Selects: How Jet Lag Works

anyone that travels over long distances. We've all probably felt it at one point or another, and this is a great explainer on exactly how it works and how you can best combat it. So enjoy, happy flying. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as Charles. To you, Chuck Bryant, who just flew in to be here. Yeah, I was, I was on the concord. I was just in Paris. Dude, dude, I've

seen a concord. Oh yeah yeah. The Air and Space Museum m not the one in downtown DC, yeah, but the one out by Dullest Airport. At the new museum. Oh my god, it's awesome. I wanted on board so bad. But it's like you're standing right next to and underneath a concord. It's cool. They also have like Discovery Space Shuttle Discovery, You're standing right next to that. It's a really neat museum. Why did they end up grounding the concord?

Was it not cost efficient? It was? It wasn't and like any time there was any kind of problem, like everyone died really oh my god. Yeah. But also the US outlaw and supersonic air travel, so like you couldn't fly across the interior of the continent, okay, um, which cut out like a lot of revenue source. Yeah. So basically it was just um and I don't think Air France or British Airways ever even broke even in all

those years on Concord flights. Yeah. But and then in two thousand and three there was that most recent crash, that last crash, and after that that was it for the Concord. Yeah. I think, Um, if I'm not mistaken, my friend Justin who you know, his mom when they had like some final flights of the Concord, flight of the Concord Yeah, she went on one of those. Yeah, as like just to do it. I think I'd be wrong with that, but I seem to remember that from my past. You could go from London to New York

in five hours? What is usually like eight? Yeah, eight or nine or something. Yeah. And do you remember when Phil Collins played Band Aid, he played a show in London, they got on the concord flute to New York and then played a show there. Yeah, like in the same night. Yeah, that was pretty cool. That was it live a Yeah, but you know what's the difference. The one thing I knew was that it wasn't far made Phil Collins. Oh

did he play Farmade? I don't think so. That was more Willie Willie and Mellencamp and Neil Young and all those cats. Yeah. So, um, Phil Collins flying back and forth between London and New York to deliver his concert. So thank god that happened. I love Phil Collins, I think though, really, Oh yeah, dude, that wouldn't have been possible had it not been for something that we'd like

to call the jet age. Yes. Starting around the late fifties, the jet became the preferred motive travel, which, interestingly a ticket on a jet was actually less than a ticket on like a propeller piston engine plane. Oh, relate first, Yeah, interesting, isn't that interesting? Yeah, But in the late fifties you had McDonnell, Douglas and Boeing really kind of duking it out to create the jet to get people very quickly

from one part of the country to another. Yeah, and it opened up commercial air travel and all of a sudden, you didn't have to be the richest person in the world to get from you know, New York to la you know, without having to drive or taking forever to get there a train, prop plane, whatever. Yeah, and admit a jet lag essentially. Well, there you go, Thanks for

finishing my intro for me. Well, we've only been around, we've been leaping time zones for less than a hundred years, so there are some beliefs that eventually we may evolve out of jet lag. Yeah, but for now, we haven't been doing it long enough. Now, it's been like fifty sixty years. Yeah, our bodies to even know what the heck is going on, right, And that's pretty much what jet lag is. Our body does not know what's going on. Yeah,

there's another term for jet lag. It's called desynchronosis. That's a great word for it. Yeah, your body has a biological clock, and when you travel from one time zone to another in fairly short order, your body gets out of sync with its environment, and all of a sudden, all cues that uses to regulate itself and all sorts of things that your body does it gets out of sink. And what happens when you get out of sink, Well, there's a lot of stuff that happens, Chuck, I'm glad

you asked that. You can have cognitive problems, problems thinking and problem solving and just general mental problems short term of course and temporary, but still you're not thinking quite right. Health problems. There is a study in two thousand and six from the University of Virginia that found out that lab rats who were given jet lag, who were exposed to simulated jet lag, yeah, which is basically I think a DC to Paris flight once a week for I

guess most of their lives. Probably older ones died much more quickly than younger ones. Yes, so if you're old, which I've noticed that my jet lag has gotten worse as i've aged. Yeah, for sure, I didn't used to get jetlagged at all. Yeah, I didn't know what the big problem was, and now it's like one of the worst things that can ever happen to you. Yeah. Well yeah, fatigue, alertness, irritability, disorientation, depression, gas rontestinal illnesses. Yeah, it can really mess you up.

