Stuff You Should Know - Little, Fluffy Clouds

Episode Date: January 11, 2011

Today every schoolkid learns a fair share of facts about clouds and the water cycle, but this wasn't always the case. Join Chuck and Josh as they break down the history behind the classification of clouds and the way they form, all in one handy podcast. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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 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. We're going to talk about clouds. And we've just had a parade of producers in here today.

Yeah, we're on our third. We're recording two podcasts today and we're on our third producer. Yeah, Jerry is out, so we had guest producer Matt. And then we had the head honcho. Well, during sometime during the podcast, they switched without telling us. And Matt became Roxanne and now we have Tyler and Josh made a really funny joke, which is we just need to get one of those birds that has the water in it or something and just have it set over the R button so it can peck the record. Or a baby that can press R. That's what we need. See, Tyler's laughing. That's good. Yeah, that is good. It was like a dead zone here. Yeah. Well, she probably thought correctly, like I shouldn't make any noise.

Right. Tyler's not thinking that. Yeah. Chuck. Yes. Have you ever seen a cloud? I have. I love clouds. I got one for you. Have you ever heard of a man named Luke Howard? I have indeed. Spill it. It's a good name, isn't it? Yeah. Luke Howard. Sure. Especially for the late 18th, early 19th century. That's a good name for that. It's kind of like somebody our age would be named Luke Howard. It just doesn't seem old-timey to me. Sure. Well, okay. This guy named Luke Howard, a young Englishman. He's walking around planet Earth and everyone around him is calling... 1800s? Yeah. He was born in 1773, lived until 1864. Didn't live to see the American Civil War come to a close, sadly, but he probably figured it would eventually. Possibly didn't predict the

following year, but who knows? Right. Well, back during Luke Howard's time, before he was age 20, right? He was walking around and people were calling clouds essences. Really? Like idiots. Right? That's what we called clouds, essences. Like, look at that beautiful, puffy essence in the sky. Well, not even that. Just like, well, look at that essence. It's probably going to eat us eventually. It's going to eat the Earth, you know? We didn't understand gases very well. Yeah. We didn't understand different states of solidity, liquid, gas. What a time to be alive. It was. There was a time of ignorance and profound fear and wonder. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot left to discover, right? Yeah, sure. Well, Luke Howard helped put the kibosh on that discovery by

classifying clouds. First of all, he started calling them clouds, not essences. He actually thought of the name cloud. He was the first to call them clouds as far as I know. Wow. He at age 20. I'll call them Luke's. Yeah. Or Howard's. He missed a boat there. Look at that beautiful Howard. Right. Little fluffy Howard's. Anyway, Luke joined. He was a pharmacist. Okay. He joined a group called the Eschisiens, which means seekers of knowledge. And as just basically to entertain themselves every week or whenever they met, each one would present a scientific paper, like one would present for that night. And finally, when he's 20, Luke gets his turn to present a paper that he prepared. And it's called on the modification of clouds and modification

meant what we would consider today classification. And in parentheses, say essences. So people knew what he was talking about. Yeah. And that paper actually formed the basis of how we still classify clouds. Wow. This kid just kind of came up with it and it was just dead on. It just made such utter sense that hundreds of years later, we still use his classification system. I would say that puts him in the realm of some of the great unknown, uh, important people on the planet. I would say that you're right, my friend. That's not a genius episode to me. Yes it does. So should we should we run down the four main types of clouds that he thought of? Yeah. He basically classified them. He, he modified them in the parlance of the day by their shape, right, size and their

altitude and in a subcategory, their ability to precipitate on the earth. Okay. All right. All right. I'll go ahead and read these off because, you know, Latin is my thing. Cumulus, Josh means, uh, heap or pile. And those are the ones, those are the money clouds. Those are the ones that are flat and on the bottom and real billowy puffy, fluffy clouds, fluffy clouds, but usually big, not little. Yes. Uh, stratus clouds are, uh, means layer and they are short and, uh, kind of spread across the distance. Uh, you got the cirrus, which means curl of hair. Interesting. Yeah. Whispy and thin. Yep. And then you got the old nimbus and those are rain clouds and it means rainy cloud, right? Which ironically, maybe not ironically, it's probably a terrible

