Stuff You Should Know - How Marijuana Works

Episode Date: May 1, 2014

For millennia people used marijuana for fun and medicine. Not until the 20th century that was it vilified, unfairly say many. Weed has done lots of good things, from alleviating cancer symptoms to unlocking secrets of the brain. Learn all about pot here. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic

podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all. And now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant getting his demons out. Man, how about this music? Yeah, this is thanks to our guest producer, Noel. Jerry's actually producing, but he's got the musical touch. He's our dub producer. Yeah,

if you want to regaify your podcast, Noel is the man. Yes, a big thanks to Noel. Yeah, and great idea by you. I and I. Yeah. I and I. I love that. How are you doing, man? I'm great. You got some good feelings going on? Yeah, I mean, we've covered grow houses. And we have medical marijuana, right? I don't think so. No. No, because a lot of it didn't seem familiar when I was looking into it in this article. So we've definitely done grow houses. Yeah, which is kind of backwards. Yeah. Well, not really. No, gotta grow up. That's first. So, Chuck, here we are. We're talking about pot and as is our thing, we're going to talk about pot in a very like above the boards, mature way. Are we? I think we can. Sure. We've talked about some other

stuff before. Poop. We've talked about poop plenty of times. Yeah. Well, I think every time we cover drugs, we like to cover the scientific aspects. Sure. Social ramifications. Right. How it's impacted culture. Yeah. Why would this one be any different? Well, and this is probably the biggest, you know, it's the most ubiquitous, I would say. Yeah. You know, yeah. Maybe the gateway to all the other episodes. Very funny. So I guess if you like, we should start at the beginning. How about that? Okay. Let's talk about pot and its history. It's very long, long, long history. And actually, for most of that history, it has been widely beloved and appreciated that apparently pot's been cultivated or marijuana. We're going to use all that in interchangeably weed, pot, marijuana,

yeah, but cannabis. That's probably where it will stop. Like if either one of us says ganja or sticky icky, sticky icky. Like it's in this article. Like we should just shut it down right then. All right. All right. We'll do the, hey, take that back. Yeah. One of us will say that. Okay. Yeah. But like you said, I mean, this is going to be an overview because we could do, honestly, four shows on the history of pot. There's quite a rabbit hole we could go down here. Yeah. We got to avoid it. Yeah. But we're just, we'll give you a historical overview. How about that? Sure. So like I said, pot's been cultivated for 8,500 years. And like I also said that it's mostly been appreciated most of that time for two reasons. One, it is an industrial, or it was,

until the rise of the synthetics, a major industrial fiber, hemp. Sure. And then secondly, it was a, or it still is, a medicinal herb that kind of spills over into recreational use as well. So in the 28th century in China, it looks like it was probably used medicinally. Yeah. And not recreationally, but there are definitely records, written records of the cultivation of cannabis. Well, yeah. A guy named Shen Neng, who was an emperor, but was also China's first physician, wrote about how Ma, that's what they call pot back then in China, was good for the yin and the yang. Both of them. Right. Which is actually, as we'll see, that's a pretty astute observation early on, because what he's talking about is balance,

or homeostasis, which pot definitely affects. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. They have found a mommy, a 3000 year old Egyptian mummy, and looked into this and it, it contained quite a few drugs, but it definitely contained THC. So the Egyptians were getting down. Yeah. Maybe medicinally, who knows? In a thousand and one Arabian nights, it makes an appearance called bang, seem bad, apparently loves this stuff. But supposedly his was hash mixed with opium, which is way more hardcore than what we're talking about. Yeah. Yeah, probably so. They think it originated perhaps in India and north of the Himalayas is their best guess. Yeah. They really have no idea. Yeah. And actually, there's like a lot of debate still over whether there's more than

one type of plant. What do you mean? So there's cannabis indica. Yeah. Cannabis sativa. Yeah, they're different. There's another one called cannabis router Alice. Oh, really? And there's, there's an ongoing debate among botanists over whether they're all actually just different, like varieties of the same plant, right? Or if they really are different species of plants in the same family. Oh, interesting. Yeah. But I think the current common wisdom is that there's at least two cannabis sativa and cannabis indica. Yeah, we may as well get into that a little bit. The indica is the plant itself is shorter and fatter and better suited for indoor growing. And the sativa is taller, it can get really tall, like 25 feet. Yeah. And it's spinlier.

Yeah. And thinner. Although I think for cultivation, I don't think even though it's grown outdoors, I don't think they're growing the 25 foot plants. No, I would imagine the helicopters can see them a lot more easily. Yeah. And the indica is known for more of a body high, quote unquote, couch locked. Yeah. Mellow. Yeah. And the sativa is more known for more energetic and cerebral and creative, more of a brain high. Right. And then conversely, one can make you more paranoid, one can make you more drooly. Yeah. And typically these days, if you are a recreational or medicinal user, you're probably getting some sort of a hybrid strain. Good point. And actually some of the strains, those hybrid strains are have some of the best names, like green crack.

That's a pretty good name. Yeah. AK 47, white widow. White widow is actually a pure strain, isn't it of indica? I'm not sure. I think it is. Yeah. Maui, Maui. Oh, but the pot names are they're pretty funny. They've definitely gotten better from the 70s. Like Maui, Maui. Yeah, that sounds very old school slapping. Yeah. So should we talk about it? Should we talk a little bit about its history in this country, in the United States? Yeah. So I think we should get to that because as I said, Chuck, when you look back on pot all of these years and it's how it was used, it was generally like appreciated, used medicinally, used recreationally, not vilified. It wasn't until it hit North America that it really started to become vilified.