That comes from flying too. Get air gas. It just the change in pressure like creates really gas. It's not like methane or anything. It's just like gas bubble in your guts. So you've like fart a lot on planes or after you got you can as a result. Sure, and you know what you should do. People. By the way, I'm gonna insert some flying etiquette here in there. Are you gonna get up and go to the bathroom and fart? Don't fart in your seat? Why are you looking at me? Well,

because you're a cross room me. Okay, now, I just you know me and flying Now it's just so annoying to me because it's like a eighteenth century, you know, bus station these days when you were flying he laughing. Everybody's wearing like pajamas and like teenage girls with their boots. Oh my gosh, it's stressed appropriately. You don't even have to dress up. But it's like, like, I don't want to see what you look like in your living room,

you know. I know, Well, you take your shoes off, which is something I'm There's nothing wrong with that because my feet do not smell. If my feet smelled in my shoes smelled, I wouldn't take them off. I'm very,

very aware of that kind of thing. But it's funny that you bring that up because the other night I watched Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, which is that movie really holds up, and John Candy takes his shoes off and it takes the socks off, and I thought, well, I don't take my socks off, right, But I thought of you because I know that you think that's a terrible thing to do. Yeah, I just think he should remain

fully clothed when you're out in public like that. I'm cool with taking the shoes off, as long as the socks stay on and your feet don't stay But okay, so you're on a plane, You're you've got all these symptoms awaiting you, and if you are part of the ninety four percent of Americans, you are going to get jet lag. Yeah, I wonder what's going on with a six percent. They're probably like younger people who don't know what they're talking about. You think, yes, interesting because it's biological.

I just I bet you there's something to that six percent. Besides, you're five years old, you think. I doubt if they interviewed a lot of five year olds about jet lack for the study, well not five, but I mean, like, I think I was American ager. I was like, what's everyone's problem with jet Like I don't understand what they're talking about. Yeah. So, And I specifically remember being interviewed in nineteen ninety eight to ask if I got jetlag, and I remember going like, no, no, but it is

a problem. It's unpleasant for some people. But if you're in the military, or if you're some huge, big shot CEO, they worry that, you know, could impair you as a pilot or as a soldier, or as a big thinker and the head of a company or deal closer. Yeah, you don't want some some jet lags ceo lady going in there and not making good decisions and making a bad deal. Yeah, how can you be a game changer if you don't have your a game on. That's got to be the motto of some company. It probably is.

I thought I just made it up knowing the plug somebody like Price Fister or something. And then what was the other study? In two thousand and ten the Universe at cal they did a study of hamsters. Yeah, and it said that um on the health tip that the the lab rats created new neurons at about half the rate of rats who did not fly. So yeah, that's not good. Now your brain is literally not functioning as

well as it should. It's not growing. Nope. Um, And I said about the dying from that study about rats dying from being exposed to jet lag, Yeah, the older ones and um, they've also found that in humans you can have a harder menstruation if you're a lady, and you can develop heart disease and diabetes more readily. Basically, your entire body is just totally thrown out of whack. You're hungrier at weird times. Sure, you're just out of it. You're you just don't feel good, stressed out, you have

a lot of stress hormones going. So what's going on, Chuck? What is jet lag? Jet lag? Well, we need to talk about the biological clock that we all have. It's basically the article here describes it of groupings of interacting molecules and cells throughout the body. That's a good way to say it. Everything's working together. They tell our glands, Hey, release these hormones at this time of day to make you sleepy, melatonin, which we'll get to in more detail.

