Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Caving Works

Episode Date: May 9, 2020

Entrances to the underworld have been places of wonder for eons, and humans have ventured into caves to sleep, hunt, create art and explore. Thanks to the hobby of caving, that tradition continues today. Get all this plus Chuck discussing his caving experience, in this classic episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this week's SYS Case Selects, I've chosen our episode on caving. We had already done an episode on biospeleology, which is about animals that live in caves.

We kinda touch on that too. But this is all of the ins and outs, if you'll excuse the unintentional pun, about caving. And you are going to love it. It's just a great, thorough, classic example of stuff you should know. So check it out starting now. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,

a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I'm an emcee of sorts. Not the cool kind, the boring kind. Well, with me is always is emcee Charles W. Chuck Bryant. He's the same kind of emcee that I am. Suck a emcee?

No, no. Not even. We're not even suck emcees. We're too square for that even. So sad. Maybe sucker emcees, but certainly not with an A. Yeah, I'm a sucker. Right, emcee.

Yeah, too square to be a sucker. That is a T-shirt. Well, I'll bet it is now. Number two, the square shape. Number two, the letter B. Or two squared, two to the second power. Oh, two squared to be a sucker. Yeah, that's it.

You've reached the point where you say stuff and people make t-shirts of it. One of these, though, we're going to hit it rich, and we can quit this whole podcasting game. Retire on our t-shirt fortune. Never. We'll be rich old men podcasting still. If only.

Hey, Chuck. Hey. Are you doing well? Yeah. You know, I think I remembered that you actually have done this before, what we're about to talk about. I have. And you had a good time, didn't you?

Yeah, I'll be offering my personal insights along the way. Good. I was hoping so. That's what I was getting at. Yeah. Hey, so I read this article in Slate. It's called America's Ancient Cave Art. And back in the late 70s, there were a couple of friends

who worked for the US Forestry Service in, I think, Tennessee. And they were running around the forest. And they found a cave. And they started to explore it. And they went into it. And they noticed, like, there were all these weird, like, scratches on the wall. And when they looked a little closer, like, wait,

that's not a scratch. That's a snake with horns. And that's a bird that, like, is tearing the head off of something else. And one of them, luckily, realized that these are all images associated with what's called the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. Or more coolly named the Southern Death Cult,

which sprung up around the Southeastern United States inexplicably about 1,200 years ago. There was, like, this what the author of the article called a religious outbreak, that they have no idea where it came from. But the weird thing about this is that these drawings were completely preserved. Like, you could still smear the charcoal.

Oh, wow. And even though they were anywhere from 500, and then they found some others that are up to, like, 6,000 years old, and they're all in this enormous, elaborate cave system in the Southeastern United States, specifically the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. But what's most remarkable, aside from their preservation, is that some of these are, like, a mile into the cave.

So some of the Mississippian people were running around, walking a mile into a cave, to, like, leave this art. And it was perfectly preserved. That's pretty cool. Even though almost every other trace of this religious outbreak, the Southern Death Cult, is just gone.

Wow. Isn't that cool? That's awesome. So I bring that up, because that is one of the big reasons that people go caving, which ultimately is entering a cave. Once you walk into a cave, you're caving, right? Yeah, I think so. Wasn't Southern Death Cult the original name of the cult,

the band? Yes, it was. And they changed it? Yep. Southern Death Cult's so much better. Yeah, it's great. Oh, well. I mean, that's one of the coolest names anyone's ever

come up with. And it's an archaeological term. Yeah, so it's got, you know, academic meaning as well. Right. All right. Well, aside from the poor name change, I like the band. Yeah, it's a good band. I used to.

You don't like them anymore? Well, I mean, it's just that sort of represented, like, high school to me in early college. They still hold up. Yeah, it's not like I don't like it. I got you. You know? Yeah.

Billy Duffy plays a main guitar. All right, so spelunking. Should we go ahead and get this out of the way? That's another word for caving. But um. Wasn't there an Atari game named Spelunker? I think so. But cavers don't really use that term a lot.

They use it derogatorily. Yeah, I think that is the case. I'm trying to remember, because I went caving, like you said. Right. Go ahead and set that up for the rest of the show with my former neighbor, who was a fan of the show. Your former neighbor, did you guys have a spat? We don't talk anymore.

I refuse to acknowledge his presence. No, he moved. Oh, OK. That's the other way that happened. Yeah, yeah. He lived across the street and left a letter in my mailbox one day, and was like, hey, dude, I heard you mention. It might have been after the biospeleology.

Right. Which we'll touch on. Again, said, I'm an experienced caver. Me and my buddy would love to take you. And you guys, too, you and you. Yeah, yeah, we were invited. Originally, it was all four of us. And it ended up being just me.

