Stuff You Should Know - Silly String: Disaster in a Can

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

It's been a while since we tackled a classic toy, so here we go with all you ever wanted to know about Silly String.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home now The extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca Slash host hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I hard 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 the Lance Bass on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts Welcome to stuff you should know a production of I heart radio Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here. We're silly. This is stuff. You should know silly podcast boy did this one just not wreak of the old house stuff works days Yeah, but what's awesome is that?

You knew that you could just you know like you didn't have to double-check any facts or anything like that Sure, Tracy Wilson was on the case. Yeah, and she does not get her facts mixed up No, this was an old house of works article from Tracy and also got some stuff from CNN Gizmodo a mental floss the wired and mother Jones which feels like a Veritable greatest hits of stuff. You should know reference sites Look at it But we're talking about silly string. We haven't done one on a classic toy in a long time It's been too long and although this isn't quite

As interesting as like say a sea monkey. I think it still has some pretty interesting points Well, there's a hundred percent less Nazis in this one, which I like that's true. Not one Nazi so silly string is a toy and it's one of those things that is so ubiquitous and everybody knows about it and may may even be annoyed by it or whatever that You don't realize that there's people out there who? Talk about this stuff and think about this stuff and that if you start to dive into the internet and look for those people And you read what they write you start to figure out that they're all very very wrong in whatever They're saying about silly string

Yeah, and I think that was I think especially at the time Tracy wrote this article. It was one of those deals where Everything on the web basically said We don't even know what's in silly string and it's one of those sort of like Easy cheese. It's like this sort of mystery what's inside the can and science can't even figure it out And all we know is invented by Julius Saman in 1969 and it turns out that none of that stuff is actually true We do know what's in silly string and Julius Saman did not invent it No, and I think here

About a minute and a half into the podcast We should probably tell everybody what silly string is in case they have been in case they haven't heard Living where Living outside of a silly string laden country. That's right silly string it comes in an aerosol can so if you look at it It's it might look like easy cheese or a small can of Aquanet or spray paint or spray paint. I was trying to think of like antiquated things, but sure spray paint works as well okay, and you press the nozzle and

Out comes shooting a pressurized stream of this foamy string and You can it depends on you know how hard you shake it and your angle of incidence I guess or is that right? I'm probably got that wrong the angle at which you shoot it Sure angle of attack angle of attack But it can travel, you know five six seven up to ten twelve feet Yeah, and it's like kind of wet and cold cool feeling when it comes out comes out very fast

And then very quickly kind of doesn't completely dry It still has sort of that tacky feeling because it will stick to things But the idea is that it stays in a string form right unless you kind of pull it apart That's what makes silly string fun and great. Yeah, it's not like your grandfather's shaving cream That was just foams up and like into this pile this bubble that kind of grows It holds its shape and that's a really important part of it because it wouldn't be a toy if it just came out like shaving cream No one would want to play with it. It certainly would have not have had a very famous Part of the movie the great Tom Hanks movie big

No, so you've ever seen big that's silly string in the scene where he and Billy I guess are playing around all of a sudden they have all this money and they buy all this garbage candy and stuff Oh, yeah, yeah, and they buy silly string and Tom Hanks acts like he's squirting it's like snot out of his nose And they spray silly string and that's the idea is that kids have a good time with it and parents hate it Yeah parents and city council people as we'll see exactly and you said another part of it too Is not only just its shape, but the fact that it can really travel you said it can travel up to 10 to 12 feet Which for our friends in non-imperial countries is a handful of meters And that's a lot, you know like you can be standing pretty far away from somebody spray them drop the can and turn him

Run and you still have a pretty good head start on them chasing you So the story of silly string Chuck is actually a pretty interesting one I love ones that like toys that started out as something else which seems like every toy We've ever talked about it started it started life as its own like a different thing and then somebody was like actually this is a pretty good toy and Everyone said agreed and it became a classic toy and then we podcasted on it 60 years later. That's right Not quite 60, but in this case It was if you look at the actual patent from 1972 for foamable resinous

