Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know The Stuff You Should Know Doin’ Science Playlist: Elastics: Where God and Science Smooch About this episode You could be forgiven for thinking the story behind elastics was boring. You’d still be wrong, though. The story of what’s holding up your underwear is a global drama, replete with war, industrial espionage, colonialism, destitute inventors – everything!
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Transcript 10,240 words · 7 speakers
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0:00 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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1:02 Josh Clark? When you're in do-it-yourself mode, the last thing you want to do is drop everything to pick up that one part or tool that you need. That's where My Lowe's Rewards and My Lowe's Pro Rewards come in. Place your order and Lowe's handles the rest. Lowe's will make the run for you with free same-day delivery. Members get more at Lowe's. $25 minimum and loyalty membership required. Order eligible items by 2 P M. Subject to weight and size restrictions and availability. Terms at lowe's.com/shippingterms. Hey there, it's Josh and it's my turn, finally. And I hope you're enjoying our Do in Science playlist so far. Up next, we have our 2017 episode on elastics.
1:46 Josh Clark? It's one of those episodes like ballpoint pens or zippers where the topic sounds super boring, but it actually turns out to be super interesting. And this episode as a bonus has a surprising amount of discussion on pirates for a show on things that snap back when you pull them. Enjoy feeling your brain enlarge.
2:10 Speaker 03 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.
2:20 Speaker 04 Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. This is Stuff You Should Know, the sick edition.
2:30 Speaker 02 Yep.
2:31 Speaker 04 The annual sick edition.
2:32 Speaker 02 You aren't well, my friend.
2:34 Speaker 04 No, and it really stinks too Chuck, because like, I like to think that I take pretty good care of myself, so to be able to be felled not once, but twice, in just a few months by some stupid bug, it's irritating to me.
2:48 Speaker 02 I know. You get mad every time you get sick, though, just so you know.
2:51 Speaker 04 I do. I hadn't noticed that, actually.
2:55 Speaker 02 Uh, my wife is the same way.
2:58 Speaker 04 Well, it's not fun.
2:59 Speaker 02 I know, but she gets like, kinda, yeah, you both get a little angry, like, why did this happen to me? I get more pitiful, like, oh, somebody help me.
3:08 Speaker 04 Oh, I've got that going on, too. Listen to this.
3:14 Speaker 02 So, does that mean people have the next, like, eight episodes to look forward to this, or?
3:20 Speaker 04 No, no, man. No way. This is it. This is it right here. I think, actually, yesterday might have been the worst day.
3:27 Speaker 02 Oh, well, good.
3:28 Speaker 04 Yeah. I mean, today was a close second, but we'll find out. Yeah, it is bad. I gotta be a pro, man. I gotta, I gotta get well.
3:37 Speaker 02 The show must go on.
3:41 Speaker 04 So, today Chuck, Charles, we're talking elastic.
3:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:46 Speaker 04 Did you know much about this?
3:48 Speaker 02 No, I thought this is actually super interesting, and it also contained two, uh, what we like to call, um, dinner party factoids that people can bust out.
4:00 Speaker 04 We need a jingle that says that, so we can play it when, when it comes up.
4:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, there's lots of cool stuff in here, and please don't correct us on factoid, because...
4:09 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah, man, that's so 2009, 10, 11, maybe?
4:12 Speaker 02 Exactly. Uh, but yeah, two really cool facts in here that I think people can just keep in their hip pocket.
4:19 Speaker 04 Okay. Are you good? So, until we get a jingle made, I'll bet Noel will make one for us, but until we do, maybe you should, you wanna practice one?
4:27 Speaker 02 Um, geez, what's a good dinner party jingle? It should, it should be like wine glasses and plates and forks and things clinking.
4:35 Speaker 04 Right. And then maybe like this Orwellian voice going dinner, party, factored.
4:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, here we are eight years in, still evolving.
4:47 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's a work in progress. Okay, so we're talking elastic, Chuck.
4:51 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
4:53 Speaker 04 I didn't know that much about it either. In this article written by one William Harris.
4:57 Speaker 02 Good one.
4:58 Speaker 04 Yeah, it is. It makes a pretty good point. Um, that it's just one of those things, specifically say like a rubber band. You just kind of think it's always been around. And you know, you've always, you just think like, you know, elastic waistbands have been around for eons. It was basically the second thing discovered after fire is what I've always thought.
5:18 Speaker 02 Yeah. Since Adam first popped Eve's bra strap.
5:22 Speaker 04 Right.
5:23 Speaker 02 It's been around.
5:24 Speaker 04 Yeah, you'd think. That's actually not the case at all. It's elastic itself, and elastic we should say is basically any rubber, natural or synthetic, thread woven with another kind of fabric, usually like say cotton or nylon or whatever, that produces a stretchy fabric. That's elastic, right?
5:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, like I think a lot of people don't even realize if they took their underwear waistband, don't do this because then you've ruined it. But maybe if you have an old pair, if you just kind of cut it, you would see these, these little elastic threads. It's all it is.
5:58 Speaker 04 Yeah, sure.
5:58 Speaker 02 Little rubber bands.
6:00 Speaker 04 Or, or you could go to like a thrift store or something, buy a pair and then cut those.
6:06 Speaker 02 If you're buying a thrift store underwear, then I don't know, I wouldn't recommend that.
6:11 Speaker 04 Yeah.
6:11 Speaker 02 I don't think they even sell it, actually.
6:12 Speaker 04 They do.
6:14 Speaker 02 Really?
6:14 Speaker 04 Yep.
6:16 Speaker 02 Used underwear?
6:17 Speaker 04 Yes.
6:18 Speaker 02 Wow.
6:19 Speaker 04 So.
6:20 Speaker 02 10% skid free.
6:24 Speaker 04 That's probably, that's gotta be one of the more difficult tasks is like getting those things just prepared for resale.
6:32 Speaker 04 You know?
6:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
6:33 Speaker 04 I don't want to be unprepared for resale duty today.
6:38 Speaker 04 Anyway, when you do, if you cut it open, if you look very closely, have you ever done this? Have you ever seen like an elastic waistband come, come loose?
6:46 Speaker 02 Sure.
6:46 Speaker 04 As you've got, if you look really closely, you can be like to like the little threads that are sticking out. Cause some just hang limp and loose. That's cotton. Nobody cares about that. But the ones that are just kind of still sticking out a little bit and you can throw them, that's the, that's the rubber or natural or synthetic rubber that, that gives that elastic its stretchiness. And again, this is a fairly recent invention, especially if you're talking about waistbands for underpants.
7:15 Speaker 02 Yeah. And especially if you're talking about elastic that really kind of worked. There were two sort of dives into making elastic and one quite a long time ago, and then one more recently that obviously worked much better. And basically the reason it worked much more better more recently is better techniques to making rubber and then better techniques changing that rubber into something that you could actually use like in a waistband.
7:41 Speaker 04 Right, exactly. But we've known about rubber for a very long time since, well, I should say those of us in the West have known about it for a very long time. Those indigenous peoples of the Amazon have known about it even longer.
