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Short Stuff: Mood Rings · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. Josh and Chuck here,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Jerry's there too, Dave's here kind of and this is
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: short stuck.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: This I think is sort of why we started short Stuff.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: This is the perfect little bite size topic and this one.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: The articles that I used to cobble this together were
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: from houstuffworks dot com and the Chicago Tribune and one
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: of our old favorites Atlas Obscura. Hey, oh, let's talk
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: mood rings.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so if you were alive in the mid seventies
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: and probably over the age of eight, there's a good
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: chance that you had a mood ring.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Chuck, I did not. I believe my sister did though.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Sure of course your older sister, right.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, six years older. So that was right in the wheelhouse.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And they just kind of came out of nowhere
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five. There's a couple of theories of
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: who came up with it. As we'll see in a
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: few months, forty million mood rings sold. And then, just
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: like everything else that was a fad in the seventies,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: pet rocks, well, pet rocks, it was just gone as
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: fast as it came along.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Key parties, cocaine, all that stuff went away.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing how fast and how lucrative this flash
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: in the pan was invented. And there's a couple of
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: stories here about who introduced this thing. Most people point
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: to in nineteen seventy five Maris Ambats and Josh Reynolds
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: as the inventor's. Reynolds, as the story goes, at least
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: was a Wall street worker and was very stressed out
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: with that high stressed job. Said I'm going to I'm
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: going to drop out. I'm gonna start getting into biofeedback.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: I'm going to open a meditation center. It's called the
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: q Tran Ltd or q Tran Limited. I guess, sure,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: And he said, I got a ring that actually produces
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: mood feedback. So the idea is that you can you
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: can see how you're doing literally by looking at the
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: ring on your finger, and then know where you are
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: if you're anxious, if you're upset, if you're chilled out,
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: and what you need to do, like you might need
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: to meditate or come and pay me money to come
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: to my center.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Sure, And there's actually like legitimacy to that with biofeedback
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: in particular, where if you can recognize what emotional state
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: you're in, you can actually take steps to get out
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: of it. If it's a negative emotional state, you can
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: sure purposely relax your muscles, like your neck muscles. You
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: can try breathing exercises that slow your heart rate a
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: little bit, like it's And that's the point of it.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: It's to be aware of your emotions. And so exactly,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: and what he was coming up or you could do
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: some cocaine. Sure, what he was coming up with was
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: this ring that you could just look to and be like, oh,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: that's my mood. I need to like, I'm actually anxious,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: so I need to do.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Some yoga, yeah exactly, which is pretty smart. Yeah, so
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: that's one. Maybe we should. Now let's go ahead and
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: talk about the next guy. Okay, before we take our break.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: The other story, which doesn't have a whole lot around it.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Like on the internet, almost everyone points at Josh Reynolds
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: and Maris Ambats, But Marvin Wernick was a jeweler, and
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: some people say he invented the mood ring kind of
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: the same year, basically nineteen seventy five, because he saw
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: a doctor put a thermotropic tape to the forehead of
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: a child to measure their temperature, and thought, hey, you know,
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: that's a great idea. If we could just measure our
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: body temperature and sort of see it, you know, beyond
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: like a readout but see a color. I could market that.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: And he didn't get a patent. And I don't think
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: we said earlier Josh Reynolds didn't get a patent. It
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: takes a while to do that. And like we said,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: this thing was a really quick flash in the pan.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: And so by the time any of these guys tried
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: to get a patent, it was kind of over.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there was one guy who has a patent, Chinese
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: inventor who patented it in nineteen ninety seven.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: But even still, like by the time that I mean
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: just by the time Josh Reynolds tried it, it was
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: over nineteen ninety seven. It's like, why would you even
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: waste your money on that?
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: But well, I think that's not too dumb though, Like
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: it could come back in a do in different way, okay,
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: and then this dude holds the patent. Not a bad idea, okay, fine, especially, oh,
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: I could see doing that because the seventies were in
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: again in the nineties. Yes, some you can retrend hats
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: off unnamed Chinese inventor, like I am the patent to
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: parachute pants.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: That would be lucrative.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: I bought that in the nineties and everyone's like, what
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: are you doing?