word to use, but 808 state had a great song called nimbus and the orb had the song little fluffy clouds that this episode is named after. We should, uh, that was a great song. Little fluffy, fluffy clouds. We should get that in here somehow. I think we should. It was on the, it appeared on the album, the orbs adventures beyond the ultra world. Uh, really? Great album. The whole thing from beginning and just awesome. It's like dark side of the moon kind of except much happier and techno year. Really? Yeah. Have you ever been to Montana? No, I've been to Idaho. So I, I kind of have an idea of what you're talking about. The big sky deal. Yeah. You know, I had a guy when I was a Montana explained, because I lived in the desert of Yuma, Arizona for a while and

you can see from horizon to horizon there, but a lot of times it's just blue sky. And so, you know, it's, it's, it looks expansive, but then you go to Montana and they call it big skyland and you get out of the plane and you, it's immediately looks larger. Yeah. And a guy that lived there said it was because of the clouds. He said they get these huge, long, billowy, cumulus clouds and it gives it a perspective that you don't get like when it's just a blue sky in the desert. And so it gives the illusion that the sky is actually larger. Right. So it sounded good to me. I didn't paint it on the clouds, but you can tell there is a difference. It's just yeah. Enormous. Yeah. And in vast, vast. Yeah. All right. So, and for those of us, for those who

really pay attention to the podcast, there is no H on Yuma. It actually is pronounced Yuma. It's not Yuma. Right. Josh, should we talk about types of clouds by altitude? Yes. I think we should chuck. We'll start with high. Yeah. So we talked about, we talked about based on size or shape, right? Yes. You can take those shapes and depending on where they are in altitude, they have different names. Different prefixes. The high level clouds generally have some sort of prefix like zero. Yeah. Right. So you got cirrus clouds, cirrocumulus and cirrostratus clouds. And cirrostratus clouds are often, they're usually very high, very thin. And sometimes they're such a thin layer that you can only detect them when they're juxtaposed against the moon.

Then you can see that it's creating a halo effect. That's actually a cirrostratus cloud, right? Yes. Cirrocumulus. One of my favorites. Very, very high level puffy cotton balls. Yeah. Way up there. Yeah. And then Chuck, take it home with cirrus. Cirrus clouds, Josh, are white and delicate and they're wispy. And they sometimes have little swirls at the end created by the wind, by the wind, by the end, created by the wind. And you can like detect air patterns a lot of times by what it's doing to these kinds of clouds. Yeah. Or you can just lick your finger and hold it up. Yes. So high level, we should point out the bottoms of the cloud. And it's always measured at the bottom because clouds can be pretty tall. Yeah. The bottom is usually between

20,000 to 40,000 feet. Not usually. That's how it's classified. This is when you have to break through when you're reaching your cruising altitude in an airplane. Matt's in here now. You're joking. Tyler's gone. Matt's in here. This is nuts. I have a feeling we're the victims of some sort of practical joke perpetrated by the woman who says that you're listening to. We should have a contest. You too can produce stuff you should know. Just show up. Yeah. We'll let you in. If you have a working index finger, you can produce stuff you should know. All right. Let's go down to mid-level clouds. And these have bottoms that begin at about 6,500 to 20,000 feet. Right. Take it away. Well, the mid-level clouds are usually described by the prefix

