What makes a genius?

each other geniuses without cracking up? I'm cracking up on the inside, but sure, because we have no idea what constitutes a genius, do we? Right? We like to throw the word around, as you were pointing out earlier. Oh, he's a genius, or he's a socialist, story's a fascist, he's a genius. You should see the bathroom he designed. He's genius. You know. Yeah, it definitely is a word

that gets to run a lot. But the way that we use the word genius now, actually uh is kind of a throwback to its original meaning in the Greco Roman era, the word genius when everyone was wrestling. Yeah, like you could be a genius at wrestling. Really? What it what it? What it described was somebody's um natural enthusiasm inclination towards certain activities, not just your your abilities, but you know how revved up you were, so so somebody who was pretty good at bathroom design would have

been considered a genius at bathroom designs. Like the word vintage, people always thinks vintage just means old, But I think vintage specifically means like characterized by that person's best work, like a tailor, their best five pairs of pants they made. I think so I might just learned that just now I might be wrong thanks to you. Are we picking up Jerry's laugh? Because we're in a yeah, two ft by two ft space right now? This room is not genius. No,

it stinks of volatile organic compounds. We should say what. They actually moved us for one day into an even smaller office like the sign Felds. Remember when Castanza they kept moving him around because they didn't like him, and he were eventually going to end up in a storage closet like he did. Yeah, I think we've arrived there. I'm sure it's lovely. It's just not for podcasting. Well, I'm a little lightheaded. So if this, if this goes oddly,

that's why it's the paints and the airplane glue. That's airplane glue. Is genius, it is. Yeah, we were talking about genius for some reason. Where are we? Yeah? Because this is about genius. Okay, Oh so yeah, I was saying the original idea of genius was enthusiasm, throwing yourself into something where you were into right. Um. And then thanks to a guy named Francis Galton, who he was a pretty smart guy himself, but he had a long history of just kind of missing the big picture with

his ideas, he came up with eugenics. Sure, he was the first one to start attributing um genius to intellect. He kind of narrowed it a little more, and eventually this led to our idea of genius being quantifiable e g. Through i Q tests or g which we'll get to. Nice. Nice, Yeah, Yeah, I don't. I'll just go ahead and say I don't

know how quantifiable it is. Well, it's not. And there's actually two pretty big reasons why quantifying genius is virtually impossible at least with our current understanding of the mind. And they are they are uh Well, the first one is pretty obvious. Genius is a very subjective thing. Um. Some people think it's like an i Q higher than one forty or one seventy five I've heard, which you know, that's just a smart quantifying, quantify quantifier And I'm clearly

no genius. And the other thing is, like you said, it's a it's a big picture thing. In science and medical inquiries, that kind of thing is all about the detail. So it's really hard to like analyze and study. It's like studying intercessory prayer. How do you study that? How do you quantify happiness or prayer or genius? You know? Um, our colleague Tracy V. Wilson, I like how she put it. Yeah, she did a good job just kind of getting rid

of the crud that's often associated with genius. And and just if you have like crazy hair and a big mustache and you know math, you're a genius, do you get rid of all that? And uh, for the for the purposes of this podcast, will adopt her description, right, which was that a genius is an extraordinarily intelligent person

who breaks new ground with discoveries, inventions, or works of art. Right, Because you can't just be a really smart person, you have to do something with it to truly be a genius. That's what makes a genius. It's not just intelligence, it's intelligence with creative energy. Well, the creative part is huge, and we'll get to that, but it's um She goes on to say, and I agree that they usually will change the way we look at the world, or at least the way people in whatever field they're in look

at their field. They make a difference or difference makers. Have you ever heard of a guy named William James sidis Now, he reportedly had the highest um i Q in history. I'm higher than ask Maryland of Parade. As a matter of fact, yes, asked Maryland says, hers is two thirty. She claims the highest ever measured. This guy supposedly was to fifty. Yeah. Um, let me let me keep you more than a q a at the end of Parade magazine. Sadly, no really, Okay, So let me

let me give you a little background on sittence. Okay, uh. He was eighteen months old when he started reading the New York Times. Okay, so far so uh. At two he taught himself Latin. Three, he taught himself Greek. Uh. He could speak more than forty languages by the time he was an adult. Uh. He graduated kum laude at sixteen from Harvard and became the youngest professor ever in the history of Rice University. I imagine he was like

