Stuff You Should Know - How Feeding Babies Works: The Bottle

Episode Date: January 5, 2017

The decision to bottle feed a baby instead of breast-feeding is a weighty one these days, fraught with supposed developmental pitfalls and very real social implications. But is bottle feeding a bad thing? And are benefits of breast-feeding overestimated? 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

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 bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya 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. Hey, San Francisco, we're coming back to see you. Aw, yes! Our second year in a row, we're gonna be going to SF Sketch Fest. I like to think it's the premier comedy festival

in the United States. Well, in the world. You think so? Yeah. What about Beijing? Nope. It's a close second, but a second. Well, we love San Francisco.

We love performing there. Everyone is always so kind to us. And by San Francisco, we mean the entire Bay Area, of course. Yeah, so we will be there doing our thing for a one time only show on Sunday, January 15th at 1 PM. Yeah, it's the rare Sunday afternoon. We're like the NFL of podcasters. Yeah, exactly.

That's what I've always thought. So all you have to do is go to the SF Sketch Fest site, look at the old calendar, and there are tons of great people performing. Oh, yeah. So I suggest just doubling down and getting tickets to all kinds of good shows. For sure, and hurry up and get tickets to ours

because they've only been on sale for a week or so, and they're already half sold out. That's right. So please hurry, San Francisco. Please hurry! 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 we have guest producer Noel with us. And this is Stuff You Should Know. Part two. That's right. Part two. Actually, things are gonna get weird

because Noel's about to leave, I think, and then that means we're alone again. So you never know what's gonna happen. The beating of our hearts is the only sound. Stuff You Should Know, after dark. Oh, this got weird pretty quick. So this is part two of how feeding babies works. Right, are we on the same page?

Oh yeah, oh yeah. I hope so. And part one, I think, went down pretty well. It was a little nerve-wracking being two dudes. Right. At the risk of doing it wrong, or like you said, mansplaining, which I even hate saying that term.

But I think we did a pretty good job. Yeah, we didn't come across as we were hanging on by just our fingernails like I felt for most of the time. I think we did all right, too. Yeah, and today we're gonna focus a lot more on formula feeding, which I feel much more comfortable because it's something I know a lot about. Right, yeah, I figured you could probably do

a lot of heavy lifting on this one. Well, it's not that heavy, just five or six ounces at a time. Terrible. Yeah. Yeah, this one is, the first one is called the breast. This one is called the bottle. And yeah, you know, the bottle is usually filled

with formula, but there's plenty of other stuff you could fill with it, specifically breast milk. But a lot of women start using bottles fairly early on, sometimes from the outset. And there's a lot of reasons why. There's a lot of reasons, I guess in other words, why women either choose not to or ultimately have chosen for them not to breastfeed.

And one of the big ones that's actually pretty common is a condition called mastitis. Yes. And mastitis is basically an extremely, extremely painful inflammation of the breast, or breasts, I guess in the worst case, which can be brought on by like sore or cracked nipples or an infection in the breast, blocked milk ducts.

There's a lot of stuff they can bring it on. And as painful as breastfeeding can be, apparently the recommended treatment, course of treatment for mastitis, is to keep on breastfeeding, that like clear, like actually the flow of milk through the breast clears up the inflammation and even the infection in some cases.

And I was trying to figure that out, like how would that work? But then I remembered that breast milk is so chock full of antibodies that I guess it would deliver the antibodies to that site as well, right? Wouldn't that, that was the only thing I could come up with. Yeah, that makes sense. And you know, yesterday, well actually we did record,

we'll let the cat out of the bag. We're recording these on two separate days even. Yeah. We usually do the sweets in one day, but yeah, we decided to sleep on it. Right, I think that's probably a good move. But yesterday, when I mentioned my mother did not breastfeed me and she had some problems

with my brother, I think that was the deal. I think it was pain and stuff like that. Yeah, and I mean like, from what I can gather, mastitis is not just pain. Like you feel very ill and run down and apparently you're supposed to get lots of bed rest and nutritious fluids and express your milk every two hours and apparently-

And express yourself for that matter. Right, which probably amounts to I'm in hell right now. Yeah, probably. But when you put all this stuff together on top of like all of the normal things that you have to do under the best of circumstances when caring for a newborn, this very frequently represents the last straw for women who are like on the fence about breastfeeding.

The mastitis commonly leads them to say, we're done with that, I'm done with breastfeeding. That's one. Another one I came across that I hadn't really thought about that kind of surprised me was boob jobs. Yeah, I never considered this until you did the research and then I thought, oh, you know what? I never even thought about that.

That's no out of my sphere of consciousness. That's pretty great, yeah. Oh, I don't think I meant that to be a pun, was it? No, it wasn't. It was a great t-shirt. Oh, okay. You know, like instead of talk to the hand, it's you are now out of my sphere of consciousness.

Gotcha. So if you do get breast implants, it kind of depends on the reasons why, how it's done, where it's actually done, obviously in the breast area, but we haven't done one of breast implants, have we? Dude, one of our better episodes is on breast implants. Really? Yeah, remember I said I wanted to see what a breast implant

looks like on a dog, because apparently they practiced on dogs early on. Yeah, I remember now. Yeah, that was a great episode from beginning to end. It was a long time ago, though. Right. So, getting back to it, the incisions, it depends on where they're made.

If they go across the nipples or areola, it's probably likely that your milk ducts and the nerves were cut. Right. Which means you probably can't breastfeed. Exactly. But if you had a good doctor and they went into your armpit or underneath your breast,

they probably also specifically chose to save those nerves and go around them. So if your incisions are under your breast or under your armpit, you probably are able to breastfeed. I imagine that's part of the conversation when you go in there, don't you think? Probably.

Like, hey, do you want to have kids or do you have kids or do you want to breastfeed? Yeah. Like, I would, I don't know. I've never had a consultation. No, but I mean, it does seem reasonable that that would be part of it for sure. I would think so.

Yeah. The other thing, if you still have feeling in your nipples, that's a good sign that the nerves are still intact. And sometimes that takes a little while to come back, though. Yeah, if you just had your breast augmentation surgery and the feeling isn't back, that doesn't mean it's not going to come back.

So that's not a sign. But if it's been years now and you have feeling back in your nipples, you probably can breastfeed. Right. Where you got your implants counts too. If it's in the actual mammary tissue, that's gonna be a problem.

