Happy continuing holidays. Everybody chuck here to tee up our next episode on our twelve Days of Christmas Toys playlist. And I am super excited because you're about to listen to one of our older episodes from this list about in molder toy It's all about Yoyo's. It's how Yoyo's work. Hope you like it. Welcome to Stuff you should know Fromhowstuffworks dot com.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clarr. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant.
That's me, same as ever, scratching the old back.
Yeah, I just got a little itch there.
You ever use one of those little dealies, the little creepy hand, the little monkey pap on the end of the stick I have.
Before, Yeah, I don't like to do that. It hurts do Yeah, I guess you could call it that some painful sensation.
I get up gives the wall sometimes and do the blue the bear.
That'll do sometimes too. But it's weird, like I only have backages in about the same place, and that would be on my left shoulder blade on the western side of it, depending on which direction I'm facing.
Curiously, this is going to be the most interesting part of.
This show that is not a true Chuck Man, so Chuck. Yes, this is going to be a great one.
Okay.
I have a feeling this is gonna be one of those ones where it's like, wow, that turned out to be really good. It's physics heavy out the y.
Yeah, everyone loves that.
But the fact is, when we finish this, you're gonna know how yoyo works. This is probably the most truly titled, truest titled episode. Well we've ever done, you think, yep?
I don't know.
All right, Well we'll find out.
I think it should be called Physics through the Eye of a Yo yo.
So listen, have you ever seen the movie Harlem Knights Parts dude? That is go back and watch it again, the whole thing. Oh, you're crazy. It's one of the best movies ever. Eddie Murphy, Red Fox, Richard Pryor, great cast and like everybody else in it too. I think Bernie Max in there.
Awesome cast, terrible script.
I don't think the script is terrible. I thought it was great. There's one thing about that movie that bugged me to know it it's set in like the twenties, right, Yeah, and Throughout the movie, Eddie Murphy uses the word yo. Yo is obviously a modern term, and it just sticks out like a sore thumb every time he does. It drives me crazy, Like it drives me crazy that he did it drives me crazy that the director wasn't like, you can't say yo. This is like nineteen twenties New York. Yo wasn't around.
I don't know that they were going for historical accuracy in that one.
They were wearing spats. Yeah, so Jerry like that one. So I went back to the little digging Chuck and it turns out that yo was in fact around in the nineteen twenties, but Eddie Murphy was still wrong for using it in that capacity. Okay, okay. So yo goes back at least to like the fifteenth cent as like a hunting cry, right when somebody was like somebody else might go yo, and you'd go chase fox. That was kind of the first wave of yo. As far back
as eighteen fifty nine. We know that there were sailors that were using.
It yoho ho, yoho ho.
Or also it was a response for a roll call like yo, like somebody called your name, you would say yo, key. It wasn't until after World War Two, though, that the modern incarnation comes and it came out of the Italian quarters of Philadelphia.
Of course it did.
So that's where they think yo came from after World War Two. Hence Eddie Murphy was wrong in using yo especially frequently in the movie Harlem Nins. So I did all that research, or I could have just looked into Google Translate from English to Filipino or vice versas, okay, and find that it just means come.
Yeah, but I don't think that's what it means here. It does it?
It does now?
Okay.
So the word yo yo, as it stands right means come, come or come back.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Did you know that I did? You want to talk a little bit about the history of yo yos? Did you know before reading this fantastic article that yo yo's originated, as we understand them now, originated in the Philippines in the nineteen twenties.
I didn't know that. I did know that it was around for a long time before that, though, in you know, other forms.
Well pretty much the same form. There were like two forms of yo yo's in history. Yeah, and one came out of the New one came out of the Philippines. The other one, Yeah, it was pretty old.
Well, ancient Chinese or at least ancient Greeks, right more than twenty five hundred years ago. But they think the Chinese had something similar to that.
Yeah, I'm starting to strongly suspect that the Chinese or the origin of human civilization. You think, yeah, they came up with beer. Yeah, well they came up with beer. There you have it. They went right there.
And it is the oldest toy on the planet except the doll. The dolly.
I thought that was pretty interesting too. Yeah, yeah, of course, although I wonder if they're kind of diminishing any kind of ancient rituals or rites by saying, like, look at this cute doll, when really it's you know, some sort of fetish.
