Stuff You Should Know - How House Swapping Works

Episode Date: October 14, 2010

Traditionally, house swapping involves temporarily exchanging homes with a stranger for vacation purposes. Tune in to learn more about house swapping, from the traditional version to hospitality exchanges and couchsurfing, in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? 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 Bryant. This is Stuff You Should Know, Extreme Home Makeover Edition. Tip of the hat to you as well. I just gave you a literal tip of my cap. Yeah. You don't see people do that enough anymore.

Nah. Tip of the hat. Tip of the hat to you. Top of the day. Top of the morning. Lucky the Irish. Let's do this. Okay, Chuck. This is going to be one of the worst ones we've ever done. No, it's going to be so great. I don't think you're right. All right, we'll see. I guess we'll leave it to everyone to decide. Well, because then people say that was great, and people say it sucked. Yeah, whatever, and we'll be no further along than we are now. We have no idea. Yeah. It's just you and me and Jerry in a little tiny room. Yeah, and we're just completely isolated, totally out of touch with reality. Completely. So, Chuck, I guess we'll get this stinker started, huh? That sounds good to me. Do you remember back in 2006, there was a 26-year-old guy from

Montreal named Kyle McDonald. I don't remember him. You will in a second. He did one of the coolest Internet undertakings of all time. Facebook? No. Myspace? No. It's not a business. Oh, he started, he had a red paper clip, and he decided that he wanted to trade it until he got a house. That was great. It was awesome, wasn't it? Where did he end up, you know? He ended up getting a house in a place called Kipling Winnipeg. He really got a house? Yeah. Wow. In less than a year, and in 14 trades, he went from a red paper clip to a pen that looked like a fish, so on and so forth, until he ended up with, he traded an afternoon with Alice Cooper for a Kiss Snow Globe, and that's when everything opened up. Corbin Bernsen from LA Law, remember him? Oh,

yeah. He turned out to be a huge collector of snow globes, and he wanted the snow globe. So, he offered to trade the snow globe for a paid part in a movie he was directing, and the people of Kipling Winnipeg said, that's it for us. We've been waiting. This is what we want. We will trade you a farmhouse in our city for that part in that Corbin Bernsen movie. Well, who? Like the mayor of that town? The town together, I'm sure, led by the mayor. But the town got a part in the movie? I don't know. I don't know who got a part in the movie. Okay. Thank you for pointing that out. The question didn't come up. Well, where it falls apart was the guy went to Kipling, he accepted the house because he wanted to make the trade, and he turned around and sold it. He's

like, I'm not living here. Oh, you're kidding. I remember the people of Kipling's Cesscatchewan. Did I say Winnipeg? I don't know. Cesscatchewan. They were not pleased. You know where it fell apart for me? Corbin Bernsen. Terrible. Corbin, if you're listening to this, I apologize for Chuck. I loved you in Major League. He was. He was a spectacular jerk, but he wasn't over the top. He nailed it. Chuck, that guy swapped a red paper clip for a house, but that is in no way, shape, or form related to our topic today, house swapping. It has the word swap in it. That's a nice lead in, Josh. House swapping is more like swinging, but with houses rather than spouses. Yes, Josh. It has actually been around since the mid-1950s. So has swinging. It's been

growing like crazy. About 20% of travelers do this now, and they say it's growing at about 15% a year, which, I mean, you do the math, buddy, in like six or eight years. Looks like we'll all be house swapping. Okay. No one will be saying how it tells anymore. I don't think that's true. I don't think it's true. I mean, yes, mathematically, that does make sense. Right. But the problem is, people like me are kind of high strong. You would not be a good house swapper. No, it's not so much the person in my house. I generally trust people, you know, and I trust my instincts. I'm not going to, there's some, some thrill kill cult who loves a good blood orgy is not going to, I'm not going to lend my house to some group like that. Right. But I wouldn't

feel comfortable in someone else's house. Oh, really? See, that's probably the opposite of what most people's reticence has to do with. I think it goes both ways, man. You do? Yeah. Well, like all swapping. Yeah, it goes both ways. And I can tell you the one that I would really, really not feel comfortable with really is the hospitality exchange. Yeah, let's, let's go ahead and talk about the three ways that you can do this. And if you've seen the movie, The Holiday. I have not. You've seen house swapping in action. Was Eva Mendes in there? She was not. Wait, Queen Latifa? No, she was not. Oh, I'm thinking of Last Holiday. Yes. The Holiday starred Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet. She did not appear naked in this one.