seventeen or something. Who's a young guy, and then within I think about a year at Rice, he dropped his position and spent the rest of his life working like menial jobs. He went from job to job just doing normal labor. So he's not a genius though he would not qualify as a genius by this definition. You have a two ft Q. You're clearly a prodigy. You're an incredibly brilliant person. But if you don't contribute to humanity, what are you worth? You're like a Buddhist monk who

goes and spends your life meditating in a cave. We curse you, sorry, but but that's that's the point. And geniuses are incredibly valuable in society. I don't remember what podcast it was in what we were talking about, um mauthis and the idea that the more the larger the world population, the more incidents of the births of geniuses happens. Right, Uh, and then the more geniuses you have, the further along

society is helped by leaps and bounds. Right, Well, if you think MENSA is a quantifier, then there's about three million geniuses in the US. But I don't buy that, right because MENSA standards, UM, they accept people who well it's not just like you, but standardized intelligence tests. Um, they accept people who score within the top two percent

of those. So if you just extend that with basic math to percent of the population in the US is like six million people, right, and then thirty million worldwide. But I don't buy it anyway, because they don't even count in the creative element. You know, Gina Davis is in mensa that everyone always says that. Anytime you hear about MENSA, people go, you know, Gina Davis, even I think we had this conversation you brought up Ronny Harlan and yeah, the the Pirate movie they made. Let's play

the clip, shall we? No? Okay we won't. Um, just get back to she just spit bologny out of her mouth. She shouldn't be eating bologny anyway. I did her a favor. You're right, so you wanna talk about the brain is that where we're going. Let's let's get to it. I mean, like if if you're going to go in search your genius with or without Leonard Nimoy, Um, you are going to start looking in the brain, right. I love that show the best. It's awesome, so super seventies. Um, so

let's go into the brain. Clearly we're gonna find our answers here, right, Maybe no, no, but we should talk about it. The cerebral cortex, as we all know, is the largest and outermost part of your brain, and this is where the higher functions like thought and reasoning happen as opposed to lower functions like just basic survival that kind of thing, right, And the basic stuff is found in your brain stem, which is how Mike the chicken

was able to live for so long. That's right. Uh, the cortex is cerebral cortex is divided into lobes, and within those lobes are regions that help you handle specific tasks. And uh, we do know it has a big impact on how we think, but it's a little tricky to study because one reason that Tracy point out, which I thought was really valid, is to get an m R

I done, you're lying there in a tube. They can't actively study how your brain operates on a day to day basis, why you're functioning, which is the great failing of the wonder machine. Yeah, I bet you they can solve that one day. Oh they will definitely, And by they I mean people other than you, me or Jerry.

It's some genius perhaps precisely. But she did point out a cool study from cal Irvine in two thousand four and they they did pinpoint that the volume of gray matter in parts of the cerebral cortex has a greater impact on your overall intelligence than how law your brain is. Because we talked about that in the Einstein thing, right, Yeah, the gray matter, h man, I know, the white matter transmits. The gray matter is like a problem solving. I believe

in white matter is used to transmit information. But Einstein's brain was smaller than your average bear's brain. It was. Remember we talked about what happened to his brain and um when what they finally found. The big distinction they found in his brain that was abnormal was that his prietal lobe was almost missing this fissure within it that

most people have. So he had a very narrow fissure and they also wider, and so had a big prietal lobe, which is responsible for century and put, but it also handles things like mathematics. Unsurprisingly enough, so he had a big prival lobe with a small fishure in between it, which they theorized means or meant that his his pridal lobe could communicate with itself more a fishly more effectively, and a genius was born by Josh Youers. He proved

that Adams Adams exist. He figured out that light behaves as a particle and a wave. He developed the theory of relativity and the famous equation equals mc squared by six. Where were you and by that age? I wish I could remember, Chuck me too. You were you were? Were you following fish around or something like that? Wire panic, Yeah, yeah, I was. I think I was living in New Jersey at the time, but I goofed around enough in Athens. I wasn't coming up with theories of relativity, nor was

