Stuff You Should Know - How El Nino Works

Episode Date: March 1, 2016

El Nino may mean "the little boy" or "Christ Child" in Spanish, but this weather phenomenon really means crazy things for Planet Earth. We're talking rain where it's typically dry and drought where it's usually wet. Learn why today. 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.

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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. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there,

and we got this guy. I am El Nino. All other tropical storms must bow before El Nino. Yo soy El Nino. But those of you who don't habla español, El Nino is Spanish for the Nino. That was the late great Chris Forreley on Sarant Live. Back in the winter, early spring of 97, 98,

when all anyone could talk about was El Nino. Yeah, I thought you were going to select to play Wave of Mutilation by the Pixies. Is that about El Nino? It's in the lyric. I've kissed mermaids rode the El Nino. Oh, yeah. Walk the sands with the crustaceans.

I never realized this. What are you saying? Yeah, but riding the El Nino is sort of, as you'll see, it's not a wave. It's wrong, Black Francis. You were wrong. Charles. Can we call him Charles?

No, it's Frank. But in the Pixies, he was Black Francis. Yeah, he's back to Black. Yeah, Frank Black. Black, Frank Black. Man, I saw him in, you and I are both lifelong Pixies fans, obviously, but I saw him do a solo show. May have been with the Catholics, even,

in a tiny little bar in LA when I lived there. Wow. And they were, I couldn't figure it out. They were, I mean, it's at like 75 people. I was like, why are you playing here? And why aren't there 1,000 other people trying to get in here illegally? Yeah.

And he was, you know, he's eight feet in front of me. Well, I mean, the Catholics were OK, but. Oh, man, those albums are great. Not door-busting great. Oh, I think that the Catholics albums are really good. Really? Oh, yeah. Huh.

Yeah, I like to play them like Pixies numbers. Well, OK. You know? Yeah. Anyway, great show at the mint in LA. Rodiel Nino. Yeah. I know exactly the line you're talking about,

but I never realized Rodiel Nino. Right. He pronounces things oddly. Maybe you thought he, I don't know. I think that it was like Nino or something like that. Or maybe he didn't mean the weather phenomenon. Maybe he got on the back of a small boy and wrote around. Or the horse.

Or the Christ child. Maybe. Because if you live in Spain or Spanish-speaking country, and you turn on, say, the Weather Channel, they will say things like, well, the Christ child is going to be way worse than the last time the Christ child came around. That's what they say.

Because El Nino, we should say, when it's capitalized, means the Christ child. That's right. If it's lower case, it just means the boy in Spanish. But uppercase, the baby Jesus. Yeah, and I never knew this until we researched this. In Peru, the Spanish colonizers coined that term when they discovered this phenomenon themselves

around Christmas. Yeah. So how about that? Yeah, it was pretty cool, I guess. And we should mention, historically, this is nothing new. What, El Nino? No, they written records, date back to 1525. Spaniards again.

Of course. And there's geological evidence that dates it back possibly, if you like, Harvard Science. Go, Harvard. As much as 124,000 years. Because some scientists there, or one in particular, examined annual deposits on Indonesian coral and said, hey, I think this coral looks like it

was affected by El Nino 124,000 years ago. I also saw they found evidence that a very early Peruvian culture collapsed because of the climate change brought about by El Nino based on the disappearance of some certain mollusk varieties. Yeah, pretty cool stuff. So nothing new. We should probably tell people, if you

don't know what El Nino is, what El Nino is. Do you want to? Sure. I do like I do with lots of things that don't understand. I go to kids science websites. Yeah, I found one that said, I was reading this article three times, and I got to the bottom. And it said fifth grade or science module.

I was like, man. It really helps. And that's just a tip from us to you. If you're a dumb adult, then go look to kids websites. Fifth grade is about right there. All right, so here's the deal. Temperatures, world global temperatures depend a lot on the ocean.

The ocean and the ocean. Weather period depends a lot on the temperature of the oceans. So if you have a warm ocean, you're going to have more rain in that area. And in the Pacific Ocean near the equator, the equatorial region. Where it's warm. Where it's warm.

You're going to have the sun baking that water on the surface, making it warmer. Right, and then that more rain. That water heats up the air right above it. That air rises, taking some of the moisture with it. And it rises up, meets cooler, drier air in the atmosphere. That water vapor condenses and turns into rain. There's your tropical thunderstorm.

Boom, so that's part one. Right, and then in the Pacific specifically, there is a patch of warm water that usually gets blown from the Eastern Pacific to the Western Pacific. Usually like clockwork. And when that happens, everything's normal. Yes, these are trade winds. And they blow usually pretty consistently.

