Stuff You Should Know - Rainbows: Delighting humanity since forever

Episode Date: February 3, 2015

Rainbows seem to defy nature, but they're really pretty simple when it comes down to it. Turns out it's just light reacting to water droplets in the air. But they sure do look cool. Learn all about how rainbows are formed in today's episode. 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. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry Rowland.

Have we ever said Jerry's last name? Uh, I don't think so. Well, we have now. It's out there, it's on the internet even. Someone really updated our Wikipedia page if you look lately. It's robust. It even says their producer Jerry Jerome Rowland.

How do they know that? I guess I've said it on the podcast before. I am sure that you have. So how are you doing? I'm great, man. Rainbows, as the author points out, they've inspired countless fairy tale songs and legends. Man, I love rainbows.

I think rainbows are just fantastic. They're probably the greatest graphic design of all time. I just think rainbows are great. Well, it is funny when you read the different articles of people. It's kind of corny when they talk about how they delight and astound. But darn it, when you see a rainbow,

even as a jaded cynical adult, there's no way you can't look and just go, oh. That's pretty neat. Yeah, at the very least, you'll go, oh, a rainbow. If somebody says, hey, there's a rainbow over there, you're going to look up. I don't care. And if you doubt a rainbow's ability to astound adults,

all you have to do is look up Yosemite Bear's double rainbow video, which I watched today. It's pretty, pretty great stuff. All Bear Vasquez. Yeah. Yeah, that guy's he was. What does it mean? He's so delighted.

I know what it means. You're on peyote. You know, next time someone does see a rainbow and say that, I'm going to test everything and just say so. And I'm going to look. All right. See if they just think I'm dead inside. Let's see what happens.

I'm curious to see whether you can not look. Of course I look. So Chuck, we're not the first to be delighted and amused by rainbows. It goes back several years, decades at least. If they've been around forever. There is a lot of mythology surrounding them, because they're unusual.

They don't happen every day. And well, I guess it depends on where you live. Sure. But it's not necessarily a normal occurrence. No, I found that the philosopher Descartes, Rene Descartes, was the first to describe kind of the modern accurate theory in 1637. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Nice. He's the first one that's like, hey, wait a minute. There's some refraction going on here. Right. Well, most people usually associate that with Newton. Yeah. Well, he's the first one to describe the spectrum, right?

He was. And apparently, I saw this cool video by Philip Ball on The Atlantic that basically said that Newton just made up the Roy G. Biv spectrum. What do you mean? So the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet is Newton's interpretation of the rainbow. Before that, all sorts of different cultures

had different ideas of what made up a rainbow, how many colors there were, what the colors were. And our interpretation of the rainbow spectrum is a Newtonian invention. And a lot of people say, it's not seven. It's actually six. Indigo, not really there, Newton. And apparently, Newton was trying

to shoehorn the rainbow spectrum into the musical octave. So he's trying to shoehorn music, which has sound wavelengths, with light, which has wavelengths, and making them one in the same. But history has kind of shown like, no, there's six. We'll go with six for the rainbow. So Roy G. Biv, which we learned in school, apparently, I learned school you did, too.

Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. It's just Roy G. Biv. Oh, Roy G. Biv. There's no indigo. Yeah, well, he was busy making his cookies from figs, too. So he had lots of stuff going on. Those are good. Oh, yeah, I can mow on some fig, Newton.

Yeah, because they're good for you. So you can eat the whole bag in one sitting, if you want. Yeah, I'd never buy them. But if I see them on, like, if you give blood or something, they're on a snack table. That's when I get my fig, Newton on. Nice, man. Yeah.

So Newton wasn't the only one. Before Newton, there was a whole Celtic legend about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There was God saying, more bad after the great flood, and promising it would never happen again by showing rainbows come out after a rainbow. Like, it's fine. It's stopping.

We're not going to flood the earth again. Of course, you can't find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, because you cannot go to the end of a rainbow. Yes. You can't go under a rainbow. You can't go over a rainbow. And we'll explain all this why in just a second. Sure.

But first, we have to talk about to get to the bottom of how rainbows work, which to me, I think, is awesome. It's one of those things where, OK, this is how it works. We understand it now. Yeah. I love science stuff like that. Baked in science.

Yes. Just done. It's not like scientists think this is what's happening, and that's probably true, but that remains to be seen. This is one of those ones where we know how rainbows work, and here's how. But to get to the bottom of rainbows, we have to understand how light works first.

