Stuff You Should Know - How Fire Works

Episode Date: October 5, 2012

Creating fire was possibly the most important human discovery, but it's easy to take for granted. But. Josh and Chuck get to the bottom of the chemistry of fire in their quest to explain everything in the universe. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck O'Brien. Ta-da and this is Stuff You Should Know. Josh, will you let me stand next to your fire? Sure. Come over here right now. Okay, sorry. Oh, it's nice and warm over here, isn't it? I'm feverish.

And it's smoky and I feel like there's chemical reactions taking place before my very eyes. There are. That's why there's fire. If fire is nothing, if not a chemical reaction. Yeah. I got some. Okay. Have you heard of the Weinkopf Hotel? Yeah, but for what reason? That should be a bell born and raised here. Yeah. The Ellis Hotel. Was that the hotel fire? Yeah. Yeah. You know that it's now the Ellis Hotel. It's at the corner of Peach Tree in Ellis. Yeah. Nice refurbished hotel. Back in 1946, it was called the Weinkopf Hotel and it was the site of the most disastrous, casualty-wise,

hotel fire in U.S. history. Yeah. In December of 1946, 119 people died. Right here in Atlanta. Yep. Very sad. 44, just under 44 years later in Las Vegas, Nevada, the MGM Grand had a hotel fire. Oh yeah? 85 people died. Do you remember the MGM fire? No. The MGM Grand Fire? Oh, it's a big deal. Not at all. I'm surprised because I kind of remember seeing footage of that. When was this? 1980? Oh, no. I don't remember. So both of these fires and all of the loss of life associated with them were the direct result of hubris toward fire. The Weinkopf, their fire exits, won stairwell for the whole building. I think it was like 19 stories or something like that. Yeah. The MGM Grand, they didn't put up like $60,000 for a fire detection system in this one part of

the hotel that would have saved everyone's lives. So part hubris, part financial shenanigans. Right. But isn't that kind of based on hubris? Yeah, I guess so. My point is, is that if there's one thing that we shouldn't have hubris towards, it's fire. Agreed. What do you think we might control fire? Thanks to Prometheus being given it by the gods. Yep. But fire controls us when it really comes down to it. That's right. You got a face off, a tet-a-tet with fire. You're going to lose, buddy, because you're combustible. Yeah. So also we should say here that this fire is, it should be a prequel to the how wildfires work and how spontaneous human combustion works. Yeah. Those two episodes are great. Agreed. This will seal up our triumvirate.

Now we're going to explain how fire works. Yeah, I do have a couple of quick stats. We're talking about the deadly nature of fire. Yes. It does kill more people than any other force of nature. I couldn't find that, any source for that, but so I was searching for it and it brought up like a handful of plagiarized versions of this article on the Internet. Oh, really? Yeah. Those are always fun, especially when it's your own. This one's not mine. This is a Bill Harris, Tom Harris. Tom Harris. But I do have some stats in the US at least in 2010. For residential building fires, there's over 2,500 people died that year and that's sort of in the wheelhouse that fluctuates between 2,200 and about 3,200 a year from building fires. Wow. Cooking is far and away

the leading cause of the building fire and arson is number two, which I would have thought like falling asleep with a cigarette would be above arson. No. And then total in 2009 and I guess this counts like any kind of fire. In the US, there were close to 3,400 deaths that year. That's a lot. Yeah. I mean, that's more than I'm sure killed by volcanoes in the US every year. I think you're right. Yes. That's just one or two people falling into Kilauea from getting too close. Have you seen that footage of that scientist going? He's collecting some sort of, I guess, magma from an active volcano in Hawaii. And it was really nerve-wracking because he goes up, takes a sample, he's climbing up the rim and then climbs back down and right when he steps away

from it, the magma comes up over the rim exactly where he'd just been climbing like five minutes before. And so it would have just completely disintegrated in my imagination. What did he say? I don't know. Was he like, holy crap. Did you see that? Well, the guy who was filming it was like narrating like, hurry up, get out of there. This is so stupid. Geez. Yes. Very cool. I don't know what you'd search, but it's up there on the internet somewhere. Search Waponi Woo. And that should do it. So Chuck, the Greeks thought that fire was one of the four elements. Earth, water, wind, and fire. Earth, wind, and fire. And water, and Nash. And young. Right. Silly Greeks. The reason why that doesn't really hold up is because earth, fire, air, these are elements.