But not always. Sometimes they don't blow as heavy. And sometimes they change direction. Yeah, so if the trade wind isn't blowing this warm water, the rotation of the earth on its axis actually pushes the warm water toward the east rather than toward the west. That's correct.

And when everything's normal and the trade winds blow this warm water to the west, in the winter time, the rainy season comes to places like East Asia, right? Yeah. And then Western Peru, the Eastern Pacific, it's kind of confusing. So just refer to a map as we're talking. Yeah, that would help, actually.

Is normally dry and cool, right? But if the trade winds aren't there, like you say, to push that warm water along, that warm water stays right where it is off of the coast of Peru in the Eastern Pacific. And all the weather in the world starts to change. This is what's called El Niño. That's right.

And El Niño, it's not something that just affects that one region out in the middle of nowhere in the ocean. It affects climate, well, not climate, but weather all over the world. In the US, what you usually see, and we'll talk more about this current El Niño that we're in, because we're in one, 2015, 2016, winter.

But typically, in the US, it's going to mean cooler and wetter weather in the southern part of the United States, warmer weather in the upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest in Alaska, fewer hurricanes, more typhoons. Right. Fewer Atlantic hurricanes, more Pacific typhoons, I think. Are they one and the same, like a hurricane and a typhoon?

It's just depending on where in the world they are. I don't know. I think so. Yeah. I'm pretty sure. Depends on what you call it, I guess. We're going to find out. All right.

I'm sure. Around the world in Southeast Asia, where it's warm and dry in places like Australia, it's going to be, well, warm and dry. Right. Like, it can be dangerously dry. Yes, drought conditions. Right.

It'll get drier than normal, because the rainy season isn't being brought over there by the trade winds that year. Exactly. Southern Africa, warm and dry, Central Africa, wetter. And then South America is sort of all over the place, depending on where you are, from dry in the Northeast to wet in the West and South. Right.

So those are what El Nino will mean. When it happens. Usually. The thing is, this happens every two to seven years, supposedly. And it's actually only in fairly recent times, since the early 80s, that science has really set up and paid attention to this.

And it was because they got caught off guard by one. But throughout the study over the last, like, 30-something years, we still don't have any idea what causes the trade winds to stop, basically, some years. Yeah. That produces El Nino. And that's a huge mystery, and one that, really, if we could solve that, if we could figure it out,

then we could probably predict El Nino even further out, which is, as we'll see, would save lives. Absolutely. Well, why don't we take a quick break here, and we'll come back and talk a little bit more about the process. The podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,

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or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so you said every two to seven years. Yes, I did. El Nino comes on stage and takes a bow, says, we are the Pixies. Seriously, if you haven't seen that Chris Farley bit, just go watch it. It's hilarious.

He's got like Carmen Miranda arm bands on, and his shirt, and it's great. He liked to take his shirt off, didn't he? Yeah, he did. He got laughs. So Chuck, we were talking about how El Nino affects the weather, not just around like Eastern Peru, or making it drier in Southeast Asia, or Australia.

Yeah. And the reason that it affects weather around the world is because of the jet streams. There's a bunch of them, and basically the jet streams are where the stratosphere and the troposphere meet, and it's just to put really even less than fifth grade scientists. Second grade science?

They're like rivers of fast moving air, and already moving air. It's a jet stream, basically, up in the atmosphere. And they're basically like conveyor belts around the world. Yeah, they move from west to east. Right, and they push things like warm air and cool air, and high pressure, and low pressure, and fronts, and all over the world.

And when these things encounter other fronts that are already there, they form weather, right? Or, and it's weird to think of weather as the lack of something, but having, say, cool, dry weather? That's still weather. That's still weather. Usually you think of weather as an event,

like a thunderstorm, or tornado, or something like that. But weather can also be unusually dry, or unusually cool weather, too. Yeah, weather is just however it is right now, is weather. It's very mellow. And the jet stream, because of its massive power, can affect, like, thousands of miles away, things that you wouldn't think might be affected or affected.