Yeah. And I thought this article, even though there was a lot more digging in to do, I thought the shopping cart explanation for basically how light travels was pretty darn good. Fantastic. One reason they say visible spectrum is because the light is moving so fast that you can't see it. It's like, and the combination of all those is white light,

like the sun is white light because all those colors are superimposed on one another. OK, yeah. But when it hits like a water droplet or something else, it's going to slow down enough. And we'll get to all this, to where you can see those individual parts of the spectrum. Right.

And that shopping cart explanation, like you said, it definitely simplifies the whole thing, and it's not quite right. But it does a pretty good job of illustrating the principles that are going on. Yeah, so basically light is moving at different speeds, depending on what kind of medium it's traveling through. So like I said, when it hits water,

it's going to slow down a lot. That's going to change its speed. If you're pushing a shopping cart, the asphalt is the medium. Right. If you push it on the grass, it's going to slow down. That's a new medium. It's a new medium. It's gone.

It's transitioned from one media to another. That's right. And if you hit that grass at an angle, and we've probably done this, if you had a way to steal a shopping cart as a kid, you're pushing your friends around in it, you're hauling through the neighborhood, and you hit that grass at an angle,

and it's going to take a really sharp turn because that front right wheel, let's say, is going to hit the grass. And all of a sudden, really quickly, it's going to be traveling at a much slower speed than the rest of it. And your friend's going to tumble out, and everyone's going to have a good time.

Exactly. Just wear your helmet. So imagine that the shopping cart is a photon of light, or a beam of white visible sunlight. And the grass is a prism. Yeah. So the parking lot was air, and it was moving through. You just find no problem.

But when it hit that prism, it slowed down. Yes. And because it came at an angle, one side of the light hit sooner, and it made it turn. And that is called refraction. The bending of light is refraction. Yeah. And in the case of a rainbow, that prism is a raindrop.

So I mean, this is the simple, quick version. We'll get more detailed. But when it hits that raindrop, it's going to slow down, and it's going to bend. Right. So depending on the refractive index, which is how much light bends, depending on the wavelength, the wavelength of light, which is another term for color,

is going to bend at a different angle. Yeah. So when that visible light, which is all the colors of the visible spectrum combined, hits a prism, and it bends. Or raindrop. Right. It bends at different angles because the wavelengths are

different, and so that visible light comes undone into its component wavelengths, which are all the colors of the rainbow, and they spread out. It's called dispersion. Right. Yeah. And that's it, really. But like I said, in this case, we're talking about rain.

And because raindrops are all different shapes and sizes, it's not going to be as consistent as a prism might be. But it's going to have the same effect. It's going to hit the raindrop. It's going to slow down like the wheel digging into the grass of the shopping cart, and it's going to refract.

And some of it's going to keep going. Some of it's going to bounce back. But the different color is going to bounce at a different angle. And it's all relative to where you are on the ground. Like no person, two people, see the same rainbow. Right. So it's all subjective. Right.

So when light hits the prism and it bends, like you said, because the different lights have different wavelengths, different colors have different wavelengths, red has the longest wavelength. So it bends the least. Yes. I believe violet has the shortest wavelength. So it bends the most.

Yeah. But again, because these different wavelengths, they bend differently so that the light spreads apart. And when it exits the prism, it bends again, and it forms that spectrum of separated light, separated out. And you notice we keep saying the word bend. That's why a rainbow is an arc instead of like a right angle, because the light is bending.

So Chuck, we've been kind of teasing this a little bit, but we'll get into exactly how you go from prism to raindrop, and hence the rainbow right after this. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. 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. 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. Oh, 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. Attention, Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast, the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times.

It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all. And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward, and letting everybody hear from me.

What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this. And I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast

ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, if you want to see a rainbow, or if you're going to see a rainbow, there need to be three conditions. The sun's got to be behind you. Big one. You're going to have moisture in front of you.

Right. And the sun must be shining. That sun, those sun's rays must be shining at 42 degrees of what's called the anti-solar point, which is basically where the shadow of your head is on the ground. OK. So if you can see the shadow of your head, that's going to be that 42-degree anti-solar point.

Right. So what you do is you put your back directly to the sun, right? Yeah. And then turn 42 degrees, which I guess, if it were negative 42 degrees, you'd be turning to the left. So I guess you'd be turning to the right a little bit, about 42 degrees, which you can kind of measure off in your head.

It's not quite 45 degrees. And if you're looking at rain and the sun's behind you, you're going to see where that 42 degrees is, because once you hit that point, there's your rainbow. Yeah. But I mean, you can move your body around and still see the rainbow. I mean, it's where the sun is hitting. The sun's got to be hitting it at 42 degrees.

