Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How Hang Gliding Works

Transcript

How Hang Gliding Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Roland,
0:18
Speaker 1: and as I said, there's me Josh Clark, which makes
0:21
Speaker 1: this Stuff you Should Know a sore In addition, wow
0:27
Speaker 1: soaring soaring Okay, the sore toe edition. I don't know
0:34
Speaker 1: what that means either. It doesn't mean anything. It's just
0:37
Speaker 1: kind of a sore toe is kind of the opposite
0:40
Speaker 1: of soaring, you know, really drags you down to earth
0:45
Speaker 1: because you think, like now I have to go to
0:47
Speaker 1: like a urgent care center and get this toe checked
0:51
Speaker 1: out and probably take some pills that make me throw up.
0:54
Speaker 1: And it's just not like soaring high above the earth
0:58
Speaker 1: on a hand glider, I imagine. And I've never hand glided,
1:01
Speaker 1: of you, um no, but I've had a sword too,
1:04
Speaker 1: so so you know, so do you have any desire
1:10
Speaker 1: to hang glide after this? Because I gotta tell you, man,
1:13
Speaker 1: I got kind of jazzed about the idea of trying
1:15
Speaker 1: it from researching this article. Not really, no, so like
1:23
Speaker 1: if you were somewhere on vacation and they had like
1:26
Speaker 1: hand gliding lessons as part of the place you were staying.
1:29
Speaker 1: Would you like go over and try it, you think,
1:31
Speaker 1: or you just absolutely aren't enthused by it at all. Yeah,
1:35
Speaker 1: it kind of depends, I guess on my mood and
1:37
Speaker 1: what else is going on. I mean, I could see that.
1:40
Speaker 1: I think that's fair. I wouldn't I wouldn't like seek
1:42
Speaker 1: it out though. But if I was literally within fifty
1:47
Speaker 1: ft of someone doing this right, and somebody picked you
1:50
Speaker 1: up and put you into the hardest and I might
1:52
Speaker 1: do it. But and I'm not afraid of it or anything.
1:55
Speaker 1: It's just I don't know, I don't really care. Yeah, No,
1:58
Speaker 1: I get that sense that you're not afraid of it.
2:00
Speaker 1: I am terrified of heights, as you know. Um, but
2:04
Speaker 1: this still sounds pretty appealing to me. Actually, I think
2:06
Speaker 1: I might try it. I mean I used to do
2:08
Speaker 1: repelling and stuff like that. So oh yeah, with your
2:12
Speaker 1: dad right down Stone Mountain, they'll let you do that.
2:18
Speaker 1: I thought they might. So hand gliding is what we're
2:22
Speaker 1: talking about, Chuck. And it turns out this article, this
2:25
Speaker 1: is an old school, old school how stuff works article,
2:30
Speaker 1: which were really weird in a lot of different ways. Um,
2:35
Speaker 1: But once we kind of dug in. We've we found that,
2:38
Speaker 1: like the topic is actually a little more interesting than
2:41
Speaker 1: the house Stuff Works article would lead someone to believe, Yeah,
2:46
Speaker 1: it's a little dry, just his head bone dry, and
2:51
Speaker 1: this is a Freud and Rich joint. He knows what
2:53
Speaker 1: he's doing. He's got a PhD after his name. But
2:56
Speaker 1: I think it was the culture of the age, you know, Like,
3:00
Speaker 1: for example, in the article, he talks about a personal
3:03
Speaker 1: experience hang gliding. You know exactly what I'm gonna say,
3:07
Speaker 1: don't you. I don't know. I don't actually, so he
3:10
Speaker 1: said that the place that he was taking this hand
3:13
Speaker 1: gliding lesson is called Jockey's Ridge and it's a public park.
3:18
Speaker 1: So he writes that, as you know, before they took
3:22
Speaker 1: off the hand gliding instructor check to make sure that
3:25
Speaker 1: our intended flight path was clear of obstacles and people
3:28
Speaker 1: because it was a public park. That's like such a
3:31
Speaker 1: two thousand one era how stuff works thing to mention
3:34
Speaker 1: in an article. You know, yeah, I kind of found
3:36
Speaker 1: myself skimming that part once I started reading it. There's
3:40
Speaker 1: some good info in it, but yeah, the whole personal
3:42
Speaker 1: experience thing, it just doesn't it doesn't click with me.
