How Coral Reefs Work

you sound fine. You know what it was tons of emergency used to wash down tons of vitamin B stress, which is like tons of just different vitamin b's. I ate solar ray um and scotch right single malt Scott just my secret ingredient um and lots of licene, A couple of licenes every time, like thousands and thousands of percentages of daily value. Like just it just makes the FDA cringe that I did much. That's what I do. I just load up on like everything like triple it. Yep,

there you go. Take that body, So I'm fine, good has it? Do same exact thing. And she doesn't like when I tell her to take vita minutes yeah, but that you know, you live together, you drink after one another, you suck face, just like I'll leave like an emergency. Here, they're like laying around. Oh did I leave that? That's already dissolved in the water even and it's going down. You go it, um chuck. Yes, did you know that I am a certified Scooby diver. I sure did. Oh,

yeah you did. I thought for sure. You're gonna be like, no, I didn't know. We've talked about this. Yeah, we've even Scooba dive together him. That's right. That was the first time I heard about it. I'm not the sharpest tack in the package. Um, but I say that to tell you that I was certified at a place called Isla Mueris off the coast of Cosumel, which just so happens to also be the home of the second largest barrier reef known to man. What's it called to humans? I

don't know. It's not called anything, because there's the great barrier reef and then there's all the other all the other ones. But this is the second largest, which is pretty big because there's a lot of barrier reefs, there's a lot of coral reefs, in the world. But after reading this article, I found that there is a lot about coral reefs that I didn't know. Fortunately, we had Jennifer Horton, who I'm sure you'll remember, worked at the site for a while. Yeah, she's a great writer. He's

great writer. We had. We had her to explain it to us, and like, I get coral reefs now. In fact, Jennifer has written many of the animal related podcasts that we've done. Um, Bison, I think maybe that probably wrote a lot of the animals animal migration. Yeah, lots of good ones. To miss you, Jennifer. I hope you're well. If you listen, I wonder who are they? Right, remember those guys I hated those two all right, coral reefs.

This was all new to me. The rainforests of the Sea of the Equatorial seeds home to about of all this species. Yeah, that's crazy. In fact, right, um, the Great Barrier reef has more more kinds of coral um on like one, just single little outcropping of it. Then you'll find in the entire tropical area of the Atlantic Ocean. Wow. Yeah, that's amazing. I don't know why I just said that. There the Aussies are gonna they're gonna be so stoked

with this podcast. Probably anytime they can like claim to something like that, they're just like, yeah, yeah, drink exactly. They're gonna go poor beer on the Great Barrier reef. Um. It's the coral reefs are very beneficial to humans in a number of ways. Economically, sure, because there's a lot of sea life and bus people fishing for shrimp and lobster and things like that, right in all sorts of weird ways which will get too later. Um. They also

protect the beach from erosion. They act as natural buffers from huge waves wave action. That's right. Yeah, well let's talk about that because you think of when you think of coral, you think of huge you know, great barrier reef. It's enormous. It's like, um, I think there's eighteen thousand miles of coral face face on a Great Barrier reef. Actually, an individual coral called a polyp um, is about three millimeters long. Yeah that's small, super tiny for those of

you in America. Uh, they are, Well, science got it wrong early on. We should go ahead and say that they um at one point fairly understandably thought that it might be plant life because it sort of looks like it. Yeah, like you know, like the coral fan. Yeah, that's a bunch of those little three millimeter corals building up into a fan. It looks like it looks like a plant. So they got it wrong. And they're actually not only are they real living little sea creatures, but they're carnivores, yeah,

which is you know, you would never think about that. No, but they're in the phylum Sinidaria nari. Why would they put the sea there? It's silent, man, you know, I appreciate a silent letter. I am smarter than my pronunciations would suggest. I started looking this up because I feel like an idiot. So they're in the philo of Nidaria, which means, um that they have stinging cells, barbed stinging cells, um called nematicist that's right. So um they use this

to catchure their prey. But the prey kind of has to come to them because they're also sessile, which means they're fixed to a certain spot. Seriously. Yeah, uh So it is understand enable also that they got it wrong because coral has a unique property. It is almost half plant because there's this algae in the cells Okay, go ahead. It's called zus anthony, you're right, very nice. Starts with