It's gonna get in the way of milk production. But if they put it under your chest muscles, which is more involved, but is basically out of the way of your actual breasts, you can probably breastfeed. I feel like I should be finishing each one of these with you're probably a redneck. You know?

You probably can breastfeed. If the implant is on the back of your neck, the good news is you can breastfeed, but you probably made a grave error in your choice of doctors. Then you might be a redneck. No, you'd be a boobneck. And then the reason for having it

is another reason for breastfeeding. For having it is another factor. If you just got the breast implants because you wanted larger breasts, and it was purely cosmetic, then you probably are a better candidate for breastfeeding. Whereas if you got implants because the tissue was never developed

or there was maybe asymmetric problems or if the breasts were far apart from one another, like these are reasons that you may not be able to breastfeed. And again, I imagine in the consult, this will all be covered. Yeah, like if you got breast augmentation because your mammary tissue didn't develop properly

or normally, then yeah, you might not be able to breastfeed. So those are a couple. There's plenty of other reasons why a woman would choose not to breastfeed. In large part, it's a matter of preference, right? Some women just simply don't wanna breastfeed. Some are afraid it's gonna hurt. Some are embarrassed by the idea in some families.

It's a family tradition that you raised on formula. There's basically as many reasons for a woman to choose not to breastfeed as there are reasons, probably even more to tell you the truth. So let's dive back in history a bit. We sort of, I guess we usually do history first, but this is sort of woven in sensibly, I think. So back in the day, it was, it's kind of interesting.

I've heard wet nurse my whole life. I've known that was a term, but I literally never knew what that was. Really? No, I don't know why. It's just maybe I'm a big dummy, but I had no idea that a wet nurse is a woman who breastfeeds someone else's child.

That's funny. I did not know that. Did you think it was something else where you just never stopped and thought about one? I never stopped and thought about it. I'd never needed one. So I was just like, yeah, and you know, put a wet nurse on it.

Sure that'll help. Right, that'll clear that bum knee right up. It's better than a dry nurse, right? Sure, dry nurses are chapped and cracked. So yeah, that's what happens. And it was very common practice back in the day, especially before the feeding bottle was invented. And of course, as you would imagine,

it was an alternative mainly for people of higher status. Yeah, yeah, that's actually kind of fascinating in that for a very, very long time, except for a period between about 1830 or 1820 and 18, no, I'm sorry, 1850 and 1880 when breastfeeding was all the rage in America, very much akin to the situation now. Breastfeeding was seen as what the women

of lower socioeconomic classes did. Like they can't afford a wet nurse, so they have to feed their baby. Exactly, right, exactly. Or yeah, like I would hire a woman of a lower socioeconomic class to feed my own baby. Just because it just wasn't done. Women didn't do that kind of thing

if you were well off or well to do. Yeah, which is terrible, but I never considered that a lot of mothers died during, or not a lot, but plenty more mothers died during childbirth back then. And so that's a chance to save these babies, which is amazing. Sure, truly, for sure.

I mean, that's one way that wet nurses really did kind of keep things going. But for a large part, for about 2,000 years, breastfeeding or the use of wet nurses was basically what women of a higher status did. They hired breast or wet nurses, which I had no idea, it's fascinating. It is.

Even more to the point, it kind of formed the basis of this idea that not breastfeeding was preferable to breastfeeding, that it was better to not breastfeed if you were able to, right? Right. It was the preference of the wealthier class, whereas the exact opposite is the position today. They've completely switched positions today.

Yeah, and this author, Katherine Joyce, in the New Republic basically said, it's been a constant throughout history that whether whichever is in fashion, they think they're right. Right. Like one is viewed as better than the other. Right.

It depends on where you are in history as to which that was. It's not equal, it's not different. One is clearly better. And in many cases, especially as the case is now concerning breastfeeding, it's morally better in the view of the people who champion it. That's right.

Now, so for a very long time, men have been extremely fascinated with breast milk or with feeding babies, right? They've applied scientific inquiry to the whole thing. It's because they can't do it. I think that is part of it, sure. You know? Yeah, I mean, we covered that yesterday.

We could try all we wanted to. Wouldn't work. No. So maybe that is part of the reason. I hadn't really considered that, but there has been a lot of scientific inquiry. Ironically, it hasn't really come up with any set stuff. But as far back as, I think, 90, the 90s,

just the 90s, not even the 1990s, 1900 years before the 1990s, there was a guy named Siranus of Ephesius. And he was an early physician who basically wrote a 23-chapter treatise on obstetrics and pediatrics and gynecology. And one of the things he focused on was breast milk. Yeah, and his big contribution,

well, one of the big contributions was a test for the consistency of breast milk that stood for about 1,500 years, which is pretty amazing. Well, because it's clearly infallible. Yeah, so here's what you do. Is you take a fingernail and you drop a drop of breast milk on the fingernail, and I guess the fingernail's facing up and you're flat with the finger.

When it's on the fingernail and you move the finger, the milk is not supposed to be so watered down that it runs all over the nail. And when you point your fingernail down, it's not so thick that it turns into a transformer robot. Now, it's not so thick that it clings to the nail, and that, you're looking for somewhere in the middle is what he says, and for 1,500 years, people said,

yep, that's how you do it. Yeah, and so not only was that like your breast milk's great, but also this wet nurse's breast milk is adequate for the contract you want to give her. Oh, sure, I never thought about that. Yeah. That probably had a lot to do with it. For sure.

And people also used animal milk as well. Apparently for the last 2,000 years, there's evidence of people using animal milk. Yeah. But for the most part, it was wet nurses and then formula, artificial formula. Yeah, which came back, what, late 19th century? Yeah.

In the 19th century, there was a guy named Eustis von Liebig, and he said about trying to create a perfect infant food, an artificial breast milk, right? And in 1865, he kind of cracked it. He made a liquid form and then a powdered form, and it was made up of cow's milk, wheat and malt flour, and potassium bicarbonate. And when he came up with this in the 1860s,

it was considered like the perfect infant food, basically better than breast milk. Yeah, and by this point, this was about 15-ish years after the first feeding bottles were introduced in France. Right. So people were ready, like we've got the bottle, we've worked out these very rudimentary cork nipples, and we need something to put in it, besides breast milk.