For a foamable resinous composition You will find Robert Peacock's and Leonard a fish fish was an inventor Cox was a chemist and what they were trying to originally invent was a medical device kind of an emergency Largely battlefield, but an emergency cast that you could spray on like a spray on cast if you break a bone that would Sort of and if you think about silly string in a different application And if you think about it, what if it instead came out and coated your arm and solidified? That's the idea and from what I could tell they were successful in that

but part of what they were trying to do was Find the right nozzle. They had apparently tested like 500 nozzles And one of those nozzles shot this stuff out this concoction that they came up with in a string Really far and that string held its shape. So they were like, let's put a button on this particular nozzle I'm sure Leonard a fish walked around with it in his little change pocket of his Levi's for many years And then when the time was right, they said we should get back to that because we've got the we've got the spray on cast down Pat I think that other thing would make a really good toy and Robert P. Cox said

Agreed Leonard fish and Leonard fish knotted silently. That's right As the legend goes, they did not know anything about toy marketing obviously So they made an appointment with who at the time was probably the biggest name in toys in the early 70s whammo mm-hmm still a big name in toys sure and We covered frisbees and yo-yos like the whammo's has made an appearance in a lot of these episodes Yo-yos was one of our better episodes if I remember correctly. Yeah, it was a good one So they went to whammo as legend has it they sprayed the stuff all over the office and the person they were meeting with as well and They said get out of here. This stuff is like how dare you kind of reaction and the next day though

Apparently fish got a telegram saying from whammo saying we need 24 cans of this stuff as a marketing test stop to stop right there and The the idea and this sounds very much like a legend, but who knows it may be true The idea is that the next day they cleaned it up But there was one hanging string on a lamp that one of the owners of whammo saw and picked up and said what is this stuff? It's right. It's fantastic. It's it like Paul Newman from Hudsucker proxy

Okay Haven't seen that one. I guess. I don't know. I know I at least started it Okay, it was that had to do with the the invention of the hula hoop Okay, yeah, I saw a lot of that but it was some Cohen brothers movies are just not for me. Yeah. Yeah, I hear you I like them all but I get it Emily doesn't like a lot of them because they they do mean things to animals and almost every movie I never noticed that. Yeah, it's a Cohen brothers thing. Okay, so they basically say get these guys in here This stuff is brilliant

And they did and apparently within a couple of weeks They had a contract with whammo to license and sell silly string But that still doesn't explain Julian Samon, right? No, Julian Samon the guy who is legendarily the person who invented silly string back in 1969 Actually does have something to do with silly string, but he came into the picture 30 years after he was reputed to Because in 1999 whammo said we've spent our silly string. We're done with this. Who wants it and Julius Samon had a company called Julius Samon Limited Which was the parent company of the Carr Freshner Corporation. How great is that?

And Carr Freshner had a subsidiary a toy division called just for kicks and just for kicks bought the rights to make silly string in 1999 and if Carr Freshner Corporation Just rings the slightest tiniest bell. You might have seen it in really little script on your Tree air freshener that is dangling from your rearview mirror. Yeah, so Julius Samon is the gentleman who holds the patent to the fur tree air freshener It's amazing another ubiquitous product. I've never owned. Yeah, same here. I never got into those either he had but he had two patents and

One was for the tree-shaped air freshener another one was the undressed naked lady silhouette air freshener Those were his two patents. Well, I guess he saw it on a mudflap and was like, uh, I think that was the greatest in air freshener Yeah, I've never seen that one, but I can I would guess it's kind of that mud flappy thing, too Yeah, yeah, I feel like mudflaps. It's either Yosemite Sam saying back off. Yes, or it's like silhouette of a naked lady Yeah, that's your mudflap selection All right, I think that's good enough for the first segment Which we'll just call history sure and in our second segment after the break we will bore you to tears By talking about the chemical contents of silly string. That is not true everybody

Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb You might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home now The extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air bnb dot c a slash host Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I hard 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 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. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life Step by step not another one kids relationships life in general can get messy You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so tell everybody 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 the Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts I'm Mangeh Shatikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India It's like smoking you might not smoke But you're gonna get second-hand astrology and lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention Because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you it got weird fast