Right. The day came, I was like, let's see, crawl around in the cold in a cave, get wet and muddy. I'm going to stay home. Boy, after I did it, I was like, I'm so glad Emily and you and me and Josh didn't come, because you guys wouldn't have liked it. Yeah, there's a good picture of you on Facebook

where you're covered in mud. Yeah, I'll post more pictures when this comes out. OK. But yeah, I'll touch on it as we go. But the first thing I want to point out is that a cave can be a thing that you picture when you picture a cave, which is like you're walking along and there's a big, huge entrance that you're looking at

and you walk in. Or in this case, it can be a little hole in the ground, which is when I walked by, I was like, that's where we're going? And he was like, yeah. I was like, really? It's like a two-foot little hole in the ground. Yeah, it looked like maybe a place where foxes live or something. Yeah, he's like, nope, that's how you get in there.

I was like, OK. You're like, that's how you get in there, pal. But it ended up being, aside from the most physically challenging thing I've ever done, one of the coolest things I've done, it was very difficult. But you nail it on the head. A cave is basically any opening from the surface below ground. Yeah, into the earth.

Right. And for the most part, when we think of a cave, it's part of something called a karst landscape, which is characterized by sinkholes, underground aquifers, subterranean drainage, caves, a cave system. It's technically called a karst landscape. Yeah, and once you read that, you kind of take it for granted. But if you never really thought about it,

I hadn't never thought about it. I was like, well, why are these caves even here? Right. Someone didn't come in here and carve these out. No, but some natural processes did. That's right. There's actually four main ways that caves are created, right? Yeah, most caves are limestone caves.

And you get those when rainwater seeps down through the soil, picks up some CO2 along the way. And that forms carbonic acid, which is kind of weak. It is, but if you have carbonic acid present in the same area for eons, it's going to eventually eat away at even stone. Yeah, like limestone. And that's basically what happens. It either collects there for a long time

or is rushed in there by rain. And corrosion is what happens. It's erosion through abrasion. Through abrasion. Just basically rainwater running over something long enough, it's going to erode it. And that is how you get a cave one way. Yeah, that's the main way, I think.

You've got extrema files. Which is kind of cool. We're starting to realize, I think we talked about them in the Are We All Martians episode. Yeah, we have an article on extrema files that have earmarked for us. That's pretty good. They are basically bacteria that live and thrive

in toxic environments. Yeah, like places where nothing else lives. Right, high sulfuric content and really high temperatures, or really, really low temperatures. Yeah, they're the only things that live there. And they are starting to realize that they have a pretty big impact on cave formation. For example, there's some that like to eat oil underground.

I never knew this. And they eat and eat, and then they shoot ducks of sulfide gas. And the sulfide gas goes up and up and up as gases want to do. And it travels through groundwater, picks up oxygen, and becomes sulfuric acid. And that really starts to eat away at caves. Yeah, that's probably more so, I think, than carbonic. Yeah, which is you probably want to look out

for the sulfuric acid lake in a cave system if you're ever caving. I would say so. So that's number two. Sea caves, you'll see a lot. If you ever do sea kayaking and stuff around an island, you might venture into a sea cave. It's pretty cool.

They are basically just water pounding away at these seaside cliffs to the point where they form caves. Yeah. Pretty easy. Yeah. Did you ever see the orphanage, the Guillermo del Toro movie? No. Dude, you've not seen that?

I almost watched it last week. That is one of the best ghost movies ever made. Yeah, I was by myself, and I wanted to watch something scary because it was Halloween. That's it. And I had searched around on the internet for what's a really good scary movie, not some crappy scary movie.

And that was on the list. And I ended up searching and researching for so long I didn't watch anything. Went to sleep. You should have asked me. Or go on to the social medias. I did that once. I was looking for some scary movies

and got into a conversation with Joe Randazzo and a couple other people and ended up with this list of great horror movies and then all of them panned out awesomely. Yeah, I need to watch that. How's the devil? Have you seen that? No.

Dude, that was another one recommended by the orphanage. I love del Toro, too. Dude, it is. Was this like the Spanish Civil War era orphanage? No, no, no. That's, what is that one called? I know the one you're talking about. Devil's Backbone.

Yes. I saw that one. That's OK. Compared to the orphanage, it might as well have been like. Peewee's Playhouse. Hey, I like Peewee. No, I mean, as far as light fare goes. Yeah.

OK. It's just so much better. I'm watching it. Yeah. And watch House of the Devil, too. It's pretty good. I think you'll like that a lot. Yeah, I like Good Scary.

I don't like all that crappy saw-like stuff, like shocking torture porn crap. I like the first couple sauce. All right, so that's the third wave that caves are. Well, that was a good one. The fourth is lava tubes. When lava comes up through a volcano and it shoots up, if the conditions are right, the outer part

will cool more quickly than the creamy, gooey middle. Yeah. And when that happens, that outer shell will come together and form this coherent crust. And the stuff in the middle might fall back down, right? You got yourself a tube. You have a tube of lava. Now, if at the top of this, that top cave's inner crumbles,

all of a sudden you have an entrance. And the lava tube is now a cave. Because, again, cave is any entry from the above ground to hell. I imagine the lava tube caves are pretty interesting to explore. Yeah. But I'm a limestone guy.