One of the other things that came, all this stuff kind of came together to form the basis of a successful formula, feeding formula, right? And one of those was things like sterilization, pasteurization, germ theory, because in the early 19th century, they were trying out like bottles and stuff like that,

but it was killing infants left and right, because they didn't know about sterilization, they didn't know about germ theory at the time. They, I think something like one-third of non-breast-fed babies died from being fed artificial milk. That's staggering. It is, it's a lot.

So there was a huge breakthrough in the late 19th century when they came up with a decent formula that wasn't just animal milk and that they could deliver it in some sort of feeding apparatus that wasn't gonna ultimately kill the baby. Right. So that was a big deal.

Yeah, and this is all, like I said, early 1850s is when the bottle comes, 1865 is when Von Liebig developed his, and sort of a little before and a little after, you had people like Gail Borden, if that name rings a bell, Eagle brand Borden condensed milk. She came up with that, adding sugar. Oh, was it a?

I'm pretty sure. It could be a boy. It sounds like it, just imagine him as a country western singer. No, Gail totally can be a guy's name. I just, I defaulted to lady because, I don't know, because this is about breastfeeding, I guess. So he, I guess, added sugar to evaporated milk,

canned it, and that was condensed milk, and then about 30 years later, I mean, it became popular as an infant food, obviously. Right, have you ever had condensed milk? In things, not by itself. In things like cheesecakes and like the sweetest desserts you can ever have. They were feeding that stuff straight up to infants

as the infant food. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and about 30 years later, another one, John B. Meierling, was that a man? It's possible. He developed an unsweetened condensed milk, called it evaporated milk, and this became a big thing to feed babies in the 30s and 40s.

Right. All this stuff had a lot of fat. It would plump your baby up really well, but it was missing a lot of the things that babies need to thrive. Well, why does my baby have claws instead of fingernails and like dark circles under his eyes? Oh, nutrients, that's right.

We need vitamins and stuff. Yeah, which in the 1920s or so, is when scientists started developing these formulas that didn't even have cow's milk at all. Right, right, for kids that had milk allergies, they started using like soy flour. Sure. Yeah, and so when they figured out that you could take

this stuff and evaporate milk or evaporate soy protein and add this other stuff to it, like nutrients and vitamins and balance it all out, formula really took off and it became a really, almost a triumph of science in the popular culture, right? So starting in the 30s, in America, if you wanted formula, you basically had to go to your doctor for it.

You didn't necessarily need a prescription from what I saw, but the rule was that if you were a formula manufacturer, you could only advertise directly to doctors. So it gave formula this kind of air of medicine, like it was medical in nature, it was like sterile and high quality and that had the stamp of science behind it

and it lionized the physicians who were now in between the mother and the baby's food, right? Yeah. The doctor needed to recommend it and so it was a real way that science and medicine and parenting, especially early, early childhood parenting, came fused together and so there was this idea that science had conquered nature

and created this perfect infant food. Yes, so by the 1940s and 50s, this is when formula had really taken root in the United States and I guess around the world, but definitely in the United States and it definitely caused a decline in breastfeeding for about 30 years. Yeah, I mean, this is around the time

the LHA League started to organize in the 50s as a direct result of this decline in breastfeeding and it continued on even into the 70s where our bodies, ourselves people, organized that second wave of lactivism, right? Yeah. And formulas like flyin' high from the 30s, the 40s, on to about the mid-70s and you can actually point

to one specific scandal that basically led to a massive erosion of trust in formula, not just in the United States but around the world, that's still around today, actually. Yeah, the Nestle Company in the mid-1970s, they were sued because they were trying to really market formula to developing countries. Very aggressively.

Yeah, they wanted to sell more formula, so they would do things like send sales women over dressed up in nurses uniforms who were not nurses. Right. Giving, obviously, the indication like, hey, this is a great thing, you should use it. And formula was a great thing that they developed it for sure,

but what they didn't say in Africa to these mothers is that, hey, you need really good clean water here for this to be a viable source of nutrition for your kid. They didn't know that. They used it tainted water and infants started dying. Yeah, and it was laid squarely at the feet of Nestle formula and ultimately formula in general. Yeah.

And that was, I think, 1974 that that happened. And a few years later, the World Health Organization came up with these guidelines for marketing formula around the world. It was such a huge scandal. And the US said, oh, wait, you know what? We just realized there's nobody overseeing our formula market.

Maybe we should put the FDA on that. So it wasn't until 1980 that the United States tasked the FDA with overseeing the quality and purity of formula. Yeah, that's true. It was apparently just totally unregulated. Yeah, I can't believe 1980. That's really, really surprising.

But the whole suspicion of formula and the whole idea that it's dangerous or that it's problematic, it all stems from that event that scandal with Nestle in Africa. Yeah, so about eight years later in the late 80s, the formula folks started, they could advertise directly to the public for the first time, got on TV, got in print ads, and said, hey, use our formula.

It's good stuff. And apparently the American Academy of Pediatrics, though, still didn't like this kind of advertising and said, you should still go to your doctor and talk about all this stuff. Right, which is a conundrum. It's like, well, wait a minute. Are you guys saying that the formula industry

is being greedy and reckless by going around you? Or are you just trying to preserve your own bank accounts by re-insinuating yourselves into this factor when you're not really necessary? It's like just one more thing you have to figure out when you're trying to raise a newborn infant that just stinks, you know? All right, well, speaking of stinks,

I need to take a break and we'll come back in a minute and talk a little bit about milk banks and other cool things. Suffice should go. 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 non-stop references

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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, okay, I see what you're doing.

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on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Chuckers, we're back, right? We're at the milk bank. Yeah, milk bank is pretty neat. I hadn't heard of it before. Had you? Oh, I'm sure you have.

I actually hadn't heard of any of this stuff. Oh, really? OK. Well, let's talk milk banks then, baby. All right, so let's say breastfeeding is not an option for any of the reasons we've talked about for mom. You can go to a milk bank where milk has been donated, breast milk, obviously, from women.

And you can pay a lot of money for banked milk that you know is very healthy, fully screened, just like going to a blood bank, basically. Right, exactly. You need a doctor's prescription. And it is expensive, like $5 an ounce, which is a lot of money. It is. But it's good, high quality, disease-free mother's milk,

right? Yes. And I've seen that some insurance companies, some insurance plans, will either pay all or some of that cost, so it can drop dramatically. But because it's so expensive and because not all insurance covers it, other peripheral milk exchanges have grown up. Some alarming, some slightly less alarming.