Maybe adjust your body temperature. It's a couple hours where you're gonna wake up, so let's make you really hot for some reason. And the body is all in tuned with each other, all these things firing like a master timepiece. Who wrote this anyway? This was that was a pretty good Patrick Tiger. He's done some good stuff. Yeah, it is a master timepiece. And there are twenty thousand nerve cells called the super a chiasmatic nucleus we'll called the SCN.

It's at the front of the brain, right near the optic nerve, and that is what keeps your circadian rhythm in your sleep and waking cycles going. Yeah, like clockwork. That's it. That's the biological clock the sea. Yep, it's pretty neat um And the fact that it's located by the optic nerve is kind of telling. Yeah, because one of the ways that it sets itself it actually has a it's on a set cycle twenty four point six five hour cycle. Yeah, and it's since it's off a

little bit, um, it uses cues to reset itself. And one of the big cues it uses is natural light. Yeah. Some people think that it's the light, that the brain is super photosensitive, that light really is the key to everything there. Well, yeah, like the pineal gland apparently, even though it's buried inside the brain, is very light responsive. And the pineal gland is one of the things that makes or it makes melatonin, which has to do with

sleep cycles. Melatonin is the good sleepy time stuff. So, um, this whole, this whole rhythm, that twenty four points sixty five hour cycle is called your circadian rhythm, circadian rhythm, right, And when it's time to sleep, when it's about the time that you went to sleep the night before and it's dark out, your brain's melatonin production increases. And also you've been building up in your head all day this stuff called a DNA sign right, and that they recently

found has been linked to being sleepy. What's called sleep pressure. You know, when you try to stay up and you're just getting sleepier and sleeper it's harder and harder to resist. That experience is called sleep pressure, and they think that it's a DNA sign a response for that, and it accumulates in the brain until finally about the time that you should be falling asleep, the sleep pressure is just

too much to overcome and you fall asleep. Yeah. My, uh, Emily's family, my Ohio family has a lot of sleep pressure. We call it the yearly gas leak over the holidays. That's funny, Emily. I'll look up at like seven forty five, We'll be watching TV and like everybody's asleep after like a big turkey dinner or something like that. Well, after drinking all day and eating, oh yeah, stuff like that. Yeah, and it's all warm and toasty, and so I get it,

but it's still kind of funny. Well, it's called the gas leak, and you just made me feel so cozy in that description. It is in a very cozy household. Um, so you get the melatonin production increased, you got a DNA sign built up, and you reach that sleep pressure threshold and all this stuff is kind of going on this general pattern that's a tune to you in your rhythms. Yeah, you know, Are you a night owl? Do you like to get up early? Do you like to sleep in late?

Like this is your own circadian rhythm. Yeah, and if you mess any of that up without flying, you're going to be thrown out of sorts. If you're a night owl and all of a sudden you get a job or you gotta get up super early, it's gonna suck for a little while until your body adjusts. It is gonna suck for a little while. Um, And it takes

a while for the body to adjust. But it also we've never really, except for the last sixty years, we've never really had the capability of exposing the body to a sudden shock of just falling out of rhythm like that, Like I'm flying to Australia right exactly. Yeah, where there's like a twelve or thirteen hour difference. Man, I've never I've done the europe thing, but I've never experienced yet like to that degree. I imagine that it would take

me quite a while to adjust. It does, and it sucks because it takes away a percentage of your vacation almost. It definitely does. When you know, when you me and I went to Japan, Yeah, got there out of bed. We flew there, we flew west to east, No, east to west, because we flew up and over Canada and down Russia, which is easier can it was supposedly, but even still, like when we got there, it was like three in the morning and we're just like wide away. Yeah,

and that took a very little while to adjust. But when we flew west to east on the way back get killed. It took two solid weeks of being almost like clinically out of our minds. Wow, before we got back on our sleep. For that, actually, you were pretty whacky, do you remember. Oh, yeah, there was a period where like the first four days when we got up, we would we would both wake up in the middle of

the night, wouldn't even talk. We'd just get up and go out to the car and drive to crystals and like eat some crystals and go back home and go to bed. Yeah, and like we'd never done that before and haven't done it since. But like we just did it for like four nights in a row because of jet like, so we were doing stuff like that all the time. That's weird. But yeah, going from west to east is the worst, and especially if it's like that was a thirteen hour time difference. Yeah, what do they

