Stuff You Should Know - Whatever happened to acid rain?

Episode Date: June 15, 2012

Along with the hole in the ozone layer, acid rain was one of the first international environmental threats. It's fallen to the wayside in the face of climate change, but we have yet to lick it. Join Chuck and Josh as they revive the 80s drumbeat. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner, the residue-free, fast-drying solution especially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like stone, tile, laminate, vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and we're doing this again. We're bringing the science this time for once in our lives.

Acid rain. Yeah. Falling down from the acid clouds. That's not how that song goes. That's not how acid rain by Tejon Day goes. That guy's so great. We watched that again the other day just by chance, and I hadn't seen it in a couple years, and it's still just beautiful. It's hard to, like Chad said, our friend. It's hard to believe that that voice comes out of that guy. Yeah. And he's got a new one, like mother economy. Oh, really? Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, he's a good guy. Don't know what chocolate rain's about, but there's a good call out. I would be very interested to hear everyone's interpretation of what chocolate rain means. Good. I'd like to hear that too. Let's see, Chuck. Do you remember

back in the 80s hearing about two things, two terrifying environmental things. One, the ozone layer, specifically the hole in the ozone layer. Yeah. And two, acid rain. Yeah, throw an apartheid, and that is the 80s. Yeah. I'm not going to play Sun City. Nope. Yeah, that's pretty much. Also, don't forget cocaine, Ronald Reagan, jelly beans, and the A-Team. Yeah. And Magnum. Sure. But he kind of transcends the 80s, really, if you ask me. He's just a man of all time. Fair. Yeah. Never gets old. The weird thing is, is since, I guess, maybe the mid 90s or whatever, you don't hear about any of those things except for Magnum any longer. Yeah, because of course, global warming took over, and everyone's afraid we're going to melt now. And so they said, well,

we don't need to worry about acid rain anymore. We fix that problem. Right. I think there's a perception that, you know, acid rain was fixed and taken care of, and astoundingly, in a lot of ways, it has been. Yeah. They've come a long way, baby. The ozone layer, by the way, has not been. As a matter of fact, another one opened up in the Antarctic now, so now we have two. But that's another topic of discussion. Acid rain, let's get back to it, though, is a very, it's a nice success story in a lot of ways. And it came from a comprehensive understanding of a problem and a comprehensive will to address it. That's right. That's how you take care of stuff. There is still a long way to go, though. Oh. You always bring me back down, or tell me to.

Not completely fixed, but it is good. It's heartwarming to know that you can see a problem and reduce something like acid rain. Precisely. So, Chuck, what is acid rain? Acid rain, Josh, is a transboundary issue, which means even though it just occurs in the north, mainly occurs in the northern hemisphere, it still is going to cross over and affect the rest of the world. And the reason that's worth mentioning is because for many years, up until the 1980s, they thought it was a very local problem. Yeah. And then they realized, oh, no, it's not. And everybody kind of got on board with fixing it. That's right. But like you said, northern hemisphere, it occurs mostly there because we're the dirtiest. Yeah, more industrial, most polluting. Yeah. So specifically

what it is is rain with acid in it, literally. Emissions of sulfur dioxide, SO2, nitrogen oxides, NOX from things like cars and factories, power plants, all those nasty things. Lightening strikes, volcanoes. Those are the natural ones. Yeah. They will actually react with water vapor in the atmosphere and turn into acid, sulfuric and nitric acids. Yeah. And they can fall in the form of wet rain, snow, sleet fog, or they can be deposited as particulates and gases. Right. So that's dry acid rain. Well, the whole drug thing is called acid deposition. Yeah. Because it can be wet or dry, right? And it's being deposited. Exactly. On the earth. Yeah, that's what that word is. It's branched from deposit, isn't it? I think so. Yeah. It didn't

even occur to me. And so bravo on explaining acid rain and how it's formed. Bravo, Sarah Dowdy, who wrote this. Yeah, she did a very good job on this. And when you can't just be like, well, this rain seems a little hanky. So we're going to say that that's acid rain. They actually know there's a very strict definition of what constitutes acid rain. And they use the pH scale to determine it. Good old pH scale. So the pH scale is the spectrum between highly acidic and highly basic, right? And acid rain obviously falls toward the acidic side of the scale. And in the middle of the scale is pure water. And that's at a 7.0. It's not at 0. It's entirely neutral. It's neither basic nor acidic. Yeah. I just find it interesting that

