Stuff You Should Know - How Horseshoes Work

Episode Date: August 6, 2013

That laziest of backyard games, horseshoes, is also a very ancient one, developed by people following Greek armies more than 2,000 years ago. Since then, the game of horseshoes hasn't evolved too much, which would indicate that it has reached perfection. Learn about the rules of this game, one of the few things in life where close counts. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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launch, use offer code SYSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Thirty years ago, a van exploded in a parking garage below the World Trade Center. The plan was to send the North Tower crashing into the South. It failed, but six people were killed and more than 1,000 injured. The masterminds behind it all were just getting started and would soon change the world forever. Featuring never-before-heard audio, this is a story told by investigators from around the world. There are double agents and an undercover operative to bring the bomber to justice.

This is Operation Trade Bomb, an Apple original podcast hosted by Mark Smerling. Follow Operation Trade Bomb on Apple podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuckers Bryant. Did I say that last time? My name like that?

Yeah. I don't know. You might have just said, I don't know. I wonder. We'll find out. How's it going? It's going great. We just learned something neat.

What? Guest Producer Noel to our right. Yeah, hang on. You're left. Our podcast today is on Horseshoes. He took that as a college course called Backyard Games. Yeah. At Augusta State?

Yeah. It was a real college course. And he said, bachi, horseshoes, and badminton. Was it badminton? I thought we couldn't determine. Yeah, he's a badminton and possibly lawn darts. So hey, college credit. Which I don't know.

I guess you'd have to apply to the FTC maybe to get lawn darts as a college. Kind of like how you'd have to apply to the DEA to get some MDMA to carry out some sort of. Oh, on campus studies or something. You'd have to study. Yeah. You'd have to. Lawn darts are illegal, man.

Yeah. Big time. Do you remember those things? They were like all the kids left and right. Big time, I mean. Big time illegal. There's a task force like roaming the neighborhood. There's scheduled one backyard game, I think.

I bet you could buy them on eBay and stuff. Well, you could probably buy them on Silk Road. Oh, it's just about to say. Yeah. You got to go in the deep web to get lawn darts. I played that when I was a kid, though, man. We had lawn darts. I was smart enough to not kill myself for anybody else with them.

It's funny looking back. It was tempting. And how dangerous that was. Yeah. And that was kind of like the end of that wave because, you know, at the time and like for a decade or two before that, probably longer, it was like you could get electrocuted by your toaster pretty easily. Like your humidifier was, there was a 90% chance it's going to catch fire while you

were asleep. Remember the hydrochloric acid slip-in slides? Yeah, right. Those were awful. Yeah. And they designed them like that so that they would be obsolete very quickly. Yeah. So like the acid would burn them much more quickly and you too, unfortunately.

Yeah. So do you have a great setup for this thrilling podcast to come? I'm hungry, so this will explain this setup. Have you ever heard of a horseshoe sandwich? No, I haven't. It is a local delicacy out of Springfield, Illinois, and it dates back to the early 20th century. Okay.

So for a full-size portion, it's two pieces of Texas toast. Love Texas toast. Nice hamburger patty or ham. Love both ham and hamburger. Well, then you'd probably like them together. Yeah. On each Texas toast slice, cover the whole, put them next to each other, it's open-faced. Cover the whole thing with fries.

Love it. And then top it all with cheese sauce. Just like nacho cheese sauce? I'm sure there's people out there who use cheese with, but from what I understand, from my research, it's more like a Welsh rarebit sauce. Okay. So like cheese with other stuff that makes it Welsh rarebit sauce. But it's a horseshoe sandwich.

Sign me up. In doing research for horseshoes, that was one of the most interesting things I could come up with. Again, I'm hungry, so it really jumped out at me. Yeah. Why did they call it that? I didn't see. Because it didn't, because it's the size of a horseshoe.

I don't know. It looked to be the size of a horse. Okay. Maybe the shoes underneath. Well, maybe calling it the horse sandwich was untoward, so they just queued it up. Right. Yeah. I'll bet that's exactly what it was.

Yeah. Well, anyway, shout out to Springfield, Illinois. Right? Woo. Home of the horseshoe sandwich. Yeah. And cardiovascular disease. Okay.

