Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Jet Lag Works

Episode Date: April 1, 2023

It was only since 1958 that the Jet Age began, and jet lag became a real condition. Also known as desynchronosis, jet lag can lead to all manner of ailments, from sleeplessness to irritability to diabetes and cancer. In this classic episode, learn about how the body's natural clock runs normally and what happens when it gets out of whack when we cross time zones quickly.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions like, can we create new senses for humans? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. Good morning to you. If it's Saturday morning, good afternoon, if it's Saturday afternoon, good evening or good night, if it's Saturday evening or night, and if it's not Saturday, then what are you even doing here? This is our select episode

selection for the week. I am your co-host Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and I went with How Jetlag Works. This is from February 12, 2013. And Jetlag is just a bit of a drag for anyone that travels over long distances. We've all probably felt it at one point or another, and this is a great explainer on exactly how it works and how you can best combat it. So enjoy. Happy flying. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is always this Charles W. Chuck Bryant, who just flew in to be here. Yeah. I was on the Concorde. I was just in Paris, dude. Dude, I've seen a Concorde. Oh, yeah? Yeah, the Aaron Space Museum, not the one in downtown DC,

but the one out by Dulles Airport at the New Museum. Oh my God, it's awesome. I wanted on board so bad, but it's like you're standing right next to and underneath a Concorde. It's cool. They also have like Discovery, Space Shuttle Discovery, you're standing right next to that. It's a really neat museum. Why did they end up grounding the Concorde? Was it not cost efficient? It wasn't, and like anytime there was any kind of problem, like everyone died. Really? Oh my God, yeah. But also the U.S. outlawed supersonic air travel. So like you couldn't fly across the interior of the continent, which cut out like a lot of revenue source. Yeah. So basically, it was just, and I don't think Air France or British Airways ever even broke even in all those years.

On Concorde flights? Yeah, but then in 2003, there was that most recent crash, that last crash, and after that, that was it for the Concorde. Yeah, I think if I'm not mistaken, my friend Justin, who you know, his mom, when they had like some final flights of the Concorde, flight of the Concorde, she went on one of those as like just to do it, I think. I might be wrong with that, but I seem to remember that for my past. You could go from London to New York in five hours. What is it usually like, eight? Yeah, eight or nine or something. Yeah. And do you remember when Phil Collins played Band-Aid? He played a show in London and got on the Concorde, flew to New York, and then played a show there, like in the same night. Yeah. That was pretty cool.

That was live-aid. Was it live-aid? Yeah, but you know, what's the difference? The one thing I knew is that it wasn't Farm-Aid. Yeah, Phil Collins. Oh, did he play Farm-Aid? I don't think so. That was more Willie. Willie in Mellon Camp and Neil Young and all those cats. Yeah, so Phil Collins flying back and forth between London and New York to deliver his concert. So thank God that happened. I love Phil Collins. Do you really? Oh, yeah, I do. That wouldn't have been possible had it not been for something that we like to call the jet age. Yes. Starting around the late 50s, the jet became the preferred mode of travel, which interestingly, a ticket on a jet was actually less than a ticket on like a propeller piston engine plane. Oh, really? At first? Yeah.

Interesting. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. But in the late 50s, you had McDonald Douglas and Boeing really kind of duking it out to create the jet to get people very quickly from one part of the country to another. Yeah. And it opened up commercial air travel. And all of a sudden, you didn't have to be the richest person in the world to get from New York to L.A. without having to drive or taking forever to get there, a train, prop plane, whatever. Yeah. And invented jet lag, essentially. Well, there you go. Thanks for finishing my intro for me. Well, we've only been around, like we've been leaping time zones for less than 100 years. So there are some beliefs that eventually we may evolve out of jet lag. Yeah. But for now,

