Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Fire Works

Episode Date: May 16, 2020

Creating fire was possibly the most important human discovery, but it's easy to take for granted. But. Josh and Chuck get to the bottom of the chemistry of fire in their quest to explain everything in the universe, 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. Hi folks, from October 4th, 2012, my Saturday select pick is how fire works. Yeah, you can light a match. Sure, you can use a magnifying glass, and you might be able to rub two sticks together

or use a flint and stone. But that is all just starting a fire. How fire actually works is much more complicated and very, very cool. So give it a listen, why don't you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck O'Brien. Ta-da, and this is Stuff You Should Know. Josh, will you let me stand next to your fire? Sure, okay, come here, come over here right now. Okay, sorry, oh boy, it's nice and warm over here. Isn't it? I'm feverish.

And it's smoky, and I feel like there's chemical reactions taking place before my very eyes. There are, that's why there's fire. If fire is nothing, if not a chemical reaction. Yeah. I got some. Okay. Have you heard of the Wyenton Hotel?

Yeah, but for what reason? That should be a bell born and raised here. Yeah. The Ellis Hotel. Was that the Hotel Fire? Yeah. You know that it's now the Ellis Hotel. It's at the corner of Peach Tree in Ellis.

Nice refurbished hotel. Back in 1946, it was called the Wyenton Hotel, and it was the site of the most disastrous, casualty-wise, Hotel Fire in US history. In December, 1946, 119 people died. Right here in Atlanta? Yep. Very sad.

44, just under 44 years later in Las Vegas, Nevada, the MGM Grand Head of Hotel Fire. Oh yeah? 85 people died. Do you remember the MGM Fire? No. MGM Grand Fire? Oh, it was a big deal.

Not at all. I'm surprised because I kind of remember like seeing footage of that. When was this? 1980. Oh, no, I don't remember. So both of these fires and all of the loss of life associated with them were the direct result

of hubris toward fire. The Wyenton, their fire exits, one stairwell for the whole building. I think it was like 19 stories or something like that. Yeah. The MGM Grand, they didn't put up like $60,000 for a fire detection system in this one part of the hotel that would have saved everyone's lives.

So part hubris, part financial shenanigans. Right, but isn't that kind of based on hubris? Yeah, I guess so. My point is, is that if there's one thing that we shouldn't have hubris towards, it's fire. Agreed. Well, you think we might control fire?

Thanks to Prometheus being given it by the gods. Yep. But fire controls us when it really comes down to it. That's right. You got a face off, a tet a tet with fire. You're gonna lose, buddy, because you're combustible. Yeah. So also we should say here that this fire is,

it should be a prequel to the how wildfires work and how spontaneous human combustion works. Those two episodes were great. Agreed, this will seal up our triumvirate. And now we're gonna explain how fire works. Yeah, I do have a couple of quick stats. You're talking about the deadly nature of fire. Yes.

It does kill more people than any other force of nature. I couldn't find that, any source for that. But, so I was searching for it and it brought up like a handful of plagiarized versions of this article on the internet. Oh, really? Yeah. Those are always fun, especially when it's your own.

This one's not mine. This is Bill Harris, Tom Harris. Tom Harris. But I do have some stats in the U.S. at least in 2010. For residential building fires, over 2,500 people died that year. And that's sort of in the wheelhouse, it fluctuates between 2,200 and about 3,200 a year

from building fires. Wow. Cooking is far and away the leading cause of a building fire and arson is number two. Huh. Which I would have thought like falling asleep with a cigarette would be above arson. No.

And then total in 2009, and I guess this counts like any kind of fire in the U.S., there were close to 3,400 deaths that year. So, you know, that's a lot. Yeah. I mean, that's more than I'm sure killed by volcanoes in the U.S. every year. I think you're right.

You know? Yes. That's just one or two people following into Kilauea from getting too close. Have you seen that footage of that scientist going, he's collecting some sort of, I guess magma from an active volcano in Hawaii. And it was really nerve-wracking because he goes up,

takes a sample, he's climbing up the rim, and then climbs back down, and right when he steps away from it, the magma comes up over the rim exactly where he'd just been climbing. Wow. Like five minutes before. And so it would have like just completely disintegrated

am I imagine. Man. What did you say? I don't know. Was he like, holy crap, did you just see that? Well, the guy who was filming it was like narrating, like, hurry up, get out of there. This is so stupid.