But the movie, The Holiday and Jack Black and the very fetching Jude Law, Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet swapped houses for Holiday. Okay. And romantic hijinks ensued, obviously. Yeah. With Cameron, of course, with Jude Law and Kate Winslet with Jack Black. Nice. And LA to London, or I'm sorry, English country cottage type of thing. So that was house swapping in action. And what they did was called a traditional exchange. Yeah. And that's when you plan your vacation at the same time and say, I'll stay in your place. You stay in my place. Yes. There's also Chuck. I think the traditional is far and away the most common and frequent type. And appealing. Because all you have to do is own a house. That's it. Well,

own a house in a place where somebody would want to go. Yeah. There's different ways around that. If you're in Mobile, Alabama, and you want to swap apartments with someone in New York, you might not get a lot of action. Maybe not. But what if the person in New York who's swapping has family in Mobile? Well, true. Funeral. Uh-huh. Got to go down in Mobile. Yeah. But by God, I'm not going to spend a dime while I'm down there. How swapping it is. Yeah. I'm not going to pay $45 for that days in. You know, it's sad. I was reading one of the articles that this article on our site was based on. And they made that point like, sure, if you live in Manhattan or Rio, you're not going to have any trouble whatsoever. Yeah. But

they said you can still have a successful swap if you're able to convince somebody who has a house where you want to go of the hidden charms of Toledo or Tulsa. They ranked on my hometown as an example of a place you wouldn't want to go. Yeah. I think all you need to say is Tony Paco's and people would be all over it. Exactly. It's Lord Cleaner. Lord Cleaner. Yeah. So the traditional exchange is one. Non-simultaneous swap is another. This is the rich person swap I take it. Yeah. It's when you have like a vacation house and you don't necessarily have to plan your vacation with theirs. You can just say, take my place in Worcester and I'll take your place in Rio. Yes. Rio's the hot spot right now. It is. You could also do non-simultaneous swap where you,

maybe you're not at home. Somebody's using your home. Right. But you're not using theirs at the same time but you're banking a credit to be able to use theirs in the future. Oh. So I have business in Rio so you can stay in my house in Atlanta. Right. And I'll take you up at a future date to stay at your house in Rio. Exactly. Because my company's paying for me to go to Rio this time so I don't have to worry about it. Yeah. Okay. And then there's the one that I would find extremely uncomfortable. Do people really do this? Yes, they do. And I'll describe some of them momentarily. But the hospitality exchange, it doesn't matter whether I'm the host or the guest, I would feel really uncomfortable. Yeah. Like my mom was always this very, very generous person

and she always wanted to bring home like a single friend or something at the hospital she worked with for Thanksgiving or Christmas and my sister and I were always like, we don't know this person. Yeah. Now our holiday is awkward. Like, yes, we're helping a stranger but at what cost? Right. So I've always been like that. I've just, I've never liked hanging out with people I didn't know on a really intimate level. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I can hang out with anybody in a bar or whatever. If someone's house is in play or is the setting, it changes everything. It's just uncomfortable for me. But I'll tell you who is into that. The 2.2 million members of couchsurfing.com. Oh, those people. Yeah. So I don't even know if you said for sure

what a hospitality exchange is. That's when you live with each other. Yeah. That's when you say, you can come and stay in my place while I'm here. I'll be here too. And then I'll just come visit you someday while you're there and we'll just be uncomfortable. But what if they didn't go well on the first round and you hate each other? I don't know. I think it was, it was free. So maybe you could send a friend. I don't like you, but I have a friend who would love you. Yeah. Well, they do say though, to be fair, that it's not necessarily like you're in a little one-room apartment with these people. It works better if you have a large house with maybe a private guest house or some area where you don't have to necessarily be with each other all the time. Right.