we haven't been doing it long enough. No, it's been like 50, 60 years. Yeah. Our bodies still even know what the heck is going on. Right. And that's pretty much what jet lag is. Our body does not know what's going on. Yeah. There's another term for jet lag. It's called desynchronosis. That's a great word for it. Yeah. Your body has a biological clock. And when you travel from one time zone to another in fairly short order, your body gets out of sync with its environment. And all of a sudden, all the cues it uses to regulate itself and all sorts of things that your body does, it gets out of sync. And what happens when you get out of sync? Well, there's a lot of stuff that happens. Chuck, I'm glad you asked that. You can have cognitive problems, problems thinking

and problem solving and just general mental problems. Short term, of course, and temporary, but still, you're not thinking quite right. Health problems. There was a study in 2006 from the University of Virginia that found out that lab rats who were given jet lag, who were exposed to simulated jet lag, which is basically, I think, a DC to Paris flight, once a week for, I guess, most of their lives probably. Older ones died much more quickly than younger ones. Yeah. So if you're old, which I've noticed that my jet lag has gotten worse as I've aged. Yeah, man. For sure. I didn't used to get jet lagged at all. Yeah. I didn't know what the big problem was. And now it's like one of the worst things that can ever happen to you.

Yeah. Well, yeah. Fatigue, alertness, irritability, disorientation, depression, gastrointestinal illnesses. Yeah. It can really mess you up. That comes from flying, too. Air gas, which is the change in pressure, creates gas. It's not like methane or anything, it's just like gas bubble in your guts. So you like fart a lot on planes or after you got the plane? You can, as a result, sure. And you know what you should do, people, by the way? I'm going to insert some flying etiquette here and there. Are you going to... Get up and go to the bathroom and fart. Don't fart in your seat. Why are you looking at me? Well, because you're across from me. Oh, okay. No, I just, you know, me and flying now, it's just so annoying to me

because it's like a 18th century bus station these days when you're flying, cheers laughing. Yeah. Everybody's wearing like pajamas and like... Oh, those teenage girls with their boots. Oh, my gosh. It's just... Dress appropriately. You don't even have to dress up, but it's like, I don't want to see what you look like in your living room, you know? I know. Well, you take your shoes off, which is something I'm hugely against. There's nothing wrong with that because my feet do not smell. If my feet smelled and my shoes smelled, I wouldn't take them off. I'm very, very aware of that kind of thing, but it's funny that you bring that up because the other night I watched planes, trains, and automobiles. Great scene. Which is, that movie really holds

up. Oh, yeah. And John Candy takes his shoes off. And it takes his socks off. And I thought, well, I don't take my socks off. Right. But I thought of you because I know that you think that's a terrible thing to do. Yeah. I just think you should remain fully clothed when you're out in public like that. I'm cool with taking the shoes off as long as the socks stay on and your feet don't stink. But okay. So you're on a plane. You've got all these symptoms awaiting you. And if you are part of the 94% of Americans, you are going to get jet lag. Yo, I wonder what's going on with those 6%. They're probably like younger people who don't know what they're talking about. You think? Yes. Interesting. Because it's biological. I just, I bet you there's something to that 6%

besides your five years old. You think? I doubt if they interviewed a lot of five-year-olds about jet lag for this study. Well, not five, but I mean, like, when I was a late teenager, I was like, what's everyone's problem with jet lag? I don't understand what they're talking about. Yeah. Interesting. And I specifically remember being interviewed in 1998 to ask if I got jet lag. And I remember going like, no, of course not. But it is a problem. It's unpleasant for some people, but if you're in the military or if you're some huge big shot CEO, they worry that, you know, it could impair you as a pilot or as a soldier or as a big thinker and the head of a company. Or deal closer. Yeah. You don't want some jet lag CEO lady going in there and not making

good decisions and making a bad deal. Yeah. How can you be a game changer if you don't have your A game on? That's got to be the motto of some company. It probably is. I thought I just made it up. I know when you plug somebody, like Price Vista or something. And then what was the other study? In 2010, the university at Cal, they did a study of hamsters. Yeah. And it said that on the health tip that the lab rats created new neurons at about half the rate of rats who did not fly. So yeah, that's not good. No, your brain is literally not functioning as well as it should. It's not growing. Nope. And I said about the dying from that study about rats dying from being exposed to jet lag. Yeah, the older ones. And they've also found that in humans,

