Stuff You Should Know - Human Blockheads: A Real Thing

Episode Date: December 29, 2016

Human blockheads are performers who hammer nails and things into their noses. Yup. That's a thing. And it isn't a trick either - anyone can do it. Just please don't try to. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 gonna 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. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, ya 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 Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey San Francisco, we're coming back to see you. Aw, yes. Our second year in a row, we're gonna be going to SF Sketch Fest. I like to think it's the premier comedy festival

in the United States. Well, in the world. You think so? Yeah. What about Beijing? Nope. It's a close second, but a second. Well, we love San Francisco.

We love performing there. Everyone is always so kind to us. And by San Francisco, we mean the entire Bay Area, of course. Yeah, so we will be there doing our thing for a one time only show on Sunday, January 15th at 1PM. Yeah, it's the rare Sunday afternoon. We're like the NFL of podcasters. Yeah, exactly.

That's what I've always thought. So all you have to do is go to the SF Sketch Fest site, look at the old calendar, and there are tons of great people performing. Oh, yeah. So I suggest just double in down and getting tickets to all kinds of good shows. For sure, and hurry up and get tickets to ours

because they've only been on sale for a week or so, and they're already half sold out. That's right. So please hurry, San Francisco. Please hurry! Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Bright, and it's just us chickens here in Studio 1A. Yeah, the blockhead is gone. Yeah. Jerry the blockhead. I'm just kidding. She's not a blockhead. She's a meathead.

She is a meathead. This is fun. What else is she? She's not here. We can say whatever we want. She'll never hear this. Oh, that's true. Two things I've noticed today.

We're both wearing blue hoodies. Oh, yeah. Yours is a recreation of the great sweater that Danny wore in The Shining, which I think I've told you. You love. Lee Uncrick of Pixar owns that real sweater. Oh yeah, you did tell me that.

Yeah. Like if you're like, you know, you got the sweatshirt version. He owns the sweater. He owns the real thing. But unless he's the same size, it's like a little four, five, six year old boy. But he doesn't wear it.

But we put it on his own kit. Oh yeah. That's probably why he had a kit. He wants to drive him to madness. Right. Well, to model the sweater. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

And I'm wearing my high school sweatshirt. The Radan Raiders. Radan, yeah. Radan. Pixar. The other thing I noticed is that I got new glasses or a new prescription. Oh yeah.

Because my eyes were clearly getting worse. And you're fuzzy to me, but my papers are clear. Uh oh. And I should have gotten the bifocals, like he said. Bifocals, gramps. I've been doing a lot of this. Oh, is that? That definitely doesn't age you at all.

Chuck just pulled his glasses down on his nose and then looked over him. Well, when you're at home and let's say you got the TV on, but you're working on your laptop, it's troublesome. Have you ever heard of that? I can't remember what it's called. Progressive lenses. No, it's like a type of basically training your eyes

to get better by denying them corrective lenses. Well, I did that for 43 years. And it didn't work? Well, I mean. Or maybe it did work. Your eyes would have been way worse had you not done that. Here's what I know. I know that two weeks ago, like I never

wore my previous glasses prescription because it didn't look like they were doing anything. But things were getting harder to read. So I went back three years later and they were like, oh yeah, things have changed. But I was reading two weeks ago. I was just sort of holding it back a little more maybe. But now when I put these on, it's

like someone turned on the lights. I was like, holy cow, that's so clear. But has something changed in just the last few weeks? No, I think I was just used to getting by on things clearly as I could have. I see, I got you. Because once I put these on, I just couldn't believe the difference.

Well, good for you for doing something. Yeah, but now it's like I've got to wear glasses all the time. Or not all the time, but when I read. You remind me exactly of how I felt in fourth grade when I got glasses. They came in and they were like, OK, everybody's doing the eye test. And of course, you just think it's cursory,

like a lice check or something like that, right? And you went and stood in the corner. And then the nurse or whoever it was was like, you need glasses. I was like, what? You're an insane woman, I think is what I said. But it was a man. Right.

And so that's all they knew. I proved myself insane. Yeah, right. So I ended up with glasses. And I remember feeling like, oh man, I'm shackled for the rest of my life. Yeah, that's a tough age. I don't know if glasses still have the same stigma on young kids.

But when we were kids, it was definitely like four eyes and all that. Yeah, there was a bit of it. So I showed them. I went out and got the most Elton Johnny glasses I could find. I'd love to see a picture of that. They were clear with like a thin blue wire running through the frames.

