Latest / Stuff You Should Know / What are tinnovators?
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
- 0:03Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
- 0:08Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast.
- 0:17Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles Bryant, who is with me
- 0:20Speaker 1: is always. I don't know what I'd do without each
- 0:21Speaker 1: other man. Seriously, it'd be like having um a conjoined twins, separated,
- 0:27Speaker 1: one that has its head into still alive. You were
- 0:30Speaker 1: being mean to me seconds before he went on, and
- 0:31Speaker 1: then he butter me up right when in front of people.
- 0:34Speaker 1: In front of people, you have hundreds of thousands of people.
- 0:36Speaker 1: I'm secretly very abusive to you behind closed doors, aren't Yeah,
- 0:40Speaker 1: so chuck, Yes, my fellow ian f er. Oh yeah,
- 0:45Speaker 1: we took the Myers Briggs personality tests. Pretty cool. We
- 0:48Speaker 1: are again like conjoined twins, except for the distinction of
- 0:52Speaker 1: the P and the J. I'm a perceiver, you're a judger, right,
- 0:55Speaker 1: and I think we compliment each other well in that regard.
- 0:58Speaker 1: I agree. I'd actually like to do a podcast on
- 1:00Speaker 1: that test. Let's do it. I think we should do.
- 1:02Speaker 1: We haven't do you know if we have an article
- 1:03Speaker 1: on that? Oh, we'll just make stuff up. Yeah, yeah,
- 1:06Speaker 1: I totally want to do it though. I found it
- 1:07Speaker 1: really fascinating and I did not think I would, and
- 1:10Speaker 1: I was. I was into it. So maybe we can
- 1:12Speaker 1: work swimming with whale sharks into that somehow too. Who're
- 1:15Speaker 1: just doing podcasts now based on personal experiences around the
- 1:18Speaker 1: office Tomorrow is going to be called ham and Eggs
- 1:21Speaker 1: for breakfast. So, speaking of around the office, Chuckers, as
- 1:26Speaker 1: you know, we have a bunch of new, kind of
- 1:29Speaker 1: cool articles about um al toys on the site. Who
- 1:33Speaker 1: to thunk It? Yeah, the curiously strong mint. She took
- 1:36Speaker 1: my line, I'll kill you. So yeah, We've got a
- 1:41Speaker 1: whole suite of articles. We have like a sub channel
- 1:43Speaker 1: in the science channel that's dedicated to Altoy's really yeah,
- 1:48Speaker 1: have you been on you haven't been on it? Now?
- 1:49Speaker 1: I wrote a few of them now. The final products
- 1:52Speaker 1: look pretty good though, all right, I think so. The focus,
- 1:56Speaker 1: as you know, since you have written some, was on
- 1:58Speaker 1: this stre range little group of people called tent evaders. Right, yes, well,
- 2:04Speaker 1: let's talk about them a minute. First, let's discuss candy. Okay, yeah,
- 2:09Speaker 1: it sounds good talk about al twits, Chuckers. Do you
- 2:12Speaker 1: have candy in your mouth now like you did during
- 2:13Speaker 1: the Twinkies show. I know, let's let's address that show.
- 2:16Speaker 1: We Yeah, we got a few letters that came in
- 2:18Speaker 1: that said, what was Josh eating during the twinkiespot? Even worse,
- 2:21Speaker 1: why was Josh eating? Yeah? It sounded like he had
- 2:23Speaker 1: a Werther's in his mouth or something, or candy and yeah,
- 2:27Speaker 1: one guy guess whethers are Jolly ranchers. Not true, Josh
- 2:29Speaker 1: didn't have anything in his mouth, and we've surmised that
- 2:32Speaker 1: because we're talking about twinkies. He was just frothy, and uh,
- 2:36Speaker 1: it's weird. I went back and listened to it, and
- 2:38Speaker 1: I definitely sound like I'm chewing on something. But no,
- 2:41Speaker 1: I think I just really wanted a twinkie. I guess
- 2:44Speaker 1: you were too cheap to pick them up, weren't you. Right. Yeah, So,
- 2:47Speaker 1: just to let people know we're slightly more professional than
- 2:50Speaker 1: to suck on candy while we're trying to podcast despite
- 2:52Speaker 1: our illustrious surroundings. Rightly, although we do have jolly, we
- 2:56Speaker 1: have candy on our desk, and we we avoid it
- 2:58Speaker 1: during I think Jerry would literally murder us if we
- 3:01Speaker 1: just started eating candy during a podcast. Yeah, so um, yes,
- 3:06Speaker 1: I think I might salivate again. Okay, alright, So Chuck,
- 3:10Speaker 1: did you know that altoids, these these little mints date
- 3:14Speaker 1: back to the reign of King George the Third, who
- 3:18Speaker 1: is the mad king who drove the colonists to revolt
- 3:22Speaker 1: seventeen eighty. Dude, people have been sucking on these mints. Also,
- 3:25Speaker 1: did you know that King George may have had a perphyria?