Tantric curses major league baseball teams canceled marriages k-pop But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology My whole world can crashing down situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father And my whole view on astrology It changed Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too So Chuck I just want to say before we get started. I want to explain myself when I was saying stop while you were talking about the telegram Mm-hmm. I wasn't telling you to stop telegram stop

Yeah, yeah, I have have you ever heard the legend behind why people said stop instead of just adding a period No, but I think this is definitely the episode to put that okay, so Apparently if you were sending a telegram Letters were very cheap, but punctuation was expensive. So you actually paid less to spell out the four letters No way than paying for a period. That's why people had stopped in the middle of their sentences But the big dumb dumb would say stop exclamation point I really mean it. Wow period here. That's amazing

What a great little factoid to be able to throw out at the next dinner party. It is a factoid It's a tenth of a fact. I know oh wait. I might have My wires cross. I know what you mean. There's probably a couple of listeners to get it All right, let's dive into a can of silly string. Yes, because What is inside a can of silly string is is known generally to the public now Although some of the stuff on the original patent is has had been changed since then So I think there are some trade secrets, but let's just say it's definitely a liquid inside the can Yes, and it becomes the string outside the can because of the stuff that's inside the can

It is very lightweight and like we said it does have an adhesive quality But it's got to be just the right mix that you want it to stick to a lampshade or stick to a wall or stick to a person's like ears and hair if you're draping it over them over them over the room, but You don't want it to be so sticky that you can't get it off of something You want to be able to you know, it's got to be cohesive You want to be able to pull it out and have it kind of generally come in one big ball as you're trying to clean up afterward Right, so that's the tension between The adhesiveness of it and the cohesiveness of it and as long as it's more cohesive meaning it'll it'll hold its shape

When you pull on it Then it is adhesive so it takes less force to pull it off somebody than it does to take to pull it apart Yeah, that's why it's so easily cleaned up because it is a little bit sticky But not fully sticky and that that has to do with the genius of some of the stuff that's in it Yeah, and I imagine getting this right is I mean it sounds well, it's about to say it sounds silly To put this much research and thought into a product like this But if you get it wrong no one's gonna buy it if it sticks so bad everything that parents can't clean it up They're not gonna buy it for their kids, right?

It's it's kind of genius in a way that they figured like the exact recipe to make it fun for kids But something that you could generally just sort of pull off and ball up and throw in the trash Yeah, and Robert Peacock's and Leonard A. Fisher are the people who did spend that time figuring that out because you couldn't make a Instant cast with the stuff that comes out of a can of silly string now I've tried so they they had to go back and figure out how to make it You know very colorful how to make it so it didn't stick too much how it was cohesive all that stuff And they did they managed to come up with the perfect mixture of basically three ingredients although there's more than three There's I don't know why everybody says three, but everyone does say three

I think three is the the magic three and then some other stuff So there's a resin a surfactant and a propellant and apparently there's also a solvent which is very important There's also talc, which is very important as we'll see but each one of these things plays a really important role in the creation of the silly string and You know like you said it has to be just right or else the whole thing's going the whole enterprise is going to collapse I've been picture doctor strange love wheeling in the room all of a sudden Mine podcast so you've got your resin that's gonna form that plastic structure that exoskeleton of The strand and in original form on that patent. It was an acrylic resin using

poly isobutyl methacrylate and The resin is like everything else with the silly string. You got to get it just right That is the framework of those strands if you have too much resin It's not gonna foam like you want it to foam and it'd be more like shooting caulk at somebody and I think we can all agree That's no fun. There's that's such thing as silly caulk, right? If you have too little of the stuff then they're not gonna hold together and if silly string I think we agree that if it came out as tiny little foam bullets

It wouldn't be as fun as if it comes out as a big string But the whole point is is once this Thing is propelled into the air then it forms that shell That if you don't mess with it like it'll stay there for a while. It's not like it just disappears Yeah, because of the resin that plastic structure that it lends to the whole thing Yeah, if you leave it alone, it can it can Survive for weeks. Basically, I would guess indefinitely. I'm sure it's like how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tutorial pop No one really knows because no one's just left silly string indefinitely. You know talk about a monster