Yeah, and so depending on where you are in a jet stream, jet streams are characterized by troughs and ridges, right? Yeah. And if you're underneath a ridge, things usually tend to stay warm and dry. And if you're under a trough, it's usually cold and wet. So like you said in El Nino, the southeastern United States usually is sitting right underneath a trough in the jet

stream, which means it's colder and water than usual. Yeah, right? Yeah. Well, that's why, because of the jet stream. People blame it on the El Nino, and the El Nino started the whole thing. Like, this weather wouldn't be happening. But the reason the El Nino is distributed

throughout the world is because of the jet stream. So it's this very extraordinarily complex system working in concert with one another. To wreak havoc, for the most part. El Nino, we said every two to seven years is when we get one. And climatologists and weather people and meteorologists, what else can I call them? Weather bugs.

Weather bugs? They look at patterns. And you can't just say any time like, oh, things are heating up a little bit. It's El Nino. There are specific conditions. They look, in particular, at the. You can say that, but you'll get shouted down.

Oh, sure. Yeah. You know, meteorologists. Yeah, they love shouting. They look at ocean temperatures mainly in the Pacific. And when they find a 0.9 degree Fahrenheit or 0.5 degree Celsius rise in the water, and then the conditions start to sort of act like we were talking about before with the

wind, they say, all right, let's take a look at this and start charting it, everybody. And everyone gets real excited in the office. And what they need is five overlapping three month periods for that to be officially classified as El Nino. Right. Otherwise, it's just, like you said, weather. But it all starts with the sea surface temperature is what

they call it staying warmer, being warmer than usual. Yeah, and right now we are officially in the strongest El Nino on record. Yes. At a 3.1 degree rise Fahrenheit. And it's peak. Wow, and El Nino conditions start at 0.9 degrees? Yeah.

And we're at 3.1? Yeah, and we'll talk about some of the other big ones. But the one in 97, I believe, that Chris Farley referenced, was that peaked at 2.8. So this is officially the strongest, although it's not really having the same result as what you would imagine as the strongest. Right.

So you would guess and you wouldn't be shouted at in the meteorological conference if you guessed this. But warmer weather, warmer sea surface temperatures should lead to worse weather conditions, drier in Indonesia, wetter in the southeastern United States. And that's just not happening this time. Well, it is, but not to the degree that they thought it would.

Right, but not even to the degree where, oh, this is just slightly worse than it was in 97. It's actually not nearly as bad as it was in 97, even though the sea surface temperature is higher. Yeah, and they can't explain that either. No, they can't. And they're blaming it on climate change. They're saying climate change is definitely

doing something. Yeah. What exactly? We don't know. Right. And again, the whole thing dates back to, or the whole study of it, dates back to 1982, 83 season, right? Yeah, that was when meteorology was in its infancy.

Right. Well, not exactly, but sort of. Because they had an El Nino year then, and they thought, hey, I think what's going on is this volcano in Mexico, El Chichon, erupted. And that's wreaking havoc everywhere. That's got to be what it is. Yeah, they later were like, oh, wait a minute.

Things are normal now. It wasn't the volcano. It's what could it be? Well, and the reason that it really got their attention is by the time the El Nino conditions ended, there was like $80 billion worth of damage worldwide, property damage, I think. And something like 2,000 people had lost their lives.

So it really made these meteorologists sit up and take notice. And so agencies like NOAA started to drop buoys in the Pacific Ocean. They started using weather balloons to study air temperatures in the area, and really started tracking the whole thing to see what was going on to notice any changes.

And that's when El Nino study really started in earnest. Yeah, and there's also, we should mention La Nina, which is what's known as a sister to El Nino, appropriately titled. And that is when the trade winds actually pick back up and are stronger than normal. Right. And the fact that it's capitalized

suggests that it's the girl Christ child. I guess. Maybe. El Nino, La Nina, both capitalized. I don't know. A little odd. And each of these phenomenon are about nine to 12 months long, developing the spring.

They peak in the autumn or winter, and then weaken in the following spring and early summer. Right. So like right now, when this El Nino, when they finally were like, all right, we're getting another El Nino, everyone in Southern California was jumping up and down because they're in the midst of a long drought. And they thought, we're going to get tons of rain,

like we did in 97. And it's going to really help fill the coffers. And it just hasn't panned out that way. They got a lot of rain in January, but nothing compared to 97. Right. California really angered God when they elected Schwarzenegger.

Was that what it was? Yeah. You would pay. And Chuck, I think you said La Nina doesn't always follow El Nino. I don't think so. Well, it doesn't always follow El Nino. It's not guaranteed that when you have El Nino,

you're going to have La Nina. Right. But La Nina is basically the opposite. The trade winds not only blow the way they're supposed to, they blow even more than ever before. Yeah. And it's really crazy dry where it's supposed to be. And it's really crazy wet where it's supposed to be wet.