3:45
Speaker 1: You know, so, um, hang gliding, should we should we
3:50
Speaker 1: do a little history. I think we should do a
3:52
Speaker 1: little bit of history because, like I said, it's kind
3:54
Speaker 1: of interesting. Yeah, and this is one that you would
3:56
Speaker 1: not Um. I was a little bit surprised to know
3:59
Speaker 1: that NASA had anything to do with hang gliding, because
4:03
Speaker 1: it seems like obviously those two things would be opposite
4:06
Speaker 1: of one another, sort of like tow toe gliding sort
4:13
Speaker 1: toe and storing. Yeah, it's like an s A T question,
4:18
Speaker 1: it is. But there was an engineer for NASA named
4:21
Speaker 1: Francis Rogelo, so you kind have had an idea in
4:25
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties to use his Rogallo wing, uh, which
4:30
Speaker 1: was I guess sort of a crude hang glider to
4:33
Speaker 1: return space help return spacecraft to Earth. Yeah, instead of
4:37
Speaker 1: a mere parachute, which is what I guess had been
4:40
Speaker 1: used for a little while. Yeah. Like you know those
4:43
Speaker 1: famous images of like the Gemini capsules coming back to
4:46
Speaker 1: Earth and splashing down the ocean and they have like
4:49
Speaker 1: a drag shoot you know that they're from Originally they're like,
4:52
Speaker 1: what if we try this other thing? That's that will
4:55
Speaker 1: be one day. The predecessor of the hang glider and
4:57
Speaker 1: everyone said, what's the hang glider? And that person said,
5:00
Speaker 1: just wait a little while. So Rigalo and his wife
5:04
Speaker 1: actually were amateur aviation enthusiasts, and that's they were just
5:09
Speaker 1: kind of doing this on the side. But when he
5:12
Speaker 1: started working at NASA, they he said, hey, I've got
5:14
Speaker 1: this idea. And it didn't pan out. But the the
5:19
Speaker 1: the pictures of these tests that made it into magazines
5:24
Speaker 1: captured the imagination of some people around the world all
5:28
Speaker 1: at once. Different people who weren't in communication with one
5:31
Speaker 1: another saw these pictures and thought, you know what, I
5:35
Speaker 1: could do something with that. I could turn something like
5:37
Speaker 1: that into like a personal, non motorized flight machine. And
5:43
Speaker 1: they did. Yeah, But he was not the first person
5:46
Speaker 1: to ever do stuff like this, because everyone, i think
5:49
Speaker 1: has seen images of weirdos in the nineteenth century jumping
5:56
Speaker 1: off of buildings with all manner of winged suits and
6:00
Speaker 1: things like that, and one such guy, and that's just
6:03
Speaker 1: the humans obsession with like literally flying themselves, like not
6:07
Speaker 1: in a plane. There's also that it takes a certain
6:10
Speaker 1: type though, if you think about it, like even today,
6:12
Speaker 1: like somebody who says, wow, I'd really like to fly,
6:15
Speaker 1: and someone who says wow, I'd really like to fly,
6:17
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna spend ten years creating my own personal
6:19
Speaker 1: flying machine. Those are two different people, yeah, for sure,
6:25
Speaker 1: like the right brothers versus uh, this guy right exactly
6:29
Speaker 1: that you've never heard of because he didn't do anything
6:32
Speaker 1: otto lilienthal is that is that a good way to
6:36
Speaker 1: pronounce that? Oh yeah, not this guy. This guy did
6:38
Speaker 1: a lot. Yeah. Oh yeah, you're talking about the crackpots. Uh. Yeah.