7:55 Speaker 02 But I interrupted, you were talking about waistbands.
7:58 Speaker 04 Oh, okay. So, yeah, so with, with underwear waistbands in particular, right?
8:03 Speaker 02 Yes.
8:04 Speaker 04 Apparently humans have felt shame for thousands of years because the oldest pair of underwear, identifiable underwear are 7,000 years old.
8:15 Speaker 02 And you bought them at Goodwill.
8:17 Speaker 04 Right.
8:18 Speaker 02 Last week.
8:19 Speaker 04 Yep. So these, this underwear originally, well, even before that, I should say, there was something called breach cloth and that was just basically strips of leather that just kind of hung down and covered your junk, maybe kept the gnats out, that kind of thing, right?
8:33 Speaker 02 Or kept them in.
8:34 Speaker 04 Yeah, if that was your thing.
8:37 Speaker 02 Sure.
8:37 Speaker 04 You'd probably catch some. And those are even older than the, the first underwear, which would be considered a loincloth.
8:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, of course.
8:47 Speaker 04 Which is basically that, and there are loincloths that are at least 5,000 years or 7,000 years old. And they are.
8:55 Speaker 04 Basically in a linen diaper. That is folded in a certain way, worn by grownups, including very famously, most recently Gandhi used to wear a loincloth everywhere. It was called a dhati, but it's a loincloth, no matter what you call it.
9:11 Speaker 02 That's right.
9:12 Speaker 04 So those stuck around for quite a while in the West, and it wasn't until basically the Middle Ages that someone said, "We can do better than this."
9:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, and they brought around these things that are, that were much longer than a loincloth. Most of them kinda, for my research, these braies, B-R-A-I-E-S, went below the knee even.
9:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, they were like a cross between a loincloth and jams.
9:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, sorta. It says here that they were laced to the waist and legs, but there may be lace under the waist, but they're also generally kinda rolled over many times at the waist.
9:50 Speaker 04 Right.
9:50 Speaker 02 I think to probably tighten it up a bit.
9:53 Speaker 04 Yeah, and everyone said, "Great, this'll work."
9:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, for a while.
9:56 Speaker 04 "I'm happy with this." And, you know, then it went a different way. We should do an entire episode just on corsets. I know there's a good article on the site on it. But after braies, the, what's called the Union Suit was invented.
10:12 Speaker 02 Whoop, dinner party fact.
10:14 Speaker 04 Okay, there you go. That was good.
10:16 Speaker 02 I never knew. I thought it was called a Union Suit because it had something, somewhere along the line to do with unions. But no, in fact, the word Union Suit, now we know them as long johns, even though long johns are generally two-piece. The one-piece Union Suit is called that because it is one-piece. It is the union of a top and a bottom undergarment.
10:36 Speaker 04 Yep, that's right. It's a one-piece long john with a flap in the bottom. They usually button all the way up front from the groin up to the neck.
10:44 Speaker 02 Do you have any of these?
10:45 Speaker 04 I'm wearing a couple pair right now, obviously. You just can't see them because they're under my clothes.
10:50 Speaker 02 Do you really have some?
10:51 Speaker 04 No, I have long johns. I've got these one called the silkies that work really well.
10:56 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
10:57 Speaker 04 But I don't have a Union Suit, no. Do you?
11:00 Speaker 02 No, I don't anymore. My brother still, Scott, swears by the Union Suit. I think he has the classic red, and then of course, they famously have, like you said, it's either called an access hatch. I've also seen them called a drop seat or a fireman's flap.
11:19 Speaker 04 Yeah, I saw that too.
11:20 Speaker 02 Uh, where you can-
11:21 Speaker 04 I can see that.
11:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, where you can unbutton your- You know, because generally you're wearing this out in the cold, so you don't want to strip down to the naked if you want to go pee pee or poo poo.
11:32 Speaker 04 Right.
11:32 Speaker 02 So you just open the old access hatch and there you have it.
11:35 Speaker 04 Yeah. Now that, see, that to me makes sense in the 19th century when the, the Union suit was invented. Today, though, it's like, I, I guess Scott just likes to add a little panic to when he has to tinkle. Like having to get that flap open.
11:50 Speaker 02 I think he's just a, a classicist, not classicist, a, who's someone who's into the classic things?
11:57 Speaker 04 Classicist?
11:58 Speaker 02 Oh, okay. That sounds like he doesn't like poor people.
12:02 Speaker 04 That's a classist.
12:03 Speaker 02 Oh, okay.
12:04 Speaker 04 That extra s uh makes a big difference.
12:06 Speaker 02 Okay, he's a classicist then.
12:08 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you should tell him this, here's another little sub dinner party factoid. Union suits were originally invented for women, from what I understand.
12:18 Speaker 02 All right.
12:19 Speaker 04 And they were invented in response to the corset craze, because apparently corsets were so out of hand. It was basically like, remember our foot binding episode?
12:26 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
12:27 Speaker 04 So that's basically what women in Europe and the United States, in the Western countries, were doing with corsets. They were engaging in, what was it, amounted to foot binding, but with their waists.
12:40 Speaker 02 Right.
12:41 Speaker 04 They were, they were literally deforming themselves.
12:43 Speaker 02 Right.
12:44 Speaker 04 Uh, using corsets and, and there was a reformation movement against the corset and against that look and what it spawned ultimately was the Union suit, which were so great that men were like, these are ours now.
12:57 Speaker 02 Right. Yeah, we should do one of corsets. I assume that they did this because men were like, no, more of an hourglass.
13:05 Speaker 04 Yeah, and, yeah, and I think that's where the reformation came out of like, just shut up, men.
13:10 Speaker 02 Right.
13:11 Speaker 04 Do you have any, like, we're disfigured now, thanks to you, you idiots.
13:16 Speaker 02 Uh, well, I hate to pack another dinner party fact right next to the other one, but that's kind of where we are.
13:21 Speaker 04 Mm hmm.
13:22 Speaker 02 So my second factoid that you should bring up next time you're among friends, or next time you see an injured friend, perhaps, is if they're using an ACE bandage, ask them what it stands for and they'll say, "Oh, what do you mean?" But it in fact is an an acronym, correct?
13:39 Speaker 04 Yes, it is.
13:39 Speaker 02 And what does it stand for?
13:41 Speaker 04 All cotton elastic ACE.
13:43 Speaker 02 All cotton elastic bandage. I never knew that until today.
13:46 Speaker 04 And it's been around since 1918, apparently.
13:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:49 Speaker 04 That the 3M company introduced it.
13:52 Speaker 02 Amazing.
13:54 Speaker 04 And so, so, okay, you've got an ACE bandage.
13:57 Speaker 02 Okay.
13:57 Speaker 04 Which is essentially, uh, an elastic waistband.
14:01 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
14:02 Speaker 04 Used to, to keep Shaq's elbow in place, right?
