Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Does a Diving Bell Work?

Episode Date: May 4, 2019

About 2,400 years ago Aristotle mentions the use of diving bells, apparatuses that convey divers to the bottom of the sea -- or at least below the surface of the water -- and allows them to breathe -- at least until the air runs out. Learn about the physics of this clever and ancient invention and how it's been used to sabotage enemy boats and build the Brooklyn Bridge. 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, Chuck here. Hope you're having a good Saturday. This week, I selected for the select episode, great one from August 8th, 2012. How does a diving bell work?

And I think if you've listened to this show before, you know I love antiquated equipment and steampunky things. And all of that together is a diving bell. So, I just picked this one out because I remember it being a good one. So, please do enjoy, how does a diving bell work right now?

Welcome to Step You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W. Chuck Bryant is with me, which means it's time for Step You Should Know. That's right. Man, I got all confused right there. You were about to say listener mail.

Yeah, it was a little close for comfort. Our shortest show ever. Yes. How introductions work. How you doing? I'm well sir, how are you? I'm good. It's a little warm in here today, isn't it?

I feel like this tomb-like room that we're in is always sort of warm and off-putting. Well, there's like 18 Ikea lamps in here and I guess it feels like it's warmer than usual. They generate some heat and that's how they power Switzerland or Sweden. With heat, is it Switzerland? Sweden, Sweden.

Yeah, yeah, sorry. Swedish, yeah. I know people are like, good Lord Chuck. You got a map as a desk. They're like skipping diving bells. Yeah, you have a tan map, don't you? So Chuck, I want to dive into a subject that I believe you know something about.

It's called diving bells. That's the subject. And I know you know about it because this article that we're basing this off of is a Chuck Bryant jam. Yeah, I forgot all about this and got about halfway through it. And I was like, that sounds like something I'd say. Oh, really?

You didn't realize that you'd written it? Nope, totally forgot. And then it wasn't halfway through, but it was probably somewhere in the intro. What was it you said? Well, that silly, clever intro was really not clever. Oh, I don't know. I feel like I used to start all of my articles

like I was writing a middle school term paper. Oh, was it where they're talking about how there's not very many images of our early attempts to scuba dive because quote of the lack of availability of underwater filming techniques at the time? Yeah, it sounds like filler. Very, very, very, very, very.

Remember in summer school with Chainsaw and Dave? Yeah, the Mark Harmon movie? Yeah, they had to write like a 300 word essay or something like that on somebody they admired. And I think it was Toby Hooper. And, or it was the, or a special effects guy, but they said like he was very, very, very, very, very, very. Oh, I remember those days, counting the words, yeah.

That's not what this is. No, this is a great article on diving bells. It's kind of interesting, you know, the precursor to scuba diving, if any of you folks out there are scuba enthusiasts, you have, you know, there's a trail that was blazed many years before littered with dead bodies and big iron casks.

Yeah, not just dead bodies, but crippled bodies too. Like a lot of bad stuff can happen to you. And a lot of bad stuff did happen to people before we really understood the physics of pressure. Yeah, I mean, people still lose their lives, obviously, in the pursuit of just forwarding technology, but not like they used to. Yeah.

People who were like, we really owe a debt to the people who figured out everything that we have and lost their lives doing it. Well, what's spectacularly amazing to me is that not everyone died trying to use diving bells. And we're talking like 2,500 years ago. Yeah, it wasn't, you know, in the early 1920s. Right.

Yeah, apparently by the 1200s, the concept of diving bells were so, I guess, entrenched in societies around the world, civilizations around the world, that they were just routinely used for all sorts of different stuff. Yeah, Aristotle wrote about it. Yeah, back in the fourth century BC, right?

Yeah, that's a long time ago. So he was the first, I take it, to mention diving bells or to describe them, right? Yeah, should we read that quote? I think it's a good quote, but you have to read it in an Aristotle-y voice. Aristotle-ian. Boy, I really have no idea what ancient Greek sounded like.

Well, the key is that no one does. Okay. So you can just make it up. They enabled divers to respire equally well by letting down a cauldron, for this does not fill with water, but retains the air, for it is forced straight down into the vata.