I don't know, you never know. So it's been around a long time. They've designed it in different ways over the years. The original design was had the string tied tight to the little axis there.
We'll call it the Greek design, the Greek design, No, we'll call it the Chinese design or the European design.
Well, not design, but it was popular in Europe. Yeah, and that obviously if you ever used an old yo yo like that, or redesign yours to where it's tied around the axle. It'll pop up, you know, as soon as you throw it down, it'll pop back up. Yeah, because it's tied to the axle.
Exactly right. And you said it was popular in Europe. There were other words for other names for the yo yo before it was a yo yo.
That's right.
There was the limigrette, the bandolore.
The bandolora was British, I believe the quiz. Yeah, I didn't get a country of origin for that, but.
It was very popular in Europe. There's a painting of I think Louis the eighteenth is he the boy king? I don't know whichever Louis was the boy king of him holding like a yo yo, like a royal painting of him with a yo yo?
Or the what was a little hoop on in a stick?
I think that's what it was called.
That was an awesome game.
The hoop on a stick. And then I don't think you can compare the yo yo to the hoop on a stick.
No, I'm not comparing it. I'm just saying I just never got that toy.
Oh oh, okay, well, here's another one for you. Napoleon was well known for carrying and using a yo yo, apparently for stress relief.
Oh yeah, yeah, it didn't work too.
Here's a stressed out dude. Yeah he needed the yo yo. But as you said that, that's the European favored or Chinese design, where like the strings tied really tight to the axle and it just basically goes up and down.
Yeah.
Right, So the Filipino design led to the modern yo yo as we understand it now, And the huge distinction is that the string is just looped around the axle kind of loosely, yeah, which has the added benefit of allowing the yo yo itself to spin once it reaches the end of the string. Yeah.
Sleep, that's what the that's why people yo yo, I think. Yeah, it's all about the tricks. I mean, it's sort of fun for a minute just to go up and down, but it's really all about the tricks.
Right, It's just a stress reliever if it just goes up and down.
Did you yo yo when you were a kid?
Uh? Yeah, here there. But even as a kid, like I could sense that like these these new modern ones that we'll talk about with like ball bearings and clutches. They just seem like cheating.
I agree, let's not even talk about them. It's not even a real yo yo.
So, Chuck, you want to talk about a little bit about physics.
Well, let's finish the history first, shall we. Oh?
Okay, well, I have plenty of that.
It was originally in the Philippines. They think it was a hunting weapon for like four hundred years. Uh huh so, but not like a little tiny yo yo. They were really big and it was basically a big spindle attached to a rope with like spikes coming off of it.
They were like the size of a you go, yeah, And I guess.
The just the benefit there is you could get it back after you threw it at somebody.
Right. The string was almost just useless though, Well could you just throw it and run after it?
Oh? Really? Okay? It was actually heavy rope and they use it for hunting too, right.
Well, at some point down the line, well, yeah, you would think anything used in hunting, you know, does double duty and more exactly anything you're trying to kill. Yeah. At some point though, they became smaller and became toys, and in the twenties a Philip you know, immigrant to the US named Pedro Flores, started a company, the first modern yoyo company in the United States, and did pretty well for himself. And then in nineteen twenty nine he sold out to a man named Duncan, Right, Donald.
Duncan, Yes, Donald Duncan, and Duncan Duncan, and you know Floris's in Santa Barbara, and like you said, was selling these things like hotcakes enough that Duncan said, hey, let me buy that. I'm going to keep the name yo yo because it's catchy. Yeah, I'm going to trademarkt and now I own it. And through the years he had competitors that made similar devices with different names, and they were like, dude, everyone's calling the sing of yo yo.
We want to be able to call it a yo yo too, And he said, no, no, I own it. Then the federal courts in nineteen sixty five says, you know what, that's generic enough now where you don't own it any longer. Right, they're all yo yo's.
Well what those legal challenges to their trademark? The name yoyo was one of the things that bled the company dry. It eventually went bankrupt. Duncan, the Duncan Company went bankrupt.
Yeah, the same year they ruled, yeah against them.
