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SYSK Selects: How Silly Putty Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: M Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's
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Speaker 1: Saturday Select Stuff you Should Know, I'm choosing how Silly
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Speaker 1: Putty Works. It originally ran in October two thousand and eleven,
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Speaker 1: and as I say in this episode, it has it all.
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Speaker 1: It has all six pillars of a great Stuff you
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Speaker 1: should Know episode five maybe I don't quite remember. Either way,
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Speaker 1: you'll find out what they are in this thrilling enjoy.
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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
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Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:47
Speaker 1: There's Charles W Chuck Bryant uh with me as always
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Speaker 1: looking good. I am, yeah, thank you, Josh um that
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Speaker 1: makes the Stuff you Should Know, and you were looking
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Speaker 1: good as well. Sort said in is your No, I'm not,
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Speaker 1: it's I don't less than six months old. I guess
1:06
Speaker 1: it's kind of new, all right. I'm trying to think
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Speaker 1: it was pouring way I could start a show pretty
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Speaker 1: high up there. Josh is wearing a lovely stripe blue
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Speaker 1: button up as he has one to do, and I'm
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Speaker 1: wearing a Everything is Bigger in Texas green T shirt.
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Speaker 1: We're both in jeans. I have on my last chance
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Speaker 1: garage hat, yep, anything else I want to I want
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Speaker 1: to set the scene for once. I've got a beard.
1:31
Speaker 1: Now you've had a beard. I'm clean shaven, clean shaven. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I've started to do the clean shaven thing more than scruffy.
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Speaker 1: I was doing scruffy for a while. Are you which
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Speaker 1: way do you like? I hope for you? Yeah, I
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Speaker 1: think whatever you mean likes, which is clearly not scruffy.
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Speaker 1: She likes it both ways. Oh yeah, yeah, all right,
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Speaker 1: that's that's that is the most boring way to ever
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Speaker 1: start a show. We should all go to sleep. Now.
1:57
Speaker 1: I've got a story for you, all right, all right,
2:00
Speaker 1: and you know some of this so you don't have
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Speaker 1: to pretend like you're surprised. Back in eighteen thirty nine,
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Speaker 1: there is a man named Charles Goodyear, and Charles Goodyear
2:11
Speaker 1: whose last name you might recognize for good reason, Uh,
2:14
Speaker 1: figured out a way to make rubber, natural rubber tougher
2:19
Speaker 1: than leather. It's called vulcanization. Yes, okay, So this process
2:24
Speaker 1: of vulcanization took rubber, which is naturally um kind of
2:28
Speaker 1: stickier gooey at warmer temperatures and um rigid at cooler temperatures.
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Speaker 1: And made it much more appliable, much more, much more flexible,
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Speaker 1: but able to stand up to really punishing conditions like heat,
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Speaker 1: lots of pressure and force, which made it perfect for
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Speaker 1: car tires, hoses, fan belts, all of the stuff that
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Speaker 1: we use rubber for today. This guy is the reason
2:53
Speaker 1: we're able to write the reason that's tough enough. Yes. Now,
2:57
Speaker 1: the fact that this came at nine means that this
2:59
Speaker 1: in ovation came during the Industrial Revolution, which means that
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Speaker 1: all that stuff that the rubber could be used for
3:05
Speaker 1: could be mass produced, which means that we needed a
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Speaker 1: vast source of rubber as a raw material for this
3:13
Speaker 1: volcanization process. And luckily, I guess you could say, at
3:17
Speaker 1: least for the Westerners, uh, we knew where to get
3:20
Speaker 1: vast stores of rubber, the Amazon, which is where this
3:24
Speaker 1: very specific type of rubber tree is indigenous and is
3:27
Speaker 1: found in vast supply, right, all right, you with me
3:31
Speaker 1: so far? So we went down on the Amazon, and
3:33
Speaker 1: as a result, these parts of Brazil that were just
3:36
Speaker 1: totally impoverished were suddenly suddenly found themselves at the center
3:40
Speaker 1: of a global rubber boom and just became decadently wealthy,
3:45
Speaker 1: like almost overnight, Brazil and the Amazon was the center
3:49
Speaker 1: of this global trade and rubber for decades until these
3:55
Speaker 1: British guys snuck some rubber tree seeds out of the
3:59
Speaker 1: Amazon on and took them to the botanical gardens in London, Okay,
4:05
Speaker 1: and they started to work on forming a hybrid that
4:08
Speaker 1: was even better than the ones in Brazil. A hybrid plant,
4:10
Speaker 1: a hybrid rubber tree that could coincidentally thrive in British
4:15
Speaker 1: colonies in Southeast Asia. Perfect, it was perfect for the British.
4:20
Speaker 1: By the Brazilian stranglehold on the rubber um trade was
4:27
Speaker 1: being challenged and was in real trouble by countries like
4:29
Speaker 1: Malaysia and Sri Lanka, Um and Thailand, and by nineteen
4:36
Speaker 1: twenty the Far East held the basically the monopoly on
4:41
Speaker 1: the rubber market. All right, that's a good background. Thanks,
4:44
Speaker 1: I'm almost done. So about the time the Southeast Asia
4:50
Speaker 1: started to dominate rubber, we needed it even more than
4:52
Speaker 1: when Brazil dominated rubber because cars were being mass produced
4:57
Speaker 1: in each of those required four rubber tires. Right, So
5:01
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia's hold on rubber was even stronger than than
5:04
Speaker 1: the one that Brazil had, plus one in the trunk. Yeah,
5:07
Speaker 1: that's right, five um. And by the time World War
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Speaker 1: Two rolled around, we come to rely on rubber so
5:14
Speaker 1: much that it was calculated the US military the Pentagon
5:18
Speaker 1: needed thirty two pounds of rubber for every troop on
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Speaker 1: the ground for things like tires, boots, anything you need
5:23
Speaker 1: rubber for right every soldier, which makes it a It
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Speaker 1: was a very very, very big deal. When the Japanese
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Speaker 1: successfully invaded the Pacific theater, including Malaysia, including Sri Lanka,
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Speaker 1: including all these rubber producing places and cut off the
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Speaker 1: rubber supply to the US and We're like, we need rubber, yeah,
5:42
Speaker 1: we need it bad. And they were like, well we've
5:45
Speaker 1: got it, yes, And by the way, let's go. When
5:47
Speaker 1: you win, there's going to be stragglers on these islands.