So that makes a little more sense. Still not into it. If you are into sharing your town with strangers, like let's go see this or let's go to the zoo. For the world of Coke. Right. Exactly. If you can't possibly get to the world of Coke often enough, hospitality swaps are the one for you. I love showing people Atlanta that I know. Yeah. That's one of my favorite things is to delight people with the charms of my hometown because there are many charms in Atlanta. But strangers, I mean, if it was a friend of a friend that was a stranger, I would certainly do that too. But I would never log on to a website and just say, just come and visit me. I'll show you around Atlanta. All right. So we've clearly established now that hospitality exchanges

are the worst idea ever devised by humankind. Or that we're just two big jerks. Right. One of the two. So let's stick to the traditional exchanges where you don't meet them. They don't meet you. You just use one another's houses. That's how it was in that movie. So according to this time article about house swapping as well, written by a Russo, specifically Francine Russo, most of the people, about 40% is an estimate, have already house swapped. So most people who are involved in house swapping have done it before. They're usually professionals, business people, doctors, lawyer. It's not a couch surf situation. No. Again, there is couchsurfing.com and I would advise people to go check that out. If you're into hospitality exchanges, either as a guest

or a host, check out couchsurfing.com. It's pretty cool. Yeah. But with the traditional house swap, let's talk about the details, Chuck. Like what are you going to do? Like let's say you live in Rio? Yes. And I live in Mobile, Alabama. Okay. And you have a dead relative in Mobile and have to go there. Well, I'm depressed all of a sudden. But what I would do is fight through that depression first and then you and I would start exchanging emails with one another where we start to outline specifics of what this is going to entail because on the surface it seems easy like, hey, you just swap houses. But there's a lot of small details. You might have a car that you want to have use of. Swap, you know, you can use my car. You might have houseplants or pets.

You might have mail that you want picked up. You might have your refrigerator only opens if you hike up the left side first and pull the door open. There might be little tricks to your house. You got to jigger the deadbolt from the inside if you want to leave the house. So you got to get all those little details out in the open so you know what you're dealing with. You're also going to be leaving the keys to your car, the keys to your boat, the keys to your ATVs, everything. Like you're giving these people your life if you are a friendly sort or a suspicious sort and you have neighbors, friends and relatives that live in the area who will listen to your commands. You may command them to drop by and introduce themselves. Maybe to act as tour guides, maybe to just say

hi, maybe to just give even more advice, find out if everything's going on. Like you're switching lives with people for a minute, a week. Well, in the movie The Holiday, the reason that Cameron met Jude Law was because that was Kate Winslet's brother. Okay, yeah. So you are sort of switching lives and the reason Jack Black was there because I think, I can't remember, but it was Jack Black. He was there. He was a neighbor or something or he knew her somehow. So yeah, I was reading another article that this article was based on. I think it was in budget travel and the woman who was talking about house swapping was saying that she and her, I think mother were saying in this pair is flat and they were living Francois' life. Like they were eating at his favorite bistro down

the street and they were like fixing his leaky sink and talking to his neighbors outside, you know, his flat, that kind of stuff. Yeah. So you can expect like if you kind of keep to yourself, you're probably not going to house swap in the first place, but if you're looking to come out of your shell, trade houses with somebody. Well, and they say that's another great reason to do this. If you want a more immersive non-touristy experience, I've never even rented an apartment from someone, but I'm keen to go to a foreign country and live in a neighborhood apartment rather than a hotel. Like I like hotels for a minute, but the hospitality, all the fakeness, it all rings faults to me. Oh, you're crazy. Hot hospitality all the way from me. It just is so fake to me.

But you know it's fake. You know that people are paid to be nice to you. It's not like I think that they actually like me or anything like that. I don't care, right? I'm at the hotel. I don't care. No, trust me. I love hotels a little bit because I didn't get to stay in them as a child. Right. We were poor teachers and we camped. It's funny that you bring up teachers, Chuck, because this whole thing, the whole thing was started in 1953 by a group of teachers really who founded inner vac international vacations so that they could cheaply swap. Well, it makes sense. Rental places or houses. They have to make ends meet. That makes total sense. So that's where house swapping actually came from was teachers. I didn't know that.