Well, I mean, you don't spend much time in Hawaii. If you did, I'll bet you'd be a lava tube guy, too. Yeah, you're probably right. All right, so once you're in the cave, you're going to notice a couple of things straight away. Stalactites and stalagmites. OK, which is which, man. I feel like we have a golden opportunity here

to explain this to thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of people. It's very easy. There's a lot of little ways you can remember. Maybe millions of people. Stalactites, and that is where the sea are the ones that hang down. And you can remember that by maybe hold on tight. Stalactite, they got to hold on tight.

Yeah, because it's not stalactite and stalactite or stalagmite and stalagmite. It's stalactite. Yeah, with a C and then stalagmite with a G. And an M. So that helps, too, because you have C for ceiling or G for ground. Great, there you just did it.

Or T for top, if that helps you. We give you three ways to remember this. I don't think that we're, I think I messed it up. This is so simple for a second, and then I, I'm sorry, everyone. So stalactites hang down, stalagmites come up from the bottom. They are speleotherms, which is a cave formation. And this happens when carbonic acid

eats away at the limestone and starts dripping the calcite mineral from rainwater. Yeah, it's just kind of trickling in over centuries. Yeah, and as it is, it's depositing that calcite, right? Yeah, so it drips down from the top so it forms and then it will, you know, not drip up, but collect and form up from the bottom. Sometimes they'll meet and form a column,

which is really cool. Yeah, it is. But these things grow at a rate of a quarter inch to an inch per century. Wow. So you can't sit around and watch a stalactite form. That is basically the rule of thumb. So the rainwater comes down and drips down

and whatever deposits are at the top going down is a stalactite. That's right. And it drips down under the ground and builds a formation that grows up towards the top. Yes. That's a stalagmite. And that's why you usually find them together.

And stilacine is actually the Greek derivative. It means to drip. Really? So there you have it. That's great, man. And they did mention, I looked these up because I'd never seen them, other speliotherms like fried eggs and bacon.

Did you look these up? No. It's pretty neat. It looks like a fried egg. It's this formation. Yeah, it looks like a, you know, it's large and round and has a center that's very round as well. Yeah.

The bacon stuff, it looks like bacon strips. It's like, you know, these little strip-like formations that have different colored patterns that look like, you know, the fatty part of the bacon or the meaty part. Right. And it looks like fried eggs and bacon. I feel like I saw the fried egg one before. Yeah, you probably have.

When I saw it, I was like, oh, that's what that is. Oh, fried eggs and bacon. I had to see it because the name wasn't descriptive enough. Yeah, and this just proves that speliologists are fun, loving people. That's right. One, two, three, four. Four, five, six.

Five, seven, eight. It's a scale of surface. On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called David Lacher 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. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound, like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best 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 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. 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 will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

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. So while you're in the cave, you're probably

going to run into certain kinds of animals. And as speleologists love to do, they've classified these things into categories, right? Yeah, we talked about these in biospeleology. Right. Creepy cave-dwelling things. Yeah, if you haven't heard that episode, go check it out. It's all about caves and the stuff living in caves.

Yeah, it's really cool. But the troglosines, those are temporary visitors, like a bear, maybe hibernating in a cave. They live most of their life outside of the cave and come in for shelter or food or something like that. And there's a troglophiles. That means they love the trog. They do.

They spend most of their life there, but they will come out some. For food, yeah. But they spend most of their lives in the cave, right? Yeah, salamanders, crickets, flatworms, daddy-along bugs, and other spiders. Love them. And then there's the troglobites.

Yeah, those are ones who live their entire lives within the dark zone of the cave. And usually, they don't have eyes. And apparently, without exception, they're all blind, like the Prometheus salamander. Yeah, I remember that thing. The Ozark blind salamander, the tooth cave spider, which isn't as creepy looking as it sounds.

I expected to see something out of a B movie, but it was just like a little skinny spider. But if you name something, the tooth cave spider, you'd expect some really scary looking thing. Or something with glasses and huge buck teeth. Same with the tooth cave beetle. And they're also blind fish and shrimp and all manner of little white, creepy creatures.

Yeah, they lack pigment because they don't need it. Yeah, like screw pigment. What do we need that for? And then this kind of stuck out to me, the idea that it's always the average annual temperature of the surface above a cave, within the cave. So if it's the average temperature over the course of an entire year

in the spot above a cave is 65 degrees, it's always 65 degrees in the cave, not true. Oh, that's not true? No, so the temperatures in a cave are very, very stable. But depending on how deep it is, closer you get to the center of the earth, the warmer it gets. So that has an effect.

And just like above ground with the sun, warming the surface differently causes weather. Different amounts of heat inside a cave cause what we wouldn't recognize as weather, but actual weather itself. So is this wrong? Yes, the way it's stated. It's always the average annual temperature, yeah.