So I know how you feel about horseshoes. I actually love to play horseshoes. Okay. I know how you feel about talking about playing horseshoes. That's super exciting. I find it, it's an interesting thing. All right. It's fun.

Yeah. You actually do get a bit of exercise, especially if you play competitively. My friend, you can burn as much if you're an average Joe as 150 calories an hour playing horseshoes. You can work off a hard boiled egg an hour. Yeah. Or 100th of a horseshoe sandwich. Hey, and if you're playing in the backyard, maybe you've eaten some deviled eggs at picnic

because horseshoes and picnics go together like ants and picnics. That's exactly right. I actually love horseshoes. I got a set a few years ago when my buddy Justin, who you know, had a Fourth of July party and we set it up in his backyard and played and now he kept them and haven't played since. What's the deal? Well, I mean, he just, I left them at his house, you know, and he'd go get them.

Those are yours. Yeah. But I don't have a, actually I do have an area, but like no one comes and hangs out in my backyard basically. Everybody hangs out at Justin's. Yeah. Only I would play horseshoes together, but it's more fun with a good group. Well, sure.

And that's one way you can play individually with two people or with pairs. Yeah. And it says in the article, you can play solo, but if you're playing horseshoes, that is sad. Yeah. It's a bad day for you. It is. Um, so Chuck, let's talk about the, uh, the origin of the horseshoe itself of the shoe.

I got a little info on it, not the game, the shoe, the shoe. Okay. So if you see a horse in the wild running, it's probably running for its life. Horses naturally don't like to run very much and of course not their feet get sore. That's why they don't run very much. So right when humans said, Hey, I'm going to ride that thing, they figured out we need to put something on its feet because little feet get sore and I don't want to hurt this horse.

I'm trying to get it to run. Yeah. So probably in the Asian steps, about a thousand years, well, about 2000 years ago, they started putting like booties on their horses. That's cute. It's like herbs and something to soften the, the blow of the ground, right? By the turn of that millennium, the first or second century AD, people were putting booties, leather booties, which the ancient Romans, I believe called hippo sandals.

They basically put sandals on their horses. Finally, everybody realized all this was idiotic and you need to put metal on a horse. Right. And by 1000 AD, uh, like nailing metal horseshoes to the bottom of a horse's hoof was very common practice. Well, does that not hurt? No, because, um, it's kind of like, if you have your fingernail past your quick, yeah, if you nail the nail through that past the quick, not below the quick, but anything that

grows out past the quick, that doesn't have any nerve endings in it. Right. Yeah. So, no, it's very similar to that. It's like a huge, thick fingernail for the horse. That's what a hoof is. So it hurts them to walk on these, but it doesn't hurt to have people drive nails into them. Yes.

Okay. Depending on how long the nail is. Now you could easily use a nail that's too long and drive it right into the horse's foot, which would be very painful, but as long as the nail is short enough, you're just driving it into something that has no nerve endings and it prevents that foot that's on the other end, the inside of the hoof from becoming sore from walking. Okay. Okay.

So you want to use nails that aren't too long, which is why there's a very specific, um, trade called a farrier. Yeah. Who knows what they're doing. Sure. With trimming horses' hooves, shooing horses, that kind of thing. And there's actually a patron saint of farriers, saint Elegius. He said, yeah, he said to have come across a horse that was ailing, remove the horse's

leg, shoot it, and then put the horse's leg back on and the horse's leg fine after that. Sounds like hocus, pocus magic to me. Right. Somewhere along the way. Somebody figured out that a horseshoe makes for a pretty great stand-in for a discus if you bend it to close it. Yeah. Like the ancient Greeks, maybe.

Yeah. They were into it. Thanks. Thanks for sitting through that intro. That was great. I saw a little blood come out of your ear. Oh, no. Uh, yeah, Greeks and Romans apparently played horseshoes and, uh, it, like, became a popular

thing in the United States, like after the Revolutionary War. Yeah. And I guess it just caught on, like, hey, let's throw these things. So the ancient Greeks were into discus throwing. Yeah. But you had to be wealthy or part of the military to have a discus. If you were poor, you had access to horseshoes. And if you bent the horseshoes to close them up and threw them like a discus, you had something

called quiats. And then one of them landed accidentally on a metal stake and they went, I bet you can't do that again. Right. I think they just got lazy and grew tired of bending the horseshoes. They were like, well, let's throw the horseshoes as they are. Yeah. And that horseshoes is an ancient game.

