah. But for the larger animals, it's higher.

Because again, it requires so much energy to restore it that their body temperature never gets too low. And their set point is being activated pretty frequently during hibernation. But if you're a much smaller animal, I think the Arctic ground squirrel is like the best example of hibernation, especially in this respect.

The Arctic ground squirrel, a warm-blooded animal, their body temperature will get below freezing during hibernation. And you would think, well, that's got to be pretty terrible for them. Yes, it is. They lose bone density. They lose their teeth.

Their brain, actually, they lose parts of it. And they come very close to dying or being dead. Unbelievable. And then the thaw comes, and they're aroused from their hibernation. And all of a sudden, they start growing all that stuff back. Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. Yeah.

Like, oh, I just want to say move. All right. Well, I go through that every year. All this is controlled mostly by the endocrine system. And we have these glands in our body that alter all of these hormones. And it can really control, with great precision, all these physiological changes that they need to go through.

Yeah. I say we, but yeah. I'm an animal, too, I guess. Sure, yeah. Party animal. Should we talk about some of the specifics of that? Right. And again, this is the reason why things like temperature

changes and the changes in the amount of sunlight during any given day can trigger hibernation, because those are capable of affecting hormones, right? That's right. So you're picking up things like when to grow your coat. It triggers melatonin production, which triggers a thick coat, like coat thickening, right? Your pituitary gland is going to control that fat buildup,

the heart rate, and the breathing rate, and metabolic functions. That's a big one. The pituitary gland takes care of a lot. Oh, yeah. You lose that. You probably can't hibernate. Thyroid, that's going to control your metabolism somewhat,

and your levels of activity. Right. And then finally, insulin, as we all know, is going to regulate your glucose. Right, there's also something that was isolated. It's an opioid called Datal, D-A-D-L-E. And they found that it lowers heart rate and respiration in animals.

And that if you give any animal this, they kind of start to get into hibernation mode. Oh, really? So it's not like I don't think it's a hormone. It's a chemical. But it has a hibernating effect on animals. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

So some of these changes can be pretty drastic. The heart rate can drop to as little as 2 and 1 half percent. A chipmunk, for example, five beats per minute, as opposed to 200. That's pretty significant. Listen to the bat. Some species of bat go from 1,000 beats per minute to 25. And they only breathe once every two hours.

Wow. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. And the box turtle doesn't breathe at all. It completely shuts down breathing. But I mean, that makes sense. Like when you are, when you're running off of stored fat, right?

Yeah. You don't have the need to power cells like normal. Your hibernating, your metabolism has slowed because your cells aren't requiring the same energy that they had before, which means that you don't need oxygen or nearly as much oxygen. So you don't have to breathe as much. And since you're not taking in that much oxygen,

your blood doesn't need to pump nearly as much either because that's the point of the heart. And your blood is to spread oxygen through your body, at least in large part. And the turtle, the box turtle takes an air through the skin. So like you said, it still needs the oxygen. But it just doesn't need to breathe to get it. Right.

And it doesn't need much because the box turtle's heart beats about every, once every 10 minutes. Man, that's neat. Let's go. Boom, boom. Then 10 minutes later, boom, boom. You're right. Pretty amazing.

And then most animals, probably all animals that go into any sort of deep hibernation, they have like X amount of fat stored up that they should carry them through the winter. That's right. That's why you should never, ever mess with a hibernating animal of any type because you will basically have killed it.

Yeah. If you rouse it from its hibernation, it will take a tremendous amount of energy to come back to wakefulness, right? Yeah, and to bring that temperature up. Right. And so it just spent way more than its budget for the winter. So even if it can get back into hibernation,

it'll starve to death because it used up a bunch because you, some jerk, woke it up from its hibernation. Yeah. Why'd you do that? I didn't do it. I'm just saying. Waste, if you're wondering. I know we kind of gave it away a little bit

in the polar bear episode about the poo poo and pee pee. Some or most animals that go into deep hibernation don't do either one. There is no poo poo because they're not eating. Right. All that food's been digested already and turned into fat. Yeah. So there's nothing going through the intestines at all,

which must be a wonderful feeling. Oh, yeah. You know, when you empty out real good. But the body does produce urea no matter what, and that's the waste product in urine. And hibernating animals actually recycle that. Bears in particular break it down into amino acids and use it. And if you think, well, they're not drinking,

how are they not dehydrated? That comes from fat, too. Pretty unreal. It really is. Yeah, this whole thing is just like, it's unbelievable that animals evolve to do this to survive. Yeah, you know. Yeah.

But I mean, it makes utter incomplete sense. It's like, oh, the food supply dried up for five months? Well, then just go to sleep. Don't eat any food. And again, they're not sleeping. Yeah, I know it's really tough to avoid that. I know. But just go hibernate.