- 3:29Speaker 1: And what is that? It's um, it's what's it called.
- 3:33Speaker 1: There's acute intermittent perfyria, which is I think when they
- 3:36Speaker 1: think King George had it's a congenital disease where porphyrins.
- 3:41Speaker 1: I can't remember what they do. I think they get
- 3:43Speaker 1: rid of waste build up in your blood stream, in
- 3:47Speaker 1: your system, and uh, it can get kind of bad.
- 3:50Speaker 1: It can have um effects on the nervous system. You
- 3:53Speaker 1: can have psychological effects, which is why they think King
- 3:55Speaker 1: George was mad. Um. And the stomach cramping is unpara level.
- 4:00Speaker 1: It's really horrible stuff. But the prefer you might be
- 4:03Speaker 1: most acquainted with. I can't remember what it's called, but um,
- 4:06Speaker 1: it's it's where your photo sensitive. You can't go out
- 4:09Speaker 1: into sunlight, you can't be exposed it's sunlight. It was
- 4:12Speaker 1: featured in the others you ever see that one? Um.
- 4:15Speaker 1: And also that's where they think the vampire legend, or
- 4:18Speaker 1: that aspect of the vampire legend came from, was from
- 4:20Speaker 1: people who had I thought you're gonna say, given bad
- 4:23Speaker 1: breath or something. That's why they created Altoid. And I
- 4:25Speaker 1: think that was consumption, yeah, which was pretty big around
- 4:30Speaker 1: seventeen eighty, which is when they were first created, right, Yeah,
- 4:33Speaker 1: and that's always by the way, we mentioned the curiously
- 4:35Speaker 1: strong man. That was their slogan from day one. Yeah,
- 4:38Speaker 1: because they use real peppermint oil and lots of copious
- 4:42Speaker 1: amounts of it's hardcore stuff. Oh yeah, as anyone who's
- 4:45Speaker 1: ever had an Altoid knows. Yeah, it does a trick though. Yeah. So, um,
- 4:49Speaker 1: in America, we in America, we love uh to attach
- 4:54Speaker 1: weird pop stuff to candy to food, like he's kool Aid, which,
- 5:01Speaker 1: by the way, we should probably make that correction to
- 5:03Speaker 1: while we're at it. It wasn't kool Aid at Jonestown.
- 5:06Speaker 1: It turns out it was flavor Aid. I've done some terrible,
- 5:10Speaker 1: terrible things in my life. I don't I've never felt
- 5:14Speaker 1: more ashamed than I do for missing that really Yeah, well,
- 5:18Speaker 1: you know, like I told the hundreds of people that
- 5:20Speaker 1: wrote in and corrected us on that, sure it was
- 5:22Speaker 1: flavor Aid, but unfortunately for kool Aid. What matters is
- 5:25Speaker 1: what people think of and remember and don't drink, and
- 5:28Speaker 1: the kool Aid is what people remember. I don't even
- 5:30Speaker 1: know if unfortunately is the right word. It could be fortunate.