But there's one called Only the Breast, which looks a lot like Craigslist for milk. OK. Have you been on it? No, I actually didn't go to the website. So probably every third ad is some sort of weird porno ad or something like that. Well, that's a good start.

But the other two are legitimate. I have milk. I'm healthy, and I just have too much. So I'm selling it for $1 an ounce or something like that. It's not like I got the best stuff out there. Well, no. I'm sure there are. I didn't run across any of that.

But there's also something that you can also click that says men need not contact me. Because apparently there's a whole thing of weirdos out there who are like, hey, sell me your extra breast milk. You know, I was going to make a joke a minute ago about milk banks being for mothers who can't or won't breastfeed more creepy, weird, wealthy guys. They go to Only the Breast, apparently.

So is it a thing for men to drink breast milk? I guess so, because you can go on to Only the Breast. And from what I saw, most of the legitimate ads were like, no, I don't want any men to contact me. But that means that there are some out there where, if you are a man, you can buy breast milk. Which I mean, I guess if you have that fetish and it's not hurting anybody, then great.

But still, I guess so. So you've got Only the Breast. The problem is this, right? And I don't mean to pick on Only the Breast. There's other milk sharing sites like this. They definitely do serve a function where if you want to feed your baby mother's milk and you just can't afford $5 an ounce,

but you can afford $1 an ounce. And some women on there have it for free. They're just donating it. They aren't charging anything for it. That's a viable place to go. The problem is the milk you're getting is not in any way screened. You have no idea whether the person you're getting it from,

despite how great they look and how healthy they look, whether they're actually disease free, and hence whether their milk is disease free. Which is, that's very alarming. It is. There's also something called cross nursing, which seems like a reasonable alternative. And that's basically just when two women or four or five,

just people who know each other, like neighbors or good friends that are pregnant at the same time, will cross nurse. And basically it's just milk sharing among a few people. Straight from the tap. Not straight from the tap. They'll bottle it up. Oh, okay.

And go next door and say, I had this leftover milk. You're in need. Oh, I see. It's basically milk sharing, but not through some big website. It's just among friends. I got you.

Just keep it between friends. There is a website called Milk Share that is, it's along the lines of only the breast, but it's much more regimented. Yeah. It's all donated. It's all free or there's no charge. And there's like guidelines for storing and shipping

and stuff like that, that only the breast didn't have. But again, still as far as I know, it's not screened for anything. Yeah. And we're not disparaging anyone who wants to use services like this at all. Sure.

Just want to make that clear. It's just, we want people to be as safe as possible. Yeah. I mean, what's the alternative though? You know, like if you want to feed your child breast milk, you can't breastfeed and you just don't have the money. Yeah.

What do you do? You know, that's a sticky situation. It is. It's very sad. We talked a little bit about the breast pump yesterday, but we'll really get into it here. It was invented in the early 19th, I don't know if it was early,

but let's just say 19th century. It was about a time when formula was really starting to come into its own. All right. Well, that kind of makes sense in a way. Everyone's like vying for that space in the industry. Yeah. Even back then.

Right. These models are probably what you think. It's basically a cow milking machine that's been modified slightly. Looks like a vacuum and a hand pump. But it was, and this is something I had no idea. As far as a consumer delivered at home product, it's only been around since about 1991

when Madella introduced the first at home electric powered. You can have it in your, as a consumer use breast pump. Yeah. Right up to. It had no idea it was that new. Right. Yeah, and ever since then,

there's this really great Jill LePore article from the New Yorker called Baby Food, where she kind of chronicles the rise of the breast pump. But she points out that since 1991, between 1991 and 2009, sales of Madella's model alone had quadrupled, and they become ubiquitous, you know? Then they started out as a medical device. Like if your baby couldn't nurse,

you could still feed your baby breast milk by using these pumps. Right. And it was a medical intervention that became a consumer product. And the reason it's spread in popularity like wildfire is because it makes breastfeeding moms life exponentially more awesome than if they're just nursing.

Yeah, I mean, it obviously has the advantages of freeing mom up by being able to bank that milk on her own, then dad can help feed, a babysitter, daycare worker can help feed. Mom can sleep through the night, maybe even, if, you know, dad is a good dad and a good husband. She can go to the store by herself. Well, what do you mean?

Well, I mean, rather than having to feed every two hours, or to express milk every two hours, she can go, as far as I've seen, up to like six hours between expressions, right? Gotcha. So you can fit a lot of time away by yourself in that six hours rather than two. Yeah, I hear you.

It's another big one. It also made things way easier in the workforce, obviously. We did touch on it yesterday with, as of 2010, here in the United States, employers are required to provide these break times in a private place, but it's not, like, we had a lovely lactation room in our last office. We actually recorded in there once, I think.

I actually was studying in there once, and I was like, huh, lactation room, but it didn't occur to me, like, that was a lactation room at all times, rather than just when somebody was in there pumping. So I was in there studying, because it was very quiet and comfortable before I finally got kicked out,

and it dawned on me that, oh, that's the lactation room all the time. That should probably steer clear of that place. So you're in there smoking a cigarette? Pretty much doing shots of whiskey. And you mentioned a second ago that the breast pump allowed women, if their baby had trouble nursing,

one of the issues that can happen is called nipple confusion, and it is not confusion, which is a little confusing. It is not the baby doesn't know, like whether or not it's mom's nipple or a bottle nipple, it's that the baby actually has a preference for the bottle nipple. Right, yeah, the baby has been introduced to the bottle,

and is now that the mom's like, okay, don't forget about the boob. The baby's like, no, no, no, I'm pretty hip on the bottle instead. Let's just stick with that. Yeah, I think it's a little easier, supposedly, right, for a baby to feed from a bottle. Yeah.

Easier for the baby, that is. Right, it employs gravity more than the breast does, and the baby has to work less, and since babies are inherently lazy, they're like, I like the bottle more. I just, I don't understand why it was ever called nipple confusion, and I couldn't find the origin of it, although.

I bet your nipple preference just sounded mean. I guess so, yeah, like they were worried that the mom would take it as rejection or something. Sure, absolutely. Yeah, there you go, just lie. And so they say, experts do that, if you wanna try and avoid that potential at least, that you wanna at least try and breastfeed,

if that's what you're gonna do for two weeks before the baby sees any sort of bottled nipple. Yeah, right, you want him to get good at breastfeeding so they can remember how. Yeah. Right? Seems smart. Yeah, your lazy little dumb baby is smarter and not as lazy as you think.

