Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Thread Count

Episode Date: January 23, 2019

Is thread count all it's cracked up to be? Listen in and find out in today's edition of Short Stuff! 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. Hi, and welcome to the short stuff podcast. I'm Josh, there's Charles, there's Jerome, and this is again, the short stuff podcast.

This one in particular is the short stuff podcast where we discuss thread counts in bedding. Let's begin. Yeah, and this one reeks of typical stuff you should know, and that occasionally we will bust a myth or two. And bust a move. That probably might disappoint some folks,

like Dr. Seuss, lovers, when we pooped all over his early career. But now we're gonna poop on thread count, because thread count has become one of these things. Starting in like the early 2000s, when you would literally see thread counts of a thousand, it became one of those numbers, and they pointed out in this House of Works article,

it was like IQ or gas mileage or something where no one thought about anything but that number. It was like, oh, well, it's a thousand. It's got to be better than the 800, which is better than the 600, which is better than the 300. And I mean, do you know where that came from, the whole thread count thing?

It's not like thread count hadn't been a factor before, but it was like an industry thing. And somehow it got brought out to the consumer. I'm guessing by some yuppie scum who boasted about their thread count somewhere, maybe in a movie or on a TV show, and then it just kind of took off from there. Yeah, here's the disappointing revelation, everyone.

What I read, it's not in this article, but I read in a different one, that anything over 400, well, first of all, thread count is the number of horizontal and vertical threads per square inch. Yep, so if you cut a square inch out of your sheet, get a microscope and count every single one of the threads, not where they cross or anything like that,

but just the individual threads, that's your thread count. And it's just added. There's no weird formula, horizontal plus vertical. Well, you also do the square root of pi. Right, right in the middle of it. Right. Just for fun. Here's the dirty secret, though.

Apparently anything over 400 is just bogus, because a square inch is a square inch. There's only so much thread you can fit in it. And what I read was that 400 is that number without getting manipulative. Okay, all right. So what I read is that you can exceed that number without getting manipulative,

but to exceed that number, you have to use smaller, thinner and thinner fibers. But that's manipulative. I guess it's manipulative, but yes, it is. But you can, like there's also outright manipulation where there's just not that many fibers in there. Well, hold on to that.

There's just not that many threads. Okay, all right. But if you use thinner and thinner fibers to fit more and more threads into that square inch, you're giving the thread count that you're saying, but it's not necessarily going to be a better sheet. It might feel pretty nice, because what you're doing is creating like one really solid

piece of material, but because the thread you're using is so thin, it might not be quite as durable. Those threads might break more easily, leading to fraying, pilling. The pilling is the worst. It might just catch fire spontaneously. It might suck the life out of you while you're sleeping.

There's a lot of things that can go wrong if the threads of your sheets snap in the middle of the night. Yeah, so there's a woman named Lexi Sacks who works at the Good Housekeeping Institute. And she says in this article, the sweet spot is between 300 and 500, or anywhere from 300 to 500,

because if it goes higher than that, then the cotton becomes thin, because like you said, that probably means they're using thinner thread just to get that number up. Right. But what you're looking for is a, it depends on who you are,

but if you want a soft and durable sheet, then you want it to be in that 400 range. Right. Which is great. They don't even like mention thread counts much anymore, do they? I haven't bought sheets in a while, but I bet it's still a thing.

Okay, but I think one of the reasons, it used to be like whether you were in the market for sheets or not, you were bombarded with thread counts on TV, radio, people in their car. Yeah. So, and it definitely has subsided. And one of the reasons it's subsided

is because we'll be right back after this message. Ah. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

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Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. I'm gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90's. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in,

as we take you back to the 90's. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90's called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me

in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. 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. 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. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. All right, Chuck, one of the reasons it's subsided is because, again, some people were just straight up

perpetrating outright fraud. Purpin' fraud. Yeah. Yeah, it is weird. I don't hear as much about it anymore like you're talking about. And maybe this fraud being exposed has something to do with that. I think it definitely is.

So like for a period of time in the United States, at least, we were duped into it. Like I remember thinking like, oh my God, I don't know what my thread count is. Like I need to find it. That became the pickup line. It replaced, what's your sign? Right. I've got 800 thread counts. She's sitting below your mind.

So we were all duped for a while, but it really kind of depends if you're shopping on what you're after in a sheet. Like, some people like those flannel sheets. I think I had flannel for a little while in college. It's too hot. For me, for sure. Sometimes people cotton to those all cotton, they call them jersey or t-shirt sheets. This is weird.

I went down that road for a little while. Boy, you tried them all, haven't you? Yeah. Like silk or satin? Yeah. No. What about satin? No.