Now you do. What's another good reason to house swap, Josh? Or what's something you can do? Forget good reasons. What's something else you can do to be a good house swapper? What can you offer? You want to treat this like it's, you want to treat the other person's house like you are hoping they're treating your house. Well, yeah. Right? So let's say you break a dish. You would leave a note and say, I broke this dish. I'm very sorry. Here are all the pieces, but here's also money to, right? Here's also money to replace it. And if it's more, let me know and I'll send you the difference or whatever. Or better yet, just replace something if you can replace it. If you can, sure. Yeah. It's probably still a good idea to leave a note,

unless it's just something that they're never going to notice. This dish is an imposter. Right. Exactly. You will probably also want to restock the fridge when you leave. You want to clean up. You want to, if the car catches on fire, you're going to want to pick up the phone and say your car is on fire. Yeah. A big, a big oops. You should probably let them know. And it's nice to leave a little parting gift. Sure. Right? You also want to take care of their pets. If they've asked you to take care of their pets, bring in the mail. Yeah. These kind of things are usually worked out ahead of time though. Yeah. They say it's a good idea, a lot of times, to having a letter of agreement that's not a legal document, but it just kind

of outlines expectations for each other. Because in the end, what you want is just a positive experience. You don't want to come home and say, oh, my plants are dead or my dog is dead. Oh gosh. I wasn't going to say that. I was going to say hungry, but sure. Dead from hunger. Dead from hunger. So you want to have reasonable expectations. And apparently these websites who run these places say that it generally works out pretty well. And the biggest problems that usually have are differing expectations that aren't outlined really specifically. Right. I'm usually a differing expectation of or differing definition of cleanliness. Yeah. That's the same. You ever go on Yelp and read hotel recommendations? No. That's awful. People are, I mean, something's

got to really be wrong with a hotel for me to, to log into a website and complain. But you should see this stuff. People complain about the quality of the chocolate left on their pillow and their expectations are so ramped up for some of these folks. It's just, it's the same with hotels. Yeah. I just call those people hard to please, whether you're house swapping or just vacationing. Sure. But not only that, they, like I would consider myself hard to please, but I don't see ever really going on to a site and posting a complaint. No. It's more just like, well, you failed to please me, so I won't be back. But all that's going on in my head or I'm saying it to human. She's like, mm-hmm. And that's it. I did do one Yelp post about a nameless restaurant here

in Atlanta that served me a raw hamburger, like purple raw meat inside. It was disgusting. I'm not going to tell you. I'll tell you after. Okay. And I did write a Yelp review because all they basically did was say, Oh, I'm really sorry that your burger would have killed you if you would have eaten it. Well, we won't charge you for it. And I said, Oh, okay. How about like a free piece of cheesecake or something? And I complained and then they got in touch with me though. The restaurant did from the Yelp review and said, we're so sorry. This is not our policy. We'd like to offer you a gift card for an undercooked hamburger. It was only 25 bucks. I thought that was kind of lame. This is a nice place. Oh, was it? Okay. You're eating hamburgers in five star

restaurants now? Well, but it was one of those, you know, $16 hamburgers. Gotcha. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah. Um, Chuck, Josh, we talked about some common complaints. We also mentioned the letter of agreement, right? Yes, not a legal contract. Like you said, no, there's a couple of points that most people would make on a letter of agreement. It's where you're saying, you do this, I'll do this, or I'm going to do this and you're not going to do that. And you just have it spelled out so that everybody's on the same page, right? Sure. So what are some of the points in these letters of agreement that William Sapphire would call them? Like a hotel, you would want to know like the phone and internet deal. If all of a sudden you have a big long

distance bill, you want to get that prearrange ahead of time, how that's covered. Yeah. You want to outline who can stay there just like a hotel. Hotel say you can't have 20 of your friends in a room and you can say, I don't want 20 of your friends in my house. Right. Especially if they're a thrill-kill cult into blood orgy. Yes. You also want to talk about what will happen if something is damaged or broken down. Do you want to know immediately? Do you just not want to know? You have them called Jack Black, the neighbor. Right. What? Sure. And also you want to disclose whether or not you have homeowners or renters or auto insurance. Yeah. Because the cool thing is is you can let somebody take your car because as far as the auto insurance company is concerned,

that's your friend. Right. And your friend's covered by your insurance. Well, maybe not always, right? Well, yeah. I think as long as you're covered, yeah. As long as you, yeah. Well, I think one article I read, it didn't spell out car insurance, but it did say that a lot of insurance companies, if you're going to do the house swap, you should check with your homeowners insurance and just make sure everything, because some of them have little caveats. That is a great point. That is a very, very good point. And you should probably also do that with your car insurance. Yeah. Just to be safe. Right. Chuck. Josh. So we mentioned Intervaq, right? That was the one that started all this in 1953. Yeah. There's also a place called Homelink. That's big. And then there's