No, or confused. That's right. So, if you are going with formula, there is a lot of different types available, as I'm sure you know, more than me even. Sure. From what I've found though, that almost all of the milk-based ones,

which is the standard version, all of the milk-based versions are almost exactly the same. Yeah, there are things that the FDA requires be present. So, you're gonna see a lot of the same stuff. Should we go through the list here? I love this list, yes. Yeah, go ahead.

Protein. Fat. Vitamin C, A, D, E, K, B1, B2, B6 and B12. Niacin. Delicious. Folic acid. Love it. Pantythenic acid.

Calcium. How do you feel about phosphorus? It's a little stinky. Magnesium, iron, zinc. Here's the best one, manganese. It's like a mongoose and a mango mixed together. Copper, iodine, sodium, potassium and chloride. Why do they always put potassium and chloride together?

You ever notice that? No, no, no. One thing that you may not find in your formula, you probably won't, is a fluoride supplement. And the guy who wrote the How Stuff Works article is just cuckoo for fluoride. Wants to make sure that your baby has fluoride coming out of his or her ears.

Which, you know. That would be bad, actually. I'm ambivalent on that. Well, they do say, I think the American Academy of Pediatrics says no fluoride supplements at all to babies six months or younger. Oh, is that right? Good to add that.

Because the fluorosis is a concern in that case. That's not what this guy's saying, so good catch. He clearly doesn't work for the American Academy of Pediatrics. The thing about formula, though, is you would like to think it's all pure and wonderful and the best ingredients. And there are some out there, and I'm sure they're Mondo expensive, right?

Yeah, I mean, you know, the good organic formula is a little pricier, for sure. But there's also ones that are like, they appear to be almost junk food for babies. Well, yeah, I mean, read those labels, for sure. Like corn syrup and artificial sweeteners and corn starch sweeteners. Yeah.

I mean, do what you want, but I would avoid that stuff. Sure. And I'm sure a lot of people are 100% aware that that stuff's in their baby food. Probably so. And I mean, a lot of it's disguise. Like, maltodextrin sounds natural, but that's corn starch sweetener.

I don't think that sounds natural at all. But it sounds like it's, sounds like a quarterback for like a middling, Midwest college or something like that. Maltodextrin takes the field. It just sounds like that hardy mid-America kind of thing. All right. It's not coastal at all.

No, it's not coastal. If your little baby has intolerance to milk, like a milk allergy, you can get those soy protein or coconut milk formulas still. They're still out there, but they now have the proper extra nutrients added, which they did not used to have. Right.

And you can also get, did you say coconut too? Yeah. Yeah. I like the sound of that one. Coconut milk? Sure. Coconut, anything's good. Yeah, I tried the formula once.

How is it? Yeah. Is it sweet at all or are these sweeteners just strictly for carbohydrates sake? I don't remember how sweet it was. I don't think I got enough to really... No, I see. This is after a couple of scotches, huh?

You're like, let me see that. Bring me that bottle. Not that bottle. Speaking of sweeteners though, if you want to get close to breast milk, the sweetener you want to look for, the main sweetening ingredient in your formula is lactose. Okay.

Lactose. But then like you said, you may find out that your kid is lactose intolerant, in which case you have some alternatives, especially soy and coconut, which is my favorite. So formula, you're going to have a few choices. You can have, like what they'll give you in the hospital a lot of times is just the bottles

already pre-packaged and pre-made, which obviously it doesn't get any easier than that. You just pop the top and go at it, pre-measured and everything. And those are okay? Yeah, I mean, those come in a variety of kinds as well. Like from probably ones that aren't as great to the more expensive, better ones.

Okay. It's basically just the pre-made version of the powder that you might buy. Right, right. And the fact that they already measured out the precise amount and added the water and shook it all together already, that's what you're paying for,

the convenience I guess in other words. Yeah, but you know, they're disposable. So you're, I mean, you're recycling the bottles hopefully, but it's still something that you, it's a one-use thing. I got you, okay. So then you got your concentrates and your powders and price and convenience are kind of what play in here

according to what you're gonna go with in addition to what little BB will want to eat. Right. You know, some babies are like, I don't like that. I reject your formula. Give me another one. Or this one makes me have reflux or makes me super gassy.

Yeah, that was the thing that I saw too that even the formulas are virtually all the same. Yeah, your baby might have a strong preference for one over another. I think they're different. Yeah, I think the thing, the recipes are tweaked because there can, I mean, some of them say like for gas problems specifically and stuff like that.

Oh, gotcha. So there must be some, either a little less of something or maybe a little more of something would be my guess. Gotcha. And I'm just, I'm flying off the cuff here. So if I got that wrong, I'm sorry. One of the other things that formula requires is really good water.

Yes. Which again, the author of the House of Forks article who apparently is unaware of Florosis says, just use tap water. You can totally use cold tap water. And he does say you never want to use hot tap water when you're creating formula because if you do have lead plumbing anywhere

connecting to your house, hot water will leach it out more. When we covered that big time or one about Flint, Michigan, remember that? Oh yeah. So you want to use cold tap water. I would say use filtered water. Yeah, that's what we did.

For formula, sure. But if you're just using it out of the tap and the rule of thumb is if you can drink the tap water safely, your baby should be able to as well. But just be sure to use cold water. Yeah, and in fact, I think for the first little while we were even using spring water. Sure.

Just to be like, those first few weeks or until you get a little more comfortable or a little bit like, all right, I've been doing everything right. Yeah, no, I don't blame you, man. And then you get a little more relaxed. You're like, oh, babies are pretty hardy little monsters. Right.

And apparently also, I was surprised that they'll take formula cold, but apparently they'll take it cold right out of the fridge. Well, it depends. Well, it depends on the baby. Well, yeah, like some babies are like, no, no, no, no. Heat that stuff up. Right, well, when you're heating it up,

you only want to run it under hot tap water, in which case, it's fine because you're not actually adding the hot tap water. You're just using it to run out on the outside of the bottle, right, to heat it up. Yeah, I'm going to advise against that. OK, how do you heat it up then? Because I saw it don't use a microwave.

Well, you can buy a bottle warmer, which is basically just a little round thing that you have water in the bottom that boils at a teakettle. It's like a water bath? Yeah, it's a little water bath. But the reason I suggest that is, if it takes a long time to warm it up under tap water, and so you're literally just running water for five minutes.