It's an ancient game and it's played all over the world. It's not just for suburban American backyards, uh, South Africa, Israel, Italy, to name a few. Yeah. I bet it's played the world wide. Uh, and just here in North America, apparently 15 million people play, not necessarily competitive, but, you know, like Justin. Yeah.

And steal your horseshoes and play with them. Uh, and that is according to the National Horseshoe Pitchers Association or NHPA. Yeah. And like every sport, there is an official governing body and they set the rules. They host tournaments. Um, I imagine they sell t-shirts and hats. There's also a rock star. Who?

Uh, his name's Alan Francis. Oh, uh, what? I thought you meant a real rock star. He's like their, the rock star horseshoe. Like what's his deal? He's just super great. Yeah. There's apparently no sports figure in any, in all of sports who's, who dominates more

than he does. I'm not kidding. This guy, this guy, listen, he's the most dominant sportsman in the world. Yes. Okay. Yes. He has won 14 of the last 17 men's world championships at the NHPA championships. So what's his name?

Alan Francis from Defiance, Ohio. So when people say like he's the Michael Jordan of horseshoes, what they should say is Michael Jordan is the Alan Francis of basketball. Right. They really should. This guy has a, you know, which we'll get into, but you throw a horseshoe and what you want to do is throw a ringer. Yeah.

Sure. He's got a 90% average, 90% nine times out of 10. When he throws these things, it's a ringer, not a leaner, not an account. It's a ringer. No one walking the earth has a ringer percentage like that. That is a maze. If you want to learn more about Alan Francis, by the way, read Perfection in the Horseshoe Pit from New York.

By Josh Clark. Right. You wrote a book about him. That's sweet. It's a, it's cool. I think it's cool that there's a guy out there who's like unbeatable. Yeah. I'm pretty good at horseshoes.

This guy would wipe the floor with you. Well, of course you would. He's the best athlete in the history of humanity. Of sport. But all I'm saying is I'm pretty good at horseshoes and I assume it's because I pitched softball. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I think it's probably got some, you know, similar motion. Yeah, they are, they are similar. And I'm athletic. I'm not one of those people that gets a horseshoe and like throws it behind them or over like on the picnic table or anything like that. Yeah. That's good. So that means it's your spectator friendly horseshoe thrower.

That's right. That's right. Thirty years ago, a van exploded in a parking garage below the World Trade Center. The plan was to send the North Tower crashing into the South. It failed, but six people were killed and more than 1000 injured. The masterminds behind it all were just getting started and would soon change the world forever. Featuring never before heard audio. This is a story told by investigators from around the world using double agents and an

undercover operative to bring the bomber to justice. This is Operation Trade Bomb, an Apple original podcast hosted by Mark Smerling. Below Operation Trade Bomb on Apple podcasts. Hey, everybody, we all know the stock market has been hard to stomach this year. And if you're like a lot of Americans, it's hard to look at your stock portfolio. Yeah, but you don't have to sit on the sidelines and watch your hard earned money disappear. You can diversify your portfolio and Rad diversified can help. That's right.

Rad diversified buys cash flowing real estate all over the country and for a minimum of just $1000, you can access their lucrative portfolio of investments. They have thousands of clients. Yeah, only $1000 to see how they've been delivering awesome results for their clients. You don't have to be a millionaire to access world-class investment opportunities. Rad diversified investor share prices doubled since 2019 and boasts an impressive 11 straight profitable quarters. So now you can be a real estate investor without doing any of the heavy lifting.

Watch your money grow with raddiversified.com. In economic times like these, it's a good reminder to explore all your options in a balanced portfolio. To make your money work for you, just visit raddiversified.com today. All right, so let's get into this. Pitching is what you call throwing. The shoe is about twice the size of a regular horseshoe. Yeah.