call that? It's a phase delay going east to west in a phase advance going west to east right. And it's kind of like you can look at it like if you're if your clock, if you're looking at a clock and bedtime is a set time. In phase delay, you're just taking that hour hand and moving it back, so you're just putting off your bedtime a little longer. Yeah. With phase advance, you're moving that hour hand closer suddenly to your bedtime, even though your body is not ready

to sleep. It's bedtime now. Wow. Wow. Well, it's just interesting that the body under it, you know, I mean, it makes sense. I guess what I find interesting is that we've figured out a way to technologically and artificially subject the body to like this kind of shock, and that it responds the way that it does. Yeah, you know that. It's it starts like overproducing this hormone or under producing that hormone and you go crazy. Well yeah, and since you mentioned it, that's one of the things

that happened. It really it literally disrupts biological functions, releases stress hormones, drives up your blood pressure, sends inflammation stimulating chemical markers through your arteries. It's gonna mess up your appetite, like you said, because you're used to eating at regular times, and that's why you were eating crystal because it was that was probably a dinner time in Japan, I guess. Yeah.

But haven't you ever noticed, like when you get up early, like say you have an early flight or something like, you can get up at a normal time, say you normally get up at eight, Yeah, you're maybe you're a little hungry or whatever, but you could skip breakfast. It's not a big deal. But if you're up and like moving around and at six or something like that, Yeah, for some reason, you're just starving. Like hasn't that ever happened to you? Yeah, I'm usually not super hungry in

the morning, regardless of what time I wake up. If I'm up really early, I am ravenous for some reason. And I'll also find and I've always wonder what this was, that I'm not as hungry if I don't eat anything, but if I have like the banana, then it just makes me super hungry, right, Yeah, yeah, Or have you noticed if you have like red meat the night before whenever you get up the next day. You're just ravenous too. Really, yeah,

that happens to me. Interesting. I don't need a lot of red meat anymore, but I'll oh you don't, no, I mean just because Emily doesn't. So, but yeah, I'll still have my steak every now and then. What are you eating these days? I mean, same thing I've always been eaten since I've been with Emily, which is a lot of chicken and turkey and fish. What kind of fish? Uh? It depends. I'll make like tilapia tacos or grilled salmon or nice like uh, what's the more flaky? Like not

my heat, but I'll eat my he to the flounder. Yeah. Yeah, I'll just go to the the farmer's market and what looks what looks good and fresh? You know they just took mackerel off the Safe to Eat or or Fine to Eat environmentally list? Oh really, yeah, I didn't know it was on that. Yeah. Tuna, of course, love tuna, oh man, But you shouldn't eat a ton of tuna either. I think the mercury. Oh is that right? Yeah, I eat a lot of raw tuna. Yeah that they say that,

you know. Jeremy Piven supposedly had some sort of mercury poisoning for eating too much sushi, which is why he knew. Yeah, he had to bag out of some movie or show because of it. But then I think later on they said, no, I think he was using as an excuse and it wasn't verified that he had mercury poisoning. That's a lot like the twinkie defense. It meant yet Jeremy Piven had the tuna defense. But that's why they did say, if

you're pregnant, you shouldn't need a lot of things. Oh yeah, sushi, Yeah, yeah, for sure. Man, that was a sidetrack. Yeah, I think I'm hungry, is what the deal? All right? So why is it so difficult to overcome Josh? Well, like we said, um, your body's your buddy's circadian rhythm is not exactly twenty four hours, twenty four point six five hours, and so every day you're ready for sleep a little later and a little later and a little later. And that's why