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Man? Did you ever have parachute pants in the nineties.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: No, I was, you know, we didn't have a lot
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: of money to buy like the bachetable stuff, and that
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: was never in the the uh. I never can remember
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: the name. But whatever the thing is where your shoelaces
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: have one too many eyes, or your zippers backwards or whatever.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Oh the like factory seconds. But there's another name.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: For him too, factory rejects.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know. But anyway, that's where I was shopping, right,
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: and the parachute pants never came through there. I probably
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: would have gotten them had I had the opportunity.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Well, I had some and they sure something else you
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: were rich. They were not like, these were not really
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: nice high They weren't like Arimez parachute pants or anything
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: I don't even know what that is.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Ames is a very high end luxury brand, okay, and
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: I don't think they ever made parachute pants. And now
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: that a joke sucks because I had to explain the
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: whole thing.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Oh no, let's go to break. You should have say Gucci. Alright,
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: let's go to break, all right, Charles, I know what
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Gucci is.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I should have said Gucci.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Or Polo.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, that joke is in the rear view about cost.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: So we're talking mood rings, after all, and not just
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: mood rings. They came out with like mood pendants, mood chokers,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: mood bracelets, anything to show you what your mood was.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: And if you kind of start diving into mood rings
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: or what later became called like mood jewelry biomod biomood
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: jewelry or truth jewelry, there's an actual like function of
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: those rings. It's not a stone. It's not magic or
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: anything like that. Well, it's magic if you find science magical.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: But there's a pretty easy explanation for it.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Like, and before we get to that, like the
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: question is do mood rings work? And the answer my
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Chuck's answer after reading a lot about this is kind of.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: I have the same answer kind of kind.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: Of Yeah, they're definitely not They're definitely not bs or bunk.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: No. But at the same time, I think a lot
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: of people who think that they're real think that it's
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: actually sensing your emotion. It's not. It's just sensing minute
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: changes in temperature on your skin.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: That's right. So how these work is is it's got
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: a sometimes a little hollow glass container mounted in a ring.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Sometimes it was like a clear glass stone on a
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: little thin sheet of these liquid crystals. And inside the
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: clear glass container were these thermotropic liquid crystals.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Yes, which I looked up and I cannot make heads
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: or tails of what they're used for specifically or it's
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: everything about it is like all nothing but science direct,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: and it's all our cane.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: I wonder if what's it called when you can like
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: predator heat sensing.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Thermal imaging.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, has that got anything to do with it?
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't think so. I saw that
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: it's used in displays, but I didn't see how or
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: what kind of displays.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, well, liquid crystal displays. I geah, LCDs, Yeah,
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: I guess so LCD sound System, Sure.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: They use thermotropic liquid crystals.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Sure, but at any rate, as my friend Josh would say,
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: the upshot is these liquid crystal molecules are just super sensitive,
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: and they are very sensitive to temperature in particular, and
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: when temperature is affecting these crystals, they will twist around,
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: they'll move positions depending on that temperature. And what happens
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: then is when they're twisting around, they are affecting the
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: light spectrum. And that is why it is literally color.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like they twist one way, they reflect blue, so
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: the thing looks blue. They twist another way because of
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: a change in temperature, they reflect black or green or
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: something like that. I think amber is another one. And
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: so the reason that this isn't actually bunk is because
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: your skin does undergo minute temperature changes when your mood changes. Yeah,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: And what they did was they basically calibrated the temperature
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: of an emotion, your skin temperature when you're experiencing some
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: emotion or a kind of neutral emotion, and figured out
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: what color that creates in the thermotropic liquid crystals. And
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: then they basically said, well, if your mood ring is
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: this color, you're probably experiencing this emotion. So it's they
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: cobbled together like a bunch of different things that are
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: real and put them together in something that it's kind
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: of real.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: That's right. I think it's kind of cool that they
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: came up with an average on the color scale, which
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: is green, based on your average body temperature. So that
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: makes sense. And then you know, we can go through
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: the colors here. Sure, green is normal. Like I said,
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: if you go up on the scale you go to
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: the bluish green, that means you're kind of relaxed. If
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: you are blue, you are calm slash relaxed. And then
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: if you're dark blue, if it really goes blue, that
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: means you're feeling like really good. You're like maybe passionate
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: about something a little romantic or super happy. And then
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: it goes down the scale from amber to gray to black,
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: from you know, nervous or anxious to very nervous or
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: anxious to just really feeling super stressed.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Right, and so again it kind of makes some sense.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: When you are feeling passionate, you're probably a little bit flushed, sure,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: and so your skin temperature is going to increase. When
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: you're anxious, you actually start to feel a little bit cold,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: and your skin temperature decreases. I'm not sure if it's
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: calibrated so accurately that you could divide it like that,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: but right, sure, it's possible. It's not like completely out
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: of the realm of possibility. The point is it doesn't
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: matter anymore because mood rings aren't really around.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: That's right, and there are a lot of other things
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: that go into your emotional state beyond the temperature of
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: your skin. So that's why I firmly land on it
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: kind of works.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I think that's great and another.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: For a teenager in the seventies to buy it exactly.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Chuck delivered as verdict on mood rings, which means short
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: stuff is out.
• 11:36
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• 11:39
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• 11:43
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