5:51
Speaker 1: You will one day podcast about them. Hero So what happened, Chuck, well, Josh.
5:57
Speaker 1: Because the US is industrious and bright and has it
6:02
Speaker 1: never say die attitude, they said, you know what, why
6:05
Speaker 1: don't we commission some labs and academic institutions to develop
6:10
Speaker 1: a synthetic rubber. So they put out the call because
6:13
Speaker 1: they needed this for the wartime demand, and uh, all
6:16
Speaker 1: these chemists got to work on it, and uh, invented
6:20
Speaker 1: something called g R dash S, which is Government rubber styrene,
6:26
Speaker 1: and it turned out to be a great replacement for rubber.
6:28
Speaker 1: And by n we were producing twice the amount of
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Speaker 1: all the world's rubber combined, the synthetic rubber and synthetic
6:38
Speaker 1: rubber in the US. So this is like one of
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Speaker 1: the most this is one of the biggest chemical chemical
6:44
Speaker 1: engineering accomplishments ever created undertaken right, um So g R
6:50
Speaker 1: S huge still in use today. Right, Yes, it's like
6:53
Speaker 1: the standard for synthetic rubber. Um it changed everything like
6:58
Speaker 1: that was it was like bye bye, Malaysia, Sorry about
7:00
Speaker 1: your your rubber monopoly falling apart. You shouldn't have let
7:04
Speaker 1: you pain invade. Well, I'm sure they still had plenty
7:07
Speaker 1: of customers. I'm sure they still did. They weren't like, oh,
7:09
Speaker 1: we got all this rubber, right, what are we gonna do?
7:12
Speaker 1: We we we chose the wrong team. Uh So, this,
7:16
Speaker 1: this synthetic rubber, this triumph of chemical engineering, was not
7:20
Speaker 1: without setbacks though, Right well, no, anytime you're trying to
7:25
Speaker 1: synthesize something like that, it's gonna there's gonna be some
7:27
Speaker 1: ups and downs. And this was a nationwide challenge by
7:29
Speaker 1: the War Production Board. It wasn't just like hey, you
7:31
Speaker 1: five guys over here. It was like, attention, all chemical engineers,
7:35
Speaker 1: all chemists, anybody who has anything to do with chemistry.
7:38
Speaker 1: We need a synthetic rubber, and we needed an abundant supply.
7:42
Speaker 1: So there were a lot of people working on this. Yes,
7:45
Speaker 1: and one of those guys was James Wright of General
7:48
Speaker 1: Electric GE. He mixed bork acid with silicon oil and
7:53
Speaker 1: uh said, you know what, this is gonna be a
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Speaker 1: great synthetic rubber. Unfortunately, it wasn't a great synthetic rubber.
8:00
Speaker 1: His quote unquote bouncing putty is what he called it.
8:04
Speaker 1: But Gee thought I had some promise. Gee thought I
8:07
Speaker 1: had some promise. But it did pretty much wallow away
8:12
Speaker 1: in obscurity at first, right for um, almost a decade.
8:16
Speaker 1: It just kind of made the rounds to other places, like, hey,
8:18
Speaker 1: can your guys do anything like with this, We'll share
8:21
Speaker 1: the patent, whatever, just just figure out what we can
8:24
Speaker 1: do with this. Yeah, and apparently Gee got this. Uh.
8:29
Speaker 1: It was so widespread that it made its way to
8:32
Speaker 1: a party that a guy named Peter Hodgson, who owned
8:35
Speaker 1: an ad agency in New Haven, Connecticut, attended a cocktail party.
8:39
Speaker 1: Remember spam. That's where spam came from a cocktail party
8:42
Speaker 1: on New Year's Eve. Great things happen when you get
8:44
Speaker 1: together and drink. Uh. This guy was at a at
8:46
Speaker 1: a cocktail party and saw some people playing with this
8:49
Speaker 1: um bouncing putty that James as James Wright called it,
8:53
Speaker 1: and said, you know what, these adults seem fascinated by this.
8:56
Speaker 1: I just happened to be working on a cattle dog
9:00
Speaker 1: for a toy store, and I think this would make
9:02
Speaker 1: a great adult novelty. So he approached the lady who
9:06
Speaker 1: owned the Block toy store, right yeah, and I got
9:10
Speaker 1: there's varying accounts of this story. I think it's one
9:12
Speaker 1: of those deals where because I saw somewhere where she
9:15
Speaker 1: was the one that saw it and contacted him and said, hey,
9:19
Speaker 1: can you put this in my catalog? So either way,
9:22
Speaker 1: Peter Hodgson and Ruth fall Gadder, who owned the Block
9:27
Speaker 1: Shop toy store, they they decided to put it on
9:31
Speaker 1: the pages of their their catalog to sell as a toy, right,
9:35
Speaker 1: and it was two dollars, not chump change. No, that's
9:40
Speaker 1: definitely not um. And it was an adult novelty, as
9:44
Speaker 1: they reckoned. Right, Sorry, you just say adult novelty, and
9:50
Speaker 1: a lot of things come to mind, Spencer Gifts. I know,
9:53
Speaker 1: I know. It wasn't that kind of an adult worldly Okay,
9:57
Speaker 1: uh no, it was an adult diversion. It became a
10:01
Speaker 1: big seller, is what it became. Yeah. So yeah, it
10:04
Speaker 1: was the blockshops biggest seller, one of them. Um. And
10:07
Speaker 1: then this this I found a little hazy for reasons
10:10
Speaker 1: that remain unclear. Did you find anything out about why
10:13
Speaker 1: fall got her stopped backing the product? I couldn't find
10:17
Speaker 1: anything on that. But I guess even though it's sold
10:19
Speaker 1: big for her, she was just like whatever. Maybe she
10:21
Speaker 1: just had her thing going and she's like, why don't
10:23
Speaker 1: I want to start a new product. I'm a toy
10:25
Speaker 1: store owner? Yeah, why do I want to be a millionaire?