a Z and there's an X in there somewhere. And so what happens with there's a very mutually beneficial relationship between the algae and the polyp. They do a little exchange. The polyp itself will supply I'm sorry, the algae will undertake photosynthesis as algae tends to do. As algae will do, and it will say, hey, mr polyp, why don't you take all this stuff that i've I've made within your cell walls and and convert it to proteins and fats like amino acid and cars and in return, why don't

you give me a nice shelter. And you can also use some carbon and nitrates and both fates that I need to produce the photosynthesis to give you the proteins and fats that you need. So it's what you might call a symbiotic relationship. One's helping the other. And um, you can make the case that the coral is getting the better end of the deal because coral gets about

the energy produced through photosynthesis by the zoos anthely right. Um, But that also makes the coral more dependent on the zuos anthely, and the zoos anthely is a algae very little needs. It's not needy, it's not grabby. It's not gonna call you up every Friday night wondering what you're doing, Why you aren't here? Are you talking about me? No? No, jerry like that one. So um. The the symbiotic relationship between the zux anthely and the coral polyps also produce

coral reefs. Um. The polyps use some of that energy, some of that amino acid to create something called calcium carbonate. And that's the hard stuff. Right, that's limestone, my friend. Yeah. They produce limestone out of their butt hawks to create a cup, a little shelter for the polp to stay in. And since the algae stays in the polyp, it creates a shelter for both. Right. Yeah, And this limestone secretion can keep building and building and building because again, coral

stays in the same place there cecile. That's right. And um, as as long as they're still secreting limestone, the limestone structure they build will just keep getting bigger and bigger. Eventually that's just one three millimeter long coral yes, what you want to do is get thousands together strengthen numbers. Then you have a coral fan yeah, or a colony, and then those colonies will eventually meet up with other colonies uh, and say, hey, you guys interested in forming

a wreath because we're pretty indestructible. Although that's not quite true. We're more indestructible if we all hook up my brothers, like you said, strengthened numbers. And when they hook up, their limestone secretions can start to join together forming a reef. But they're also um connected by a thin piece of tissue. You got this one called a sin a sark. That's what I was gonna go for. I was just tired

of humiliating myself for this episode. I would have called it a kna sark, So I was a way off. I'm really glad that Celia can. It's a scene of sark um and that's how the the coral themselves are through limestone secretions and through this tissue called the senu sark. They're connected. But how would they grow? Well, there's two ways, man, they can reproduce. Yeah, a couple of ways. So right, it's sexually or a sexually I know which one I choose.

A sexual yeah, because you're cloning. That's pretty remarkable. Anyone can just get together and you know mate. Right. Sexually, it's like here's some sperm in another one's like here's some eggs, and then they get together and then it's just no, there's not much to it right A. Sexually, though, they actually do divide and produce identical clones of themselves,

and that's one way they can grow. And the other way is just to keep pooping out limestone and that will connect with each other and it just forms a big o yummy wreath. Yeah. Um. This is not a fast process though. Like if there's a couple of coral that are a few inches away, say three inches away, and they're like, I would like to hook my sineu sark up to your sin a sark and let's poop some limestone up together and get this reef going. That's beautiful.

It's gonna take them about a year to get together. Can you imagine how frustrating that is to be three inches away and be like, I'd really like to consummate this. I'll see you next June. I'm not convinced that coral can experience frustration. You don't think so, I don't. I think that's all the experience frustration either they or they're like really really patient. But that three inches of growth a year um has to take place under very specific conditions.

Remember we said that coral reefs are in equatorial waters. Um, not the coral themselves, but the zooxanthely are actually very fickle and picky little organisms, and they like specific conditions, and as long as the conditions are right for them, then the coral can grow because remember the coral are dependent on the zaxanthely to produce the calcium carbonate. That's right, Um, So what are the conditions chuckers? Well, you said equatorial

specifically thirty degrees north or south. If you have ever dived in the Bahamas and said, no, that's thirty two degrees north and they have plenty there. It's because the warm Gulf waters spitting out towards the Bahamas, which is one reason the Bahamas is such a fielder spot. I would imagine, yes, I've never been there. You no, my folks drove my car back from the Bahamas. Though once you had a car in the Bahamas, you're supposed to say you're kidding, You're kidding. I must be the Bahamas