And then there's a period in between a neutral period where nothing's freaky. That's called regular weather. Right. And if you put all this together, El Nino, the neutral period, and La Nina, you have what's called the El Nino Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, which if you are a weather bug

or a meteorologist, this is probably how you refer to El Nino. As the El Nino Southern Oscillation? Yes. Very nice. So ENSO, you want to take a break? Yeah, let's take a break. OK.

All right, so we talked about some of the effects on local weather in different parts of the world for El Nino. But that is not the only issue. We talked about it wreaking havoc. It's not just, oh, it's raining a lot, and it shouldn't be. Or, oh, it's super dry, like devastating effects, billions of dollars in lives lost globally,

all over the place. So 1997, 1998, the Chris Farley one, let's just call it the Farley El Nino. By the time that was over, I think you said earlier, $33 billion in damage. Oh, I thought it was like $80 billion. I'm sorry. I exaggerated.

Maybe it would be $80 billion today. No, I was talking about the early 80s when I said $80 billion. I see now it's $8 billion. Oh. I was just flat out wrong. So please go ahead. That's still a lot of money.

So $33 billion in damage for the 98 one, half a billion in California alone. And it's a big deal. If you're an island in the Pacific, you rely on that rain for life. For fresh water? Yeah. Wash your hair?

Sure. All that jazz. So food crops, they're going to suffer? Well, yeah. I mean, drought is really bad for it. But also, so is too much rain, too, can actually ruin crops. It also has a tremendous effect on property as well.

Oh, yeah. I mean, if you live on the side of a hill in Los Angeles, you might slide off of that hill and into the ocean below. Yeah. Where was that one? There's a place in, I think, in the 80s. Oh, yeah, in Peru. There is a place in Peru that normally

gets about six inches of rain. Oh, yeah, that one? Yeah, and for the 1982, 83 El Nino, it got 11 feet. Yeah, you can't normally get how many inches? Six. Six inches and go to 11 feet and not have serious damage done. Right, and for those of you not in the US or Liberia who

weren't just like, wow, normally this place in Peru gets 15 centimeters of rain. And they got three meters of rain that year. Now everybody's duly impressed. Fisheries are also affected. This is one that I did not know. Anchovies love that cold water off the coast of Peru. But when that cold water is not there,

they say, I'm swimming to where it's cold. And so fisheries either scramble to make up for that in other ways. Or if they get warning like they get now, they say, hey, why don't we fish for something that likes cold water instead? Like shrimp. Like little baby krill and shrimp.

Shrimp. Because you can do a lot of different stuff with shrimp. I don't know if you know this. Oh, boy. Would you like me to list them off? No, Bubba Gump. Please don't. It's also affects just the health of individuals.

Disease-carrying rodents and insects are going to be more prolific in the wet weather. Malaria is going to increase when it's unusually wet and warm. Right. And when it is unusually wet and warm, things like diseases tend to spread a lot more easily. Sure. Mosquitoes breed very easily.

Yeah, which would account for the malaria. Right. Threefold. Right? Did you say threefold increase in 1997? I did not. In Peru, there was a threefold increase in malaria in 1997 because there were just that many more mosquitoes biting people.

Yeah, and that's wet conditions. In 1997, Indonesia had 24 million acres or 7.7 million hectares of unchecked forest fires. Yeah, that's devastating to the region. Well, yeah. And it was because, again, they're expecting a rainy season, and instead they got a drought. And Indonesia in particular got screwed over by nature.

OK, I'm just going to come out and say it. Absolutely. Because they had the warm conditions from Southeast Asia pushing into that area. And then, well, they're in Southeast Asia. But the majority of Southeast Asia got warmer than usual conditions. And then Australia had drier than usual conditions.

And these two conditions pushed together and overlapped and made a Venn diagram. And the center of the Venn diagram fell directly over Indonesia. So Indonesia was like, we didn't elect Schwarzenegger. What's going on? And it burned, as a matter of fact. Yeah, 24 million acres.

It's unbelievable. California, Southern California, it's not over for you yet. They said that there could still be some rough storms into March. But you're not going to solve your drought problem even if it was a strong El Nino, or if the strong El Nino led to massive amounts of rain. Well, supposedly, also, when you get a lot of rain, too, it's really dangerous because if you've been through a drought,

what, too much at once? Yes. Because tree roots, during a drought, come back up toward the surface because they're trying to get all the water they can. So these trees have shallow roots. So an influx or a deluge of water just goes right underneath the trees and they fall over.