Alto, which makes mid-level clouds the Kenny G of clouds. So you've got Alto cumulus, Alto stratus. Is that written down or did you? Okay. It's written down. I didn't want to forget. Alto stratus? Yeah. Alto cumulus are sheets of little round clouds. Yeah. And then they're kind of like serocumulus, but they have shading. Right. Right? Which I hadn't really thought about, but I've noticed the difference. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I would encourage people to, you know, if you're at a computer and you're not just listening to this in the car or something, follow along, like type in Google images. It helps. It does help because this is really difficult to describe. Yeah. Because you can very easily pick out the cumulus clouds,

the big fluffy ones. Everyone's favorite. But once you start to get into serocumulus, that kind of thing, it just becomes a little harder to describe. Right. Well, imagine. True. Alto stratus though, I will say you might know those because those are the really, really solid thick ones. So much so that that's when you're out on a sunny day and one passes over and it gets noticeably dark and you get shadows and things like that. Right. Those are Alto stratus. And then the low-level clouds, you want to talk about them? Yeah. Below 6,500 feet. Right. So these are the ones that we would conceive of creating fog. Yeah. Right. There's cumulus, stratocumulus, stratus. Stratus clouds are the ones that resemble fog

that make the sky look overcast. Yeah. Where it's just like you can't tell it's nothing but clouds or else if it's just kind of a gray day or what's going on. Right. Did you hit your head? That kind of thing. Yeah. And there's also the classic fair weather cumulus and those are the those are the money clouds. That's when it's really bright and blue, big puffy cotton balls that look like bunny rabbits or Lyndon Johnson or whatever. Right. And then there's stratocumulus where you can usually pick those out at night as well most easily because they're the ones that pass in front of the moon. Yeah. Right. And there's like breaks in them and that's stratocumulus. So like it's so strange to think because you've experienced in your 39 years walking around

this planet, all these different types of clouds. Right. But you might as well have been walking around calling them essences because we didn't really realize that they have all these different classifications or that the ones that the moon breakthrough here there are actually stratocumulus. Right. Right. The ones that are the big, big fluffy clouds are cumulus. The ones that rain are nimbus. Yeah. Cumulonimbus clouds are thunderstorm clouds basically low level and nimbo stratus are also very the dark low hanging clouds. Right. And those are attached into like this kind of extra category called vertically developed clouds. Right. Yeah. Yeah. These things are so tall, so large and they form vertically in these piles that they

actually transcend altitudes. They cross over altitudinal boundaries. Okay. So they creep into different like low level and mid level. Right. Gotcha. Yeah. So those are the types of clouds. Right. Are you still with us? I am. Yeah. It'd be bad if I was not in it. We got through the boring part. Now we're going to talk about how clouds form. Right. Yeah. This is a good part. I agree. Evaporation and con. Well, let's start this out with something that comes later in the article. Clouds are collections of little water droplets and crystallized water molecules. That's what a cloud is. Right. We should have led the show off with that. Basically, cloud forms in here if you ever are wondering how a cloud forms, if anyone ever asks you, just bust this out.

Clouds form when warm, moist air encounters cooler air. Yeah. Simple as that. Sure. We can get into a little more complexity, shall we? Yes. Think about a hot day and you have like pour some water on the asphalt on a hot day. It's going to evaporate quicker. Right. And a dummy would just say, well, it's hot, right? Yeah. But the reason it's happening is because the water molecules are more excited because it's hot. They're moving around more. They can spread out further. They can spread out from a body of water. Yeah. And then basically bus free into water vapor more easily. Right. And Tuthman, who wrote this article, uses the example of a birdbath, right? Yes. But you can use the birdbath as pretty much a metaphor for any body of water on earth. Yeah.