Yeah. I just added a German to the end of it. Yeah, at the end. I was gonna say there was an 85% chance that the Greeks were gonna sound like Sean Connery coming out of you. Yeah, that wasn't Sean Connery. It was close.

So, yeah, so Aristotle's talking about this and the very fact that he's talking about diving bells proves at least that the idea was in place at the time. Yeah. There's some legends that Alexander the Great, who was actually a student of Aristotle's, used a diving bell. Yeah, there's pictures, drawings of Alexander the Great,

like laying down or sitting down beneath the water in some sort of a diving bell or like a barrel. Or magic bubbles, some sort. Yeah, but we don't know if that means he just talked about it a lot and like draw pictures of me doing this. Right. Or if he actually tried it.

We're just not sure. Well, so supposedly he used it one when he was 11, but then again, as an older man during the siege of Tyre in 332 BC. And I looked that up and it looked like it seems pretty reasonable, like apparently there is some underwater obstructions around Tyre and he had some underwater divers removing them.

So he used a diving bell to go check on their work. Not the most fantastical tale anyone could tell if they were just making stuff up about him using a diving bell. Yeah, that's true. So I kind of buy that one. Yeah, I could buy it. And of course Da Vinci sketched them out

because he invented everything, even if he didn't properly invent it, he at least sketched out ideas. Right. You know? Well, yeah, he had a lot of great ideas that have come to life now. That's true.

The Star Trek Phaser. Really? Yeah, okay. But Aristotle, he kind of hints at the basic physics behind the diving bell. He says that you have a capsule that you're forcing straight down into a water, the water, and the air bubble,

whatever air was inside, is pressed upwards so long as the vessel is concave, right? Yeah, and so long as it is straight down, like you said, you don't want this thing because if you've ever played in the bathtub, and I know you do, you know, if you take a cup and invert it and just push it straight down,

there's gonna be water, and then if you wanna make it poop, you tilt it on its side and the air comes out in little bubbles. That's true, you know? Does it poop or shoot a duck? It shoots a duck. But I think every kid has done stuff like that,

and that's essentially what all a diving bell is. It's just really heavy. Yeah, because when you have a cup above water, upside down, it has air in it. When it contacts the water, the air can't escape any longer because of the water's surface tension, and then when you push it up, the water compresses the air.

That's right. So that's all you have, like you said, at the top of a diving bell inside is compressed air and human beings can breathe that. Yeah, it doesn't have to be concave, though, does it? I don't think so, but I've seen- Did they make them square later? I think, well, I think there needs to be

some sort of point that the air can be pressed up into, but maybe not. Okay. I've seen here their concave, so maybe that's the best design for a diving bell, but yeah, not everybody's used concave designs. Yeah, but I mean, many were shaped like bells. Some were barrels, like whiskey barrels.

Some were wooden, many were iron. They were trying all sorts of things basically just to see if it worked. Right, and they figured out the heavier the better because this thing had to be able to go down to the bottom of the sea, whatever depth that was. And not tip over. Yeah, it couldn't tip over,

and it had to be balanced, too. So you had to have ballasts. If you weren't using an iron diving bell, you had to put weights on it, and they had to be balanced or else it would tip over. It was a big deal. Yeah, and I think the key here is this is breathable air. Right.

It depends on how deep you are and how big your bell is, obviously, but I think one example I gave in here was if you have a 10 foot tall bell down 325 feet, that's only about 11 inches of air. Right. That's not enough. No, I don't think they were going that deep back then.

No. Or at least they were not smart to do so. No, those are the ones that died. That's right. So one of the other problems that these people faced aside from dying because they went too deep and ended up with just 11 inches of air. Now, we should point out that before we go any further,

physically speaking, by volume, that's 11 inches of air, but that's still the same amount of air that filled up the diving bell above water. So just compress. Right, it's compressed. So you have compressed air. So all those oxygen molecules are still there.

They're just in compressed form. Yeah, that's a good point. The problem is if you're in there, you're compressed too. Right? And when you're in that state of compression, the oxygen and the nitrogen in your bloodstream get compressed as well. That's right.