or islands. It's a it's a dead milkman song. It's pitching camaro Oh that's from Batne Camara. Yeah, it's the beginning. Geez, I'm a dummy. That's alright, Chuck, I'm not hip. I'm not hip either, Chuck. Sunlight is another thing that they need because, and it makes sense if you're gonna undertake photo synthesis, you need sun. So if the water is rich in nutrients, believe it or not, that's not great

for them. No, because if you've ever looked through if you've ever been underwater and seen like a lot of plankton everywhere, it filters the sunlight, it's dappled, that's right. And also, as we learned later, um, the more nutrients there are, the more it will attract uh competition for those nutrients, and that's not good for me either. No, they don't like competitions. Basically, there's this little prima donnas

this example. They are the water, since you're near the equator, should be between seventy three point four and eighty four point two degrees fahrenheit, and I ultimately, if you put all these factors together ample like clear water, and between seventy three and eighty two or twenty three celsius and twenty nine celsius um, you can get up to about ten centimeters or three point nine inches of growth in

a year, twice as much on sunny days. Yeah, this is remarkable, but they're still not going to exceed that three point nine inches most likely it's not all the time. But what's cool then is if you think, well, that's crazy. You know there's some coral that. Um. I've seen coral reefs and they're big. And if it takes three point it takes a year to grow about three point nine inches,

say horizontally or vertically, maybe even die diagonally. If it was like a crazy year for them, Um, it must take thousands of years for coral reefs to build up. You would be right, my friend, Which is why scientists very affectionately consider coral reefs the old growth forests of the sea. Um. Because when you're looking at coral reef, you're looking at something thousands, if not tens of thousands of years old, which my question is how long does the coral live? So one thing I didn't get out

of this this article. Did you, oh, how each individual coral, each polypic, Well, I don't know. And are they are there their cups, the protective cups that they secrete. Um, are they inhabited by like successive generations, their clones? Maybe? My guess, and I'm guessing here, is that there are so many, hundreds of thousands and millions of these so tightly together that if one of the little guys dies, it ain't no big thing because he's surrounded by his

living brothers and sisters. But I don't know how long each one lives though this good question. Someone will know. Coral sand. If you look at the reef and you think, hey, coral is obviously the skeleton in here of this great reef. Uh, it's not just the coral. Coral sand, from what I understand, is little remnants, tiny pieces of coral that are either eaten and pooped out or just chipped away because of erosion and waves crashing and bad weather and stuff like that.

Is that right? Yeah? And um? But the cool thing is that it doesn't necessarily go anywhere. It can fill in gaps or holes and then, as luck would have it, there is a type of algae called coral line algae that goes and covers it up, and the structure of the algae acts is like an adhesive that glues the coral sand. So basically it's like this self sustaining repair process that's always going on the waves of road the coral into coral sand. Certain types of fish choose the

coral into coral sand. The saying goes in just drifts into like little pockets where it gets caught in the algae lays over it bam strong. Coral and coral sand is mind which is one of the threats to reefs because they use it for bricks and cement and roadville. So if you're mining the coral sand, there's not gonna be that natural spackle to fill in the holes, and thus the reef is jeopardized, which is just one of

many ways that research in jeopardy. Apparently one estimate is that um of the world's reefs could be gone in the next few decades. That's scary, very sad. I hope you're scared. I'm scared. Um. This is where I got a little confused. Was well, let's talk about the kinds of reefs, because I'm not confused about that There are basically three categories, depending where they form. The fringing reef it's most common it's directly from the shore and they

form a border projecting out to the sea. Yeah. It's kind of like, um, if you go to like marble Head in Ohio, there's a lighthouse. Yeah, um, I think it's limestone. It's like it just comes it off the land, right. I don't understand how that would be because it's in Lake Erie, which is not fresh water, but who knows. It's very similar to that. It's like just a rocky projection jutting out from the land. But it's a coral reef, right, or if it were a coral reef, that's a fringing

reef reef attached to land. Barrier reef, very similar to the fringing reef, but it has a gap of water between the land and in the reef. Correct. And then my favorite, of course, the atoll. It's a nice one, which is when at one point there was an island or volcano and it sunk, but you still have the circular wreath reef with I guess like a lagoon or something. Yeah, the reefs keeps building, but the mountain is now submerged. Pretty cool. Yeah, so you got your three types fringing