14:07 Speaker 02 Shaquille O'Neal?
14:08 Speaker 04 Yeah.
14:08 Speaker 02 All right.
14:11 Speaker 02 What year do you think this is?
14:12 Speaker 04 What's, what's crazy is, uh, this was 1918 that, that 3M introduced the ACE.
14:18 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
14:18 Speaker 04 And it took until the 40s before somebody thought, "Why don't we just like attach, like, underpants, a woolen cloth."
14:27 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:27 Speaker 04 To that.
14:28 Speaker 02 That is weird.
14:28 Speaker 04 And you just pull it up, snap it in place and be like, "Oh, baby, modal."
14:34 Speaker 02 I guess because, I mean, the only thing I can think of is because they were tying them and they just figured, "Well, that works pretty well for now."
14:41 Speaker 04 But yeah, I, I guess.
14:42 Speaker 02 You know?
14:43 Speaker 04 I mean, that's what, uh, that's what William Harris says. He says it was basically a sort of fashion inertia that's, everything was fine. Like you could use buttons or ties or something like that and keep it in place. So who cares?
14:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:56 Speaker 04 But it's just so much easier to pull up your underpants, snap them in place and go, "Oh, baby."
15:02 Speaker 02 That's right. Uh, but regardless of, um, what you're talking about here, these fabrics, including elastic, are made with a loom. And if you've ever seen a loom at work, uh, or a...
15:16 Speaker 04 At work?
15:17 Speaker 02 Yeah. It's amazing to watch.
15:18 Speaker 04 You come into work, you're like, "What the hell's this loom doing here?"
15:22 Speaker 02 Well, not at your job, but you know.
15:23 Speaker 04 I know what you mean.
15:24 Speaker 02 Sure.
15:24 Speaker 04 I was just being a wiseacre.
15:26 Speaker 02 If you've ever seen a loom doing its thing, it's pretty impressive. And what, I mean, it's really not that complicated either. Basically, all it's doing is allowing these lengthwise threads to be interlaced with widthwise threads.
15:41 Speaker 04 The Warp and the Weft.
15:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, which is not a bad band name, by the way.
15:44 Speaker 04 No, it's not, especially like proto-folk.
15:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, that's exactly what it would be. There would be at least three guys wearing vests in that band.
15:54 Speaker 04 For sure.
15:56 Speaker 02 That may have been woven with a loom.
15:59 Speaker 04 Yeah, right.
16:00 Speaker 02 You know?
16:01 Speaker 04 And maybe pocket watches with chains.
16:04 Speaker 02 Oh, totally.
16:05 Speaker 04 Yeah.
16:05 Speaker 02 But that's all a loom does. It goes, you know, it allows this interlacing to take place. And that's what's happening with elastic. It just takes the place of the yarn and it's.
16:16 Speaker 04 Well, part of the yarn, half of the yarn or a portion of the yarn.
16:19 Speaker 02 Well, yeah, because in the case of a waistband, you're obviously introducing other fabrics as well, like cotton, probably, or something else.
16:26 Speaker 04 Yeah, and that's the case with any elastic. Elastic is, again, it's a type of fiber woven together with some sort of rubber and to create this new stretchy, resilient fabric.
16:43 Speaker 02 That's right.
16:44 Speaker 04 Elastic.
16:44 Speaker 02 You want to take a nose blow break?
16:46 Speaker 04 I'm dying here. Thank you, Charles.
16:49 Speaker 02 Sure.
17:02 Speaker 05 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
17:04 Josh Clark? Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.
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17:23 Speaker 05 It was good to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
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18:07 Josh Clark? Sure.
18:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, because it's a process. There's always something you could do or buy or update. The only question is, what's next? For us, our animals just wear out our rugs so quickly. It's usually a new rug.
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19:52 Speaker 04 All right, we're back.
19:53 Speaker 02 You good?
19:54 Speaker 04 Yeah, I should say also, like, I keep hammering home what the definition of elastic is. Now, we're talking about elastic waistbands, and that's what you think of typically, but, again, any fabric with fiber of one type and rubber woven together is elastic, and that has tons and tons of uses.
20:12 Speaker 02 Oh, sure.
20:12 Speaker 04 Like, bungee cords are elastic, right?
20:17 Speaker 04 You know? Everything else that's like that is like elastic.
20:22 Speaker 02 Well, you know, in your socks, a lot of times, there'll be, I mean, there's elastic, and, you know, we'll get to spandex later, but that stuff is in many, many, many garments that you wear today, and you may not even realize that you have this stuff in your clothing.
20:36 Speaker 04 Right.
20:37 Speaker 02 Everything from the neck of your shirt, perhaps, to maybe the tongue of your shoes sometimes.
20:45 Speaker 04 Yeah.
20:45 Speaker 02 Fancy shoes will have elastic in them.
20:47 Speaker 04 Those jeans that you wear to Thanksgiving dinner, they have an elastic waist?
20:53 Speaker 02 Oh, I know which jeans you're talking about. I don't wear those.
20:57 Speaker 04 They're pleated jeans, which is just weird looking.
21:00 Speaker 02 I just wear buttonflies.
21:01 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah, so you just go pop?
21:04 Speaker 02 Yep, pop a couple out, and you're all set.
21:07 Speaker 04 That's right, you can stuff a lot of extra bits in there.
21:10 Speaker 02 Uh, all right, so let's, um, should we get in the wayback machine a bit and go back to, uh, the 18th and, uh, I guess the 19th and 18th centuries, huh?
21:21 Speaker 04 Yep.
21:27 Speaker 02 All right, we're pirates.
21:29 Speaker 04 Oh, man, I'm glad you brought that up. I read this really interesting article. I found it, I think, on Longform, but it's from the National Endowment for the Humanities, like, magazine website? And this guy wrote an article about how just thoroughly we misunderstand pirates.
21:48 Speaker 02 Oh, really?
21:48 Speaker 04 And how our conception of pirates took place, basically, in one decade between 17, I think, 26 and 36. And everything we think of as pirates is crammed into that 10 years. Everything before and after is totally different from our conception of pirates and that they were actually very frequently, they were just sailors who would go attack like a vessel in the Indian Ocean for one big haul and then flee to the colonies and buy a bunch of pigs and set up a farm and live as like upstanding citizens from that point on. And some of them were like lieutenant governors. Um, it was a really interesting article that I recommend tremendously, obviously.
22:28 Speaker 02 Did we not cover that in our pirates episode 18 years ago?
22:33 Speaker 04 No, we wouldn't have known that. This is a brand new article.
22:36 Speaker 02 Oh, well.
22:36 Speaker 04 I'm sure we just totally fell for everything.
22:39 Speaker 02 Right.
22:39 Speaker 04 And apparently that's, it's not, we, like, that's not our fault. That this guy's article and idea is, is pretty new.
22:48 Speaker 02 It's just one of these things historically, everyone kind of bought in on.
22:51 Speaker 04 Mm hmm.
22:51 Speaker 02 Interesting.
