Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: What Makes us Yawn?

Episode Date: July 6, 2019

What is it that makes us suddenly draw in a deep breath through a wide-open mouth? The beautiful thing about yawning is that researchers really don't know. Whether the answer is physical, mental or even contagious there is pretty much no chance you won't yawn during 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 SYSK Selects, I've chosen What Makes Us Yawn. It's actually a really good question about something everyone does,

and yet we don't really fully understand. After all of these eons of people yawning and all these centuries of science studying things like people yawning, we still can't explain what yawning is. So buckle in and enjoy this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Selects. 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 Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You getting comfy? Yeah. Okay, well you put the two of us together and this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. Frank was squeaking.

I thought I was in Frank. Oh, is that Frank? Yeah. Oh, sorry, I'm in Francine. Oh, okay. Sorry, Francine, she's squeaking. You are in Frank. Cool, I am.

That's Bill, the chair. People have never heard this or like, what are they talking about? Oh, they've already turned off. We name our chairs, people. That and everyone. You name cars, boats, and chairs. Yeah, a surprising amount of people name chairs.

If you don't, you should be paranoid because people are talking about you. That's right. Chuck. Yes. Have you ever oscillated? I have, I've even pandiculated. You've pandiculated before?

I pandiculate every morning. You know what? We sound like people running for the Senate in 1950s, Florida. Yeah, Florida has a rich history of people running for political office using technical terms for things that sound way worse than they are to smear their opponents.

Really? Yeah, there's this one guy who went, and I can thank Uncle John and his bathroom reader for this, who went after his opponent and said that his sister was a thespian in New York. And all these people were like, boo, boo, we hate thespians. I hate actors. And apparently the smear campaign was successful.

That wasn't the only one, but this guy used that. A couple of technical terms. We should probably tell people what we're talking about. Because you said you pandiculate every morning. Easily every morning. And that is a what? That is a yawn and a stretch combined together, and is one of my favorite things to do in the morning.

It is. Did you see that painting of the, it was a self-portrait, the artist's self-portrait. Seemed like it was from like the 16th or 17th century of him pandiculating. It's just this awesome oil painting of this, you know, Renaissance man stretching and yawning. Yeah, I love it because it feels good.

And it ties me to my pets, you know, because like I see them do it, they see me do it. And I'm kind of like, hey, we all eat. We all pee and poop. And we all pandiculate. My little cattle stretch and yawn. My dogs will stretch and yawn. And I will stretch and yawn.

So do you guys make one another stretch and yawn? You know, I'm gonna start looking out for that because I have not noticed that, but apparently yawning can be contagious to animals, right? Yeah, there's a fun little game you can. Or dogs only, right? Dogs supposedly chimps, for sure. But probably not cats.

I don't know. Just because it's not in here, doesn't mean it's not true. There's a fun little game you can play the next time you're hanging out with people, if you feel like manipulating them on a biological level. Just yawn and just start paying attention to how many people yawn as a result.

And it should start some sort of chain reaction among maybe 40 to 50% of the people. Because that's the statistic of how many human adults yawn in reaction to seeing somebody yawn, seeing videos of somebody yawn, hearing about somebody yawning, reading about yawning.

Like how many times did you yawn while you read this article? A bunch and people will probably yawn while listening to this supposedly. It's pretty much impossible not to. Yeah, do you ever, this just really shows how deeply disturbed I am. I will not, I will suppress or cover up a yawn if someone else has made me yawn sometimes

just so I don't give them the satisfaction. Oh yeah, I've done that before too. Sometimes it's just like, no, I'm not yawning. Like just some stranger on an elevator, they'll yawn. And I'll just be like, nope, not me buddy. One of those people who don't realize that they're just your mortal enemy for no real good reason.

When in fact they really don't even know he exists. They're like some guys on the elevator. So yawning is involuntary. Yep. And I've seen a range of weeks that a fetus has been observed yawning from 11 to 20. And that sort of disproves one of the, well many things disproves one of the theories

which is that we yawn to oxygenate ourselves. Yeah, because a lot of people think that fetuses breathe amniotic fluid in the womb and that is absolutely not true. Right. They get their oxygen through the umbilical cord. Yeah, so they're clearly not yawning to oxygenate themselves. Right.

And we'll debunk that with other things in a minute. Sure. But still it is a little bit of a mystery though. Like yeah, the other ideas for why we yawn don't really hold up in the fetus either. It feels like that's where the key to the mystery of yawning is going to be found. In the fetus.