it's a scale of zero to 14 with seven being in the middle. Seven's in the middle of zero to 14. Yeah. But I mean, it just for me, I would say zero is neutral and anything above would be negative. But whatever. In the grand tradition of civilization established by the Romans, though, the pH scale starts at one rather than zero. Sure. But yeah, I see what you're saying. Actually, it says zero to 14 in here. I like the fact. I think it goes from one to 14. Well, then Sierra got it wrong. In the graph here says one to 14. I wonder. But back to it, seven's in the middle. So it would start at zero, I guess. Okay. So the more acidic is the lower numbers and the more basic is the higher numbers, right?

Yeah. The thing is, is rain isn't neutral. No, normal rain still is slightly acidic. And it hits about 5.6 on the pH scale. Right. So why? Well, it combines with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to form a slightly acidic carbonic acid deposition. Yeah. Which is branched from the root word deposit. That's right. So acid rain is something like 5.3 to 4.0 as far as acidity goes, right? 4.3 to 5. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's a big difference. And it's something like what the acidity between orange juice and black coffee? Yeah, which Sarah is keen to point out, which is a bit of a misnomer. While that's true, you can't say, well, like, oh, it's just like coffee. And then you're like, that's not going to

throw coffee in your grass and it's not going to kill it. See, and yeah, my hat was off to her for saying like, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't just be like, orange juice is fine and coffee's fine. Because if you think about it, if it rained orange juice all the time, yeah, it'd probably have the same impact. It'd be awesome how it just like hold the old cup out the window at your morning. I'd be like, oh, it's with pulp today. Okay. The problem with acid rain though, Josh, even though it is has the acidity of a coffee or an orange juice, it can wreck small parts of an ecosystem. And as we all know, if you wreck small parts of an ecosystem, there's a domino effect that occurs that spreads throughout an

ecosystem. One of the most valuable things on the planet is something like plankton. Yeah, plankton is high currency. It's like honeybuns in prison, but for the, you know, pretty much. And when plankton, which is very, very sensitive to changes in pH, especially when it becomes more acidic, when plankton dies and small invertebrates die, then yeah, it starves out the larger animals, fish and frogs. And then we start to get hungry, especially the French who eat frog legs, e.g. acid rain is a huge problem in France. That's right. And eventually it's just mass hysteria. Pretty much.

Cats and dogs living together. Kimberly from different strokes ends up with green hair. That's right. There are a couple of programs that monitor this in the U.S., the National Atmospheric Deposition Program, and they handle the wet deposition and the clean air status and trends network handle the dry. And what they're looking for is trying to determine the critical load, which is how much an ecosystem can take before it starts saying, man, I'm breaking down. You're killing me with this stuff. Right. And the pH scale is determined by the concentration of hydrogen ions, right?

Yeah. In a substance. That's what makes it either acidic or basic, right? Sure. So what these programs are doing is measuring the concentration of hydrogen ions to determine acidity. And they say, oh, well, this is, this is too much. Science. I would just walk out and be like, look at these. This plankton is not looking very healthy. This is acidic.

I don't even need to measure this stuff. You can just spot unhappy plankton. Pretty much. Nice. It's not hard once you know what to look for. Sure. I'll teach you sometimes. Well, it's not hard when you've met happy plankton.

Your life will never be the same. The difference is like night and day. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table.

Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty.

It starts as guilty. Cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset fortune. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

Where were you in 92? Were you bouncing your butt to Sir Mix a lot? Wondering if you, like Billy Ray Cyrus, could pull off a mullet? Yes. 1992 was a crazier for music and a crazy time to be alive. And now iHeart has a podcast all about it. I'm Jason Launfier and on my new show, Where Were You in 92, we take a ride through the major hits, One Hit Wonders, and irresistible scandals that shape

what might be the wildest, most controversial 12 months in music and pop culture history. They were angry at me. They thought I was uncontrollable and wild. I wanted to burst open. The president came after me. Everybody, I'm Warner with madness. Imagine trying to put a record like that out right now. We'd be canceled before it made it to the post office.