Yeah. Well, it had a good run here too. In the States for a couple of hundred years, it was hemp was grown and cultivated and widely used. Some people say it's, you know, the most versatile plant on earth as far as the different uses you can get out of it. And it was in the 16, 19 Virginia assembly. They even said you have to grow hemp if you're a farmer in Virginia. So not only was it encouraged, it was actually law in Virginia at least. Well, so it had a good run until the early 1900s and 1920s. Well, what's interesting is back in this time, you remember the part in Dates and Confused where like the biggest stoner of the whole group is talking about George Washington like, like planting hemp all day and then comes home and

smokes a big bowl of it. Yeah, Martha, are you ready? It's not clear whether or not any of them were smoking pot and it's entirely possible that they weren't because the idea of smoking pot was lost to the ages for a very long time. The Greeks actually grew marijuana, but they didn't smoke it. They just used it for its fibers and it almost appears like they had no idea you could smoke it and it was psychoactive. So it's possible that our forefathers didn't smoke pot. Yeah. You know, and they were just growing it for industrial uses. And meanwhile, Native Americans were like, you guys are crazy. Rope is nice, but you know. Yeah, it can be both. That's right. In the early 1900s, the Mexican Revolution in 1910,

this is one of the big turning points because a lot of Mexican immigrants came to the U.S. and they were like, hey, you know, you can smoke this stuff. It's pretty nice. And because Mexican immigrants were sort of looked down upon, all of a sudden, pot was looked down upon. Really, Mexican immigrants were looked down upon somewhere in the U.S. history? Yeah, the whole thing about pot being vilified, or I guess there was a moral panic, basically, is what they call it that erupted around it. And a lot of it was based in racism toward Mexican Americans or Mexican immigrants. Yeah, in the 1930s, especially in the Depression, they were sort of had a bad name because, you know, they're immigrants in this country and

we're Americans and we're in a depression and we want the work and kind of a lot of the same arguments here these days. But the association with pot was definitely a part of it. It definitely was. But also, I read this NPR blog on Code Switch about this very topic and they were saying like, yes, there's a lot of racism that led to the criminalization of pot. But Mexico was 20 years ahead of the U.S. in criminalizing pot as well. So you can't just say, well, it was just Americans disdain or dislike or distrust of Mexicans. It's more complex than that. And this guy was saying that really you can conclude there was a fear of what this drug did. Right. And the reason why there was a fear of what the drug did was because the newspaper reports

at the time had people like killing entire families and like wandering around the streets, like with somebody's head covered in blood, because they just smoked a joint. And they were really trying to unpack this. Like why would that happen? Did it happen? Were all of them just overblown reports? The fact was, when you picked up the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, there were front page stories about this. And they were like, brown skin, Mexican kills white family of eight on marijuana cigarette. And that's why. And actually, the word marijuana was kind of used as a derogatory term to kind of Mexicanify cannabis, which is what it had been called prior to that. That was the word came from. Yeah. Did not know that. I'm off my soapbox.

Look at you teaching me. Well, movies like reefer madness definitely didn't help. In 1936, the famous propaganda movie from French director Louis Gasnier, it's, you know, required viewing for any college student at some point. Yeah, it's, it's not very good and it's not very enjoyable, but it is kind of funny showing the, the reefer addicts, you know, driven to insanity by the marijuana cigarettes. And somebody gets murdered, right? I think someone murdered somebody else because they smoked pot. And then in 1937, a year after reefer madness, Congress passed the marijuana tax act. And this is basically where the tide turned. And it was essentially criminalized because it called for restricting possession just to individuals who paid a tax,

which is like $1,000 for medical or industrial use. Right. So in other words, if you're just, you know, Sammy Podhead, you can't live that way anymore in this country. No, you would basically have to set up a shell organization, pay the $1,000 tax, and then you'd be able to import marijuana. But if you were caught with it smoking it, you'd still get busted. Yeah. It was a big deal when that happened. And you can kind of lay all of this at the feet of one guy, a moral crusader who ran the federal bureau of narcotics in the thirties, well, the thirties until the sixties. His name was Harry Anslinger. And he was the one who really kind of started this crusade against pot and got the government to turn against it, got the press to turn against it, and got the marijuana tax

act passed. Yeah. But even while this guy's like sitting there shouting like, all marijuana's gonna kill us all. It's a horrible drug. And it's as bad as it gets. There were studies, independent studies that were funded by the government that were showing like, you guys are kind of overstating this a little bit. Yeah. In 1944, Mayor LaGuardia of New York issued a report that basically said that it doesn't induce violence, insanity, or sex crimes. Yeah. And he was a moral reformer himself. Remember, he went after the Minsky brothers from the burlesque episode? Yeah. So it's not like he was just some big pothead. Like he was a moral reformer himself and he still found this report. Yeah. That's a good point. That led to the sentencing laws over time have kind of waffled back

and forth. Yeah. In the 50s, they were pretty strict because of the Boggs Act and the Narcotics Control Act. And that's when they started setting mandatory minimums for basically any drug, but including marijuana, of course. Yeah. Like you would go to prison for a long time if you got caught with pot. Yeah. Two to 10 years for a first time offender in the 1950s. Getting caught with pot. Yeah. That's it. Any amount, right? And in the 60s, things relaxed a little bit in every way you can imagine in this country. And you know, President Kennedy and LBJ issued reports that found kind of the same thing as they found out in the 40s. It doesn't induce violence. And in these reports, it said it wasn't a gateway drug either. Yeah. In the 1960s.