Clouds ultimately form from the evaporation of water on the earth's surface, which so these water molecules become excited, turn into water vapor, which is capable of interacting with the air. They may rise up. Yeah. When they encounter cooler air higher up, they're going to condense all of a sudden. Yep. And form clouds, right? That's called a convective cloud. Boom. It can also happen when warm, moist air encounters a cold front. Yeah. Just a piece of cold air that's not necessarily higher in altitude, but it's coming in from the right or the left. Yeah. And then along that front where the warm, moist air meets the edge of the cold air, the edge that's created, that's going to cause precipitation. Boom again. And clouds. Clouds, Josh, also form a little easier

if the water vapor that's evaporating has something to grab onto. So that allows it to change into a liquid or solid phase easier. And they call these condensation nuclei or freezing nuclei. Sounds fancy. It's really what we're talking about is dust, sea salt. There's like a wildfire, soot from the wildfire. Yeah. Stuff in the air serve as particulate matter. Yeah, particulate matter. And that serves to make the clouds form quicker. Right. Because what you have is something that it forms the nucleus of this water droplet. Yeah. And it starts attracting more and more and more and more. And then eventually this water droplet gets so heavy that it can't be sustained against the force of gravity any longer, which pulls it down to earth

as a raindrop. Or if it's cold enough, pulls it down to earth as a nice crystal, which you might know and love as a snowflake. Meteorology with Josh Clark. Yes. Before we move on to that, which is awesome, I do want to point out that one of the other things that can serve as a condensation nuclei is bacteria, plant bacteria, and the air can help clouds form more quickly. That's right. It's weird, man. Is it weird? I don't know. It just, it is to me. Why? Well, you can't see it. It's happening. Right. But you can't see it. So anything I can't see is just weird. Well, not weird. Red light, ultraviolet light. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. Microscopic stuff. It has weird. I hate art. 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 2200 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 applying sample of tax. 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 jack move or being robbed.

They call civil asset. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. 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 block buster? 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 friends 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. Alright Chuck, clouds move around we should say because the difference in the air temperature within the cloud then outside it can push it around here and there. Yeah, let's a good way to look at clouds that I realized from researching this article is that clouds almost follow the first law of thermodynamics. They can't be created or destroyed. They just change formation. If you look at clouds as part of the rain cycle, that is basically this interaction between the water

on the earth surface and the atmosphere and their reaction, they're part of this reaction, different types of clouds. Then they're constantly moving. This water vapor is either in the air, invisible as water vapor, visible as a cloud or visible as part of the water on the earth surface. So clouds like turn into one another. It's not like oh I'm a cumulus cloud now I'm just gone. Right. They'll usually turn into one another as they rise and fall and then it's part of the big cycle. Right. So say that you have a big old cumulus cloud. Yay. Nice warm moist cumulus cloud. Right. Love them. And it hits a wedge of cold air. That cold front causes precipitation. Yeah. Right. And it's actually usually when a warm cloud meets cold air, the warm cloud is forced up.

Heat rises. Right. And it's going to cool, which will cause precipitation, but it's also going to cause that cloud to just rise further and further and it's going to evolve so it'll hit that middle altitude and become like an alto stratus or alto cumulus cloud. It's going to break up a little further. Finally, it'll probably reach into the upper atmosphere and become a cirrus cloud. Yeah. And then, you know, jazz hands or what is that? What are those hands called? Dream hands. Dream hands. It turns back into water vapor. Possibly just kind of drifts along until it reaches the right conditions to become a cloud again or it might just travel back to earth and condense into a body of water. You could do a little one main show. Dream hands. Josh explains clouds through beats

and physical movements. Have you seen the dream hands video? I know. I've got to show you this. I thought you were talking about the rainbow guy at first. Which one's that? Full double rainbow. No, it's very similar to that. That guy's, he's full of wonder, isn't he? He's like, look at those essences. He's full of something. So we talked about rain a little bit. We talked about snow a little bit. This is what I found most interesting. What? What about the others? What about sleet, freezing rain and hail? I found this endlessly interesting. Did you really? I did. Because freezing rain, I mean, I didn't know how many of this stuff worked. And I was in, I took a meteorology class in college. I guess it just sort of

left my brain space at some point. But freezing rain, Josh, is when it's a snowflake at first, falls down through the atmosphere, gets a little warmer, melts, turns back into rain, continues to fall, passes through another layer of cold air, becomes super cooled, but it doesn't re-freeze, hits the ground and hits something so cold on the ground that it freezes. Right. That's freezing rain. Yes. That's different than sleet. Sleet's sort of the same thing, except it actually has enough time to re-freeze. The melted snowflake re-freezes before it hits the ground. The cold air, right, you know, that's on the ground and up is big enough so that it, as that droplet is passing through, it re-freezes. And then take it away, Hale.