But generally it is. Yeah, it's usually very stable. And it's very close to that. But we're finding now that there is actual weather that happens in a cave. Just like we found out there's seasons on the bottom of the sea floor. Like it seems like the same thing to us,

but there's actually like seasons and changes that we didn't recognize. Cause we don't think of it that way. Yeah, caves sometimes can be dry and dusty. I guess it all depends on where you are in the country. The one I went to and like many caves are wet and muddy. And I was not expecting that. I was not expecting a lot of what I encountered actually.

Really, you weren't, were you prepared for a wet money? Oh yeah. I mean, they told me what to wear and we'll get into all that stuff. But I just, I don't know. I thought I was going to be walking into a thing and then walking around sort of like the kid caves that you can take the whole family to.

But yeah, it wasn't like that at all. It was being dropped into a muddy, wet cold hell. Yeah. And you looked like it too, man. Afterward, you look like you were really glad to be topside again. It was weird coming out. I'll say that.

So why did you go? Why would anybody go? What's the allure of caving? The unknown and the thrill of discovery. Oh yes. Well, it's true though. That's what the article says, but I don't mean to be glib.

It is very cool and way different down there. Like you get a sense that it is not the same topside as it is in the bowels of the earth. Very different place and very cool to experience firsthand. And as we mentioned, there's a lot of good opportunity for cave archeology because the climate and temperature in a cave is so stable. Things are, things left in caves

are really, really well preserved. Yeah. And you know, the caves were a good place for ancient rituals and things. And they mentioned the cave art in France. Yeah. And let's go. Have you seen this stuff? Yeah.

Holy cow. It's like, it looks like artwork painted on canvas. Some of it does. It's not like, you know, just scratchy cave drawings. Like this stuff is really beautiful. Yeah. And they found this in 1940. They discovered this in France

from the Paleolithic era, 17 to 20,000 years old and over 2,000 figures drawn. And it's like, from what I understand, like the granddaddy of all cave drawing scores was here in France, here in France, there in France. Well, there's also another one called Chauvet Cave in France. And that's what Warner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams is. I never saw that.

Oh, you didn't? I'll watch anything that he's in, or narrates at least. Oh, he does so much narrating. He's a bad guy and is it the new Bond? No. Is that right? No, he's a bad guy in some movie coming up

and I was like, oh, that's brilliant. Like no one sounds more diabolical than Warner Herzog. Yeah, it's perfect. But yeah, that's a good one too. And I think they shot it in 3D as well. It's supposed to be really good. Oh, wow. Yeah, check that one out.

It's very interesting because they figure out that they're like, why would these idiots draw a bison with eight legs? Was there an eight-legged bison back then? And then somebody figured out that if you look at it by torch light, not electric torch, but real fire torch. Does it move? It moves. Oh my god, that is so cool.

Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, I highly recommend you guys go and Google image these, L-A-S-C-A-U-X, France. And it's all over the place. And what was the other one? Chauvet, C-H-U-V-E-T. Yeah, very cool stuff. And see Cave of Forgotten Dreams if you're into that.

I mean, it's a lot of cattle drawings, granted. But it's better than you would think, considering they're doing this on a cave 20,000 years ago. Exactly. There's also biospeleology, which we talked about at length. And we don't need to really get into here. Again, go listen to the biospeleology episode. But that's another reason people go through caves.

But ultimately, I think the first sentence was the right one. It's like the thrill of discovery and the unknown. There's so few people doing any actual caving and enough caves out there that you got a pretty good shot of finding something that no one else has seen for 10,000 years, or maybe ever, you know? That's pretty cool.

In cavers, too, part of being a caver or a speleologist is being into conservation and preservation. And that's one thing I learned from my buddy Eric and his friend. There were casual spelunkers that were in there. Clearly didn't know what they were doing, weren't dressed for it, didn't have the proper equipment. And of course, these guys are just like,

these are the people that get us in trouble. Or that get in trouble that we need to come help get out of trouble. But I think serious cavers are uniformly way into preserving the cave. Like, they don't just go in cave and be like, yeah, that was cool. Like, they're all into the meetings and the preservation.

A lot of them do the volunteer for search and rescue and stuff like that. Like, they really get into it. It's not a casual affair. No, and that idea actually extends to urban spelunking or urban exploration. Yeah, which we've covered. Yeah, where you enter something like a sewer system

or an abandoned building or something like that. But one of the big rules is like, you can't break and enter. You can enter. Somebody else has already cut a hole in the chain link fence. You can go through that hole, but you can't cut that hole yourself. And you don't take anything. You preserve the place exactly the way it was.

And we actually have, I think, what's a new article on the site that is awesome, top 10 cities for urban exploration. Oh, yeah? It's got all these attractions of where to go in the city and what to explore. It's very cool. Well, France has the catacombs that are really popular.

Yeah. And I did a little bit of that in Florida in Fort Pickens in Pensacola. Oh, the Fort Pickens catacombs? Well, the Fort Pickens battery. It was like Civil War battery. Oh, yeah? Yeah, and I think it's all blocked off now.