6:43
Speaker 1: He was a German engineer, obviously from that name, and
6:47
Speaker 1: he was crazy about this stuff. And he literally did
6:50
Speaker 1: over two thousand successful flights with these what they called
6:55
Speaker 1: weight shift hand gliders, so hang gliders, where as you
6:58
Speaker 1: will see, like the modern hang lider, you you shift
7:01
Speaker 1: your weight to steer the thing, and he was he
7:03
Speaker 1: was doing that in a kind of a crude way. Yeah,
7:06
Speaker 1: he basically I mean like Leonardo da Vinci had like
7:09
Speaker 1: some design for a hang glider. I don't know if
7:11
Speaker 1: he's ever built, and the Chinese used to make criminals
7:15
Speaker 1: hang glide for fun. But this is like the guy
7:18
Speaker 1: who like actually went to the trouble of figuring out
7:21
Speaker 1: how to make this right from his own designs, and
7:25
Speaker 1: and like you said, two thousand successful flights. Is I mean,
7:29
Speaker 1: that's that's proven technology, you know, so I say, and
7:34
Speaker 1: I don't think it's just us, but Otto Lilienthal is
7:37
Speaker 1: basically known as the father of hang gliding, the Opah. Yeah,
7:43
Speaker 1: I guess OPA's grandfather. Yeah, but isn't that is that German? Yeah? Oh,
7:48
Speaker 1: I thought that was Greek. Well I don't. It may
7:51
Speaker 1: be Greek too, but I don't know. Opa is German
7:53
Speaker 1: for uh. But you know, he did a good job.
7:58
Speaker 1: Then the Rogue Rogallo machine or whatever they called it,
8:02
Speaker 1: the Rogallo, the fantastic flying Rogallos came on the scene. Yeah,
8:08
Speaker 1: but they apparently were not inspired by anything Lilienthal did.
8:11
Speaker 1: His stuff really kind of fell to the wayside once
8:14
Speaker 1: the Right Brothers started. You could see that a motorized flight, right,
8:18
Speaker 1: Everybody's like, why would you want this thing when you
8:20
Speaker 1: can just fly in a plane. And the Right Brothers
8:23
Speaker 1: themselves experimented with hang gliders first and then um moved
8:27
Speaker 1: on to two planes from their hang gliders. But by
8:30
Speaker 1: this time, like the idea of hang gliding was was
8:33
Speaker 1: dead and from what I understand, unknown to the Rigalos, Yeah,
8:37
Speaker 1: we should totally do a right brothers show at some point.
8:40
Speaker 1: I can't believe we haven't. I know there's a lot
8:43
Speaker 1: out there. We will. Uh So flash forward some though
8:47
Speaker 1: toe at the very hot party, the Auto Lilienthal anniversary
8:54
Speaker 1: meet up in California. So he still had his people,
8:58
Speaker 1: you know, I would guess the sort of early um
9:02
Speaker 1: extreme stunt enthusiasts who held people like Otto Lilienthal Is
9:08
Speaker 1: in high regard, and people came from all over the
9:11
Speaker 1: place too to hang out and hang glide, I guess,
9:16
Speaker 1: And that's where I think it was. Everyone sort of
9:19
Speaker 1: points to that meet up that year is when the
9:22
Speaker 1: reinvention of modern hang gliding came around, do you care
9:25
Speaker 1: to say? I think so? And part of this that
9:28
Speaker 1: So you've got alto Lilienthal, You've got the rigolos who
9:33
Speaker 1: may or may not have been influenced by Lilienthal. And
9:36
Speaker 1: then you've got a guy named Bruce Dickinson. No it's not,
9:41
Speaker 1: he's the guy from John Dickinson and Australian Tom. No,
9:47
Speaker 1: well this is Tom h Are there two of them?
9:49
Speaker 1: Doug Dickinson? Was it Tom Dickinson? I mean that's what
9:54
Speaker 1: this one article says. But okay, well I'm sure that
9:56
Speaker 1: one's right. But so Tom Dickinson. I think he was
10:00
Speaker 1: one of the ones who was inspired by those photos
10:02
Speaker 1: of the Rigala wing from NASA and built his own
10:05
Speaker 1: hand glider. And he created um like what you would
10:10
Speaker 1: call um what's it called when you're like on a
10:14
Speaker 1: your parasailing and you're being towed behind a boat parasailing. Okay,
10:18
Speaker 1: So he invented basically that which later, to confuse things,
10:23
Speaker 1: was reinvented in the eighties or rediscovered in the eighties
10:26
Speaker 1: and became basically a separate but related sport to hang gliding.
10:30
Speaker 1: But his designs for this paraglider early paraglider, was based
10:36
Speaker 1: on the Rigala wing and basically improved it enough so
10:39
Speaker 1: that other people said, hey, you know what, you could
10:41
Speaker 1: turn this into what we call a foot launched hand glider.