10:28
Speaker 1: Money is the root of all evil for her, Rubic,
10:32
Speaker 1: I have no no plans for this exactly. So. Uh So,
10:36
Speaker 1: the whole, the whole, the whole drive, the whole push
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Speaker 1: to make this into something big, what we now know
10:43
Speaker 1: as Silly Putty fell completely to Hodgson, and he turned
10:46
Speaker 1: into a whirling dervish. Between nineteen fifty, he borrowed a
10:51
Speaker 1: hundred and forty seven dollars and bought another batch from
10:53
Speaker 1: ge hired a Yale student to roll them into twenty
10:58
Speaker 1: eight Graham one ounce balls, packaged them in plastic Easter eggs,
11:04
Speaker 1: and sold them to Double Day book shops and Neiman
11:08
Speaker 1: Marcus along the way. He also um took them to
11:13
Speaker 1: some chemical engineers in Schenectady, right yeah, and said, hey,
11:17
Speaker 1: copy that reverse engineering. Yeah, it's like that website that
11:20
Speaker 1: has like all of your favorite recipes from like Applebee's
11:23
Speaker 1: and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Reverse engineering. First, get chicken from
11:26
Speaker 1: a sealed bag that's pretty sauced exactly and put it
11:30
Speaker 1: in a pan. Yes, they're like, do you have Cisco's
11:32
Speaker 1: phone number? So that's what he did, and you're right,
11:36
Speaker 1: he did make pretty quick work of it, um, because
11:38
Speaker 1: after he opened a manufacturing plant. Yes, all this is
11:41
Speaker 1: in a year he first encountered this stuff. In this
11:45
Speaker 1: is he believed in this what would be? Actually he's
11:49
Speaker 1: he had already settled on Silly Putty as the name. Yeah, well,
11:52
Speaker 1: he was an ad agency guy, so should brainstoring some names?
11:55
Speaker 1: Evaluated fifteen of them was like, this is the one
11:57
Speaker 1: that he trademarked. It was Nutty Putty one I think
12:00
Speaker 1: was one of them. I think that would have sold
12:01
Speaker 1: to so he had the Silly Putty name. At this
12:04
Speaker 1: point opened the manufacturing plant in Connecticut, and soon after
12:08
Speaker 1: that landed Neemon Marcus and Double Day bookshops as customers,
12:11
Speaker 1: which was huge, it was, but it became even huger
12:15
Speaker 1: when um, some writers from the New Yorker went to
12:18
Speaker 1: Double Day and they encountered, do you want to read
12:21
Speaker 1: this part? You're I'm not gonna read and read this
12:24
Speaker 1: one all right. It was in the Talk of the
12:27
Speaker 1: Town section in ninety in the New Yorker. We went
12:30
Speaker 1: into the Double Day bookshop at Fifth Avenue and fifty
12:32
Speaker 1: two Street the other day, intending in our innocence to
12:35
Speaker 1: buy a book, and found all the clerks busy selling
12:38
Speaker 1: silly putty, a gooey, pinkish, repellent looking commodity. The commodity
12:43
Speaker 1: I love that that comes in plastic containers the size
12:47
Speaker 1: and shape of eggs. We sought out Mr Lee Weber,
12:50
Speaker 1: the manager of the bookshop, to ascertain the mysterious link
12:52
Speaker 1: between it and Double Day. He told us that silly
12:54
Speaker 1: putty is the most terrific item and that Double Day
12:57
Speaker 1: shops have been privileged to handle it since forever, Amber, Yeah,
13:02
Speaker 1: forever Amber. I looked it up. It was a bestseller
13:04
Speaker 1: from the forties. It was about a woman in restoration,
13:08
Speaker 1: England's late seventeenth century England who, through her sexy wit,
13:12
Speaker 1: went from rags to riches and became like the favorite
13:14
Speaker 1: mistress of Charles the second I was banned in Boston. Yeah.
13:18
Speaker 1: So because of this um pretentious bit of cynical whimsy
13:23
Speaker 1: that appeared in the New Yorker, Um, the sales overnight,
13:28
Speaker 1: uh for Silly Putty just exploded. He got Hodgson got
13:33
Speaker 1: UM three hundred, seven hundred and fifty thousand orders. Two hundred. Man,
13:40
Speaker 1: why did I quarter of a mill? You're probably thinking
13:42
Speaker 1: three quarters? Yeah I was. I was thinking about the
13:45
Speaker 1: orders that weren't there, exactly. He got a quarter of
13:48
Speaker 1: a mill in three days, a quarter of a million orders,
13:50
Speaker 1: and at two bucks a pop, that's a lot of money,
13:54
Speaker 1: especially considering that he only a million dollars. Yeah, yeah,
13:58
Speaker 1: that's well, I was thinking about the half a million
14:01
Speaker 1: he didn't right. Uh So it was like basically an
14:38
Speaker 1: overnight success thanks to Neiman Markets, Double Day Books and
14:41
Speaker 1: the New Yorker and G. E. And the Japanese. But
14:45
Speaker 1: I mean, again, this is all happening in a year
14:47
Speaker 1: that's pretty speedy. This is a whirlwind year for this guy.
14:50
Speaker 1: I'm happy for him. Just just looking back on this story,
14:54
Speaker 1: I hope he was a good guy and he didn't
14:55
Speaker 1: like beat up little kids on his way to work.