But at the time, the metal bars were bent enough where you get through. And me and my brother and my brother-in-law made torches and went all through the stuff. Awesome. What did you find? Stuff written on the walls from the Civil War and then stuff written on the walls, clearly more modern

in nature. But just graffitian stuff and beer cans. But it was just neat walking around. Yeah, it's cool. What else, Chuck? How to get started? Yeah, I guess if this podcast tickles your fancy, then you may want to know how to get into this.

Yeah, a lot of people might be into the very easy guided you walk in and you walk around type of experience. Take the kids. There's nothing wrong with it. You can still learn a lot. It's not a cop-out. Like Carl's Bad Caverns and the real touristy ones, they're great.

Yeah. Have you ever been there? I haven't been there. I've been to Ruby Falls. You mean I went? Yeah. Ruby Falls is nice. Yeah, and there was plenty of people running around.

It was very well lit. Yeah. Safe. Yeah, but it was so awesome getting to the falls. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was great. It was total. I think part of the reason I appreciated it so much

because I took it for what it was. It was like, this is tourism, but it's also very cool. I mean, you're walking underneath a fault line in the earth. It's really kind of cool. You can tell t-shirts afterward, but it's still very cool to be in there. Exactly.

So you can do that. You can go to these really big touristy ones and still get a nice experience. Or you can get a guided tour for a little more intense experience. Have you been in Carlsbad, Cameron? Yeah. OK.

Yeah, it's nice. Is it? It's lovely. It's like red carpet everywhere. Yeah, it's just couches everywhere. Missiles, chairs. But they do mention in this article that kids are great to take into caves.

They love that kind of stuff. Obviously, you want to keep an eye on them because it's pretty easy to get lost in there. Yeah. But at these big major attractions, they take care of you. Right. They're not going to let your kid go off and live

with the salamanders. Yeah, and you've got a guide for the guided tour. But even self-guided tours, it's usually paved or clearly marked trail. Like you're going to have a lot of trouble getting lost if you get off of this trail. Yeah. Or if you stay on the trail, I should say.

Yeah, I went to a concert in a cave one time. Really? Yeah, in Tennessee, they, oh man, what's the name of it? Something Caverns. I can't remember now. But it was The Silver Jews played their last show ever in this cave. Oh, yeah.

And they have regular shows there, like usually it's like Bluegrass and stuff. But it's awesome. Like you park in this big field, and then it's one of these where you walk into a huge opening. And there's big paths. But you walk like probably half a mile down in there, and then it opens up to this huge, open room.

And there's a stage, and there's lights, and everything. Wow, that's cool. It's a really cool experience. I wonder what the green room's like there. I don't know. It's probably brown. Just sit on that rock and we'll bring you some shrimp. Yeah, it was really a very cool show, though.

I might post pictures of that, too. OK. Wow, this is going to be a picture of a Nanda. Then there's cave diving. Yes, probably the most dangerous thing a person can do. Yeah, we can't overstate that enough. Like even these cave dudes that I was with that are hardcore, they were like, those people are crazy.

Yeah, and if you're a hardcore scuba diver, even a rec diver, that doesn't mean you're a cave diver. No. Cave diver is its own thing. Yeah. And it's very easy to die. In 2012, seven people already died in cave diving. In 2012, now?

Wow. Three of them in three different days, three consecutive days in Florida, in three different incidents. Yeah. In March. Yeah, it's scary. And I asked Eric, I was like, well, what's the big deal?

And he was like, dude, you've got to be crazy to do it. And he's like, you are underground, underwater. And it's very easy to get lost and turned around, and you've only got so much air. They say that to never try and exit with half a tank of air still, or whatever, it's not air. What is it? It's compressed air.

OK, compressed air. There's an air mix, but it's generally air. Yeah, but they were like, you don't want to go below half a tank ever. That's just scary. I'm sure. And after we went caving, he took me to the entry point for the cave diving nearby.

And it's this little, probably 10 foot by 10 foot hole, little pool, but it's like infinitely deep. And it's like, wow, so you can jump in and just sort of waddle around. Or there's below that, there's the tube where you enter, and it just seems like the scariest thing ever. Right, with a tank of air on your back that could be punctured by anything.

Because it's not like there's not stalactites hanging down. Yeah, it's utterly frightening to me. That said, if you're into cave diving, and you go through the certification, and you are into that kind of thing, there's some awesome cave diving. Like cenotes, any cenotes? Yeah, yeah.

And there's a place in that I missed when we were talking about the Abandoned Mines podcast. And there's a place called Bontair Mine in Missouri. And it's an old lead mine that was in production for like 100 years. And then they closed it down in 1960. And they didn't remove anything. There's like magazines, all this stuff

just still sitting around. And they flooded it with like a billion gallons of crystal clear water. Really? And you can go scuba dive. You can cave dive this abandoned mine now. Wow. And see, there's like an old movie theater down there.

There's mine cars, elevators. Yeah, it's pretty cool. That's awesome. Yeah. But it's like the visibility is just limitless. Wow. I wonder if that's slightly safer. I think it's pretty heavily guided as far as tours go.