- 5:33Speaker 1: I'm not sure about it. How's Flavoride's market share doing
- 5:35Speaker 1: since jonestown exactly? And and so basically in America, we
- 5:40Speaker 1: don't just eat things like we eat things and then
- 5:43Speaker 1: turn them into cultural phenomena but icons, right exactly. So
- 5:47Speaker 1: altoids isn't any different. Um, And it's not necessarily the mint,
- 5:50Speaker 1: although I agreed they are curiously strong. Um, it's the
- 5:55Speaker 1: tin that seems to like really get people's juices going,
- 5:59Speaker 1: you know. I mean, who out there hasn't had altois
- 6:02Speaker 1: at some point and saved the tin and kept you know,
- 6:05Speaker 1: paper clips or spare buttons or rubber bands or something
- 6:09Speaker 1: in them. I don't know who. I at my house, Fuller,
- 6:13Speaker 1: Jimmy Fuller at home right now, I have a couple
- 6:15Speaker 1: of altoys tins on my desk with assorted, Uh, little knickknacks. Yeah, yeah,
- 6:20Speaker 1: because it's you know, it's it's perfect size, it is convenient,
- 6:22Speaker 1: snap shut, and I think that's what led this whole
- 6:25Speaker 1: tentovation thing. Well yeah, technically that makes you a tinovator
- 6:32Speaker 1: is exactly what I was gonna say. But a tinovator nonetheless,
- 6:35Speaker 1: which I guess we should define this a tentovator um
- 6:39Speaker 1: as we've turned up through our research as somebody who
- 6:42Speaker 1: um finds new and novel uses for old altoits tins.
- 6:46Speaker 1: It's as simple as that, and it can be as
- 6:47Speaker 1: simple as throwing rubber bands in an old tin. But
- 6:51Speaker 1: some people have come up with much more advanced projects
- 6:56Speaker 1: of them that that that involved an nodes and electrodes
- 6:59Speaker 1: and weird stuff that I would electrocute myself trying. So
- 7:03Speaker 1: should we talk about ten evators? I don't see why
- 7:06Speaker 1: should we talk about these people? Yeah? Who you want
- 7:08Speaker 1: to talk about first? Because we did? I have to say, Chuck,
- 7:12Speaker 1: this could have gone either way, this assignment writing these articles.
- 7:15Speaker 1: But the but the people that we ran across, at
- 7:18Speaker 1: least the ones I wrote on, we're generally really interesting.
- 7:21Speaker 1: They were interesting people and the stuff they came up
- 7:23Speaker 1: with was very interesting, very creative, which I was very
- 7:26Speaker 1: thankful for. Let's start with Jake von Slat. Yes, let's
- 7:31Speaker 1: steam punk steampunk guy. Um. For those of you who
- 7:33Speaker 1: don't know what steampunk is, it's kind of this um
- 7:36Speaker 1: subculture movement that's based out of this sub genre, like
- 7:41Speaker 1: sub sub of speculative fiction that centers around the Victorian
- 7:45Speaker 1: era and all like the fantastic contraptions that like Jules
- 7:48Speaker 1: Verne and H. G. Wells came up with, right, so,
- 7:51Speaker 1: like throwback stuff that's in fact kind of futuristic, right so. Um.
- 7:55Speaker 1: Jake von Slat came up with one of the most
- 7:57Speaker 1: recognizable steampunk relics at her, which is the steampunk desktop computer. Ude.
- 8:03Speaker 1: Have you ever seen it? It's wicked cool. Have you
- 8:06Speaker 1: read the article that Jay strick wrote Jonathan Strickland, our
- 8:10Speaker 1: writer called the Stamfellow Podcaster. We have a cool, cool
- 8:14Speaker 1: article that's just on steampunk on the site. I think
- 8:17Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. I would never get caught up in
- 8:19Speaker 1: something like that because any any movement where you're dressing
- 8:23Speaker 1: up and going to events, it's not really up my alley.
- 8:25Speaker 1: But I like to look at them when they walk
- 8:27Speaker 1: by me on the way to their convention. Sure yeah, um,
- 8:30Speaker 1: I'm more into first suiting, but I can see how
- 8:33Speaker 1: somebody would, you know, uh, get into steampunk. It's it's
- 8:36Speaker 1: interesting even looking from the outside in. But Jake fon
- 8:40Speaker 1: Slat is kind of the a de facto godfather steampunk.
- 8:45Speaker 1: But it also happens to be a tent evator too, right, right,
- 8:49Speaker 1: so he makes a little steampunk tens. Now that he
- 8:53Speaker 1: sells the too right, I don't know if he sells him.
- 8:56Speaker 1: I think it's he's there's there's kind of um. One
- 8:59Speaker 1: of the things that goes along with Altoyd's almost like
- 9:03Speaker 1: almost across the board is that, um it's open source.
- 9:08Speaker 1: So like Jake von Slat like puts instructions on how
- 9:12Speaker 1: to do his projects up for free on his website,
- 9:15Speaker 1: which I think is called steampunk workshop dot com, which
- 9:19Speaker 1: is really cool if you ever ever tooled around on it.