barrier and at all. Right, the zones is where I get a little confused. So all of these reefs um are kind of broken down into zones. Like remember the biospheleology. How could I forget? Okay, So you've got like the different zones. It's very similar to that. You've got the um back of the reef, and the back is the side closest to shore. I think that's what's a little confusing. But it's from the it's from the viewpoint of the

seed um. So you've got just imagine like a line and then a bump and then another line, and that's our reef right um on the shore side of the bump, that's the back of the reef. And this is actually where the most life is. Yeah. Um. Sometimes it's left high and dry by low tide, but most times it's just this little shallow area that's got tons of sunlight. So there's tons of plankton, which means there's tons of fish. There's a feeding frenzy, there's diurnal temperature changes. It's just

very pretty. It's what most people think of when they think about diving. On a coral reef. Right. Then that bump that's the ridge or the crest o um. That part the the crest is always exposed at low tide, and it may be exposed even at high tide sometimes depending on how big. But it's the tallest point. It also um serves as the wave break for that function of um reefs that protect the land. This is what the waves smack into, so it's gonna be more easily

eroded and probably have more of that natural speckle. Right. Yes, that was it coralline algae. Probably that was called cora line yeah or coraline whichever, however you want to say it. I'm not gonna stress you out, all right, um. And then there's the four reef that's the the ocean side, the seaside, right um. And in that part of the of the four we find the other side of the crest, the seaside of the crest. There's the buttress zone, which

is awesome if you ask me. And that's where you're gonna find if you're shark hunting, that's where you're gonna find like sharks and barracuda and sing things like that. Right, but does it buttress is that why they call the buttress n So the buttress, consider a buttress is just like a jutting projection of coral limestone, right, just jutting out, and then in between these projections are little channels holes

that can go all the way through. Right. I'm not quite sure what the physics are of it, but basically, once a wave goes through this coral reef and hits short and then gets drawn back out to see these channels, UM funnel these spent waves back out to sea, and by funneling them it gives them a more energy, so then they crash into oncoming waves, which reduces the oncoming waves velocity. So all this is is in an attempt naturally to combat the erosion of pounding waves. Yes, a yeah,

it's pretty cool UM. And it's also a really excellent UM shelter for little fish ees and things like that they want to go into the channel. So, Josh, we've talked about the Great Barrier reef uh here and there, but we should give it its proper do. As the largest living structure on the planet seen from outer space. Everyone loves to throw that back around. Yeah, you can see it from outer space, and that made me look

something up, chuck. Um, that's it's the largest living structure. Okay, So if if coral reef is an organism, do you know what the second largest living organism is? Um? My guests would be Louis Anderson. Is he still with us? I think so. I don't know why I picked a comedian that's been out of the loop for that long? Does a fat joke? Man? That was so many? No, it's a fungus in Oregon named amarially Ois stay years old. Takes up four square miles or ten square kilometers, single organism.

Where is it Oregon? It's in our friend Van Austrian's house. So it's a big mushroom. Yeah. Interesting, didn't that cross? That is cross? So? Uh, the great Berry Reef? We're talking fourteen hundred twenty nine miles or clicks and um, it is not a single reef. It's about three thousand I got so I'm not sure if that number had declined since this was written or not. But um, Jennifer points out, and like you pointed out earlier, the the full edge of the reef is about um eighteen and

a half thousand miles. So she says, if anyone's ever told you they've dived the entire Great Berry Reef. They're dirty liars, Yes, she said, they're lying because there's no way you couldn't do it in a lifetime. She said. I wonder if somebody told her that, and she inserted it in the article. I don't know. It's definitely an accusation due it is. It's a weird sense. It's one

of the seven natural Wonders of the world. More than four hundred coral species, two thousand fish species, four thousand mollusks, and six of the seven sea turtle species. All right there for the for the googling, nice and the um the like you said, the Australians are gonna be proud of this and they should be. Back in ninety five, apparently it was in some jeopardy and the Australians moved to protect it as a National Marine Park UM and

that basically ensured its survival. It's still, you know, kind of in rough shape here there is, as I understand. But UM six years after that, so let's see, that's one it became a World Heritage Site UM and one percent of the eighteen and a half thousand square miles or eighteen and a half thousand linear miles UM are open to the public except for that one percent to just one percent is that ated to research only? Just research, just pretty cool, not very much. They need bona fide

scientists to dive that part. The rest of it, Jennifer points out, is divided into national park zones, which is where you can go, recreate and learn some things. And then the rest of it is general use, which means commercial fishing, which I guess there's no better time to get into the threats than right now. Yes, Um, there are some coral reefs and trouble UM the Great Barrier reef.