So if you're going to start somewhere, that would probably be a good place. OK. Yeah. Yeah, I saw a couple of dudes come out of the hole. And all the cavers know each other, it seems like, because they knew these guys. And they were like, oh, yeah, these guys are real nice.

And then they turned around. And they were like, they're nuts. These guys are crazy. Yeah. Oh, so all the cavers know each other because they're all members of grottoes, right? Yeah, it definitely seems like a close knit community. Like they're all on each other, have each other's contact

info, because when someone gets lost, they send out who can come and help, basically, who's free tomorrow to come and find these idiots. Tomorrow. They're in trouble if it's tomorrow. Yeah, that's true. But well, a grotto is a caving club, right? And there are any legitimate caving club

is sanctioned by the National Speleological Society. And there's about 200 caving clubs or grottos in the US. Nice. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Just kidding. Seven, eight. Seven, eight. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends,

and 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 90s. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

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

Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. 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 Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So if you're a member of a grotto,

if you're a caver, what are some of the things that you're going to need? You're already into this. You're like, come on, let's go. What are we going to do? What do I need to take with me? Well, you want to take three forms of light and plenty of backup batteries and take glow sticks,

take the headlamps, take lighters, even though those will get wet. You can bag them in the dry bag. But take as many forms of light as you feel comfortable with that's not less than three. And not only that. I took like four or five flights. That's smart.

Yeah, and I knew I was going to be fine, but I was just like, you know what? I'm going into the depths of the earth. I want to have lots of light at my disposal. Right, and you want to also have lots of batteries and extra bulbs for those light sources. Yeah, sure. Because your light is the number one most important thing

when you're caving. That's the number one most important piece of equipment. Yeah, and my buddy, Eric, had a carbide lamp, which back in the day, even car headlights and lights on the fronts of houses, it wasn't always a gas lamp. Sometimes it was carbide. And old school cavers use these things.

And it's basically a chemical reaction. It burns acetylene gas, and it's created from a reaction of calcium carbide with water. So he had this pod that he carried on his belt that had carbide pellets in it. And it would drip water down and create the gas. And it fed it up through a tube connected to the gas lamp that he's wearing on his head.

And it was really cool. The other guy didn't have one, but Eric was used it. And the light that it gives is just really very illuminating. It's not like a, you know how incandescent light is just so specific, even if it's like a broad range. It's not like having a flame. So this thing really warms up the cave, and it does actually warm it slightly.

But just generally with light warmth, it's just like the cave was illuminated, not like a flashlight shining on something. Very cool. And very durable, like if you take care of these things, they're a little finicky. But if you take care of them, you can have them like your whole life.

Sounds kind of newfangled. No, it's very old school. Well, oldfangled. Yeah, it's oldfangled. And you just look cool. Eric looked like a cool guy with his tube running out of his head and flicking the little lighter switch. And he looked cooler than I did with my pet's stick.

Yeah, with my glow stick. So you need light. You need light. You need a helmet. And you want your helmet to be certified by the Union Internationale d'Association d'Alpesme. Yes. Jerry just laughed at me.

You want a helmet. And this is if you want to do it right and safely. We saw morons in tank tops and shorts walking around and crawling around. And these guys are just rolling their eyes. They're like, those are the people that get hurt and get lost. We had knee pads and elbow pads, helmets. And as far as safety gear, that was pretty much it.

And they had rope and stuff just in case. And you want to dress appropriately? In layers? Avoid cotton. Well, if you are wearing cotton, you want to wear it under layers of synthetics, which snag less easily. They dry more quickly. Yeah, I would imagine you just want to avoid cotton all

together if possible. Yeah, I wear one of those synthetic wicking shirts, the workout shirts. But you do, you want to dress in layers, because it's cold in there. But you may raise your heart rate here or there, and you may get a little warm. I definitely raise my heart rate.

You're going to get wet, most likely. You can be in a dry, dusty cave, but chances are you're going to get wet. There were times where we were up to our chest in a crevice about two feet wide, up to our chest in water. And it's intimidating. It's like I'm far away from anybody. And what if this water rises?

I mean, it didn't. But what if it started raining? These things can happen pretty fast down there. And so we were literally soaked to the bone. It's like getting in a swimming pool. And then you get out, and you're covered in mud, and you're supposed to climb things. That's like climbing a creased wall of stone.

I'm like, am I supposed to really do this? And they were like pushing me by my butt. It was sort of embarrassing, like pulling me. I felt like a stuck pig at times. The only thing that made it better was the warm glow of the carbine lamp. And then they had the pancakes, you know, where it's like, I'm surprised my body fit in this thing.

And you had to go like 30 feet across this pancake. What is it? Well, it's where there's a top rock and a bottom rock. So basically you just- Oh, gotcha. There's like a foot of space to crawl through. And you can't even crawl. You're like inching, you know, using your shoulder blades.

I would have lost my mind. You would not have liked this pancake. And that's when I remembered thinking, boy, Josh would not have liked this part. No. It was uncomfortable for me. And I don't even have issues with like, you know, closed in spaces.