- 9:22Speaker 1: Um and also some of the other people will talk about,
- 9:24Speaker 1: especially to do it yourself electronic electronic folks. There's kind
- 9:28Speaker 1: of this sentiment like I created this project and I
- 9:31Speaker 1: want to share it with the world, and here's how
- 9:32Speaker 1: you can do it step by step, which is really
- 9:35Speaker 1: big about sharing it seem like sort of a community,
- 9:38Speaker 1: and there a couple of the guys I interviewed had
- 9:40Speaker 1: um guys and gals had gotten in touch with other tentivators,
- 9:43Speaker 1: and I'm kind of surprised they don't have a little,
- 9:46Speaker 1: uh a little mini convention at some point. Oh yeah,
- 9:49Speaker 1: just wait for it. It'll happen. We'll go. Yeah, well,
- 9:52Speaker 1: just as a chipmunk and a rabbit and go to
- 9:54Speaker 1: the convention. Yeah. So, do you want to explain how
- 9:58Speaker 1: how he does this or do you just want to
- 9:59Speaker 1: kind of give you what what? Von Slack came up,
- 10:02Speaker 1: but this is just one of his projects. He has
- 10:03Speaker 1: other altoyds Um projects too. Um. Since he steampunk, he's
- 10:08Speaker 1: being into Victorian stuff. So he shows an etching, a
- 10:11Speaker 1: copper plated etching, and um, I was on his site
- 10:15Speaker 1: just kind of getting the gist of it so I
- 10:17Speaker 1: could explain it in the article on him. It's called
- 10:20Speaker 1: how to make a Steampunk altoids tin um, and he
- 10:24Speaker 1: goes through all these really elaborate um techniques to copper
- 10:29Speaker 1: plate an altoids tin pretty advanced and somewhat dangerous. It is,
- 10:34Speaker 1: it's very dangerous. He's using acids and chemicals and like hardcore.
- 10:38Speaker 1: Um a POxy removers electricity and water together, yeah, which
- 10:44Speaker 1: is always a little fun. Yeah. I actually when I
- 10:46Speaker 1: when I wrote it, I copied and pasted the couple
- 10:49Speaker 1: of paragraphs describing that part and send it to him
- 10:52Speaker 1: to see. Like I said, I don't want any of
- 10:54Speaker 1: our readers to be electrocuted. Because he told me if
- 10:56Speaker 1: this is accurate, and he wrote back he's like, here's
- 10:58Speaker 1: a here's a much simpler way to do it. So basically,
- 11:00Speaker 1: through trial and error he came up with the simplest method,
- 11:04Speaker 1: which was good for me because I could comprehend it
- 11:06Speaker 1: and wrote about it. So basically what he does was
- 11:09Speaker 1: he takes um what is it? He calls it blue vitriol,
- 11:14Speaker 1: which is the Victorian era word for or phrase term
- 11:18Speaker 1: for copper sulfate. Right, so he uses the terminology to
- 11:22Speaker 1: the lang. Yeah. Yeah, actually he's steampunk to the core,
- 11:25Speaker 1: buddy um. But anyway, he takes us and and just
- 11:28Speaker 1: with a with a Q tip, he dips it in
- 11:31Speaker 1: um the copper sulfate, rubs it on the back of
- 11:35Speaker 1: an Altoy's ten that's been stripped of its paint and
- 11:38Speaker 1: buffed and everything um, and it turns copper and copper
- 11:41Speaker 1: plates it like that. It looks really cool. Yeah it does.
- 11:44Speaker 1: But that's not the end of it, right, So he
- 11:46Speaker 1: takes like a Victorian etching, like well a digital image
- 11:51Speaker 1: of digital like just something off the internet exactly, and
- 11:53Speaker 1: then he prints it out on like a transfer paper
- 11:56Speaker 1: like pressing peel or something. What do they call pressing
- 11:58Speaker 1: peel in Victorian era? You know? Know? So not that though, buddy, Yeah,
- 12:03Speaker 1: maybe was that my Victorian era lady? Was it? Really? Yeah?
- 12:07Speaker 1: I thought that was Eleanor Roosevelt. I think it was. Um.