They were pretty awesome. All right, so human block heads. Yeah. So Chuck, have you ever seen the human block head? Trick? Yeah. I should not call it a trick. It's a stunt.

You're right. I have. Like in person? Yeah. I went to a Jim Rose circus once. Oh, yeah. And they had a block head that when I went, I'm not sure if they still do.

Was it Ryan Stock? I don't think so. This was a long time ago. Yeah, he seems a little young to have been in the original Jim Rose show. Yeah, I mean, this was in like 1993-ish. Was it at Lollapalooza? Maybe.

Because that was in the first part of the first Lollapalooza. They were part of that. Yeah, I was at that show. Well, there you go. Maybe that's where it was. Maybe so. Well, I've never seen a human block head. So I mean, I was aware of it.

I'm sure I'd seen references to it in cartoons or whatever. But I went online because I noticed as I was researching this, I was like, wow, I feel like fainting for some reason. Yeah. I was like, this really makes me feinty. And I went online and just exposed myself to it. And it was, yeah. I didn't actually feint, but it's something.

Well, we should go ahead and say then a human block head is a person. And we'll get into the history of it where that name comes from. But it's a person, a performer, who inserts a nail or a camping steak or a drill. Pair of scissors. What something sharp that would make your stomach turn if you saw it jammed in a person's nose all the way. Right.

And they do just that. Yeah. And the reason I corrected myself earlier, I called it a trick. It's not a trick. The person who performs the human block head or who is a human block head would correct me and say, no, no, this is a stunt. A trick suggests that there's some sort of illusion. There's some sort of deception or stage magic going on.

Yes. This is a stunt because it's exactly what you think it is. There's a nail going into the person's skull. Yeah. And if you don't know and you go to one of these, you probably think it's a trick. It's a fake nail. It's a collapsible or a telescoping nail or something.

Maybe some sort of sleight of hand like the old trick where you just turn to the side and act like you're pulling something out of your mouth. Yeah. That'll bit. Yeah. I finally figured that one out in my 20s. Thanks to your glasses, probably. So to the uninitiated, people probably leave these performances sometimes

saying, well, of course, that wasn't real. There's no way. Right. It's true, right? That's what you think. And the performers, they play on that, right? That's part of the whole thing. But it's actually legitimately the nail is not fake.

And it actually is going into the person's head. But the further misconception is that, OK, if it is going in the person's head, that it's being driven into their skull, their bone, either through a new hole that they're making because they're crazy, or an established hole that they have like that they've used time and time again, like an ear piercing, that it's healed over, not the case. Yeah, I was about to say the body doesn't need any new holes,

but I forgot about piercing, not that you need piercing, but that's the only thing I can think of where you would want a new hole. That's legitimate, right? I don't know. Some doctors could want new holes for you depending, like if you got a colostomy or a tracheotomy. Yeah, yeah, I didn't even think about that, medical reasons. Or Stellark put an ear on his arm.

I was thinking about him. I can't believe you remember that guy's name. Yeah, it's Stellark. Wow. If he didn't listen years ago, we talked about him. He was a performance artist who put, he molded and grafted an ear lookalike onto his arm. He survived some terrible infections.

It was Bluetooth compatible, so he could literally hear through it. Right. I mean, you know what I mean. He probably not literally hear through it. It had like a Bluetooth mic in the ear, and then he had like a head bone in his own ear, so yeah, he could hear what was going in the ear. With assistance of technology, he could hear through it.

Oh, he's a performance artist, what do you expect? But that technically wasn't a hole, though. No. It was just a fake ear on his arm. No, it was a real ear. Oh, was it a real ear? Whose was it? It was like a cloned ear grafted onto his arm.

It was basically the cutting edge of performance art at the time. Yeah, I wonder what he's doing now. I've got to look that cat up. He's sitting around on people's couches going like, hey, remember that time I grafted an ear on my arm? That was pretty great, huh? And he says, hey, talk to the forearm. And they say, Stelarc, we never get tired of that joke.

Right. So should we talk about the history first or the mechanism? Let's do history. I love this guy. Well, by guy, I know you're talking about, because there can be only one. Mr. Melvin Burkhart, who passed away 15 years ago in 2001 at the age of 94 years old.

He's born in Atlanta. Yeah. In 1907, grew up in New Orleans, mainly, and quit school at an early age and became a, well, he worked a couple of odd jobs, worked for Western Union, but then found his calling as a sideshow performer, which we've covered on the show.

Yeah. Along with other circus arts. Yeah, you've got it for circus arts. I think just about every circus art one we've ever done is your pick. Was it? But, man, we have an extensive library of circus arts. Yeah, sword swallowing.