Yeah, I think we pointed that out. Earlier we mentioned estivation, which is hibernation and hot weather. This is something I did not know existed until the last few days. Yeah. In the desert, if you live in the desert or a tropical climate and it gets too hot or if the food is getting low,

you may not be able to survive unless you dig a hole and dig down into the earth where it's cooler and a more stable temperature down there. Right. Or if you are a fish or a primitive fish that has lungs, like a lung fish, you may live in an area where your body of water dries up annually. This is a good reason to estimate, too.

So lung fish actually produce mucus. They create a mucus sac around themselves that dries on the inside, but stays wet. No, dries on the outside stays wet on the inside. Yeah, they're down in the mud. Right. But the lake can completely dry out around them, and they still stay hydrated.

And they don't dry out. They're lung fish, though, so they breathe through lungs. So they also make a tube of mucus that reaches into the air so they can breathe while they're sequestered away. And that's good eating, too. I don't know. Lung fish?

Yeah. No. Those are, I doubt it. We're related to those. We're both tetrapods. Did you know that? We're related to the lung fish. I don't think I did know that.

Although it makes sense because they're the only fish, I think, that breathes that way, right? I believe so. But they're also probably one of the first fish to start to come out of water and produce what became amphibians. I just had to look up a lung fish real quick. You've seen it before.

Yeah, it looks sort of like an eel. A little. But they have like foot-like appendages almost. Yeah, interesting. Just like us. I have a foot-like appendage. You can do two of them. So we talked a little bit about torpor with birds.

The black-capped chickadee has a daily torpor that it undergoes for a few hours. And like we said, that's all it needs, just a few degrees lower in their body, just for a few hours a day to conserve that little bit of energy that it needs. And only that poor will will, they have a 93% drop in energy needs, the poor will does. And then back in the spring, when things warm up,

the poor will needs about seven hours to stretch it out. Wait, seven hours of torpor? No, seven hours of getting back to speed again. Oh, I see. Like after they wake up from hibernation. Oh, gotcha. Because a lot of animals, it takes a long time. Days.

But this little bird needs about seven hours. And he's like, all right, let's do this. I'm up in Adam. Exactly. He's like that guy from Jerry Maguire. Which guy? Remember the guy who had the interstitial interviews? He was like, every morning I wake up and clap my hands

and say, let's go. The old agent. You know, Cameron Crowe tried to get Billy Wilder for that role. Really? And there's a great story that he told, because he just revered Billy Wilder, the great filmmaker and writer, directed the apartment, among others.

Did he do sunset Boulevard too? I don't know about that, maybe. OK, go ahead. So Billy Wilder said no. And Cameron Crowe was like, please, this would really be awesome. And he said no. So Tom Cruise was like, let me come to the next meeting

and ask him. Because I'm Tom Cruise. Right. So the cruise rolls in there and asks Billy Wilder. And he says no. And Cameron Crowe, how he put it was, I could tell from the look on Tom's face that no was an award he heard often.

Wow. And that stuck with me all these years. That Tom Cruise was told no by Billy Wilder and was just like, what? Right. His smile didn't change. It was like the entire change took place in the light in his eyes.

Yeah, pretty funny. Billy Wilder did direct sunset Boulevard, by the way. He did. All right, in Hummingbirds, we should mention because those little dudes and dudettes are very active, as you know. If you've ever seen them flitter around, they, in order to do that, they have a heart rate up to 1,200 beats per minute.

So when you see the Hummingbird and it looks like they're going like, all over the place, they are. It's not just their wings. Right. Like they're in a constant state of high heart rate. And their consumption is so great that they use daily torpor, even when they're in the tropics. Like every Hummingbird you know has a daily torpor where they,

and I think it's like more torpor than other birds even. Right. So it has nothing to do with weather in their case. Yeah. There's juiced up. So if this whole idea of hibernation is like a really kind of ancient mechanism, right? Yeah.

And we're all connected far back into the tree of life, it raises the question, can humans conceivably hibernate, right? Yeah. And that's a, it's not just us asking that. That's right. So let's take a break and we'll talk about that right after this.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger

and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place,

because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast

and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Josh, can humans hibernate? Uh, probably not. Well, it's a pretty controversial thing, because there are some scientists that say, absolutely,

we have this latent ability that we could tap into. And then other scientists say, absolutely not. Right, asleep. Yeah. We did a whole episode on therapeutic hypothermia that touched on a lot of this. And actually, NASA's got a contract with a company from here in Atlanta called Spaceworks.