- 12:10Speaker 1: So he'll take the transfer paper, put it onto the
- 12:13Speaker 1: back of the newly copper plated altoy's tin, and and yeah,
- 12:18Speaker 1: here's where it gets very dangerous. Right, here's where electricity
- 12:20Speaker 1: comes into play. So he gets a twelve L one
- 12:23Speaker 1: amp d C wall mounted transformer, right, pulls one out
- 12:29Speaker 1: of his pocket. It's it's probably steam powered, um, And
- 12:32Speaker 1: he he clips the positive side to the altoy tin
- 12:36Speaker 1: he wants to etch. He clips the negative side to
- 12:39Speaker 1: like a dummy altoy tin to throw away one. And
- 12:42Speaker 1: then yeah, he drops it into a salt water solution.
- 12:45Speaker 1: He said, one teaspoon of salt for every quart of
- 12:49Speaker 1: water and I got the impression he wanted at least
- 12:51Speaker 1: a gallon enough to to submerge the altoys. Tin throws
- 12:56Speaker 1: it in there, turns on the power weights ten to
- 12:58Speaker 1: twenty minutes, turns off the power this is very important,
- 13:02Speaker 1: reaches in right, and then removes it. And also I
- 13:04Speaker 1: saw a picture of it's cool like the the water
- 13:07Speaker 1: starts bubbling. In terms of dark. Yeah, it's pretty cool looking.
- 13:11Speaker 1: So he turns the power off and then takes it
- 13:12Speaker 1: out and he uh, he scuffs off the transfer paper
- 13:18Speaker 1: and it's been etched into the metal, so into this
- 13:20Speaker 1: copperplated metal. He buts it, adds some rouge buffs, it
- 13:24Speaker 1: brings it to a high shine. There you go, such
- 13:26Speaker 1: a cool product. It is really cool. And I mean
- 13:28Speaker 1: again in the article, just from what I wrote, you
- 13:31Speaker 1: can do it. Uh. In all the articles we included
- 13:34Speaker 1: how to make your own of what these people made,
- 13:37Speaker 1: because like it's open source. Um. But yeah, if you
- 13:42Speaker 1: if you really want like detailed instructions, you can go
- 13:44Speaker 1: into his site too. Well. I think the fact that
- 13:46Speaker 1: they with all of these I noticed it was the
- 13:50Speaker 1: fact that it was an altoid sin is what got attention.
- 13:54Speaker 1: Basically because I did one on this kid, Nick Brand
- 13:56Speaker 1: who makes a little mini flashlights from the little small
- 13:59Speaker 1: I think it's the m tin and he sells these
- 14:02Speaker 1: kids online and kind of like your guy Aaron Dunlap
- 14:05Speaker 1: to who does the USB charger and Nick brnn with
- 14:08Speaker 1: a flashlight. The fact, the mere fact that it was
- 14:10Speaker 1: an Altoids tin made people go, oh, man, I gotta
- 14:13Speaker 1: have one of those, because it's really nothing more than
- 14:15Speaker 1: a little small, tiny flashlight you can put in your pocket,
- 14:17Speaker 1: like the little plastic once you can get at the
- 14:19Speaker 1: gas station checkout line for nine nine cents. But it's
- 14:23Speaker 1: an outoid stin so it's cool. Yeah, yeah, that's Dunlap
- 14:26Speaker 1: said that, uh what he created his USB charger UM
- 14:30Speaker 1: just out of necessity he wanted he wanted. Uh. It
- 14:34Speaker 1: uses a nine volt battery like a dollar apiece UM,
- 14:38Speaker 1: and he added the USB charger in the connector and
- 14:40Speaker 1: all that stuff and he just he connects his smartphone
- 14:44Speaker 1: to it and it gives it like sixty minutes of
- 14:46Speaker 1: talking time or four hours of standby just from one
- 14:49Speaker 1: nine volt battery, which is cool. He also makes kits
- 14:52Speaker 1: and sells them, and he said he had some left
- 14:55Speaker 1: over UM from his first project. That's why he put
- 14:58Speaker 1: kids together to sell them. Um and he said that
- 15:01Speaker 1: had he chosen just a plain old office sheelf metal enclosure,
- 15:05Speaker 1: he suspects he'd still be trying to sell the first
- 15:07Speaker 1: twenty five, but instead he sold thousands and actually founded
- 15:10Speaker 1: a company called the Electroids Company just to handle the order.
