Stuff You Should Know - How Fire Breathing Works

Episode Date: December 26, 2013

As part of their strange, ongoing suite on circus arts, Chuck and Josh discuss one of the more dangerous crowd favorites, aspirating extremely flammable chemicals from one's mouth onto a flame, creating a ball of fire. It's straightforward, yes, and stunningly hazardous. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the all-new 2014 Toyota Corolla. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. ["HowStuffWorks.com"] Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,

and this is Stuff You Should Know. Two-Hot Edition. This is an addition to our long-standing circus art suite. What else have we done? Then human cannonball. Sure. We've done... Lion-taming.

Yeah, lion-taming, good one. Or animal-taming in general, maybe. I think it was called lion-taming, though. There seems to be like a couple more. Yeah, maybe to be due to the, you know, that sphere that the motorcycle guy's right in. The cage of death. What did they call that thing?

The probably the cage of death, because it's the most dangerous thing ever. It's pretty dangerous. Yeah, yeah. Gosling did it, though, in that movie. Did he actually do it? No. Oh, okay.

Of course not. What movie was it? The Pines one? Yeah, Place Beyond the Pines, Among the Pines. Beside the Pines. Around the Pines. That's what they do with the pines. They had a pine smell to it.

Yeah, that was a great opening shot, though, I have to say. Oh, is that... I haven't seen that movie. A long, continuous shot that eventually takes him from like his trailer into that sphere of death. Well, now the whole movie's spoiled. You might as well tell everybody what the final part of the plot is.

What's that called? The De Numeau Resolution. Yeah, the last act. It's called De Numeau, Frenchy. All right, Circus Arts continued with fire breathing. I just did it. Did you see that, Chuck? Or what are some of the other names?

Because breathing is technically kind of a weird thing to call it. Yeah, that's the most common. Fire Blowing is one. Sure. Fire Aspirating. And apparently, I read something called HouseofPoy.com, which is basically a fire arts website. Yeah.

They were saying like there's two... There's a medical term for aspirating, which is to introduce air into the lungs and they wanted to go out of their way to point out that that's not what they were talking about when they call it aspirating. Okay. They were using the other definition,

which is exhaling a mist, vaporous mist. Gotcha. Aspirating is probably the best term technically for it, but everybody calls it fire breathing. Yeah, because a circus... What do they call the people that yell a barker? Isn't gonna say. Step right up and see the fire aspirator.

Yeah, they may have. Some of those old-timey circus barkers were like, they were into big words. Fire Aspiration. You'd have to say it like that, though. Exactly. Like Walter Winchell. Exactly.

For some reason. Chuck. Yes. Have you ever seen somebody breathe fire? Sure. I have in real life. Yeah. Oh, okay.

Yeah, like the smaller circuses. Lollapalooza? Well, well, I did see the Jim Rows show. Did they have a fire breather then? I don't remember. I just remember the guy that hung from needles through his teats. And I remembered dudes eating glass and stuff.

But there had to be a fire breather in there. Well, apparently that was around the time of the fire breathing revival. There was a... They think that it's possible people were fire breathing. Back in ancient Persia. Apparently that's where Naphtha was discovered, which we'll talk about.

Yeah. And the fire breathing, as we know, it probably came about around the 18th, 19th century, around the time when circuses started, as we understand them. Medieval traveling players gave way to traveling circuses, which gave way to big circuses. Right.

And then it just kind of died off for a little while, until a little-known guy named Gene Simmons started doing it at shows for the band called KISS. Yes. What does it stand for? Knights in Satan's service. Does it really? No.

That's not a rumor. Is it a rumor? Yeah, that's not true at all. You kidding me? They're like... They just want to party. Bunch of Jewish guys from New York or makeup. So yeah, Gene Simmons, he's a student on stage at Kiss shows.

Still does. I didn't know that, did you? That he did that on stage? Oh yeah, that was his big trick. So you've been in a Kiss tribute band before. Did anyone breathe fire? I've seen pictures. We dressed up as Kiss for a Halloween concert that we did.

Same thing. We did not play a single Kiss song, though. Oh, gotcha. Because they're kind of crappy. Well, did anyone breathe fire? No. I should have. I should have had the blood capsules, too, you know?

So Gene Simmons taught a guy who was in a tribute band called Black Diamond how to breathe fire, so he could do a better tribute act. And that guy eventually started this whole... Well, he kind of introduced fire breathing to the whole urban tribalism, raver, goth culture. Yeah. And then there you have it.