Featuring interviews and special guests like Sir Mix a lot, Ice Tea, Tori Amos and Vanessa Williams. This podcast poses the question, what was it about 1992 that made it so groundbreaking and so absolutely fabulous? So buckle up and tune into Where Were You in 92. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Listen and follow on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. So surface waters are where acid rain is going to hit you most initially.

Precipitation. And you don't really think about this. You think it, well, it rains in a lake. In a river, what it does is it rains on the ground and although sure it rains on the water surface, it's also going to run through soil to get to water. Right. One of the purposes of soil, one of the functions that provides is buffering water that percolates through it toward groundwater, toward bodies of water.

And what's buffering mean? Well, it has the ability to neutralize acids. Yeah. Isn't that awesome? Yeah. I think it brings everything more toward purified water or neutral pH, right? Yeah. But I think specifically with a lot of like the minerals that are in the soil, like say calcium,

they counteract acidic rain, acidic water to bring it more toward neutral, right? Right. The problem is when the soil's buffering capacity is overloaded, there's just too much for it to handle, a lot of that un-neutralized acid gets passed along into the body of water and then you start to have those big problems with the little unhappy plankton. Yeah. It's almost like a water filter that's past its date.

You know, it just can't filter anymore. Nice analogy. Thank you. So we've talked about what happens where the French end up with a lot of big problems. Mm-hmm. In coastal areas, nitrogen, remember we have what is it, sulfuric acid and what acid? What for acid rain? Yeah, nitric acid. Yeah.

Okay. So nitric acid is based on nitrogen. Nitrogen has a really interesting impact on coastal waters where when it's deposited, it supports algae blooms. Yeah, lots. Because algae love nitrogen. Yeah. And when algae blooms take place, algae starts to die eventually and they sustain bacteria,

specifically aerobic bacteria that flourishes itself and sucks up all the oxygen in the water, starving fish, shellfish, plants, and eventually like leading to, at the very least, a strain if not a collapse on coastal ecosystems. So too much acid rain will increase algae. Increased algae means increased dying algae and increased dying algae means increased bacteria and they rob fishies of their oxygen. Yeah, that's a domino effect. One of the things I love about acid rain is just how elegantly understandable it is.

It is very basic and simple. I love it. It's not basic. I'm acidic. Yeah. Very nice. So we're not done with the soil too, by the way. No, no.

In addition to, I guess, decreasing its buffering capacity or overloading its buffering capacity, acid rain has the terrible habit of drawing aluminum out of the soil. Yeah. It's normally locked in the soil. Acid rain draws it out, which means that tree roots can suck it up. And that's poison to them. That's a toxin. Yeah, and Sarah makes a good point here.

It's not a situation where you're going to find a rainforest that's leveled all of a sudden because of acid rain or you're going to find a lake or a river that looks nasty and decaying and disgusting. Water might actually look cleaner. Yeah, and then ironic. It is. It's ironic and beautiful. And what it's going to do to your forest is it's going to stun its growth and over time

it's going to have an effect. Yeah. Like you're going to have bald trees because in addition to the toxins coming out in the soil on low-lying areas from acid rain and it also degrading helpful minerals like we said like calcium and other things that trees also use in higher elevations, that acid rain turns into an acid fog. That's crazy to me. That, I'm going to say at this time, that is a great band name.

Acid fog? Yeah. But so just imagine like trees bathing in that all the time. Yeah. That strips their leaves and basically makes them chilly. Yeah, and that's why when you see mountains in the Appalachian mountains that have bald peaks, it's not because trees can't grow up there. They could grow up there if they weren't sucking in and being surrounded by acid clouds.

Acid fog. Acid fog. Yeah. That's nuts. It doesn't have to be raining. Right, yeah. You know, it's just in particulates, in the air. Yeah.

Crazy. And that kind of leads to how it affects us because we are not nearly as sensitive to these kind of changes with acid rain that acid rain brings, right? No, it's not going to burn you. No, you can swim in a lake. Sure. An acid lake and you will be fine. But an acidic lake, let's say.

And yeah, because it's just above battery acid. Yeah. So you couldn't swim in a battery acid lake. That would be terrible. That would be all. But you could swim in an acidic lake as far as acid rains concerned. The problem comes with that dry deposition. The sulfuric and nitric ox or nitric acids combine in low-lying areas with ozone.