I see. OK. So Chuck, it doesn't matter, then, where your head is. It's the raindrops relation to the sun. It is the sun's. Needs to be 42 degrees to produce a rainbow. Yeah, the sunshine must be hitting it at 42 degrees. OK.

So let's get back to basics again for a second. When the sunlight hits the raindrop, each individual raindrop is acting like a prism, right? That's right. So that visible white light is hitting a raindrop. It's hitting it at an angle. It's going kaboom into a colored spectrum inside the raindrop.

And then it's going to reflect back again, refract again, exiting the raindrop so it bends again, and it comes back at you. Right. The thing is, when you see a light, colored light wavelength, from a raindrop, you're not seeing the whole spectrum. You're not seeing millions of little rainbows. You're seeing one big rainbow.

That's right. And the reason why is because each individual raindrop, depending on its relation to you and, I guess, to the sun, is shooting one color at you. That's right. It's shooting all colors at you, but you're only picking up on one color because there's only one color from a raindrop that is angled correctly to you

in your line of sight so that the only one you're picking up on is red. That's right. And then all of the raindrops around that raindrop are doing the same thing. They're shooting about, in relation to your line of sight, red toward you. But then the raindrops a little lower than that

are shooting yellow, and then lower than that, green, and so on and so on until you get to violet. And so these groups of raindrops are producing this rainbow cumulatively as far as your line of sight is concerned. Yeah, because the rain is just falling. So where it is in the sky, I mean, as it falls, it's going to be changing color.

Right. It's not like frozen in midair or anything. But it seems like it. But it seems like it. Right. Exactly. Isn't that phenomenal? It really is.

I just think that's just as cool as it gets. Yeah, it's super cool. And you'll always notice, too, the sky under the rainbow is going to be brighter than out. And when you've got a double rainbow, which we'll get to, the area between those two is usually really dark. Right. And that's called the Alexander's Dark Band?

Yeah, Alexander's Band, because he was Alexander Aphrodisius was the first dude to describe that. That's a great name. Alexander Aphrodisius? Yeah. That's pretty good. It sounds like a 70s exploitation movie or something. Totally.

But yeah, so the reason why in between the double rainbows you have Alexander's Band is because the light there is reflecting away from you. And so it's a dark area. Yeah. So the sunlight hitting those raindrops is going, pew, away. You're like, oh, it's dark. Inside the rainbow, all of that light is reflecting back to you.

And you're seeing all of the different colors come at you. And they're recombining into visible light. So there's no color. It's just bright sunlight in the middle. Yeah. And that sunlight, they also always describe it as white. I mean, sunlight is all the colors. We just can't see it.

Yeah. We should really do a whole How Color Works episode. Yeah. It's fascinating stuff. But yeah, depending on whether you're a painter who's mixing chemical color, whether you're a chemist or a physicist, white is either the presence of all colors or the absence of color.

Right. You know? It's kind of mind blowing. We should totally do How Color Works. Well, I guess after this break, we'll talk a little bit more about the double rainbow all the way. And even, well, we'll just leave it at that. What does it mean?

Yeah. 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. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Attention, Bachelor Nation. He's back.

The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all.

And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward, and letting everybody care for me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this. And I have a lot of thoughts.

I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, you want to talk about double rainbows and what forms them?

It's pretty much the same thing, right? Yeah, the lights refracted twice. Yeah, it's just a double refraction. Yeah, well, what's cool is if you look at a double rainbow, the one on top, the higher one, that's the second refraction, is reversed. So rather than red being on the top, it's on the bottom. It's a reverse rainbow is what a double rainbow is.

And you can have a triple and even a quad, but it's rare. Like I've seen a little bit of a triple once, I think, to where you just see the faintest hint of that third one. And if you're seeing that, that means the initial, I think it's called the primary and secondary. That means your primary is super, super, super sharp. To where it looks like it's drawn on the sky, painted on the sky, then your secondary is going

to be a little more faint than the third one, because the triple refraction is not the easiest thing to occur in nature. Yeah, and one of the things that makes the primary rainbow and then hence the secondary and I guess tertiary and so on rainbows bright is the amount of sunlight and the number of raindrops. Because remember those raindrops that you're seeing

that the spectrum is made up of light wavelengths that's coming at you from a bunch of different raindrops and they reinforce one another. And the more they reinforce one another, the brighter the rainbow is. Yeah, and you'll, I mean, I feel like I usually see rainbows when it's not raining where I'm standing, but that doesn't matter.