Oh, that's a good wasteful, you're right. And at first, I was like, I don't need a bottle warmer. They try to sell you all this junk. Literally, it was like that. And I tried, I was like, look, you can just put it in a coffee cup and put some hot water in there. But that cools off really quick. Gotcha.

And the bottle warmer was like $15. Then you're like, well, look, you can just put the coffee cup on the stove, turn the stove off, turn it on. Yeah, Emily was basically like, get the bottle warmer done. And it's infinitely easier. You just click it on.

It's got a little timer for a couple of minutes or whatever. And it heats it up, and you're not wasting as much water. That's cool. But in a pinch, like when you're out and about, you definitely like the running it under tap water works. I think there's two things then that the federal government should give every new parent at least a year supply of infant formula, good stuff, and a bottle warmer.

Like just for being an American, you should get that. Yeah. What country is it? Sweden. Where they give them the box? Norway. Is it Norway? I don't know.

No, I think it's one of those. I'm sure. Oh, I know what you're talking about. The box can be used as like a crib even. Yeah. I think it is a Nordic country. And it's like this old tradition that they still do. And I think I posted something about it.

And I was like, what in the world? And all these women are like, no, dude, it's the best. They're doing it right. Yeah. But I can't remember. It was some sort of baby box. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. And I think it came with stuff in it,

but then you take the stuff out of it, and then you put your baby in it. I have to look into that. I think I'm describing it correctly. And the baby's like, echo, echo. So when you get your bottles and your nipples, when you decide on the ones, there are a bunch of them out there.

But when you decide on the one that works that you like and that works for baby, you want to sterilize it right out of the package by boiling it. But then after that, you can just wash it in the dishwasher with hot water. Supposedly, unless your house operates on well water, in which case, you may want to be a little more sterilific. And in 2012, they banned BPA for baby bottles,

because BPA has been shown to leach from its plastic container, the products, when heated up. And so since 2012, anything you buy won't be BPA-free. But if people, I mean, that wasn't that long ago. So if people are like, here, take my old bottles or have my handy-downs, you've got to look on the bottom. And if you see a number seven on the bottom or PC, yeah, then it might have BPA.

So you should just try and get a new one. Yeah, and you don't be also lulled into complacency by things that say BPA-free, because they may be certified even BPA-free, but two replacements that have come to stand in for BPA, BPS and BPF, are apparently just as bad endocrine disruptors as BPA. So what you really want to do is just avoid any clear plastic bottles.

You want to use the opaque kind, because they're usually made of polyethylene or polypropylene. And you want to go with ones that have the recycling symbol with the number two or the number five in them. Those are legitimately free of BPA or bisphenols of any kind. Yeah, they should put a little baby with a thumbs up. They should just, yes, they shouldn't have taken this many years for, I'm just,

the whole BPA thing really gets me going. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I mean, this is only four years ago. They're like, oh, wait a minute, it's leaching when you heat it up into your baby's food. Yeah, well, wait, we're making money off of it. Sorry, see, that's what I'm saying. You can get glass bottles now.

Yeah. Back in the day, that was all you would see, obviously. And they still make great glass bottles. And they're a bit heavier to hold. They obviously can break if you drop them. But I've seen a lot of places like the hazards of dropping and breaking a bottle. And I mean, it's not that big of a hazard.

It's like, unless you don't have any glass in your house at all, you could always drop a glass. Sure, also, these things aren't the most fragile things you've ever encountered, to I would guess. Thick and heavy. Sure, so they just crack the baby's face if you drop them. I would guess that's a bigger hazard than it breaking, right? No, I mean, you should be holding that bottle, you know?

Sure. Which we're going to get into, right? Yeah, you want to take a break first? Yeah. OK. Stuff is should go. 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.

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Hey, so Chuck, I saw something. I think I said you don't want a microwave baby bottles. Did you know that? I didn't, but we don't really use a microwave at all, so not an issue. Well, the reason why you don't want to is because microwaves heat basically from the inside out. So when you grab the bottle and you're like, oh, it's lukewarm.

The stuff that you're touching on the outside is lukewarm, but the stuff inside might be really hot, and you don't want to hurt baby. I guess we should also say, anytime you give baby formula, unless it's directly out of the fridge. And even then, why not? You want to shake a little on the underside of your forearm, right?

Because it's a very sensitive area in your skin, and you'll be able to tell whether it's hot or not. I would drop it in my eye. That's a good one. It's very sensitive. I'll bet that spring water doesn't hurt at all. All right, so like you said, some babies don't mind it cold. Or after a while, they may be like, all right,

cold is fine with me. But you still want to hold and feed your baby. You don't set your baby down on a couch and hand your baby a bottle and walk away. Because A, for a while, that's not even possible. Although I will say, once the baby can hold the bottle, it's pretty neat. But you still want to be there.

But you want to still be there and provide eye contact and that closeness, it's a big part of it. Yeah, that's a huge part of it. Also, we talked about it in the breast episode. Skin on skin contact has a lot to do with social development and brain development with babies due to oxytocin release. But that doesn't just come from breastfeeding. So anytime you're feeding a baby,

you basically should be shirtless from what I'm gathering. So that any way you hold the baby, whether you're bottle feeding it, whether you're breastfeeding it, whether you're the neighbor or the mailman who's been invited to come meet the baby and feed it, you want to take your shirt off first. So that the baby's got some form of skin-to-skin contact while she's eating.

I never did that. Well, I don't think it's ever too late. Yeah, now it'd be like, what are you doing? It's a new thing we're trying. So you don't want to have your baby laying down flat. You want your baby, the head elevated a little bit or flat out sitting up if they have reflux problems, you may have to experiment a little bit with that angle.

But the one thing you definitely don't want to do is just prop the bottle because that has four specific problems that can happen. Ear infections, perhaps. Yeah, because the formula just flows right into the middle ear. Yeah, feeding longer than they might normally and then decreased emotional and physical satisfaction

from being held. Right, and it apparently also increases the potential for cavities too. Yeah, so I mean, this is, like we're talking about, you shouldn't put your baby down in a crib, like even if your baby can hold the bottle, you shouldn't lay your baby down in a crib like a bedtime and say, here's your bottle to put you to sleep.