They're matter. Yeah. They're made up of atoms. Fire is the physical manifestation of matter changing form. Yeah. It's pretty cool. Like when you think of it that way. We're going to describe how this happens. All right. I can tackle some of this. This chemistry is not my forte, but it is a chemical reaction at its core between oxygen and fuel, which I mean, we'll probably, let's talk about like a campfire. Let's go with wood. A wood fire is probably the easiest way to describe it. Yeah. But the wood is the fuel. The wood is the fuel. Oxygen is found in the air. That's right. But for these things to make fire, you gotta have something called combustion. Yeah. And which means you're

going to have some sort of a spark. Well, actually not always. Because as we find out, some things can combust without a spark. Yeah. If they get hot enough. Like the heat is just so intense that it doesn't need any spark, right? Yeah. But for wood, you have to get it up to its ignition temperature, which is about 300 degrees Fahrenheit. 150 degrees Celsius. Yeah. Which is where you're going to start seeing some smoke because that is cellulose burning away. And it just occurred to me reading this today, like where there's smoke, there's fire. Not true. Yeah. Because things can smoke without there being a fire. Yeah. Actually a byproduct of fire, you know, doesn't smoke. So I guess in order to, if you're one of the people that now says

bottom of the totem pole, or instead of top of the totem pole, then we can further reinforce this obnoxious quality by encouraging you to say where there's smoke, there is ignition temperature of a combustible fuel. There's volatile gases. It's nice. Way to go, Chuck. All right. Thanks. So yeah, heat decomposes fuel. We'll just say wood. And in the case of wood specifically, it decomposes the volatile gases contained in the solid matter, right? So these volatile gases start to heat up themselves. And while they're doing that, the cellulose, the solid stuff is decomposing and turning into what's called char. Yeah. I got a little thing on cellulose. And then you can just take it home. No, man. Because

that's where I get confused. I'm confused too. Cellulose, about 50% of wood is cellulose. And that's what, like, that's where you make paper is what you make paper from. That's what you make cellulose, the cathenol from too. And it's what you make cellophane out of. Oh, you know that? No. Cellophane is regenerated cellulose. So it's, it's like, it looks like plastic, but it's not. I had no idea. It is a man made, I'm sorry, it's a natural polymer. Plastic is man made, obviously. Right. So cellophane is nothing more than regenerated paper in a way. Wow. Like they add some other stuff to it, but that's why it's biodegradable. And I always wonder why, like supposedly cellophane is biodegradable. It's like, that's impossible. It's plastic,

but it's not plastic. There's this old cellophane ad from like the 50s maybe. And it's like, good things come in twos and it's like this pair of twins wrapped in cellophane. And they're just like kind of looking around. But yeah, you can imagine they only have them in there for a few seconds before they snap the picture. Awesome. I did not know that about cellophane. Just a little tidbit. Back to the podcast right there. I don't know about that. Hats off to you. All right, back to Charlie. Oh, no, I know what the fact of the podcast is. You're going to save it for when it comes. We're going to save it. The war on drugs impacts everyone. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff.

Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, everybody, it's your boy Michael Kaya, world famous, often talked about alleged comedian. Some of y'all know me as Mr. Whitaker from Martin. Some of you know me as showboat from house party three. And yes, I have told Jim crackers for everybody. And some of you don't know me at

all. But you can come find out who I am on my new podcast called Michael talks to everybody. That's right. They gave my own show y'all. Woo woo woo. Michael talks to everybody where every week we'll be interviewing some of the greatest artists in the game. Also, we'll be talking to ordinary people with extraordinary ideas. It's gonna be off the chain. We're gonna be covered all sort of topics you ain't heard of nowhere else. We're gonna be doing a lot of laughs and a lot of talking. Most importantly, we're gonna have a lot of fun. It's gonna be off the chain. So please check us out. Everybody I'm telling you it's crazy. It's bananas. It's Michael talks to everybody. I'm talking about everybody. We got TI. We got Michael Jackson. It's gonna be just come back. He's just gonna be here

for a minute. Everybody we gonna be talking to him. We gonna be talking on this show. Listen to Michael talks to everybody on December 5th on the I heart radio out Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Okay, so you've got the cellulose the solid matter of wood. Yeah, separating now from the volatile gases that are starting to lift off that smoke, right? Yes. Okay, the wood, the solid matter is starting to turn into char. And that is basically if you if you burn wood, if you heat it up and you separate the gases, which are the smoke, what remains is carbon. Yes. And what what charcoal is is charred wood that's had the volatile gases burned out of it, which is why when you have a charcoal fire, you don't have smoke. Yeah, or not much at least.