Like I said, it's pretty well protected. But say if you look at some of the reefs in the Philippines have been destroyed and five percent, just five percent, are in good condition on these days, UM, ten percent of the world's reefs are now beyond recovery, not just because of human causes, because of the natural causes as well. Because everything exists on a life cycle here on Earth, we humans just tend to accelerate it. UM may die

in the next ten is pointy years. So what are Some of the natural threats are obviously harsh weather like hurricanes, um el Nino a weird weather pattern. It's going to increase temperatures, mess with a salinity, a lot more rainfall. So an El Nino season could can do some serious damage. Bleaching coral bleaching. When they experience as little as like one degree rise in temperature, the algae will be ejected basically from the coral. The algae takes off, oh it leaves. Yeah,

it's like see you in hell, coral. There's a fine line between injection and and self leaving. The chicken and egg thing, maybe you think so. The algae gets the heck out of dodge, turns the coral white. And if you google pictures, you can see a lovely coral with like white patches here and there. That's the parts where

it's bleached out and go it. If if this keeps up long enough, the coral dies because again coral has a symbiotic relationship where it's dependent on this is Anthony's algae, and if this is Anthony's leaves, then the coral dies very sad um. And like you said, it was just a as much as a one degree temperature increase, right, not much. There's also predators, like there's things that eat um. The coral, the polyps themselves, crabs, worms, snails, barnacles, parrot fish.

Those are really pretty I can't do anything about that, pal that's nature at work. But there are things we can do, such as not using dynamite when we fish on coral reefs. It's a pretty good start. There's forty countries in the world. Over forty countries in the world that allow blast fishing, people using explosives that they drop onto the reef to stun the fish so they can just swoop them up with the net and um basically go fall like a slack jawed yokel wearing nothing but

overalls while they just bring their nets in. They just threw dynamite in the water to stunt fish. Well, the dynamite also has a deletrious impact on the reef structure as well. You're gonna go to the grave with that one, aren't you. I saw on Facebook you you put the apostrophe and you all after the ax it up. You know what's weird is the iPhone corrects it incorrectly. Oh really, yeah, Well they don't know, y'all. They're from California. I've always

done why apostrophe A L L? You all y'all know. See someone pointed out to me on email that it was, in fact, why a apostrophe LLL? No, it's you all, so I've been doing it right the whole time. No, you're doing it why a apostrophe LLL? Because someone told me to change it. You can't just listen to any know who. Email fans have a deleterious effect on me. Deletrious Do you want to look it up right now?

Let's talk about blast fishing again, our cyanide fishing, which is the ugly step sister of blast fishing, which is dumping cyanide onto reefs to kill fish. Again, you have to wear nothing but overalls, no shooting, no service. Over fishing period has got a negative effect obviously, Yeah, because you're basically affecting the food chain. You're like, oh, we like these guys because they're tasty and I'm sure they won't be missed. Whenever you take any key species out

of a h an ecosystem, you're in trouble. No good. Um. There's also a runoff as a big one because um, remember they like clear light, the algae do and uh or clear water and when they're when the water is not clear, they shrivel up because they need sunlight for photosynthesis. Yeah,

the pollutants went also. Um, I thought it was gonna be pollutants because just pollutants are bad, which they are, but really the reason is polluting sin sewage actually increase the nutrients so that attracts harmful algae and uh competition and that's no good. Right, And then we already talked about the mining. So what can we do, chuck, um, we We've got a few things we can do. You can adopt a reef. You can, tons of organizations will

let you do that. In fact, if you want to go to adopt dot nature, dot org slash coral reef, you can adopt a reef in the Bahamas, Dominican Republic uh poooo and Popula New Guinea nice, just like that. Yeah, you can funnel money to an organization that will take care of that reef exactly. Um. And that's just one. I think you can do it through all kinds of places. And then you say that you can get your congress

