Stuff You Should Know - How Murphy's Law Works, the Redux

Episode Date: August 16, 2011

Years back, Josh recorded this show without Chuck, and the old version's omitted facts bugged him. In this new version, the pair delve into the people, science and rocket tests behind Murphy's Law. Join Josh and Chuck for this properly-executed 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. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, who is with me as always, but hasn't been with me as always. What do you mean? There is a dark, dark time in my life, Chuck. I call it the pre-Chuck era.

And there were several, many podcasts that I released with other people. I don't feel good about it, okay? But there, it's out there. There was one that always stuck out to me that I was like, there's so much more information. You remember back in the day, we used to try to hit these things at like five minutes. Yeah, to say this has evolved is an understatement. Right. So there was one that I was like, five minutes is not enough for this. Let's do something like 37 minutes instead. And it was Murphy's Law. So I wrote this article a long time ago. It was like how Murphy's Law works. I was raised on these unnatural laws,

like the Peter Principle, which we've podcasted on, Parkinson's Law, which is work expands to fill the time allotted. And then Murphy's Law, which is, of course, anything that can go wrong will go wrong, right? Yeah. So I was kind of always aware of this. And I pitched this idea like how Murphy's Law works, like right after I got here at How Stuff Works. And I got the assignment and started doing this research. I found out that there's this awesome backstory to this, which I know you know now and have for a while because we made a Toyota commercial based on part of it. You're telling me this now? Exactly. Exactly. So I guess what I'm saying is I wanted to redo how Murphy's Law works. A reboot. And let's do it. And no disrespect to previous podcasters,

but this was just too short. Too short. You can't cover Murphy's Law in five minutes. No, you can't. So here's the expanded version. And we're not going to start rerunning things. Don't worry. There's plenty of topics out there. This one just really kind of I always wanted to redo this one. It was stuck in your craw. Yeah. And now it's not your craw. Idiom, Josh. That's what we're talking about. Yeah. Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. And you make a good point at the beginning of this is it's an idiom because we've made it an idiom. And you don't notice and make remarks about when things go perfectly right. You might feel good and be like, hey, everything's coming up roses today. Or maybe that's an idiom. It's not an idiom,

actually. It's a saying, but you don't say, you know, boy, I got in this lane of traffic and it's just speeding along and I should make a saying about that. You can, but very rarely do you. Like humans tend to focus more on the negative. Exactly. And that's what Murphy's Law is. It's a focus on the negative. That's right. We look out for the bad in a way. And Murphy's Law itself, Chuck, is not that old to tell you the truth. You're right. And it wasn't Murphy who originally coined this idea. There was something called Saad's Law that's still around in Great Britain, which says basically the same thing, any bad thing that can happen to some poor Saad, which is short for sodomite. Is it? Yeah. Yeah. No comment. And then there was a magician

named Adam Hull Shirk. Apparently in 1928 wrote something called On Getting Out of Things, an essay on magic. Which is not on the internet. No, it is not. I looked all over for it. Yeah, I did too, actually. It said in a magic act, nine out of 10 things that can go wrong usually will. And I thought maybe Adam was just a bad magician when I read that. Right. It's like, really? So he gets credit. Like just about any origin story of Murphy's Law includes Adam Hull Shirk. And it should. But it wasn't called Murphy's Law. No. Until a guy, there actually was a guy named Murphy. And he actually did live not too long ago. He died in 1989, I believe. This article says 1990, but it's 89. Are you going to go back and change that? Yeah, me too. And he was a captain

in the Air Force. And he is attributed with not coining Murphy's Law, depending on who you talk to. But spurring the idea of Murphy's Law, which was coined by somebody else, right? So let's set the stage, Chuck. It's 1949. We're in California. I just got you in my hand. Exactly. We're at Edwards Air Force Base. We need to get into the wayback machine here. Oh, man. It's been a while. You ready? Sweet. Buckle up. Okay. So as I said, 1949, Edwards Air Force Base. The air is much cleaner. It's very nice. There's Chuck Yeager. Right? See, look at him go. And then over there, on that railroad track, it's kind of in the middle of nowhere, is the rocket sled, the G-Wiz rocket sled.