So the propellant is also really important too for a couple of reasons Whatever propellant they're using is at room temperature and normal sea level pressure Which is what it's like outside of the can it would be a gas But the contents of an aerosol can is under so much pressure that it's actually in its liquid state And the propellant when it when it emerges from that can it essentially boils It changes from liquid to a gas and as it does that because everything else is mixed up with that Propellant as we'll see it takes all of those other components the resin the surfactant the solvent on a wild ride And they all combine with one another and turn foamy so again the structure of the exoskeleton the thing that lends the whole thing

It's initial support. That's the resin. Yeah, the other thing the propellant does is that it also helps that resin form basically and It helps sort of create that that foamy exterior because once that Propellant is shot out it evaporates very quickly If you if you shoot it at a normal distance if you've ever taken silly string and Like shot it into your like a closed palm or a fist or something. It's gonna be different It's gonna be like a lot more wet because it doesn't have that chance to spread out and quickly evaporate and it's gonna be a lot More brittle. That's why you're supposed to shoot, you know the propellant across the room

Is it sort of lends itself to doing what it does best? By doing what it does best You're right, which is propelling things, right? So they used to originally use dichlorofluoromethane also known as freon-12 and Freon-12 is so bad for the ozone layer that there is a global law. Yeah against Manufacturing freon like think about how many global laws there are that might be the only one murder I Guess so, but yeah, this is this is like an actual. Yeah sure fine murder, but still well how about like a global regulation, maybe

Okay, sure or something that has to do with industry or manufacturing rather than you know killing people So so they used to use freon, but you can't use freon anymore You actually can use it in some applications. There's a finite stock of freon left on earth And you're allowed to use those you just can't manufacture anymore. So eventually we'll run out of freon They had to figure out something else to use and they did so you don't find freon 12 inside of silly string anymore Because it's really bad for the ozone layer. That's right. Although as we learned in our research over the years there have been various rogue

off brands That have used freon that have popped up like in the 2000s and I think even in the 2010s they would find some random silly string shipment that came from you know, Taiwan or China That still had that freon 12 in it and you know confiscate that stuff quick and get rid of it, right? so One of the other things moving on from the propellant which again, it's really really important stuff But all of these things are important each one plays its own role. That's right And and the surfactant plays a really interesting role too because it helps the resin foam

It helps the resin expand and the surfactant does this by By the fact that it's amphophilic and Amphophilic sorry, it's hydrophobic and it's hydrophilic So it repels water and it attracts water It doesn't know what it's doing But it does both of those things and in that sense it actually manages to keep molecules cohesive So it lends it its cohesive Property it also lends it a little bit of stickiness, but I saw that it keeps it from being too sticky

So this is like the surfactant is just a wonder Chemical because it's doing the opposite at the same time. Yeah, and the surfactant is Like Tracy says, you know so many years ago in this article that it's just sort of a fancy name for a detergent and the idea is if you think about like like if you have a Sink full of water and you just squirt some soap like dish soap in there It's just gonna sort of sit there and you might not even know there's any soap in there until you turn on that that high pressure

From the sink and maybe even put your finger over it Then that stuff's gonna foam up all of a sudden and that's sort of what's going on with this can of silly string right and Originally on the patent they listed the surfactant as sorbitan trioli eight Which has a trade name of get this tween 85? Tween 85. Yeah, that's weird. It sounds like a super weird. Yeah, that sounds like a an An internet name for a predator For sure, but it's also one of those things

It's like so innocuous that it almost makes you wonder if they went to great lengths to come up with something You just look right past You know As far as how much of this stuff is in there of what stuff is in there The resin is about 10 to 15 percent surfactant is actually less than 5 percent Most of what's in that can is that propellant. So if you had a see-through can of silly string It would be mostly that liquid propellant. Well, I guess it's all liquid at the time until it comes out like we said Right, but mostly propellant, but you did mention talc in there. I think

Without the talc it would it wouldn't have much body to it. Mm-hmm. Is that the idea? Yeah, it would it would I can't even imagine how it would be like yeah It'd just be like kind of flaky plastic-y exoskeleton without it the foam I guess is what it what I saw. Okay, and I also saw get this So I've been doing a little bit of sleuthing. Ooh tween 85 Actually used as an emulsifier for mixing mineral oil with other stuff in other applications So I believe that tween 85 serves a double duty as a surfactant, but also an emulsifier for the talc as well