you can have a harder menstruation if you're a lady. And you can develop heart disease and diabetes more readily. Basically, your entire body is just totally thrown out of whack. You're hungrier at weird times. Sure. You're just out of it. You just don't feel good. You're stressed out. You have a lot of stress hormones going. So what's going on, Chuck? What is jet lag? Jet lag, well, we need to talk about the biological clock that we all have. It's basically, the article here describes it of groupings of interacting molecules and cells throughout the body. That's a good way to say it. Everything's working together. They tell our glands, hey, release these hormones at this time of day to make you sleepy, melatonin, which we'll get to in

more detail. Maybe adjust your body temperature. It's a couple of hours before you're going to wake up. So let's make you really hot for some reason. And the body is all in tuned with each other. All these things firing like a master timepiece. Who wrote this anyway? This was... That was a pretty good analogy. Patrick Kiger, he's done some good stuff. Yeah. It is a master timepiece. And there are 20,000 nerve cells called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. We'll call it the S-E-N. It's at the front of the brain, right near the optic nerve. And that is what keeps your circadian rhythm and your sleep and waking cycles going. Yeah. Like clockwork. That's the biological clock, the S-E-N. It's pretty neat.

And the fact that it's located by the optic nerve is kind of telling. Because one of the ways that it sets itself, it actually has a... It's on a set cycle, 24.65 hour cycle. And since it's off a little bit, it uses cues to reset itself. And one of the big cues it uses is natural light. Yeah. Some people think that the light, the brain is super photosensitive and that light really is the key to everything there. Well, yeah. Like the pineal gland apparently, even though it's buried inside the brain, is very light responsive. And the pineal gland is one of the things that makes... Or it makes melatonin, which has to do with sleep cycles. Melatonin is the good sleepy time stuff. So this whole rhythm, that 24.65 hour cycle,

is called your circadian rhythm. And when it's time to sleep, when it's about the time that you went to sleep the night before and it's dark out, your brain's melatonin production increases. And also, you've been building up in your head all day this stuff called adenosine. And that they recently found has been linked to being sleepy, what's called sleep pressure. You know, when you try to stay up and you're just getting sleepier and sleepier, it's harder and harder to resist, that experience is called sleep pressure. And they think that it's adenosine, responsible for that. And it accumulates in the brain until finally, about the time that you should be falling asleep, the sleep pressure is just too much to overcome and you fall asleep.

Yeah, my family, Emily's family, my Ohio family has a lot of sleep pressure. We call it the yearly gas leak over the holidays. Emily and I look up at like 7.45, we'll be watching TV and like everybody's asleep. After like a big turkey dinner or something like that? Well, after drinking all day and eating stuff like that. And it's all warm and toasty. So I get it, but it's still kind of funny when it's called the gas leak. And you just made me feel so cozy in that description. It is in a very cozy household. So you get the melatonin production increased, you got adenosine built up and you reach that sleep pressure threshold and all this stuff is kind of going on this general pattern that's attuned to you and your rhythms. Are you a night owl? Do you like to get

up early? Do you like to sleep in late? Like this is your own circadian rhythm. Yeah, and if you mess any of that up without flying, you're going to be thrown out of sorts. If you're a night owl and all of a sudden you get a job or you got to get up super early, it's going to suck for a little while until your body adjusts. It is going to suck for a little while and it takes a while for the body to adjust, but it also, we've never really, except for the last 60 years, we've never really had the capability of exposing the body to a sudden shock of just falling out of rhythm like that. Like I'm flying to Australia? Right, exactly. Yeah. Where there's like a 12 or 13 hour difference. Man, I've never, I've done the Europe thing, but I've never experienced jet lag to that degree.