And now we have fire breathing. So Gene Simmons is responsible for the resurgence in the 1970s of fire breathing? Pretty much. All right. Yeah. So if Gene Simmons can do it, you say. Anybody can do it.

And you're pretty much right. But the thing is, is it takes a certain kind of person to breathe fire. And with that, I feel like we should see you away here. Yeah, big time. Like this is fire breathing. So there's actually stuff called fire arts. It's a subsection of the circus arts.

And it's basically anything dangerous to do with fire. Yeah, juggling, breathing. Eating. Eating fire, sure. Anything you can do with fire is pretty dangerous. Fire breathing is far and away the most dangerous of the fire arts. It is extraordinarily dangerous.

It is, you could say, extremely dumb to do. Yeah. And I used to think that when I saw it, I was like, I could do that. You know, you just put it in your mouth and you just blow the fine mist out. I just spit it out. But you will end up burned and disfigured

if you just tried that on a whim. Which we'll get into. I was reading an article by Penn Gillette about fire eating. And the whole time he was talking about how dumb it was and don't do it, but then he's giving it step by step. Which is what we're going to do. Kind of. Yeah.

But he was saying that fire eating and fire breathing, any of the fire arts, are one of those rare things where even if you do it right, you're still going to get hurt. Like you're not going to come away unscathed. And in addition to the immediate problems you're going to have, you can have long-term problems, which we'll get into as well.

But we should say that just from the outset, people who are fire breathers typically won't teach you how to do it if you ask them to. And they will also tell you, don't listen to podcasts, don't read magazines, don't read books, don't go to websites. Like all of those things have problems. And if you really do want to learn how to breathe fire,

then go find somebody who does this and has done it for years and knows what they're doing. And ask them if they will teach you how to do it. That's the only way you can possibly, even remotely safely, learn how to breathe fire. That's right. And for this article, who wrote this?

This is a Tracy Wilson jam. Well, you know it's Thora. But she interviewed a couple of professional fire breathers, Mike Grunner and a lady with the stage name of Pele. And so we're going to be quoting from them. And a lot of this is their expertise on the page. So we just want to shout out to them. Yeah.

I don't know if they're still doing this. But I bet they are. Like, who hangs up their boots, their spurs, if you're a fire breather? I think when your mouth falls out, well, they've both been hurt. Yeah? Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

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

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and repairing this, moving forward, and letting everybody care for me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this. And I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this

and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so let's get into it. All right, so with fire breathing, you've got basically two things that you need. You need a fuel source and a flame source.

Yeah, and a mouth. Yeah. That's pretty much it. You got a mouth. Yeah, you don't even technically need a hand. You could use some sort of robotic arm to hold your flame source. So really, you just need a mouth, a fuel source, and a flame.

And like you said, you thought you could just do that. You put a little fuel in your mouth, and you spit it at the flame, and you're fine. I was just going to do a tiny bit, too. Well, apparently, it's all you want. You want about a shot's worth. Yeah. See, I already would have done too much, probably

thinking it was little. Right. And I have a huge beard, which is not a good idea. Yeah, that's another big one, too. Some people say that you should do this unclothed from the waist up just to prevent your shirt from catching on fire or whatever. Sure.

But the key to fire breathing, apparently, is the mist you produce. You don't want the fuel to be. You want to kind of atomize the fuel in your mouth with the spit. You want to create this mist. Because if it's not misty enough, the fuel will be too heavy.

It'll catch fire and land on the ground and just burn the ground. That's right. And if this is something that eventually you want to try and do professionally, and you get hooked up with a professional, and they're going to give you lessons, they're not going to hand you a cup of Coleman fuel

and say, let's give this a try. They're going to hand you a cup of water. And they're going to say, we're going to be getting this mist correct and the angle correct. For the next two years. Yeah, until you ever touch fuel to mouth. And speaking of angle, that angle needs to be between 60 and 80 degrees.

Because if it's too low, it might get on your body. If it's too high, it might fall back onto your face. And it's a really important angle. That's the angle of the mist coming out of your mouth in relation to the ground. Yeah. OK. Is that confusing?

Yeah. OK. They're like, what are you supposed to lay on a board at a certain angle? So the first thing you want to do, or the first thing the professionals do, is examine their surroundings. They got to check the wind, of course, even if they're indoors.