14:58
Speaker 1: He passed away nine seven six. I hope before then
15:02
Speaker 1: he didn't do bad things. But he saw it become
15:04
Speaker 1: a huge success because when he died in nineteen seventy six,
15:07
Speaker 1: Silly Putty was in twenty two countries plus the United States,
15:12
Speaker 1: with sales exceeding five million a year. And that was
15:14
Speaker 1: in seventy six. Yeah, which I looked it up. That's
15:17
Speaker 1: nineteen million today dollars, I think. But um, it's it's
15:22
Speaker 1: pretty it's pretty good. Yeah, uh yeah, they seem to,
15:26
Speaker 1: they seem to. Yeah, well he's set up um Arnold
15:29
Speaker 1: Clark Inc. And I never found out who Arnold Clark kiss.
15:32
Speaker 1: Maybe that was an alias of his, who knows, um,
15:36
Speaker 1: but yeah, apparently owns Silly Putty. Now, now we've just
15:41
Speaker 1: described the history of Silly Putty. That should be enough. Um,
15:45
Speaker 1: But I mean, surely there's no one out there who
15:48
Speaker 1: hasn't played the Silly Putty before. I used to play
15:52
Speaker 1: with it like crazy when I was a kid. And
15:53
Speaker 1: one thing I would do, which is something that they
15:56
Speaker 1: found out, you know, it was originally intended for adults,
15:58
Speaker 1: and they were kind of surprised learned that kids were
16:00
Speaker 1: into it, and it didn't take long for the kids
16:03
Speaker 1: sales to dwarf that of adults. It was sales overtook
16:08
Speaker 1: it initially, he said. He's like, you know, this is
16:12
Speaker 1: great for adults because you can come home and unwind
16:15
Speaker 1: at the end of the day by squeezing it and
16:17
Speaker 1: just blowing off steam. By copying newsprint with it, may I,
16:21
Speaker 1: And that's what I did with it, was was copied
16:23
Speaker 1: comic books. So in that New Yorker article they interviewed
16:26
Speaker 1: Hodgson and he had he had a quote, it means
16:29
Speaker 1: five minutes of escape from neurosis. It means not having
16:33
Speaker 1: to worry about Korea or family difficulties, and it appeals
16:36
Speaker 1: to people that supure intellect. The inherent ridiculousness of the
16:39
Speaker 1: material acts as an emotional release to hard press adults.
16:43
Speaker 1: So it obviously worked because we're not in Korea any longer.
16:47
Speaker 1: It's interesting though, that he was wrong. I think it's
16:50
Speaker 1: funny how somebody can be wrong on something and still
16:52
Speaker 1: be right, you know what I mean, Like all the
16:55
Speaker 1: uses in the intent was he was completely wrong, but
16:59
Speaker 1: it's still skyrocket and he's like, oh, well, it's for kids.
17:02
Speaker 1: Then he kind of cast a wide net on the
17:04
Speaker 1: patent license. It was for um stress relief, hand therapy
17:09
Speaker 1: for people who needed it. Um it could be used
17:12
Speaker 1: to block out low frequency noises. Yeah, they still claim
17:15
Speaker 1: you can do all this stuff today, like it's good
17:17
Speaker 1: for therapy and for like guming up holes and cleaning
17:21
Speaker 1: typewriter keys, which is a huge use these days. Well
17:25
Speaker 1: computer keys. Oh yeah, that's right. I forgot about this,
17:28
Speaker 1: um but yeah. So the guy was very much focused
17:31
Speaker 1: on it being uh um for adults, but kids kind
17:35
Speaker 1: of took it for themselves, mainly because you could. One
17:38
Speaker 1: of the great properties of silly putty is you can
17:40
Speaker 1: stretch it out, push it down on newsprint, and you
17:44
Speaker 1: have a mirror image of it. That's what I said.
17:46
Speaker 1: That's what he used to do. Oh you did say that, Yeah,
17:48
Speaker 1: comics comics, and you can't. It's harder to it's harder
17:50
Speaker 1: to do that these days because the print they use,
17:53
Speaker 1: Like you literally have to find like a newspaper in
17:58
Speaker 1: order to do that. Yeah, you can't do it on
18:01
Speaker 1: the internet or a magazine. Yeah, you can't do it
18:05
Speaker 1: on a kindle. You could do it on a magazine.
18:08
Speaker 1: H No, I think you can know, dude, it's got
18:11
Speaker 1: to pick up the ink. I know I can't do
18:13
Speaker 1: it on a magazine. I can tell you from reading
18:15
Speaker 1: Harper's by the Pool that that's stuff smears. And if
18:18
Speaker 1: it's smears, I guarantee you can get it on silly putty. Uh.
18:23
Speaker 1: Lucky for him, though, it was non toxic, so when
18:25
Speaker 1: kids started playing with it and inevitably putting it in
18:28
Speaker 1: their mouth, there were no issues with that. Right, so
18:32
Speaker 1: you should not eat it. We should say that. Yeah,
18:34
Speaker 1: don't eat anything that's not food or anything that has
18:36
Speaker 1: the name silly in it or putty, silly string, silly anything. Um.
18:40
Speaker 1: So Hodgson made mention of its um inherent ridiculousness of
18:45
Speaker 1: the material. Right, Um, it has some really strange properties. Uh.
18:49
Speaker 1: He originally called it so he described it as a
18:52
Speaker 1: solid liquid right when you um, when you stretch it,
18:57
Speaker 1: it's like taffy. It stretches, right. Uh. If you pull it,
19:02
Speaker 1: it just snaps apart quickly and with a lot of force. Um.
19:07
Speaker 1: If you stick it to like, say, um bookcase, you
19:11
Speaker 1: come back a few days later, it will have very
19:13
Speaker 1: slowly moved down, very slowly, very which means it flows,
19:18
Speaker 1: which is weird, but we'll get to that in a minute. Um.