Lion-taming. Lion-taming. Fire-eating. Fire-eating. Do we have fire walking? No, I don't think so. All right, look for that one soon. Yeah, for real.

Or tightrope acts. No. We did circus families. We did. We've exhausted this. I don't know, man. Fire walking. Or maybe we should do the wheel.

We talked about it, the wheel with the motorcycles in it. What's it called? Oh, the something of death. Wheel of death? No. Globe of death? Maybe. Maybe the globe of death.

The promise of death. Clunky ride. Right. All right, so back to Mr. Burkhart. Yeah. He started performing inside shows. He did. So he kind of fell into performing.

He used to go to the theater a lot. And one day when he was, I think, 14 or 15 or something, he jumped to his feet when the people on stage asked for volunteers to come on stage. And I guess he tripped or fell. I didn't know if it was purposeful or not. And drove a nail through his forehead. Right.

And everyone just laughed and laughed. He did get some laughs. It's not for the nail yet that came later. But he was invited back for the next show. And within a day or two, he found himself with a contract to do an amateur performance. So he started performing at a very early age. And his thing initially was, and I think throughout his career,

here's what was called a talker, a master of ceremonies at a side show. You might call him a barker or something like that. But they were the ones who kept the show going. They introduced the new side show performers as they came on and went off. And he did his own act in between the other acts. And part of his act ended up being the nail,

the human blockhead trick, among a bunch of other stuff. Yeah, so one of these quotes I got is New York Times obituary, which are always great. But one of the quotes from one of his counterparts, and Coney Allen was so funny, he said, this is from Dick Zygon, he's a side show guy. And he said, anybody can insert objects in their nasal passage, up their nasal passage.

But Melvin's pattern and comedy made it an act. And then the other guy, it's two great quotes, Todd Robbins is a magician who was also a blockhead at times, says, anyone who has ever hammered a nail into his nose owes a large debt to Melvin Burkhardt. Yeah, there's a little bit of tongue and cheek in that obit that I'm sure Burkhardt would have appreciated. I'm sure.

That Todd Robbins guy actually has traced it back to the Jadu Wallace. Yeah. Basically the Indian, the Hindu performer, street performer. And they apparently did a human blockhead trick long ago. Right. And I don't know if it was just totally coincidental that Melvin Burkhardt stumbled upon it himself,

or if he had heard about it or seen it himself. Right. But at any rate, as far as it goes in the West, in the modern conception of the human blockhead, Melvin Burkhardt was the guy who invented it. Yeah, I'm sure there are probably people in India scoffing at that notion. Right.

But he was soon discovered by none other than Mr. Ripley himself. And he took him on to his auditorium in Manhattan, had him performing. And supposedly is the one who came up with the name human blockhead for this act. Man, that Robert Ripley. He coined a lot of stuff.

I don't get it, though. I still don't get why blockhead is just a dumb name. I would have called it like, I don't know what I would have called it. Give me 10 minutes, though, and I'll think of a better name. OK, shout it out when you got it. All right. Well, I mean, you can hammer nails into a block of wood.

I guess so. Is that what he was going to say? It's a stupid name. But without it, we wouldn't have the Lucy from Peanuts favorite put down. Remember, she called everybody a blockhead. Oh, yeah. What about the human pincushion?

That's not quite right, though. That's OK. It's actually a lot more accurate. But I think there are other human pincushions, aren't there, people who do the nails through their faces and stuff? That'd be very confusing. I'm the pincushion. No, I'm the pincushion.

You're a blockhead. So he actually ended up, and this is where the story ties into fleece circuses, actually, at Huberts Museum on 42nd Street, which I believe is where the hecklers had their fleece circus for decades and where it appeared in Easy Rider. That's right. That's right.

Boy, it's all coming together, isn't it? And he was what was known as, like some people are, you know, when we did our sideshow podcast, a lot of people were born with physical deformities that they would, some people say were exploited, other people say championed. But he was not that. He was what was known as a working act.

So he just had some talent and fortitude to do some of these things. He wasn't necessarily born with any strange nasal passage. Although he does say he was a boxer and broke his nose such that they remove nasal bones that he thinks created this passage to inserting a nail into your sinus cavity. But it exists in everyone.

OK. So that, to me, is a great place to put a break. All right. You ready? Yes. Here we go. 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 nonstop 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. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. 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. This, I promise you.

Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week

to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, 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. Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles, stuff you should know. All right, Chuck, you may have mentioned that Melvin Burkhart was a boxer, right? Yes, a pugilist. So apparently, during his boxing career, he was getting some bone that had been shattered in his face

removed around his nose, around his nasal cavity. And the story goes that he noticed that the doctors were having a really easy time sticking like a scalpel, or pincers, or all sorts of little medical instruments in his nose. Yeah, rubber chicken. Any young man was his doctor. Just look him up, everybody.

And he was like, well, jeez, if these guys can put the stuff in my nose, I'll bet I could too. And if I combine it with my pattern and comedy, I could really make a good show of this. And apparently, that's where he was inspired to do the human blockhead trick. Yeah, he's like, I can make $50 a week. So he had something like a dozen pieces of bone

removed from his nasal cavity area, from his skull. For medical reasons. Right, from his boxing career. So he apparently had a larger than normal nasal cavity as a result. OK, well, that makes sense. But it's like what you said. Everybody has a hole in their face,

and it can be exploited to do the human blockhead trick. Yeah, we have a lot of holes in our face. So let's talk about the holes in our face, sis. Chuck just put his glasses on. I'm tired of looking over you and feeling like I'm 70. So how do I look without, like, I got to get a picture of this. How do you look when I'm looking at you through the glasses? Without the glasses.

Well, you look great. How do I look with the glasses on? Not so great. Larger and fuzzy. So look at me over the, there you go. Wow. All right, we'll put that up on Instagram. All right, the holes in our face.

Let's talk about the skull. The skull, while it appears, is if it's just one big solid bowling ball with a face on the front of it. It is not. It is 22 bones and all. And if you look, if you've ever seen a human skull, you can see this, because they have sutures where it's joined together.

It's a big patchwork of goodness, protective goodness. And for the most part, when you look at someone's face and you say, hey, high cheek bones, prominent chin, look at the size of those teeth and how pointy they are. That's crazy. These are actually like features of either the bone themselves or the bone underneath the skin. That's your facial features, right?

Right. But there is one very prominent exception to this rule. And that's your nose. Your nose is not the result of a protrusion of bone with skin stretched over it. Most of your nose is made of cartilage. That's right. So there's actually very little bone involved in your skin,

just on the bridge or with your nose, just on the bridge of the nose. That's right. OK? So beneath the bridge of the nose, everybody, I want you to take your finger, put it between your eyes, and then just press down. That's the bridge of your nose.

Not too hard, not that hard. And then just go slide, start to slide a little further down. That is not bone any longer. That's cartilage. And behind that cartilage, friends, there's a big old hole in the center of your face. Have you ever had your nose broken? Let me just knock on wood like 50 times.

No. Have you ever been punched in the nose? Yes. But didn't break it? No. OK. I've never had my nose broken. I've never been punched.

You better knock on wood. At all. Yeah. No, I've never been in a fight. That's great. It is, but I kind of feel like I should get in a fist fight. Oh, you could go start one. You know, like Fight Club, remember that?

There's this thing called bars. Yeah, right. And if you go out at certain times, you can get into a fight pretty easy. I was always the guy that was breaking it. Like, oh, guys, it would be much more fun if we all just kept drinking. Right.

And did not get in a fight. Right. Like, there's nothing that will ruin a night more than a bar fight. It's all over. Bar fights suck. Yeah. Across the board.

Plus, I never always had a very strong inclination to not get punched in the face. I think that's a sensible inclination. So I was, well, not really. You know, you see how some people act, and some dudes love the fight. Some ladies love the fight. You know?

Yeah. I could go out looking for it. Sure. I don't know that that's to be admired or celebrated in any way. Oh, no. It's the worst. Sure. Those people, like, when I lived in Arizona that short year,

I'd picked up just friends at my restaurant. And one of the friends of the dude that worked there was one of the most uncomfortable people to hang out with I've ever experienced. Oh, yeah? He was always looking to get in a fight everywhere we went. And it just, I was so fraught with anxiety. You know, tons of anger inside.

Is it just anger? Don't you wonder if stuff like that is hormonal? Like, that guy's hormones are tuned a little out of? I bet you there's a lot of factors. Hormones, upbringing, anger from childhood. But all I know is that I felt like I was going to have a heart attack every time I was near this dude. So I was just waiting for the inevitable fist fight.

Wouldn't it be neat if that guy listens? He doesn't listen. He's listening right now, knows who you're talking about, and has just started sobbing uncontrollably. Like, he's just had a breakthrough. That'd be great. Because you mentioned his childhood. He's not listening.