In the womb. All right. Should we go over some theories in it? Well hold on, first you were saying it's involuntary. I found this one thing Chuck, that there's a type of paralysis, like a lesion on the brain. Uh huh.

Where you can still, if you yawn, you still pandiculate. So like your paralyzed arm, if you yawn deep enough will raise, will rise. Really? Yeah. Wow. Pretty weird, huh?

Yeah. There's only been a few cases of it over like the last 150 years, but it's been documented in a number of different places. Huh. Yeah. I'll bet that is such a surprise. Yeah, seriously.

They're like, can I be tired more often? Yeah. So when you yawn, just physiologically speaking, you're gonna open your mouth, you're going to suck in air into your lungs. I read one place that your eyes usually close. They did this big study and found that most time your eyes close,

but I don't think it's like all the time, you know? That's sneezing, you're thinking of. No, they did a study on the eyes of the yawner. Well, that's part of the yawn too, as far as cues go. It's not just the mouth opening, your eyes squint. Yeah, and I found the really good deep yawn, my eyes will generally close.

Gotcha. So you're gonna flex your abs. It's good workout. You're gonna push your diaphragm down. You're gonna fill your lungs with air and then exhale and that is a yawn. That's a yawn. And if you stretch, you're bandiculating.

Yeah. Also, parts of your brain become active, right? Basically what happens when you go through all this process, a bunch of neurotransmitters and dopamine are activated. And that is why a guy named Robert Provine thinks, well, he says that yawns are basically a part of a change from one state of arousal to another. Yeah, like I was asleep now I'm awake

or I was alert now I'm bored. Right, or I was like just ho-hum and now I'm like in the mood because you can yawn when you're sexually aroused. Oh, that mood. Yes. The mood. The mood.

Sorry. The Glenn Miller mood. Yeah. That's what they had to call it back then. And that's what we have to call it today on this family friendly podcast. That's right. What's going on too is physiologically speaking

is we are distributing something called the surfactant which sounds gross and it kind of is. Okay. It's a shipping agent to coat alveoli in the lungs. But are they saying that's what happens or that's why it happens? That's what happens. Okay, they're not saying the reason

is to coat the alveoli with surfactant, right? It could be. I mean, for all we know. Because they still don't know. No, we still have no idea what function yawning provides. Same with the yawning as a symbol of arousal or as a sign of arousal. They think that it's really just a byproduct of it.

Right. You know? But it explains why people who are nervous or dogs, I'm sure you've seen dogs who are nervous and they yawn in like that really kind of weird unsettling way. Yeah, yeah. When they're super worked up.

Yeah. And humans too, you know, like people will yawn when they're nervous. It's a sign that you're in a state of arousal. Yeah. And what that state of arousal is depends on the situation. Yeah, they point to Olympians who yawn before like a race.

Yeah. Which Pupu's one theory that, we're gonna get to the theory. Should we just get to the theories? Let's get to the theories. And Pupu's that theory though that you have to be bored or you have to be sleepy or tired. Yeah. Like there's the boredom theory

and it's kind of been pretty fully shot down just by, you know, casual observation. Yeah. There's also the physiological theory. Yeah. Which is that, this is the one that I'd always heard when I was younger, like why are you yawn? It's because you need to, you're oxygen deprived

or you have an abundance of carbon dioxide. So you're drawn in a bunch of oxygen and like putting out a bunch of carbon dioxide. Right. That's why you're yawn. And a povine or a provine that you mentioned. Yeah. He tested this one, right?

Yeah, pretty simply. He just said, okay, well, let's just give some athletes a bunch of oxygen and see if they, if they breathe, if they yawn any less and they didn't. Right. They also increased the carbon dioxide in the ambient air and people still kept yawning.

Okay. So that one's gone. But they didn't yawn anymore. Yeah. So we can put that to bed. Yeah. Plus also there was a terrible proof associated with that hypothesis.

Oh yeah. That explains why people yawn in groups. Because when you have a big group, there's more carbon dioxide and less oxygen. And that's like you're all fighting over the oxygen. Right. So you're yawning. Yeah.

Whoever can yawn the deepest lives. Yeah. That does sound right. Evolution could play a part. Some people think that maybe we used to yawn, took took would yawn to bear his teeth, to intimidate folks around him, or that it developed as a signal.