19:21
Speaker 1: And when you roll it up into a ball, it
19:22
Speaker 1: bounces higher than rubber. Yeah, they did a test. They
19:26
Speaker 1: rolled it into like a perfect little ball, and they
19:28
Speaker 1: dropped it with no force from three ft and it
19:31
Speaker 1: bounce bounces back two and a half feet. Supposedly. That
19:35
Speaker 1: is dynamite. Not bad. And if you throw it down
19:38
Speaker 1: real hard, you know you got yourself a super ball
19:40
Speaker 1: in your hands. So what is the stuff? Well, what
19:44
Speaker 1: are the the what's the science of silly putty chuck?
19:47
Speaker 1: The science of so? Well, before we get there, can
19:50
Speaker 1: I say about the egg? There are several varying accounts
19:53
Speaker 1: on why it was put in an egg. Some people
19:56
Speaker 1: say it was because his first batch went out before
20:00
Speaker 1: Easter and then he just said, hey, it's actually a
20:02
Speaker 1: pretty good idea, let's just keep it in the egg.
20:05
Speaker 1: Other people say he got the inspiration while eating eggs
20:08
Speaker 1: one morning. Eggs are good for you, And still other
20:10
Speaker 1: people say that he couldn't find another container in abundance,
20:16
Speaker 1: and he had like a line on these plastic eggs,
20:19
Speaker 1: and I was like, I'll just use this because this
20:21
Speaker 1: is a pretty good way to put it in there.
20:23
Speaker 1: It's about an ounce, so let's just do that either way.
20:26
Speaker 1: That became the signature that's still used today, silly putty
20:31
Speaker 1: full of eggs, the egg full of silly puddy, I
20:35
Speaker 1: feel silly. You could probably get silly putty full of
20:37
Speaker 1: egg but you don't have to do it yourself at home. Um. Alright,
20:42
Speaker 1: so back to what this stuff is, um, josh, it
20:47
Speaker 1: is a polymer, right, Yeah, it's a visco elastic polymer. Basically,
20:55
Speaker 1: it's subject to the science of fluid chemistry, right, And
20:59
Speaker 1: fluids are not necessarily liquids. Liquids are fluids, but not
21:02
Speaker 1: all fluids or liquids. Gas can be a fluid, some
21:07
Speaker 1: semi solid substances can be fluid. Basically, a fluid is
21:11
Speaker 1: anything that yields to slight pressure and has no definite shape.
21:17
Speaker 1: So fluid your your gut is at least okay. Um,
21:24
Speaker 1: So so that's uh, that's the science. That's the part
21:27
Speaker 1: of chemistry and physics that we're looking as fluid chemistry UM,
21:31
Speaker 1: and the ruling principle of that of fluid chemistry is viscosity.
21:36
Speaker 1: Where do we talk about this? I know we've talked
21:38
Speaker 1: about viscosity. We talked about viscosity in um quicksand right,
21:43
Speaker 1: shear maynaise this visquosity, Josh. Viscosity is uh. It measures
21:48
Speaker 1: how much a fluid resists flow at a certain temperature.
21:51
Speaker 1: So so viscosity is resistant resistance to flow. If you're
21:54
Speaker 1: like me and you can never remember what's viscosity, what's viscous,
21:58
Speaker 1: or what's high or low viscous, viscosity is resistance to flow.
22:02
Speaker 1: Actually the easiest way to remember is water is low.
22:05
Speaker 1: That pretty much says it all, just so it's easy.
22:07
Speaker 1: Like peanut butter would have a high viscosity, water would
22:10
Speaker 1: have a low viscosity. That's pretty easy way to it
22:13
Speaker 1: has a high resistance to flow or low resistance to
22:17
Speaker 1: flow like honey or molasses and um. Viscosity is often
22:21
Speaker 1: measured in pascal seconds, not so much anymore now it's
22:26
Speaker 1: measured by dying seconds per square centimeter, also called poise
22:31
Speaker 1: and tien. Poise equals one pascal second. What that means
22:35
Speaker 1: I cannot. I couldn't rant my mind around before then. Yeah,
22:39
Speaker 1: every site that I saw it took it for granted
22:42
Speaker 1: that I understood what what that measures. But it measures
22:47
Speaker 1: viscosity or flow. As far as I understand. What I
22:50
Speaker 1: love is that someone somewhere said, uh, tascal seconds just
22:54
Speaker 1: said and cutting it right. The guy whose last name
22:57
Speaker 1: was Poise or poisel, I believe that's what happ came
23:00
Speaker 1: up with poise um. But yeah, so that's how viscosity
23:04
Speaker 1: is measured UM. And the more Pascal seconds are, the
23:09
Speaker 1: more poise there are, the more the higher the viscosity
23:14
Speaker 1: is UM. But the thing about viscous fluids, they all well,
23:20
Speaker 1: I should say, most of them are subject to um temperature.
23:25
Speaker 1: That's what affects their viscosity. If you if you have
23:29
Speaker 1: cold honey that you're trying to get out of the bottle,
23:32
Speaker 1: it doesn't flow very well. But if it's a room
23:34
Speaker 1: temperature or if it's warm, it flows. It's it's much
23:37
Speaker 1: less viscous, right, it flows much more easily because it's
23:41
Speaker 1: subject just to temperature. That makes it a Newtonian fluid.
23:45
Speaker 1: That's also a pet peeve. When you go to a
23:48
Speaker 1: place and get pancakes or waffles or French dose and
23:50
Speaker 1: they have the heated syrup. Oh I like that, you do? Yeah?
23:55
Speaker 1: I like my syrup thick, okay um, you like it
23:58
Speaker 1: thin and water you like that as long as it's warm.
24:01
Speaker 1: It's watery because it's low and viscosity and it's warm. Um.