I can guarantee that. So, oh, yeah, the nose. Yeah, yeah, so cartilage. The nose is easy to break is kind of where I was getting. Oh, yeah. But technically, you're not really breaking it. Oh, really? Because it's cartilage.

I guess you can break cartilage. Don't listen to me. So what you've also got in your face upfront of that skull is all kinds of spaces. There are these little hollow places called sinuses. You got your eye sockets, of course. And then the old reliable foreman magnum, which is where the brainstem exits the skull.

That really has nothing to do with this episode. It doesn't. This is just sort of a breakdown of what's going on in your face. Tracy, oh, by the way, this is a Tracy Wilson joint. Sure. And she's just trying to prove her point that there's lots of holes in the skull.

That's right. The only holes that matter for a blockhead are the nostrils and, I would say, the nasal cavity. Right. And the nasal cavity is that hole in your skull, in the front of your skull, where your nose goes. And it leads all the way back to your throat, actually. Yeah, which is very important, actually, for other acts

that we'll talk about. Yeah. So the area where it terminates at the throat is called the nasopharynx. And all of this is just wide open. You can stick whatever you want in there. Please don't. And you can do it without nailing, without hammering,

without anything like that. You can just slide it in, right? Yeah. Physically speaking. We'll get into how all the reasons why that's very difficult. But just physiologically speaking, there's a big old hole in the front of your face. There's a lot of empty space behind it going all the way

back to your throat. And so the human block head takes advantage of these holes, right? But it wouldn't be so great if you could just look at somebody and say, hey, that's great. You're just sliding a nail into a hole in an open passage. So it doesn't do anything. The trick, the illusion, is based on the natural formation

of our nose and our nostrils, which appear to go upward. Yes. Which is not the case, actually. If you pull your nose back and look into a mirror, you see that the hole is behind them, not above them. Right. And that's the whole illusion. Yeah, you feel like when you blow your nose,

that snot is coming down from the top of your head. Right. And that's not the case. No, it's coming from the back. That's right. It's the ceiling is just about even with the top of the nose right below your eyes. The ceiling of the nasal cavity, right?

Yeah, not the ceiling of your bedroom, every year. In the floor of the nasal cavity is about level with what's known as the LR cartilage, A-L-A-R. Yes. Which is where the nostrils are. Right, that's the bottom of your nostrils. Yeah, so when you see, like you said, when you see the trick, the fact that it's not going up

and it's just going straight in, makes people go, oh my god, what is going on? He's driven a nail right into the bone of his skull. That's what it looks like. That's right. And by the way, if you want a good view of what all this looks like, I stumbled upon a horrific photo of somebody whose nostrils, I guess they're the cartilage that separates

their nostrils into two. Yeah, there's got to be a name for that, right? It's gone. And the whole nose is the skin of the nose is being pulled back so you can see the skull behind it. So if you want to just type in LR cartilage in Google search, image search, and you'll be as unhappy as I am for having seen it. I was going to go around there and blow it.

Do you want to see it? No. It's pretty crazy. No, that's all right. OK. I'll look at it later because I know I want to. I'll be lying in bed tonight thinking of it. I'm not going to do it.

I'm not doing it. So to finish up, though, on the cavity, it is not just a smooth, straight thing either. They have these grooves called concave, C-O-N-C-H-A-E. I'm going to say concave, concave on the walls. And they hold on to the moisture when you exhale. And that's going to keep everything nice and lubricated, which is what you want in there.

Thanks to the mucous membrane that lines all these surfaces and keeps everything nice. And I'm not going to say the M-word, but nice and moist. Everybody hates that word. And not everyone, but there is great word. There's science behind it. Oh, OK. I can't remember.

I posted an article for mental floss. Apparently, there's some science behind why people don't like that word. Nice. So when you're doing the human blockhead trick, I should change that. When you're seeing a professional do the human blockhead trick, what they're doing is they're sliding the nail.

Let's just stick with the nail. Sure. The nail into their nasal cavity. They want to usually hug the aller cartilage, the floor of their nasal cavity, try to avoid the concave in that way you decided that's pronounced. And they're pushing it all the way back into their nasal pharynx, right?

You've got about six, eight inches of space to deal with. Is it that much? From your nostril back to the nasal pharynx, yeah. Wow. And the human blockhead, to make it so it's not just sliding a nail into your nose, which is gross, but that's pretty playgroundy, they will take a hammer.