Ellie Patrick Kiger thinks you are. It's easier to adjust going from east to west because that means you're gonna have to stay up later to hit your normal bedtime. Anyway, and since we're already kind of doing that. It's not that big of a deal. And it's not just him. I think that's proven. Like NASA says the same thing, well, NASA and Patrick Kiger. Another reason is is not just

light body temperature we said fluctuates. It's minimum temperature. Oh I'm sorry, I thought it was maximum three hours before you get up. It's minimum temperature. Yeah, all right. I thought you like got really hot, like right before you woke up. You might, but Team in is typically three hours before you normally awake, okay. And they found that if you're if you have to wake up like during Team in, what your body is normally used to being at Team in, right, that's when your jet legs the

absolute worst. And I think it's because that's a key that your body, your whole body has, is like Okay, we're still in deep sleep and we're going to be in a while, and then all of a sudden it's like, oh I have to wake up and go to this meeting. The body's not it's it's whacked out of its normal process of waking. I wonder if that sometimes if I get up super early, I have a harder time warming up through the day. I wonder if that has it

makes a difference. I would bet it does. Like if you're used to waking up at a certain body temperature, Yeah, you know it takes care that no matter what, every single time, no matter why you're cold or how cold you are, go spend fifteen minutes in a sauna, yeah, and you will be right as rain. Yeah, it's just a miracle wood box. Yeah. I do that with the hot shower with the steam. Sometimes it doesn't take with

me really Yeah. Sometimes like I'll still get out of the shower and like I'm chilled to the core still. How you sit in there, Like I will stay in there for a while and like really try to heat up, and like most of the time, like it will get my temperature like up. Yeah. Some with a sauna, it's like resetting it back to your normal setting every time you're kind of cold. Though for a man, like you're often chili when I'm not. And I know I'm super hot. You are very hot, but I think you're also a

little cold. Put it's put us together and we make a very well adjusted exactly human body temperature wise, very middle. Um. So ask anyone what their remedy is for jet lag and you'll get ten different answers. Ask tender for people, you get ten different answers. That's what you say. Um, ask Bruce Willis what is he going to say? Make fist fits toes? Make fist with your toes. It's always been one of my favorite things, and I've tried it and it's silly. Of course it doesn't work, but I

just do it now because it wasn't die Hard. Yeah, Argyle told him to do that. No, no no, no, it was a guy on the plane. I thought it was Argyle the driver. It was. It was on the plane as ever flying in and of course in die Hard, it was just to set up to get him without shoes and socks on. Yeah, because I played a part in the movie. That's a good movie. She's Day Finster. Yeah. Um. But like I said, some people use herbal remedies. Some people take melatonin, which is not FDA proof. But you

can take melatonin and uthotic melotonin. We should say it saysn't this article it tells you how much it taken win and we'll tell you too, but we should also add a disclaimer. Melatonin has interactions with drugs like diabetes drugs, blood thinners, birth control pills. You may want to check out what melatonin might do with your medication before you

take it. You definitely should. Yeah, some people just say, you know what, I'm gonna take a red eye and I'm gonna take some valume and drink some Scotch and just knock myself out for the whole flight and that'll do the trick. Yeah, that works if you want to die, Yeah, explain well, there was a thirty six year old woman who recently died of a stroke because and she was otherwise healthy apparently, Yeah, but she passed out on a

seven hour flight or went to sleep or whatever. But she slept for seven hours on a flight and developed thrombosis, which is a blood clot and apparently it went from probably her leg to her brain. Yeah. And again when we went to Japan, I think it was Japan Airlines, they make you get up. Yeah, they're like, okay, it's like it's big, it's play stretching time. Yeah, and they show you how to do it, like sitting down at your seat, but they're also like, why don't you get

up to walk around? So wow, Yeah, you kind of have to because you can develop a fatal blood clot just from sitting on a plane because of the change in pressure and just sitting for that long. Yeah, you're not supposed to sleep in a sitting position, right. The body is meant to be horizontal and prone, right, But that's just for rich people on flack. Oh up in first class now where they have the sleepers, Yeah, that's

they're so obnoxious. They should put first class in the back so you don't have to walk through that scene. I know. The funniest is when they have like the gauzy curtains separating first class coach and you can it's like, I see that you're having a salad. I can see your salad. That hotel looks nice. Give me some of

that salad. So there are all kinds of home remedies in Little Wives tales of what you can do, right, But if you're an expert, like if you're a NASA or if you are Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, you have some real advice like gradually adjusting your circadian rhythm actually using a lightbox, which is a lot of effort, but I bet it works. It does. It also works for seasonal effective disorder. Sure, So there's actually I came across the paper and all tweeted out and posted on