Yeah, because the gases have already been burned off. Yeah, and charcoal too that got that kind of got me on charcoal filtering, because these charcoal is a filter and I think these are a scrubber two on smokestacks. And if you're like I did some of those survival articles at one point and one of the things you can do to purify water is take your char from your fire, put it in like, you know, cool it down, obviously, and then put it in, then put it in like a hanky and then running creek water through that to collect it underneath. That's awesome. And and there's like real charcoal filters too. But apparently charcoal has a quality because once it's pure carbon like that, it has a knack for filtering out things like impurities like chlorine and letting other stuff get through.

So that's why it's used as a filter. Yeah, because essentially what you're making is a carbon filter. Yeah, charcoal is like basically pure carbon with all the impurities burned off. Yeah, those impurities burned off of smoke. They're volatile gases. So it's pretty neat. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. A little survival tip. Man, you're killing it today. Well, not that this is when I go to sleep though. Okay, so the third component of burned wood, you've got the volatile gases smoke, you have the char, the charcoal, which is carbon. And then you have ash, which is unburnable minerals like calcium or phosphorus, I believe. Yeah, and if you're like you ever cook with briquettes, charcoal briquettes, you're going to get a lot more ash

with that because it has a lot of more like byproducts in it than if you use like real wood charcoal. Right, but they're not going to smoke, they're just not going to burn. It's just going to be left over like you can't get rid of it. You can pound it into oblivion, but it's still there. Yeah, but if you use the real wood coal, then a char, then you'll notice you don't get a lot of that stuff. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Oh, okay. But briquettes aren't as nasty. Are those synthetic briquettes? No, they're made from char and like binding agents and stuff like that and sawdust. Horses? No, I actually used to hear that like, oh, you can't cook with briquettes or so nasty, but they're really, I looked into it, it's not super nasty. I mean, you probably should cook

with somewhere in between nasty and super nasty. Well, it's not, it's not as bad as I thought. I thought it was like a bunch of chemical agents and glue and cement and that's not the case. I got you. It's not the hot dogs of cooking materials. No, it's the corn dog. Okay. Okay, so we've got the components, right? Yeah. As these volatile gases continue to heat up to about 500 degrees Fahrenheit, 260 degrees Celsius, the molecules break apart. And when they break apart, they go to combine with oxygen, oxidation, right? And the same thing happens with the carbon in the wood, but this takes place much more slowly. But one of the stars of this chemical reaction, this change of breaking down of these molecules and then the recombining into

other things like carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, water. Isn't that weird that fire produces water? That's why sometimes you have steam coming from a fire, right? Yeah. The star of all this chemical reactions, all these chemical reactions is heat is produced. Heat energy is released, which allows us to cook and be comfortable and feel secure and all the good stuff that comes with fire. Exactly. And because of the heat that's released as these things are heated up, it is sustainable. That means the fire is sustainable so long as there's fuel and there's oxygen present. Yeah, that was the kind of creepy part. Not creepy, but it's self-perpetuating. Like that flame is going to heat up any fuel near it to the point where it can release those gases

to recombine with oxygen. It's pretty elegant if you think about it. Yeah. Another big star of fire besides heat is light. And part of that is from the same the carbon atoms, right? Yeah. That are combining, that are being torn apart, the molecules that form up the char. Right. Breaking down in their constituent carbon atoms. Yes. When they combine with oxygen, right? Recombine. Yeah. I think that would make carbon monoxide. But as they change, their electrons will go up an energy level, will change orbit. And when they come back down, they emit, they release some of that energy that they have and they release it in the form of photons. They produce light. Right. In kandescence, right? Yeah. It's heat

producing light. Like we talked about bioluminescence, where basically you heat up a filament in a light bulb and it glows. That's the same thing with the fire. It's based on the same principle, which is in kandescence. Pretty awesome. And depending on the temperature, different colored light is going to be produced. Yeah. Like you remember the Bunsenburners back in chemistry class? Yeah. And how the Bunsenburners have little slots on the side that you can vary the amount of like oxygen getting in there? You know, there's the little flickering orange flame of a Bunsenburner. And if you let a lot more oxygen in, it's going to be more, it's going to be more hot. And that's what, that's when it's going to be that blue jet.