Geez. Yeah, it's very cool. I don't know what you'd search, but it's up there on the internet somewhere. Search Waponi Woo, and that should do it. So, Chuck, the Greeks thought that fire was one of the four elements, earth, water, wind, and fire. Earth, wind, and fire, and water, and Nash.

And young. Silly Greeks. The reason why that doesn't really hold up is because earth, fire, air, these are elements. Yeah. They're matter. Yeah, they're made up of atoms. Fire is the physical manifestation

of matter changing form. Yeah. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Like when you think of it that way. We're gonna describe how this happens. All right, I can tackle some of this. Chemistry is not my forte, but it is a chemical reaction

at its core between oxygen and fuel, which, I mean, we'll probably, let's talk about like a campfire. Let's go with wood. A wood fire is probably the easiest way to describe it. Yeah. But the wood is the fuel. The wood is the fuel.

Oxygen's found in the air. That's right. But for these things to make fire, you gotta have something called combustion. Yeah. Which means you're gonna have some sort of a spark. Well, actually not always, because as we find out,

some things can combust without a spark. Yeah. If they get hot enough. Like the heat is just so intense that it doesn't need any spark, right? Yeah, but for wood, you have to get it up to its ignition temperature, which is about 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

150 degrees Celsius. Yeah. Which is where you're gonna start seeing some smoke because that is cellulose burning away. And it just occurred to me reading this today, like where there's smoke, there's fire. Not true. Yeah.

Because things can smoke without there being a fire. Yeah. Actually a byproduct of fire, you know, doesn't smoke. So I guess in order to, if you're one of the people that now says bottom of the totem pole, or instead of top of the totem pole. Yeah.

Then we can further reinforce this obnoxious quality by encouraging you to say where there's smoke, there is ignition temperature of a combustible fuel. There's volatile gases. Yeah. It's nice. Way to go Chuck. All right, thanks.

So yeah, heat decomposes fuel, we'll just say wood. And in the case of wood specifically, it decomposes the volatile gases contained in the solid matter, right? So these volatile gases start to heat up themselves. And while they're doing that, the cellulose, the solid stuff is decomposing and turning into what's called char.

Yeah. I got a little thing on cellulose real quick there. And then you can just take it home. No man. Because that's where I get confused. I'm confused too. Cellulose is about 50% of what is cellulose. And that's where you make paper,

is what you make paper from. That's where you make cellulose like ethanol from too. And it's what you make cellophane out of. Oh, I didn't know that, no. Cellophane is regenerated cellulose. So it's like, it looks like plastic, but it's not. I had no idea. It is a manmade, I'm sorry, it's a natural polymer.

Plastic is manmade obviously. So cellophane is nothing more than regenerated paper in a way. Wow. Like they add some other stuff to it. But that's why it's biodegradable. And I always wonder why like supposedly cellophane is biodegradable. It's like, that's impossible.

It's plastic, but it's not plastic. There's this old cellophane add from like the 50s maybe. And it's like, good things come in twos and it's like this pair of twins wrapped in cellophane. Oh my God. Yeah. And they're just like kind of looking around. But yeah, you can imagine they only have them in there

for a few seconds before they snap the picture for you. Awesome. I did not know that about cellophane. Just a little tidbit. Back to the podcast right there. I don't know about that. Hats off to you. All right, back to Charlie.

Oh no, I know what the fact of the podcast is. You're going to save it for when it comes. We're going to save it. OK. OK. MUSIC 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. 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. 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. OK, so you've got the cellulose, the solid matter of wood,

separating now from the volatile gases that are starting to lift off. That smoke, right? Yes. OK, the wood, the solid matter, is starting to turn into char. And that is basically, if you burn wood, if you heat it up, and you separate the gases, which are the smoke, what remains is carbon.

Yes. And what charcoal is, is charred wood that's had the volatile gases burned out of it, which is why when you have a charcoal fire, you don't have smoke. Yeah, or not much at least. Yeah, because the gases have already been burned off. Yeah, and charcoal, too, that kind of got me on charcoal

filtering, because charcoal is a filter. And I think they use it as a scrubber, too, on smokestacks, don't they? And if you're like, I did some of those survival articles at one point, and one of the things you can do to purify water is take your char from your fire, put it in like, cool it down, obviously. And then put it in like a hanky,

and then running creek water through that to collect it underneath. That's awesome. And there's like real charcoal filters, too. But apparently charcoal has a quality, because once it's pure carbon like that, it has a knack for filtering out things like impurities like chlorine and letting other stuff get through.