I imagine that it would take me quite a while to adjust. It does. And it sucks because it takes away a percentage of your vacation almost. It definitely does when you mean I went to Japan. When we got there, we flew there, we flew west to east. No, east to west because we flew up and over Canada and down Russia. Which is easier. It was. Supposedly. But even still, when we got there, it was like three in the morning and we're just like wide awake. And that took a very little while to adjust, but when we flew west to east on the way back, it took two solid weeks of being almost like clinically out of our minds before we got back on our sleeping bed. That actually, you were pretty wacky there. Do you remember? Oh yeah.

There was a period where like the first four days when we got up, we would, we would both wake up in the middle of the night, wouldn't even talk. We'd just get up and go out to the car and drive to crystals and like eat some crystals and go back home and go to bed. And like we'd never done that before and haven't done it since, but like we just did it for like four nights in a row because jet lag. So we were doing stuff like that all the time. That's weird. But yeah, going from west to east is the worst. And especially if it's like, that was a 13 hour time difference. Yeah. What do they call that? It's a phase delay going east to west and a phase advance going west to east. Right. And it's kind of like, you can look at it like if you're, if you're clock,

if you're looking at a clock and your bedtime is a set time in phase delay, you're just taking that hour hand and moving it back. So you're just putting off your bedtime a little longer. With phase advance, you're moving that hour hand closer suddenly to your bedtime, even though your body is not ready to sleep, it's bedtime now. Wow. Well, it's just interesting that the body under, you know, I mean, it makes sense, I guess. What I find interesting is that we've figured out a way to technologically and artificially subject the body to like this kind of shock and that it responds the way that it does. You know, that it's, it starts like overproducing this hormone or underproducing that hormone.

And you go crazy. Well, yeah. And since you mentioned it, that's one of the things that happened. It really, it literally disrupts biological functions, releases stress hormones, drives up your blood pressure, sends inflammation, stimulating chemical markers through your arteries. It's going to mess up your appetite, like you said, because you're used to eating it regular times. And that's why you're eating crystal because it was, that was probably dinner time in Japan, I guess. Yeah. But haven't you ever noticed like when you get up early, like say you have an early flight or something, like you can get up at a normal time. Say you normally get up at eight. Yeah. You're, you're, maybe you're a little hungry or whatever, but

you could skip breakfast. It's not a big deal. But if you're up and like moving around at six or something like that, for some reason, you're just starving. Like, hasn't that ever happened to you? Yeah, I'm usually not super hungry in the morning, regardless of what time I wake up. If I'm up really early, I am ravenous for some reason. And I'll also find, and I've always wonder what this was, that I'm not as hungry if I don't eat anything, but if I have like the banana, then it just makes me super hungry. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Or have you noticed if you have like red meat the night before, whenever you get up the next day, you're just ravenous too. Oh, really? Yeah, that happens to me. Interesting. I don't eat a lot of red meat anymore, but I'll,

oh, you don't? No, I mean, just because Emily doesn't. So, but yeah, I'll still have my steak every now and then. What are you eating these days? I mean, same thing I've always been eating since I've been with Emily, which is a lot of chicken and turkey and fish. What kind of fish? It depends. I'll make like tilapia tacos or grilled salmon or like, what's the more flaky, like not mahi, but I'll eat mahi too, the flounder. Yeah. Yeah, I'll just go to the farmers market and what looks good and fresh. You know, they just took mackerel off the safe to eat or fine to eat environmentally list. Oh, really? Yeah. I didn't know it was on that. Yeah. Tuna, of course, love tuna. Oh, man. But you shouldn't eat a ton of tuna either.