First of all, it's not like a little horseshoe. You pitch to see who goes first, closest to the stake goes first. And we need to say right off the bat that there are real rules and there are house rules. All right. I'm always a house rules guy. Yeah. So you play by Justin's rules. Well, we co-determined the rules since I bought the kid.

Oh, okay. I got it. But if you went to say Jake Gyllenhaal's house and he was playing horseshoes and you would play by his rules, you wouldn't be like, according to my rules. No, I'd say Jake, first of all, what kind of name is Gyllenhaal? And then I'd say, secondly, what are your house rules because I will abide? I respect the house. Okay.

Cool. But since we bought the kit together, then we made up our own rules basically. I just want to make sure that's what you're saying. That's what I figured. And that's one of the points of a game like horseshoes is you can play and make up your own rules. It's no big deal. But we're going to tell you how to play a real game if you're into that as well.

Yes. According to the NHPA. All right. So you pitch to see who goes first. The object, if you don't know this by now, is to throw your horseshoe and have it ring the metal stake that is driven into the ground that we'll tell you about in a second. If you didn't know that already, raise your hand so we can send someone to come lay on top of you until you pass out from unconsciousness.

Exactly. Games are made up of innings. You play in pairs and you throw two horseshoes. You throw both your horseshoes and then the next dude or dudette throws their horseshoes. You don't alternate one-on-one unless you want to per house rules. House rules. Yeah, there are some details to these rules that I wasn't aware of. You have to pitch both shoes in 30 seconds.

It's like a speed chess in the park. Yeah. But if you're taking longer than that, what are you doing? Are you measuring the air? You're just drinking beer and talking to people who are watching like a jackass. Get your head in the game. Exactly. That's what that rule does.

That's what I say. Yeah. All right. So I guess we should go over the court and all that stuff of regulation. So if you get your horseshoes, you at least know how to set it up. Well, hold on. What's the end of the game? So if we're playing one another, we're both pitching toward the same stake.

You pitch your two in 30 seconds. I pitch my two in 30 seconds and that's an inning. And there's no set number of innings. But normally people will play until you get to 40 points. Yeah. I've seen that the common backyard horseshoes, you played at 21, but I think a regulation tournament, you're going to play to 40. And it depends, also saw like Philly rules and stuff like this.

Yeah. Yeah, people get local. You get a punch in the stomach. Yeah, exactly. It's called a court where you play. And if you want to play horseshoes in your backyard, you need to have like a level wide open area. You can't like, you don't want to play it on a hill.

And there's actually a lot of schematics online if you want to build your own horseshoe court. All right. So let's go over the basics of the court though. It's 46 feet long by six feet wide. Yes. You've got two pitching platforms, which is where you throw from each six feet square. Yeah. And you're supposed to have protective backboards.

I've never seen that. No, I mean, I've just like, I guess this is so it doesn't like, you know, tumble on and hit the guy at the beer keg. Right. But I usually just dig a pit, you know, and like the Chuck House rules once again. So what is it then? Like, how do you lay out like where the end of the box is? Usually not an end of the box for Chuck House rules.

I got done with you. You're either ringing it, you're leaning it or you're closest to the pin or close to the stake, I guess. All the schematics I've seen are like, man, it is a defined box. Yeah. Like, it's a real deal. Right. So you've got two stakes.

They are iron rods about 36 inches long, one inch wide, and they are staked toward each other at roughly a 12 degree angle about halfway in. It says about halfway. So I think that would be like really specific, like how many inches above ground. Yeah. I would think so too. But I didn't find that. Apparently you're also supposed to stake it four feet from the back of the box, but two

feet from the front of the box. Okay. All right. That makes sense. Okay. Chop up the soil or sand if you really want to go the extra mile. Yeah, you should. If you're going to build yourself a horseshoe pit, get some sand.

You've got foul lines at 27 feet and 37 feet from each stake, and that determines where you're going to throw from. They say adult men pitch from 37, and ladies and old people and kids pitch from 27 or shorter. Those sexist and agist. Agreed. I say pitch from wherever you feel comfortable. Yeah. House rules.