But you feel like, what if the earth shifted and this thing just smashed me? Yeah. Of course the earth doesn't shift like that, but I don't know. It could. I'm down there. I'm freaking out.

Yeah. And you made it though. Yeah, I made it. I don't want to spoil it. Yeah. You survived. What else do you need? Food and water.

Sure. Do you want enough to last your whole trip and then some just in case, you know? Like you want gloves, you want a first aid kit. Yeah, and here's my favorite part. So we were talking about how like you do, you just preserve the environment exactly as it was found. This also means that you're not allowed to poop there.

You can poop there, but you're going to poop into like a plastic container that you can carry out with you because you take your urine and your feces out of the cave with you. So you want a plastic bottle to pee into and a like a good crush proof container to poop into. I did not poop.

I wouldn't have pooped. I'd just be like, well, I guess I'm not pooping today. Yeah. And you know, I was only down there a few hours. So if you can't hold your poop a few hours, you probably shouldn't be caving that day. Man. Just put it off, you know?

Imagine getting sick down there. Oh, like vomiting? No. I'm not sure what you mean. The other kind. Oh, like poopy sick? Yeah. Yeah, that would be awful.

Yeah. If you have a cave map, which you should have, bring a few copies, put them in ziplocks, hand them out to your friends that you're with. Make sure everyone knows what's going on. Right. And you also want to probably leave one at home with an X marks the spot of your route.

Sure. And well, at least it's a cave safety, doesn't it? Yeah. There's a lot of precautions you should be taking before you set out. Yeah, know what you're doing. Do not take it lightly. It's not like a hike that you can go on.

So it's definitely different. You should go with someone that knows what they're doing at the very least. A couple of people would be even better. They say not to go in really large groups because you don't want it like you could leave someone behind easier. Like four to six people is a good number.

And you want to put the slowest person at the front of the group. That would have been me. So everybody's kind of pushing them from behind. Sometimes literally. And the reason why is because that person doesn't get left behind. It makes the whole group stick together.

And if you're into passive aggressive peer pressure, that's great. That's a great situation for everybody. Yeah. No, you're fine. I know. That's what they kept saying too. Like, oh, you're doing great, buddy.

And I was like, no, I'm not. I know I'm that guy. You also never ever want to go caving alone. I don't think there's a better sentence that's ever been spoken by anybody. Never go caving alone. That's a good idea. If you do get lost, they say to stay put.

And it's better to stay put instead of moving around because at least you're where you last were. Right. You are where you last were. Well, you said you were going to be. Yeah, at least. Roughly. If your light goes out and you're alone.

Start screaming at the top of your lungs until someone comes and gets you. That's probably not a bad idea. But they say not to freak out. But yeah, I would definitely try and make a little noise. Although you also don't want to attract the descent. Hail billies. Yeah, whatever those were.

They were mountain folk. You know what? That was a lot like a Lovecraft story. I wasn't. I can't remember the name of it, but there's a whole thing that takes place in the Alleghenies maybe, Adirondacks, somewhere up there,

where this family that was like kind of mountain folk came to Embryd and eventually moved underground. It's one of his best ones. Man, he was, we should do a podcast on him. Okay. What a twisted mind. Well, we did the Necronomicon, remember? Yeah, but let's just do one on his life.

Okay. What made him tick? Let's do it. Oh, well, we're at it real quick. Dude, I found a real legitimate physics paper or written by a legitimate physicist that explains how certain events in Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu can be explained away

by quantum physics. Really? Yeah, it's specifically a gravitational lensing. Huh. Yeah. To explain what Cthulhu is or? No, like what happened to this guy who went mad and described this crazy place that he went

and stumbled upon in the South Pacific and then came back and wrote about it. They were like, well, actually, wait a minute, what he's talking about is a quantum bubble. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. It's like he works out math and formulas for explaining all of this,

but the rest of it is really interesting. Wow. Yeah, I can't remember what it's called, but probably look up the physics of The Call of Cthulhu and I'm sure it'll bring it up. Yeah, but he could find it. It's a good one. That's awesome.

So what are some of the big problems you're gonna run into, Chuck, aside from getting lost or running out of light? Hypothermia. Right. Always a concern when you're cold and wet. Like I said earlier, flooding of passages, which I was worried about the whole time.

Yeah. Slipping, falling, I was slipping all over the place. It's gonna happen in these muddy caves. And you know, I just sort of slid and tried not to pick my face up off the rock, but I definitely got bumps and bruises. I bet. And I was really sore the next day.

It was like mountain climbing except underground and the mountain was slick and muddy. Yeah. It was basically kind of what it felt like, like rock climbing. Yeah. It was not what I thought it was gonna be, once again. I can't stress that enough.

It's not a stroll. I ate my baloney sandwich by 10 a.m. Yeah, it was pretty bad. But super fun. And like I said, when you come out, man, this is so weird. Once you've been underground for that long, when you come out into the real world,

everything is just like hyper colorful and bright and just weird. Huh. And it's like, man, there's a whole different world down there that most people don't know about. Nice. I highly encourage it. Just be careful.