I know I was thrown a lot of darts. Some other interesting aspects of the brain um is that it

actually develops. It goes from thicker to thinner as we age, So it goes from undeveloped to the cerebral cortex thickening, and then after adolescence or maybe during adolescence it begins to thin, right, And what the what a study in Nature I think two thousand and six found was that UM kids whose brains thick and faster in youth tended to have higher i Q s. And the reason that this could be significant is that they we we tend to find intelligence is an inherited trait or what appears

to be an inherited trait. So this is a physical example of how uh intelligence could be inherited through organic structure of the brain. So that's intelligence, but that's not genius. But we can't even we But at the same time, we can't even really describe intelligence. Like consider, let's let's

talk about the i Q tests, all right. The are our big um arousal for the i Q test began in the in the mid nineteen twenties when a psychologist named Katherine Morris Cox published UM The Early Mental Traits of Three Geniuses, and basically she went back from and it was exhaustive. She used like fift sources and studied the the work the traits, the UM contributions of three

hundred actually three hundred and one. Oun't know why she called it three hundred, but three hundred one Great minds and then basically gave them an i Q test based on this uh and came up in. The highest rated one was Johann Gurta, very nice thank you. Did you know he had a theory of evolution like seventy five years before Darwin? Yeah, and he came up with human chemistry. He was a smart guy. But he cocked in at number one, at two fifty or to ten. Sorry, not

bad at all. But as this book came out and became you know, um, the public became aware of it, it was like, hey, we didn't know about these i Q tests. Is awesome, we can start measuring how smart people are. Ironically, the earliest i Q tests were used to measure mental handicaps and children. Yeah, but then they started figuring out, hey, you can use this for gifted kids to find the gifted kids as well, and the Stanford psychologist U mixed with the first guy who came

up with the i Q test, bin At. The two together formed the Stanford Binet IQ tests that we used today. Have you ever had yours done I refused to I never will. I took one at one point, but it wasn't like the standard test. It was just some hackneyed version, and I scored really high. That's the reason I know that it was pretty much BS because I'm kind of smart, but not anything like Uh I scored. I didn't. I don't put any stock into it, but chuck, I guess

that kind of underscores um. A really good criticism of i Q tests is that they may be standardized, they may be widely accepted, but we aren't percent sure that they measure everything. So I wouldn't even say we're sure they measure everything. The measure mathematical aptitude, language abilities, um, what else? Uh? Well, yeah, sure, along with memory and spatial ability. Okay, but is that every Well No, in any standardized test, the word itself kind of says it all.

It's standardized, right. No standardized tests that you give different people can really tell you the same thing about all those different people. No, I can't. And I mean the very questions that the test test asks. Wow, these pain themes are really getting on top of me. Uh, the very questions that these tests ask um actually can be biased? Um? I heard, I heard of I think an S A T. I hope it wasn't an S A T question. It's

a little too easy. But um, some sort of standardized tests asked the question which of these places would you go to buy milk? And it was like grocery store, convenience store, dairy or something like that. You can buy milk at all those Josh, well you can. But I mean, like for kids out in the sticks where there isn't a grocery store, but there's a convenience store, that's where they go to buy their milk. But they missed the question because the answer was supposed to be grocery store.

It's a it's a pretty dumb examp ample, but it's accurate. I mean, the very people who write the tests are biased in some ways, and i Q tests have been shown to skew against um certain ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Yeah, sure, same say, any standardized test does so boo boo to. That is what I say. And the other thing, too, is is that geniuses don't, like people can generally consider genius, don't necessarily score well in these tests anyway. No, that's true.

To throw it out the door, I say, Um, I will say that just while we might as well give a little information on the IQ test. The standard score is a hundred with the deviation of sixteen, So the average score of the general population will be between eighty four and one sixteen. Right, but no one knows what over that indicates a genius. A widely accepted number is one forty. But somebody just made that up at some point in time. Well, like I said, I read one.

And it's not to say that a really high score doesn't mean you're a genius, like it could mean you're a genius. The i Q test is capturing something, probably, but it's not capturing the whole picture, I think is the point we're trying to make right here, right, not at all. So let's leave the i Q test in our dust. Okay, maybe we should go with Steinberg's I'm sorry,

Sternberg's try arch theory. I kind of like that. Yeah, there are some competing explanations of what components there are to intellect, right, Yeah, Sternberg said that he thought it um. Human intelligence includes a few things plus the try arc.