Well, Hale is particularly interesting because it's associated with severe storms that have a lot of updrafts and gusts within it, right? So this, the ice crystals or the rain droplets are being kicked up and around and, you know, it's freezing and thawing and re-freezing and more water vapors being attracted to it. And the gusts are strong enough that this can be prolonged so that it turns into ice chunks the size of like a Volvo. It collects more stuff, basically, as it's going down, then the wind says, no, no, no, you're going back up, then it goes back down, then it goes back up. And then you have, like you said, damage, damaging Hale. Right. It just can't be sustained any longer. It's just too heavy,

which that's the story with all precipitation, right? Yeah. It's the stuff forming up in the atmosphere out of water and it's either cold enough to freeze or it's not so it's rain or it's snow. And then it becomes so fat that gravity can't support it any longer. Dude, the wonders of the earth. Chunks of ice can form out of invisible nothings in the air and fall on your car. Isn't that awesome? It is pretty awesome. Like this kind of stuff. I used to sit on my roof in college and talk about, you know, with my friends endlessly. Really? Oh, yeah. I used to talk about the Illuminati. Oh, yeah. Well, that too. My friend, Jason, actually, that lives in Japan now. He was my first friend to turn me on to all these like stuff they don't want you to

know type stuff. Yes. He was, everyone had that first friend. Yeah. I was like, what secret societies? Yeah. Tell me more. Yeah. And I was like, clouds are cool. Yeah. I have to say, I was a little disappointed. I thought this was going to be this ended up being more of like, well, we got to understand this to understand everything. I see I was blown away. Were you really? I'm glad. Yeah. I'm glad, man. Childlike wonder, Josh. Let's talk about why clouds, what they do to earth. One of the things they do is move dust. Yeah. That is mind blowing. I think it is. 13, what is it? 13 million tons? Well, that's just between Africa and a certain spot of the Amazon basin. I know. Moving it from Africa. It is kind of cool. At least to desertification.

Well, it can. One of the cool things about clouds is that if you have particulate matter, as we saw where there's plant bacteria or sit from wildfires, it's going to cause precipitation a lot more easily, which is the idea behind cloud seeding, right? Yeah. Like the disaster by the Royal Air Force in 1952, where they seeded clouds and like 90 million tons of rain hit in a day and killed a lot of people in Great Britain. Yeah. And the Royal Air Force is like, whoops, this is going to be classified till 2001. Yeah. And when I say it worked, I don't mean, I mean, it worked and like it rained so much. It worked awesome. They killed people. China did their bid to control the weather by dissipating clouds, by impregnating them with

silver iodide cloud seeding. And apparently we're doing it. We're using this to control climate change as well. Yeah. The problem is if you have too much particulate matter, it's going to spread out and the water droplets that are going to be attracted to it are going to be very small. Because there's maybe one piece of particulate matter for every water droplet rather than one piece for every million water droplets, which are going to form big, fat rain drops, right? So therefore that leads to desertification. Interesting. Did that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I wonder since bacteria can serve as a particulate, I wonder if potentially you could have disease rained down upon a nation. I would imagine so. There's a movie plot for you right

there, buddy. Hey, it's going on all around us right now. Is it? Sure. All right. So let's talk about what else they do to the earth. They serve as a barrier for heat, both coming in and out. They absorb about 20% of the heat and they also reflect about 20% of the heat back to the sun. Well, it depends. If you have low level clouds, you're going to have a cooler temperature because low level clouds are the best at reflecting solar energy back into space. If you have high level clouds, you're going to, especially at night, you're going to have warmer temperatures because the highest level clouds are the best at acting as a blanket around the earth. Yeah. They do both. They absorb some, they bounce them back and then once it passes through,