And Garner says, or actually Pele, says to actually watch the flame on the torch is the best way to tell what the wind is doing. Yeah. But it can all change in a moment. Oh yeah, it definitely can. Wind changes direction, and you're in trouble. Yeah, big trouble.

You also want to, this is not something you want to show up to. You just put the fuel in your mouth and blow into a flame. You want to do a little recon work first. Sure. You want to make sure there's no power lines around where you're going to be blowing fire. That you want to make sure that you know where

the people are going to be and where they're not going to be. You want to know which direction you're standing, the wind direction, wind speed, all of that kind of stuff. Trees. Yeah. No low hanging fruit nearby. That's right. And then once you've kind of got your miss down,

your angle of your head, and the knowledge that you don't want to blow fire toward power lines, it's time to investigate what kind of fuel to use. That's right. There are all kinds of fuels. One thing that you want to always avoid is gasoline or just straight up alcohol. It's not safe.

Yeah. Methyl alcohols are extremely toxic. And Paley points out, ethyl alcohols can induce drunkenness. You do not want anything approaching drunkenness while you want to be a sober as a judge, a sober judge, while you're fire breathing. Yeah.

And both those alcohols have very low flashpoints, too, which makes them more dangerous. And here's why. So there's something called blowback. Yeah. If something has a low flashpoint, that means it ignites at a low temperature, right? So if you're spinning fuel at a fire source, a flame source,

that fuel that's close to your mouth, if it has a low flashpoint, could conceivably catch fire. So the trail of fire can follow the path back to your mouth and then catch your mouth on fire while you have a mouthful of fuel. Yeah, like the trick that you also should never do, which is with the aerosol can and making that into a flame torch, I've seen it crawl back up toward the nozzle

when someone else was doing it. And that's really dangerous. That's the same thing. Same exact thing. Right, but imagine you don't have a cap that closes a valve with your mouth. And you have fuel all around your mouth from the little spittle mist that you've been making with it.

It's a bad scene when blowback happens. And so to avoid that, I should say fire breathers use fuels with high flashpoints. Yeah, so you want to look at your flashpoint. You want to look at the toxicity, even though most of these are going to be fairly toxic, because you're putting this in your mouth. Well, there actually is one that's non-toxic that

apparently works cornstarch. Oh, yeah? Yeah, apparently cornstarch processing plants used to blow up in the 19th century a lot. Do you remember that sugar plant blew up in Savannah? No. Well, a sugar plant blew up in Savannah, and it blew up because of sugar dust.

Anything that's that small can explode, can ignite. So cornstarch can as well. So it's non-toxic, but the problem is if you get it into your lungs, then it can cause problems. But did they actually use that for professional fire breathers? I saw it on House of Poy. Really? Yeah.

And hey, House of Poy. They know what they're talking about. I love you said that, like it was the National Archives or something. I mean, it pretty much is. It's the National Archives of Fire Breathing. Right. So the taste and the smell, because like we said,

you're going to put this in your mouth, and there's also going to be people around, and you don't want to offend people with some malodorous toxic fumes. You don't want all kinds of awful smoke. Then you want it to make a nice flame that has nice color, and it's very visible. Right.

So all this goes into choosing your fuel. That's right. The fuel, the most prevalent fuel that I came across in researching is kerosene, which is also known as paraffin. And it's toxic, but as far as the fire breathing fuels go, it's one of the least toxic ones. Paraffin's actually used medicinally as a laxative, which means that you can suffer anal seepage as a fire breather

if you use paraffin as a fuel source. Yeah. That's one of the side effects of paraffin laxative use. But that's not a, all right, never mind. They both have kerosene and lamp oils. Another one, they both have high flash points, so they're a little bit safer. And they burn at low temperature, but they're bright.

Yeah, but they are smoky, and they do have a pretty nasty smell. And neither one of them is really safe to ingest. Right. And they do have toxins in the additive. So like, you know, nothing's like perfect. No, it's like choosing the lesser of the evils, I think. There was a lamp oil that was colorless and odorless, but it turned out to be extremely carcinogenic,

because whoever was making this stuff used additives to make it colorless and odorless. And those things were very deadly. Isn't that weird? Yeah, that is weird. I mentioned Coleman fuel earlier. That's what I use like camping. A lot of camp stove and stuff use Coleman fuel.

That's what pendulette uses for fire reading, yeah. Aka white gas or lighter fluid or naphtha. And that has a low flash point. So it's more volatile and it's toxic, of course. And a lot of people say it is more dangerous inside with the kerosene over the Coleman fuel. That's a Coleman brand name fuel, by the way. Right.