Yeah, VOCs. And create smog, which is bad for your respiratory system. Ground level, baby. Yeah. It can also do things like if you've ever seen an old building that is or a monument that's got these little smooth grooves, that could be acid corrosion for years and years. It'll wear away stone, it's no friend to your car paint job, that's for sure. No, which, I mean, if you're into your car, that's a big deal.

Yeah, the tree sap pollen, bird droppings and acid rain are the four enemies of your auto paint. They're considered corrosive environmental fallout. And friend of Mako. Yeah, Mako loves that stuff. Yeah. So the idea about acid rain, consider this, that stone statue you're just describing, that takes a long time. Sure.

A lot of orange juice rain has to fall on that thing for it to become pockmarked and weathered prematurely, right? And it's had actually plenty of time to do that. What would it feel like to have a statue at where Jane's almost? You'd be like, it's a spitting image. So sorry. So, man, you got me with that. So cool.

The reason we've had a long time where that statue is weathered over a very long time is because we've had acid rain for quite some time ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution, I think. Yeah, pretty much. Because remember they thought it was a very localized problem and the reason they thought it was local was because it had such quick, rapid effects. But the acid rain, I don't know who coined the term acid fog, but acid rain was coined by an Englishman named Robert Angus Smith back in 1872.

Yeah. And it was the monuments that made him say, what in the heck is going on here? Yeah, there weren't a lot of people back then. Like I was thinking when I read this, like, man, it would have been great if during this boom of ingenuity and industrial revolution, there were just as many people concerned with the impact it might have, but it just couldn't have worked that way. It's almost like they just had to do their thing and then leave us to figure out how to fix it. How to clean up the mess?

Sort of. I don't know if those things, two things could have evolved simultaneously. No, I think you're onto something. I mean, maybe we wouldn't have, I don't know, the iPhone maybe. Who knows? Maybe we would. I don't know. Maybe we'd be better off.

Yeah. A lot better off. Maybe we would have more stuff. Maybe it would have changed the way of thinking rather than just get, get, get. You know, it would have been get, but also how's this going to affect other people? So Smith was a man alone. An early ecologist, we'll say. Yeah.

Yeah. It's good for him. Man, you've been coming up with some great like off the cuff creative solutions. Well, that's not a solution. If we had a time machine, it would be a solution. Okay. Yeah. The way back machines in the shop.

So the war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs.

Of course. Yes, they can do that. And on the prime example, the war on drugs is the excuse. Our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty.

It starts as guilty. Cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

Where were you in 92? Were you bouncing your butt to Sir Mix-A-Lot? Wondering if you, like Billy Ray Cyrus, could pull off a mullet? Yes. 1992 was a crazier for music and a crazy time to be alive. And now iHeart has a podcast all about it. I'm Jason Launfier and on my new show Where Were You in 92, we take a ride through the major hits, One Hit Wonders, and irresistible scandals

that shape what might be the wildest, most controversial 12 months in music and pop culture history. They were angry at me. They thought I was uncontrollable and wild. I wanted to burst open. Well, the president came after me. Everybody, I'm Warner with madness. Can I just try to put a record like that out right now?

We canceled before it made it to the post office. Featuring interviews and special guests like Sir Mix-A-Lot, Ice-T, Tori Amos and Vanessa Williams, this podcast poses the question, what was it about 1992 that made it so groundbreaking and so absolutely fabulous? So buckle up and tune into Where Are You in 92. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Listen and follow on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast,

or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. So scientists did determine by what, the 70s, 1970s, that acid rain was a problem and it was transboundary, it's not just local. And so then in 1980, thankfully, the Acid Deposition Act said, you know what, we're going to study this for 10 years and we're going to see what's going on. 10 years later in 1990, they said, yep, it's a big problem. Yeah. So we need to do something about it.

And they did very quickly. Congress took the already established Clean Air Act and added sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide, nitrogen oxide to the list of most wanted reduction people, materials. And this was in 1995 with the Clean Air Act and the Acid Rain Program. Right. So 1995, this is when everything really starts to come into effect. I guess at least as far as sulfur dioxide emissions went, it was wildly successful. Yeah.