So that's why it's used as a filter. Yeah, because essentially what you're making is a carbon filter. Yeah. Charcoal is basically pure carbon with all the impurities burned off. Those impurities burned off as smoke. They're volatile gases.

So it's pretty neat. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. A little survival tip. Man, you're killing it today. Well, this is when I go to sleep, though. OK, so the third component of burned wood you've got with the volatile gases of smoke, you have the char, the charcoal, which is carbon.

And then you have ash, which is unburnable minerals like calcium or phosphorus, I believe. Yeah, and if you ever cook with briquettes, charcoal briquettes, you're going to get a lot more ash with that, because it has a lot more like byproducts in it than if you use like real wood charcoal. Right, but they're not going to smoke. They're just not going to burn.

It's just going to be left over like you can't get rid of it. You can pound it into oblivion, but it's still there. Yeah, but if you use the real wood coal, then char, then you'll notice you don't get a lot of that stuff. Oh, is that right? Yeah. Oh, OK. But briquettes aren't as nasty.

Are those synthetic briquettes? No, they're made from char and binding agents and stuff like that and sawdust. Horse hooves? No, I actually used to hear that like, oh, you can't cook with briquettes. They're so nasty. But they're really, I looked into it, it's not super nasty.

I mean, you probably should cook with. It's somewhere in between nasty and super nasty. Well, it's not as bad as I thought. I thought it was like a bunch of chemical agents and glue and cement, and that's not the case. I got you. It's not the hot dogs of cooking materials. It's the corn dog.

OK. OK, so we've got the components, right? Yeah. As these volatile gases continue to heat up to about 500 degrees Fahrenheit, 260 degrees Celsius, the molecules break apart. And when they break apart, they go to combine with oxygen, oxidation, right?

And the same thing happens with the carbon in the wood, but this takes place much more slowly. But one of the stars of this chemical reaction, this change of breaking down of these molecules and then the recombining into other things like carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, water, isn't that weird that fire produces water? I know.

That's why sometimes you have steam coming from a fire, right? Yeah. The star of all these chemical reactions, all these chemical reactions is heat is produced. Heat energy is released, which allows us to cook and be comfortable and feel secure and all the good stuff that comes with fire.

Exactly. And because of the heat that's released as these things are heated up, it is sustainable. That means the fire is sustainable so long as there's fuel and there's oxygen present. Yeah, that was the kind of creepy part. Not creepy, but it's self-perpetuating. Like that flame is going to heat up any fuel near it

to the point where it can release those gases to recombine with oxygen. It's pretty elegant if you think about it. Yeah. Another big star of fire besides heat is light. And part of that is from the carbon atoms, right? Yeah. That are combining, that are being torn apart,

the molecules that form up the char breaking down in their constituent carbon atoms. Yes. When they combine with oxygen, right? Recombine. Yeah, I think that would make carbon monoxide. But as they change, their electrons will go up in energy level, will change orbit.

And when they come back down, they emit, they release some of that energy that they have, and they release it in the form of photons. They produce light. Right. And they can do that, right? Yeah, it's heat producing light. Like we talked about bioluminescence,

where basically you heat up a filament in a light bulb, and it glows. That's the same thing with the fire. It's based on the same principle, which is incandescence. Pretty awesome. And depending on the temperature, different colored light is going to be produced. Yeah, like you remember the Bunsen burners back

in chemistry class? Yeah. And how the Bunsen burners have little slots on the side that you can vary the amount of oxygen getting in there? You know, there's the little flickering orange flame of a Bunsen burner. And if you let a lot more oxygen in, it's going to be more hot.

And that's when it's going to be that blue jet. The same as when you see a jet plane. Right next to where the flame comes out, it's going to be really blue. And then it gets more orange and yellow, like the Batmobile. Yeah. You know what I'm saying?

Oh, I know exactly the original Batmobile. No, we've seen a bunch of Batmobiles. Recently, yeah. There's a documentary about the Batmobile. Oh, really? Yeah. That's why all those were there for it, Comic-Con. You mean I had our picture taken with it?

With which one? The new one. The tumbler? That's what they call the new one. Is it? Yeah, the crystalline one. It's called the tumbler, I think. Yes, the crystalline one.