Took took would give a signal to his mates that, hey, we got a, we're hunting now and we need to go now gather wood. So I will yawn to tell you that. Yeah. Like pre-speech, right? Yeah. Like a bird turning of the whole flock.

Yeah. That makes a little bit of sense, but I still don't believe that one. I'm with the brain cooling theory. That's like the most recent one. Yeah. That seems to be the one that people are subscribing to.

Yeah. Scientists generally are leaning toward the fact that when our brains are warmer, yawning might cool it down. And a cool brain is a more whatever, a better brain I guess. I should say I just. Does better for thinking.

I just yawned. Did you? I did. Okay. I didn't see it. Well, I covered my mouth. You may have thought I was burping. I think I did.

So the brain cooling theory, that's the one that most people think is lately. Yeah. That's the. That's the hot. Explanation du jour. Yeah. And there's another piece of research

that people are going into that is the idea that contagious yawning is the result of empathy. Right? The more you empathize with other people, the more susceptible you are to contagious yawning. And we said earlier that like, I think 41 to 55% of human adults are susceptible to contagious yawning.

Yeah. Which the mythbusters confirmed by the way. Okay. So there is some sort of link between what we perceive as empathy and the susceptibility to yawning when you see somebody else yawning or reading about yawning or whatever.

I wonder if it's like, why that guy's tired and just let me make him feel better. Well, Provine again, he's like really into yawning research. Yeah. He has done MRI scans where he shows, I guess pictures of people yawning or talks about yawning and they yawn.

And when they do, he says that mirror neurons go off. Oh yeah, our old friends. Right. So our mirror neurons are activated when you see somebody else yawn. And apparently that triggers the yawn. But people take it a step further in this quest to prove that empathy

and contagious yawning are, work hand in hand. Right. And saying, well then people with autism, that they shouldn't be able to be susceptible to contagious yawning. Right. Because they're known to have less empathy.

Right. They have trouble connecting with others or they have trouble developing what's called a theory of mind about other people. Right. And there have been a lot of studies about whether or not people who have autism are contagious to susceptible to contagious yawning.

Yeah. And it's been proven, not proven, but at least the data says that the stronger your autism, the less you will yawn even though they will yawn when someone's pretending to yawn. Was that what it was? I didn't see that part. Yeah, I think it said that when they were watching video

of people just moving their mouths, then non-autistic kids yawn more than kids with autism when it was really yawning. Does that make sense? Yes. Well, hold on before we get to that. Yeah. Cause this is like a whole thing to me.

Sure. The idea that if you have autism, you're not susceptible to contagious yawning. Yeah. Let's first have a message break from our sponsor. Stuff you should know. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor,

stars of the cult classic show HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use HeyDude 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 cause you'll wanna 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 HeyDude, 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. Oh, 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. Okay, Josh, so I believe we were talking about autism and yawning, which is, I just learned a thing for you. Well, yeah, you said that there was, they have found that if you have been diagnosed

with autism, you're less likely to be susceptible to contagious yawning. Right. And they found that the higher on the autism spectrum, you fall. The less likely you would even be, right? Yeah, which would suggest that there is that link because they've tied, there's a link between empathy

and autism and empathy and contagious yawning. So this, the autism and studying kids with autism is kind of like the fulcrum. Sure. So yeah, it just seems to me to be kind of, I don't know, I don't buy all of the studies that have been carried out and other studies kind of contradict it.

Yeah. Like they, other studies have shown that like kids with autism focus on people's mouths rather than their eyes. So maybe they're missing the cue. Remember, we said that your eyes scrunch. So like a yawn is not just people opening their mouths. Right. It has all these other facial characteristics

that might trigger a yawn in another person. So maybe kids with autism are simply missing that. So you're saying maybe the data could be skewed by other factors? It could be plus. I just remember when I wrote this article like years back, I was kind of like something stunk. Yeah, there's just, it seems just slightly off.

Like, yeah. You got a good gut though. Well, thanks man, I've been working on it. So bad. Well, we should also mention too that this goes back a long way, like I believe was it Hippocrates? Yeah. Was the first person to start sort of postulating ideas

and he was like, he thought it was fever related like sickness that could help cure you. So I got a fever and the only prescription is more yawning. Yeah. That's why he was the father of medicine. That's right. Because he was the first guy to just start saying stuff. But, you know, that was pretty quickly disproven.