And they dissolve, which isn't a problem with the oxygen because the tissues, the surrounding tissues absorb that oxygen and they love it. It's like yummy to them. But the nitrogen remains dissolved in the blood until you decompress. Then you have a problem.

Yes, then you have a Radiohead album. Did they have one called the Benz? Yeah, I didn't know that. It's a great one. It was the one that proceeded, okay, computer. Sort of. Did they make a bad album ever? No.

That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah, that's what the Benz is. And that can, when the nitrogen tries to escape, it forms little bubbles that block blood vessels. And that's why you can have a stroke or a heart attack if you ascend too quickly. And it can go to your joints and cause excruciating pain.

I imagine. Crippling, remember I mentioned being crippled before? Yeah, you've suffered the Benz? No, no, no, earlier you said the history is littered with dead bodies and I said uncrippled bodies. I feel like we've talked about that. My lifelong crippling. Well, momentarily, I thought you meant.

I've never had the Benz. Okay, I thought I remembered many moons ago you mentioning scuba diving. Something about the Benz. I've never had the Benz. Yeah, poor scuba cat. He'd gotten the Benz. I don't know, wonder if scuba cat's still around.

I don't know. It's kind of old already, wasn't it? I don't remember. Boy, that was a winner. One of our best. So yeah, when you come up too quickly, the nitrogen in your blood undissolves, forms bubbles, blocks your blood vessels, blocks your joints,

causes tremendous pain, strokes, death, all that stuff. So when you're an ancient bell diver, I guess is what you call him. Is that right, a bell diver? Seems right. And you were down for very long, too deep, and you came up too quickly, you're in a lot of trouble. That's right, and they may not have even understood the Benz at that point.

I imagine they didn't. Right. They're like, he's just got the diving bell sickness. Right. Again. Yeah, it was because he sinned or something like that. Yeah, that's right. He upset Zeus.

So things went on like this for quite a while. Through the Renaissance, into the 16th century, people were using these diving bells. It was all well and good. They were having a blast down there, having parties. And then at some point, people were like, you know what? I bet we could make this better.

Right. These guys keep running out of air down there and dying. Or they run out of air, and they have to come up too quick, and they get the Benz. So how can we improve this? Or they're only 14 feet down, sitting in a bell, and what's the point? Which is magnificent, but the ship that we need to get to

is 100 feet down. Yeah, exactly. Like they needed this, they wanted to have applications they could use to build things or repair things, or get Pirate's booty. Exactly. And speaking of Pirate's, Jack Sparrow does this with a canoe in the first Pirates of the Caribbean?

Yes. Does he really? Yeah, he turns a canoe upside down and walks along the ocean bottom. And I don't remember how he pulls the canoe down. Technically speaking, it's possible if he pulled it straight down. I think for the magic of Disney.

But I don't think it's physically possible what he did. Just want to make sure that anybody who really liked that part, I poo poo it. OK. 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.

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 Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So in the late 1600s, it was a Frenchman named Dennis Papin. And he was one of the first dudes that said, you know what, I think we can get some fresh air into there. And very smartly and simply, he used hoses and bellows that, you know, the bellows were outside, obviously, up on, you know, the boat. And they had dudes manning the bellows

and pumping fresh air in there. Yeah, and it wasn't even like difficult. You didn't even have to navigate, like, where to put the hole in the top of the diamond. The hose literally just goes under the bottom and up inside. And then the air just presses up. Super easy. Yeah.

So you've got fresh air now. Yeah, they can stay down there longer. All that's off, basically. But it's still not pressurized. The air they're pumping in isn't pressurized. That's true. So they couldn't go any deeper. They could just stay down there and do whatever

the heck they were doing sitting in these cast iron bells. Right. So we invent diving bells in at least the fifth century BC. We have to wait until the 17th century AD before we make a real innovation to them. Now we have a whole other obstacle, pressurizing these things. How long do we have to wait to overcome that one? A year.