Okay, okay, did you do that on the fly? I Mean when I was researching okay, it sounded in the moment. No, I mean I don't walk around knowing other industrial uses for tween 85 Mid-dug you just happened to look it up or something. No, no, no, I look it up and wrote it down. I was like, this is juicy I can't leave this one out. It's pretty juicy. You also have Anytime you have something like this, you're gonna need a stabilizer and in this case they use ammonia and isopropyl alcohol and I think the ammonia keeps it from corroding inside the can and

The alcohol stops bugs basically. Yeah, like life from forming Right, I didn't find that anywhere else on the entire internet. I looked in every single corner I didn't find it not only in relation to silly string But in relation to aerosol cans in general like I have no idea where that came from, but I did some more sleuthing Oh boy So that was from the wired article, right? I think so actually yeah, but I just don't understand what what they're talking about I mean it makes sense, but I just haven't seen it anywhere else

Yeah, but isopropyl alcohol is also commonly used as a solvent So the unnamed solvent might actually be named. They might have all the ingredients listed here But they're just not saying this thing is also Well, I got you. Yeah a little bit of a sleight of hand and what's it called misguidance No misdirection. Yeah. Yeah misdirection. That's right misguidance Yeah, you'd be a heck of a magician I'm misguiding you. Everyone's like what I Don't think you're supposed to announce that either

Man, I would be terrible at this If you think the coin would fall out of my knuckles if you look at my right hand and not to my left you will notice misguidance All right, is that does that cover the ingredients? Oh Oh, just one more thing. Okay. No, I guess we already talked about it about how like the the the the aerosol The propellant boils and carries everything else out on it. Yeah, and if you're just like man I need more tell me more about the the manufacturing of aerosol cans You're in luck because we actually did an entire episode on aerosol cans before did we really that yes

I'm not familiar that that's an old one, huh? Yeah, I was back and we were just casting about at the time Yeah, obviously, but if I remember correctly, we we did it. It was done, you know when we were finished We were casting about trying to sell old Toyota Camry's That's right of the 2012 Camry. Are you ready? Let's take that break I'm gonna go fire up the camera and get the AC going because it's hot here I'm ready to leave and we'll talk about some interesting other uses and the environmental impact right after this Hey everybody when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could

What could it earn so I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her Cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at air Bnb.ca Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I hard 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 band or each week to guide you through life step by step Oh, not another one. Mm-hmm 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 I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts I'm Mangeh Shatikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born

It's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke But you're gonna get secondhand astrology and lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention Because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you it got weird fast Tantric curses major league baseball teams canceled marriages K-pop But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology

My whole world can crashing down situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father And my whole view on astrology It changed Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are gonna change too Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts I can just see that 2012 Camry in your driveway with like the the ceiling liner kind of hanging down a little bit Like it made it came undone in one spot and it just kept going no those ceiling liners last forever They sure do way beyond 2022. I like the idea that people actually might think that they gave us like Camry's

No, it's true. I mean seriously, there's still old episodes that have that that that ad embedded in its hilarious I think that then we'll go away. They really got their money's worth out of that one. Yes, and still do one of the interesting uses of a silly string popped up during the war in Iraq when the US military although they didn't Officially endorse it and like buy this stuff for the troops, which I'm not sure why they wouldn't They Would use them to find IEDs and tripwire so they would like go up to like the doorway of a room and they would spray silly string around and

See if they were if it hung on invisible tripwires not invisible But you know hard to see tripwires Yeah, which is really awesome. It's kind of like Catherine Zeta Jones spraying that powder or whatever. Yeah in that one movie I can't remember that. I don't remember Thomas Connifair. Maybe I'm not sure. No, it was the one with Sean Connery I can't remember the name of it, but it was just yeah 90s dumb movie But yeah, same thing but using silly string in in Iraq In taking out IEDs rather than trying to steal a diamond or something. That's some differences, but it's the same principle Yeah, and there was a kind of a cool story from 2007 when a I think a soldier's mother in New Jersey