They were like, well, that's it for us. But they also had other money troubles. They were actually victims of their own success. The Duncan Company was. So they moved in the forties to luck, Wisconsin, which very quickly became known as the yoyo capital of the world. And at their peak they were making thirty six hundred yoyos an hour, mostly out of wood at first maple. They were using a million board feet of maple wood every year. Yeah,
it's a lot. And they actually, in addition to their legal challenges, like the money going to fight their legal battles, they were paying tons of money in overtime too, advertising And as a matter of fact, I think in nineteen sixty two, Chuck, they managed to sell forty five million yo yos and in that same year there were only forty million kids in the US. Wow, pretty astounding.
A chicken in every pot and a yo yo in every other hand at least. Yeah, sure, well, lets I guess some kids were yoyo with both hands.
They're rich kids. Yeah, But like I said, they the company ended up coming bankrupt anyway. But Yoyo enthusiasts still look very fondly on the Duncan name. And I think June sixth, Yes, June sixth is National Yo Yo Day, which happens to be the same day as Donald Duncan's birthday.
Yeah. Yeah, well, and the Duncan name lives on obviously, you still see Duncan Yoyo's. They they sold out. They didn't just shut down.
Well, they went bankrupts and sold out, right, yeah yeah.
So who was it? The flam Flambeo Plastics company. Yeah, they said we'll keep the name Duncan because it's synonymous with Yo yo's.
Yeah, it's not generic yet. No, No, there's a little yoyo history for you. Yeah, I got a little more. I'm gonna say to the end. I think you'll like. Okay, we're gonna tease you with it.
Now, let's talk about physics.
Well, I think this is very interesting.
Good.
So there's a two Okay you mentioned with the string tied to the classic Chinese design Yo yo, you have one kind of energy going on, right, Yes, and that is linear momentum, the ability of it to go up and down I should say down and up right, that's right. With the Filipino design the modern design. It has two kinds of potential energy. It has that same linear momentum to go up and down, but it also has angular momentum. And angular momentum is its ability to spin on an axle. Yeah, okay,
so you've got two things going on. And like you said, when the yo yo hits the end of the line of its linear momentum, it can still It's built up since it's wound around the spool. It's built up a lot of angular momentum, so it can just sit there and spin or sleep as you called it.
Yeah. It actually increases as it goes down, which is the key to keeping it spinning.
Right.
It gets faster as it falls.
There's another pretty cool trait to a yo yo. Who knew they were so complex? I didn't, did you?
I did not?
Okay. So they also have gyroscopic stability, chuck, they do. Okay. So, if you have a yoyo that's sleeping and you push down on top of it, like it goes down and then back up right, that's because of its gyroscopic stability. That point that you push down on the yo yo is transferred from the front and spun around to the back. So that's even now, so the yoyo will just keep spinning as long as it's spinning fast enough.
Gyroscopic stability, Yes, that means a spinning object object will resist change to its axis of rotation. And if you've ever thrown a football, it's the same thing. Yeah, Or if you've ever thrown a football poorly?
What do they call that wobbler? A turkey wounded duck?
Brick? That's why winded duck doesn't go very far because it doesn't have that tight spin. Yeah, so it falls off its axis and won't travel as.
Far, exactly same as a prison And then the whole team's mad.
Basically anything that spins, Yeah, Frisbee's football's there's there's got to be a baseball. We could liken it to a baseball somehow.
Let's say a curveball, knuckleball slider.
Definitely not a knuckleball slighter doesn't spin it all, really, is it like a shot put? No, the knuckleball, you, the whole key is it doesn't move. It travels like this, and that's why it moves all around. Crazy, isn't that nutty?
Yeah, So you've got your you've got your yo yo sleeping, You're you're totally aware of its gyroscopic stability and you understand that it's angle momentum is just awesome. It's far out right, it's far out but you want to wake it up. And that's when you bring it out of its sleep and rewind it back up the spool.
Right, a little tug on the old finger.
Yeah, And the reason why is because the loop, right, there's less friction with the loop around the axle. Yeah, when you tug it, you increase that friction and you allow it to rewind.
It just grabs a hold of its buddy and just let's go back up to the palm.
Yep. It's pretty cool. Yeah, I like yoyo physics a lot. So we basically just talked about the two hardest parts, right, sleeping and waking.
Yeah, And like I said, sleeping is the key to do any kind of trick like walking the dog, which I was pretty good. I used to could do a few yo yo tricks. Really, Yeah, I could walk the dog, and I could do I could do the deal where you make a triangle and then TikTok through the triangle, something like.