- 15:15Speaker 1: He got picked up on like dig and Boing boying,
- 15:17Speaker 1: and he said it was the it was the allure
- 15:20Speaker 1: of the altoys, did it? Yeah? What is it about
- 15:23Speaker 1: the tin? Well? I think Well, I interviewed Nick Brand
- 15:26Speaker 1: and this other guy, Matthew Poech She does uh, he
- 15:29Speaker 1: does a speaker like you can plug your iPod into
- 15:32Speaker 1: this Altoids tin and play your music out loud because
- 15:35Speaker 1: he's drilled little holes like a speaker grill on the
- 15:37Speaker 1: top of what's it called the Minty Boost? No, no, no no,
- 15:39Speaker 1: that's it's called speaker Okay, Because there is an altoys project.
- 15:43Speaker 1: It's a legendary altoy project by um Leemore Freed, who
- 15:48Speaker 1: I haven't met her interview, but he he seems to
- 15:50Speaker 1: be kind of like this d I y Altoid's electronics guru.
- 15:54Speaker 1: Um and he came up with the Minty Boost, a
- 15:57Speaker 1: lot of people tip their hats to him or I
- 15:59Speaker 1: think I think you're steampunk guy kind of takes it
- 16:01Speaker 1: to the next level personally. Well, when you're etching a
- 16:04Speaker 1: Victorian era stuff, that's pretty cool. Yeah, he's a he's
- 16:07Speaker 1: a sub subgenre guy or a sub subculture guy. He's
- 16:11Speaker 1: a steampunk altoys tent evator, which it doesn't get more
- 16:15Speaker 1: niche than that. I don't think I had another actually
- 16:17Speaker 1: one of my guys too. A lot of there's kind
- 16:19Speaker 1: of two camps. You can either be artistic and like
- 16:22Speaker 1: we've seen some cool like shadow boxes and I know
- 16:24Speaker 1: one of your uh the ladies you wrote about that
- 16:27Speaker 1: a zen garden, which is kind of cool, and then
- 16:30Speaker 1: the other side of the coin is people that do
- 16:32Speaker 1: um a more useful thing like flashlight speakers, USB chargers,
- 16:37Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Right, Yeah, there's there's an artistic
- 16:40Speaker 1: side and then there's like a technical side. But the
- 16:45Speaker 1: artistic side, dude, I've got the man who I wrote,
- 16:48Speaker 1: David's Alban He actually does fine art and makes big
- 16:51Speaker 1: dough so what's album does. He actually uses the tens
- 16:54Speaker 1: as his canvas, so he will mount tens, you know,
- 16:58Speaker 1: pressed against one another. I'd buy side and at whatever
- 17:01Speaker 1: a four ft by four ft frame and actually paint
- 17:04Speaker 1: over them all. So what you have is as a
- 17:06Speaker 1: complete finished painting in small little blocks, almost like a mosaic. Yeah.
- 17:11Speaker 1: I haven't seen this stuff. Yeah, he's based out of Miami.
- 17:13Speaker 1: And the articles up on the site yet. Uh my
- 17:18Speaker 1: speaker article is, and the flashlight article is, and the
- 17:21Speaker 1: fine art article is cool, and the shadow box article.
- 17:24Speaker 1: We'll check it out. Man. Lots of tentivators, I know,
- 17:26Speaker 1: I wrote at least ten, I think really. Yeah. So
- 17:29Speaker 1: there's a bunch of stuff about tentivators and how to
- 17:31Speaker 1: undertake their projects and if it was too involved, we
- 17:35Speaker 1: just kind of kicked it to a site like instructibles
- 17:37Speaker 1: dot com. Yeah that's a great site. Oh yeah yeah,
- 17:40Speaker 1: very in depth detail stuff. So you can buy some
- 17:42Speaker 1: of these kids too, if you're too lazy to do
- 17:44Speaker 1: it yourself, yeah yeah, or the kit you kind of
- 17:47Speaker 1: have to put together yourself. So that's fun, good projects
- 17:49Speaker 1: for kids. Yeah. And when there was another guy named
- 17:52Speaker 1: Matthew Pogue who came up with the Swiss AVR knife. Well,
- 17:56Speaker 1: and he's a saying guy that as a speaker. No,
- 17:58Speaker 1: he he made his speaker based on Lemore Freeds Minty Boost.