tons of other sites. I went on Intervaq today. They had this place at Table Mountain, South Africa. That was one of the most beautiful homes I've ever seen in my entire life. Pool. Yeah. Everything. Just mod. Really sweet house. So they do have cool houses. And apparently, they have about 10,000 listings. Are you going to go there? No. Did you offer up your place? No. I was just checking it out, you know, as I want to do. But apparently, everywhere from like Craigslist for free to like these high-end sites that charge you about $100 to be a member. To list your house? Yeah. You can, like, there's a whole subculture out there that we weren't aware of. I'm going to look into this. Yeah. I don't think my house is, I guess, if you were a big golf

fan. Yeah. The Eastlake Golf Tournament is like right across the street if you want to rent my house for the weekend, which is actually this weekend. Oh, is it? Yeah. I got home yesterday and there are cars everywhere in yuppies from the suburbs, throwing their Coors Light cans in my yard and talking about how dirty the neighborhood was. I could see you with the shotgun being like, get off of my lawn, yuppie. Yeah. It's kind of fun, but it's also kind of annoying. I'm with you. Are you going to sell anything? I may sell some parking spaces. Oh, yeah. Okay. But no bloody marries. No. No. That didn't work out. A couple of last things real quick, Chuck. Inaution is huge. Huge. Yeah. If you start to get the impression that you don't really feel

comfortable with this person, the more you talk to them, that's that. Yeah. And since they're house swappers and you're doing this and they'll understand, if you kind of are on the fence, you can feel free to ask them for references apparently is fine. Yeah. Although I'd be like, no. That's why another reason you're not a good house swapper. And then if somebody seems a little controlling, like here are exact details of what you have to do every moment you're at the house. Yeah. No, thanks. They're probably not going to be real comfortable. They're being forced into this possibly by a thrill-kill cult that they're a member of. I think I'd be okay with it. Okay. Except for my animals, I would be a little suspicious to let the stranger take care of my

animals. Yeah. I would have to really know that they had dogs and cats and they knew how to do it. And Emily gets real specific with the directions for the animals. Yeah. Which is a good idea. Oh, another thing you should do is take the things you're really, really love and or maybe valuable and either put them in a friend's house or lock them in a room in your house just to be safe. Mm-hmm. It's not necessarily even thievery. Just if you have a really expensive vase, don't leave it on your kitchen counter. This is dumb. Agreed. Mistakes can happen. Agreed. So that is the sound that officially ends house swapping forever for the rest of our lives. We'll never talk about it again. Thank you. Thank you for bearing with us this far. Hats off to you.

Tip of the hat. Chuck just did it. If you want to learn more about house swapping, why? There's nothing else to know. You can type in H-O-U-S-E space S-W-A-P-P-I-N-G in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And that brings up, of course, Facebook questions. Yeah. Yeah. How about a quick announcement, Josh? Okay. It got very quiet in here all of a sudden, didn't it? A silence fell. Yeah. The co-ed, the cooperative for education. Yes, our beautiful friends who took us to Guatemala. Indeed. Yeah. They are having a fall fiesta here in Atlanta. And we wanted to give that a little plugage. It is October 21st. It is at the Metropolitan Club in Alpharetta, Georgia. Right. And that's at 7, 7 to 10 p.m. That's right. 20 bucks to get in,

but 20 bucks to buy you food, wine, beer, and entertainment. And by entertainment, we mean Jerry will be there. Jerry's going to be there in the flesh in her birthday suit. She'll be playing drum solos. I'm not mistaken. I don't know if a rim shot is a drum solo. That's entirely. And basically, they're raising money for their awesome operation with awesome prizes. You can win raffles. You can win a week-long African safari. Yes, I'm brave stuff, which I know you'd be into. I'm brave stuff. And Chuck, just to give everybody a quick rundown, if you don't know who co-ed is, first of all, go listen to the two-part Guatemala podcast. Right. And they are a nonprofit that basically pulls together money to buy textbooks for schools

in Guatemala, which in turn, rent them and create the self-sustaining system where every five years, the schools have saved enough money through these rental fees to buy new textbooks. And much more. Yeah. And they do computer lives too. And it's just a really, you and I thoroughly believe in this group, right? Agreed. So we would encourage you, if you're in Atlanta, to go to the Fall Fiesta October 21st in Alpharetta. And where can they get more information on the co-ed site, you think? If so, it's www.coeduc.org, right? Yeah, you should go there anyway. COEDUC.org. Agreed. Okay. So let's get to it. Yes. We're going to cover a few of these real quick. Josh, I gave you a sheet there, right?