10:45
Speaker 1: And and by the early nineteen seventies it was under
10:50
Speaker 1: it was it was the design had been improved enough that, yeah,
10:53
Speaker 1: you could have like an invitational meetup of the crackpots
10:56
Speaker 1: who are into this kind of thing back then, right,
10:59
Speaker 1: And then a couple of years after that, a couple
11:01
Speaker 1: of brothers named Bob and Chris wills Uh started Manufacturing
11:05
Speaker 1: actually formed a company called Will's Wing, and by all accounts,
11:09
Speaker 1: those dudes really really grew the sport in the early
11:13
Speaker 1: to mid seventies because it's a very I mean, I know,
11:16
Speaker 1: it's kind of been reborn now with these uh what
11:19
Speaker 1: are they called, not solid wing or I guess you
11:21
Speaker 1: could call him solid wing rigid Yeah, rigid wing. But
11:24
Speaker 1: those early hand gliders, it's a very seventies sport, you know,
11:30
Speaker 1: and they're so pretty in the seventies way to like
11:33
Speaker 1: the colors they use. Yeah, for sure, love looking at
11:36
Speaker 1: hand gliders looks like a catamaran sale up there, Yeah,
11:39
Speaker 1: like a Hobie Cat or something. And you know, like
11:42
Speaker 1: every I'm sure there was an episode of Chips where
11:45
Speaker 1: one of them hand glided. They were it made its appearance,
11:47
Speaker 1: It had its fingerprints all over seventies pop culture. Do
11:51
Speaker 1: you remember, like back in the day on prices, right,
11:55
Speaker 1: one of the standard um one of the standard prizes
11:58
Speaker 1: was a Hobie Cat personal sailboat. Yeah, like anyone, You're like,
12:02
Speaker 1: what am I going to do with that? In Texas? Right? Well,
12:07
Speaker 1: I guess Texas has a shoreline though, look at me? Yeah,
12:09
Speaker 1: there you go. How about Nebraska? Yeah, no shore line
12:13
Speaker 1: of Nebraska. So by the seventies this thing had kind
12:17
Speaker 1: of taken off, if you will forgive the unintended punt um,
12:24
Speaker 1: and it's it's I don't have the impression that it's
12:28
Speaker 1: like nearly as much of a craze today, even though
12:31
Speaker 1: there have been major improvements like the rigid wing design.
12:35
Speaker 1: It seems like it's the seventies and maybe the eighties
12:37
Speaker 1: were the heyday, right. I get the feeling that today
12:41
Speaker 1: it's sort of in that extreme sports category, especially with
12:46
Speaker 1: these rigid wing But back in the seventies and eighties,
12:49
Speaker 1: like dudes like my dad would probably go out and
12:51
Speaker 1: give it a whirl right in his jeep. Yeah, absolutely,
12:55
Speaker 1: Like my dad para glided or paras sailed on one
12:58
Speaker 1: Florida trip one time, I remember, and in true like
13:02
Speaker 1: my dad fashion was he was like, I'm the only
13:03
Speaker 1: one doing this. It's like, I'm not gonna pay for
13:06
Speaker 1: you guys to do it. The one but no way,
13:09
Speaker 1: the one behind the boat. Mhmm. Yeah, Uman did that.
13:13
Speaker 1: Once it got stuck up there for some reason, they
13:16
Speaker 1: couldn't get her, like her and the friends she was
13:18
Speaker 1: with down for a while, suck floating aloft. Yeah, well,
13:23
Speaker 1: don't they just stop the boat and you come down.
13:25
Speaker 1: I don't remember what the problem was, but there was
13:27
Speaker 1: an issue that they couldn't like her her turn or
13:29
Speaker 1: her ride or whatever, just kept going on and on
13:32
Speaker 1: and on for some reason. I feel like the boat
13:34
Speaker 1: didn't stop. They're like, I can't take my foot off
13:37
Speaker 1: the gas. But by the way, and something you do
13:43
Speaker 1: probably it's usually with the hand. I can't take my
13:46
Speaker 1: hand off the gas. Yeah, exactly. There. So you want
13:50
Speaker 1: to take a little break and then come back and
13:52
Speaker 1: get into hang gliders themselves, Yeah, let's suit up. Okay, yeah, okay, man.