Right, but the idea that yawning has something to do with increasing our alertness and awareness, which is kind of one of the current views of yawning, that dates back to the 17th and 18th centuries. Yeah, well, it increases your heart rate during inhalation only. OK. Not during the, I think it increases and then levels off

and then just drops back down to normal pretty quickly. I got you. Yeah. But up to like 30 beats per minute increase, right? Yeah, I read a real heady article on this study that really just made my eyes cross, but that was the long and short of it. Right.

But that's one that dealt with the eyes, like they really measured all kinds of stuff. And we said that fetuses from 11 to 20 weeks of development yawn in utero. And did you see any of the 4D ultrasounds of fetuses yawning? Is it adorable? It's pretty cute. But it's also weird at the same time

because they're not fully developed. So it's like, aw, you. It's like a little baby platypus. Kind of. But you have to be around age four before you're susceptible to contagious yawning. Yeah. Is there any way to put it besides susceptible to contagious yawning?

I don't think so. Why do you feel like you've said that like 80 times? A lot. And I've had trouble with it every time, too. There's another couple of researchers who a couple of years ago, Andrew Gallop and Omar Tansi Eldakar, they found that outside temperature could affect the amount of yawning.

So if it's warmer than usual, then you're going to yawn less frequently because their explanation is the outside air is useless to the organism because it doesn't need to suck in more oxygen. I don't get how the temperature would affect that, though. Well, if it's warmer temperature and you're using the cooler air to cool your brain, if it's warmer than the temperature of your brain,

then it's not going to work. That makes sense. All right, well, they had other tests, though, that showed that the amount of yawning increased both when outside temperature and the temperature of the brain increase. Yeah, it's all over the place. No one knows anything about yawning,

except Robert Provine, the foremost leading authority. Well, he's proven that seeing or hearing about somebody yawning triggers your mirror neuron. Yeah, I think somebody should do a documentary on these people that become obsessed with yawning. No, just a certain small thing. So you're yawning right now. And that was unsatisfying because you made me laugh

in the middle of it. I think fast cheap and out of control, I've talked about it before, Errol Morris' documentary sort of did that. But that was about like studying naked mole rats or lion taming or what's it called when you clip the hedges, topiary, gardening. But they should do things that are even more like mundane,

like this dude that is dedicated his life to yawning. I just think that'd be interesting, like what drives Provine to figure this out when it really doesn't matter, you know what I'm saying? Well, I don't know because, and it's not just yawning, he frequently is cited as a yawning expert. He's an evolutionary biologist. So like, but yawning, since it's involuntary

and since you find it in all vertebrates, it kind of gives some peek into our evolutionary past. Plus, he probably just loves a good mystery. Sure, he had a great quote too. We were talking about how arousal, yawning is a byproduct of a state of arousal. He was saying that he believes that yawns and orgasms share a neuro-behavioral heritage.

Oh, really? Yeah, so like they're possibly rooted in the same behavior. Like remember you said to yourself, when you pendiculate, feels good. Yeah, something happens. Same, you know, with the orgasm. Yeah, I've heard those feel great. Right, so possibly if you trace the lineage

of this behavior back far enough, you'd say like, oh, they both came from, when humans used to stub their toe, they thought it was awesome. And then the two things diverged into these two things. Interesting. Into yawning and what happens when you're in the mood? The Glenn Miller mood.

Right. You got anything else? No, man, that is yawning forever until somebody figures it out. It's a mystery. Yeah, and I kind of like it like that, but at the same time, I think it's so amorphous that there's no one has a clue.

Like sometimes we've talked about stuff that science couldn't fully explain, but we almost always like pick a theory, like this is the one. Yeah. It just hasn't been proven yet, right? This one, I don't feel like we did that. Like we both like the brain cooling one,

but it was kind of discarded. Yeah, and I'm definitely gonna keep an eye on my pets. But then I don't know if like, can you induce that just by noticing more, you know? You know what I'm saying? Or maybe what I'll do is I'll watch Emily around the pets. So no one's in on it. Just be careful you don't accidentally change

their behavior just by observing it. Heisenbergs. Well, Buckley farts every time he stretches too. See, that's what I'm saying. We'll see if Emily farts while she fendiculates. That'll be the test. Nice. So, okay, I think if you guys want to learn more

about yawning, you can type that word into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And since I said search bar, it means it's time for listener mail. Not quite yet, my friend. And we have a quick word from our sponsor again. And then we will, we have a great listener mail though about Rodriguez, so.