That's a neat name. So let's talk about that. Okay. What is it? Well, this was part of the Project MX-981. And there were tests to determine how the body, the human body, reacted to G-Force. Yeah. There's a longstanding idea that the human body could withstand 18 Gs. And all airplanes were designed to withstand 18 Gs of force and nothing more, right? Which means that they were kind of hamstrung by this magical number. But no one knew exactly where that number came from or if it was true. What's screwy is that they had no way to find out, except for these rocket sled tests. That's right. Using a real-life human being. Because if you're going to test something, you can't throw a crash test dummy in there. You couldn't in 1949. Well, yeah, these

days they have sensors and actually not to be pluggy, but Toyota came up with the thing that measures total human model for safety. And it measures internal damage. So it's very sophisticated now. But back then, if you wanted to find some of the stuff out, you had to put a human in there. Well, at first they used cadavers. Then they used dummies like Sierra Sam. And then on the G-Wiz rocket tests, they used Oscar A. Ball. But they didn't have sensors for it. So they had to use John Paul Stapp, who volunteered, who was a really incredible Renaissance man. He's a colonel. Yeah. In the Air Force, he was a physician. And he flew around in an airplane without a canopy. Remember that? I've heard that. He also basically made it his life's work to get seatbelts made

mandatory in automobiles. So he staged the first ever automobile crash test. And he did it at the expense of the Air Force. And the Air Force was like, hey, whoa, what are you doing? What are you expensing these to us for? These are cars. We fly planes. And he came up with statistics that showed that more Air Force pilots died from car wrecks than from plane wrecks. And they said, okay, that was just the kind of guy he was. Real standup dude. He was. So what he did was he jumped in the G-Wiz, said, hey, I'll do it. I'm Colonel John Paul Stapp. I do this kind of thing. And it would go about 200 miles an hour, down a half mile track, and then stop in less than a second. And what they're trying to test is... Say that one more time. 200 miles an hour and stop in less

than a second. Yeah, that's crazy. Yes. That's basically they're trying to test what might happen in a plane crash. So they were finding the force of gravity, how much a human could withstand. And remember, 18 was that magic number. And in very short order, John Paul Stapp withstood 18 Gs and then 20 and then 25. And I think he made it up to 46.26 Gs was the most he experienced. I think of your average, like the highest roller coaster, we always go to that. But the roller coaster with the highest acceleration is like 2.7 Gs. This guy did 46.26. And he suffered for it, too. Yeah, big time. Broken bones, concussions, broken blood vessels in its eyes. Yeah, he'd have whiteouts, which is when he was going backwards, they'd turn him around sometimes.

So he wouldn't get the bugs in his face. And he would have whiteouts, which is all the blood is pulling in the back of the head. So he has no blood in his eyes, which means he can't see. All right. Or he'd get read out to where all the blood was pulling in the front of his face. And he couldn't see because there was too much blood in his eyes. I wonder if they were like, hey, let's put him sideways to have this. Be like a pink out. Yeah, one eye is red, one is white. Yeah. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy, number one, is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana.

Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Hey witches, I'm Ilaria Baldwin and I'm Michelle Campbell Mason. And together we host the new iHeart radio podcast, Witches Anonymous. I am a health and wellness expert. I am an author. I am a mother. I am a wife. Although I feel like putting that in my bio makes me slightly uncomfortable because I have an identity separate from that. He is a husband, okay? Alec is a husband and he can be Mrs Ilaria Baldwin. Come to the coven where we don't hold back and we don't shy away from tough topics. We are going to go really deep into women's relationships with each other. So bring your brooms and join us as we tackle why women are pinned against each other and what we can do to stop this vicious cycle. Consider this your invitation to Witches Anonymous because

Witch, please, we're in this together. Listen to Witches Anonymous on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So this is all going pretty well for staff. If you consider that a success. And then Murphy, Captain Murphy shows up on the scene and says, Hey, you know, I've got these sensors that will give you a much more accurate read of the g-force. Right. So let's get my assistant. I don't know why he didn't do it himself. No, it was one of the, this is Project MX981. It was one of the project's assistants. Murphy showed up himself. Why didn't he do it is what I want to know. I don't know because there's another saying if you want something done right do it yourself. It's true. And I would have rubbed

that in his face. Yeah, they didn't though. And supposedly, tell him about the sensors. Well, that the sensors would give you a more accurate reading. And then the assistant evidently hooked them up wrong. And there are, there's one way to hook up each one of these. And he did it the opposite way for each one of these. Well, there's one correct way to hook up the sensor. And then he did it the wrong way on every single one of them. Right. And then Murphy said out loud to somebody that if there are two ways of doing something, one of these will result in disaster. He's going to do it that way. Or he said something along the lines of if there's any way they can do it wrong, they will. It depends on who you talk to. There were living witnesses in 2000.