Right. And then leave the room. Because, and this is a little bit different than just bottle propping, but there are a lot of dangers there. One, tooth decay, of course, because the last thing that should happen is tooth brushing, ear infections, choking,

and then just this sleep association. You don't want your baby to be dependent on having that bottle to fall asleep. Right. You're not doing yourself any favors there in sleep training. That's a good point. So that's in the crib, leaving the baby with the bottle.

Slightly different than bottle propping. Sure. When you are feeding an actual infant, and you have to hold them up basically and feed them with the bottle, one of the things I think you said was that you have a lot of opportunity for eye contact, right? Oh yeah.

It's one of the benefits of holding the baby while you're feeding. But you also want to be sure to hold the baby with your left arm one time and then the next time hold the baby with your right arm and just keep going back and forth. Because apparently their eyes can develop, one can develop more strongly than the other

if the baby's fed facing the same way all the time. Yeah, I never did that either. Because the baby will look up. It's funny, it's intuitive, but I could totally see not even thinking about that. Yeah, never thought about it. Yeah. You want to keep that nipple full of milk at all times,

which means keeping it pointing down. Because you want to decrease the amount of air because that will make your baby gassy. The more air that baby drinks or swallows while eating the gassier he's going to be. Right, and when you are feeding your baby, apparently it's good to burp him midway between the feeding. Yeah.

Definitely after each feeding. Yeah, midway for a while and then eventually just after. And burping is, there are different ways from over the shoulder, like the sort of classic over the shoulder. You want to go high though and make sure there's some pressure on the abdomen to putting just sitting a baby on your lap sideways

and holding her under the chin and then patting the back or just across the lap, again with the pressure on the abdomen. And you want to, people are a little timid I think at first because little tiny babies seem so fragile. Yeah. But they are not as fragile as you think. And just tiny little soft pats is doing literally nothing

to get that burp out. So if you've ever had a nurse do it for you and show you or your mom or someone who's had a few kids, you might be like, oh my God. My baby. You're beating my baby. But that's what you want to do. I mean, obviously you don't want to,

you don't want to like strike them. But a good firm pat is what it takes to get that burp out. Yeah. Like don't be shy. And in my case, my daughter never really burped much from burping. I would try and try and then be like, all right, I guess she's good.

And then she would like sit up and go on her own. And you know. And then she'd like kind of smile and look at you like, what did you think of that one? Sort of. And you know, I mean, whatever you can do to get that little burp out. And burp doesn't always come out.

So if you try it for a few minutes, it doesn't happen. Then, you know, they might be good. Yeah. Which I'll bet it's not, not intuitive. I'll bet some babies have just been pounded on for days because it's apparent. Probably. Why won't you burp?

Yeah. Burp. So Chuck, you were saying before that one of the great things about bottle feeding is that it allows other people to share in some of the feeding as well. Yeah. Right? It's not just mom who's responsible for feeding the baby.

Dads can too. And other people, like I said, the male carrier, whoever. But the idea that it's not just sharing responsibility, but also like an opportunity to get to like get closer to your kid as a dad has got to be pretty appealing as far as the concept of bottle feeding goes, right? Absolutely. You know, like it's when you're breastfeeding, apparently

there's a, there is a phenomenon among some, some men where they actually become jealous of either their wife or their baby or both because of the bond that's being formed and the amount of attention and time that's being given to the baby through breast feeding. Yeah. I've heard of that. You have heard of that?

I hadn't heard of it until I ran into this. Yeah. I've heard of it. I mean, I'd say just get in there dad and you can still be a part of things. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, oh, you're breastfeeding.

Well, I'll just go in the other room then. Yeah. Fine. You know, like sit down with them. Yeah. Yeah. I say, get your act together. Yeah.

Get in there. If you're jealous of your baby because it's being breastfed. As far as when there are a couple of methods of feedings, demand feeding versus scheduled, I only have my own experience which was my daughter just fell into her own routine basically and it worked out to be a scheduled routine that was pretty tight down to the 10 or 15 minutes apart on a daily basis when it was clear that, so it ended up being scheduled, but she sort of set the schedule.

That makes sense. That's pretty cool. Right. But there are two different schools of thought. You can try and stick to that schedule, but you may be pushing that rock up the hill constantly in which case you might want to think about demand feeding, which is, I feed my baby when my baby says they're hungry. Yeah.

And I was researching this and I was like, well, seems like setting the schedules is smartest thing to do. And then I thought, oh, well, the baby kind of lets you know when he or she's hungry. Yeah. And it doesn't necessarily stick to the schedule. So I'm sure the idea of setting a schedule goes right out the window when the baby's like screaming. Yeah.

You know? So, yeah. The demand feeding though is that your baby might come to say, oh, this is enough. This will be enough for this hour. I'll see you in another hour and do that like 15 times a day. Yeah. One thing I do recommend is to track it. We just got it like a spiral notebook and tracked the times and the amounts because even though

you think like, no, no, no, I'm keeping up with it, it's really easy to forget how much they've had that day and you don't want to overfeed them or underfeed them. So just, yeah, we just kept a little daily log and made it super easy. Did you get the spiral notebook warmer too? I did, actually. It was very nice. Nice. It was good.

At first I was like, oh, who needs it? But then every time I put it on my lap, it was all cold and so. Oh, this is nice. Yeah. It was very nice. So, as a dad, being able to feed your kid, I mean like, that has to be pretty special, right? It's the best.

Yeah. It's the benefits of bottle feeding that the dad gets to do that too. And just kind of from the research, I got the impression that a lot of dads kind of take this hands-off thing where it's like, that's your thing, you feed the baby, I'll go make some money outdoors or something like that, right? And the idea of the dad being involved in the feeding, like that's part of the thing about bottle feeding the kid is that the dad can be involved. So the dad should be involved probably in more ways than he even imagines in a lot of

cases too. Yeah. Like, not just actually feeding the baby, but actually knowing how much formula is needed to prepare and that kind of stuff. Yeah. Just like be involved is the best advice and that's kind of what this article says that you sourced here. Like, you know, don't be a chromagnon or a dad from like the 1930s.