The same as when you see like a jet plane, like right next to where the flame comes out, it's going to be like really blue. And then it gets more orange and yellow, you know, like the Batmobile. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Oh, I know exactly. The original Batmobile. No, we've seen a bunch of Batmobiles recently. There's a documentary about the Batmobile. Oh, really? Yeah. That's why all those were there for Comic-Con. Oh, okay. You mean I had our picture taken with it? With which one? The new one. The Tumblr? That's what they call the new one. Is it? Yeah, the Chris Nolan one. It's called the Tumblr. Yes, the Chris Nolan one. Yeah. It's awesome. It's pretty cool. So yeah, the reason why the blue one happens to be

a different color and hotter is because there's more energy being released. That's right. The lower energy and slightly less hot part of the flame that glows orange yellow is at the top. And the reason a flame is pointed, this is pretty cool. This is pretty awesome. Not the fact of the podcast? The space part is. Oh, okay. I think. All right, go ahead then. So a flame is pointed and it burns upward because the gases that are burning, what you're burning right there are volatile gases that are being burned off, right? As they burn, they're hotter but they're also less dense and they're moving upward toward the less dense air above it, which causes it to be pointed. But if you were to like. You take it for granted,

but it's kind of cool to know how that works. Yeah, that's why it always burns upward. Yeah. Tends to burn upward. No, it always does. Always burns upward. And that's also why it's pointed too because the air around it is dense and it's pushing it in. Yeah, right? Pretty awesome. But if you were to light a fire in zero gravity, it would burn as a sphere. I want to see this. I do too. I mean, can it be done? If we go into zero gravity, sure. Yeah, but I mean they have zero gravity environments. Do they attack? Surely someone has started a fire in one of those, just to see this. I think it's a really bad thing if a fire starts in a zero gravity environment. But I guess so. That's, I just got to think that someone's tried this. I'm sure. I'm sure

there's video of it on YouTube. No, there's probably a good reason why and someone's going to write and say, you dummies, don't you understand that when you start a fire in zero gravity that we all die? That's right. Yeah. Okay, so steam. Let's talk about steam because because we talked about the recombination of atoms when these gases are released. Same thing happens when you boil water, you know, you get these, this gas mixing with oxygen in the air, but it's not going to combust. Thankfully, or cooking would be much more dangerous. It's because some of these atoms aren't as attracted to each other in the case of water, for sure. Right. They're tepid toward one another. Yeah.

If you're talking fire, though, they have carbon and hydrogen, which are really attracted to oxygen. And so they like to get together and combine, recombine more easily. Right. Pretty simple. And then we've been talking mostly about wood as a fuel, but tons of things are fuel. Gasoline's a good fuel. Gasoline doesn't produce char. Basically, heat vaporizes gasoline into nothing but volatile gases, which burn. Yeah. So there you go. And I always heard, too, that gasoline ignites like the vapor ignites. Right. Not the liquid, is that true? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's not the liquid. It's the gas. Right. But heat causes all that liquid to turn into the gas. Right. Which goes kaboom. So different fuels are going to catch at different

temperatures. And no matter what the fuel, it'll have a piloted ignition temperature and an unpiloted ignition temperature. Yeah. Basically, the piloted ignition temperature is that that point, that temperature where the volatile gases are being released and they're heated up to the point where if you introduce a spark, it would blow up. That's right. One of the defining characteristics of a volatile gas is that it basically disperses at room temperature, I believe. Right? Okay. So at some point, introducing a spark is going to set that off at some temperature. Right. Which I guess means that if you have gasoline cooled to enough of a temperature, just lighting a match next to it won't set off the

gas. Hmm. I don't know if this is a question we should be raising to a general audience. Don't try this. I'm curious. So we'll have to check that out. Yeah. But the unpiloted ignition temperature is basically when something gets hit by lightning and the heat is so intense that there's no need for a spark. It just heats it up to the point where now it's on fire where it combusts. Right. Pretty cool. Yeah. And I try to get to the origin of pilot like a pilot light, which is the same thing, I guess. I couldn't find it. I don't know where that came from. Yeah. Because yeah, think about it. You've got the gas burning and it's glowing. Yeah. And then you just hit the spark and then bam, you just ignited the gas. So it's at the pilot, the piloted