Creative intelligence, so the ability to generate new ideas, interesting ideas, analytical intelligence so you can examine facts, draw conclusions that's pretty good and practical intelligence, which means you can fit into your environment, which like kind of yeah, But I disagree, man. I went back and reread that a couple of times, and you know, Racy points out that there are a lot of critics of you know, um practical intelligences. Everybody has that to a certain degree, that does that really

count to towards being a genius? I disagree. I've met some people who well, I mean, think about it. It's the classic example of somebody who's very book smart, but you should never let walk down an alley by themselves and by himself for her. So many many people like that. Sure, and then there's you know, the super street smart um ratso Rizzo, you know, who can make his way him Jersey Midnight cowboy here exactly, who who can make his way in the world, but you know, would probably do

horribly on an IQ test. The very fact that there there are those different um polar extremes means to me that there's something to that that is an aspect of intellect, right, And you remember I mentioned g earlier. I didn't want to leave people hanging there. But the i Q test they have come up with a unit and they call that unit for intelligence g right, and that's actually i Q tests are under a larger umbrella of what's called psychometrics, which is basically the study of an attempt of the

measurement of intelligence. Right yeah. Um. Back in the seventies, there is a statistician named Carl your skog you're a skog weird, um, and he figured out that you. He figured out a way to measure intelligence that basically lead to the appearance of three different kinds of intelligence. While we're on theories of intelligence, right, okay, he came up with um fluid intelligence, right, yes, okay, And this is basically coming up with new ideas on your own to

solve problems. Crystallized intelligence is UM understanding already established techniques of problem solving and being able to identify which technique will best work to solve a particular problem. And then there's visual spatial reasoning, which is UM kind of an aptitude at creating mental images in your head to solve problems. It's very important part of mathematics. Actually, So we have your Scogg's ideas, we've got um, what's your guy's name, Sternberg's.

Let's talk about Howard Gardner, and he has the feel good we're all geniuses kind of theory, right, Yeah, multiple intelligence. He thinks there's seven types linguistic, logical, mathematic, musical, bodily, kinetic, I'm sorry, kinesthetic, spatial, which is always in there, uh intrapersonal, and interpersonal. But that's, like you said, it's a little too uh broad, is what a lot of critics say.

There's always a critic of each of these. It seems like one person comes out with something and people say, well, I think that sounds good, and then another part of the camp says, no, I don't agree at all. Isn't that the way with everything they chook? Pretty much like mountain dew code read is the greatest drink ever. No, it's not gular, Mountain Dews way better. Good point um. And then I guess another hallmark of intelligence, something that

can be measured, is geniuses aptitude toward social awkwardness. Yeah, there's a lot of them. Are generally known as quirky, odd characters makeup friends John Nash did. Yeah, absolutely. Einstein was sort of a wacky guy. Yeah, he liked to stick his tongue out, he was zany. Yeah, that people always pointed that picture. So you look how crazy he was.

Got anyone else? Well, let's talk about studying that. Yes, Josh, a Purdue uh study perdue you saw four and twenty three students gifted students and suggested that they were more susceptible to being bullied. So they're little mammy panbies, I

guess a little bit. Also, there was a study UM out of was it Stanford That it was a twenty year study actually UM that ended in ninety that actually gave UM children aptitude tests and personal adjustment tests and found that there was a negative correlation between i Q and social adjustment. Right, So basically it's it's quantifying what we all already know that if you're a smart kid, you're going to eat mud several times in your life. Yes, I never ate mud. That's why my IQ score was

bs uh. Well, one thing that they geniuses have in common, I think we can all agree on that you need to have to be a genius and not just smart. This creative intelligence and high waisted pants. Creative intelligence and high waisted pants. This is where it all comes together to me, right, Yeah, I mean when we talked about this earlier, like you can't. It's not good enough to just be smart. Then you're just a really intelligent person.

That leap between intelligence and genius is bridged by creative prowess. Yeah, that's how you break new ground. Right, Why did you point it me? Because promise was a horrible I like that, thanks man. The thing is, though, Josher's is that, uh, this is another thing that you can't quantify and study necessarily, So once again it's hard to kind of pinpoint creativity and imagination. Although they researchers do think that creative people

have less latent inhibition, and I completely agree with that, right. Yeah, we've talked about that with the Thinking cap episodes where schizophrenics have low latent inhibition and they take this extra stimuli and their brain constructs solution hallucinations out of it. The idea was that creative geniuses, who who have low latent inhibition take this additional stimuli and use it in novel creative ways. Yeah, that's one way of looking at it.