Right. When this guy for improbable research who, who hosts the Ig Nobel Awards wrote a pretty comprehensive article on it. And he interviewed these people and they said, he roughly said that or he said something like you said, but ultimately he was grumbling and it was loud enough. And he was saying it about these people that he just met. Right. Who had, you know, incorrectly hooked up the sensors. Okay. Well, let's hook them right and do it again. It's not a big deal. Right. So Murphy apparently, if you talk to the witnesses, was kind of thought of as a bit of a jerk. That's what I would think. Which is something his son still to this day disputes. He says that that is not in his father's character, that his father was not a jerk. And he wouldn't have, he wouldn't

have been so rude or boorish. But most of the witnesses say he said something like that. That was the seed. How'd the tree come about? The tree came about because Stapp was apparently a pretty gregarious guy. Obviously, if he's taking part in these tests with a plum, then he's going to probably be a pretty fun guy to be around. Well, he had, he had two books, Chuck, of idioms. Oh, yeah. One was, it was called Stapp's Almanac. The other was for your moments of inertia. And he had already come up with his own little saying Stapp's Ironical Paradox, which is the universal aptitude for ineptitude makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle. So he was already generally on the lookout for new bits of wisdom. He's stealing

these things from people basically. And he stole it from Murphy and at a press conference the next day said, and this is where it, you know, it took off obviously because the press conference, he said that, Hey, we have a good safety record because we are aware of Murphy's law, which is whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Right. And they all got a big laugh. So that's brilliant. That's brilliant. And they all ran to the pay phones and called it in. Yeah, it makes it into like some aerospace publications and then it disseminates out. It's just like a, just a perfect gem perfectly encapsulated. Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. It's just a universal truth in unnatural law. Right. Yeah. And it kind of gave a kickstart to this whole, there's a trend in

the fifties of people being pithy like, like Peter principle. Yeah. And actually I found out Lawrence Peter who came up with the Peter principle and Captain Murphy became lifelong friends. Wouldn't that special in it? But it gave rise to all these other ideas, these unnatural laws. It was kind of a trend, like I said, in the fifties and sixties, I think people wanted to put their name on something. Right. So I selected a few out of there's lists on the internet that are just, you can scroll for hours and never hit the bottom of these things. Right. But you want to read some of these. It's Orr's observation. The other line moves faster, which makes sense. Boobs law. You will always find something in the last place you look. Yeah.

Yeah. What's another good one here? Franklin's rule. Blessed is he who expects nothing for he will not be disappointed. Yeah. Minkins law. Those who can do, do those who cannot teach. That was just mean. It is mean, you know, especially the teachers. It's so disrespectful. And then Patton, General George's Patton had a law that a good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow because by then, Charlie's killed you. Right. He wasn't Vietnam. No, but okay. Oh, you just meant a guy named Charlie. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, people obviously like naming things after themselves and coming up with pithy little sayings that people like to say. Right. But there's, and there's two ways that Murphy's law can be categorized. It can be categorized

in the realm of pithy sayings from the fifties and sixties, like the Peter principle, which, as you remember, it did make sense. It had some gravity to it. Yeah. Or you can look at Murphy's law and the coining of it in 1949 by John Paul Stat as the formulation of the basis for all engineering thought that came after that point, which was the creation of fail safes, the creation of redundant systems and the idea that you should plan for everything going wrong. Yeah. So that if it does go wrong, it's covered and the system doesn't, it won't break down. Sure. It gave a saying to that practice. It was already in practice, but people didn't start building fail safes because of Murphy's law. You know what I'm saying? I don't know, man. Well, it was seatbelts. That's