14:15
Speaker 1: So hang gliders at its core an extremely simple machine, right,
14:22
Speaker 1: and uh, it's actually a pretty clever one too, to
14:25
Speaker 1: tell you the truth, I'm not quite sure. I can't
14:27
Speaker 1: really put my finger on why I'm so jazzed about
14:29
Speaker 1: the idea of trying it, but it's somewhere in here. Okay, Okay,
14:35
Speaker 1: So you get the hang glider, which is basically an
14:37
Speaker 1: air foil, right, yeah, and are we going to differentiate
14:42
Speaker 1: a lot between the sort of the old school and
14:46
Speaker 1: the and the new ones and the rigid wing. I
14:48
Speaker 1: I looked up the difference and I didn't see a
14:52
Speaker 1: terrible amount of difference. I saw that the rigid ones
14:55
Speaker 1: have um they glide a lot longer, I think um
15:00
Speaker 1: or they have like less of a sync rate. But
15:03
Speaker 1: other than that, it's more of like a matter of
15:05
Speaker 1: personal preference. And then you would train on the flexible
15:08
Speaker 1: one for sure, So they still use flex wings. Okay,
15:12
Speaker 1: I just wasn't. I had for some reason thought reddit
15:15
Speaker 1: as sort of like the rigid wing took the place
15:17
Speaker 1: of the flexible wing. No, I think it did not. Actually,
15:20
Speaker 1: it's a different it's a modified design. And if you're
15:24
Speaker 1: really really good at um at hand gliding, you you
15:30
Speaker 1: may prefer the rigid, but you may also prefer the
15:32
Speaker 1: flex you don't, you wouldn't necessarily graduate from one to
15:35
Speaker 1: the other. And then the rigid didn't replace the flex wing,
15:38
Speaker 1: all right, And just so people know for sure, we're
15:40
Speaker 1: talking about the flexible wing. It's sort of that old
15:43
Speaker 1: school hang glidder you think of that. Uh, it looks
15:46
Speaker 1: like a modified parachute, and in fact it is like
15:50
Speaker 1: a nylon parachute that you can hear kind of flapping
15:53
Speaker 1: in the wind over some sort of aluminum frame. The
15:57
Speaker 1: rigid wing is ordered the same but the fabric, it's
16:02
Speaker 1: the wings themselves are it's just stiffer. It's not like
16:09
Speaker 1: it's made out of wood or anything like that. It's
16:12
Speaker 1: just like a stiffer um like the exoskeleton. I'm not
16:16
Speaker 1: describing this very well. Once you bring the exo skeleton in,
16:21
Speaker 1: it's all downhill from there. How would you describe the
16:24
Speaker 1: rigid wing? So like it was, like you said, the
16:27
Speaker 1: flex wing, it kind of flaps in the wind. It's
16:30
Speaker 1: it's it covers a skeleton. But the rigid wing is
16:35
Speaker 1: is virtually the same thing, but it has like struts, say,
16:37
Speaker 1: woven into it that keeps it from flapping as much.
16:40
Speaker 1: It makes it makes the fabric rigid. Yeah, and it's
16:42
Speaker 1: like a pre fab wing you know that you would
16:47
Speaker 1: load out of your car. Yeah. They're really tough to
16:51
Speaker 1: travel with it from what I understand. As far as
16:53
Speaker 1: like if you're flying somewhere on an airplane, you would
16:56
Speaker 1: you would have to take your flexible wing pair and
17:00
Speaker 1: glider like on an airplane. Yeah. Yeah, they disassemble really easily.
17:06
Speaker 1: The like all of the joints are hinged, the tubes
17:09
Speaker 1: pop out of one another. Um. The the actual um
17:13
Speaker 1: fabric folds up and comes off and the wires, you know,
17:17
Speaker 1: snap off. It's like whenever you're you're going to hang glide,
17:21
Speaker 1: you want to put your thing, you want to assemble it,
17:23
Speaker 1: and then you disassemble it when you're done. Yeah, And
17:26
Speaker 1: they're like somewhere between forty seventy pounds, and from what
17:30
Speaker 1: I can tell, the ones that way less are the
17:33
Speaker 1: much more expensive ones because they might not even be
17:36
Speaker 1: made out of aluminum. They may be made out of
17:38
Speaker 1: something even light or like carbon fiber or something like that.