22:52 Speaker 04 Yep.
22:53 Speaker 02 Send me that, William.
22:54 Speaker 04 You got it.
22:55 Speaker 02 Uh, all right. So we're talking pirates here, not just pirates, but sailors, explorers, basically anyone who got on a ship in the 17 and 18 hundreds, uh, early 18 hundreds and, and went exploring.
23:07 Speaker 04 Yeah.
23:07 Speaker 02 And, uh, they, you know, what they did was they would go off and find things that they didn't have in their home country. Say, oh my God, what is this? Let me bring it back.
23:16 Speaker 04 Yeah. And cinnamon, remember our cinnamon episode?
23:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely. That's a great example. Uh, but one of the things they found in, uh, Central and South America was, uh, what the French called, uh, cauchouc.
23:28 Speaker 04 Nice.
23:29 Speaker 02 And, uh, it's an Indian term meaning weeping wood. And it's basically what they're talking about are, now, is it an actual rubber tree?
23:37 Speaker 04 Yep. Hevia brasiliensis.
23:40 Speaker 02 The rubber tree, which literally oozes milky latex.
23:45 Speaker 04 Yeah.
23:46 Speaker 02 Naturally.
23:46 Speaker 04 Yeah. And the, the earliest sailors that encountered, um, the indigenous natives of the Amazon were like, what's that stuff you're like putting out on your outerwear and it's keeping the rain out or what's that weird flexible bottle you're, you're using? And they, they explained it to them and those guys said, awesome. You know who will love this? My fellow Europeans. So they took it back with them.
24:11 Speaker 02 And then they said, and what are those awesome drugs that you give us in liquid form every night after dinner?
24:16 Speaker 04 They said, oh, yeah, Huska.
24:17 Speaker 02 Yeah. And they went, we'll take some of that home too.
24:19 Speaker 04 Yeah. Can we get a to-go bag of that stuff?
24:23 Speaker 02 So yeah, they they were already using the stuff because they found out when when it was dried out, basically, you could use it for a lot of things, like you said, bottles, shoes, it's just like this, you know, flexible, rubbery material.
24:37 Speaker 04 Yeah, right. So everything's hunky dory. This is a brand new thing. Europe's starting to go crazy for it. But what they figured out pretty quickly was that you you couldn't do a lot with it, right? It was we'll find out later. Rubber has an unusual natural chemistry. And it just so happens that in the normal range of temperatures outside of the tropics, it can tend to fall apart pretty easily.
25:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:05 Speaker 04 It has a narrow range of temperatures that that allow its usefulness, right? So once you take it up to above the equator to say, like, Europe or the United States or whatever, and they did, they thought it was great. They thought it was terrific. People went crazy for it. Joseph Priestley actually came up with a dinner party factoid that I'm sure you'd love to share.
25:27 Speaker 02 Uh, ooh, which one?
25:29 Speaker 04 Oh, you didn't. This wasn't one of them?
25:31 Speaker 02 No, I blew mine on the two.
25:34 Speaker 04 Joseph Priestley, who was very famous chemist, Jason Priestley's triple great uncle, we'll say.
25:42 Speaker 02 He made that same joke in the anesthesia episode.
25:45 Speaker 04 I'll bet we did.
25:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:46 Speaker 04 Because, yeah, that's where he popped up. That's right. Thanks for that. Oh, and the nitrous oxide one, too.
25:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
25:52 Speaker 04 So he got his hands on some of this because everybody's like, he's the only chemist alive right now. Give it to him. And he's like, you know what? This is amazing. I'm writing in pencil, and then I'm rubbing this this latex.
26:03 Speaker 02 Oh.
26:04 Speaker 04 Kahachuk. And it's it's rubbing out the pencil marks. And that gave rise to the term rubber.
26:13 Speaker 02 Oh, that's how the name?
26:14 Speaker 04 Yeah.
26:15 Speaker 02 Came around?
26:15 Speaker 04 Yep.
26:16 Speaker 02 From rubbing?
26:17 Speaker 04 From rubbing out pencil marks, erasing, rubber.
26:20 Speaker 02 Interesting.
26:21 Speaker 04 Because remember, the British loved to change everything with an er on the end, like soccer is actually shortened association. Football, like a soccer.
26:30 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
26:31 Speaker 04 Became soccer.
26:32 Speaker 02 Right.
26:32 Speaker 04 There you go. Rubber.
26:35 Speaker 02 That's pretty interesting. I don't know how I skirted past that one.
26:38 Speaker 04 I love that one.
26:39 Speaker 02 So it became a big deal and everyone, um, you know, that had a little money to invest thought, hey, we can make a lot of dough with this stuff. We can transform that into something useful, like let's say in a garment. But like you said, they had this problem that was a very narrow range of temperatures where they could find it useful. So a couple of dudes.
27:01 Speaker 02 Started working on it. We've talked about Mr. Charles Goodyear before.
27:05 Speaker 04 What did we talk about him in?
27:07 Speaker 02 I don't know, but I, I mean, definitely the Goodyear blimps episode. But, um, it seems like, do we not do one in vulcanization?
27:16 Speaker 04 I don't remember. I was looking up rubber or something because some of the stuff in the extra source that I sent you was kind of like. I feel like we've talked about this before. Yeah.
27:25 Speaker 02 Uh, we haven't done this entire episode, have we?
27:27 Speaker 04 No, definitely not.
27:28 Speaker 02 Okay.
27:29 Speaker 04 If so, then I really am just totally out of my mind.
27:33 Speaker 02 So Goodyear was one. He was working in the U S and then another guy named Thomas Hancock, an English inventor. Partnered with a dude named Charles McIntosh. And they started making raincoats, basically.
27:45 Speaker 04 Yeah, the McIntosh.
27:47 Speaker 02 The classic McIntosh.
27:49 Speaker 04 Yeah. And so Charles or Thomas Hancock was already pretty well situated to, he was already working on it, right?
27:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
27:57 Speaker 04 But Charles Goodyear, um, had that breakthrough first and it was actually a really big deal that he had this breakthrough. Cause in the early 1830s, Charles Goodyear basically became obsessed with cracking the rubber coat. He just knew it could be used to, to be. Made into something useful, right?
28:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:16 Speaker 04 And he became so personally committed to it. He, all of his investors went away. He went into debtor's prison so regularly, he referred to it as his hotel. Six of his 12 children didn't make it to adulthood. They were just that poor.
28:31 Speaker 02 Oh, man.
28:32 Speaker 04 They, um, they had to sell their dinnerware. So he made plates for him out of rubber. It was really, really rough. So the idea that he had this breakthrough.
28:42 Speaker 04 Was just enormously rewarding for him, right? Unfortunately, as he was shopping this stuff around this vulcanization process or the vulcanized rubber. Some of it fell into the hands of Thomas Hancock and he reverse engineered it.
28:56 Speaker 02 Yeah. And what he basically discovered was if you slow cooked latex with sulfur. It could, it could basically transform rubber into a very durable material that uh it, it was hardy under all kinds of temperature ranges. It would always snap back.