24:06
Speaker 1: But that's but it's just temperature there had it has
24:08
Speaker 1: nothing to do with force or pressure or anything like that.
24:11
Speaker 1: If a fluid is subject to not only temperature but
24:14
Speaker 1: also force, it's what's called a non Newtonian fluid. Chuck,
24:48
Speaker 1: are we at the email point? I believe we are, Chuck.
24:51
Speaker 1: This was pretty neato. We got an email from a
24:53
Speaker 1: young listener just a few weeks ago that seemingly had
24:57
Speaker 1: nothing to do with this podcast. But Josh and his
25:01
Speaker 1: wisdom looks back and says, hey, this kid actually described
25:04
Speaker 1: this Newtonian fluid very well. Yeah, and so let's just
25:08
Speaker 1: read his description. And it came before we decided to
25:10
Speaker 1: do silly Place, so it was all just serendipitous, just
25:12
Speaker 1: sitting there. So I'm just gonna read the Holy hemis.
25:15
Speaker 1: And this marks the first time that a listener has
25:17
Speaker 1: actually contributed to the body of the show's information, and
25:20
Speaker 1: so this is a um. He's a young listener too,
25:23
Speaker 1: as we'll find out, Dearest Josh, Chuck and Jerry, And
25:27
Speaker 1: he spelled Jerry's name correctly right out of the game
25:29
Speaker 1: Kids on the Ball. Hi, guys, I wanted to say
25:32
Speaker 1: how much I love your podcast and your soothing voices
25:34
Speaker 1: which get me through long road trips. I may be
25:37
Speaker 1: considered one of your younger quote listeners since I am
25:41
Speaker 1: eleven years young. I needed an excuse to email you,
25:44
Speaker 1: so I'll tell you a little bit about non newtonium
25:46
Speaker 1: fluids this kid, Sir Isaac Newton said that fluids such
25:50
Speaker 1: as water flow continuously regardless of forces that act upon it.
25:54
Speaker 1: So if you put your hand under a faucet, the
25:56
Speaker 1: water still flows no matter what, making it a newtonium
25:59
Speaker 1: flu it. But non newtonium fluids like catch up blood
26:03
Speaker 1: and yogurt behave differently based on the amount of stress
26:06
Speaker 1: added onto it. Try adding corn starch to water. If
26:10
Speaker 1: you put your hand into it, it behaves like a
26:12
Speaker 1: liquid and allows your hand to go through it. But
26:15
Speaker 1: if you punch it with a lot of force, it
26:17
Speaker 1: behaves like a solid and stops your hand from entering
26:20
Speaker 1: corn starch and water. Is called you black, like the
26:22
Speaker 1: Dr Seus's book Bartholomew, Bartholomew and the O Black. Sorry
26:27
Speaker 1: if that was long, boring or not entertaining. I don't
26:30
Speaker 1: write articles as well as you guys. Anyway, I love
26:32
Speaker 1: the podcast and keep up the great work. I hope
26:35
Speaker 1: to keep listening to the podcast and that one day
26:37
Speaker 1: we will hear Jerry speak together. We will find a
26:39
Speaker 1: way your podcast confuse my friends with amazing knowledge and
26:43
Speaker 1: make me sound like the smartest kid in sixth grade.
26:46
Speaker 1: And for that I thank you. You'r s y s
26:48
Speaker 1: K super fan Matthew from New York PS, what kind
26:52
Speaker 1: of music do you guys like? I like Pink Floyd
26:54
Speaker 1: que Loosened the News and Weird Al Yankovic. So there's
26:58
Speaker 1: non newtonium fluids for you. And dude, when you came
27:01
Speaker 1: to me and said, hey, are you cool with us
27:03
Speaker 1: reading this kid's thing to describe this, I went, yeah,
27:06
Speaker 1: because you know what that means. I don't have to
27:09
Speaker 1: do it. He saved me, Yeah, he did know. He
27:12
Speaker 1: saved both of us. Funny our favorite little U Blake,
27:15
Speaker 1: New York. Basically the non Newtonian fluid, as as Matthew
27:19
Speaker 1: points out, is basically it acts like a solid and
27:22
Speaker 1: a liquid all at once. So he was right, way back.
27:24
Speaker 1: Hodgson was way back in the day correct when he
27:26
Speaker 1: said it was a liquid solid or a solid liquid exactly. Um.
27:30
Speaker 1: The reason why is because it's main ingredient is polydime
27:35
Speaker 1: methyl siloxane, right, and that means that's what gives silly putty.
27:40
Speaker 1: It's fisco Alaska fisco elastic properties. So it changes depending
27:46
Speaker 1: on long flow time meanings say the force of gravity
27:49
Speaker 1: acting on it down a bookcase, um, and temperatures right,
27:54
Speaker 1: So along flow time a high temperature, it behaves like
27:57
Speaker 1: a highly viscus fluid. It will just kind of slowly flow,
28:02
Speaker 1: but at lower temperatures and when um, the when when
28:05
Speaker 1: it has short flow times high pressure is applied really quickly,
28:10
Speaker 1: it'll just break, which is why you can snap it.
28:12
Speaker 1: I wonder, I guess if you heat it up, does
28:14
Speaker 1: it become liquid? If you heat it up, it becomes radioactive.
28:17
Speaker 1: It's like super Happy fun ball. Okay, remember that you
28:21
Speaker 1: don't the same live commercial for super Happy fun Ball.