Which is still up for debate, really. Yeah. I don't think it's ever been definitively. No, because you read every other report you read, it's going to say something a little different. Yeah. About what the gateway drug is. And plus, I think defining what makes a gateway drug, too, has never been fully established. Yeah. How can you test something scientifically if it's you don't have it defined, you know? Yeah. And that led, the 1960s led to a repeal of a lot of the mandatory minimums in the 70s. But then of course, Ronald Reagan in the 1980s brought a lot of that stuff back. And Nixon, too, he fought that tooth and nail, like even though they tied in the country was turning one way, Nixon was like, nope, we're going to keep pot as illegal as

possible. And as a matter of fact, we're going to put it on the same level as heroin and cocaine. Yeah. And during the Nixon administration, the Schaefer Commission was a bipartisan commission found, again, that it should be decriminalized and Nixon was just like, well, I don't want to hear that. Sorry. I'm going to make up my own mind about this. I'm the president. Exactly. Yeah. So like you said, the Reagan era brought it back. Not brought pot back. No, brought back any kind of anti-government sentiment toward pot itself was redoubled in the 80s under the Reagan administration. Just say no. Mandatory minimums were, or mandatory sentences were reenacted. In 1986, thanks to the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, if you got caught with 100 marijuana plants,

you got the same jail time as if you were caught with 100 grams of heroin. Yeah. That's interesting. Plants versus grams. That's sort of an apples to oranges comparison. Yeah. Plants versus heroin. It's like plants versus zombies. I know at one point, this is sort of an off topic, but I don't know if they've changed it, but at one point they were sentencing LSD users by the weight. Right. And wasn't that the deal? It was like if you were an LSD dealer and you had 20 sheets of acid, they would weigh it. And they were like, well, wait a minute. You can't weigh the paper. That's like weighing the suitcase that the cocaine comes in. Right. Yeah. And I think that's still the same though,

isn't it? I don't know, but I do know what you're talking about. And apparently, like if they would, if you had it mixed in with liquid or something like diluted into liquid form, they'd take the weight of all the liquid rather than the proportion of it. Yeah. I don't know. It could be, we could be like showing our gullibility for urban legend or not, but I don't know if it's the case. I don't know if it still is, but I know it definitely was. It definitely was. Yeah. Cause I saw like an HBO special on these LSD dealers that were basically serving like life sentences for dealing acid right alongside murders and rapists. Yeah. We'll have to check into that. And people who are caught with pot in the 30s.

That's right. So pot these days cost-wise varies a lot depending on quality. Obviously, it ranges. I love that in this article, it says $1.77 to $17.66 per gram. I'd like one gram of marijuana, please. Yeah. That's interesting. But these days, you can expect to pay for what people consider good marijuana, about $120 for a quarter bag, which is a quarter of an ounce. Right. Which is seven grams, right? Cause there's 28 grams in an ounce. Yeah. I think between seven and eight grams. But it depends on if the dealer likes you. Exactly. Yeah. But that's generally how it breaks down is, you know, you have it by the pound, which is, you know, the pot dealer, I guess. And then

they break it down into ounces and then to quarter bags and dime bags and whatever people can afford, I guess. Well, it's funny because in the state of the country right now, like you can take dealer and dispensary and basically flip them and interchange them. And no matter what you're talking about, virtually the sentence is going to remain unchanged, basically, you know, because the marijuana dispensaries are following like basically the same format that marijuana dealers in this country have for decades. What do you mean, like pricing and? Yeah, the pricing, the way it's sold by weight. Oh, sure, sure. Like I think you still buy like like quarters and half ounces and ounces and stuff, which makes sense, but they're also getting a lot

of this from people who are growing it indoors in their basement. And it's like, now they have licenses for all this, but it's basically like all the people who were doing it illegally before or some of the people who are doing it illegally before went and applied for licenses. And now they're doing the same thing, but they just have like a license to do it in a frame on their wall. Yeah. And dispensaries, you're going to find a lot of other things like edibles. Yeah. And they even have now cannabis strips, like, you know, the little Listerine breath strips. Oh, yeah. They have little cannabis strips. It's just a little edible strip of concentrated cannabis. Huh. And I guess you put it under your tongue and that's better for your lungs, I would imagine if you're

a cancer patient or something. Yeah. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. Let's talk about the planet itself, Chuck. Okay. Maybe the most recognizable plant, that leaf, you know. Yeah, which is, here's a little fact for you. The botanical description of the way that marijuana leaves are arranged is groovy called palmately, like the palm of a hand with five fingers out stretched. Yeah. That's the pot leaf that you can find on lighters and baseball caps at gas stations. Yeah, exactly. And like you said, the plant itself, depending on which variety it is, either very tall or kind of tall, depending on whether it's trimmed or not. Right. And the buds or whatever that are smoked are actually the flowers of the plants. Yeah, the flowers of the

female. Which apparently are, that's sensamia. So the definition of the word sensamia are female flowers that have reached maturity without being pollinated. I can't hear that word without thinking of Caddyshack. I don't remember that part. Bill Murray. Little California sensamia. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what that means? Yes. That's the term sensamia. So basically, unless you're like 14, if you're smoking pot, you're smoking sensamia. Okay. So yes, the term sensamia means pot. Okay. The pot that's smoked, although the male flowers do have some THC. It's just far, far less of female than female. Yeah. As a cultivator, males are not what you want. In fact, males can disturb the cycle of the female plants. So the goal of the cultivator is to get

the male out of there as quickly as it can be identified, basically. Yeah. And weed is actually a good moniker for pot because it spreads very easily. Paulin is like 24 microns, which apparently is very easily wind-borne and goes very great distances. Yeah. There's very few obstacles to pollinization. So if you have female plants and you have what you suspect to be a male plant anywhere nearby, you want to get rid of the male plant. Right. And then tell the officer, they must have just blown over here and taken root, sir. These hundred plants in my backyard came from my neighbor. Right. Paulin is 24 microns. Come on. Yeah. He says, he says, tell your story to the judge, my friend. Right. There are about... Oh, we should also say there

are hermaphroditic plants, hermaphroditic plants. Oh, yeah. That feature both male and female flowers. Those are probably a mess. Yeah. I think that... Or maybe that's a good thing. I think that's like a lot of hybrid ones are hermaphroditic. Okay. Yeah. Well, there are hundreds of chemicals in the marijuana plant, 109 of which are cannabinoids, about 33 are cancer-causing, and we'll get to that stuff later too. But ironically, they also are cancer-killing, some of them. It is an unplant. Yeah. But we're going to get to all that stuff too. Right. Okay. And your THC is really the main psychoactive ingredient. What's the long name for it? Delta-9 tetrahydrocanabinol. That is THC. That is what the high that you're seeking,

it lies within that chemical. Yeah. And actually, you can point to the part of the plant where it is. If you've ever seen a marijuana plant and it has kind of this hazy appearance from far away, and you get up close and you realize that haze is actually made up of a bunch of little clear, sticky protrusions coming off of the leaves, those are called trichomes, and that is where the THC is stored. That's right. And depending on the plant and the variety and how it's grown and when it's harvested and the genetics and how you process it, it's, that's all going to affect the THC level. And as a cultivator, your goal is to have the THC level as high as you can get it. Yeah. That is up for debate as well from what