There's also um a quantifiable method or a couple of them to determine how much um creativity a genius has lent to the world. Right, It isn't that article you that time article you sent me. I thought that was kind of lame. Explain but that this is the level that we're at to try to survey a genius. Right, Yeah, what is was this the guy who wrote the book Simmons Simonton. Yeah, he yeh, Dave dean Keith almost said,

David Keith, what a great actor. Dean Keith. Simonton wrote a book called a Genius one on one Creators, Leaders, Prodigies, and he came up with a little notion that add up the number of times someone has been in a publication, has been cited in a professional publication in the field, or the number of times their composer's work maybe has been performed or recorded. And I just think that's stupid. I think the I think there's one that's worse, and

that's counting encyclopedia references. That's awful, because I think you can be a genius who was undiscovered. You may have like written a thousand great compositions of music that you never show the world. No, then the same things just holding menial jobs. It's that's virtually the same thing as holding that stuff in your head. You have to share it with the world. To be a genius or else you're just some smart schmoke. I don't know if I agree with that. Well, but I don't know if I

do either. I think you can still be a genius in and of yourself. You can be a genius in a vacuum, but not considered a genius by the populace who wants to own you, right, you know, I guess that's a difference. The difference I see in the the guy who wrote, or gal maybe who wrote uh several great compositions and that were never discovered, and the guy who just got the menial jobs is he didn't seem to have any creative genius going on. Yeah, he learn

he was book learning, book learning. Um. Although if you are trying to come up with a measure of you know, creative genius, then counting Encyclopedia entries does work. I mean, it's a way to go, right, Malcolm Gladwell should talk about him. No, he is of the belief that, along with Galton I think you're talking about with eugenics, that practice is really what leads to genius, hard work and practice and practice and practice, which I don't know about

that either. What do you think I told you I'm not talking about Gladwell. Oh really all right? Moving on then? Uh and there was well, fine, forget glad Well. Let's talk about Ericsson Andrews Erickson as a rival. They call him a friendly rival, which I thought was kind of funny of the Simonson guy I was talking about their their um conflicts end in tickle fights, right, It kind of reminded me of the good Will hunting like Robin Williams and that other guy. Right, there were friendly rivals.

But he is popular for the tenure rule, which has been around for a long time. But that's a notion that it takes ten years or ten thousand hours of dedicated practice to master a complex endeavor, and Gladwell is a believer in that. So chuck um. There's a guy named David Gallantson too, who's kind of come up with and at least a qualification of creative genius, Right he didn't, Well, doesn't that kind of underscore like where the field of genius or intelligence research is right now that we we've

just pooh pooed absolutely every sec it's all over the place. Yeah, but yeah, say what he says, because I want to prove that he says that there's actually now he says there's three kinds. Originally said there's there's two types of innovators. There's conceptual innovators who think in bold, dramatic steps, which Einstein would fall into. And do you know that among very smart people, he's considered kind of a flash in the pan. Yeah, think about it. He did everything that

he was going to do by age six. After that he just went around canoeing with Walter math Ou as Walter math Ou same thing. Um. But then there's experimental innovators and they learned through trial and error over This would be the Thomas Edison's of the genius world um. And then everybody started shouting at David Gallerson. Then he said shut up, shut up, and went back to the drawing board and came up with the idea that genius can also be expressed in a continuum over time, throughout

a long lifetime of great contribution and work. That's my problem with it. What everybody shouted at him. And he went back and was like can you go? He was like, well, you can either get everything done really early, or you can produce all your great work later in life. And they were like, but what about people do it all their life. He went, well, yeah, you can do that too.

It's like so lame. So should we just list out some some geniuses throughout history that people generally consider genius and didn't like this list either, But we don't like anything about this one doing George Washington's number forty five, and here's number one. It starts at number two, and if one's Einstein, I'm gonna literally eat this list. One

was Einstein. I didn't copy pastel of them. We have geniuses like Tesla's three, um Da Vinci number two, Isaac Newton, number four, Hawking of course, Michelangelo, Archimedes, Josh is eating his list. Warren Buffett is on there. Not bad. Sure they had to round it out and make it as approachable that all the readers they could Aristotle, Picasso, Neils Or Jefferson, Plato, Churchill, Benjamin Franklin. I think I'd agree

with that one. Shakespeare, Sir Francis Drake, Michael Faraday, Chuck Darwin, Renee de Descartes or is it desplaine deplane des plane, Gary Cass casper Off and I think Bobby Fisher was on their both chess champions. I don't know, they're they're considered geniuses. It's all subjective that it is completely subjective. I think we're gonna end this with this observation. Genius is like pornography. It's impossible to fully define, but we know when we see it, right, Chuck, who who was that? Uh?