29:12 Speaker 04 Yep.
29:12 Speaker 02 Um, well, not always and forever, which we'll get to later too. As you know, that waistband will sometimes leave you disappointed eventually. That's why you end up buying new underwear. Um, well, one of a couple of reasons you buy new underwear.
29:29 Speaker 04 Or take it to the thrift store.
29:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. Uh, but yeah, he, that is what vulcanization is and um Hancock and Macintosh, what they were doing, uh, they didn't crack that code first, but they um,
29:43 Speaker 02 they developed called something called the masticator. Basically, they had been, been making elastic threads by slicing it from rubber bottles and raw rubber, but there was just so much waste. They developed this machine uh called a masticator and it would basically chew up this rubber and make it into uh meld it together and make it into a big single sheet of material, which was really helpful.
30:05 Speaker 04 Yeah.
30:05 Speaker 02 But they still had that temperature problem until uh Goodyear hit it.
30:08 Speaker 04 Right. And, and again, they reverse engineered Goodyear's process, went and filed a patent on vulcanization.
30:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, did they rip him off like fully?
30:16 Speaker 04 Yes, yes.
30:17 Speaker 02 Wow.
30:17 Speaker 04 Fully. And um apparently it was one of those ones like the phone where Goodyear went to go file a patent and found out that uh someone else had that Hancock had just a few weeks earlier.
30:26 Speaker 02 Uh.
30:27 Speaker 04 So he took him to court. Um, in order to settle Hancock offered Goodyear 50% of the patent to drop the lawsuit. And Goodyear said no, and he lost the case and he died broke.
30:40 Speaker 02 Oh, man.
30:40 Speaker 04 But he was able to um, he was able to generate enough royalties so that his kids were able to uh to live the good life thanks to him. Um, but he uh, yeah, he got ripped off for sure. And uh one other thing about the, about Charles Goodyear, the Goodyear Rubber or Tire and Rubber Company, uh he, he had nothing to do with it. They named it after him in honor of him.
31:03 Speaker 02 Oh, wow.
31:04 Speaker 04 Yeah, I, I thought that was pretty cool.
31:06 Speaker 02 Uh, you don't watch the TV show Shark Tank, do you?
31:09 Speaker 04 I do not.
31:10 Speaker 02 Uh, I think I've asked you that before. I, you know, the whole concept, right? Is these people pitch their businesses to them?
31:15 Speaker 04 Yeah, well, surrounded by sharks swimming.
31:17 Speaker 02 Well, yeah, that's it. Now they pitch them to the sharks and they either invest or they don't. Everyone kind of knows the show, but you, I guess. But I'm always at home just yelling at these people when, you know, they'll offer up like 20% of their company. And then they'll get offered an investment from a shark for, you know, and say, but they want like 40%. And some of these people like turn around and walk away, which on one hand, I kind of respect that they don't want to give away that much of their company. But like, I'm always just thinking, wouldn't you rather own 60% of a $20 million company than 80% of a $3 million company?
31:57 Speaker 04 Yeah.
31:57 Speaker 02 Like sometimes I think pride gets in the way with these people.
32:01 Speaker 04 Sure, yeah.
32:02 Speaker 02 And they don't think about just how big these people can make their company.
32:05 Speaker 04 Yeah.
32:06 Speaker 02 I don't know.
32:07 Speaker 04 Who's that company though, that, that turned down a billion dollars from either Google or Facebook? And just kept at it and now it's-
32:16 Speaker 02 MySpace?
32:18 Speaker 04 No, I can't. It's one of like the big social media brands that you know of. That, that now is just worth Gob's more money than-
32:27 Speaker 02 Oh, really?
32:27 Speaker 04 Yeah.
32:28 Speaker 02 Yeah. I mean, you know, there is no recipe. Like sometimes it is better to hold on to more of your own company. Cause if it gets big, then you own that much more of it. But-
32:36 Speaker 04 That's right.
32:37 Speaker 02 I'm always kind of like, man, take the money now.
32:40 Speaker 04 And run, as Steve Miller suggested. Did you know Steve Miller's a Scientologist?
32:45 Speaker 02 Is he really?
32:46 Speaker 04 Yeah.
32:47 Speaker 02 Boy, he went off on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year.
32:49 Speaker 04 Why did they not vote for nominate him?
32:52 Speaker 02 No, no, no. He got inducted and like basically trashed them on his way in and out the door.
32:58 Speaker 04 Why?
32:59 Speaker 02 Oh, you'll just have to read it. It's kind of too long to get into, but they, they were none too happy. I think he came across as just a really crabby old guy.
33:07 Speaker 04 Oh, he didn't have like a point or anything?
33:09 Speaker 02 No, he had points, but um- Yeah, you'll just have to check it out.
33:14 Speaker 04 I will.
33:15 Speaker 02 We're already getting sidetracked here.
33:17 Speaker 04 Oh, we've been sidetracked, baby. So when, regardless of who came up with it, even though it was Charles Goodyear, once vulcanization was introduced to the world, all of a sudden, all of these dreams of what you could do with a flexible, durable material that could withstand tremendous pressure and force and heat, and cold too, which was a big one. All of a sudden, the whole world just opened up. And what was interesting, Chuck, was because it also dovetailed with the Industrial Revolution, Brazil, which was the rubber tree capital at the time, went from just being like this kind of old world colony to basically being one of the most important countries on the
34:02 Speaker 04 planet, like virtually within a year or so.
34:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, and that was true, geez, for a long time until about the mid to late, about 1876, when these British businessmen said, "I'm going to sneak these rubber tree seeds out, take them back to England, and we're going to see if these things grow in Southeast Asia, where we have a lot of British colonies," and it turns out it did. And just about 35 years later, the center of the global rubber market shifted to Malaysia, Singapore, and Sri Lanka.
34:35 Speaker 04 The British are thieves in this one.
34:37 Speaker 02 So they kind of like totally ripped that off.
34:39 Speaker 04 Yeah.
34:40 Speaker 02 And Southeast Asia was the dominating rubber capital of the world.
34:44 Speaker 04 Which was way better for the Brits and the Americans, because we're friends with the Brits, because that meant that these were, these were British colonies, which meant that the access to this rubber was basically unfettered.
34:58 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:58 Speaker 04 There were no trade deals. You didn't have to wine and dine a prince or a king or anything like that. You could just be like, "We need more rubber, please."
35:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:07 Speaker 04 Which is, I think, how they would order it.
35:10 Speaker 02 Probably so.
35:11 Speaker 04 So everything's going hunky dory, at least as far as the British and Americans are concerned. The, the rubber supply is being fulfilled, thanks to Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka. And um, it, it came at no too soon a time too, because the automobile was introduced around this time, the mass-produced automobile, we should say, and those needed four good tires, made of rubber.
35:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, and then World War II really, really increased the need for rubber. Um, I think here it says that in total, the Pentagon said that they needed 32 pounds of rubber for every single ground troop, in one way or another.