How come? I think the mercury. Oh, is that right? Yeah. I eat a lot of raw tuna. Yeah, that they say that, you know, Jeremy Piven supposedly had some sort of mercury poisoning for eating too much sushi, which is why he- No way. Yeah, he had a bag out of some movie or show because of it. But then I think later on they said, no, I think he was using that as an excuse and it wasn't verified that he had mercury poisoning. That's a lot like the Twinkie defense. It meant, yeah, Jeremy Piven had the tuna defense. Yeah. But that's why they say if you're pregnant, you shouldn't eat a lot of sushi. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm a neuroscientist

and an author at Stanford University, and I've spent my career exploring the three pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities. Like, does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or can we create new senses for humans? Or what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This case has all the markings of a ritualistic, occult murder.

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Hi, I'm Rosie O'Donnell, and I've got a new podcast called Onward with me, Rosie O'Donnell, on iHeart. I'm 60 years old now, believe that? Yes, it's the truth. So I figure two-thirds of my life are done, zero to 30, 30 to 60, and now I'm in the 60 to 90 if I'm lucky. Mostly this part of my life is just about moving forward, and I thought, what a wonderful way to do it. With the podcast that I can sit down here in my home, with people I love and admire, people I've worked with, people I've gotten to be friends with, and some family friends that feel like the real deal. Like who, you might ask? Natasha Leon, Jennifer Lewis, Ricky Lake, Fran Drescher, Sharon Glass, Kathy Griffin, Cameron Mannheim, the list goes on and on. Listen to Onward with Rosie O'Donnell,

a proud part of the outspoken podcast network on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Man, that was a sidetrack. Yeah, it was. I think I'm hungry is what the deal is. I am too. All right, so why is it so difficult to overcome, Josh? Well, like we said, your body's circadian rhythm is not exactly 24 hours, 24.65 hours. And so every day, you're ready for sleep a little later, and a little later, and a little later. And that's why at least Patrick Keiger thinks it's easier to adjust going from east to west, because that means you're going to have to stay up later to hit your normal bedtime anyway. And since we're already kind of doing that, it's not that big of a deal. And it's not just him. I think that's proven. Like NASA says

the same thing. Well, NASA and Patrick Keiger. Another reason is not just light, body temperature, we said fluctuates. It's minimum temperature. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought it was maximum three hours before you get up. No, T-min. It's minimum temperature. Yeah. All right. I thought you like got really hot like right before you woke up. You might, but T-min is typically three hours before you normally awake. Okay. And they found that if you have to wake up, like during T-min, what your body is normally used to being at T-min, that's when your jet lag is the absolute worst. And I think it's because that's a cue that your body, your whole body has is like, okay, we're still in deep sleep and we're going to be in a while. And then all of a sudden it's like,

oh, I have to wake up and go to this meeting. The body's not, it's, it's whacked out of its normal process of waking. I wonder if that sometimes, if I get up super early, I have a harder time warming up through the day. I wonder if that has a mix of difference. I would bet it does. Like if you're used to waking up at a certain body temperature. Yeah. You know, it takes care of that no matter what, every single time, no matter why you're cold or how cold you are, go spend 15 minutes in a sauna. Yeah. And you will be right as rain. Yeah. It's just a miracle wood box. Yeah, I do that with the hot shower, with the steam. Sometimes it doesn't take with me. Really? Yeah. Sometimes like I'll still get out of the shower and like I'm chilled to the core

still. How long are you in there? Like I will stay in there for a while and like really try to heat up. And like most of the time, like it will get my temperature like up some with a sauna. It's like resetting it back to your normal setting every time. You're kind of cold though for a man. Like you're often chilly when I'm not and I know I'm super hot. You are very hot. But I think you're also a little cold. Put us together and we make a very well adjusted. Exactly. Human body temperature wise. Very middle. So ask anyone what their remedy is for jet lag and you'll get 10 different answers. Ask tender for people. You get 10 different answers. I think that's what you say. Ask Bruce Willis. What is he going to say? Make fists with your toes. Make fists with your