Yeah, I think that's good advice. Is there anything else in here? Always make sure that several people above ground know where you went, know where you're going, know when you expect to be back. Yeah. And if somebody does get hurt, never leave that person alone.

Right. A couple of people have to stay with them. A couple of people have to go topside. The people who go topside need to leave some of their supplies and light and stuff and water back with the people who are hanging out with the injured person. Yeah.

They need to know exactly where the injured person is so they can tell other people who can come get them out. Right. And they also need to remember to take the car keys with them, cell phones, really kind of important. You don't want to get all the way out there and be like, ah. Can you imagine?

I left the keys in there. Yeah. Yeah, that would suck. And then like you said, if you ever get lost, you don't want to panic. You want to stay put. You want to rely on your plan, your backup plan, which was letting a bunch of people know

that you were supposed to have been home two hours ago and you weren't. That's right. And there are thousands of caves in the US, many of which are very explorable. Just do your research beforehand, go with someone that knows what they're doing. There are more extreme caves around the world

that are very cool to look at. Ones that you actually can skydive into, or not skydive, but base jump into. Yeah. Boy, that, I can't imagine skydiving into one. I think I've seen, I've seen a video of people base jumping into this. Sotano de Las Colinas.

Yeah, I think Planet Earth, the Discovery Show, had that. Okay. Yeah. That's where I saw it. It was, it's way cool. Yeah. And then like you talked about the cenotes, those are very cool too.

Just be careful that we said that enough. I don't know. I don't think you can, because like I said, once you get there, you realize they're just a bunch of dummies, no matter what, that are ill-prepared, locals that are like, yeah, I've been down here before. Well, if you want to learn more about caving, you can type in spelunking in the search bar

at HowStuffWorks.com. S-P-E-L-U-N-K-I-N-G, and it will bring up this article. And I said spelunking, which means of course it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this Pakistani pizza. We did a pizza podcast, and we got lots and lots and lots of feedback on that. I knew that was going to be one of those.

Yeah. Very ubiquitous food that people love to talk about. And this is from, and I'm probably going to put your name, sorry buddy, Nabiha Syed. Not bad. And he said that he listened to the pizza cast and thought he would drop some 411 on pizza in Pakistan. He's originally from Orlando, but currently lives in Karachi

for university, and he said here when you order a pizza, you don't really order toppings, but you order a specific flavor. Although if you're at a pizza place, you can order specific toppings and build your own pizza, this Pizza Hut calls it. Though they are a little less cooperative when you order for delivery, apparently in Pakistan.

So he said your pizza will most likely have some form of chicken on it. And then of course there's no ham because it's a Muslim country. Pizza Hut alone serves chicken tikka, chicken curry, chicken fajita, Bihari chicken afgan tikka, and the spicier fajita Sicilian, as well as the veggie, shawarma, pepperoni, and a couple of other

different beef flavors. Dude, I'll bet that's so good. I bet it is. Chicken tikka pizza. In Pakistan? Yeah. Here's the kicker for me guys. Not only do they offer their usual stuffed crust

with the rope of cheese, they also serve beefy seek kebab stuffed crust. Yes. Wow. Papa John's offer. Wait, wait, wait, I wanted to just make sure everyone understands what you just said. He said that they offer a pizza with a crust

stuffed with kebab. With beef kebab. That sounds delightful. It does. Papa John's offers a more traditional American pizza menu with their various pseudo Italian names, including chicken florentine. Domino's flavors in Pakistan are a little more

mainstream American, while they do serve chicken tikka, as well as something called golden feast, or something to that effect, which as far as I know involves corn, pineapple, and probably chicken. Along with the corporate giants, there are plenty of local chains, oddly generic sounding names, including pizza place,

pizza point, pizza, California pizza, and the list goes on and on. Pizza. Just pizza. It's a typo. Unfortunately, my university and dorm are located on the outskirts of town, not in the ideal neighborhoods of these places,

usually don't deliver, but I suppose that's fine. I don't order pizza very much here. This Pakistani pizza is kind of small and a bit too cakey and very super ready. But it fills you up, and you never leave hungry. I just had a fairly tasty contraption from pizza point around five hours ago for dinner.

I can still feel it in my throat. Lesson learned, do not go to bed in the morning, sleep until the evening, and order excess food. Anyways, love the show, and lots of love. That is Nabiha Syed. Thanks a lot, Nabiha. That's right, yeah. That's awesome.

That's right, Edie. Yeah. Syed. Syed. Or maybe just said, Syed. I bet it's Syed. We'll find out. Nabiha, right?

Yep. Thanks a lot for writing in. Good luck with your studies. And the pizza. Yeah, if you're in a foreign land and you're listening to us, and you have some 411 as Nabiha pointed out, Nabiha, right?

Yeah, good. We want to hear from you. We want to hear about it from you. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production

of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 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 I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.