And they say the backyard games are similar, but like it's usually not like, it's either like sand or asphalt pits or something. Whatever you can, whatever you can accommodate is what I say. If you don't have that many feet, like make it shorter. Right. You know. But then you have to handicap your score. Really?

Yeah. Okay. My house rules are very unforgiving. That's why I never play horseshoes with you anymore. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about pitching then. Oh, okay.

You want me to? Yeah. How do you pitch a shoe? What's, what's, what are the two methods? Well, first let's talk about the anatomy of a shoe. Let's not forget that horseshoes are derived from actual horseshoes, which were put on horseshoves. So if you're holding a horseshoe, so the two prongs are at the bottom.

What's at the top then is called the toe, the open space, the opposite of the toe. That's the heel. Yeah. And then the two, um, I guess parts at the end that kick in inward toward the heel. Those are called cocks, right? Yeah. And I would have, it's backwards in my head, but then when you think about how it sits on a horse's foot, it makes sense, but I would think the heel would be, heel would

be the part you hold, but it's not, it's the reverse. Right. Because how it sits on a horse's foot. Yeah. Exactly. Now, if you want to throw a, uh, we're going to teach you right now how to pitch a horseshoe two ways. Yeah.

And you got shanks too. I don't think we mentioned that. Those are the arms. Yeah. That's right. So you've got the toe, shanks coming down each side, the heel, the heel, and then the things that kick in are called the cocks. Yeah.

The heel cocks. The heel cocks, right? All right. So, uh, if you want to carry out what's called a single flip pitch, this is probably the easiest. That's me. Is this you? Sure.

This is the easiest, but Alan Francis does this too. And from what I'm finding a lot of pro or, uh, really good horseshoe pitchers use this single flip pitch. So what you do is you grab the thing using your thumb and your index finger or your thumb and your, uh, index and middle finger, you squeeze the toe between that. So you've got the, um, the horseshoe level with the ground horizontally level with the ground above it. And uh, you bring your arm back like a pendulum, you raise it up again, you swing it back and

forth until you can feel it and you got to do it within 15 seconds because you got another one to pitch. Yeah. But right when that thing feels right, you let it go when it hits eye level with you. Yeah. Roughly. Whatever feels comfortable, but eye level is recommended. Right.

So you can bend it in an arc about six to eight feet into the air and you can, in this method, the thing might turn 360 degrees once is why it's called a single flip method. But more often than not, if you're a pro, your shoe does not turn at all. It follows the arc, but it stays flat the whole way. Yeah. And then right before it gets to the stake, the heel caulk's drop and hit that, uh, stake and ring around it. Yeah.

It goes, yee-haw, like takes a sip of corn whiskey and they carry you off on your shoulder, on their shoulders. That is the flip pitch, the single flip pitch, uh, more advanced players and they say that this is an easier way to get ringers if you're, if you can master this, you know, if you spent enough years mastering the quarter turn, I'm sorry, the one and one quarter turn, not the quarter turn. And there's other ones. There's like three quarter turns, one and three quarter turns.

Sure. This is the standard other one. Yeah. For a one and a quarter turn, uh, you hold the horseshoe by the shank, uh, so the opening is to the left of your grip. If you're right handed opposite, if you're lefty, obviously, yeah, uh, you swing your arm back and forth like a pendulum, just like you were going to do with the flip pitch. And then, uh, I get that you let it go lower.

Is that right? Yeah. Usually when it hits like your thigh area, which I think would give it a higher arc is the difference. Right. Or a sharper arc. Yeah. But you want to keep that shoe level to the ground instead of flipping it, uh, it's turning,

I guess, uh, turn in a quarter until it meets, you know, the stake. Right. Obviously your goal there with the turn is to meet the stake with the, the, I was about to call them prongs. Cawks. After we just went over all that, the cawks facing the, uh, the stake. Right. And then you've got yourself a ringer, everyone drinks corn whiskey and, and raises their glass.

That's right. For more corn whiskey to be poured into it. So if you get close, you get no points, right? Cause close doesn't count in horseshoes. Uh, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Oh, is that where that comes from? It does. I was being coy.

Yes. Obviously you get points by being close. That's where the axion comes from. Yeah. It's, it's called an in count. So let's, let's say you and I just both thrown. Yep. That's one inning.