toes. It's always been one of my favorite things and I've tried it and it's silly. Of course it doesn't work but I just do it now because it was in diehard. Yeah. Argyle told them to do that. No, no, no. It was a guy on the plane. Fist with your toes. I thought it was Argyle the driver. It was on the plane as they were flying in. And of course in diehard it was just to set up to get him without shoes and socks on because that played a part in the movie. That's a good movie. The first one. She's named Finster. Yeah. But like I said, some people use herbal remedies. Some people take melatonin which is not FDA approved but you can take melatonin. Synthetic melatonin. We should say it says in this article it tells you how much to take and when and we'll tell you

too but we should also add this disclaimer. Melatonin has interactions with drugs like diabetes, drugs, blood thinners, birth control pills. You may want to check out what melatonin might do with your medication before you take it. You definitely should. Yeah. Some people just say you know I'm going to take a red eye and I'm going to take some volume and drink some scotch and just knock myself out for the whole flight and that'll do the trick. Yeah. That works if you want to die. Yeah. Explain. Well, there's a 36 year old woman who recently died of a stroke because and she was otherwise healthy apparently. Yeah. But she passed out on a seven hour flight or went to sleep or whatever but she slept for seven hours on a flight and developed thrombosis which is a

blood clot and apparently it went from probably her leg to her brain. Yeah. And again when we went to Japan on, I think it was Japan Airlines, they make you get up. Do they? Yeah. They're like okay, it's like it's big, it's plane stretching time. Yeah. And they show you how to do it like sitting down at your seat but they're also like why don't you get up too and walk around. So, wow. Yeah, you kind of have to because you can develop a fatal blood clot just from sitting on a plane because of the change in pressure and just sitting for that long. Yeah. You're not supposed to sleep in a sitting position. Right. The body's meant to be horizontal and prone. Right. But that's just for rich people on flights. Oh, like up in first class now where they have the sleepers. Yeah.

They're so obnoxious. They should put first class in the back so you don't have to walk through that scene. I know. The funniest is when they have like the gauzy curtain separating first class and coach and you can, it's like I see that you're having a salad. I can see your salad. That hot towel looks nice. Give me some of that salad. So, there are all kinds of home remedies and little wives tales of what you can do. Right. But if you're an expert, like if you're in NASA or if you are Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, you have some real advice like gradually adjusting your circadian rhythm actually using a light box, which is a lot of effort. But I bet it works. It does. It also works for seasonal affective disorder. Sure. So, there's

actually, I came across a paper and I'll tweet it out and post it on Facebook or something, blog about it. We'll do something with it because I couldn't get it enough in time to really speak about it. Gotcha. But there's this guy who came up with a paper that's basically like a computational method for offsetting jet lag and figuring out how to adjust your schedule accordingly. Is it like this in the article? Yeah. That's the impression that I have, but it's like really detailed. But basically, Chicago's Rush University Medical Center researchers say what you want to do is if you're going from west to east, which is the devil one, right? Phase advance. You want to start going to bed an hour earlier every day. Yeah. And like several

days, maybe like five days before your trip, you want to start going to bed an hour earlier, and not just an hour earlier across the board, but earlier and earlier and earlier to where right before your trip, you're going to bed about five hours earlier. Right. And if you're going to take melatonin and you've done all your research, you want to take a half a milligram of melatonin four and a half hours before bedtime. Yeah. And then so you want to progressively push that time earlier and earlier in the day as you're going to bed earlier and earlier at night. And then when you wake up, blast yourself with a light box. Yeah. Well, east to west. That was west to east. Okay. Yeah. East to west, you want to

not blast yourself with light. You want to like wear sunglasses. In the morning. And avoid light in the morning. But they say use a light box at your normal bedtime and stay up later. Right. Which makes sense. It sounds pretty torturous. It does. There's a New York Times article too called a battle plan for jet lag. And they've done a study with Major League Baseball, actually, because they travel a lot. And they said that over two year span teams that went eastward gave up an average of one extra run per game. Huh. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. But they say, which is the old, I guess it's not a wives tale, if NASA is confirming it, they say it takes about one day per light per time zone to get back into that rhythm in general. And they say the same