- 18:03Speaker 1: So he's like he was just training himself in the
- 18:05Speaker 1: art of UM do it yourself electronics based on other projects.
- 18:09Speaker 1: But he's also a tent invator as well, and he
- 18:11Speaker 1: came up with the Swiss AVR knife, which uses an
- 18:14Speaker 1: a VR chip. It's like, uh, I think eight bit
- 18:17Speaker 1: processor something like that, UM, and you can program and
- 18:21Speaker 1: it's reprogrammable because it uses onboard flash memory. But UM
- 18:25Speaker 1: using a little sound output device and some little LED lights.
- 18:29Speaker 1: It goes through all these different UM mechanisms like the
- 18:33Speaker 1: mini menorah, so like all the LED lights light up
- 18:36Speaker 1: or um there's the uh, what's it called this noisemaker
- 18:43Speaker 1: and it just makes all these different digitized sounds that
- 18:45Speaker 1: fans of craft work would really appreciate that one. UM.
- 18:48Speaker 1: But there's a lot of people are putting a lot
- 18:51Speaker 1: of thought into altoids tunes. It makes I feel like
- 18:55Speaker 1: I'm wasting my life, you know. Well, let's go get
- 18:58Speaker 1: some altoids and empty them out and start painting on
- 19:01Speaker 1: them or something. Let's do that, Chuck. Let's do some
- 19:03Speaker 1: folk art. Okay, yeah, it's the easiest kind of art
- 19:06Speaker 1: I believe, so yes, well, Chuck, that's tinovators. If you
- 19:09Speaker 1: want to read more about tinivation. Uh. As we said,
- 19:12Speaker 1: we have a ton of articles on the site. You
- 19:14Speaker 1: can find those just by typing altoys I imagine into
- 19:18Speaker 1: the handy search bar and how stuff works dot com.
- 19:21Speaker 1: Since I just said that, that means it's time for
- 19:23Speaker 1: listener mail. Yes, Josh, we gotta listener mail. I'm just
- 19:27Speaker 1: gonna call America's Funny Some Videos. Oh, I like this one.
- 19:31Speaker 1: They took a bit of ribbing from us for me
- 19:33Speaker 1: specifically in this are Stupid People Happier? Because I put
- 19:37Speaker 1: that show at the very bottom of the food chain
- 19:39Speaker 1: comedy wise. Getting kicked in the groin? Yeah, what's funnier?
- 19:44Speaker 1: So this comes from Jason. Jason says, I just listened
- 19:47Speaker 1: to your podcast Stupid People Happier, and I loved it,
- 19:50Speaker 1: especially the part about the America's Funny Some Videos. I
- 19:52Speaker 1: thought you might be interested to know something that most
- 19:55Speaker 1: people don't know about laughter. The following excerpt about how
- 20:00Speaker 1: jokes work applies equally well to the a f V videos.
- 20:04Speaker 1: And this is from the Definitive Book of Body Language.
- 20:08Speaker 1: That's what he quoted. The basis of most jokes is
- 20:11Speaker 1: that at the punch line, something disastrous or painful happens
- 20:14Speaker 1: to someone. In effect, the unexpected ending frightens our brain
- 20:18Speaker 1: and we laugh with sounds similar to a chimp warning
- 20:21Speaker 1: others of imminent dancture. Even though we consciously know that
- 20:25Speaker 1: the joke is not a real event, our laugh releases
- 20:27Speaker 1: endorphins for self anesthesis as if the joke the word event. No,
- 20:33Speaker 1: that's a real word. If it is a real event,
- 20:35Speaker 1: we may go into crying mode, and the body would
- 20:38Speaker 1: also release endorphins. Crying is often an extension of laughing
- 20:42Speaker 1: about a laughing about, and is why in a serious
- 20:45Speaker 1: emotional crisis, such as hearing about a death, a person
- 20:48Speaker 1: who cannot mentally accept the death may begin laughing. Yeah,
- 20:53Speaker 1: it's interesting, it's right on the money. When the reality hits,
- 20:56Speaker 1: the laughter turns into crying. So there you have it.
- 20:59Speaker 1: To be a dude get kicked in the groin and
- 21:02Speaker 1: it's funny. That explains it all. Yeah, so I guess
- 21:05Speaker 1: I am the stupid person. Yeah, the joke is on me, Chuck.