person to lobby for stricter oversight of phishing methods. Um. You can boycott products from countries that allow ast fishing or cyanide fishing really put the squeeze on the common in the other country you can kim go to. You cannot chip off bits of the coral when you scooba dive because it's just so pretty that you want to take it home. Yeah, that's a big one. Give it to your daughter. Yeah, not good. There's a lot of stuff you can do that you probably should do if

you want to save the coral reefs. That's right, I have nothing else. Why would you save them? Do you say, if you don't care about snorkeling or anything like that, Well, my friend, if you care about the economy, you will want to save corel res because they are valuable. The the total value of the asset that is the reefs,

the reef systems in Florida. In Florida alone, just Florida eight point five billion dollars when you take into account not just tourism, which is a big part of it, but also the estimated hundreds and seventies seven thousand jobs that is all the industries surrounding it UH create. That's just Florida worldwide, just from tourism and recreation, just tourism recreation that reefs bring in nine point six billion dollars annually. So if you like money, then you should support core reefs.

Twelve of Bolivia's g d P is created by reefs. Yeah. So, um, if you don't have a heart, but money makes you liy, then that should get you going on saving coral reefs as well. That's right. So if you want to learn more about core reefs, including um seeing a diagram of where the four and the back of the reef is, you can type in coral reefs in the search part housetuffworks dot com. It'll bring up this great article by Jennifer Horton. Um. And since I said Jennifer Horton, it's

time now for listener, ma'am. Every time the name Jennifer Horton is uttered on the planet, somebody will read a listener mail somewhere. Quick announcement first, Josh, okay, you know what you're gonna say. That's right. We want to went out to our south By Southwest action this year. We've been invited back somehow. I didn't think that's why it was. I thought it was about the party were coming up. Oh no, no, no, that's been UM. We are going to be podcasting live at south By South West. Jeez,

it's a tough one. It's a mouth for south By Southwest in Austin, Texas on Sunday, March the eleven, from three thirty pm. We don't know the location yet, but we will get that out soon. It's funny. If you're a badge holder, we would love to have you come down and here's podcast live. If you're not a badge holder, take keed Monday March twelve, we're gonna be throwing a party. Did you write down the dates? I've noticed you've been getting him right? Nice? Get my little calendar out. Yeah,

we are going to throw a party. We can't really reveal the details yet, but if you're in Austin, Texas on March eleventh and twelve, we'll be in town and there will be something for everybody, badge holder or nonlike. Yes, right, yep, so stay tuned for details. Got it on Facebook and Twitter and on the podcast. When we get everything firmed up, we'll let you know, all right, listener mail, Okay, all right, I'm gonna call this uh good cause from a good person. Um.

Hello s Y s K team. I want to take a minute and thank you for helping me in a really big way. I've been working alone as a volunteer in Malawi, south of Tanzania Mallowe mallowe uh since September of two thousand nine, and I happily passed the time listening to your show during my super long, super Awesome minibus rides. I am building a library and a small village, and a big part of my library is an audio video collection that I've been putting together for the past

few years. Many of the people in the village are illiterate, so a library full of books just wouldn't do them any good. So I started to think of ways I could include everyone in a learning activity. My answer was, UH, to incorporate documentaries and podcast on a variety of subjects. So basically, we will choose the topic for the week and use the podcasts as a way of getting people interested, then direct them to read articles and books on the topic,

or watch documentaries and have some group discussions. Pretty cool, um. I really believe in the beauty of being inquisitive and interested in life, and videos and podcasts really help immerse people in new subjects. This is the first library of its kind in the country. Wow, and I'm really hopeful that it helps to open the world up to people who are so often cut off. Fingers crossed. And that is from Diane Bowls, the founder of the Future found. And if you want to check out Diane's awesome work

she's doing, you can go to the future found dot org. Excellent, Chuck, very cool. It's Diane Diane in Malawi. Yeah, building building the only library of its kind of Um, thank you very much Diane for doing that. Um. What do you want to hear? You want to hear of other people making a difference in the world. We always love that. Yeah, you're a set for that kind of thing, or some good harrowing scuba diving stories one or the other. Okay, so um, that's a great one. Chuck, either doing good

in world or not to winking worksoever. Um. That could be directed to Chuck and I via Twitter at s hye sk podcast. That's our Twitter handle on Facebook dot com. If you go to stuff you should know his page. That's that um, and you can also email us directly. We both get emails sent to the address Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works

dot com to learn more about the podcast. Click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you