17:42
Speaker 1: So the so, the whole, the whole point, whether you're
17:44
Speaker 1: talking about and I don't really think we need to
17:46
Speaker 1: get into two rigid wing just because it is just
17:50
Speaker 1: a modified version of the flexible wing and the flexible
17:53
Speaker 1: wings the one that everybody's familiar with. But with the
17:56
Speaker 1: flexible wing, it's basically it's just a triangular skeleton made
18:02
Speaker 1: of hollow aluminum aircraft grade aluminum tubes or carbon fiber tubes,
18:08
Speaker 1: and you've basically got three um three tubes coming out
18:16
Speaker 1: at one point. Did you ever take an art class
18:18
Speaker 1: of drawing class? Nope, this can not make sense to you. Then,
18:23
Speaker 1: well I've seen a hang glider though, Okay, well, so
18:26
Speaker 1: if there's a point, if there's a the very front
18:29
Speaker 1: tip of the triangle of that, that the that is
18:32
Speaker 1: the hand glider. Then right the widow maker, the that's
18:38
Speaker 1: the nose. Out of the nose, going directly back away
18:43
Speaker 1: from you is a piece of metal, a tube called
18:48
Speaker 1: the keel, yes, going at angles out of the nose
18:54
Speaker 1: backward away from you as well. Those are the leading
18:57
Speaker 1: edge tubes. And then about halfway back from the nose,
19:03
Speaker 1: crossing the leading edge tubes and the keel connecting them all,
19:08
Speaker 1: that's the crossbar. You have those four bars put together,
19:14
Speaker 1: that's the basically the basic skeleton of the of the
19:17
Speaker 1: hand glider. Okay, And if you haven't seen one of these,
19:21
Speaker 1: just crawl out from under your rock, go to your laptop,
19:25
Speaker 1: look at a picture of it. And you know, when
19:27
Speaker 1: I was researching this, especially when Freud and Rich started
19:32
Speaker 1: to get into the wires, the front wires and the
19:35
Speaker 1: landing wires, and I was like, now I fully understand
19:39
Speaker 1: what they mean when they say that a picture is
19:41
Speaker 1: worth a thousand words. Like Freuden Rich could have spent
19:45
Speaker 1: five thousand words explaining all this and he still wouldn't
19:49
Speaker 1: have nailed it like a picture would it's just impossible
19:52
Speaker 1: in a situation like this. Well, you've already explained more
19:54
Speaker 1: than I would have. I would have just said, a
19:56
Speaker 1: series of tubes and wires. Okay, So a series of
19:59
Speaker 1: tubes connected, and then you've got the fabric covering that
20:02
Speaker 1: you got wires having like holly, connecting everything um and
20:07
Speaker 1: stabilizing it. And then the key to all of this,
20:10
Speaker 1: there's a couple of keys. This is where it starts
20:12
Speaker 1: to get fascinating. There's something called the control bar, right,
20:15
Speaker 1: and the control bar is like a triangle that dangles
20:19
Speaker 1: right in front of you when you're hanging from the
20:21
Speaker 1: hand glider. And this is the thing that you you
20:25
Speaker 1: have your hands on. It's it's how you control the
20:27
Speaker 1: hand glidder, which is why it's called the control bar.
20:30
Speaker 1: And then the next really essential piece, and I'll stop
20:33
Speaker 1: after this, I promise, is the harness, which is suspended
20:37
Speaker 1: from the keel above you, right behind where the control
20:41
Speaker 1: bar hits the keel right, and so you are prone,
20:46
Speaker 1: you're lying on your stomach when you're flying, and you're
20:49
Speaker 1: hanging onto the control bar and you're dangling from the
20:52
Speaker 1: hand glider above, which is why it's called hand gliding.
20:55
Speaker 1: Because you're hanging from the hand glider. Fascinating it is,
21:00
Speaker 1: and I imagine in the nineties seventies it seemed like
21:02
Speaker 1: a fun idea when you're in Hawaii, we've had a
21:06
Speaker 1: couple of rum drinks to uh to get in a suit,
21:10
Speaker 1: throw on the helmet, strap into that harness and run
21:14
Speaker 1: off the side of a cliff because that's how you used.