And Spaceworks has something called RhinoChill, where they introduce chilled liquids up your nose to cool the base of your brain. That's where you lose me. Well, yes, well, you would lose consciousness, right? Yeah. And apparently, it slows metabolism and induces a hibernation-like state.

And they're looking into it to see if they can use it for long-distance space travel, like a trip to Mars or something. Like in the movies. Exactly like in the movies. NASA is very much looking into this kind of thing. And apparently, it has been since the 50s. Since the movie said they could do it.

Basically, yeah. But this idea of entering hibernation, it's also frequently called suspended animation, that kind of thing, it would help tremendously. Yeah. Because not only would you save people from the boredom of a six-month space trip, you'd save them from going a little crazy from that,

save on food supplies, save on space, because the people don't need to move around or exercise or anything. I guess it's slowing their aging as well, right? Or is it? I don't know. That'd be the interesting thing. I would guess so, yeah.

Because I would think the process of aging is the wearing out of your body from metabolism. And if your metabolism's slowing, you're not aging. Sure, yeah. I mean, you probably, I'm sure it doesn't shut it down, but I guarantee you there's a formula. Right. So there is, I mean, there is actual interest

in this kind of thing. You found a cool thing from the British medical journal from, geez, how long, 110 years ago? Yeah, 1900. On the nose. 116 years ago. It was an article titled, Human Hibernation. And they reprinted it about 16 years ago.

Right. And they talked about these Russian peasants that did something called Lutska. Nice. I think you nailed that. Which is essentially six months during the hardest winters, the family will kind of hibernate. Like they don't do anything.

They sleep as much as they can, eat a little hard tack, drink a little water, and someone stays up to keep the fire going. They take turns doing that. Right. But otherwise, they are just bedded down, conserving their energy. Yeah, that's it.

They wake up once a day, like you said, eat a little bread, drink a little water, go back to sleep. I imagine that's gotta, I'm sure it's not so drastic, like some of these mammals that we've talked about, but it's got to have a physiological effect. Yeah. The desired effect. I mean, think about it.

That's why they tell you, if you're trying to lose weight, don't eat for hours before you go to bed, because all you're gonna do is just, you're not gonna burn any of that energy off, because you're just laying there sleeping. Same thing with this. I mean, it's kind of like a forced pseudo hibernation, self-induced pseudo hibernation,

that they're like, it's a strategy. We're not gonna use up as much energy. We're just gonna lay here. It's awesome. Yeah, and I think these survival shows that you see too, they do a lot of laying around when the food is scarce as well. Yeah, I mean, that's what you wanna do.

Yeah, plus, I think you're kind of forced to. Sure. Yeah, because you lose energy. Yeah, you have no food energy, so you're, yeah, you can't do anything. There's one other thing I wanted to mention too. You got something else? No, I mean, just, you know, I remember a few years ago,

I guess it was 10 years ago now, I remember when that Japanese man was lost in the woods and claims that, in some scientist's degree, that he went into a state of hibernation. Yeah, we talked about him in the hypothermia episode too. Yeah, I think we might've done

one of our old video things on him too. Oh yeah? It seems like it. Man, a while ago. We've covered everything, dude. But there've been other cases like that. Yeah. From people like stranded in cars.

Swedish biologists who like, for all intents and purposes, drowned in an icy creek and was revived. That's, yeah, I guess that's a little more like the therapeutic hypothermia, huh? But no, the same thing with the Japanese man and the woman in the trunk of the car. They were both exposed to below freezing temperatures

and it lowered their metabolism. Pretty amazing. Then there was this guy who was not in freezing temperatures. Back in 1973, there was a journal article, I can't remember the name of the journal, that they did a study with a yogi, yogi Satya Murti, and for eight days, he went into like a state of basically

like meditative hibernation. Yeah. As far as they know, he didn't eat or drink anything. He lost 10 pounds, four and a half kilograms. His body temperature dropped down to 94 degrees, which doesn't seem that much, but apparently that was the ambient temperature of where he was, sealed off in.

And they had an EKG, they had EKG sensors detecting his heartbeat, and apparently his heartbeat went up to like 200 beats a minute and then started to taper off. And after like the first day and for the next seven days, they basically couldn't detect a heartbeat. Oh wow. He'd like lowered his heartbeat so much.

And I haven't seen, I've seen it mentioned here there or whatever, but I've not seen anybody say, well, this is how he did it or this is the trick. Yeah. It seems to be one of those weird curiosities of science that is just kind of over there. You know what I mean? I think I remember that and like,

that's incredible when I was a kid. Oh yeah. Remember that show? Sure. I think I remember a piece on this dude. Right. I wouldn't be surprised if they did. Do you have his name?