But it's almost like Tylenol fuel or Kleenex fuel. Yeah, I agree. So we talked about avoiding alcohols in general. You got your fuel. You got your mouth at the right angle. And you get the mist going on. Now you need a flame source. Just looked like a match, right?

No, you'll catch your whole hand on fire. You want something that you can keep away from your hand. So a torch, usually. There's actually torches that I think are made for this kind of stuff. Sure. You can make your own, but you want to be, I should say, fire breathers can make their own.

But they want to be careful with the materials they use. Like, for example, let's say you had a wad of cotton. And that was your, that you were going to dip in naphtha. Right? Makes sense. But the wad of cotton is not going to stay there. You need to wrap it around with something. Well, you have to be careful what you wrap it around with.

If you wrap it around with rope, it can break and fall into your mouth if you're doing a fire eating trick. Same thing with nylon rope. That stuff will melt and drip into your mouth and just burn until it feels like going out. So you want to be careful what you use. And from what I understand, you want to kind of pony up for the torch, the pre-made torch that's

That's what I would get. designed by a professional not to burn your face off. Yeah. If you're going to be a professional fire eater, you're not going to cheap out on the torch. Right. And I mean, really, that's going to be your most significant investment unless you have to pay somebody

to teach you. Because how much is lamp oil? How much is your mouth? Your mouth is free. Probably not much. You know? Yeah. Yeah, this is pretty low buy-in, I guess.

It is. But a high cost, if you do it wrong. Well, let's talk about the high cost. Well, dangers and safety, there's one thing called fire eater pneumonia. And that is a condition that they're prone to called hydrocarbon pneumonitis. Basically, that's from inhaling fuel.

And they've nicknamed it fire eater pneumonia because it must just be a common thing in that trade. Yeah, it can lead to coma. One of the signs of it is stupor, collapsed lung. You can also get a fluid buildup in the lining of the lungs. It's not good. No good. That's not the only problem.

We also talked about blowback. Because if you think about it, you can influence the direction of the flame. But you're incapable of controlling it, especially outdoors. So first of all, even without blowback, the wind can direct the flame in a different direction that you want it to.

And all of a sudden, you or somebody you care about is on fire. Or maybe someone you don't even like that much. Yeah. But you don't want to be in the hook for setting them on fire. Exactly. You could still be liable. The trees on fire, there's things that catch fire when you're fire breathing, even under the most

perfect of circumstances. Yeah. Some of the lesser effects over time, skin irritation, ulcers in the stomach, gum disease in dry mouth, poisoning, and general respiratory distress. Like, if you're a pro fire breather, it's not a normal thing to put this toxic fuel in your mouth and blow it back out.

So over time, it's going to catch up to you. Yeah, and don't forget anal seepage. Who can? That's another one for using paraffin. But they do take a lot of safety precautions. Paylay points out that they work with partners who are very adept at putting out fires. They train them in how to put out the tools,

how to put out the person, how to put out the area around it if anything bad happens. And it's basically just an assistant there in case anything goes wrong. With all of the accoutrement, like a fire extinguisher, a wet blanket, like literally a wet blanket. I guess that's where the term came from, fire breathing. Don't be a wet blanket.

In this case, we want someone to be a wet blanket at the right time. And the person is not only good at extinguishing a tree or a loved one, they're good at extinguishing the fire breather himself or herself and calling 911. Yeah, it's probably a good idea to have the old cell phone handy. But you want to have someone you trust

and who's not going to panic. Yeah, you also want to have a first aid kit and make sure you have everything you need. You just don't drive up willy-nilly. If you're a pro, you've got all the stuff squared away. You've talked to the local authorities, maybe the fire marshal. You've said, here's what we're going to do.

Is it OK? Here's my fire plan or burn plan. That's another one. Paley was saying she contacts the local fire department or the local fire marshal and says, hey, I'm going to do this. Are we cool? Yeah. And then here's what happens if things go out of control.

The fire marshal says, yeah, that looks good to me. Hey, Jimmy, pass a lasagna over here. Fire marshal's are known for loving lasagna. Yeah. Well, I think that's all those guys do is eat, right? Eat lasagna? Well, just good food.

Yeah. That's why people go into that business, right? I don't know. Hang out with the dudes and eat good food? Is that really? Pet the Dalmatian. Is that it? No.