I've seen. Apparently, they're just going higher and higher and higher as far as THC content goes. And there's a lot of recreational pot users and medicinal pot users who are saying like, too much, dude. Like Louis C.K. has a bit about how when he was in like the, in the 70s, he could smoke like a whole joint and be like totally mellow or cool. And I was saying he takes like one hit and you go totally insane. And apparently there is like a point where it's just like, that's too much. Well, Louis C.K. can afford better pot these days. No, but you're right. It all depends on the end user, you know, what they're into. Sure. But generally speaking, the cultivator wants to deliver the most bang for the buck.

You would think so, sure. So Chuck, let's figuratively smoke some pot and follow it through the body. Okay. Okay. You know what? We probably shouldn't do this ourselves. No. We like our jobs. Exactly. Yeah. And we might be fired for even figuratively smoking pot. Well, yeah. And who wants to? Let's, let's get, how about that scruffy looking guy? Farmer Ted. Yeah. He's, he's, look at him. He's game. So a lot of people don't know this, but we have a friend named Farmer Ted, who has the very strange characteristic of having entirely translucent skin. He's kind of like the invisible man or something like that. Yeah. And what better person than to follow the trail of THC in the human body than when

you can actually see? Yeah. Because the rest of his organs or anything aren't translucent. It's just a skin. Yeah. And thank you for coming in Ted. So Ted is going to smoke a joint. A marijuana cigarette. Yes. And he's going to smoke what is a typical marijuana cigarette, approximately 500 milligrams of marijuana, which translates to roughly, I don't know, maybe 10 milligrams of THC. Okay. So he's going to take a lighter and take it to the end of this joint. I'm making air quotes here because it's, that's vernacular. And the THC is going to be burned and carried into his lungs. So Farmer Ted is kind of high already. Yeah. The, the THC in the smoke is carried to the avioli in the lungs. And the avioli is where gas exchange occurs. It's where

your oxygen deprived blood comes to get a refill of oxygen to be replenished. And since there's THC smoke present in that oxygen in the lungs, the THC is going to hitch a ride into the bloodstream and travel through the body. Yeah. So it just takes seconds. Yeah. One of the places it's going to go is the brain. And when it hits the brain, it starts doing some pretty funky stuff. That's right. We could ask Farmer Ted how he's feeling right now. And he'll probably say, yeah, he can't talk. He might say that my eyes are dilating and the colors are a lot more vivid. Yeah. I'll be hungry soon. I'll be hungry soon. My other senses are enhanced as well. But hold on. I'm starting to feel a little paranoid. Yes. Let's, let's get into this.

Listen, let's get into how pot affects the brain because it is pretty gosh darn interesting if you ask me. Yeah. And, and this is how it, the physiological effects, the end user might have different reactions. Yeah. It doesn't make everyone paranoid necessarily. No. And I really looked into it hard to find out why some people are paranoid and some people don't. Part of it is, well, there's two things. One, and I didn't find anything definitive, which I'm sad about, but one, the two things I came up with is one, it depends on the pot. Sure. If there is a difference between indica and sativa, the prevailing wisdom is that if you smoke indica, you're going to be less likely to be paranoid. Okay. The other reason is it would depend probably on the existing

brain chemistry of the user. My brain chemistry is not the same as yours. Right. And neither one of ours is the same as Jerry. So of course, when we introduce a psychoactive chemical into that chemistry, it's going to affect it differently. Yeah. So that's what I came up with basically. I wonder if one of the reasons indica is less likely is because that's the couch bound one and you're less likely to be paranoid sitting on your couch rather than the more active one like smoking and going to the Renaissance festival. Where you'd be freaked out stone sober, where you'd meet John Strickland and he would mess with you if he found out you're a stone. Anyway, I'm curious. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. I've also found there's recent research that shows the

cannabinols. Yeah. There's a precursor chemical to them that's called the cannabidiolic acid, CBD. Right. And CBD has been found that to actually counteract the schizoid effects of pot, like the stuff that makes you paranoid, that symptom. If you smoke a pot that has a higher CBD to THC ratio, maybe it's even or something like that, the CBD is going to cut down on the schizophrenic symptoms while leaving like the rest of the stuff intact. Oh, interesting. Isn't that weird? So I wonder if if Indica just by nature has a higher CBD content. Yeah, maybe so. Yeah. There are people that know this. Okay. So back in the sixties, there was a researcher, his name escapes me, who started looking into what the heck made pot make you loco, right? And he found THC.