Yeah, yeah. And they will hold on to the nail very tightly, and they will make it look like they're hammering the nail into their skull. And they'll go, oh, oh. Right. And there's the sound of the hammer against the nail, and it sounds really painful, where really, you can just

take the thing and slide it in easy peasy. Yeah, that's called stagecraft. Right. So all of this sounds extremely easy, and in a sense it is. But there are a lot of obstacles to performing this trick successfully, and we'll talk about those right after this. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lashier

and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses 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. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road.

Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. 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. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step.

Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, ya 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. Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles, stuff you should know. So I don't think we should go any further without a serious COA message. Yeah. It seems obvious, but do not try to stick a nail in your nose, because Josh and Chuck said it was possible.

Yeah, that's really good, Chuck. The human anatomy, the anatomy of a face in a skull makes it possible. We advise no one to ever try this unless you want to get into the circus arts legitimately and want to take the steps to really learn how to do this. I actually ran across this theory11.com forum where a novice was asking how to do this,

and this guy named William Draven replied. And I thought he had a pretty good COA himself. He said, like, if you do want to do this, I no way advocate learning from reading text on the internet, or even watching videos. Go find somebody who has successfully performed this trick numerous times, and then learn from them directly. Don't learn from guys like us.

Don't learn from reading William Draven's comments on the internet. Don't read it from anybody. Go find somebody who knows this trick and learn it from them. Yeah, and where do you find that person? They're the guy in the corner of the bar with the nail on their nose. Sure.

It's pretty easy. Right. Or they live in a town called Winter Something in Florida. And we keep saying dudes. I did try and find to see if there are any women out there who did this. I didn't find any, but I'm sure there are supposedly more than 100 human blockheads around the world.

Go find one of them. I'm sure some women do this. I'm sure. It's just not a prominent Google search to type in woman, blockhead, with a lot of misogynistic. Well, you come with some weirdo porn too, I'm sure. Also, I think every single time I've ever said guys, I've meant it as a gender neutral word.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So one thing Tracy points out is that all noses are different. And sometimes to reach your nasal cavity, the lower edge of your nostril might be in the way. So sometimes it might just glide right in and you look the same. But sometimes if you do it right, your nose will stick up. Like your snout will stick out like a pig. Because the nail's holding it up.

Other noses, it might just look normal. Except for the fact that there's a nail through it. A lot of people who do this, most people, I should say, who do it practice initially with Q-tip. That's probably smart, right? Yeah, you want to practice with a Q-tip. And one reason why you want to practice with a Q-tip is, number one, I would guess it'd be harder to injure yourself

with a Q-tip, although I'm sure it'd still be quite easy. Sure. And then the Q-tips are kind of fuzzy. Oh, yeah. And so one of the hardest things to overcome doing the human blockhead trick, or stunt, is overcoming the sneezing reflex. Yeah.

That's the biggest one. I mean, there's all sorts of other problems. If you use something that's not clean, you set yourself up for a sinus infection because you're sticking foreign objects back there around your sinuses. You can damage the very soft mucus membranes and tissue that are around that line your nose and nasal cavity

and your sinuses and your nasopharynx. But one of the biggest challenges is overcoming the sneezing reflex, which can combine all this stuff, all these dangers, and then increase them 10-fold. Yeah. If you're trying to stick a nail in your head in the early stages and you sneeze,

sneezing can be a very violent reaction. So let's talk about sneezing real quick. All right. So Tracy went through the trouble of outlining how a sneeze works, right? It's pretty neat. So you've got a sneeze has what's called a reflex arc. Any kind of reflex, as far as the human body's concerned,

consists of a reflex arc. And it's made up of a receptor. In this case, we've got nerve endings in our noses. Yeah. Those are the receptors. Yeah, and they're the things that say, you know, I just snorted pepper at my nose. Yeah.

Or this house is dusty. Sure. Or whatever might cause you animal dander, whatever. Hops in beer for me. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah. So like if you literally smell like an IPA. I don't even have to smell it.

I can just drinking it. Oh, really? Yeah. Just like one good sneeze and then you're fine? No, about like 80. Really? Yeah. Wow.

Hops gets me. Hops and peppermint. Huh. Yeah. So you've got the stimulus against the receptor. The receptors got the sensory nerve leading up to the integration center of your brain. The whatever center integrates all of this information

for that particular reflex. That's right. Your motor nerve, which says, hey, go do this. Yep. And then it was called an effector. And in the case of sneezing, an effector is the process, the physical process of sneezing, right? Yeah, which everyone sneezes.

Sure. Let's get real. You know what was interesting to me, Chuck, is when you're researching yawning, you yawn when you research itching. Did you sneeze? You scratch. Didn't sneeze.