a fail safe. Yeah. And that is not just from Murphy's law. That was from staff himself. That's true. When he's pushing this legislation in 1966. So let's talk about like the principles going on behind Murphy's law. Fatalism. It's pretty much it. Fatalism is the idea that we are just walking around subject to whatever fate, you know, whatever happens to us, whatever fate dictates. Like if you're in a line of traffic, right? Yeah. And you, it seems like all other lines are going except for yours. Right? This is explainable. It's explicable. Like you're not paying attention to the other lines of traffic when your line is going because you're paying attention to not hit the person in front of you. Right. When you're just sitting there, all you notice is that

the other lanes are going. But if you could really statistically explain, you know, how often the lanes of traffic are moving, it's probably fairly even. Yeah. Probably so. I always kind of, well, actually, I go in the lane that I think is going to be moving. But because we're fatalistic, it's like, why, why does the universe hate me? I'm totally powerless to make traffic move. Right. And then free will was the opposite. That's the other idea is that we have free will for all of our choices and all of our consequences are due to things that we have made happen. Right. And the attendant with free will is the risk of failure. Right. So when we have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, we're going to get it wrong. Or we're going to notice mostly

when we get it wrong. Because then we have to do it again. And it's just so much trouble to try to put the plug in the right way. Yeah. Right. The three-pong fail-safe plug. Three-pong, prong. Yeah. That is fail-safe. Yeah. Okay. But other prongs, electrical sockets, if you look at them, one's bigger than the other. Yeah. That's a fail-safe. Nowadays, sure. After Murphy's law. Changed everything. Before that, it was just deathville for everything. Well, yeah. Well, let me put it to you this way. There was something like 25 million licensed motorists in the U.S. and 43,000 deaths on the highways in 1960, I think, something like that. In 2000, there were 75 million licensed motorists and about as many deaths. So yeah.

Yeah. Before Murphy came along and said that there were no fail-safe. No one had any idea what they were doing. I'll dispute that. But did I ever show you the video of the car crashes, like the old classic car? Blood on the asphalt? The what? Blood on the asphalt. They did this high speed car crashes with an old, like, you know, when you see those old tanks, like, oh man, back then. Like an impala or something? Yeah. Like those big old tanks, those were like, they were tanks because they're tanks. Right. And they, I bet you were safe in those seatbelts, but they compared the crash to a modern car and the old car, man, just, I mean, squashed and crumbled like a tin can. Really? Oh, dude. Yeah, because cows, cows,

cars are just engineered these days as our cows. Oh, with crumpled zones and things like that? Yeah, man. And it's, it might be made of plastic, but it's amazing when you watch this thing. Back then they were huge and made of metal, but at enough impact that metal just becomes nothing. Yeah. It's pretty interesting. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute a 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that in on the prime example. The war on drugs is the excuse our

government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, witches, I'm Ilaria Baldwin and I'm Michelle Campbell Mason. And together we host the new I heart radio podcast, which is anonymous. I am a health and wellness expert. I am an author. I am a mother. I am a wife. Although I feel like putting that in my bio

makes me slightly uncomfortable because I have an identity separate from that. He is a husband. Okay, Alec is a husband and he can be Mrs. Ilaria Baldwin. Come to the coven where we don't hold back and we don't shy away from tough topics. We are going to go really deep into women's relationships with each other. So bring your brooms and join us as we tackle why women are pinned against each other and what we can do to stop this vicious cycle. Consider this your invitation to which is anonymous because which please we're in this together. Listen to which is anonymous on the I heart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Speaking of cows being engineered. You remember that cow on village in Athens that had the porthole in it. So they could

like open it up and reach inside and I think fertilize it or they were doing something. I never saw that but I've seen that cow. It was crazy. Yeah, Murphy's law happened to that cow. I wrote about that. They have those little portals into their stomachs so they can study things like that. It's like right there on the side. Yeah. And then also Chuck, I want to point out Rudyard Kipling, right? He provides us a good example of that whole why me attitude of humanity and then the mathematical explanation of why you pal. Right. Rudyard Kipling once lamented that no matter how you drop it, the the bread that you dropped out of your hand onto the floor always falls butterside down. Yeah, which means you can't eat it any longer. Right. Sure you can.