28:24
Speaker 1: It's just like a regular ball. But there are all
28:26
Speaker 1: these warnings like, do not stand directly at super Happy
28:28
Speaker 1: fun Ball. It's super happy fun Ball begins to smoke,
28:31
Speaker 1: run away. You gotta look it up. I'll find it
28:34
Speaker 1: for you. We remember, we fought for that for the
28:36
Speaker 1: title of our audiobooks was like the super Happy fun
28:38
Speaker 1: guy to what you know, happiness or whatever I think
28:41
Speaker 1: awesome was in there somewhere and they said, now, yeah, simplified. Um,
28:46
Speaker 1: so that's it. That's the science of silly putty. But
28:49
Speaker 1: let's say, Chuck, you don't have much money, you're down
28:53
Speaker 1: on your luck in this economy, it happens you still
28:58
Speaker 1: want some silly putty. What do you do? You make it? Dude,
29:02
Speaker 1: You can very easily make your own. I don't know
29:05
Speaker 1: this here, you do, okay? Because I don't have this,
29:07
Speaker 1: I know that there's probably some sort of borax involved.
29:11
Speaker 1: There is bo x involved, or you can use corn
29:12
Speaker 1: stars for this. I'm gonna use bo X because I
29:15
Speaker 1: think we should support our friends at twenty Mule Team
29:18
Speaker 1: bore X' doing it for a hundred something years. And
29:22
Speaker 1: by the way, kids, uh, even though this is a
29:25
Speaker 1: safe thing, you should always get your parents to help
29:27
Speaker 1: you when you're making stuff like this. Because you might
29:28
Speaker 1: just make a big mess and then they would be
29:31
Speaker 1: mad at us and take away your iPod. That's exactly right,
29:34
Speaker 1: and we don't want that. Uh. There was I was
29:36
Speaker 1: listening to an old episode and there was one about
29:38
Speaker 1: a kid who wrote in and said that we had, um,
29:42
Speaker 1: we've gotten his iPod taken away because his teacher he
29:46
Speaker 1: asked her about alien hand sendrame, remember that, and um,
29:49
Speaker 1: his teacher couldn't answer, So she took his iPod and
29:51
Speaker 1: said it was a utensil for cheating. And he said,
29:54
Speaker 1: for the record, I never used my iPods a utensil
29:57
Speaker 1: for cheating. He basically smoked her. She was embarrassed. So, um,
30:02
Speaker 1: if you want to go ahead and gather these things. Um,
30:04
Speaker 1: there's a white Craft glue. Elmer's glue will work. Um.
30:08
Speaker 1: Any bor X twenty mule team Borax works very well. Uh.
30:11
Speaker 1: Some warm water and food coloring if you like, and
30:14
Speaker 1: we'll we'll wait here while you gather thus, okay. Um,
30:20
Speaker 1: So you want to take your white Craft glue, you
30:22
Speaker 1: want one cup of it sixteen ounces eight ounces sorry, right, okay, um,
30:28
Speaker 1: which I think is the standard size of just a
30:31
Speaker 1: regular thing of Elmer's glue. You take your three quarters
30:35
Speaker 1: cup warm water, and you make a nice glue water mixture,
30:39
Speaker 1: and you're gonna find that the glue dissolves pretty readily
30:42
Speaker 1: in the warm water. Chuck, and which means it has
30:46
Speaker 1: a very low viscosity. Right. Then you take your borax,
30:50
Speaker 1: just a half of a teaspoon I've also seen up
30:52
Speaker 1: to a teaspoon one of those two. Slowly add it,
30:56
Speaker 1: and you're gonna find very quickly that the viscosity increases.
30:59
Speaker 1: Dramatic claim. Okay, um, after a little while when you're
31:03
Speaker 1: stirring it, you're eventually gonna have to get it to
31:05
Speaker 1: the point where you just pull it out and you
31:06
Speaker 1: rub it together with your hands or whatever. And um oh,
31:10
Speaker 1: when you add the borax, you also want to add
31:12
Speaker 1: the food coloring to sure if not yours have white
31:15
Speaker 1: silly putty. Um, but you you roll around in your hands,
31:19
Speaker 1: there's your silly putty. It's done. And what happened was
31:22
Speaker 1: your the polymer chains, the molecular chains of water and
31:26
Speaker 1: the glue weren't sticking. They just slid right past each other,
31:30
Speaker 1: which kept them in the Newtonian fluid category. But the
31:35
Speaker 1: moment you added that borax, it came in and said, hey,
31:38
Speaker 1: let's all just band together. And it took these polymer
31:40
Speaker 1: chains and linked them so they could no longer slide
31:42
Speaker 1: past one another. They were turned into a net or
31:45
Speaker 1: a web. And that's what gives the putty. It's elastic
31:49
Speaker 1: like qualities and these long polymer chains that just hook
31:51
Speaker 1: up and hook up and hook up. How long does
31:53
Speaker 1: that stuff last? You know? I don't think humanity has
31:56
Speaker 1: been around long enough to know how long silly putty
31:59
Speaker 1: will last? Mean homemades everybody. I don't know until your
32:02
Speaker 1: little brother eats it. Because I thought I saw something
32:04
Speaker 1: about putting it in the fridge. You can store in
32:07
Speaker 1: a receivable bag or container to keep soft. Well, that nice.
32:12
Speaker 1: So that's it. And does it does it copy print
32:15
Speaker 1: the same way? I wonder, or just had the same
32:17
Speaker 1: elastic properties? I don't know. It makes you don't let's
32:21
Speaker 1: do it all right, Okay, that's hey, that's what we're
32:23
Speaker 1: doing this weekend. Okay, weekend. I'll bring the apron sweet
32:28
Speaker 1: to bring the beer. So that's it. I would say
32:30
Speaker 1: that this UM this podcast was a quintessential UM stuff
32:34
Speaker 1: you should know podcast. It had an iconic American product,
32:39
Speaker 1: It had a lot of history. It had science, the
32:42
Speaker 1: the the chemistry behind it, and it had do do
32:46
Speaker 1: it yourself at home recipes. The four Tenants and a
32:51
Speaker 1: kid and a cute kid. Five pillars, five pillars. We
32:55
Speaker 1: we nailed this one. And a cocktail party. Six pillars.
32:58
Speaker 1: That's it, all right, Go get you some silly putty.