35:52 Speaker 04 Right.
35:52 Speaker 02 That's amazing.
35:54 Speaker 04 Yeah, and that's why it was such a big deal that the Japanese invaded the Pacific, because that, the, the Pacific Theater featured those countries that were the rubber-producing capital of the world.
36:05 Speaker 02 That's right.
36:05 Speaker 04 That had been under British con- control. And um, now all of a sudden, our rubber supply was either cut off or in danger. So the United States, led by FDR, said, hey, uh, four biggest rubber companies, we're gonna get together and we need to come up with a synthetic rubber toot-sweet.
36:23 Speaker 02 Right.
36:23 Speaker 04 So let's get on it. We're all gonna split the patent evenly, and uh, let's get to work. And in 18 months, they had come up with a synthetic rubber.
36:31 Speaker 02 Amazing.
36:32 Speaker 04 Yep.
36:33 Speaker 02 Uh, and we'll get to synthetics a bit more in a minute, but jumping back to the mid 1800s, the story of the rubber band is pretty interesting.
36:40 Speaker 04 Mm-hmm.
36:40 Speaker 02 Uh, these two chaps, uh, Stephen Perry and Thomas Barnabas Daft, great name.
36:46 Speaker 04 Mm-hmm.
36:47 Speaker 02 Uh, TBD, actually, uh, invented the rubber band, the modern, what we know as a rubber band, because they started slicing these, uh, they had a rubber tube and started slicing these narrow rings from a vulcanized rubber tube, and they were like, here you go, it's called a rubber band, you can put it around your asparagus.
37:05 Speaker 04 Yeah.
37:05 Speaker 02 And everyone was super psyched.
37:07 Speaker 04 Yeah, except people who ate asparagus. That was a good one, man.
37:11 Speaker 02 Uh, and today, they still kinda do it in the same way, um, rubber band-wise. They create this, uh, they mix this latex together, um, with all these chemicals, it depends on, you know, what kind of rubber band you're making. And they get this raw rubber compound, uh, into a long hollow tube, slip it over a round pipe called the mandrel, expose that to high heat and pressure to vulcanize it, it cures it, and then they slice that up into rubber bands.
37:39 Speaker 04 Yep.
37:40 Speaker 02 Pretty neat.
37:41 Speaker 04 It is pretty neat. You want to take a break and then talk some more about how it's made?
37:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, right after this.
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41:06 Speaker 02 All right, so we've been talking about rubber in its most natural form, and how they transform that into usable rubber is pretty remarkable, but immediately after World War II, like we were talking about, this creation of synthetic rubber was probably the second biggest invention of all time. Well, maybe not of all time.
41:28 Josh Clark? It's up there, though.
41:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, but when it comes to stretchy things, for sure.
41:31 Josh Clark? Yeah, and apparently the World War II research and development produced not just one, but three different types of easily manufactured synthetic rubbers.
41:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
41:44 Josh Clark? One was a butadiene rubber, another was a styrene butadiene rubber, and that was the one that the government went with for World War II.
41:53 Speaker 02 Right.
41:53 Josh Clark? And it was actually ripped off from a German, from the Germans, which they'd come up with something similar previously. And then there's an ethylene propylene monomer.
42:03 Speaker 04 And all three of those make up most of today's synthetic rubbers.
42:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, and they found that this stuff worked really, really well, just as good as natural rubber. It had all that flex resistance.
42:16 Speaker 02 It didn't deteriorate. Eventually it would. Again, I keep teasing like we're gonna get to that, which we will. But they found it was really well-suited to replace rubber.
42:27 Speaker 04 Well, in most applications, like an industrial application, like a tire or a fan belt or something like that. But it didn't have that resilience that that natural rubber has. So there was an issue still. There was a kink that needed to be worked out.
42:42 Speaker 02 Well, yeah, as far as using it in textiles, for sure.
42:44 Speaker 04 Exactly. And they actually overcame it in 1959. And by they, I mean DuPont Corporation, who employed two chemists that got to work trying to crack this code. The final code of synthetic rubber. How to make it flexible and resilient, right?
43:02 Speaker 02 That's right.
43:03 Speaker 04 And they they started by using a polymer, a polyurethane. Right? So, well, we'll talk about polymers in a little bit, but basically, they they they took a polymer, a urethane-based polymer, and watered it down and forced it through a plate with tiny little holes in it. And what came on the outside were these tiny little threads.
43:25 Speaker 02 Yep.
43:26 Speaker 04 And those tiny little threads were a magical creation known as spandex, the trade name of which originally is Lycra.
43:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's amazing. And spandex, they found, had a lot of great applications, namely, it could accept dyes, so it wasn't just this sort of dull white color. You could make it any color you wanted to. And you could wash it. It didn't absorb a lot of moisture, and it remained really stable when it was washed and dried, you know, kind of normal, moderate temperatures. So, hey, you can make this, weave it into clothing, throw it in the washer, dye it whatever color you want, and you're good to go.
44:03 Speaker 04 And, and, most importantly, Chuck, it would snap back. It would retain its original shape.
44:09 Speaker 02 That's right.
44:10 Speaker 04 After being stretched. So, yes, spandex changed everything. I didn't realize it was from the 50s.
44:15 Speaker 02 I didn't either. Yeah.
44:16 Speaker 04 And William Harris makes a pretty good point. He says that spandex might be considered the modern elastic.
44:22 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
44:23 Speaker 04 Like it is, it's basically the base of anything stretchy that you use today.
44:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, and it said here, we said it's in all kinds of stuff. They said it's in about 80% of all clothing bought by Americans.
44:34 Speaker 04 Mm hmm.
44:35 Speaker 02 So even if you don't think spandex is in something, it may have a little spandex in there.
44:39 Speaker 04 It's in 80% of all clothing bought by Americans, 100% of all spandex pants bought by Americans.
44:45 Speaker 02 (laughing)
44:47 Speaker 04 Think about that stat for a little while.
44:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's amazing.
44:50 Speaker 04 Yeah, including jeggings, he points out. He calls them pajama jeans, but I've always called them jeggings.
44:56 Speaker 02 Oh, is that the same thing?
44:58 Speaker 04 I believe so, yeah.
45:00 Speaker 02 Interesting.
45:01 Speaker 04 I hope so.
45:02 Speaker 02 Emily, when we put them on her daughter, she calls them jazzy pants.
45:07 Speaker 04 Oh yeah, that's a good one, too.
45:08 Speaker 02 But that's, I think, usually due to the pattern more than the snapback.
45:13 Speaker 04 Gotcha.
45:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
45:15 Speaker 04 So we can sit here and procrastinate for several more minutes if you want, but ultimately, we're gonna end up on the chemistry part, you realize?
45:23 Speaker 02 Yes, and because I don't understand chemistry at all, take it away.
45:32 Speaker 04 (laughing) We'll get you for this, Chuck.
45:35 Speaker 02 I'll throw in some words here and there.