And it gives you the vapors. Right. So if you think about it, a buttered piece of bread is heavier on one side than the other. So thanks to the force of gravity on the way down, the bread's going to flip over. Is that true though? But it's, yes, but it's heavier on that side. Has it approved this? Give me some bread. Well, I just don't, I just wanted this proven and not the, I think it's interesting but. Well, think about this. I just wonder how much butter would it literally take to cause it to flip over. I'm sure that there's a certain amount. Yeah. And I think also this is going to happen more frequently with plain, untoasted bread and butter rather than like toast with butter melted in it. Okay. Which may be distributed evenly throughout the bread. Okay.

But the point is, is yes, it's going to flip over, but it's not going to flip back over because the heavier side is now being dragged toward the earth. But if it does fall butterside up, then that's just good luck. That's fate. Okay. So again, there's, there's a certain amount of, I guess, math or science to Murphy's law. There can be if you really want to look for it. And your name's Joel Pell. Right. Yeah. He's another fun killer, like the laughter guys. I know math people take issue with that, but I take issue with everything having to be stated as a math formula. Well, this guy, he begs to differ. He does. He's a biological engineer at the University of British Columbia. And I think in 2005, he came up with Murphy's equation, which basically he figured

out how to quantify the probability that things will go wrong when they can go wrong. Right. Are you going to read it? It's pretty impossible to read out loud. Yeah, I don't, I don't think I can because what's the opposite of to the something power when it's like down below into the right rather than up into the right. I have no idea. Well, basically, he figured out that the importance of the event I times the complexity of the system involves C times the urgency of the need for the system to work you plus the frequency of the system is used equals P the probability that the Murphy's law will kick in. Right. And one is definite. I think 10 is it's not going to happen somewhere in between as it might happen. It might not. So what he did

was he basically plugged in the the possibility of his clutch going out in a rainstorm 60 miles, 100 kilometers from his house. And he came up with an answer of one, which means that his clutch was definitely going to go out. And he further demonstrated that was now that he stranded out in the rainstorm and he needs to get somewhere by foot. He needs his flashlight to work. What's the what's the probability that Murphy's law will happen and the flashlight will be out? He plugged it in and came up with the one again. So he very facetiously proved that Murphy's law is real and his equation worked. I hope this guy got stuck in a rainstorm. That's what I hope. Well, poor Joel Pell. I know. I had to correspond with him for this. Oh, really? Yeah, they get

permission to use his equation. And he said, Hey, sure. He was a cool dude. Was he? Yeah. Really? Yeah. All right. So, Chuck, we talked about like prongs being designed with fail safes, seatbelts are fail safe, diesel pump nozzles. They're they are designed at a wider diameter than regular gas pumps. So you can't fit it in your gas tank. Did you know that? Yeah, that wasn't always the case. So I put diesel in a truck one time when I shouldn't have. Right. And when did it start after Murphy's law became widespread? It started in the mid 90s, I think. Yeah. Or that's the last time I screwed up like that. What you got? I got nothing else. All right. Thank God for fail safe. So

thank God for John Paul staff and Captain Edward A. Murphy, Jr. I have a Chuck's key law. Well, I got my two house keys. I have a outer security, like a clear door and then my regular door. Yeah, two different keys that look the same on my dog leash. Yeah, I will almost 100% of the time I use the wrong key. I'll bet if you pay attention to it, you use the wrong key about 50% of the time. That's Murphy's law. Well, then something's up. I also have my directional thing. I have a poor sense of direction and almost, oh, dude, it's awful. I didn't know that. Almost 100% of the time I will go the wrong way if faced with a choice. Should I go this way or that way? And if I try to trick myself and go, I want to go right, then I'm going to go left.

It was right. Nice. That's Murphy's law too. I know. And it ruins my life. But you can't just hijack Murphy's law and swipe your name on it. Those are Chuck's, that's Chuck's key law and Chuck's law of direction. Right. That's Murphy's law. All right. If you want to learn more about Murphy's law and read my article on it, it was one of the first articles I wrote. I like it. You can type in Murphy's law in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. Thank you for listening to this one twice. Yeah. Thanks for doing it with me, man. Well, it was due. We were due for this one. Yeah. I think I said handy search part, didn't I? I think so. All right. Well, that means it's time for what? We're going to wind up the old Facebook, ask jock and chush questions. Yeah. And people did so.