Yeah, I thought the same thing. Really? I wonder if I'm going to start sneezing and I did not. It's not suggestible. Nope. Totally a reactive thing. So when you sneeze, you might start off with your eyes watering, and you're going to secrete some fluid

from your nasal passage. And then there's that abrupt pre-sneeze breath that you draw in from your diaphragm. I don't think that has a name. Let's just call it the pre-sneeze. Breath. Breath, for sure. I think we just coined it.

And then the muscles. We're like Robert Ripley. And then your diaphragm and muscles in your chest contract really quickly. And the air leaves that nose and mouth really quickly. Do you have a sneeze pattern, or is it random? No, I'm sure I follow pattern. I almost always sneeze in threes.

Yeah. Is yours three? Yes. Oh, wow. But I mean, it depends. Like, I seriously will sneeze eight or nine times. Right, if you're drinking a hoppy beer. Right.

Yeah, I'm almost always three. And when it's not, it stands out to me as being unique. Or incomplete. Yeah, sometimes. Or sometimes I'll sneeze later and think, oh, yeah. Oh, there's the third. There it is. Which is silly.

It's like celebrity deaths. I wonder about, I meant to look that up, though. I wonder if there's any science to that sneezing pattern. Sure, there's. There's science to everything. That's true. Science and magic. So you can put off a sneeze.

You've probably done that before. That tickling sensation just goes away. Those are, to me, the incomplete things. Because you feel like, or I feel like, so close. And I clearly needed to sneeze. But you didn't. If your body doesn't sneeze, then it warded itself off. Yeah, and so the point of all the sneezing talk

is that part of mastering the human blockhead stunt is reducing your sneeze reflex. And apparently it can be done just by exposing yourself to a sneeze reflex over and over and over again. So you just stick that Q-tip in there. You sneeze. You do it again, you sneeze. You do it again, you sneeze.

You go eat a TV dinner and take a little break, because it's tough. And you're mad. You're really mad. Get really pissed off. And then you come back, and then you do it again. And then eventually, a few days later, a few weeks later, you've lost all your friends.

But you don't sneeze when you stick something up your nose. Right. Victory. Yeah. I also saw that if you are a human blockhead, you want to basically scrub down any new stunt nail that you've got with steel wool and then soak it in rubbing alcohol for a while to prevent sinus infections.

I'm picturing like a carny thriller where someone creeps in and switches out the nail, some pathogen on the end of it. No, I'm dead. So like I said, there are over 100 people doing this around the world, supposedly. Ryan Stock, who you mentioned earlier, has become pretty famous because he's been on,

I think he had a TV show of his own. He was definitely on America's Got Talent. Yeah, and he does all sorts of things. He and his wife. Oh, is she on the act? Oh, yeah, she's definitely part of it, Amberlynn. So like I said, he does all kinds of things. But one of his most notable tricks

is a spin on this called the human meat head, where just look it up. Ryan Stock, he puts a meat hook. And remember how he said it was connected to the throat? He will go all the way through his nose, out of his mouth with the end of the hook, then he'll pull stuff around. He actually pulled almost a 1,300 pound car.

He holds the world's record. That's being the only person that ever do it. You gotta hear the title of this world record. He has a world record for the heaviest vehicle pulled using a hook through the nasal cavity and out of the mouth. 1,598.35 pound car. No idea how much that is in kilograms.

Yeah. I remember my brother, he ate something when he was, first time I realized that was all connected. He laughed a lot when eating hamburger and coughed hamburger through his nose. Or milk through the nose when you made your friend laugh. That was always, man. You just were triumphant the rest of the day.

Oh yeah. I actually have found, if I'm jogging, like I always chew gum. And I break the gum slowly into small pieces and I eventually eat it or whatever. Really? But there's a few moments where there's a small piece of gum separated from the rest of the gum.

And I've noticed every once in a while, I don't know what sets it off, but I'll just snot it out. Like it'll shoot up my throat and then out my nose. And this happened more than once? Yeah. I don't, you're either not jogging right, you're not chewing gum right. There's something, there's a breakdown.

Yeah, I don't think you're supposed to do that. It's true. Weird, yeah. Does it hurt? No, it's just surprising. Are you sure it's the gum? What do you mean? Oh yeah, it's pieces of brain.

Did you ever hear about the woman who had like a runny nose for 20 years and she finally went to the doctor and they're like, that's cerebrospinal fluid. Your brain is leaking out of your nose. Was she okay? I guess, I mean, she lived with it for decades. That's crazy.