45:37 Speaker 04 So I don't really know chemistry either, but I know both of us crammed on this.
45:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
45:42 Speaker 04 So forgive us, all you chemists out there. If we get something wrong, let us know. But from what we understand...
45:48 Speaker 02 It's magic.
45:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, there you go. The end. So rubber, whether it's natural or synthetic, is a polymer.
45:56 Speaker 02 Yes.
45:57 Speaker 04 Right? And it's a specific kind of polymer called an elastomer. It's an elastic polymer. It has stretchiness and resilience. It's flexible.
46:05 Speaker 02 That's right.
46:06 Speaker 04 And any kind of polymer is, basically, if you look at the molecular structure of it, it's made up of these long, repeating chains of the same unit over and over again. The units are called monomers. Depending on what the monomer is, that leads to different kinds of polymers. And with elastomers in particular...
46:27 Speaker 04 If you look at some polymers, the the structure is bulky and big and compact and it's rigid and heavy and not flexible at all.
46:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:36 Speaker 04 Still, other kind of polymers, say like a plastic or a resin, are crystalline in structure, and they fit so well together, they're also rigid and not very flexible either.
46:47 Speaker 02 Yes.
46:47 Speaker 04 Then you have elastomers, which are a kind of polymer, and because of their molecular structure, they are super flexible, super stretchy, and they snap back into place.
46:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, and normally, they're, I mean, they liken it to this article, like a coiled, like a big mass of snakes.
47:05 Speaker 04 Yeah.
47:06 Speaker 02 But they have this really neat quality, these elastomers, when you apply force to it, the molecules actually straighten out in the direction that you're pulling it, and that's sort of the snapback you're talking about, but as soon as you release it, it goes back to that coiled up arrangement.
47:19 Speaker 04 Right, when you pull it, when you apply force, they line up basically like those snakes, head to tail, in one single long line.
47:26 Speaker 02 It's a scary snake.
47:28 Speaker 04 Yeah, and then when you release it, it goes back into its original form of that that coiled mass, right?
47:33 Speaker 02 Right.
47:33 Speaker 04 Perfect, okay. One of the reasons why any kind of rubber, natural or synthetic, is flexible, a flexible polymer, is because its glass transition temperature is actually pretty low.
47:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, this is where I've kind of just got foggy.
47:48 Speaker 04 So this is, it's as simple as this, Chuck, a glass transition temperature, it's not a melting point. A melting point is where the substance actually, basically, just turns into a liquid state, a disordered liquid state.
48:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
48:01 Speaker 04 The glass transition temperature doesn't affect the molecular makeup of the substance. Instead, it basically applies this property, flexibility or rigidity.
48:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
48:15 Speaker 04 It's as simple as that, right?
48:16 Speaker 02 Okay.
48:17 Speaker 04 And so, anything that has a low glass transition temperature, relative to what we have as normal temperatures outside in the world, or in our homes, or whatever, is going to be flexible and floppy. Anything with a high glass transition temperature is going to be rigid.
48:37 Speaker 04 And, and, um, hard and, and not flexible.
48:40 Speaker 02 Ah, okay.
48:40 Speaker 04 So it's, uh, it just suffice to say, anything rubber, whether it's natural or synthetic, has a low glass transition temperature, so it's flexible under normal temperatures. But even if you, if you took a, um, a piece of rubber, natural rubber.
48:55 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
48:55 Speaker 04 And you applied, uh, you applied the temperature of negative seventy degrees Celsius or negative ninety-four degrees Fahrenheit, it would crystallize. It's below the glass transition temperature, so it would just basically turn rigid and crystallize and ultimately would break apart. And that was part of the problem with those early pre-vulcanized rubbers.
49:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
49:15 Speaker 04 They would fall apart because the glass transition temperature is not like a, a, exact moment where the, where the thing converts from flexible to rigid. It's, it's the median of a, a large thermal window where it starts to, um, get, get crystalline and rigid and then is completely crystalline and rigid on the other end. So of course you would think, you know, if you get down to say twenty degrees like it would in Boston or New York in the nineteenth century and you're walking around with rubber-soled shoes, they're going to crystallize and break off.
49:49 Speaker 02 Right.
49:50 Speaker 04 That's what's going on. It all has to do with the glass transition temperature.
49:53 Speaker 02 Oh, okay. So during vulcanization, they heat that up with sulfur and that makes those polymer chains link together with sulfur atoms. I guess that's like, uh, almost like a glue?
50:04 Speaker 04 Pretty, yeah, like, it's like a molecular glue from what I understand, yeah.
50:07 Speaker 02 Okay, that makes a lot of sense.
50:09 Speaker 04 Yep. So, so even when you apply intense heat, um, or extreme cold, it will, um, maintain its molecular shape.
50:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, but here's the thing. I've been talking about, uh, why your elastic band doesn't last forever and why your socks will eventually be around your ankles. Um, this elastic eventually will lose that snapback due to oxid, uh, oxidization. Oxidization?
50:31 Speaker 04 Oxidation. I like oxidization.
50:35 Speaker 02 Natural rubber, this oxygen and in particular ozone is going to start breaking those bonds within just days. So it happens pretty quickly. And that's why we heat and treat rubber like we do. But even still, over time, that ozone and combine that with light UV radiation, it's another culprit. That's what's going to cause that to eventually break down over time.
50:59 Speaker 04 That would make sense because with vulcanization, what you're doing is adding sulfur to the polymer, right?
51:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
51:07 Speaker 04 And if it would, it would make sense then that either UV radiation or something else could break those bonds between the sulfur and the other, the other ingredients. And then they would be replaced by oxygen. So oxidation would take place, right?
51:23 Speaker 02 Yeah. So it's pretty much ozone, UV radiation, and then cold actually does make a difference. It's not going to hold up quite as well in cold weather. Like if you take, if you take a pair of underwear out in like, you know, negative 20 degrees in Minnesota, and you start really stretching it out a lot, it's gonna, it's gonna lose its elasticity really fast.
51:43 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah. Anybody from Minnesota can tell you that.
51:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, who knows? They may have to buy more underwear than like Hawaii. I have no idea.
51:53 Speaker 04 They all wear Union suits up there.
51:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's true.
51:56 Speaker 04 So you want to finish with Pat Benatar?
52:00 Speaker 02 Oh, man. Let's bring her out.
52:02 Speaker 04 Okay.
52:04 Speaker 02 Come on, Pat.
52:05 Speaker 04 She's gonna do an acoustic set.
52:07 Speaker 02 Man, how great would that be?
52:08 Speaker 04 So we did a little digging and we were trying to figure out who basically started the 80s spandex rocker trend.
52:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:19 Speaker 04 The rocker spandex trend.
52:20 Speaker 02 She was the first thing that came to my mind.
52:22 Speaker 04 Oh, really?
52:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, I just didn't know exactly how.
52:25 Speaker 04 I, I would have guessed it went back beyond Pat Benatar. And then I found out that Pat Benatar has been a musician for much longer than I realized.