Yogi Satya Murthy. Different guy. There was another Yogi though on that show. Yogi Berra? No. He could do the same thing. Right there on the bench in the dugout. Do we, should we talk about hydrogen sulfide real quick?

Sure. There's a cell biologist named Mark Roth at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. And in 2005, there was a big experiment where scientists induced hibernation and lab mice by giving them hydrogen sulfide gas. And apparently it shut down, it really induced hibernation.

The body temperature shut down their metabolic processes and then they gave them normal air and then they were fine again. Right. And they're thinking, they're trying it now on roundworms, which apparently we have the same reaction humans do. What's it called?

Nitrogen sulfide. No, the effect. Oh yeah, it was like that initial, it's kind of like, you know, you gas somebody and it knocks them out. Right. And they're doing experiments. They think that might be the key

to inducing this in humans. Whether for space travel or, I think one of the other things they said it would be good for is, so organ transplants. Right, that's it. And by that I meant organ, not organ transplants. Yeah.

Like people moving from Northern California. I think they mentioned something too about people in vegetative states. They could help them out if they kind of shut their metabolic functioning down. Oh yeah. While they wait for a cure or something, I'm not sure. The thing I saw about that gas is that

if you remain exposed to it, you die. Right, yeah. Which I guess is some sort of inert gas asphyxiation, but it seemed different than that. I don't know why that would mean that it showed promise for hibernation. Maybe if you expose somebody to it and then let off a little bit

and then expose them to it and let off, that you could keep it up like that. Yeah, like a good dentist. We'll go run our own experiments after this. Great. If you want to know more about hibernation, you can type that word in the search bar and it'll bring up this article,

which was a Grabster article. Oh, that's right. Yeah, Mark of Quality. And since I said Grabster, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm gonna call this Wine-Growing. Hey guys, enjoy the episode on ice ages and commend you on your ability to once again, distill a complicated subject

into an informative entertainment piece. That's what we do. As a quick note from the wine industry, we often and I often personally prefer the term wine-growing. You both chuckled the phrase in the episode, but actually conveys the job better than anything else. Grapes grown for wine are generally different varieties

held to different standards than grapes grown for eating or juice production. Berries are smaller, contain less juice, more acid, and sugar, and have bitter skins and seeds, which make them less appetizing than the grapes you find in the supermarket. The peas are the qualities that make good wine. In fact, many professional associations

in the wine industry refer to themselves as wine growers. Unfortunately, the vines don't grow in finished bottles. Wine is made there in the vineyard, though. Gets me every time. The goal is to bring out the best in the fruit once it is inside the winery. I keep up the good work. I encourage you to try some of the wines

from around Delana, Georgia. Great wine is made everywhere. You may be surprised what is just down the road. Steve? Steve? Steve, send us some wine. Yeah, man. That's how we try.

Send us some wine. I'm in the wine industry. Go try some wine. Send us some wine. Yeah, Steve. I like big, beefy reds, full-bodied reds, and dry whites. What do you like? I love rosés.

OK. I like reds, I guess, fruity reds, like zinfandels and sauraz. Sure. And I'm cool with any whites. Root champagne, too, Steve, or any kind of sparkling wine, I should say. Yeah. I recommend to you and others out there

to watch this great documentary. Did you see SOM, the original SOM documentary about the Sommelier, Master Sommelier testing process? Yeah. It was good. There is a sequel now from the same makers called SOM Inside the Bottle, where it's just a look at wine, there are 10 different topics they cover about the wine and the wine industry, and it's really, really good.

Oh, let's check that one out. Yeah, you can learn a lot from it. OK. It'll make you thirsty. We need to do a whole episode on wine. We still have yet to do it. Yeah. Emily asked me that when we were watching it.

She's like, have you not done this yet? And I said, that's the one I might be most afraid of, period. Oh, yeah. It's worse than soccer or chess. What? We did soccer and chess. I'm more intimidated by the wine podcast, because I care so much about it. And you could do a, you could have a podcast series on wine.

I'm sure there are. So it would be, yeah, there are plenty. So it would be tough to sum it up in 45 minutes. We can do this. I don't know, man. We'll do it. We're doing wine. All right.

It'll be great, Chuck. You'll love it. So scared. If you want to get in touch with us, again, you can hang out with me on Twitter at Josh underscore um underscore Clark. You can also hang out with stuff you should know in general at S Y S K podcast. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can hang out with stuff you should know on Facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you

should know. You can send us an email to stuff podcast at house stuff works dot com. And as always, hang out with us at our home on the web stuff you should know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics visit house stuff works dot com. On the podcast Hey Dude the 90s called David Lacher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I heart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot

sexy teen crush boy band or each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.