Yeah, that happened in Atlanta a few years ago. I remember. And I may have even told the story of the guy who got killed in front of my house. Oh, yeah, you did. I forgot about that. I mean, 30 feet in front of my house, a tree fell on a guy's truck sitting in the stoplight.

I mean, what a freak death. I know, and I think about that every time we have massive amounts of rain for days and days at a time, and I start to see trees down. When I'm driving, I start to look around and pay attention. It's not that there's much you can do. No. I mean, maybe if you saw a tree falling,

you could jet out of there. But you know, you got to go the right way. It's true. You know, a tree is a large swath. Yeah. There was an actress in Chicago. She was on TV. I don't remember what show.

But she was riding her bike and a tree fell over and killed her. Tree falling over and killing you randomly is like, your number is up. How can you think of the universe as being that random? It just, it almost is like, fate showing its hand. Like, yes. You're sitting in a stoplight and a tree falls on your car and kills you, then that's definitely.

Or physically moving past a tree on a bike and it falls over. The timing is that perfect that it kills you. There was some movie where, one of those disaster movies where these large towers were falling, and you know, people were trying to outrun it by going like north or the same direction. I can't remember what it was, but I just remember thinking like,

just go left or right. It's the same thing as like, don't go into the house. I know. No reason for you to go into the house. It's just, it's, they're movie tropes. I get it. Yeah. Do you have anything else, sir?

Yeah. So we talked a little bit about climate change affecting El Nino. And like, the general consensus is that, yes, it is going to affect El Nino. It's already affecting El Nino. And unsettlingly, it's affecting El Nino in ways that are wildly unpredictable to the current models we have, right?

And there's this blogger on climate.gov named Tim DiLiberto. I'm probably over pronouncing his name a little bit. But he likens the ENSO to the light in like a dining room that's controlled by a dimmer switch, right? Yeah. And actually, because it's kind of complex, there's a bunch of different dimmer switches. But all of them control this one light that is ENSO.

And he says climate change is like this bratty kid that comes in the room and just starts messing with all the dimmer switches. It's going to affect the lights, but in all sorts of different ways that are really tough to predict. And he's basically saying like, we were caught with our guard down in 1982. And we did a lot to make up for that.

And now it's so great that we can tell farmers in Peru, go plant in dry areas, you're going to have a great crop this year. Or go fish for shrimp. Right, which is basically magic. This is what their shaman used to do a couple thousand years ago. We're now doing, right? Which is pretty cool if you ask me.

Agreed. But now we're caught with our guard down again, apparently. And we're going to have to figure it out. And by we, I mean they. And they better hurry up. Yeah, in the prevailing thought that just things beyond unpredictable are just going to be more severe. Yeah, but it's actually, that doesn't make any sense

because it's less severe this year, even though the sea surface temperature is warmer. Yeah. It says to me, they don't know. My whole take away from that story is that's my kind of dining room because I love dimmer switches. I love dimmer switches too, man. If something will stand still long enough,

I'll put a dimmer switch on it. Yeah, I've got them all over my house. Not because why not have a dimmer switch? I don't know. Why just have a dumb switch? It's like I can only be this bright. On or off, take your pick, Slim. Yeah, I mean this is 2016 for God's sake.

Yeah, so we have an Amazon Echo. And I don't know what that is. It's like the thing you talk to. It's the robot that eavesdrops on you while you're in your house. Sounds neat. And it can't control lighting yet, but it's like right there.

And I can't wait. I can be like, turn the living room lights to 30%. What's the purpose of this thing? I've never heard of it. At its core, it's a wireless Bluetooth speaker that responds to voice commands. Oh, I saw a commercial for that. Yes, that.

So you have a house robot, as John Hodgman says. Yes. That is going to become sentient and kill you and your wife in your sleep. Probably, but not for a few decades. Okay, good. And in the meantime, she's just eavesdropping on us and feeding everything we say to the NSA.

Wow. You know, I did see a thing the other day where I can't remember which brand of TV, but one of them came out and said, hey, you know that new smart TV? It's actually always listening to you. So watch what you say. Yeah, no, everything that has the capability,

well, your phone. Like if you look at apps and you're looking at the permission that you give apps on your phone, go check it out. It'll say, yeah, we have access to your microphone. We have access to your video and you're granting them access, which means they can go in any time or all the time and eavesdrop on what you're saying or watch you through your camera

while you don't think that it's on. I take over my laptop camera at least. Yes, that's smart, but your phone is very, have you seen Citizen 4? Not yet. Oh, Chuck. It's been sitting there on my TV. You need to see that.