That's true. And it took an Englishman to do so, Edmund Halley. He basically attached these wooden barrels. He's weighted wooden barrels to the diving bell. And they could be brought up and down. And they contained air at the bottom of each of these as a whole that allowed water to come in, forcing the air up. And at the top was a hose that ran from that barrel

to the bottom of the diving bell. And there was a faucet. So basically, whenever it was sort of like having air tanks down there, whenever they wanted more pressure, if they were trying to equalize things, they would just turn their little faucet and allow air in. Yeah. And once the barrel was empty, they

would pull the barrels up, I guess refill them with air, which probably meant just opening the top and then closing it again. It's filled up. And then lower it back down there. And all of a sudden, you could control the pressure. And that was the same Halley who named a comment after himself. Was it really?

It was. No way. Way. That guy was all over the place Renaissance man. Yeah. Yeah. That's where that word comes from. So he's a post Renaissance Renaissance man.

That's true. So yeah, so now we have pressurized diving bells, right? Yeah. And basically, it equal to that of the surrounding water. So that means you can go deeper, you can stay down longer, you can. You run out, like if the water starts to creep up, you just add more pressurized air

and it pushes the water back down. Yeah. Like it keeps the water at bay because it's at the same pressure. So to the water, whatever is inside the diving bell might as well just be more water. Yeah. It doesn't have this crazy urge to fill the diving

bell up any longer because there's something there. It just kind of goes along its happy way to the Mary on the Trench. That's right. And I bet there was some 17th century David Blaine that very shortly afterward was like, I can stay down here for two months. Right.

And people like who cares? Well, the horrible thing was when you added pressurized air, again, you're pressurizing not just the diving bell, but the people. Yeah. So to become pressurized to go down in a diving bell was a pretty horrific thing to endure in and of itself. Yeah, I guess so.

When they built the Brooklyn Bridge to the two towers that I guess that support. The main supports. Yeah. Those are down almost to the bedrock. They were going to go on the bedrock and then they found out there's some pretty stable aggregate 30 feet above bedrock.

So they just planted them on those. But to construct those, they had to drop these huge caissons, which are basically like giant structural diving bells. And they pressurized them. And it kept the water of the river out. So literally the river's just flowing around this stuff. So weird. But there's men working in these things.

And they'd have to pressurize before going in them. And it was just like this, their eardrums would burst once in a while as they were being pressured. Because it wasn't like gently. It was like, I guess it was better than just walking right into the caisson. But it was still pretty rough. And then they'd go and work in there for a couple of hours

and then come out and hopefully not get decompression sickness to the bends. But actually the project manager, the son of the designer of the Brooklyn Bridge, Washington Robles, the son, he suffered a lifelong crippling from decompression sickness after going and inspecting some of the work in one of the caissons and coming out too quickly. Well, I know a lot of people died.

And I enjoy walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, as many New Yorkers do. And you should think about that next time you're doing so. Yeah, that people gave up their lives so you could say snarky things and Instagram photos of yourself and all the other things that you do. There's a really great Kim Burns documentary on the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Ooh, I haven't seen that one. It's good. It's like a straight up PBS one, no frills. Well, he's not about frills. Right. He just moves pictures around and pans in and out. This may be his least frilly. Okay, yeah.

I'm not knocking Kim Burns. I like a good Kim Burns. Well, you'll probably like this one then. So 100 years after being able to control the pressure with bellows and the barrels, I'm sorry, in English and other Englishmen, a scientist named John Smeaton invented an actual diving air pump in 1788.

And it was on the surface obviously and took like four guys to operate it. And it was basically like Dennis Papine's original plan, but it was just mechanized. So they were able to build like big ones, like people, there's like 12 people could go down in those things and like have a party if they wanted to.

They made windows eventually. Yeah, they put electricity in them. Yeah, that's a little scary. Yeah, for that time period. Oh, yeah. I don't know if I would have trusted that. Yeah, I wouldn't have. 17 or early 1800s.

Right, yeah, we just discovered electricity. Now let's put it under water. And they use them for, like you said, building bridges and repairing docks and. Early saboteurs would sneak up underwater to cut the anchor lines of enemy ships. Really? That is a very handy use of the diamond bell.