Yeah, it's awesome. It's pretty cool. So yeah, the reason why the blue one happens to be a different color and hotter is because there's more energy being released. That's right. The lower energy and slightly less hot part of the flame that glows orange-yellow is at the top.

And the reason a flame is pointed, this is pretty awesome. Not the fact of the podcast? The space part is. Oh, OK. I think. All right, go ahead then. So a flame is pointed, and it burns upward because the gases that are burning, what you're burning

right there are volatile gases that are being burned off. As they burn, they're hotter, but they're also less dense. And they're moving upward toward the less dense air above it, which causes it to be pointed. But if you were to like. You take it for granted, but it's kind of cool to know how that works. Yeah, that's why it always burns upward.

Tends to burn upward. No, it always does. Always burns upward. And that's also why it's pointed, too, because the air around it is dense and it's pushing it in. Yeah, right? Pretty awesome. But if you were to light a fire in zero gravity,

it would burn as a sphere. I want to see this. I do, too. I mean, can it be done? If we go into zero gravity, sure. Yeah, but I mean, they have zero gravity environments. Do they attack? Surely someone has started a fire in one of those,

just to see this. I think it's a really bad thing if a fire starts in a zero gravity environment. I guess so. I just got to think that someone's tried this. I'm sure, and I'm sure there's video of it on YouTube. No, there's probably a good reason why. And someone's going to write and say, you dummies,

don't you understand that when you start a fire in zero gravity that we all die? That's right. Yeah. 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. 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. OK, so steam. Let's talk about steam, because we talked about the recombination of atoms when these gases are released.

Same thing happens when you boil water. You know, you get this gas mixing with oxygen in the air. But it's not going to combust. Thankfully, or cooking would be much more dangerous. It's because some of these atoms aren't as attracted to each other, in the case of water, for sure. Right, they're tepid toward one another. Yeah, if you're talking fire, though,

they have carbon and hydrogen, which are really attracted to oxygen. And so they like to get together and recombine more easily. Pretty simple. And then we've been talking mostly about wood as a fuel. But tons of things are fuel. Gasoline's a good fuel. Gasoline doesn't produce char.

Basically, heat vaporizes gasoline into nothing but volatile gases, which burn. Yeah, so there you go. And I always heard, too, that gasoline ignites like the vapor ignites, not the liquid, is that true? Yeah, OK. Yeah, it's not the liquid, it's the gas. But heat causes all that liquid to turn into the gas,

which goes kaboom. So different fuels are going to catch at different temperatures. And no matter what the fuel, it'll have a piloted ignition temperature and an unpiloted ignition temperature. Basically, the piloted ignition temperature is that point, that temperature where the volatile gases are being released, and they're heated up

to the point where if you introduce a spark, it would blow up. That's right. One of the defining characteristics of a volatile gas is that it basically disperses at room temperature, I believe, right? Yeah, OK. So at some point, introducing a spark

is going to set that off at some temperature, which I guess means that if you have gasoline cooled to enough of a temperature, just lighting a match next to it won't set off the gas. I don't know if this is a question we should be raising to a general audience. Don't try this. I'm curious, though.

We'll have to check that out. But the unpiloted ignition temperature is basically when something gets hit by lightning and the heat is so intense that there's no need for a spark. It just heats it up to the point where now it's on fire, where it combusts. Right. Pretty cool.

And I try to get to the origin of a pilot, like a pilot light, which is the same thing, I guess. I couldn't find it. I don't know where that came from. Because, yeah, think about it, you've got the gas burning and it's glowing, and then you just hit the spark, and then bam, you've just ignited the gas. So it's at the piloted ignition temperature

in your hot water heater. But I'm sure someone knows the answer to that. So if you do, send it in. We're raising a lot of questions in this one. And giving some answers. The shape, and by shape usually they mean surface area of a fuel affects how efficiently it burns and how easily it burns too. Yeah, I mean, this is pretty basic.

If you have a big, thick log, obviously, you're going to have way less surface area exposed and combustible than if you had a toothpick. Yeah, and it can absorb a lot more heat, too, a big, thick log. But yeah, if you have a bunch of little pieces of wood, it's going to burn more quickly and catch more easily because there's more exposed surface temperature. And more of that fuel is exposed to the heat than a big,

like you said, a big log or something. Yeah, and that's why when you're starting, if you ever watched a Bear Grylls do this thing or Les Stroud, they try to get the little tiny little shavings from the inside of, like you peel away the bark on a tree and then get the shavings off of the tree itself. And that's the stuff that's going to really combust easily through friction with like, there's different ways

of doing the little friction. I've never been, I've never done that, have you? Have you started a fire using like friction? Yeah. Have you really? Yeah. That's impressive. I do that stuff when I go camping now for fun, like.