Facebook or something, blog about it. We'll do something with it. But because I couldn't get I couldn't get it enough in time to really speak about it. But there's there's this guy who came up with a paper that's basically like a computational method for offsetting jet leg and figuring out how to adjust your schedule accordingly. Is it like

this in the article? Yeah, that's the impression that I have, but it's like really detailed, but basically Chicago's Russia University Medical Center researchers say, what you want to do is, if you're going from west to east, which is the devil one right phase advance, you want to start going

to bed an hour earlier every day. Yeah, and like several days, maybe like five days before your trip, you want to start going to bed an hour earlier, and not just an hour earlier across the board, but earlier and earlier and earlier. To wear right before your trip, you're going to bed about five hours earlier. And if you're going to take melatonin and you've done all your research, you want to take half a half a milligram of

melatonin four and a half hours before bedtime. Yeah, and then so you want to progressively push that time earlier and earlier in the day as you're going to bed earlier and earlier at night. And then when you wake up, blast yourself with the lightbox. Yeah. Oh well east to west. That was west to east. Okay, yeah, east to west. You want to not blast yourself with light. You want to like wear sunglasses in the morning and avoid light

in the morning. But they say, use a light box at your normal bedtime and stay up later, right, which makes sense. It sounds pretty torture, it does. There's a New York Times article too, called a Battle Plan for jet lag, and they've done a study with Major League Baseball actually because they travel a lot. And they said that over two year span, teams that went eastward gave up an average of one extra run per game. Huh.

That interesting. Yeah, But they say, which is the old I guess it's not a wives tale if NASA is confirming it. They say it takes about one day per light per time zone to get back into that rhythm in general, and they say the same thing, you got to re to regulate your exposure to light. So when you get in that hotel room, if you're traveling east, you got to expose yourself to light early an advance

at clock. If you're traveling west, expose yourself to light at dusk and in the early part of the evening and delay that clock. And they'd say, like, you know, close the curtains, put a towel over your clock radio, like get it as dark as possible. Don't look at any computer screens and laptops. They say you shouldn't eat like a big meal or a spicy food like the first day you get there. Don't like dive right into that vacation because that can mess you up as well.

Gastro intestinaly speaking and what else. Well, the CDC says they don't have any suggestions other than like eat a balanced diet and make sure you get some exercise jerks. And it's like, of course you're gonna say that, CDC. Do you have any other suggestions, and they say, yes, wear loose clothing on the flight, avoid alcohol and caffeine well. And afterward they say that first day on vacation, you shouldn't be hit in the alcohol right either, Yeah, because

that'll just mess up your sleep period. Yeah, and then have you heard of this thing called the Valki no vl k team of scientists in Finland invented this thing, and it because their belief is that the brain is it's all about photosensitivity, and so they actually it's sort of like an iPod, but instead of the ear plugs, it emits light through your ear canal directly to the brain,

and they said it works. They tested three hundred and fifty subjects over four years and found that there is definitely brain activity when the little Valki is on, and that nine out of ten subjects felt reduction and stress, seasonal depression and anxiety. And so they're using it for winter blues and PMS and jetlag and migraines, all sorts of stuff. Fantastic. Yeah, I don't know how much of it is, Zoe. I'm curious if it is the price of an iPod or just the size of an iPod.