You always get like 100 of them in a couple of minutes and have to shut it down. Yeah. People want to know. All right. So let's just run through some of these, Josh. You got one? No, go ahead. All right. Who's your favorite Simpsons character who was not a Simpson? Well, cheers. And I even saw this one yesterday and I didn't. It's so hard. I like Lionel Hutz a lot. He was good. I like the whole Flanders family. I think Ned's a great complex character, like the one where he has the nervous breakdown. Yeah. And it turns out he was part of a spanking protocol research study. I like it when he's occasionally ripped with muscles. Well, he is all the time. Just sometimes he's wearing a shirt. Well, yeah, but he's clearly

different when like when he's in the ski suit than when he's in his sweater. Yeah, that ski suit was hilarious. Stupid sexy Flanders. What about yours? I'm going to go with a cop out. I'm going to go with a pair with Ralph and Chief Wiggum. Yeah, they're good. Pretty good. Yeah. Or Smithers and Flanders. I mean, that's those two. Those are hard to beat as a duo. I mean, you can't leave out Seymour Skinner. Yeah, or a boo. Yeah, or Barney. We can keep doing this for hours. Actually, I like Moe. Are you a Moe fan? Yeah, huge Moe fan. Okay, we could do this for hours. Go ahead. Chuck, do you have a job outside of the podcast? I do. I'm the chef and housekeeper at my home. I think I mean here. Oh, no. Do you not since when? Oh, well, yeah, sure. We write stuff.

Yeah. Right now. Blog, write quizzes. Do we manage Facebook and Twitter? We manage the stuff you should know brand. Yeah. What do you want written on your tombstone? I don't, you go ahead. How about died tragically rescuing his family from the wreckage of a destroyed sinking battleship? I had a suspicion you were going to say that. Yeah, that's a good one. Oh, that was I know what I want. Kelly Cronley, I'm sorry. And Drew Plinkle asked about the Simpsons. Thanks, Drew and Kelly. On my tombstone, I want to say weather. This is from Trash Goblin. Toby, is this from Twitter? I guess it is. Have you seen Hodgman's mustache in real life? And is it as scary as I have heard it is? We've both seen

Hodgman's mustache in real life. It accidentally brushed my shoulder. I was like, really? Was that it? No. Okay. I was like, how did that happen? I know. It is not scary. I think John wears it well. Yeah. And it's not an ironic mustache. He's grown his hair out a little bit. He's turned all hippy, hasn't he? Yeah, it's kind of fun. He's like Wooderson. I like it. Let's see. This is from How Awesome Is Joe, aka Joe, on Twitter. Could it actually be possible for a human to be raised by apes like Tarzan? I would say the answer is undeniably yes. Yeah. And I'm going to wind it up for my last one with something people ask a lot. What does COA mean? And that is from Joseph Goebbels.

No. Do not explain it. That's a trick. He's been trying to figure it out forever, and if he can't do it on his own, he has to figure it out on his own. Chuck, or else he's never going to learn. All right. Sorry, Joseph. That was a smackdown. What's our favorite episode, Chuck? Of what? Of Stuff You Should Know. Oh, I thought we were on The Simpsons. Oh, man, I get asked this a lot. It's always different. Today, I'm going to go with Lobotomies. That's a good one. You? Nothing? None of them. There's just so many. I know. It's hard to choose. I'll look through occasionally in spot ones. You're like, oh, that's a good one. I know, and think that,

because we're always asked this, and I always say the same like five things. Like, ooh, Lobotomies, body farms, cannibalism. You know what? I recently listened to, why isn't the FDA regulate herbs? I think I was telling you. Good one. And that is worth listening to again. All right. Some people, you know, are making their way through again. They've already made it through, and they've made it through. They're making it through, again, the whole catalog. I'm looking at you, OMG, Chris. There's a name for people like that, Josh. Massacus. Superfans. Same thing. Yes. If you are a superfan, we want to hear from you always. We're pretty friendly guys, so we'll say hi back usually. If we don't, don't take it personally,

keep saying hi. We read your emails, both show, and we answer a lot of them. Twitter. That's S-Y-S-K podcast is our Twitter handle. We're on Facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can send us email like you just mentioned to stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com. Excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that will piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Langston Kermit. Sometimes I'm on TV.

I'm David Borey, and I'm probably on TV right now. David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting groundbreaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Kyle Goodman, Sam J. Quinta Brunson, and so many more. New episodes around every Tuesday, many episodes out on Thursdays, where we answer you, the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.