So THC was isolated in the sixties. And from that, they reverse engineered how THC affected the brain and effectively discovered an entire system that we didn't know existed thanks to pot research. It's called the endocannabinoid system. And it's a very ancient system that's found in everything from sea squirts to every vertebrate on the planet, including a sea squirt, sea squirts, very primitive animals all the way up to us. Well, I know that I didn't quite get the endocannabinoid part. So take it away. Okay. So I know it works backwards. Yes. That's a very important point. So, you know, when like, when we do anything from our brain says, grab coffee mug, right, to, to us thinking about how we're feeling at any given point, all of that is based on the transmission

among neurons, right? Yeah, we've covered that a lot. The neurotransmitters kind of covered that gap between the neurons and deliver the message. Right. And then depending on where the, the neurotransmitter is and what chemical has come across, then different things happen, right? Well, the endocannabinoid system is this kind of dimmer switch that is around all neurons that works backward to kind of say, whoa, whoa, let's not pump those neurochemicals out as frequently or in as much abundance. Right. And the whole point of the endocannabinoid system is to maintain homeostasis or good for your yin, good for your yang. Right. Isn't that weird? Yeah. Okay. So when you smoke pot, your endocannabinoid system, which has receptors all throughout the body,

there's CB2 receptors, which are mainly associated with your immune system. Yeah. And then CB1 receptors are throughout the brain. And when you smoke pot, the cannabinoids, the phytocannabinoids, which is THC in this case, go into these reasons of your brain and stick to your brain, to your endocannabinoid receptors. Yeah, they basically just kind of hijacked the system. So these, the systems that the endocannabinoid receptors are meant to regulate are no longer being regulated by our body's endocannabinoids. They're being hijacked by THC, which is not subject to our body's whims and all that. We just basically have to ride that snake out until it's over. So you end up with all of these different weirdo symptoms that you normally wouldn't have,

which is basically the result of your endocannabinoid system going haywire because it's been hijacked by THC. Right. So like your hippocampus. Yes. We've talked about that. That's good for learning. Yeah, it is. And when the endocannabinoid receptors are full of THC, you're not learning or making memories as well as normal. Yeah, we're talking short-term memory. It definitely impairs that. And that's why if you've ever hung out with a bunch of potheads, you'll hear the phrase, what are we just talking about? Quite a lot. Yeah. Because it's going to affect the hippocampus in that way. Yeah, you're not forming memories. It's also going to affect your coordination, which is the cerebellum. So you may be a little clumsier. And then you have the basal ganglia,

and that directs your unconscious muscle movements. Yeah. So the reason Farmer Ted is paranoid, he doesn't like that plant looking at him the way it is. Right. He's paranoid because his basomedial amygdala has been affected. It's endocannabinoid receptors have been hijacked by THC. And it's this region of the brain where we learn to fear dangerous situations. Farmer Ted is learning to fear things he normally wouldn't fear. Right. Because the endocannabinoids that the body normally makes are not operating the way that they're supposed to be. So he's now afraid of that plant. Now, isn't that the endocannabinoids, the same system that they have finally pinpointed the munchies or activates the munchies? Yeah. And your hypothalamus, your ghrelin production.

Remember ghrelin? Oh, yeah. It's that chemical that makes you feel hungry. So you go eat. Your ghrelin production and absorption is mediated by endocannabinoids in the hypothalamus, which gets hijacked by THC, which suddenly all food looks irresistible. Yeah. And which is why it is prescribed for people going through chemotherapy and other things because they lose their appetite and lose a lot of weight. And aside from helping to stem nausea, it also will stimulate the appetite. Yeah. So that's the endocannabinoid system. And that is how POT affects it. I feel like a ta-da. Yeah. We left out the biggest part. It also causes a release in dopamine, which is what makes you feel high. Sure. Any euphoric feeling comes from that release of dopamine. But it's also possible

that any paranoia or those schizoid symptoms that come along with it are from too much dopamine. Right. So that too high a release of dopamine can lead to feelings of paranoia and anxiety. Yeah. And these feelings, the effect of THC period is going to last a couple of hours, depending on obviously how good the pot is and how much you smoked. Right. But the chemicals are going to be in your body a lot longer than that with the terminal half-life of 20 hours to 10 days after you've smoked it. So if you get, you know, if you're one of the, how many percentage of companies drug test? 57%? Yeah. 50 something. 53 maybe? Yeah. Depending on your weight and how much you smoked and how long you smoked. 57. You're right. You're going to either pass

that drug test or not. It can stain your body for, you know, weeks though. Yeah. Yeah. And there's no way to tell because it depends on you, your metabolism and the pot potency of the pot too. But yeah, your body breaks it down into five metabolites and they test for all five just using a basic immuno assay where they introduce an antibody to your urine and it reacts or doesn't react and turns it a pretty color. A pretty bad color. Right. Chuck, we got a little more on the body. Okay. Well, we'll get to it after this break. How about that? Sounds good. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke,

but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, Paydude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave

a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Farmer Ted, stand back up. Let's abuse you some more. Although he seems like he's enjoying it. He's a little cooler now. He was petting that plant a minute ago, I think. So they made up. Good. So if you can see his liver right here, right there. So Farmer Ted is going to eat some pot this time. Okay. So what's going to happen? He's ingested pot orally, one way or another,

whether cooked in a brownie or just eating the pot. Sure. And the body is going to take this and break it down, metabolize it, and send it to the liver. And when this happens, it's going to, the THC is going to hit the bloodstream in this stomach anyway. So it's going to get some sort of buzz or whatever. But in the liver, he's going to metabolize it into another psychoactive chemical that isn't really present when you smoke it. So it doesn't, the effects aren't quite as pronounced, but they last longer and there's an additional weirdo thing to it. Well, it's going to take longer, but last longer. The effects of it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But there's also that extra psychoactive chemical that's produced in the liver that's not really produced when you smoke it.

Yeah. Isn't that weird? It is weird. And it's also the reason why my new young travelers to Amsterdam, you know, want to try their first pot brownie, and they don't think it's working. Then they try another one. And this is the ones you see like sitting alongside the canal, like rocking themselves. Yes. Because it takes a little while. It does. When you ingest it via smoke, it's almost instantaneous. When you ingest it by eating it, it's going to take a lot longer. That's right. So I guess we should talk a little bit about whether or not it's addictive because that's another raging debate for years and years. How addictive is pot? There are all kinds of studies that contradict one another.