Oh yeah, yeah, okay. All right, so this is a time for message break. On the podcast, Pay 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. 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 vapor, 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, 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 podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Okay, and now it's time for Listener Mail, huh? Yes, and I already gave it away, because I wanted people to stick around for this, and it is called, I hung out with Rodriguez. Wow. So we mentioned Rodriguez, the singer-songwriter from the 60s, who unbeknownst to him, was a huge, huge hit in South America and...

No, South Africa. What did I say, South America? I'm such an idiot. No, you're not. South Africa, and then... They're both like down there, one's on the left, one's on the right. And then later on Australia, and...

So we covered that in our apartheid podcast, and you can see the documentary searching for Sugar Man is super interesting. Which one best documentary this year, right? Yeah, heck yeah. Have you seen How to Survive a Plague? That was up for Best Picture 2. Yeah, best documentary?

Yes. Was it good? Yeah, it was really good. It's about the early gay AIDS awareness movement, and it's just what they were up against is mind-boggling. Yeah, the idea of society was just kind of like, no, God's punishing you, good luck with it, pal. Jeez.

Yeah, it was really something. I saw a... Go ahead. Our friend Stuart of Superhuman Happiness, who they're fans of the show, he scored the soundtrack. Oh, nice. He did a really good job with it, too.

You'll have to check that out, yeah. I saw another trailer the other day for a documentary about this family of Jews who hid in an underground for a year and a half during World War II. What? And they never told their story because they didn't think anyone would believe it.

And this caving cave diver, not cave diver, caving guy found these human objects and traced them back to this family, and they came out like the surviving ones like told their story of is amazing. Wow. What's it called? It's called No Place on Earth.

Cool. And it's coming out soon, it looks awesome. All right. Well, there you go, everybody. We like to recommend documentaries around here. Okay, Rodriguez. Guys, it's so fun to hear you talk about Rodriguez because I've known him a little bit here and there.

I'm glad he's getting recognition. And here is the story about the first day I met him. September 2007, I moved into a 101-year-old apartment building in the Cass Corridor neighborhood of Detroit. It was a bar across the street called The Bronx. And after getting moved in, my boyfriend and I went over there and had a night of celebrating and talking with some old and new friends.

A friend, Dale, pointed out this dude wearing all black with sunglasses on and said, you know, Rodriguez, that guy over there is bigger than Elvis in South Africa and Australia. I didn't understand the gravity of a statement at the time, but being friendly people, we talked late into the night with Dale and Rodriguez. The bar closed, we decided to walk back across the street

to our new apartment, and Rodriguez followed us out with his guitar and toe. It was very quiet out, about three in the morning. The apartment building was U-shaped with a big courtyard in the middle and low lighting. It was really beautiful. There was a single picnic table, and we sat there on it talking more and more.

Rodriguez pulled out a pint of brandy, offered a sum, and then asked if we wanted to hear his new song, saying he'd just written it the other day. He said, sure, because he seemed so incredibly excited about it. He played the song for us and played it again. Which I thought was interesting. He just played it twice.

So did you like that? You want to hear it again? Wait before you answer. Let me play it a second time. And then we talked some more about music and love, and he played it once again. No way. I guess he played it three times.

I saw him many, many times over the next few years and met his middle daughter as well. He played the same song every time. But I'll never forget sitting under the stars all alone with him in a majestic old Detroit courtyard, giving my boyfriend and me a private concert of a single song. That's cool. Played thrice in Passing the Cheap Brandy.

He really is, and it's kind and happy of a soul, as the movie says. That's cool. When you watch Searching for Sugarman, you can see a couple of people talking at the Bronx Bar and even see my old apartment in the background. Hope I see you guys soon. Love, Julia.

Well, thanks, Julia. Hat tip to you for being aware of the word thrice. Yeah. And for, I guess, waiting out the storm in Detroit. Yeah, and for listening to that song three times, like very patient and understanding. Right, with that smile plastered on your face the last time. Yeah, very cool memory, I imagine.

Let's see if you have a story about any sort of famous singer, songwriter, filmmaker, anybody. Remember the guy who hung out with Henry Hill and became really disenchanted as a result? Yeah. If you have a good story like that, we're always in the mood for a good yarn, especially if it's true.

You can tweet to us if it's a really, really short story to SYSK Podcast. That's our handle, the whole thing. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. All one word. That's our Facebook page. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web,

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. 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 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. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.