52:33 Speaker 02 Right.
52:33 Speaker 04 But apparently, the whole thing happened on Halloween of 1977.
52:39 Speaker 02 Awesome.
52:40 Speaker 04 And by this time, Pat Benatar was already like a pretty regular fixture on the New York City club circuit. And so she dressed up as a character from Catwomen of the Moon. Have you seen that movie?
52:51 Speaker 02 Uh, no.
52:52 Speaker 04 I haven't either, but apparently Catwoman on the Moon is a cult classic sci-fi movie.
52:57 Speaker 02 Okay.
52:58 Speaker 04 And I guess they wear a lot of spandex. So she dressed up in some spandex getup and decided to play a show that night at Catch a Rising Star, which is basically her house club. You ever been there?
53:09 Speaker 02 No.
53:10 Speaker 04 I haven't either.
53:10 Speaker 02 Is it still around?
53:12 Speaker 04 I don't know. Is it? I think I know of it from like Comedy Central in the 90s.
53:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think that was the name of a show.
53:19 Speaker 04 But I think it was from that club.
53:21 Speaker 02 Oh, was it filmed there?
53:22 Speaker 04 Yeah, I think so.
53:23 Speaker 02 Oh, okay.
53:23 Speaker 04 Could be wrong. But anyway, she was used to playing shows there, but she played the show in this getup, the spandex getup, and noticed that the crowd was like into it a lot more than usual.
53:34 Speaker 02 And then they said, wowee, wow, what's she wearing?
53:37 Speaker 04 Pretty much. It was about as simple as that. She, um, she was like, okay, let me try this. I want to do a little experiment. And, um, I'm going to do this again, but not on Halloween. I'm going to dress up again and do the same show. And she did and got another response, like way better than usual response. So she's like, that's it. I'm doing spandex from now on.
53:58 Speaker 02 Wow.
53:58 Speaker 04 And that was that. 1977, Pat Benatar starts the 80s spandex rocker trend.
54:05 Speaker 02 I would count that as the fourth dinner party factoid.
54:08 Speaker 04 Yeah, I would say so too.
54:10 Speaker 02 And if you want a fifth, Catch a Rising Star is a chain of comedy clubs and was also a TV series in Canada.
54:18 Speaker 04 To now. You got anything else?
54:22 Speaker 02 Uh, no.
54:23 Speaker 04 Well, that's it for Elastic, everybody. If you want to know more about it, type that word into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And who knows what amazing things will come up?
54:33 Speaker 02 That's right.
54:34 Speaker 04 And since I said search bar, it's time for listener man.
54:39 Speaker 02 Uh, yeah, I'm gonna call this, um, short, but kinda funny. Uh, hey, guys, quick and trivial email from a fan in Pittsburgh. Uh, I too appreciated, uh, in your, uh, was the episode on, uh, body snatching, uh, live episode on grave robbing, I too appreciated how cool Charlie Chaplin's body robber's partner's name was, Gancho Ganev. And I tell ya, we did that show a few times and you and I never cease to not crack up at the words Gancho Ganev.
55:10 Speaker 04 That's true, it's still happening.
55:12 Speaker 02 Uh, being Jewish, I thought a little Hebrew-Yiddish, uh, languages were involved, and Ganev, in fact, does mean thief.
55:20 Speaker 04 Oh, really?
55:21 Speaker 02 And, uh, then he stretches it a bit. Then he says, "Gancho, for that matter, seems to be Spanish for hook-like dance moves." And he said Charlie Chaplin was a dancer. He said, "So maybe that's a stretch on the second part, but it seems as though Gancho Ganev was born to steal Charlie Chaplin's body."
55:39 Speaker 04 Wow.
55:40 Speaker 02 Uh, I'll give you props on the, uh, Ganev part at least. And that is from BD Walberg, and he said, "P.S. You might remember me from Pittsburgh at your live show. Uh, I asked a question in the Q&A about how you find new ways to rip on the post office, and I still remember I gave my Trader Joe's bag to somebody in the audience."
56:02 Speaker 04 Mm-hmm.
56:03 Speaker 02 And that was BD. He still has, I still have Chuck's Trader Joe's bag hanging in my kitchen.
56:08 Speaker 04 Nice, man. Well, thanks a lot, BD, we appreciate it. That was, uh, it would've been even more ironic had he been referencing the DB Cooper episode.
56:18 Speaker 02 Oh, did you hear about the new, uh, info?
56:19 Speaker 04 I did, and it actually makes a lot of sense to me.
56:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, so for anyone that hasn't seen, uh, they found some actual new science that, uh, seems to indicate, they found these four elements in the tie that BD, uh, DB Cooper wore, and apparently these elements are very specific to work being done by the Boeing company.
56:41 Speaker 04 Yep.
56:42 Speaker 02 So it gives a lot of credence to the theory that he was a Boeing employee.
56:47 Speaker 04 And even more specifically, because it was on his tie, if he were like working the actual machines that were manufacturing this thing, he would have been wearing like coveralls or something, not a tie. So it indicates that if he worked for Boeing, he would have been like an engineer or a manager who would have been wearing a tie on the floor while he was out there.
57:05 Speaker 02 Like, I think this is like the biggest lead they've ever had.
57:08 Speaker 04 I think so, too.
57:09 Speaker 02 Pretty amazing.
57:10 Speaker 04 Yep. You know who's excited about it? Secret.
57:13 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. Boy.
57:15 Speaker 04 If you want to know what we're talking about, we did a DB Cooper episode, and this popped in.
57:20 Speaker 02 That's right.
57:20 Speaker 04 Popped up.
57:21 Speaker 02 It's a live episode that we hope will be available to you soon.
57:26 Speaker 04 What else?
57:27 Speaker 02 Oh, and actually, wow. Boy, this is exciting. We just got literally an email reply from BD. Because I said we were going to be reading this, and I think this bears mentioning. What a daymaker, guys. If you use a pronoun for me, I go by they and them rather than he or she.
57:46 Speaker 04 I know who you're talking about.
57:47 Speaker 02 Because I am a non-binary listener. What up?
57:51 Speaker 04 What up, BD? Thank you. It's good to hear from you.
57:53 Speaker 02 And I'd love to surprise my BFF Carlisle with a great big audio high five.
57:58 Speaker 04 Well, I think that just happened.
57:59 Speaker 02 Wow. All right. This is like real time correction slash back and forth with BD.
58:05 Speaker 04 Let's just see what hap- email Obama real quick. We'll sit here. Let's see what happens next. We're just gonna take this for- we're gonna take this ride.
58:14 Speaker 02 All right. Well, thank you, BD.
58:16 Speaker 04 Yeah. Thanks a lot, BD. Good to hear from you. All right. Well, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us. I'm at Josh underscore um underscore Clark. You can also hit me up at the official SYSK Podcast handle. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant and at Stuff You Should Know. You can send us both an email to [email protected] . And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com.
58:47 Speaker 00 For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.
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