Suitor Bruce Suitor, Bruce Jenner. If you want to learn more about genius, I think there's more than just this article. There's a bunch of good genius articles on the site at how stuffworks dot com. And there's also a bunch of articles on the people that we've mentioned, because we're doing a whole new series on painters. Right, yeah, we are at Cosso and Van Gogh. You can type it in the handy search bar. Of course, since I said that, it means it's time for listener and mail Chuck first

before we do anything. Before anything, yes, let's uh, we get we should probably plug our new Facebook page. We were on Facebook for a while. This is nothing new to us, but we streamlined our stuff. We had a fan page and a regular page and it was also strange, so we consolidated and we're actually active on Facebook now. Yes we are, um, so, yes we are. We have a our brand new Facebook page is stuff you should know.

Just type that into the handy search part Facebook or I think it's Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know. Maybe I'm not positive. Fine, And also, buddy, we're tweeting. You are tweeting, tweeted twice. Yeah, and your tweeting, I know, I feel like a modern child. All right. If you want to follow us on Twitter, we have our Twitter name as s y s K podcast right, yeah, so

that would be at and the how they do it. Yeah, look at you guys, y ESK podcast and we'll be saying funny things as well as uh sending out links to cool stuff. And you know we're active now, that is true. So check us out, will you yes on on the show? Yes? All right, Josh, listener mail. For goodness sakes, listener mail, I'm gonna read a couple of quickies here from a young boy named Sam and from a trucker name and net. And it took us to task. Oh no, over what I will read it first? And

that says u Hi chucking Josh. I am a oh for the road truck driver and love your podcast over the road. That's what she says. I would love for you guys to come along with me into the twenty one century. Regarding truck drivers, I've been driving for almost thirteen years, and guess what, I'm a woman. In fact, I have two sons. Y'all's age when you talk about truck drivers is in the McDonald's podcast. You always talk

about big, burly guys. Well, I may be big and probably more surly than Burley, but I'm definitely not a guy. Don't forget us, lady drivers, love love love the show, so and how could we forget? I mean large Marge was a huge factor. Yeah, J's big adventure and that was a net. That was a net, and I told her that I would read this as our penance a net. I'm making the blow your horn signed for the tractor trailer. So if you're hearing this right now to your horn, awesome.

I hope she didn't just cause an accident. This is from Sam, and Sam is just another a cute little kid, and I like these. I saw that that's a caps. Yeah, Hi, Chuck and Josh. I'm Sam blank be because I'm using your last name substitute. I'm eleven years old. You guys helped me get through many boring tasks like dog poop pick up my least favorite chore. I think it's mine too. Actually that in the cat box I just stopped as an adult, I don't pick up. You just don't go

into the yard. I just watch where I'm walking in the yard. Okay. I think the funniest podcast was the Twinkie podcast. You guys make me laugh in my bed when I listen. Also in the supermarket, so he listens when he goes to sleep and when he's grocery shopping, or I guess when his mom's grocery shopping, or dad or two dad's. I don't know. Kids today are pretty independent. Yeah, you're right. I think you guys are the funniest people in the world. I have a few suggestions, like what

dues cat Got your Tongue mean? And other phrases means improper English? I do. Also, Riot Control really cracked me up. Does an eleven year old kid know what riot control is? And legos? So he wants to know about I Got your Tongue? Legos and riot control and trading cards and football? So could you please please read my shout out on the air, And here's my shout out, and this is an all caps. I told you mom, I would get my email read on air. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

So that's from Sam w And he said, I thought Josh looked like Chuck and Chuck looked like Josh, but that changed when I saw your pictures on the site. Yeah, we get that a lot. Yeah, we're well, not that I look like you and you look like me, but that we look like different people. Okay, that's always a case. With the voice. I'm much uglier than you would think. That is not true. You are a lovely, handsome man. Thank you all right? Well, thanks Sam, keep on shopping

and the net keep on trucking. If you have an interesting email that you want to roll the dice and see if we'll read it on the air. Cost you nothing in this digital age, you can send us an electronic mail. Just address it to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. M For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot com home page. Brought to

you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you