It's, you know. Oh, you can be being rained on and still see the rainbow. Well, yeah, but it's like sometimes it's like a super light rain where it has just rained really hard. Maybe it's tapering off or maybe stopped all together. But the point is where the rainbow is, it's not like I said earlier, you can't drive up to a rainbow.

I'm gonna go up and find that thing because it's just a perspective trick basically. Right, the only, apparently from this scientific American article you sent, the only visual information we get from a rainbow is the band of its arc. Yeah, and everything else is what's around it. Right, so like if a rainbow seems really huge,

it's because say the mountains in the background look small, which makes the rainbow, by contrast, look very big and majestic. If we're close to say like the mountains are like a cell phone tower or something like that, the rainbow may look very small by comparison. Yeah, and the way they liken it in that article, I think was like the human head,

it's like roughly the same size, but if it was right in front of your face, it would block out a whole movie screen, but if it was further away, it would just be like, hey, there's that guy's head. It's the same thing, same thing. And then Phil Plate, who's a, who does the Bad Astronomer blog for Slate,

he did a pretty good explanation of full circle rainbows. Yeah, I had never, ever heard of that until you sent me that. So it makes sense though. It totally does. So remember we talked about a rainbow arcing over the sky and it's because the light is bent out of the prism, right?

Well, no, it's because it starts on one part of the ground and ends on another part of the ground, right? Where the goal is. Yeah. The reason why it has that arc is because what you're seeing is part of what really is a full circle and it's depending on where you are. Now you have a certain amount of raindrops

available to reflect the light to you, right? So when you're on the ground and you're looking up or just over to the horizon, you have a certain amount of raindrops available to you to form a rainbow. If you were able to get away from the ground, you have even more raindrops, not just above you, but now below you as well.

And you can see a full circle that is the actual real rainbow. So a real rainbow depending on where you are in relation to the ground is either a part of a circle, an arc, or a full circle. Yeah, and there was a picture. I mean, he said that pilots see him all the time. Or I guess if you're an astute flyer

that's not just like asleep with a black blanket on your face. Right, yeah. You can look out a window of a plane and see one too because you're above it. Right. It's pretty neat. I mean, there was a photo of one and it was like, oh, wow, there's a full circle rainbow.

Full circle rainbow. It looks kind of like a lens flare a little bit, but it's a rainbow lens flare. And they fill plate head in that same blog post a double circle rainbow, which is really neat. Yeah. So go check that out. I agree.

That was pretty cool. Yeah, you know that thing we were talking about earlier too about the perspective. That's why the, I think I thought you did a don't be dumb about why the moon looks bigger. Have you done that? No, so why can you see the moon during the day sometimes? Oh, why is that?

Well, I'll tell you why. Cause I saw it like a one the other day that was like super late in the day. Well, the reason why, a better question is, why can't you see the moon all the time even during the day? So it's not, the moon's very bright. It's the brightest object in the sky, second only to the sun, but it also gets its light

from the sun. So most of the time when you can't see the moon during the day, it's because the moon is behind you. Right. So the light that it's getting from the sun is behind you. Now, if the moon is closer to the sun, like depending on where the moon is in its lunar phase, then you can look up and see the sun and the moon

at the same time. It's above the horizon in other words. So if the moon were always visible above the horizon, you'd always be able to see it during the day. Gotcha. And it just has to do with where it is in relation to the sun in the lunar phase. Does that make sense?

Yeah. If it's, just go watch the Don't Be Dumb on it. Yeah, they call that a bonus, an impromptu bonus. Yeah. But the reason why the moon will look really huge in the sky is because the same thing we were talking about with the perspective like the mountain is like when you're low on the horizon, it's gonna look enormous.

Right. If there's a lot less stuff near, close to you, it's gonna look very big. Yeah, and when I went to Montana years ago, my explanation I got because you step off the plane and you think, wow, this guy does look bigger. Like what's the deal? They call it big sky country and it really does look bigger.

And the explanation I got from the locals was it's because the clouds. So again, it's just a perspective trick. So like the mountains are way over there? I think it's just the clouds that they typically get of the big, huge, puffy clouds and... But they look big in relation to the mountains in the distance, right?

Yeah, I think that's the deal. So it makes the sky appear to look larger. Plus I imagine also there's fewer obstacles and obstructions so that it's just, there's more sky to see and take in just looking around, right? Yeah, yeah, like when I lived in Yuma and you go out in the desert and you can see

like 180 degrees from horizon to horizon. Right. But they don't have the cloud formations. So the sky looks bigger in Montana than it does like in the middle of the desert. Yeah. Because most of the time in the desert, you're gonna see that just blue, nothing but blue.