thing. You got to read to regulate your exposure to light. So when you get in that hotel room, if you're traveling east, you got to expose yourself to light early and advance that clock. If you're traveling west, expose yourself to light at dusk and then the early part of the evening and delay that clock. And they'd say like, you know, close the curtains, put a towel over your clock radio, like get it as dark as possible. Don't look at any computer screens and laptops. They say you shouldn't eat like a big meal or spicy food like the first day you get there. Yeah. Don't like dive right into that vacation. Right. Because that can mess you up as well. So gastrointestinal speaking. And what else? Well, the CDC says they don't have any suggestions

other than like eat a balanced diet and make sure you get some exercise. Jerks. It's like, of course, you're going to say that CDC. Do you have any other suggestions? And they say, yes, wear loose clothing on the flight. Avoid alcohol and caffeine. On the flight. Well, and afterward, they say that first day on vacation, you shouldn't be hitting the alcohol already either. Yeah. Because that'll just mess up your sleep period. Yeah. And then have you heard of this thing called the Valky? No. VAL, KEE, team of scientists in Finland invented this thing. And it, because their belief is that the brain is, it's all about photosensitivity. And so they actually, it's sort of like an iPod, but instead of the earplugs, it emits light

through your ear canal directly to the brain. Oh my gosh. And they said it works. They tested 350 subjects over four years and found that there is definitely brain activity when the little Valky is on and that nine out of 10 subjects felt reduction in stress, seasonal depression and anxiety. And so they're using it for winter blues and PMS and jet lag and migraines. That's neat. All sorts of stuff. Fantastic. Yeah. I don't know how much of this though. I'm curious. If it is the price of an iPod or just the size of an iPod? That's a good question. Yeah. I'd try it though. I get pretty bad jet lag. That's like when we go to do events now, I try to fly out a day early just to sort of adjust. Yeah. But I can do East Coast, West Coast. It doesn't hit me that bad.

Yeah. It's more like international that gets me. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't had it very bad. Like when we went to the TCAs, it didn't, I didn't see amount of sorts there or back. I get a little lot of sorts. Do you? Yeah, but not super bad. I'm glad, Chuck. Yeah. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University. And I've spent my career exploring the three pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities. Like, does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or can we create new

senses for humans? Or what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception and your reality. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This case has all the markings of a ritualistic, occult murder. Starring Westworld's Jonathan Tucker and Eddie Cthigge from Twilight. I wouldn't go digging around, stirring up trouble if I was you. Tune in to uncover what happened when three boys entered a Tennessee cave, but only one returned. This is the exact spot where we found the bodies, Julie.

The Manta Wall Caves, M-A-N-T-A-W-A-U-K, a production of iHeart Radio, Blumhouse Television, and Psychopia Pictures. Every minute I remain in Manta Wall County, the thicker the fog gets. Listen to the Manta Wall Caves now on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hi, I'm Rosie O'Donnell, and I've got a new podcast called Onward with me, Rosie O'Donnell, on iHeart. I'm 60 years old now, believe that? Yes, it's the truth. So I figure two-thirds of my life are done, zero to 30, 30 to 60, and now I'm in the 60 to 90 if I'm lucky. Mostly this part of my life is just about moving forward, and I thought, what a wonderful way to do it. With

the podcast that I can sit down here in my home, with people I love and admire, people I've worked with, people I've gotten to be friends with, and some family friends that feel like the real deal. Like who, you might ask? Natasha Leon, Jennifer Lewis, Ricky Lake, Fran Drescher, Sharon Glass, Kathy Griffin, Cameron Mannheim, the list goes on and on. Listen to Onward with Rosie O'Donnell, a proud part of the outspoken podcast network on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Okay, that was jet lag, everybody. Yeah, and that kind of goes in with our sleeping suite. We've done a bunch of those, like how much sleep do you really need? What was the one about the sleep aid? Remember the

sleep aid where you could stay up for 48 hours without any sleep? Oh yeah. I don't remember the title of that one. Who wants to do that? I love my sleep. That was a good episode though. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of people wish that you didn't have to sleep, I would imagine. Not me. I'm with you. I like sleep, too. If you want to hear any of those, you can go to our website, stuffyoushouldknow.com, and click on the podcast page, and just start searching. Go to town. You're going to find some cool stuff. And if you want to read this article, How Jet Lag Works, go to howstuffworks.com, and then the search bar type jet lag, and it will bring up this fine fine article. And I said search bar, so it's time for Listen to Me.