ignition temperature in your hot water heater. But I'm sure someone knows the answer to that. So if you do, send it in. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Step out of piss y'all. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like

looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, everybody, it's your boy Michael Kaya, world famous, often talked about alleged comedian. Some of y'all know me as Mr. Whitaker from Martin. Some of you know me as showboat from house party three. And yes, I have told Jim crackers for everybody. And some of you don't know me at all. But you can come find out who I am on my new podcast called Michael talks to

everybody. That's right. They gave my own show y'all. Woo woo woo. Michael talks to everybody where every week we'll be interviewing some of the greatest artists in the game. Also, we'll be talking to ordinary people with extraordinary ideas. It's gonna be off the chain. We're gonna be covered all sort of topics. You ain't heard of nowhere else. We're gonna be doing a lot of laughs and a lot of talking. Most importantly, we're gonna have a lot of fun. It's gonna be off the chain. So please check us out. Everybody I'm telling you, it's crazy. It's bananas. It's Michael talks to everybody. I'm talking about everybody. We got TI. We got, uh, oh, Michael Jackson. It's gonna be just a comeback.

He's just gonna be in for a minute. Everybody, we gonna be talking to him. We gonna be talking on this show. Listen to Michael talks to everybody on December 5th on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. We're raising a lot of questions in this one and giving some answers. Um, the shape and by shape, usually they mean like surface area. Yeah. They, um, of a fuel affects how efficiently it burns and how easily it burns too. Yeah. I mean, this is pretty basic. Like if you have a big, thick log, obviously you're going to have way less surface area exposed and combustible than if you had like a toothpick. Yeah. And it can absorb a lot more heat to a big, thick log. Um, but yeah, if you have a bunch of little pieces

of wood, it's going to burn more quickly and catch more easily because there's more exposed surface temperature and more of that fuels is exposed to the heat than a big, like you said, a big log or something. Yeah. And that's why when you're starting, you know, if you ever watch the bear grills do this thing or less strowed, they try to get the little, like tiny little shavings from the inside of, uh, uh, like you peel away the bark on a tree and then get the shavings off of the tree itself. Right. And that's the stuff that's going to like really combust easily through friction with like, uh, you know, there's different ways of doing the little, I've never been, I've never done that. Have you, have you started a fire using like friction?

Yeah. Have you really? Yeah. That's impressive. I do that stuff when I go camping now for fun. Like, oh yeah. In front of the real fire, you know, that we started with our big lighters. Gotcha. Yeah. And I'm sitting there with my beer and my southern comfort and my comfy chair. Right. And the steak is on the grill. I'll, uh, I'll do some little survival stuff just kind of for fun, you know, until I get tired of it and give up. Yeah. But yeah, it's fun. Um, well, I'm a hats off to you for knowing how to do that. Well, it's pretty easy. I mean, there's different ways. There's the plow method or the little bow, uh, where you make the little stringed bow and do that little number. Yeah. I've seen that one. Yeah. There's

the castaway one. Yeah. That's the plow method. Oh, that's plow. Yeah. That makes sense to be called that. You got anything else? I don't think so. Do you feel, do you feel like we explain this correctly and well? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's pretty basic chemistry. We're basically heat breaks down a fuel so that it can combine with oxygen and ignite. Yeah. And then burned. That's right. And it's self sustaining so long as there's fuel and oxygen. And then all you need is a bare skin rug and some cinemax and you're all set for Friday night. Awesome. Yes. Uh, if you want to know more about fire, you can type fire into the search bar at howstuffworks.com and that will bring up this article and plenty of other stuff too. Um, maybe even some survival stuff by

one Charles W. Bryant. Uh, and I said search bar. So it's time for a listener mail. Chuck. Yes. We should tell everybody about something very special and due to our hearts, New York City. That's right. We are going to Comic Con and we will be doing a live podcast on Friday, October 12th. Yeah. At Comic Con. Yeah. The Jabbit Center. That's like our new thing. We did San Diego. Now we're doing New York. That's right. Next up Albuquerque. So if you are going to Comic Con, you should come by and see that. But after Comic Con, we have one of our famous, that's famous to us, All Star Tribune Knights. Right. Um, where is it going to be? The cutting room? It is at the grand reopening of the cutting room in the Flatiron District, which is, what's the