We're going to go score our inning. Yeah. Let's say I threw one wild cause I've had a lot of corn whiskey from all the ringers I threw previous to this round, this ending before I got there to witness it. And huh? I'm just saying like you're lying about how many ringers you threw. I get there. You look earlier through 12 ringers.

Right. Okay. That's why I'm drunk. So, uh, I throw one and it's out of the, out of the court. Yeah. That's out. That's dead. That's a dead shoe.

It doesn't count. Yeah. Not a dead ringer. I guess we'll explain that in a second. But I did throw one and it hit the ring and it spun around and we're doing the, uh, all count or count all scoring. Yeah. Which means that I get three points.

That's great. A ringer is three points. It's the highest you can score. Okay. For a single pitch. You threw a ringer too. And, um, you threw yours on top of mine. Yeah.

You got three points for that one. Yeah. And then your second ringer, it stayed in and I only did a stay in. It fell and is leaning now vertically up against the stake. It's not around it, but it's just up against it. It's called a leaner. Yeah. That's worth one point.

I think that should be two points. It depends. Some people do score at two points. Chuck House Rules is two. I've seen videos that that's one. Yeah. I think this is just my opinion. I think it should be three, two and one, not three, one and one.

It makes sense. And the one that I think you're under your House Rules counts as one point no matter what everybody counts as one point is one that lands within six inches of the stake. Yeah. Well, how we play is, um, you just measure with another horseshoe and if it is, uh, within the length of the two cocks, right, you know, that's what we measure. I don't know if that's six inches or not. Yeah.

But that's what we use. That makes sense. Yeah. Um, so three, two and one or three, one and one, depending on how you're scoring, that's the count all method. Yeah. I don't get this other method. Okay.

I mean, it doesn't make sense to me. It does. It took me many times and I actually had to watch a video to get it. It's complex, but it's not really. Okay. It's just sometimes the rules of games are hard to write down to get across and writing. Agreed. Um, so the other method of scoring is called cancellation, right?

And so in cancellation rules, that one that I threw out, that's out, it doesn't count either way. Yeah. Sure. Remember I threw that ringer? Yeah. Um, that canceled out my ringer, which made my ringer and your ringer, they cancel one another out.

See, that's what I don't get. What's the point? That's the same thing as both of us getting three, both of us getting zero. Okay. It's true. But does that just keep the score down or something? It does. I think also, uh, if you're really good, you know how to cancel other people's points

out in addition to scoring yourself. But yes, it does. It extends the game to really cancelation, uh, I mean, like that keeps the points down. And if you're trying to get to 40 points, that's a long game. Yeah. Um, but that one that you threw that's leaning, I didn't throw one like that. So there's not one for you to cancel out mine, which means you get your points, whether two points if you're playing at your house or one point if you're playing at a tournament.

I get it. So cancellation is just, if you do something that's the same as somebody else, they cancel one another out and then if there's something that's like yours is closer than mine, that you get that one point. Okay. I mean, it makes sense. I guess in a way. And then I like to score points.

So I would just give everyone points. Right. Yeah. That's the thing in cancellation points. I'm not going to win any points like because yours is, if yours is closer, even if mine is within six inches of the stake and yours is within six inches, if yours is closer, you're the one who gets the point. I don't.

So it's all like, I'm getting all the points in this inning. Yeah. I got you. Thanks for a long game. I would guess. Although if you have people who are just throwing ringer, ringer, ringer, a game would probably go by like in a blink of an eye. So cancellation rules are probably for people who are really good at horseshoes.

Yeah. And I've also seen where a lot of times you play to win by two. I don't know. Is that the official rule or is that house rules? I didn't see that anywhere. I saw a first person to get to 40. Okay. That may be a house rule or a local thing.

Yeah. But I'm always a win by two. It sounds a lot like what you're describing as volleyball. Play to 21, win by two. That's ping pong too, right? Maybe so. Oh, I think we happen upon a magical rule that permeates almost all games, backyard or otherwise.