What is satin? That's a weave, right? I don't know if it's just a synthetic satin or, yeah, I think it's even like more satiny than satin. Okay. Well, supposedly a satin weave will float the yarn over a few rows at a time, which makes it smoother apparently. So what about percale?

I'm not, I don't even know what that is. So percale is kind of like a crisp, sturdy cotton weave. Okay. It's kind of like a basket weave. But it's funny how like you can use, if you use certain types of fibers and certain types of weaves, you're going to get totally different feels. And it is. It's totally personal preference.

I'm sure when I said jersey just feels weird, someone out there is like, you're nuts, Clark. I love jersey. Who doesn't want to sleep on a t-shirt? It's all just personal preference and luckily the textile industry has heard this, that there are many different preferences and they're giving us many different things to work with here. Yeah. And some of those like jersey sheets and the cotton sheets like that, well, then this

something I've just learned by having a young daughter, it will tangle your hair a lot. If you have long straight hair or curly hair, God forbid, because that cotton, when you move around, it just grabs hold, so what they recommend is like a satin pillowcase for kids, for toddlers, because you're, and it just makes sense, your hair will slip around on that and not get as tangly. So it's in the mail, it's coming, I'll report back on success rates. But that is supposedly a big anti-tangler as a satin sheet. Yeah.

You mean he's gotten a silk, just pillowcases, not the sheets, just the pillowcases. Yeah. You like it? Yeah. It's great. I had no idea why. Now I understand why. I just thought she was showing off or something.

Who are you? The king of France? Right. We've got silk pillowcases now, but I mean, they are very nice to sleep on. I have to admit. Yeah. It's a small indulgence. I like it.

But it's the, yeah, right. It's just a fraction of an indulgence. You get the whole sheet set or whatever, then you are showing off. I don't think I would like it. I just like it's fine for a pillowcase. I'd be afraid I'd slip off the bed or something. Exactly. Because I'd wear my silk pajamas.

Silk on silk. You know what that means. Well, yeah. You're toast. You're just going to keep sliding indefinitely until a car like stops you. So everyone's getting duped. It's in the 2000s. They start coming out with these crazy numbers, like I said, up to a thousand.

And they were able to do this because there is no FTC mandate on how to determine thread count. So you can kind of just say whatever you want and you can't be like tagged for false advertising. Well, what they were doing also was they were saying, oh, well, we're using two ply cotton threads, which is two thin strands of cotton wound together to make a thicker strand of cotton. So we have 300 of those in a square inch, but they're two ply. So we're going to call these 600 thread count.

Some people, apparently India, Pakistan, and China were putting out a substantial amount of sheets that just, it didn't matter what you did. You weren't going to come up with the thread counts that they were being advertised at. And so the International Trade Commission heard some complaints and they actually authorized customs agents around the world to see sheet shipments. Say that again. To see sheet shipments. Bam.

Man, that's a tough one. Yeah. And test them. I don't know if they tested them on the spot or what, but I'm sure there are some nervous boat captains like standing there like, you know, is it going to come back with man? And they found like a lot of sheets that were coming out again, India, Pakistan, and China that weren't up to the thread counts. And I think that was kind of like the crest of that wave and the fact that the International

Trade Commission actually took action on it, it just kind of beat back that little subset of fraud. And so that's where thread counts went. And apparently one of the other things that was fraudulent was Egyptian cotton. Yeah. Egyptian cotton is a real thing and it is great because it's a longer fiber. Longer staple is what they call it. Yeah.

Which means it's softer for sure and more durable. So it's not like if you see Egyptian cotton, it's not some big scam unless it's not Egyptian cotton. And again, all kinds of brands are advertising Egyptian cotton that were not Egyptian cotton. So if you go into a store today and you see a 1000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheet, be very wary, I would say, run away screaming. Well, unless it's, it costs you a pretty penny and it's from a brand that you know and trust. Well, I don't know.

I think the rules, well, that's true. I mean, yeah, it's true in this day and age. And at a time, I think if you bought sheets from a brand, a very trustworthy brand and they were expensive sheets, you're probably getting what you're paying for. This article from House of Works says, if you see Egyptian cotton and it's inexpensive, you're probably not getting Egyptian cotton. I'm surprised there's not an app delivery service called Sheety. Oh, I'll bet there's going to be in about two weeks now.

All right. Give us a small cut. That's all I asked. Did they ever, though, Chuck, whenever you come up with these ideas, did Sharknado ever give you any? I got no Sharknado money. You got no sugar from Sharknado. Nope.

Did you seize the sheets from Sharknado sugar? I don't even know what that means. It doesn't mean anything. I got nothing else. I haven't had anything else for about 30 seconds. So let's end this. Okay. Okay.

If you want to know more about this, go to House of Works.com and check out this article and also send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com.