Mm-hmm. Oh. And there's this other guy that I wanna mention too, the faith healer. Oh yeah. John of God. And this made me wanna do, I'd love to do a show on faith healing period

and a show on psychic surgery. Okay. Like those are definitely on the list now. But he is a famous Brazilian faith healer who, I mean, he's big. Like if he's way more famous than I thought he was because I hadn't heard of him. Okay.

But he's big time. And he does these, he has a couple of kind of operations, one visible and one invisible. And one of the visible ones is he sticks forceps up the nose of people and to supposedly heal them of certain things. And apparently he was exposed by the great James Randy, the amazing Randy, who we talked about,

the great legendary skeptic. Old sour puss. Is that his name? That's what I call him. Did you ever see the documentary? No, I haven't yet. It's really good. There's a great documentary called an honest liar

about the amazing Randy. He's just so interesting. But he, I think ABC or CBS or someone got him involved. Yeah, ABC TV to expose John of God. And he said, well, for sure, one of the things, I mean, he's exposed psychic surgeons before, but he said this forceps up the nose thing is nothing more than the blockhead trick.

Sure. And that's all he's doing, fraud. We'll do a human or no, a psychic surgery one for sure. That sounds pretty interesting. I remember seeing that when I was a kid. I thought it was like the real deal. Apparently Andy Kaufman like went to a psychic surgeon and then figured out the scam.

So sad. So says Milosh Foreman, at least. Yeah. He's like, oh, chicken's in the hand. I see it. You got anything else? I do not. If you want to know more about human blockheads,

you can type those words in the search bar howstuffworks.com. You can search human blockhead online. There's at least one good Melvin Burkhart performance on YouTube. Don't forget to look up Alar Cartilage, Ryan Stock, and also shout out to Zen Arts LA for their article on blockheads that was helpful as well.

Since I said all that, it's time, friends, for Listener Mail. So Chuck, I guess this is the last one of the year. Yeah. Yeah, we should say before we do mail, Happy New Year, everybody. Yeah, be safe. We want to see everyone in 2017.

And we kind of said it in the Christmas episode, but thanks for everything over the years. Yeah, for real. It means a lot to us. And we just can't wait to get things going again. And by your calendar, just a couple of days. By your Earth calendar. Yeah.

And also, on a personal note, happy birthday to my darling wife, Yumi. Happy birthday, Yumi. OK, well, it's time for Listener Mail, huh? I'm going to call this banning advertising to kids. We heard from a lot of people on this. It's a hot topic. Hey, guys, live in Northern Virginia.

Just listen to your show on advertising for children. Want to relay an experience we had with our then 18-month-old daughter. We were on vacation with her in Florida. Had a day with nothing on our to-do list, so we decided to take a drive to Walt Disney World. We also found a bag full of cash in our glove compartment. My husband was hesitant about going because of her young age

and the fact that she had zero exposure to Disney at this point. I persuaded him by saying she would enjoy the parades and the characters, even if she didn't know who they were. The literally only television she had ever seen at that point was educational programming on PBS Kids. And that was even minimal. So as we turned onto the road, trying

to make our way to the Magic Kingdom, there was a water tower in the distance, decorated like Mickey Mouse, ears and all. And my daughter immediately shouted, look, it's Mickey Mouse. Oh, but they were like, wait, how do you know that? My husband and I were both completely surprised. We could not believe that our daughter had been indoctrinated into recognizing that brand at only 18 months, especially

since we hadn't taught her that. Most likely she was shown a toy or a book at daycare. It is not that we were against Disney or anything, obviously because we were taking her there. Which is very shocking to see your young child parrot that information. This could also be evidence of reincarnation. Well, at least what if it was like a billboard?

And she's like, look, it's Newt Gingrich. That would be cause for alarm. I know this advertising is everywhere and it's nearly impossible to avoid. I just hope we can eventually teach her to not be fooled and use critical thinking to make decisions rather than her emotions. Thanks for all you do to make my long commute so much more

enjoyable, that is from Stacy, and she says my daughter now is nearly five and gets annoyed by commercials. So she pauses television until she can fast forward through them all. One point for technology. Nice. Well, thanks a lot, Stacy. We appreciate that.

It's a cool story. Hope you guys had a good time at Disney World. And that's it, right? Yep. Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Stacy did, you can tweet to us at Josh M. Clarke or S-Y-S-K podcast. You can hang out with Chuck on facebook.com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant or facebook.com

slash stuffyoushouldknow. Send us an email to stuffpodcastathousestuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. 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 slipdresses 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. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.