It's very enlightening for sure. They talk about that, because apparently when Snowden came in the room, he like took everybody's phone, took the batteries out and then put them in like the mini fridge in the room. It was like, now we can talk. Wow. Yeah. And he didn't realize he was talking to human cyborgs

that were recording everything with i-cameras? No, well, actually they had a camera in the room, which is the ironic thing. And he was talking, he knew he was being filmed. He just, I guess, wanted to control the flow of information. Well, if anyone out there wants to hack into my laptop, I will untape it for you and you will be subscribing to the most boring TV show

in the world. No, I thought you were gonna say, you'll take them on a wild ride. No, Chuck sweeps the floor. Chuck cleans out cat poop and forgets to put in a cat litter. What did, I think it was on internet roundup. We also talked about, there was like a Russian website

with nothing but links to like baby cameras and security cameras around the world with people who had poorly protected cameras. Well, yeah, cause I think the thing with the baby cams is they give you a password out of the box, but you're supposed to change that. And if you don't, then it's easily hackable. They're hackable anyway.

Dude, I read stories where like a lady went into her kid's bedroom with a camera and heard someone talking back to the kid. In Russian. Yeah. Like yelling at the kids. Every parent's worst nightmare. And that's one reason I don't have a video baby monitor.

Yeah. And that usually Russians yell at babies through baby monitors worse than usual during El Nino seasons. That's right, bring it a full circle. If you want to know more about El Nino, type that word into the search bar at howstuffworks.com.

And since I said Christ child, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm gonna call it. Well, you know, first we got a couple of quick corrections. Oh yeah. Skin milk. Does the body good? It does.

Skin milk does not have high fructose corn syrup. Yeah. I just got that one wrong. Yeah. It was off the cuff comment. But I have thought that for a long time. And I'm trying to think of where I heard it. And I don't remember.

I do not remember. It was either like food ink or fed up or some documentary about food. Or I just confabulated it. Maybe. Sorry for that one. It happens. There is some additive though.

I stand by that. I can't remember what it is. But it's not HFC. It's a PCP. And AJ Hackett, boy, are we sorry New Zealand. Yeah, sorry guys. The inventor, one of the forebears of the bungee jump was definitely not Australian.

No. He was Kiwi. And I've been both places. So I know the difference. Well, and you're the one who said it. So you, you sir. I apologize, New Zealand. And to make it up New Zealand,

we're gonna come do a show there one day. And it's gonna be free. Actually, that's not true. Because we have to actually pay for the trip. Yes. But I'd love to do a show there. Let's do it. If we go to Australia, we gotta go to New Zealand.

Oh man. They'd kill us if we didn't. Plus I just want to. Yeah, New Zealand's beautiful. That's what I've heard. All right. So on to listener mail. This is just kind of a neat thing.

That's what I'm calling it. Neat thing. Okay. Hey guys, one year ago today, I proposed to my now wife. So I guess you said yes. Using a custom New York Times crossword puzzle. Oh yeah.

This sounds like something you'd do. Yeah. And was entitled, it was entitled, Stuff You Should Know. I worked on the puzzle with a New York Times puzzle creator. That's so cool. And even got the official layout from the New York Times magazine staff,

the hotel staff where we were staying that night, swapped out the puzzle in our New York Times crossword. That was to be delivered the following morning, 12 to 15 of the clues were tied to our relationship, including the title of the puzzle from the finished puzzle. The phrase, I thought it said, you will marry me. That would be creepy. Will you marry me was spelled out in the bubbles.

So creative. Yeah. My wife Hannah and I bonded early on through your podcast. And it has remained a wonderful constant in our relationship. So thanks a bunch for being great. And in a way being part of one of the best days of my life, the day I proposed to my wife.

That is neat. The exclamation points. Nice. I've attached some of the photos from that day. I looked at it and the guy's telling the truth. Yeah. His story checks out. You guys are great.

Adam and Chicago PS. We saw you perform live at the Athenian theater here and really enjoyed it. Keep up the good work guys for exclamation points. So he thinks we're doing a better work than he enjoyed his own engagement. Yeah. I also said you guys are great to exclamation points.

So I see where your priorities lay. Adam in Chicago. Yeah. We got six exclamation points. So Adam and Hannah, way to go. Hope you guys stay married forever and listen to us as part of your long lasting. Flavor.

Agreement. Legal agreement. Right. Well put Chuck. We just really deflated that dude's balloon. If you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know.

You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web. The super cool, super awesome, James Brown of websites, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. 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. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bye, bye, bye.