that it can contain it within the earth, not within the earth, but between the earth's surface and the clouds. Right. Like a blanket. That's exactly right. Which is why a cloudless night is always colder than a cloudy night because that solar radiation that's reached the earth is shooting right back into space. So that's not endlessly interesting to you still. Okay. I wish it was, Chuck. I really wish it was. How about that Illuminati though? Yeah, there's that. Should we talk about weird clouds? Oh, I think we should, man. We've got contrails, which I thought was just like literally coming out of the exhaust of jets. It's actually, that's vapor being shot out by jet exhaust that's freezing or condensing into these little

vapor clouds and we won't get into the whole chem trail thing. Those are different. Well, that's just the whole controversy there. Which is actually Maddie's in here and if you want to know about chem trails, they have a stuff they don't want you to know about chem trails. So instead of us flopping our way through it up, yeah, we'll just direct you that way. Um, lenticular clouds. Did you look up some of these picture wise? I wish you hadn't asked me that. I wish I would have printed them out. Lenticular clouds and cap clouds. Lenticular are layered and very swirly and it looks, they look like a funnel shaped stack of pancakes. Very cool looking. Sure. Cap clouds look like a big disc on top of a mountain, like kind of sitting on the nose of a mountain.

I've seen that one before. That's really cool. There's actually a really cool phenomenon. I can't remember what it's called, where if you're at a high enough altitude and it's cloudy, your shadow is cast upward. Oh really? Yeah, rather than downward and it makes you look like this huge giant like walking through the sky because usually it's so cloudy that you can't see any breaks in it and it just looks like you're this huge thing just walking across the sky above you. So the shadow is above you? Yes. I can't remember what it's called, but it's a pretty neat effect. I did a hike one time in Big Sur where we hiked up above the cloud line and it's like when you fly above it in a jet except you're walking and you feel like you can see nothing.

It's weird. It's like you're on top of the world. That's pretty sweet. Yeah, it is very sweet. That's a heck of a hike, man. Yeah, well they were low clouds in Big Sur. It wasn't like the Handys or anything like that. I mean it was a good hike. You're like, well we were dropped off by helicopter. I'm sorry, the Mammatus clouds, if you live in New York City last year or if you have an internet connection, you might have seen these pictures of Mammatus clouds and they are, it doesn't happen often at all. That's why people were like, what's going on in New York now? They're being attacked, but they're big billowy balls all clumped together like hanging down from the underside of a cloud and that's why they're called Mammatus clouds because it means like udder or breast. Oh,

really? Yeah. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, and I mean there's the internet's lousy with pictures of it last year. Really cool looking because the sunset hit it at the right time and it was like these billowy fireballs it looked like. It's very intimidating. Cool. But no harm. No fireballs, really? No, it's just clouds. Just clouds. Just essences. 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 2200 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 the 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 for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on 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 friends 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. Do you want to cover any of those other ones? Well, the Noctilucent cloud is pretty interesting, I have to say. If you were on Earth, you would call it a Noctilucent cloud. If you are up in space looking down on it, you'd call it a Polar Mesospheric cloud. That's pretty interesting. This is a very rare cloud that at twilight, apparently the makeup of these clouds that exist very high up in the atmosphere, makes them glow blue, which is unusual for clouds, and they actually think that these clouds are new. I don't want to say they're not naturally occurring. They're not old. They haven't been

around since any time before 1883, which happens to be the year that Krakatau, the volcano in Java, blew its top. And that's when people first started seeing these clouds, right? After that happened, and apparently Krakatau sent, remember the volcano episode? Oh yeah. Okay. What was that stuff called? Tefla? Yes, Tefra. It sent Tefra as much as 262,000 feet into the air, which is 80 kilometers into the atmosphere, and apparently stayed there and started forming these clouds. And well, the weird thing is, is they thought that this was just a temporary deal, but they've been around ever since, right? Yeah, they have. They also think that possibly pollution, meteoroids, and space shuttle activity are all contributing to the continued