That's a good question. Yeah, I'd try it though I get pretty bad jetlag. That's like when we go to do events now, I try to fly out a day or really just to sort of adjust. Yeah, but um, I can do east coast, West coast. It doesn't hit me that bad. Um, Yeah, it's more like international that gets me. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't had it very bad. Like when we went to the TCA's it didn't. I didn't seem out of sorts there or back. I get a little lot of sorts, do you. Yeah, but not

super bad. I'm glad, Chuck, Yeah, you got anything else? I got nothing else? Okay, that was jet lag everybody. Yeah, and uh, that kind of goes in with our sleeping sweep. We've done a bunch of those, like how much sleep do you really need? Um? What was the one about the sleep aid? Remember the sleep Baby where like you could stay up for forty eight hours without any sleep? Yeah? I don't remember the title of that one. Who wants to do that? I love my sleep? That was a

good episode though. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of people wish that you didn't have to sleep. I would imagine not me. I'm with you. I like to sleep too. If you want to hear any of those, you can go to our website Stuff you Should Know dot com and click on the podcast page and to start searching, go to town. You're gonna find some cool stuff. And if you want to read this article, how jetlag works. Go to HowStuffWorks dot com and in the searchbar type jet leg and

it will bring up the spot by an article. And I said, searchbar, so it's time for listening to me, Josh. I called this a very sweet email from Wendy, and I will be reading some of it and summarizing some of it because it's super long. She starts out, congratulations on the launch of your TV show. Thank you. I've been reading online chatter and I hope it's going comfortably for you behind the scenes, because you hear these reactions.

It's a bummer when those weird people on the block who mow the lawn naked or pride themselves on not being tricked into attending college. I think that they are qualified critics. Hopefully you're all too experienced by now to do more than laugh at the losers and just keep doing what you enjoy. So I told her that was very nice, and it came in a good time because people could be mean. Man, people have been kind of mean, but hey, we have pretty thick skin. We've been doing

this for years. We got the armor on. So anyway, that was very nice Wendy, and then she just wants she's been meaning to write in for several years to thank us. She started listening after she moved from Seattle to Burbank in two thousand and eight, and it was a pretty depressing time for her. She said, stay at home mom, and we really got her through that time. A year later, she moved to Utah. She kept downloading

because Chuck was on board. It's nice, yeah, And it was like having my brothers around for an hour or so every day. It was really nice. She said. It was clear by that point, even if we didn't know each other, that you guys would probably be friends of mine if we knew each other, and you would not only appreciate the wild cultural shift from Hollywood in Salt Lake City, but also be more fascinated than turned off by my strange family connections. And she didn't explain what

that met. Very mysterious. Then she moved from Youthaw to Massachusetts and she was eight months pregnant and we really helped her through that, and so she was super appreciative of that. And then she says, this a long time ago, you had a many side conversation about what romance meant and seemed to conclude that it was guys who had a manly friend crush on another guy that they knew and they'd really enjoy hanging out with. I don't think we invented that. No, No, that's commonly what the romance

is known as. I may be a woman, but I do have a major friend crush on you. Guys. You filled in for the awesome friends and family that I've missed intelligently shooting the breeze for the last while, almost five years now. That is really nice. Yeah, so she's moving around and we've we've helped her out as substituting for her. Smart friends, keep podcasting, take care of yourselves, you know that. In the zombiepo collipse, I definitely have

your backs. By the way, my weapon of choice would be an iron age Scandinavian sacks in one hand, a long handled axe in the other, and a shotgun I could carry across my back. So, Wendy, you are well armed a lady, and you'll be right by our sides. Thanks for that, Wendy. Yeah, um, we're glad we could help you through the last five years. Can you believe it's been like five years? Pretty soon I saw a tweet from a listener that said that they were off

to college and they started listening in eighth grade. Well, and Sarah are amazing eleven year old fan about fifteen. Oh man, that's nuts. And she she's gonna be driving soon. She is. I want to fix up with my nephew. It's too bad they don't live in the same state. Well, hey,

we're living. If you want to tell us how we helped you out, or helped you through some rough times, or we're just there for you, you know, like the pals we are, we always want to hear that kind of thing, you can tweet to us at sy SKA podcasts. Oh how about this. You can also tell us any of your jet leg remedies. Yeah, I'd like to hear them. Um. You can tweet to us at sysk podcast You can join us on Facebook dot com. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com. Stuff

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