A cradle or probably the cats in the cradle, let's.
Call a cat's cradle, and then I could I could do the around the world. Wow, around the world.
Yeah, I couldn't do any of those.
I'm gonna this inspired me to get a new Yo Yo.
By the way, I like the vintage dunk and one specifically the yellow ones with the butterfly, like the gold the gold butterfly.
The inverted ones.
No, it was the one butterfly on that okay, because they had those that were that looked like a butterfly that were I know what you're talking about, inverted, and I think that actually plays a part in the uh uh increasing the moment of inertia section. Yeah, I think that's why they flipped it out to put more weight on the outside. Yeah, okay, you want to talk about that?
Why not?
So do you remember when we did the Murphy's Law podcast?
How could I forget?
Remember one of the books that he wrote was for your Moments of Inertia?
Yeah?
Yeah, I didn't realize it was a terrible, terrible engineering pun until I read this article.
Yeah.
Kind of made me hate John Paul Stapp a little bit.
Nah, we love that guy.
So chuck A moment of Inertia's basically a way of describing a spinning objects resistance to changes in that rotation, basically being slowed down. Yeah, right, And what smarter people than us have figured out is that if you increase the mass and distribute it slightly further away from the axis, you're going to increase its moment of inertia, right, and that increases the amount of time it's just sleeping, right.
Yeah. And like I said, I don't know this, but I just remember when I was a kid, they had those inverted yo yos, and I bet you anything that's why they did that. It's got to be because they were wider at the outside and then curved in, which had to be less mass. Yeah, it was less stuff, less wood, right, So I'm going to go on record as saying that's why they did that.
But I think you want more mass further away, yeah, to increase its moment of inertia.
Right. Yeah, So it was there was more mass on the outside, I guess, further away from the axis, right. Yeah.
So that allows things to sleep a lot longer. And that was a I guess you could say one of the breakthroughs in yoyo design. I think in the sixties, they started adding mass to the outside and extending the axle a little bit. Bam, the yoyo has been improved. Think about this, right, twenty five hundred, maybe even longer than that. Years ago. Yeah, somebody invented the yoyo. Does not change until the Philippines in the early twentieth century.
Well, I thought it said it did change, We just don't know. Said there were changes in designs over the years. No, not that I took. I took it like there was one way, and then there was the Filipino way.
And that was it.
We got a correction to make then.
And then the twentieth century hits, and then there's all these great improvements on these designs.
Indeed, one of the.
Improvements, Chuck was adding ball bearings. Right, yeah, well, you.
And I don't think these are improvements, ear least I don't.
Okay, that's absolutely sure. That's a good caveat. I think that the Filipinos perfected the yoya.
Let's just call them modifications, okay for sorry kids who don't know how to yoyo rich kids. Yeah, that makes it easier, I think, Yeah, and that the whole point of both of these things. Yeah, I guess it makes it easier sleep and yeah.
Yeah, And I guess they're like, well, if you're just enjoying sleeping and waking your yo yo, then why make it tough.
If you want to have fun with your toy?
Right?
I can't believe they made it easier for kids to have fun. It's not, dare they?
So the ball bearing design I think is kind of clever. Basically, this modification takes the axle and splits it in two yeah, into two races, which are basically little courses for ball bearings to spin around.
Right, now, does it split the axle? These are just around the axle.
So one is connected to the axle, right, that's the inner race. One is connected to the string. That's the outer race. And then in between the two ball bearings right, Okay, they're not connected in any way except maybe via the contact with the ball bearings.
Right.
So when you when you release your yo yo toward the ground and it's linear and angular, momentum really build up. When it hits the inner race can tilt a little bit and connect with the outer race via the ball bearings. So they're they're spinning right, right, and then as they straighten out the they they're they're not connected anymore, so that the string no longer has any effect on whether the yo yo spins or not, because it's just the
inner race connected to the axle that's spinning. So your yo yo can sleep far, far longer.
Yeah, the outer race spends the inner race which spins the axle.
Right, it's like a transfer of angular momentum exactly, and then the strings just like you just let me know when you're done, and we'll wind back up.
Well, it'll get a little tougg'll do the same thing with that style, right right, okay.
Or you can just completely take yourself out of the equation altogether except for a snap of the risk. The initial release is all you need to do with what's called the yo yo with the brain.