They're saving lives, buddy. We talked about where Dalmatians became associated with firefighting, right? At some point we didn't. It wasn't standalone. I wonder what it was. I can't remember. So another thing you can do to minimize the effects of fuel

on the body is to you want to, in between acts, you want to make sure all that fuel is cleaned off of your face and hands. Yeah. Don't want to forget any of that. I mean, literally what they do is they blow, they put the torch down, they wipe their mouth with a wet rag.

Sure. And then they spit whatever fuel remains in their mouth back into the fuel cup. Yeah. And wipe their mouth and hands again. And then that's one blow of the thing. That's one blow. Ideally.

One breath. Yeah. They also recommend, or some of the tricks of the trade, at least, is to eat bread and drink milk and an acid. Yeah. It's kind of funny when you think about it. Pendulite was saying the burps that you will have after this are indescribable.

Interesting. Like a little puff of smoke comes out, or? I think it's worse than that. OK. The smell and the taste of it are just horrible. Wow. There are associations, real professional associations. The North American Fire Artist Association

and the National Fire Protection Association have guidelines for all this stuff with performance safety. So does Home of Poi. Let's go ahead and get to the Poi. So the Poi, we didn't even mention it in the Maori episode, did we? No. So Poi are two heavy balls on a string

that you've seen like hula dancers, like swing. And thanks to the centripetal force, they maintain this distance, although it takes a lot of agility and strength in your arms to spin these things. Well, somewhere along the way, some Maori said, hey, let's light these on fire, because it'll look really cool. And it does.

It does look very cool. So Poi are one of the implements you can use for fire arts. Yeah, it's not juggling, but it's almost sort of like juggling. It's fire spinning. You can juggle the fire, as this one person points out. Pretty much any juggling prop, you can let fire, too. Yeah. And we talked about fire eating, too,

which is basically taking your torch or whatever. You get your mouth really, really wet with spittle, apparently so wet that you can form a spit bubble very easily across your mouth when you open it. And then you put the torch in there and extinguish it. Close your mouth around it. Without touching it. Yeah.

So that, apparently, is where all the practice comes in for fire eating, is you don't want the torch to touch anything inside your mouth. And when you close your lips to extinguish it, you don't want them to have to touch the torch itself. It's probably hot. It's very hot. And then also, if you have just recently dunked your torch,

some of the fumes will stay in your mouth and catch fire. And you can hold fire in your mouth and have somebody light a cigarette or cigar or what have you off of it. Pretty cool. That's a trick. There are different ways of breathing fire, depending on what kind of plume you want.

You can alter your mouth and how you blow this stuff out into different types of tricks, like the basic pop or the volcano or the fire breathing from palm flame. Oh, but that looks neat. The old ground lifter or the old challenger. Classic fire breathing moves. And if you go to, which website was this? Probably Home of Poi.

They have little video demonstrations of each one of these, the Around the World, the One Beat Weave. The Schenectady Shuffle. The Carousel. And you can just, they're all a little bit different. And I guess, if you're a fire breather, then you want to master each one of those.

Yeah. And there's a record, Chuck, for the straight-up pillar of fire. 28 feet. Somebody exhaled a 28-foot pillar of flame once. And it's all about breathing, too. I don't know if we mentioned that. It's not just forming a mist.

Like, you have to do breathing exercises. So you can take a huge deep breath first, because you can't breathe with that fuel in your mouth. You'll aspirate the vapors. Like, you have to be exhaling the entire time. Yeah, just exhale. So you have to be able to take a deep breath and then exhale it at a steady rate,

or control it however you want. And also, atomize this fuel with your mouth. There's a lot to it. It's not, it isn't something that anybody can just do. No. It takes a lot of practice. Yeah, we've got, should we go over some more of these world records?

Yeah, let's. Give these folks their due. Sure. Most flames blown in one minute. 85 by preacher Muadib in Italy. 85 in a minute. That's like poof, poof, poof, poof, poof, poof. Yeah?

Was that the rhythm? I don't know. We'll get you 85 at least. Most people at once, 293 participants in an event in 2009 in the Netherlands. That seems very dangerous. Yeah, how about this one? Continuous fire flame.

OK. 9.968 seconds. Wow. By Fredrik Carlson in Sweden in November 2011. That's a long breath. Heck yeah. That's a real long breath. And Antonio Restivo in January of 2012 in Vegas

breathed a plume 26 feet, five inches. So I saw 28 feet. I wonder if that's. Well, he has feet now in Antonio. Yeah, maybe or else Antonio is the one that or else my source is wrong, yeah. Or Antonio has a rival, and they continually best each other by like six inches each year.