Compared to 1980 levels, in 2010, the sulfur dioxide emissions have been reduced by 50%. That's good. That's astounding. It is. That is astounding because consider this. That's not from hitting this since 1980. That's hitting it since 1995. We already got it back down to 50%.

Yeah, we're down 50%. 15, 17 years. That's amazing. And the way they did that is through a cap and trade scheme. I kind of like the old cap and trade. It makes a lot of sense. Cap and trade, Josh. Basically, what they say is, we're going to set a cap for how much SO2 that your power plant can

create. It's a limit. But they set the cap and they says, you know what? You've got these allowances, though. If you come under, you get these credits and you can actually sell those to other companies that are in need. And it just, I don't know, something about it makes sense to me. It makes a lot of sense.

And then over time, you decrease the amount that people are allowed to emit. And when you're cutting it into these allowances, those allowances by virtue of the scarcity of them become more valuable. Yeah, and it really incentivizes you to do something about it for your company. Exactly. So that worked really well for nitrous oxide or sodium sulfur dioxide. What are we even talking about here? That's why I just say SO2.

And with nitrogen oxides, they didn't institute a cap and trade until like 2003. So it was lagging a little bit. But it, too, is something of a success story. They reduced it from 27 million tons in 1980 to 16.3 million tons in 2008. That's pretty good. Yeah. And so this has had a discernible effect on the environment. Sure.

Apparently, let's see, the number of acidic lakes throughout the country have reduced dramatically. There are 70% fewer acidic lakes and streams in Wisconsin and Michigan than there were in 1984. A third of the bodies of water that were acidic in the early 90s in the Adirondacks and the Northern Appalachians are now not considered acidic at all. That's awesome. So there have been huge strides made. Other places, there have not been. And also, you found this really good little overview about acid rain and what happened

to it by Nina Rastogi from Slate. That's who's stuff I'm quoting right now. So there have been huge strides, but there's still, like you said, originally a long way to go. Yeah. The National Acidic Precipitation Assessment Program said that another 40 to 80% is what we need to hit to really restore these ecosystems. Yeah. And I think we're headed there.

It sounds like it. Yeah. Like, we'll check in in 10 years and follow up on this. Who am I kidding? We could. We'll do it first in 10 years. Well, no, it'll be our comeback special. Okay.

Whatever happened to whatever happened to acid rain. Great. But Chuck, I think that this is a really valuable lesson. If you have a nonpolarized international initiative to take care of a problem and you can shout down business interests and just say, no, this is what you're doing. And here's how you're going to do it. Yeah. Um, you can make things happen.

Yeah. I guess no one was saying acid rain doesn't exist. No, it's really not bad. Right. It was pretty much nonpolarizing except for big business. And also where any jobs lost by this cap and trade scheme was industry hurt by this cap and trade scheme. I would wage or probably not.

Do you think? I would wage or not. I bet they're still in business. They're just doing it with clean coal and wet scrubbers and yeah, all that good stuff. Yeah, it's interesting. And I'm not even an environmentalist. I hate the environment. I'm just fascinated by this stuff.

It's not true. Well, if you want to learn more about acid rain or acid fog, you can type either of those words into the search bar at howstuffworks.com and that will bring up this very interesting article by Sarah Dowdy. And I said acid fog, which means the time for listener mail. Before listener mail quickly, we are going to Comic Con this year for the first time. Yeah. Like we're like presenting at Comic Con.

We're not just going as fans. And this is the one in San Diego. Yeah. The original. The original Comic Con that is coming up in what, mid-July? Yeah, July 12th to 15th. Yeah. San Diego CA.

And I guess what do we, we're not quite sure when we're going. So we just want to say stay tuned for details. Yeah. But we will be there. I mean, like we have flights booked and everything, hotels, the whole shebang. Yeah. Yeah. And it may or may not, our presentation may or may not include certain other things.

I don't think we should go any further. You're going to get us in trouble. Well, we're trying to land some whales. We'll see what we can do. Okay. I'm going to call this MIT Nerd Alert. I got a very nerdy email from an MIT student. And I teased her and said, I'm going to read this on the air and make fun of you.