These are really fake yoyo's. Yeah, I want to get one though. It's kind of cool.
You could be in a vegetative state and do this yo yo.
Yeah. This was in the nineties. Company called Yomega release these, and they called it the yo Yo with a brain, when in fact they should have called it the yo Yo with a clutch. And the deal here is you've got these two clutch arms weighted ball on one side, and it's not attached on the other side, and they're spring loaded. The spindle is not attached to the axle, but the clutch arms are attached to the spindle. So when you throw this thing down, it's gonna spin slower
at first, and the clutch is engaged. As it gets faster, all of a sudden, it's enough inertia to pop the clutch essentially against the edges, and it releases the spindle, which makes the whole thing spin faster.
On the axis right, the centrifugal force pushes down the weight, which pushes down the arm onto the spring, which releases the two which allows it to spin.
And it only spins for a certain amount of time. It's not like the kind that you tug back up. It'll spin till it slows down and then the clutch locks back down and boom, it shoots.
Back up right back.
I want to I wish we had one of those. I want to see what it's like.
So basically, the big to the two modifications are based on separating the string from the axle. Yeah, by creating two different kinds of I guess axles or spindles or whatever.
Which are really just sort of taking the Philippine Filipino design a step further because although it made contact with the axle, it wasn't quote connected to the axle. Yeah, I guess it was, but it wasn't tight right.
And a guy named Michael Caffrey is the one who came up with the yo yo with the brain, and Yomega started telling him in nineteen ninety, but he came up with it nineteen two years after a man named Tom Cune created the no Jive three and one yo Yo that you could take apart and replace the axle and do all sorts of modifications with no really big, big time for changes in yo yo design.
So did he rip this dude off? Is that what you're saying?
No, okay, No, I'm just saying, like the two these two big steps in the Yoyo design.
Well you said two years after it was sinister. Well you're a very suspicious person I am when it comes to yo Yo's design.
Chuck, that's pretty much the physics of yo Yo's Did you know that we just explained how Yoyo's work.
You know, I looked online at videos and stuff to make it a little easier because this is a very visual thing, and they do have videos. But what I found out is that a lot of teachers, physics teachers, use yoyo's to describe these whatever four to six properties that we described.
I have to tell you, I understand angular momentum far better.
Now. I understand, and although it went through the yoyos to the football, I understand the moment of inertia. Okay, all right, is that moment of inertia? No, that's angular momentum, angular momentum.
Spinning on an axis.
Yeah.
Yeah, Oh you were talking about the gyroscopic stability.
Yeah, there's what it was. See I get confused.
I did too, Chuck, it's physics, man, don't feel bad. You want to know a couple more pieces of yoyo trivia?
Yeah, it's here.
In nineteen sixty eight, when Abby Hoffman of the Chicago seven Yeah, was indicted or no, charged with contempt of Congress when he started doing the Walk the Dog during a House on American Activities Committee. Oh really session that was investigating him.
So he was like, I'm just so over this. I'm gonna yo yo.
Well, apparently the way I read it is that he was trying to entertain lighting everything up. It's like here, watch me yo yo And he was walking the dog.
And the who ax said no, wrap one.
So that's how yoyo's are connected to McCarthyism. If you want to take a N S Y S K quizn that comes up.
Plus yoyo's were huge back then. Totally thought that was like the heyday. I think this is sixties.
Yeah, Nixon. Have you seen Nixon try to yo yo?
No?
Man, if you don't like Nixon, this will just make you hate him even more. The night that they opened the Grand Ole Opry and I think sometime in nineteen seventy four, what's the main guy, like the whole cast of hehaws behind Nixon and then the mate Roy Akeff. Yeah, he presents Nixon with a yo yo and like has to put it on Nixon's finger, and Nixon looks like what's going on? You know? And and then he tries to do it once and it just kind of like
flops down and makes like a sad trombone noise. Wow, And he just has this sullen like look on his face, like I don't like yo yo's. He looks kind of like you did at the beginning of this episode.
Yeah, me and Tricky, Yeah you knew.
And then they took a yo yo in space Chuck, Yeah, I saw that and.
It still worked.
It did work. They found that like letting it drop did nothing because they were testing it in microgravity. But if you throw it, it will it will go slowly.