It's his older sister all day. So one of them dies. Of mouth cancer probably. And that's a nice bummer way to end this. Well, I think I want to remind everybody. Yeah, it's dangerous. It is very dangerous. Yep.

Be careful out there. Yeah, and burning, we've talked about burning. It's not a fun thing to go through. No. So like it's not something you should be playing around with. I think that's what we hit upon is the worst way to die, remember? Yeah, if you want to hit on a constant pain that won't go away,

that morphine can't even take away, then burn yourself really badly. All right, so I'm the one with the bummer ending, huh? Hey, if you're into that. So you got anything else? I got nothing else. All right, if you want to learn more about fire breathing, type fire breathing into the search bar

at howstuffworks.com, it'll bring up this awesome episode. And since I said awesome episode, that means it's time for a message break. Stuff you should know. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week

to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Attention, Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times.

It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this. We have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all. And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward,

and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this. And I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say.

Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And another thing from us to you now is Listener Mail. Hey, before I do the Listener Mail, I think we've got a little something special to announce. We do. So you know our friends at COED, the Cooperative for Education.

If you don't, go back and listen to our part one and two Guatemala adventure. But they help build literacy among school kids in Guatemala. And remember, we had call outs for people to go and sponsor their scholarship students. Well, they reached their goal for the 2014 school year. Awesome. And we said that we would read out

all the stuff you should know the listeners who donated. We have the last one of the year, Chela Garcia Glenn. Awesome. Yes, so thank you, Chela. I hope I'm saying your name correctly. And all of you stuff, you should know listeners who went and helped out students through COED. And if you're interested in learning more about it

and figuring out how you can help out, no matter what time of year or what goal they've reached, they're always very happy to receive a donation or help of any kind. Sure. You can go to coeduc, c-o-e-d-u-c dot org. And that will lead you to all of the places you need to go. Very cool.

All right, so listener mail? Yes. I am going to call this American Werewolf in London, dudes. Guys that just listened to the Werewolf podcast, and I'm also a huge fan of that movie. And I thought I'd share my experience of the first time I saw it when I was eight years old.

It was a big family affair as we were the only ones who had a VHS player at the time. Oh, yeah. Remember that stuff? Sure. So my uncle and aunt came to watch it, too. My uncle was my hero at the time as he was serving in the Navy and also the Navy boxing champ.

He told me that if any werewolves came knocking on the door in the middle of the night that he would be safe as long as he stayed behind him. So anyway, we watched the movie. I loved every minute of it. I was only a little bit scared, not too much. But around midnight, that night, I went to bed safe in the knowledge that Uncle Allen was in the next room.

Just then, I started to drift off, and I heard a blood curdling scream from outside my window followed by shouts of help, and he's going to kill me. I was out of bed in a flash getting ready to bravely run away and hide behind Uncle Allen when I see a figure running up to the front door through that weird 80s bubble glass that was all the rage back then. Then this figure starts frantically banging the door,

shouting, he's going to kill me. He's going to get me. He's going to kill me. Naturally, I had brown underpants at this moment, as most eight-year-olds would after watching that movie and then hearing and seeing this person screaming through distorted shapes. By this time, my uncle, along with the rest of us,

were up, and he opened the door to see what all the fuss was about. I was expecting to see a blood-eaten torn to shreds victim of a werewolf attack, but it turns out it was one of our neighbors, who I found out later had mental health issues, who was having a delusion that he was being chased by monsters. It's a pretty weird timing.

Yeah, that took a really sad twist. The night this kid sees this, though, it's like bad, bad timing. Plus, his neighbor is like that bad off mentally. I know. It's sad. It is sad. But, guys, we calmed him down and made him a nice cup of tea because in England, that solves everything.

And mom took him home when he was OK enough to think rationally. So they took care of the guy. And that is from Al, who is now in Australia. Wow. That's a heck of a story. Yeah. Beats my werewolf in London story. That's all I went to bed.

Yeah, it was pretty uneventful. Yeah. If you have a great story about something that we've talked about, I know it's vague and nebulous, but that's good. I mean, it's a wide net, basically, is what we've just cast. That's right.

You can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com. And as always, check us out at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Brought to you by the all new 2014 Toyota Corolla. 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.

I'm Munga Chauticular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me. And my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer,

give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.