They were they wanted to get their hands on some of this stuff And so she mounted a drive and collected about 80,000 cans of silly string To send to the troops. I think the sort of bummer ending in that story is she had trouble Getting it shipped or something. I think a lot of it went bad. I never saw any time. There's like not a great follow-up It's probably not a great ending, right or the the media just got bored with it Yeah, John. They're like we're really can we just write a listicle again? I've got it now Chuck the 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you ready? It either now. I still don't have it

So if you heard us listing all these ingredients It's even though free on 12 isn't in there anymore. You might think that it's probably Not something that's great for the environment And like you said in the 70s and 80s kind of right as this was being born they immediately were started to get rid of cfcs and hcfcs hydrochlorofluorocarbons Mm-hmm the greatest named carbons of all. Yeah, there's a lot of letters in that word one of the problems was that they replaced Hydrochlorofluorocarbons with just plain old

Hydrofluorocarbons, so you can tell fewer letters. Obviously, it's not nearly as dangerous, right? The thing is is there they're fine for the ozone layer They basically do nothing for the ozone layer, but keep it in place. So that's good But they're finding that they also have a high global warming potential So like any chemical that can enter the atmosphere It can be given a global warming potential and if the lower the number the less effect it will have on changing the climate The higher the number the more of greenhouse gas it is and some of these hfcs are kind of high greenhouse gases They have a high global warming potential. So we still need to keep figuring out how to get aerosols out. Yeah

I kind of had that feeling I'm glad you look that up because my feeling was like surely they didn't solve that to where this is just like great Yeah, no, and not a problem and I imagine if even though we didn't see the ammonia in Anywhere else on the internet? Mm-hmm. It can't be great to be squirting out something with ammonia everywhere, right? I don't know. I I really don't know and I know that so no, it wasn't the ammonia that I didn't see I didn't see people putting isopropyl alcohol in an aerosol can to keep things from growing inside of it That's what I didn't see. Oh, okay. People do use ammonia. Yeah, here's what I will say though is that I

Haven't looked at a can in a while and I don't know what warnings come on it, but I bet one of them Should be like don't let your pets eat it and that kind of thing or don't let humans or your little sister eat it Yeah, well also Yeah, that's just good advice, right? There's also you can find some Warnings depending on what what kind of propellant is used in the can To say hey, this is flammable. Don't spray it at a campfire. Although it'll look really awesome Because that's really dangerous

Another one is it can freeze it can like basically freeze your skin and the reason why is because when that Compressed liquid is converting into a gas undergoing a phase change Part of that phase change is that it's it's drawing a heat from any available immediate source That includes the can so it turns the can't ice cold because it takes all the heat out of it to help turn that That gas or that liquid into a gas I did something kind of dumb a number of years ago I you know have these little skin tags and I would go to the dermatologist to get them clipped and then I thought you know What I'm just gonna buy some of that. Oh

No freeze spray And I'm gonna freeze and clip them myself Because that's got to be easy And I got some of that spray and I guess the idea is that it's not for that purpose and you spray Kind of from a distance to maybe numb something. Okay, and I got it right up on that thing and sprayed it And it burned like the fires of hell It hurts so bad It felt like someone pressed a hot like a glowing piece of metal into my skin

I can imagine I know where you're coming from actually because I went through a phase when I was a tween 85 Weirdly enough about in 85 uh-huh and Where I had warts especially on my elbows for some reason and I had to go to the doctor like Every couple months and they would burn them off with liquid liquid nitrogen frozen nitrogen And yeah, if they missed even a little bit it would really hurt

Yeah, it was really damaging But if they just got it on the work which they normally did it was weird you there was like no sensation whatsoever I we should do a shorty on warts Sure I don't know that might be our least listened to episode he'd think Yeah, I think so even even less than aerosol cans That's right or our poop centric episodes People love those