You can do it.
You can do it slowly, but it will still spin and it moves kind of just kind of gracefully along the string like in just mid air, horizontally, and but it'll never sleep.
Well, thank god NASA did that.
Yeah, back in nineteen eighty five.
Those are all the videos you see, though they do much more than that.
That was back when NASA was like, we have so much money, we don't know what to do. Let's launch something and let's say the Toys in Space Project, right, and they did.
Now this was just for Yoyo's. That was the only thing they did on that flight.
Well, no, the Toys and Space Project in company or encompassed sixty Shuttle missions, one for each toy that they tested out. Wow, Jackson was one of the best ones.
The Bolo paddle.
Yeah, so that's uh, that's yo Yo's. Frankly, I'm pretty happy with this one.
I thought you were going to lead in with something on yo yo ma or something.
No, man, try to look up yoyo's in the news and not get yo yo ma cheese. Can't do it, stupid. I searched a yo yo minus ma minus knee, minus gabba to finally get some stuff on.
O yo gabba gaba. Sure, ye oh what was the other one yo mama neo yo MTV wraps that came up too, did it?
Yeah? I stopped searching before I minused MTV too. You know you could minus I was in the jew Yeah, and it'll it'll root out all the search, all this, all the results that have that.
Really, so you just put the minus.
Sign minus and then the next letter. No space, had no idea, and you can do a bunch of different ones, no comments, no nothing, just like minus gabba minus yo minus mom, minus knee.
You literally just improved my life. Oh good, or my research.
For like that eight times a day?
Yeah?
All right, well that's it, all right, yo yosa. I was in a jewelry store once and Neo came in. It seemed nice.
Who's Neo?
He's this rapper He's from Atlanta.
I thought you were talking about the matrix. No, that's like his real names Cana Neo.
This is ni Yo.
Oh yeah, I've heard of him.
Yeah him. Well, if you want to learn more about Yoyo's including some really top notch illustrations, this is one of those ones that you will see why we have staff illustrators here at in color.
No.
Yes, I saw you want to type in yo Yo at the in the handy search bar at house stuff works dot com. That'll bring up that really cool article. And I said handy search bar. So now it's time for Chuck to shine with another edition of Listener Mail.
Josh, this is one of our oldest than not by age, but one of our most loyal fans, Anna Spies. She has a band and they put together Well, let me just read it. This is coming out shortly after Christmas, and she said it was still great to read this. Hi, guys and Jerry. Since we're firmly in the festive, greedy little grip of the holiday season, I was wondering if you could give a shout out to a project I'm
involved in or my band is. At least it's a charity album to raise funds for the continued fallout from the Japanese earthquake and nuclear disaster, and the light of everything that's happened since, I know, it's been put on the back burner of most people's charitable contributions, which is why we were thrilled and honor to our part to re raise awareness when the label releasing this compilation approached
us to contribute a track. So you know, she's right about these tragedies that happen and then six months later you kind of forget about it.
It's the curse of the news cycle exactly.
But luckily there's a lot of people that my friend Dave is one of them that's still working, like on the tsunami from five or six years ago. Oh that's great, so continued help is always needed. There's a CD that's going to be out in mid December, so by this by the time this comes out, it'll already be out.
You can stream the entire album, which is thirty seven tracks by thirty seven artists on the website More Hope for Japan dot com and her band New Century Classics wrote and recorded a brand new song just for this compilation, and she's quite proud of it, and I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, but I'm gonna, And she says there's a lot of far better known artists on there, and anyone who likes instrumental music, post rock,
ambient and basically pretty melodic guitar bassed tunes should dig it. So check it out. That Anna's band, New Century Classics, More Hope for Japan dot Com.
Very cool, Thanks a lot, Anna appreciate that, Thanks for letting us know, thanks for doing what you do.
And thanks for listening for like years, she's been around forever.
Yeah, yeah, I guess if you're working on something that you feel like everybody's forgotten and shouldn't have, let us know and we'll try to help you re raise awareness too. Yeah yeah, send us a tweet to s ysk podcast, or you can shoot us Facebook something, Facebook dot com, slash stuff you should know, And as always, you can get really personal and send us an email, a real live email to stuff Podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks dot com.
To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The house Stuffworks iPhone app has a arrived. Download it today on iTunes,