Josh, I called this a very sweet email from Wendy, and I will be reading some of it and summarizing some of it, because it's super long. She starts out, congratulations on the launch of your TV show. Thank you. I've been reading online chatter, and I hope it's going comfortably for you behind the scenes, as you hear these reactions. It's a bummer when those weird people on the block who mow the lawn naked or pride themselves on not being tricked into attending college think that they're qualified critics. Hopefully you're all too experienced by now to do more than laugh at the losers, and just keep doing what you enjoy. So, I told her that was very nice, and it came at a good time. She says, people could be mean. Man, people have been kind of mean, but hey,

we have pretty thick skin. We've been doing this for years. We got the armor on. So anyway, that was very nice, Wendy. And then she just wants, she's been meaning to write in for several years to thank us. She started listening after she moved from Seattle to Burbank in 2008, and it was a pretty depressing time for her, she said, stay at home mom, and we really got her through that time. A year later, she moved to Utah. She kept downloading because Chuck was on board. It was nice. And it was like having my brothers around for an hour or so every day. It was really nice. She said it was clear by that point, even if we didn't know each other, that you guys would probably be friends of mine if we knew each other.

And you would not only appreciate the wild cultural shift from Hollywood and Salt Lake City, but also be more fascinated and turned off by my strange family connections. And she didn't explain what that meant. It's very mysterious. Then she moved from Utah to Massachusetts and she was eight months pregnant, and we really helped her through that. And so she was super appreciative of that. And then she says this, a long time ago, you had a many side conversation about what bromance meant and seemed to conclude that it was guys who had a manly friend crush on another guy that they knew and they'd really enjoy hanging out with. I don't think we invented that.

No, no. That's commonly what the bromance is known as. I may be a woman, but I do have a major friend crush on you guys. You filled in for the awesome friends and family that I've missed intelligently shooting the breeze for the last, wow, almost five years now. That is really nice. Yeah. So she's moving around and we've helped her out. It's substituting for her smart friends. Keep podcasting, take care of yourselves. You know that in the zombie apocalypse, I definitely have your backs. By the way, my weapon of choice would be an Iron Age Scandinavian Sax in one hand, a long handled axe in the other, and a shotgun I could carry across my back.

So Wendy, you are well armed, my lady, and you'd be right by our sides. Thanks for that, Wendy. Yeah. We're glad we could help you through the last five years. Can you believe it's been like five years? Pretty soon. I saw a tweet from a listener that said that they were off to college and they started listening in eighth grade. Well, and Sarah, our amazing 11 year old fan, is not 15. Man, that's nuts. And she's going to be driving soon. She is. I want to fix her up with my nephew. It's too bad they don't live in the same state. Well, hey, we're living in a jet age. That's true. If you want to tell us how we helped you out or helped you through some rough times or were

just there for you, you know, like the pals we are, we always want to hear that kind of thing. Indeed. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. Oh, how about this? You can also tell us any of your jet lag remedies. Yeah, I'd like to hear them. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions.

Like, can we create new senses for humans? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Rosie O'Donnell, and I've got a new podcast called Onward with me, Rosie O'Donnell, on iHeart. Mostly this part of my life is just about moving forward, and I thought, what a wonderful way to do it with good friends across a tiny table and just have a heartfelt conversation. Listen to Onward with Rosie O'Donnell, a proud part of the outspoken podcast network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Mental Walk Caves, M-A-N-T-A-W-A-U-K. Listen to The Mental Walk Caves now, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.