Yeah. So there's no perspective. Nice. You know, like when you take a picture of something to sell on eBay, you put your fist next to it so people know how big it is. Is that what people think?

Well, sure. Anytime. I've seen quarters and rulers, never seen a fist. Yeah, quarters and rulers, that's probably a better rule of thumb. Yeah, right. Yeah. So Chuck, I got a couple other things.

Apparently when you look at a rainbow, it's not an even division or an even representation of all the colors. You see the most red. It's the most visible. Apparently 38% of a rainbow is red. And green is second at 15. Blue is the least at just 11%.

What is green? Green is 22%. Okay. 22% of a rainbow? Green. Interesting. I wonder what color blind. We need to do it on color blindness,

but it's, I looked into the article and it was just sort of started to melt my brain. Yeah. Like all this stuff. So I just said, no, put that on the back burner. I think you did a great job with this. Well, we'll see. I'm sure we'll get stuff wrong.

And lastly, the LGBT rainbow flag, designed in 1978 by a guy named Gilbert Baker. Really? And it used to have eight. It had turquoise and hot pink on it before. Yeah. But apparently they ran out of fabric for hot pink because the things like started to take off.

So they discontinued that. And I think the same went for the turquoise one too. Interesting. So they just went with six. And now it's a shining monument for establishments for people to say, I want to go in there. And some people to say, I don't want to go in there. Sadly.

Right. You know? Yeah. I came to a gay bar in Philadelphia one afternoon. And I say by accident, not like it was a big deal. Was it the blue oyster? No. No, and it was in the afternoon.

So there was just, you know, you know how it is in some bars in the afternoon. Right. It's like the serious regulars are in there. Sure. It doesn't matter. Gay, straight, whatever. And they were very cool guys.

And they were like, and it was a big group of us. And I think they were like, you know, you're in a gay bar, right? And they were kind of pointing that out. And I was like, oh, well, great. Serve me a bloody Mary then. Right, exactly. Like, I didn't know if he thought we were,

I think he knew we were from out of town. Sure. So he was like, just to like, yeah, yeah, like, he didn't want any trouble. Oh, gotcha. You know? I was like, we're not like that, my friend. That's good.

Just a happy accident. That was a good ending to the rainbow episode. Yeah. If you want to know more about rainbows, go check out our article on the site. Rainbows, just type that word into how stuff works. Go check out that slate post and Scientific American in the Atlantic, some good stuff out there.

And I said, search bar, I think, in there somewhere, which means it's time for listener mail. That's right. I'm going to call this Pliny the Beer. And this is from Corey. And I think Corey's in San Francisco. Hey guys, love the podcast. I was listening to Cinnamon today.

There was an exchange about Pliny and a comment that there was one and only. I think anyone in the Bay Area would know that there are two Plinies, the elder and the younger. That's because one of our local breweries has a beer called Pliny the Elder, which is known by beer aficionados as one of the best beers out there.

In fact, it sells out weekly from local groceries. They also make, though, a Pliny the Younger, which only comes out for two weeks a year. People wait in line for hours just to get a pint. And there is also a real historical Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, which is Nephew. I didn't realize it was Nephew. And that is from Corey.

And I did look it up, because the two weeks thing did not believe it. But sometimes you want to see it with your own eyes. And yeah, Pliny the Younger is a triple IPA. Oh, wow, that sounds awesome. Name for the Nephew and Adopted Son, evidently. And it is pub-draft only. They don't even bottle it.

Very limited distribution locally. And it's seasonal, so for just two weeks a year in February. At the Bay of Bengal. You can get it in a bar, I guess, in San Francisco. And it is a 10.25%er. Wow. Yeah. As opposed to eight for the elder.

And they're both IPAs? Yeah, one's the double and the triple. So that is a lot. Yeah, and you can get the Pliny the Elder in the bottles. It's not quite as exclusive. We'll have to try that on our tour. Yeah, I guess only the elder, unless someone. Unless we luck out and happen to be there during that two week

period, huh? Well, no, it's in February. We're going to be there in March. But if there's a bar out there that maybe wanted to say we're out. It's your pint. Put it under the bar. Save it for a month for us. We'll be there.

I don't think that's going to happen. If you want to correct us after we get something flagrantly wrong, like we did with the whole Pliny thing, you can tweet to us at SYSKpodcast. You can post it on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.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 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.

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.