- 21:08Speaker 1: You're pretty far from stupid. And I think the only
- 21:10Speaker 1: way to end this is for you to keep me
- 21:12Speaker 1: in the groin. I I will do that. Come here.
- 21:14Speaker 1: Only way to come stand right here? No way right? Well,
- 21:19Speaker 1: I feel like plugging a few things. Look at you? Okay, So, Chuck,
- 21:23Speaker 1: We've got two pages on our face on Facebook. There's
- 21:26Speaker 1: one that for Josh Clark and Charles Bryant. That's us
- 21:30Speaker 1: or Chuck Brian. I think it is. Uh, there's the
- 21:32Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know fan page on Facebook every Wednesday
- 21:35Speaker 1: at one pm. Little known fact except for like thirty
- 21:39Speaker 1: people every Wednesday at one pm. On the blogs at
- 21:43Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com. Your blog, Chuck post one
- 21:48Speaker 1: every week called live webcast watch it here right now,
- 21:51Speaker 1: something along those lines. We do a live webcast via
- 21:55Speaker 1: you stream right. It's like twenty two minutes long. It's awful,
- 21:58Speaker 1: but it's getting pretty I think you think. So. Yeah,
- 22:01Speaker 1: it's a little different. We do like news items and
- 22:04Speaker 1: current pop culture things, and it's I think it's kind
- 22:08Speaker 1: of fun. I'm proud that there's very little crossover between
- 22:10Speaker 1: the podcast and the webcast. We're really working. We're like
- 22:13Speaker 1: James Brown here, Um, so we got the we have
- 22:16Speaker 1: Facebook pages, we've got the webcast. Um, we have blogs.
- 22:21Speaker 1: We have a Stuff you Should Know blog on how
- 22:23Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. And what else anything dude, we
- 22:26Speaker 1: have our second celebrity fan. Now, oh yeah, you want
- 22:30Speaker 1: to give a shout out? Yeah, well we should give
- 22:31Speaker 1: a shout out to our first celebrity fan, who was
- 22:34Speaker 1: Will Wheaton. Hey, Will Wheaton star Trek Series and stand
- 22:38Speaker 1: By Me. He'll always be famous for stand by Me.
- 22:40Speaker 1: I was never any guy in our age generation. Stand
- 22:45Speaker 1: By Me is like one of the quintessential films. Yeah,
- 22:47Speaker 1: a great, great movie. Yeah, The Dead Kid. Yeah, so
- 22:52Speaker 1: Ray Brower Boom, that was his name. Holy cow, I
- 22:56Speaker 1: just pulled that out of my head, so lou bloated.
- 23:01Speaker 1: We want to say thank you for your support because
- 23:02Speaker 1: he actually mentioned us on his blog is very popular blog.
- 23:06Speaker 1: And um, we just found out that Aisha Tyler is
- 23:08Speaker 1: a big fan. Yes, the lovely, fetching, intelligent, smart, funny
- 23:13Speaker 1: Aisha Tyler comedian. Yeah, former talk soup hostess. And that
- 23:18Speaker 1: she was on Friends. Yeah, season's nine and ten, Ross
- 23:23Speaker 1: and Joe Ross and Joey. Yeah. I think she's probably
- 23:25Speaker 1: the only person to date both Ross and Joey's. She
- 23:28Speaker 1: had done Chandler, it would have been a trifecta. Yeah. Um,
- 23:32Speaker 1: and let's see what else I think you mean? Data's
- 23:35Speaker 1: Chandler right, Okay, Um, yeah, so we're we're we're accumulating
- 23:40Speaker 1: to celebrity fans and I couldn't be that we know of.
- 23:43Speaker 1: And actually, let's just go ahead and cut to the chase.
- 23:46Speaker 1: Barack Obama, if you listen to these podcasts, send us
- 23:48Speaker 1: an email, will you? We've always wondered. We love you. Yeah. Um.
- 23:52Speaker 1: If you want to send us an email, whether you're
- 23:54Speaker 1: Barack Obama or not, please don't send an email as
- 23:58Speaker 1: Barack Obama. If you're not Barack Obama about we know
- 24:01Speaker 1: you can send that email to Stuff podcast at how
- 24:05Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
- 24:11Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want
- 24:15Speaker 1: more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the
- 24:17Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com home page. Brought to you
- 24:22Speaker 1: by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are
- 24:26Speaker 1: you