And I think it's one of these things that probably comes down to the person somewhat, if you have that addictive personality. But they do see effects of pot cessation, irritability, anxiety, depression, maybe sleeplessness and insomnia, restlessness. And that's if you quit the pot after having been a user. And it's psychologically addictive like any drug. You're going to crave it if you want it. Sure. Apparently, it can have an impact on your levels of anxiety. Like you might not feel anxious when you're stoned, but you could feel anxious when you're not stoned. So you get stoned more often, which while not necessarily a classic addiction, because the addiction model follows strictly the limbic system. And pot activates it somewhat,

but it's not really acting specifically on it. It's acting more on the endocannabinoid system. Indirectly, it might be hitting the limbic system, but it's not following that classic addiction route. But at the very least, that's habitual. If you need to smoke something to get back to normal, that's a habit and a bad one because you have a crutch there. Yeah. Unless you're Willie Nelson and then you're just like, what's the problem? You just keep smoking it. I love my crutches. What are some, well, I guess we can talk about some of the medicinal uses. We did talk about cancer and AIDS patients to stimulate appetite. The old glaucoma card is a big one to play.

Yeah. If you're applying for your medical marijuana card, it relieves eye pressure. I couldn't find how it does that. Yeah. But it's been, that's one of the earliest uses of it. I remember when all this first started to hit. Yeah. California passed legal medicinal marijuana in 1996. It was almost all glaucoma at the time, in which it seemed like everybody was like, you are so faking glaucoma. You need popper glaucoma, and then it just became more and more established as fact. It became associated with helping more and more maladies. And of course, if you go to get your card and you go to the dispensary, they have a long list of things that it can help. Right. Basically anything you can think of.

Yes. They will put on their list. As long as you have a prescription card and they think they're cool with it. Well, no, that's to get the card. Oh, gotcha. Like the, you know, the 420 doctor. The 420 doctor. If your doctor wears Birkenstocks, yeah, you can probably get a medicinal marijuana card from him. But don't see him for anything else. It can help with epileptic seizures. In fact, here in Georgia, that's been on the table due to a famous story of a boy here in Georgia who's seizures were like massively cut down by taking a marijuana oil, which has no THC. Like the kid's not getting high, basically. It doesn't have psychoactive properties? No. And Georgia is, believe it or not,

trying to speed through. I know it didn't go through initially a few weeks ago, just because I think they didn't have time to get it through. Right. But there seems to be support for it. Yeah. But just for it. Very surprising. Yeah. Just for the marijuana oil, though, not like dispensaries or anything like that. Yeah. Well, I mean, could be the beginning of it or it could be a sea change in how some states, you know, legalize marijuana. I'd be surprised. Well, but I'm wondering if it's a change like, okay, if this medicinal marijuana oil works, we can legalize that and that's it. Right. It'll be like the model for other states. Oh, I see what you mean. And then MS, multiple sclerosis decreases muscle spasms. And I've seen

this firsthand with a good friend. It really helps him out. And Montell Williams has famously come out as an MS sufferer who is a longtime advocate for using marijuana. Well, it makes sense again. I mean, if you're having muscle spasms, perhaps your endocannabinoid system is not functioning correctly and the THC goes in and actually supplements it. Yeah. Yeah. And also, I remember I said that it fights cancer. Oh, yeah. If you're going to cancer.gov and type cannabis and medicinal cannabis, I think it brings up basically a laundry list of all of the ways that marijuana helps. And it's been found to fight to destroy cancer cells. Oh, wow. Like THC goes in and destroys cancer cells in the liver. Apparently it's been shown to destroy breast cancer cells.

Like not helps you feel better when you have cancer. Right. Right. Can actually cure cancer. Wow. In some cases. It was a carcinoma in the liver that it was shown to be able to cure. It's definitely worth checking out too. That's awesome. And it also alleviates pain and inflammation associated with injury or disease. Yeah. The way it does that is with the other cannabinoid receptors, the CB2 receptors in the body are related to the immune system. So it goes in and messes with those and says, Hey, everybody, calm down. Let's stop being so inflamed. Well, that's, yeah, I guess that's why it's prescribed a lot for arthritic conditions these days. Yeah. That would make sense. Yeah. Rheumatoid arthritis. And that one's called?

Yeah. I don't know what the difference is between rheumatoid and regular arthritis. We should do one on arthritis. All right. Let's do it. How about that? It is still, despite all the medical research, it is still scheduled as a, or classified as a schedule one substance, which is the most dangerous drugs that currently have no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. And there have been many pushes over the years to get it reclassified and not in the same group as heroin and cocaine and ecstasy, but that has not been successful as of yet. But I think that will probably happen at some point soon. It seems like it's going that way. But supposedly around the time normal was founded, the national

organization for the re legalization of marijuana legislation. Is that right? I'm pretty sure. Okay. It's quite a mouthful. That's why everybody's called it normal. Festivals, East Avenue, Piedmont Park in the nineties, the normal rally. Hash bash. Yeah. I saw the black crows there once. It was great. So, but yeah, normal was found in the seventies at a time when it looked like, I mean, Carter was president, Willie Nelson had smoked a joint on the White House roof. Yeah. Like it was the time for, you know, pot to be decriminalized and everybody thought like it's going to happen. It's happening. It's happening. Yeah. And apparently nope, it didn't happen. They pulled back from

the brink. So it's entirely possible that what looks right now to be the wind of change that is very much sweeping through the country, it could be stopped baffled, I guess. So it's the fat lady has not sung yet. Well, I think the first step toward a federal and the difference here is, you know, federal laws versus state laws. It's still federally not accepted, but in states like of course, Colorado and Washington. And then how many states have medical like 11 20 or 20? Yeah. Okay. If anything's going to happen federally, it's got to be reclassified away from schedule one first. Right. So until that happens, you're probably not going to see any federal laws enacted no or repealed. And we should say the mood of the country right now is about split a little bit