You know, just be involved, like if your wife is breastfeeding or bottle feeding and she wants to do it and she likes a nice quiet scene and she doesn't want the dogs barking and stuff, like set up the bedroom and light a candle, take the dogs on a walk, put on some music, like run interference, if the phone rings, you know, go get the phone. Just like be involved. Right. So if your wife or if the mom does choose to breastfeed, if that is where you guys go with it, there's also other stuff you could do too that isn't just feeding like you in

the middle of the night, you can go get the baby, bring baby to mom. Sure. Take baby back to bed, hang out with baby for a little while while you're burping him or her. There's a lot of stuff you can do, including apparently unwavering support with whatever choice the mom makes as far as, or you and the mom, I should say, make as far as feeding the baby goes, especially apparently when it comes to breastfeeding. Because again, I guess studies have shown that the dad's support, encouragement and

involvement in the choice to breastfeed has a huge impact on how long breastfeeding continues too. Yeah, I imagine. I would guess the same thing goes for formula too, like if you're a mom who decided that you just want to feed your baby formula, you're going to catch a lot of static. So if you're the dad, you should be able to run interference for her as well too with friends, family, all that jazz. Yeah.

Go fight somebody. Yeah. It's funny, all this stuff seems just intuitive to me and guys like you who, you know, it's not like husband, wife chores, it's like we just all support each other. But I have like friends that, you know, like, oh, I didn't wake up when my wife, what could I do? Sure. And I'm like, what year is it?

I don't have boobs. Like, dude, play a part, get up, get out of bed. Right. I mean, maybe not every time, like maybe you can work out the schedule and stuff, or maybe your wife is like, no, you totally sleep through the night tonight. But you know, offer, and you know, I bet your wife might say, yeah, that'd be great. Go get the baby. Bring her to me.

Yeah. I thought you'd never ask. Take her back. Burper. Yeah. This kind of stuff reminds me of that parenting class that Marge and Homer Simpson had to go to once. Yeah.

And the instructor's like, remember, place your milk in the refrigerator or barring that in a cool, wet sack, you know, and Homer was just writing it all down. Get involved, guys. Get your head out of your keister. This is what I say. What else you got? I got nothing else. Oh, this article from HowstuffWorks says, don't feed your baby junk food or alcohol

dads. Oh, yeah. We forgot about that part. I'm sure. I know that that was huge in the 70s, like, here, let's have a little beer. Maybe dip that pacifier in whiskey. Yeah. I thought about it.

You know, they used to, yeah, they used to do stuff like that. There was like this, what's the, I guess it was colic. That's the one where the baby's just crying nonstop, right? Yeah, colic is supposed to be, not supposed to be, it's terrible. There was a colic remedy that was basically consisted of like these needles, and like you just kind of scraped the baby's skin with it, and the active ingredient was morphine that trickled down the needles and entered the baby's bloodstream, and that's what cured the colic.

Wow. Yeah. They used to do all sorts of crazy stuff. Up to, again, about the 70s. Actually, I do have one more thing. I would just offer general advice to hang in there if you're a new parent. Emily and I got super, super lucky with great sleep habits and great eating habits, and just all this intuitive stuff that we had nothing to do with.

You can try your best to do everything you can, and you may feel helpless, because that little, that little monster is ruling your household. You might be trying your darnedest for sleep, or for eating, and this and that, and nothing is working, and it's not your fault. Hang in there, because it will change, and that goes for good stuff. Just when you think everything's going great, something will change, and then you'll take two steps back. Hang in there.

It'll all work itself out. The government should give every new parent a good formula, a bottle warmer, and one of those hang in there, and one of those hang in there kitty posters, inspirational posters. If you want to know more about breastfeeding, well, brothers and sisters, there is plenty more to it. You can just start researching online, talk to a doctor you trust, a lactation consultant, a friend who's breastfed, a friend who's used formula, put it all together, form your own opinion.

In the meantime, since I said form your own opinion, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this a suggestion. We don't usually read suggestions, but I've never heard of this dude, so I'm reading it. John Evans, a young man from North Wales in the very late 18th century, agreed to explore the American interior with his friend Yolo Morgan Wigg. I think they specifically said it's not Yolo. I think you're right. It's like they said that O was like octopus.

You're right. People say Yolo, but Welsh people don't care for that. Sorry about that. So they didn't say how to pronounce it, though. They were like, just figure it out yourself, chumps. No, it says you say the O like to first own octopus. And the L, or I, is a yuh. Is that ayola?

Ayah? I don't know. I'll try and be brief. He tried to discover a Welsh-speaking tribe in middle America linked to the Mandan tribes. We're talking like Patagonia here, not Ohio. He went to London, sailed to Boston. Well, maybe he's talking about Ohio. Then just walked the land, worked for the Spanish mapping out the land, which quickly

became his auxiliary task, one that he was very good at. Lewis and Clark actually used his maps for the majority of their own famous expedition. So yeah, Ohio. Yeah, he was sort of a diplomat, securing passage up the Mississippi from the native tribes who then controlled it, then headed to New Orleans before realizing no such tribes existed. Apparently... He's like, well, it was worth a try.

Apparently the guy from Super Furry Animals, Grif-Rise, Rhys? Rhys. Grif-Rise? Uh-huh. By the way, did you ever like them? Yeah. Did you? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I was into them for a while. They're good. Like, they opened for Granddaddy one time, and you won't find a bigger Granddaddy fan than me. But they, like, it was one of the few times where the opening act blew the main act off the stage for me. Oh, yeah. It was a genius, musically, intellectually.

Yeah. Just awesome. Yeah, I agree. And I liked them as a band, but, like, I was not expecting that at a live show. Yeah. Like, it blew my mind. Are they still around? I don't know.

I don't think so. I know they had an album, like, in the last several years, last few years. I need to get back into that. Yeah. Anyway, and not to not Granddaddy, of course, they were still great. He, from Super Furry Animals, made a book, a film, an app, and an album about the story, and retraced his journey in person. What?

I believe he is actually distantly related. Oh, that's cool. We got to check that out. Yeah, for sure. So he said, this would make a great podcast, dudes. Do yourselves a favor, at least, and look up the book, American Interior, in the same title as the album and give it a read. So that is from David Evans, and I'm totally going to look that up.

Yeah. What's it called again? American Interior. Okay. And then the guy's name was John Evans. Nice. The explorer. Well, thanks a lot.

Who wrote the, who wrote it? Now, David Evans. Me and the live. Lots of Evans going on. Thanks a lot, David. We appreciate that for giving us that heads up. We'll definitely check it out. If you want to get in touch with us, like David did, you can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast,

or Josh Clark. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Chuck, Charles W. Chuck Bryant at facebook.com. You can hang out with us at facebook.com slash stuff you should know, too. You can send us an email at stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com, and as always, join us at our home on the web, 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. 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 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 bander 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 iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.