33:01
Speaker 1: I know they had. I think for their anniversary they
33:04
Speaker 1: had gold silly putty for the first time, I believe,
33:07
Speaker 1: I remember that. And I think they now have things
33:09
Speaker 1: like Glow in the Dark and you know it gets
33:11
Speaker 1: all wacky. It used to just look like, uh, I guess, pinkish,
33:15
Speaker 1: but sort of a fleshy pinkish. Remember that. Yeah, um,
33:19
Speaker 1: I think they still have that too, though the original.
33:21
Speaker 1: They've got to you can't. You can't forget your roots
33:24
Speaker 1: like that. So dads can go to the toy store
33:26
Speaker 1: and say, nah, you're not getting glow in the Dark.
33:28
Speaker 1: You're getting this. You're getting pink That's what I had
33:30
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, and I loved it. You're
33:32
Speaker 1: gonna love it too. Let's get some comics wherever they
33:34
Speaker 1: sell those and press it against their online all right,
33:38
Speaker 1: all right, So if you want to learn more about
33:40
Speaker 1: silly putty type and silly putty. It brings up a
33:42
Speaker 1: really cool article, um, including a recipe, an extended recipe
33:46
Speaker 1: even um. So that's s I L L Y space
33:49
Speaker 1: p U T T Y. And in the search bar
33:53
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com. Since I said search bar,
33:55
Speaker 1: that means it's time for a listener mail, the second
33:58
Speaker 1: one in this podcast. Indeed, Josh, I'm gonna call this
34:04
Speaker 1: smart stuff from a lady in Columbia, South Carolina. You know,
34:08
Speaker 1: sometimes we just get these listeners that just send us
34:11
Speaker 1: really good, intelligent emails, and I think those are always
34:14
Speaker 1: worth reading. So here we go. Hey, guys, just finished
34:18
Speaker 1: listening to the Future of the Internet. Cast had a
34:20
Speaker 1: few thoughts about the so called dumbing down of culture. First,
34:23
Speaker 1: I'm highly skeptical of any claims that uh to assert
34:27
Speaker 1: a sea change in intellectual ability. Smart and dumb are
34:31
Speaker 1: culturally and historically relative terms, and it's also true that
34:35
Speaker 1: people have been bemoaning the intellectual poverty caused by new
34:39
Speaker 1: technologies ever since writing was invented. Secondly, I'm not actually
34:42
Speaker 1: sure the utilization of deep memory a good is a
34:46
Speaker 1: good one in and of itself. Yes, something might be
34:49
Speaker 1: lost with those ah ha moments. But I'm much more
34:51
Speaker 1: impressed by someone's ability to make novel and surprising connections,
34:56
Speaker 1: something that the Internet actually facilitates, than by the pedantic
34:59
Speaker 1: memory reization of facts, which I would argue isn't pedantic,
35:04
Speaker 1: but that's me. Third, and most personally, the ability of
35:07
Speaker 1: the Internet to store and offer up vast quantities of
35:09
Speaker 1: information doesn't necessarily wipe out sustained research or thought. I'm
35:13
Speaker 1: finishing up a dissertation that I could have couldn't have
35:17
Speaker 1: written without Google Books, and that would have taken me
35:20
Speaker 1: a lot longer without Google scholar. Yeah, sometimes I find
35:23
Speaker 1: myself lost and the indefinitely I'm sorry, infinitely expanding more
35:28
Speaker 1: ass of tabs as I disappeared down some research rabbit hole.
35:32
Speaker 1: This guy is obviously putting off working on his dissertation
35:36
Speaker 1: by writing this email. It's a lady, but that's always
35:39
Speaker 1: been the nature of scholarship. You never know where a
35:41
Speaker 1: question will take you, and the ability to quickly pursue
35:44
Speaker 1: various strands and to figure out which ones aren't going
35:47
Speaker 1: to take you anywhere productive is I think transformative for academia.
35:51
Speaker 1: All of this to say, the Internet might diminish our
35:54
Speaker 1: ability to store quantities of facts, but mourning that ability
35:57
Speaker 1: privileges facts and quantities effects are not necessarily indicative of
36:01
Speaker 1: a culture's intelligence. Sustained reasoning and interpretation is, of course,
36:05
Speaker 1: something else entirely, and that is from Josephine Are of Columbia,
36:09
Speaker 1: South Carolina via Los Angeles. Wait so wait, she's I
36:16
Speaker 1: think currently in Colombia. Okay, so from l A. No, no,
36:19
Speaker 1: no from l A. VIA's Columbia. Nope, she's in l A.
36:23
Speaker 1: From you are right then? Man? How funny this follow
36:28
Speaker 1: up a smart email that with dum marie like dem witery.
36:33
Speaker 1: All right, well that's it. Thank you Josephine for that.
36:36
Speaker 1: We appreciate it. That was actually kind of a big
36:39
Speaker 1: topic of um dissent people writing in about that after that.
36:46
Speaker 1: But thanks. I think she summed it up pretty well.
36:48
Speaker 1: I agreed. Um. Also, we should correct ourselves. Cheddar American
36:52
Speaker 1: cheese no English after the English town of Cheddar, So
36:58
Speaker 1: sorry about that, England. Thanks for takeing in a way
37:00
Speaker 1: one of our American cheese is. I can't think of
37:03
Speaker 1: any more corrections right now, but we will figure them out,
37:07
Speaker 1: Yes we will. If you want to send us a correction,
37:09
Speaker 1: We're always open to that. You can also send us
37:11
Speaker 1: any cute silly putty stories that you've got um let
37:15
Speaker 1: us hear them. You can tweet to us s y
37:18
Speaker 1: s K podcast. You can um go onto Facebook dot
37:21
Speaker 1: com slash stuff you should know that's our fan page,
37:24
Speaker 1: or you can send us an old email at stuff
37:27
Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on
37:36
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff
37:38
Speaker 1: works dot com