Is that okay? And she went, oh yeah. And here's some other stuff you can make fun of me about. Hi, Josh and Chuck and Jerry. I love your recent episode on how language evolved, but as an MIT senior, graduating in a month, which is probably like right now actually, I felt at my duty to make a very important correction to your intro.

We are called the MIT engineers, not the MIT eggheads. I think I called them eggheads. I'm sure you did. Indeed, our unofficial school song is the MIT engineers drinking song, which includes many nerdy jokes, some of the expense of that small liberal art school up the river, Harvard. Additionally, our mascot is Tim the Beaver, Tim being MIT spelled backwards. So clever.

Because beavers are nature's engineers. In fact, every class has a special ring called the brass rat, which depicts a beaver on a bezel, B-E-Z-E-L. What is that? See, I'm so dumb, I don't even know what a bezel is. We would not make it an MIT. Supposedly, it's one of the most recognizable rings in the world. Oh man.

I started listening to the podcast during long, long hours in lab and grateful to you guys for entertaining me during my past four years at MIT. P.S., at MIT, we refer to everything by number, including majors in buildings. Linguistics, the field of Mr. Chomsky, is called Course 24. The inimitable Mr. Chomsky. Nome, I believe. Oh yeah. And is housed in a pretty crazy looking building.

A building 32, a.k.a. the Stata Center. Sorry to ramble on, I'm very proud of my soon to be alma mater and P.P.S. I thought of one more really geeky thing you might want to make fun of, regarding MIT's mascot, the humble beaver. One of our cheers for our football games is called the beaver cheer. And I will do that right now. I'm a beaver. You're a beaver.

We are beavers all. And when we get together, we do the beaver call. E to the U, D U slash DX, E to the X, DX, cosine, secant, tangent, sine, 3.14159, integral, radical, MUDV, these are smart things that don't understand. Slipstick, slide rule, MIT, go tech. I feel like you just issued some sort of orders that only like three people understand and now they're carrying out some sort of terrible mission. Yeah, like the nuclear suitcases like heating up right now, like the bomb inside.

Yeah. Yeah, I can't even say you're beaver cheer. That's how dumb I am. It's okay, Chuck. Who's that from? Laura. Thanks a lot, Laura. That was a good one.

And I have one for you. You want to hear an engineer joke that my dad, who is an engineer, taught me a long time ago? From the herbal Elvis himself. Let's hear it. Takes a minute. Will you bear with me? Sure. So an engineer, a priest, and a doctor are all playing golf one day.

And ahead of them are these guys and they stink. They're hitting, they're driving in like the opposite direction of the hole. They're just really terrible at the game of golf. So the beer guy comes around on his cart and the priest is like, do you have any idea who these guys are? I've never seen anybody play golf this badly. And the beer guy goes, oh, those are three firefighters. And they put out the clubhouse when it caught fire.

But they all lost their sight in this fire. So we let them play whenever they want. And the priest takes a step back and puts his hand on his heart. And he goes, oh, faith in the gore. Just give me their names. I'm going to go pray for them. I'm going to have my whole church pray for them at mass this Sunday. That their sight is restored.

And the doctor is like, that is terrible. Like, here's my card. Make sure that these guys get in touch with me because I know some really good eye surgeons and maybe we can do something about them. And the engineer goes, why can't they just play at night? Pretty good, huh? Very nice, Mr. Clark.

Thank you very much. I like a good joke like that. That's a good one. Like just not a one-liner, but a told joke. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. Um, so let's see, Chuck.

Oh, what were we going to ask for? Um, is that to be, oh, what does chocolate rain mean? Yeah. We want to know what chocolate rain means. Also, if you're Taison Day and you listen to this, if you tell us what it means, that would hold a lot of water. That'd be great. That'd be pretty special.

You can tweet to us Taison Day or otherwise at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can also visit us on Facebook, right? Facebook.com slash W should know. Yes. And you can send us an email at stuffpodcast at discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry.

It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Marcel Swiley, that dude, and host of More to It, a new iHeart original podcast that takes a deep dive into the biggest stories in sports, entertainment, and culture. We start with headline news and journey into deeper conversations,

always finding those life lessons that are presented in every single story. Did you know white football is a great game of skill, but a greater game of will? You'll know when you listen to More to It on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you find your favorite shows.