So you dug up a cool story about, was that this year? I didn't look at the year. Yeah, it was just this May, May 26th. Yeah, a guy named Harrison Okini, a 29 year old Nigerian boat cook, was on a tugboat, a Chevron tugboat, and in the Atlantic and it capsized.

And he was eventually through all this capsizing and tumbling around and water flowing in. And sinking 100 feet. Yeah, and sinking of course. Ended up in a bathroom, trapped with air. Yeah. Sort of like the same concept of a diving bell. And people wondered, he'd survived after 60 hours.

That's a good news. 60 hours. But physicists were like, well, how did this happen? Yeah, you probably shouldn't have been able to live that long down there. Right, the press reported that he had something like four feet of air or something like that. And yeah, the chamber that he was in

was only about four feet high. So 60 hours of air shouldn't have worked. It shouldn't have kept him alive. Because think about it, you're breathing, even if it has pressurized air. You're breathing air, you're also exhaling carbon dioxide. And when the ratio of carbon dioxide or the percentage of it gets above 5%,

things start to go horribly awry and you die shortly after that. Yeah, I didn't realize that lack of oxygen isn't what kills people, it's too much CO2. That's a pretty interesting fact. Yeah, it can happen when you're on a ventilator. That's apparently a big risk when you inubate somebody is the CO2 buildup can kill them.

So anyway, why didn't this guy die? Well, it turns out that with pressurized air, especially when it's pressurized against cold water, CO2 is readily absorbed by that water around it. So when he was exhaling, the oxygen was remaining, but the CO2 was basically being wicked away. Right. And since that CO2 or the air bubble that he was in

was pressurized, he was 100 feet under water. Which actually helped him. Right, he had a lot of oxygen, a bunch of oxygen was just pushed into this little area, but the CO2 was being wicked away and that's how he managed to survive. Yeah, it said for every 10 meters you descend, one atmosphere of pressure is added

and it makes it more dense, according to some lawmaker named Boyle, according to Boyle's law. And so since he was 30 meters below, it became more dense by times four. And so that meant that he didn't need as much air as you would think for someone that's underwater. Right.

So how much did he need? You need 10 cubic meters a day of air. So he only needed six cubic meters in the end because of the temperature of the water and how deep he was. Right. And also, I mean, don't remember, that's a lot of air compressed into the same amount of area. All those molecules are still present.

They're just in a smaller amount of area. They also think, though, that it was connected to another air pocket. Which probably helped. Even still, the guy survived in an impromptu, inadvertent diving bell, 100 feet below the surface for 60 hours. Dude, in the dark, under the ocean,

with his head next to a toilet. Oh, man. And they said that he could hear the sea life scavenging on his dead crewmates. Wow, that's horrific. That happened this May. Yeah. Not in like 1812 in May.

Yeah. So there you go. By the way, we'll insert this right now because it's a good place for it. Okay. Were you out of town? Did you hear about the whole Sharknado thing? Yeah, you predicted Sharknado.

I invented it. Yeah. It's pretty impressive, Chuck. For those of you who don't know, Sharknado was a very cheesy movie on a network that aired a couple of weeks ago. It blew up. Blew up.

Didn't get as many viewers from the blow up as they would have hoped. But I watched it. It was very funny and fun and dumb. Oh yeah, it was terrible, but, you know, in that way. Wasn't one of the guys from 902 or no on it? Yeah, Ian's hearing was in it. Yeah, yeah.

And Tara Fried, who... Oh yeah? She's looking rough. You mean I were out of the country and we heard about this thing. About Sharknado? Yeah. So thankfully, one of our listeners alerted me

to the fact that I invented Sharknado because in the Can It Really Rain Frogs episode, I say this. No, I mean, I think they're light because that's the whole point. Even an updraft from a waterspout of 200 miles an hour isn't gonna be picking up, you know, great white sharks. Right.

That's a movie for you, Raining Sharks. Yeah. So thanks to fan Todd Waters for bringing that to my attention. That's impressive, you very clearly... I even said a movie. Yeah, you invented Sharknado. And this thing was released a good year ago, right?

It was, I think, May of 2012, so... That was almost a year before Harrison Okini survived in a diving bell. All sorts of stuff coming together. Doing the bold dance, feeling the flow. So I don't know if I can sue anybody, but I'm looking into it. Have you, I see, you should always ask before you sue.