address? It is, uh, 44 East 32nd Street in New York. And, uh, it's in the Flatiron, you said? Yep. And, uh, doors open at 730. Trivia goes down at 830. And what is first come first serve, right? Free, free, free first come first serve. We will have a bar there that you can buy drinks. Yeah. You can buy us drinks. That's right. That is legal. We're going to basically be having a really good time. If you, if you're not familiar with our trivia nights, like, just come out and check it out. It'll be worth your while. Absolutely. And, uh, stay tuned for info on Facebook and Twitter about the, uh, makeup of the All Star team. We're filling that out as we speak, but we will have some special guests that you will want to meet. Yeah. And at the very

least you can come take on me and Chuck, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's just fun. So what is that? That's Friday, October 12th, right? Yep. Uh, the panels at, uh, when? Uh, the panel is at, I believe, 645. Okay. And then, uh, we're going to be at the cutting room starting at 830. Tribune starts at 830. Doors at 730. Be there, be square. You are good at this. Thank you. All right. Is it time for a listener mail? Yep. Uh, I'm going to call this email a bad to the bone. So, uh, Jocelyn Stone here in Victoria, BC, Canada apparently hates bad to the bone just as much as I do. So we are, we're friends in that way. Uh, she says a few years ago, my partner Tim, uh, discovered that he could set anything on his heart desired on his alarm clock for his cell

phone. He searched for the perfect song and decided on bad to the bone. Uh, Tim believed in order to slowly get himself ready for the day. He needed alarms at 5am, 530 and six. Uh, I, on the other hand, wake up without an alarm at 630 without fail. Okay. Which is what I do. All right. Um, every morning I was shocked by the full volume. There's a way to wake up right there. I would blast up to a sitting position in bed, my heart exploding out of my chest and look next to me at Tim, who was sleeping through the whole event. I would punch him, get up, turn off the alarm myself and then repeat this two more times. What kind of business partners are these? I don't think they're business partners.

That was like an American beauty. Yeah. Remember that? Oh, yeah. It's like, I'd like you to meet my partner. He's like, Oh, what line are working guys? Right. That was a quantum leap meeting load star, huh? Wow. Yeah. Look at you. Um, for some reason, no matter how much I begged him, he wouldn't change a song or let me turn down the volume. If I secretly changed it before bed, he would change it back. If I tried to turn it off and hide his phone, he would find it and turn it back again. If I turned the volume down while he was sleeping, this fight he since would start tingling and he'd wake up and turn it back on. It turned into a game that lasted a full year, finally ending when I told him the sliver of amusement I found in the game was gone.

And I would throw his phone into the ocean if he didn't change it. So eventually she just had enough. Yeah. It's like, this isn't fun anymore. We ended up buying an alarm clock radio, which he also sleeps through. Now, thanks to Tim, every time you're bedded the bone in public, I immediately leave the area, lest I explode in a muddy, scalding, rock throwing rage, like the one man, who guides her. Well, nice reference. Yeah. So then she said, P.S., do a podcast on accordions. After all that. Jeez. Who's that? Jocelyn. Thank you, Jocelyn. From Victoria, DC, Canada. Thank you. And Tim? Tim. Good luck, Tim. And Jocelyn, I hope you guys find a song you can both agree on. Agreed. And Tim, just get up, dude. For some people, it's hard. I never understood the snooze because

wouldn't you rather just sleep that time? No, I'm with you, but I'm saying like... Instead of being woken up every 10 minutes? It's not that easy to just wake right up. Right-eyed and bushy tailed. Except others, as they are. Let's see. What do we want? Cheese. I don't know. I don't know either. We'll have to figure it out. Yeah. Send us anything, I guess. It's a generic call out. You can send us anything via Twitter at SYSKpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com, slash wshnow, and send us an email containing anything. And if you send us an email, it just says anything. You'll be one of 5,000 people that do that, so just stop. You can send that email that doesn't just say anything, too. Stuff podcast

at discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Including a winter themed escape room, a holiday obstacle course, ice skating, hidden holiday gifts, and more. Look out for upcoming special events from your favorite artists and podcasters all month, along with scavenger hunts, and new how fan are you challenges. So embrace the holidays at iHeartland in Fortnite. Head to iHeartRadio.com slash iHeartland today.