Oh yeah? In front of the real fire, you know, that we've started with our big lighters. Gotcha, yeah. And I'm sitting there with my beer and my Southern Comfort and my comfy chair. Right. And the steak is on the grill.

I'll do some little survival stuff, just kind of for fun. You know. That's cool. Until I get tired of it and give up. Yeah. It's fun. Hats off to you for knowing how to do that. Well, it's pretty easy.

I mean, there's different ways. There's the plow method or the little bow where you make the little stringed bow. Yeah. And do that little number. Yeah, I've seen that one. There's the castaway one. Yeah, that's the plow method.

Oh, that's plow? Yeah. That makes sense, they'd be called that. You got anything else? I don't think so. Do you feel like we explained this correctly and well? Yeah, I mean, it's pretty basic chemistry. We're basically heat breaks down a fuel

so that it can combine with oxygen and ignite, and then burn, and it's self-sustaining so long as there's fuel and oxygen. And then all you need is a bear skin rug and some cinemax, and you're all set for Friday night. Awesome. If you want to know more about fire, you can type fire into the search bar

at HowStuffWorks.com, and that will bring up this article and plenty of other stuff too, maybe even some survival stuff by one, Charles W. Bryant. And I said search bar, so it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this email a bad to the bone. So Jocelyn Stone here in Victoria, BC, Canada, apparently hates bad to the bone just as much as I do. So we are friends in that way.

She says a few years ago, my partner, Tim, discovered that he could set anything on his heart desired on his alarm clock for his cell phone. He searched for the perfect song and decided on bad to the bone. Tim believed in order to slowly get himself ready for the day, he needed alarms at 5 AM, 5 30, and 6. I hate that stuff. I, on the other hand, wake up without an alarm at 6 30

without fail, which is what I do. All right. Every morning, I was shocked by the full volume. Na-na-na-na-na-na-na. I would blot. That is a way to wake up right there. I would blast up to a sitting position in bed, my heart exploding out of my chest,

and look next to me at Tim, who was sleeping through the whole event. I would punch him, get up, turn off the alarm myself, and then repeat this two more times. What kind of business partners are these? I don't think they're business partners. That was like an American beauty. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. It's like, I'd like you to meet my partner. He's like, oh, what line of work are you guys? That's right. That was a quantum leap meeting Lone Star, huh? Wow. Yeah, look at you. For some reason, no matter how much I begged him,

he wouldn't change a song or let me turn down the volume. If I secretly changed it to poor bed, he would change it back. If I tried to turn it off and hide his phone, he would find it and turn it back again. If I turned the volume down while he was sleeping, his spidey sense would start tingling, and he'd wake up and turn it back on. It turned into a game that lasted a full year, finally

ending when I told him the sliver of amusement I found in the game was gone. And I would throw his phone into the ocean if he didn't change it. So eventually, she just had enough. Yeah. She's like, this isn't fun anymore. We ended up buying an alarm clock radio, which he also

sleeps through. Now thanks to Tim, every time he heard bad of the bone in public, I immediately leave the area, lest I explode in a muddy, scalding, rock throwing rage, like the huamangu geyser. Wow, nice records. Yeah, so then she said, PS, do a podcast on accordions. After all that.

Jeez, who's that? Jocelyn. Thank you, Jocelyn. From Victoria, BC, Canada. Thank you. And Tim? Tim. Good luck, Tim.

And Jocelyn, I hope you guys find a song you can both agree on. Agreed. And Tim, just get up, dude. For some people, it's hard. I never understood the snooze, because wouldn't you rather just sleep that time? No, I'm with you, but I'm saying like. Instead of being woken up every 10 minutes.

It's not that easy to just wake right up. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I need to accept others as they are. Let's see, what do we want? Cheese, I don't know. I don't know either. We'll have to figure it out. Yeah, send us anything, I guess.

It's a generic call out. You can send us anything via Twitter at SYSK podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com, slash stuff you should know, and send us an email containing anything. And if you send us an email that just says anything, like you'll be one of 5,000 people that do that, so just stop. You can send that email that doesn't just say anything,

too, stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio 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 iHeartRadio 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, 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.