See what they think. Yeah, sure. Say, give me some cabbage. How about a little cheese? Yeah, some bread. A little Sharknado cheese. I think we should bring back bread for money, okay? Bring it a little bread?

Yeah, all right. I hope they sent me bread though. That would suck. With like a note that just says waw, waw, waw. It shaped like a shark. Maybe we should bring back bread into the regular vernacular, and then you ask them. Okay.

Okay, that's our plan. All right, so sorry about that sidebar. I just want to give myself credit where it's due. You should be very proud of that. Thanks. Hey, I know, when a good movie idea comes along, I'm all over it. Yeah, you and Ion's Earring.

Yep. If you want to learn more about diving bells, you should type those two words into the search bar at howstuffworks.com, and it will bring up this delightful little article written by a young, exuberant Chuck Bryant. And since I said exuberant, it's time for a message break.

Stuff you should know. 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 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, 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. And now it's time for Listener Mail, Chuck,

whether you like it or not. I hope you're ready. We heard from another teacher. We like to read these. Hey, guys, the reason I'm writing is to tell you how much stuff you should know has helped me during my first year of teaching. I am 24, just finished my first year

as a high school social studies teacher. All right. This year, I have a new teacher. I'm a teacher, and I'm a teacher. I'm a teacher, and I'm a teacher. I'm a teacher, and I'm a teacher. All right. This year, I taught Law and Justice and AP Psychology.

Law and Justice, that's awesome. And AP Psychology. Yeah, well-rounded. Since I listened to a huge bulk of your shows, when I was preparing various lessons, I used the information that I had on different podcasts. I'd heard on different podcasts. Then I thought, you know what?

I should just play it. I'll get even lazier. Right. And just play the show. Yeah. The podcasts were a big hit with the kids. They got a break from hearing my voice, and I got a break from talking.

Stuff you should know is also great for teachers, because the articles you guys use for the podcast are well researched and written. Thank you. Thank you. I don't have to worry that you guys are just making up information. And if you are, don't tell me.

Students said the winner of their all-time favorite in class was how Barbie works. That's probably my favorite, too. That's a good one. That and disco. I created a pretty awesome PowerPoint to accompany it, and I attached it. And I looked at it.

It was really neat, actually. We discussed how Barbie and other toys can influence gender identity and body image in developing children. Overall, some of the podcasts have streamed Japanese internment camps, dueling, right to privacy when you die. In psychology, I hit on concussions,

Monkhausen syndrome, hypnosis, lobotomies, and PTSD. Remember lobotomies? That was one of the all-time best. We should have called it lobotomies heart. We love my lobotomy on NPR. Do you remember? Oh, yeah. That dude.

Yeah, that guy. Here's our hero. What's his name? Howard something. Yeah, Howard. Just to tell you guys again, thanks a lot for making my job easier because you use classroom appropriate language and report factual research based on evidence and information.

You're an amazing classroom resource. Did you say that, or did you misspell it? I did. OK. Keep them coming, Carly Brown. Thanks a lot, Carly Brown. We appreciate that. Or Ms. Brown, as your students probably call you.

That's right. Thank you, Ms. Brown, for letting us know that. We'd like to know that we're helping shape young minds for the better. That's right. And we do use classroom appropriate language, don't we? I never termed it that. All right, well, let's see, Chuckers, what should we say?

Anything you want to hear? Anything you want to hear about? If you have invented something, because I invented the snowboard too, remember? No, I don't remember that. I have a crayon drawing from when I was six of the ski board. Oh, yeah? And it's a guy going down a ski slope on a little skateboard

with skis on it. Wow. So I've invented two things. The Sharknado and the snowboard. Yeah, so if you have inadvertently invented something. That's a great one, Dan. We'd love to hear about it. Yeah.

And you can tweet that to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can post it on our Facebook page at facebook.com slash Stuff You Should Know. You can send us an email that Chuck and I will both get to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. And you can check out our home on the web. It's a little website known as StuffYouShouldKnow.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. Couple 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 going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the 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, 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 Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.