in favor toward pot pro pot. Yeah. So like in Washington and Colorado, both votes were like 55 44 55 43 something like that. Yeah. And the CBS poll from 2014, I think in January, found about the same 55% of Americans favor legalizing pot opposed to like I think 44 43%. Yeah. So it's clearly moved out of, you know, just the hippie stoners at the normal rally into people supporting that kind of legislation that don't even use marijuana because there is a groundswell of support that, Hey, it's not a schedule one drug. It's not a schedule one drug. Alcohol is more destructive to, to your life and your body. And why are you going to outlaw this plant and put people in prison with a war on pot that isn't working? Right. It's like wasting money,

whereas we could tax it and raise money. So there's, there's been a big title shift in the past decade, really in the past 20 years, but in the past 10, like if you asked me 10 years ago, if there would be recreational use allowed in any state, I would have said probably not. Right. But here we are with Washington and Colorado. Here we are. Like where you can grow it. You can buy it and have, I don't know how much, but I think you're allowed to have a certain small amount, right? Yeah. Like you can't drive around with 10 pounds in your trunk or anything. I don't know how much you can. It's, it's definitely more than just like a small amount. But you, and you can just literally go to the store and buy pot. And there's actually an

awesome New Yorker article called Buzzkill from late last year. And it's about this economist that Washington state hired to basically create the framework for their legal pot industry. Like the economic model? Yeah. And like on a macroeconomic level and a microeconomic level, he's like, we're, whether you like it or not, you're going to be competing with dealers still. You're sure. And so you want to make your tax money, but you don't want to make so much that you price yourself out of the market and the black market stays open. You want to get rid of the black market by basically competing against them, competing them out of business. Right. And there's just all these different factors that this guy like was kind of laying out and

it was really interesting. Buzzkill. I have to check that out. Yeah. All right. Let's take another break here. And then when we get back, we'll talk a bit about the potency of marijuana over the years. I'm Mangeh Shatikar and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses,

major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it

and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, there's a debate that I don't quite understand about the potency of marijuana in like the 60s and 70s versus today. The debate is that the pot is much more potent than it was in the 60s and 70s. And first of all, they didn't test a wide variety of marijuana strains in the 60s and 70s. Right, it was like stems and seeds Mexican rag-wag. Yeah, so that's the only way you can tell a true test of potency is to study a wide variety. They didn't. They never did that. They didn't test the Maui-Waui. They never did that in the 60s and 70s, and you can't go back in a time machine. So what's the point in debating it? The pot today is how it is. It is. And basically what the best you could hope to do is like have Dennis Hopper smoke some pot and be like,

huh? And he can be like, oh yeah. He's dead. Hopper's dead? Yeah, dude. Since when? Yeah, I just saw him on like an insurance commercial. He got it years ago. I didn't know that. Yeah. That's sad. It is sad. Sorry, a state of Dennis Hopper. Get Willie Nelson, though. Peter Fonda. Yeah, he's alive. Okay, so you just have Peter Fonda tell you. He can tell you. There's plenty of people who could say the point is that is largely irrelevant because we're not dealing with creating pot policy based on the 1960s. Right. We're dealing with pot policy today. And we know very clearly that pot is more potent today than it was even a couple of decades ago. And we know that in part because of something called the University of Mississippi potency monitoring

project, basically they get their hands on seized pot that the cops get their hands on. They sent some of it to Mississippi and Mississippi tests it for potency. And they said that between 1993 and 2008, the average amount of THC across all samples rose from 3.4% to 8.8% from 93 to 2008. And it's going up, up, up apparently now with the rise of dispensaries and the openly shared knowledge of how to cultivate pot and do what you want to genetically select for. It's up to like 25% supposedly. And I didn't see that figure disputed. 25% THC content. That's insane. That's that will drive you insane. I can't imagine that. If the average is 8.8 or was 3.4 in 1993 and is now up to 25%, that's potent. Yeah. And that's, I guess, for the top of the

line most expensive pot you can buy. Yeah, but I predict that there's going to be like kind of a retro vintage pushback. A return to swag. Not necessarily that, but something that's like way more toned down or it'll be like marketed to people who like don't want like that level of a high, I guess. Yeah, like 70s weed. Yeah, that's all they have to do to market it. Green leisure suit or something like that. Yeah, boom, success. Although I don't know if anybody would want to go back to the 70s because I think it really was very low potency, comparatively speaking. Yeah. All right. Should we cover some of the ways that it's smoked? Well, I already covered the joint, right? Yes. That's what Slim had. Slim had the joint. I do know

that Slim happens to prefer the blunt. Oh, yeah. And that is a cigar that is sliced open and tobacco is taken out and generally mixed back in with some of the pot. And it's- Oh, is that right? Yeah, it's called a blunt. I didn't know that the tobacco was ever mixed back in. It depends on, I mean, you don't have to. Like a spliff is popular in Europe. That's with regular tobacco. Like drum? Yeah, whatever. Just any kind of loosely tobacco mixed in with the pot. Yeah, I think the blunt's usually they take most of the cigar tobacco out. I think you're probably right. And then you don't even need to buy a cigar now. They have blunt wrappers like basically cigar rolling papers. Oh, really? Yeah, and flavored ones too. Yeah, I've heard of those.