existence of noctilucent clouds, which means shining at night. Yeah, these are cool looking. These look like, they almost look like nebula. They're sort of veiny looking and glowing, and nebula is like nothing more than a cloud in space, right? It's a space cloud, yeah. And there's actually one called the Smith cloud, which is enormous, and it's headed for the Milky Way galaxy. And when it impacts in 20 million years, it's going to put on quite a show in the sky, apparently. And it will rain down death upon us, yeah. Well, we won't be around to see that. There's clouds. I thought it was going to be cooler. It wasn't. I'm sorry, everybody. I thought it was cool. If you want to learn more about clouds, including a little shout out to

the cloud appreciation society, you can type in clouds at thesearchbar at howstuffworks.com. It'll bring that up. And of course, now it's time for Listener Mail, probably the most interesting part of this podcast. It's definitely the most heartwarming. Okay. Josh, I'm going to call this, we're thinking about you, Jody. Hi, Josh and Chuck and Jerry. I know you don't do this kind of stuff much, because you get way too many requests, which is true, but this is, we had to make an exception here. Okay. This from Brendan, by the way, and Brendan's fiance, Jody, whose nickname is Frankie, has a rare form of leukemia, and she's undergoing treatment for that right now.

The past couple of weeks have been really rough, because she's been really, really sick, like to the point of not being able to get out of bed. And unfortunately, I'm over a thousand miles away finishing school, and she really doesn't have anyone around to take care of her at this point, apart from the medical staff. Well, very sad. One of the few things that's helping her to stay sane while she is in bed, trying not to be sick, and resisting passing out from pain is your podcast. Your humor and unique fun information is a great distraction from all the stuff she has to deal with, and I cannot thank you enough for the quality show that you produce. I really, really appreciate it if you could somehow give her a shout out on the air.

Even it's a very generic hello to anybody out there who is in pain, hang in there. Or if you could just plug the national bone marrow registry at bethematch.org or something that would be cool. So we're going to get specific and say Jody, aka Frankie in Utah, hang in there. Yeah, really. And I told Brendan to keep us informed on Frankie's progress, and you guys are getting married and there's a lot to look forward to. So I hope you get better soon and listen to us while you're getting well. And getting hitched. And getting hitched. I want to hear about your wedding days. I want to hear about it. So that's for Jody. That was nice, Chuck. Hey, Jody, aka Frankie. And Brendan. And Brendan. And as Brendan suggested, everybody out there who is in a lot of pain and

listening, it's possible that you're in a lot of pain because you're listening. But if you've tried that and you're still in pain and you've gone back to listening, hey, and hang in there with thinking of you. Yeah, we'll have to tell him that this is going to be at the end of the cloud episode because he probably wouldn't make it through it ordinarily. No, no, that's a good point, Chuck. Hang in there, listen to it. It's going to be, it's going to pay off there in the end. Yeah. Well, let's see. If you have a pretty cool picture of a cloud, we want to see it. Go post it on Facebook. How about that? We have a Facebook page, facebook.com slash stuff you should know. We also tweet sysk podcast. And then you can also send us the traditional email

at stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The HowstuffWorks iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being

robbed. They call civil answer. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey family, it's your boy Michael Cal. You're the funniest man on the planet. I'm excited to announce my new podcast, Michael Talks to Air. But don't get twisted. It's not everybody. We'll be interviewing some of the greatest artists in the game from actors, musicians and comedians discussing some of the best topics. But most importantly, we're going to be doing a lot of laughing, having a lot of fun and talking that talk. Listen to Michael Talks to everybody on Monday, Wednesday, Friday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.