Can we finish this one the 2012 Camry? Who's up for one? I don't think that was it either So the last thing we'll say is that we mentioned earlier about City Council people it has been banned here and there because it's such a pain and in the mid-2000s, I think 2004 there was a City Council person named Tom Lobonga Lobonge in Los Angeles You know Hollywood just goes crazy on Halloween There's like a lot of party in and right there in central Hollywood and apparently the silly string was out of hand with People spraying it with people getting on fights from getting sprayed with it. Yeah, and that they actually put a

price tag on that that said silly string remediation was costing the city of Los Angeles 200 more than $200,000 each year from that one night just from Halloween. So they said no more Not on Halloween not in LA Yeah, some fat cat silly string cleaner upper was making 200k on November 1st every year. Yeah, between 85 So so they they actually passed an ordinance where silly string is outlawed one day a year Halloween in Los Angeles At the very least in Hollywood, and I did not go back and find out If there had been any change to this law

So let's talk about it as a potential that existed at least in the past if not currently, right? because there's because Tracy says that these sanctions are even worse than a Pot charge and I don't think you can get charged for pot anymore in California, right? No, it's legal Right, okay So this fine of just carrying a can of silly string could get you a misdemeanor $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail in in LA, which is like a pretty glamorous jail But it's still jail for six months. Yeah, they put it on par at the time at least with

Like a drunken disorderly charge Mm-hmm bicycling or hunting while drunk was $250 and $500 I respectively find Hunting while drunk did not know that well no And I mean like each of those separately it makes a lot of sense But if you put them together sure that's when it starts to get hilarious

You could have broken into the LA zoo and gotten the mere $250 fine If you had a can of silly string it was a thousand Did you see the video recently of that poor dog who got into a gorilla enclosure at some zoo? He was so scared and the gorillas weren't happy that he was there either But he did not want to be in there and when they finally got him out animal control got him out He had like the guiltiest look on his face like I'm sorry. I didn't want to go in there But it just happened so it ended well. He got out. Yeah, everybody was safe. It worked out very well But yeah, he was really nervous and not happy. No one was I guess you wouldn't be telling that story

If you like oh man, it got mauled into a million pieces. Yeah, he looks like a 2012 Camry now Very nice full circle. You got anything else? No, just the rule of threes Accomplished that I think that was four or five Between 85 was more than three as well. We're failing. Yeah, we're screwing it up left and right Since I said we're screwing it up left and right everybody. Obviously, it's time for listener mail I'm gonna read this just because it's just a nice person saying thank you We don't do these much and we get to also answer a question Hey guys wanted to write not about a specific episode but rather to comment on your overall series

I've been listening for years now and continue to find episodes to lightly upbeat informative and extremely respectful of different viewpoints The chemistry that you two have with each other is apparent to the listener through the silly banter and fun tangents Well, if I one of you can say something like you know that thing and the other one can name exactly what he means I also have to say that I crack up just about every time Josh says well since Chuck said blank It's time for listener mail. There's no rhyme or reason to the transitional phrase and it all makes it all the better when you say it. I Like that too. That's one of the nice traditions here Definitely as a lifelong learner your work on this podcast seems to be a dream job. It is And I didn't mean that as a question. It is

You get to research an immense range of topics and you make them so accessible to the audience Something I appreciate as a teacher also applaud you for doing such a thorough job at being diligent With and mindful of your sources. That is such a teacher word. Yeah What diligent? Mm-hmm. Yeah One thing I always look forward to as well as the fun musical interludes going in and out of the commercial breaks I always wondered how you get them to fan submit them. Where do they come from keeps episodes fresh? Even after the many years that you have decided dedicated to your show And so Amy from Agoura Hills, California. Yes, those are absolutely listeners

They have been sending them in for years and they continue to and they're always fun and amazing and It's just kind of one of the fun ways that we can make listeners a part of the show Yeah, like super big time. Thanks to every single person who submitted a ad jingle for us They just agreed they keep the show fresh and happening indeed. Who is that from Chuck Amy from Agoura Hills, California? Okay, Amy. Thank you very much for that email That was really kind of you if you want to get in touch with us like Amy did and say some kind words or call us out For something whatever you can send us an email to stuff podcast at I heart radio Stuff you should know is a production of I heart radio for more podcasts my heart radio visit the I heart radio

app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I heart 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 Boybander 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 I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe you can find in major league

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