Will you play along? Sean Ross, hyphen, favorite soda, question mark. What's your favorite soda? Oh, that's what he's asking. I've been big on club soda lately, just plain club soda. Yeah. They have it in the break room now, the little Schweppes bottles. Oh, they do? I've just been drinking it. I didn't know they had that in there. Remember when we talked about in taste, we have taste buds for carbon dioxide? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My carbon dioxide receptors are in heaven. I love that stuff too. I am not a big soda drinker, but I do love a sunkist and root beer. That's good stuff. And I love La Croix, which is the fizzy water with the natural flavoring. Very good, Chuck. Yes. Excellent. Here you go.

Eric Sanchez says, would you fight a full three rounds against George Sampierre for $10,000? He's a UFC guy. Oh, really? The question used to be, would you get in the ring with Mike Tyson for $10,000? $10,000? Yeah, there's no way. This face is way too pretty for that. I just don't like pain. So no, thank you. Okay. The answer is that one. Let's see. Victoria Duggar. That name sounds familiar. Is that Facebook buddy all the time? Yeah, it sounds like she might have been a New York person. Okay. Well, hey there, Victoria Duggar. Whose voice is it who introduces you on the podcast? Is that Jerry? It is not Jerry. It is Roxanne. It is our head of the video department, Roxanne. She does a fine job. And she's from North Carolina. People always say,

what is that accent? It's a non-regional dialect. Yes, it is. She studied. And Roxanne went to high school with Zach Galifianakis. Yes, they know each other. It's a small little tidbit there for you. Shannon Rink says, what do you see as the future of the podcast? You guys have been doing it for a couple of years now. Do you see yourself doing it for a few more years? God willing. Yeah. I love it. We were talking about how the magic's gone, but we're going to soldier on and make half good podcasts. I think we both agree too, though, that we love the podcast so much, even if bigger and better things are in our future. We would like to keep doing the podcast. Sure, but we'll see. Yeah. Let's see. We did this Sean Ross favorite soda one already. Yes. Jan Moffitt asks,

do you use innuendo on purpose or is it just a consequence of talking about things like totem poles? I'd say both. Yeah, it depends. Like, I think a lot of our humor is really accidental, but that just kind of makes it funnier, doesn't you think? It's also fairly scatological and we do a good job at reigning men in. Yeah. For example, you have in your signature a phallus. Nicholas Buccielli. Actually, his name is Nicholas Sarano Buccielli. What has been the most difficult podcast to explain? I had a real hard time with the sun podcast, as we all know. Wow, we did have a lot of trouble with the sun, didn't we? That was, I don't think that was a good one. It was large Hadron Collider for me. Yeah. I think the one that I thought I was going to do well on,

but really didn't was Butterfly Wings Color. Iridescence. That was so maddening. Do you have another one? I do. In the inevitable movie bio on Hippie Rob, who do you think should play the lead? I never met the guy, so you tell me. I can't really envision anybody playing Hippie Rob, but Hippie Rob. So I think that if someone approached us to do a movie on Hippie Rob, we would have to launch like a national search for Rob. Find him and pay him in like Milwaukee's Best Ice. It's funny that I don't know who he is, but I still have a, you know, you get a mental picture when you hear about someone. Who do you have? Who? I picture the guy in office space, the next door neighbor that had the big mullet and the big handlebar mustache. You're not too

far off. Rob is a little softer, a little more self-aware than that guy and with red hair. Oh really? Yeah. That just blew my mind. Yeah, reddish strawberry blonde hair and beard. Crazy. And I got one more. I have one more. It's from Scott Fogg and he says American Coke or Mexican Coke? Definitely Mexican Coke. I don't even drink Coke, but when I see Mexican Coke, I buy it because it's got sugar. Yeah, the real deal. Yep. If you want to ask us a question, you have to be our friend on Facebook. You have to go to facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can also follow us on Twitter. It's S-Y-S-K podcast. As always, you can send us an email at stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

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