Oh, fun stuff. That's it, man. You got anything else? No. As much as I tried. Be careful. Yeah. And if you have lawn darts, turn them into your local government because you're not supposed

to have those. Yeah, they're hoarding those for the apocalypse. Those are going to be valuable one day. Yup. Message break? Not yet. All right. If you want to learn more about horseshoes or if you just need a handy print out of these

rules for your own home horseshoe court, just type horseshoes in the search bar at howstoveworks.com and it's all right there for you. And since I said horseshoes, now it's time for message break. Thirty years ago, a van exploded in a parking garage below the World Trade Center. The plan was to send the North Tower crashing into the South. It failed, but six people were killed and more than 1000 injured. The masterminds behind it all were just getting started and would soon change the world forever. Featuring never before heard audio, this is a story told by investigators from around

the world using double agents and an undercover operative to bring the bomber to justice. This is Operation Tradebomb, an Apple original podcast hosted by Mark Smerling. Follow Operation Tradebomb on Apple podcasts. Hey, everybody, we all know the stock market has been hard to stomach this year. And if you're like a lot of Americans, it's hard to look at your stock portfolio. Yeah, but you don't have to sit on the sidelines and watch your hard earned money disappear. You can diversify your portfolio and Rad Diversified can help. That's right.

Rad Diversified buys cash flowing real estate all over the country and for a minimum of just $1,000, you can access their lucrative portfolio of investments. They have thousands of clients. Yeah, only $1,000 to see how they've been delivering awesome results for their clients. You don't have to be a millionaire to access world-class investment opportunities. Rad Diversified investor share price has doubled since 2019 and boasts an impressive 11 straight profitable quarters. So now you can be a real estate investor without doing any of the heavy lifting.

Watch your money grow with RadDiversified.com. In economic times like these, it's a good reminder to explore all your options in a balanced portfolio. Make your money work for you. Just visit RadDiversified.com today. And now it's time for Listener Mail, huh? Yeah, I'm going to call this Burning Man Correction. OK.

And, you know, we've never been. We didn't get it all right. That was a tough one. We've never been to CERN either, but we still talked about Large Hadron Collider. Yeah, but we learned with Listener Mail that burners take their burning seriously. OK. Let's hear about it. And I feel terrible because I don't have her name and I apologize about that.

And not on Miss Burner. But here it is. Miss Burner. Hey, Chuck and Josh and Jerry. I was so excited when I saw you did a podcast on Burning Man, I couldn't wait to listen. I went to Burning Man five times from 2000 to 2005, so she knows what she's talking about. I don't know if y'all would.

I didn't know if y'all would get it since you've never been, but you nailed it. You made me laugh out loud a number of times. Some people get all serious about it and pretend that it's not all about sex and drugs, but just let me tell you, sex and drugs are a huge part of it. That place wouldn't exist without hallucinogenics. I have seen police there and that's the one thing that got wrong. I have a friend who was actually arrested for drugs there, so there's definitely a police presence.

The man is everywhere. So I just wanted to add also, even though it's not a music festival per se, you can really catch some great acts there on the down low. We saw Paul Oakenfold there in 2000 when he was one of the world's top DJs. There was no advertising, just word of mouth that he was there. We rocked up to see him, spin an amazing set to about 300 people. He's a pretty cool man. Yeah.

Very intimate. That's a big name. Another cool brush was with music legend Perry Farrell. We saw him dancing at sunrise and asked him to come over to our place to eat cheese and crackers with us, and he did. He's a really, really nice guy and really, really high. In the Burning Man spirit, there was no sense of them being famous people or being anything other than just part of the city like the rest of us.

All are equal on the playa. That's cool. And maybe it's good I don't have her name. Yeah. She just disappeared into the playa. Exactly. Like a mirage. So we appreciate that correction and thank you for the kudos.

Yeah, thank you very much. We appreciate that. If you want to correct us on something we got wrong, we always love those. Thank you for everyone who has ever written in to correct us. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow. You can send us a correction via email, stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com, and you can go check out our website, our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. This episode of Stuff You Should Know is brought to you by State Farm. For food lovers, there's no place on earth like Mississippi where sweet, spicy, and smoky flavors satisfy your spirits. Wherever you wander, plan today at visitmississippi.org slash dining. Mississippi, wanderers welcome. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off.

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 jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.