Interesting, man. You can have your just traditional pipe. If you go into any head shop, you're going to find a big variety of all sorts of handmade glass pipes. Or remember the brass ones with the little kind of tie dye plastic thing in the middle for holding because the brass would get so hot apparently. No, I remember that. Do you remember that from the 90s? Like, did you go to Lollapalooza? Yeah, I went to Lollapalooza. Well, then you saw those things. Okay. I remember the first time I smelled pot. It was at a concert. Yeah. And it was like 13. And it was such a foreign. I think I've talked about this on the show. I was just like, what in the world is that? Like, I've never smelled anything like that in my life. It's like someone burning a spare tire

or something. Yeah. And then you've got the the bong, or water pipes. And that uses water to, I guess, cool down the smoke. Right. And I remember that from the Scott Beyo after school special, Stoned. Did you ever see that one? No, I saw Zapt. That was a regular movie. But he was growing pot in that one. He and William Hames were growing it at school. Yeah, and Stoned was one of the classic after school specials where he was a pothead that like ended up accidentally killing his brother or something. Like he went swimming and knocked him on the head with the oar of a boat by accident. Oh gosh. He may not have died though. He may have rescued him. So the after school special that I remember most vividly is that the one where Helen Hunt took

PCP and jumped out the window like the second story of her school. I mean, they scared the pants off of us. Yeah. Which is the point. And Nancy Reagan was like off on the set like, but I remember hearing the bong. He smoked out of the bong Scott Beyo did. And I heard that the bubbling sound and I was like, well, that's a weird sound. And then you heard it on the Cypress Hill album years later. And I was like, Hey, that's Scott Beyo. And then, of course, we talked about the edibles and vaporizing, which is like all the rage these days. Yeah. And I imagine it just hit me the other day. I'll bet everyone who smokes pot uses E-cigarettes as like little vaporizer one hitters, don't they? Some do. I would imagine so. Yeah. In fact,

you can buy like pre made cartridges of like hash oil and things to stick in your little E-cigarette. I know they sell those in Colorado. Stick that in your E-cigarette. But we should point out, we say kids these days and teenagers, although marijuana use in teenagers has escalated over the years, you can't pin it down to one demographic. I think you'd be surprised if everybody who smoked pot on a semi regular basis was outed about who you would see. I've heard stories from friends whose fathers were like CEO executives and they had cannabis clubs where all the other CEOs that they were friends with like grew their own specialty pot and traded it among each other. So a wide range of people

use it. Although the vast majority supposedly, I don't know if vast majority is right. Although according to polls or surveys, the vast majority are teenagers followed by post-teens. But in between 1992 and 1999, marijuana use among teenagers doubled. And you know what? I lay that almost exclusively, at least at first, at the feet of Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. You think so? I put it out there, yes. With The Chronic? Absolutely. Yeah, that was a great album. 1992. Yeah, I can, when I hear that album, I think of Street Fighter II. Did you play a lot of that then? We would sit around in college, listen to The Chronic and play Street Fighter II. Yeah. It was a good album. It was a great game. I never really played Street Fighter II. They were

really good. So I found a study here. I have to interject one other thing. Okay. Have you seen the YouTube of Mike Tyson Clips set to Street Fighter sound effects? No. That's pretty awesome. From his one-man show? No, no, from his boxing career. Oh. And it fits perfectly. He's like, are you getting at one point? I'll have to see that. So if you're smoking pot, it's obviously not going to be great for your lungs and your body because you're inhaling smoke. And like we said earlier, there are 33 cancer-causing chemicals in marijuana. And it's going to deposit tar into your lungs just like cigarettes. And in fact, if you smoke equal amounts of marijuana in regular tobacco, it's going to deposit about four times as much tar as regular tobacco. What's called the

tar burden? Is it? However, there was a large-scale long-term study released recently by the University of Alabama at Birmingham. And they collected data from 5,000 adults for more than 20 years, which these are always my favorite studies, you know, because you can tell stuff long-term. And they found that low to moderate use of pot is less harmful to your lungs than exposure to tobacco. And I think they measured airflow rate, which is the speed which you can blow out air, and then lung volume, which is the amount of air you can hold in your lungs. And they found that with tobacco, there's a one-to-one relationship. The more you lose, the more loss you have, lung-wise. And with marijuana up to a certain rate, it actually increased the airflow rate.

And their rationale was that a cigarette smoker, like a moderate to heavy smoker, smoking like, you know, 20 cigarettes a day, whereas no one's going out there and smoking, you know, well, that's not true. 20 joints a day? Yeah, but it would be probably less than that, because it's more concentrated. But you don't see people smoking five joints a day either, unless they have other Willie Nelson or Snoop Dogg. I'm sorry, Snoop Lion. Is he still on Snoop Lion? I think so. I could see how pot would have an effect on your lungs, though, as well, especially compared to cigarettes, because like no one uses a filter on their joints. Well, yeah. And they, you inhale deeper with marijuana than you do with tobacco. So those are

both factors. Yeah. But if you're smoking a pack a day and you're smoking a lot of weed, you're not doing yourself any favors in the lung department. Yes. Even though it might help you fight that cancer, it may give you cancer to begin with. Yeah, just use non-psychoactive marijuana oil, like they give that little kid. Yeah. Or marinal, although that's psychoactive. It's a THC pill. Yeah, I remember. They use it for like wasting disease and increase appetite and that kind of stuff. Just to mess with the endocannabinoid system of people who need it. That's right. You got anything else? No, I mean, this could have been a two-parter, but well, this is a good overview. I think it is. I hope everybody enjoyed it. Yeah.

You learned a little something? Anything else? Nope. If you want to learn more about marijuana, aka cannabis, type either of those words into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And let's see. Since we said a search bar, then it means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this Australian smokejumper. Hey, guys. Just thought I'd right to let you know how you've influenced a major change in my life. A couple of years ago now, you did a podcast on wildfires. I already had a strong interest in firefighting, but never heard of the things like smokejumpers or some of the science involved. Since I joined the rural fire service last year as a volunteer. And last week, I completed my first full bushfire fighter

accreditation. Wow. It's been a great change and has inspired me to get fitter and more active with my community. I'm now working towards getting fit and fast enough to be a smokejumper, which we call RAFT units in Australia, Remote Area Fire Task Force. So thanks guys for giving me the inspiration and drive to get out there and challenge myself. Couldn't imagine doing anything else in my spare time now. As always, love the show. You keep me mildly distracted through my slow days at work. And that is Andrew from Australia. Nice. Thanks a lot, Andrew. Congratulations. Yeah, keep it up, buddy. It's pretty cool work. Agreed. Be safe out there. If you want to let us know about any life achievements or successes that you'd like to

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