21:18
Speaker 1: I mean, you can still launch like that, but it
21:21
Speaker 1: looks like it's gotten a little more uh, like that's
21:24
Speaker 1: fallen out of fashion a little bit, the run off
21:26
Speaker 1: the cliff version. I don't know if that's true. Man,
21:28
Speaker 1: I think that that's like, um, that you're an advanced
21:31
Speaker 1: hand glider, that's probably how you're going to try it,
21:34
Speaker 1: although you yeah, although you can't, I mean, you can't
21:37
Speaker 1: do um, you know, like a dune or something like that.
21:40
Speaker 1: It's really good for training or whatever. But they have
21:43
Speaker 1: like I don't know if you call it, like a
21:46
Speaker 1: launch ramp or something like that, but like some sort
21:48
Speaker 1: of launch that they build onto the edges of cliffs
21:52
Speaker 1: to run off of for hand gliding, and they're just
21:56
Speaker 1: terrifying to even look at pictures of. Yeah, I mean,
21:59
Speaker 1: i'd say I'm not scared to do it, but I'm
22:01
Speaker 1: I imagine I would have some butterflies when you go
22:03
Speaker 1: and run and jump off that thing, Right, I would too, man,
22:06
Speaker 1: So don't feel bad. But you see people do it.
22:08
Speaker 1: And my immediate thought is I'm gonna nose dive, But
22:12
Speaker 1: you don't knows dive thanks to physics. Right, And do
22:16
Speaker 1: you want to take a break and then get into
22:17
Speaker 1: the physics. Yeah, we might as well hang gliding shock
22:41
Speaker 1: all right, physics. So the reason a hang glider works
22:46
Speaker 1: is because of its elegant lightweight design and the way
22:49
Speaker 1: the air moves over these wings, and then all of
22:53
Speaker 1: these other forces acting in concert with one another to
22:57
Speaker 1: make sure you stay up there for as long as possible. Yeah.
23:00
Speaker 1: So the first one we're talking about is lift. The
23:04
Speaker 1: air goes over the surface of that wing, and that's
23:06
Speaker 1: going to generate that lift when you run and you
23:08
Speaker 1: jump off of that platform, and it's going to counter
23:12
Speaker 1: the gravity. But gravity in this case is not bad
23:15
Speaker 1: like gravity is actually going to be. While it does
23:19
Speaker 1: want to pull you to Earth, it's what's making you
23:21
Speaker 1: go forward continuing that airflow. Gravity is is your friend
23:26
Speaker 1: in this case. Yeah, and then you've got drag, which
23:30
Speaker 1: is really the the other one. Um, those three factors
23:34
Speaker 1: together are what really applied to hang gliding, and drag
23:37
Speaker 1: is what ultimately slows you down. It's you're running into
23:40
Speaker 1: air molecules, and the faster you go, the more drag
23:43
Speaker 1: you have, the more the faster you get slowed down,
23:46
Speaker 1: which then brings in the syncrate, which is the speed
23:51
Speaker 1: at which a hang glider starts to descend towards Earth.
23:55
Speaker 1: It's measured in like feet per second in still air, okay, right,
24:00
Speaker 1: and the distance it can travel is determined by something
24:05
Speaker 1: called the glide ratio, which is the ratio of the
24:08
Speaker 1: forward distance through the vertical distance dropped for forward distance
24:12
Speaker 1: you've traveled to your to that drop rate. Yeah, so
24:16
Speaker 1: like say every twenty four ft you move forward, you
24:22
Speaker 1: drop like one ft downward. Right, So that's I mean,
24:27
Speaker 1: that's really basically it for physics. But the hand gliding
24:31
Speaker 1: would be like an entirely different sport if it weren't
24:34
Speaker 1: for um, the ability to catch air currents. Yeah, it's
24:37
Speaker 1: kind of all about that. Otherwise they would just be
24:40
Speaker 1: pretty quick rides. They would be I mean, like it'd
24:43
Speaker 1: be pretty awesome still, especially if you like you launched
24:45
Speaker 1: off a cliff and then just kind of glided slowly
24:48
Speaker 1: downward toward the toward the Earth. It's still be pretty cool,
24:51
Speaker 1: but you can you can catch air currents if you
24:55
Speaker 1: know what you're doing and stay aloft for hours and
24:59
Speaker 1: go across parts entire parts of the country. As a
25:03
Speaker 1: matter of fact, the um the record for the longest
25:06
Speaker 1: distance traveled is like four hundred and seventy two miles,
25:12
Speaker 1: so I think it's like seven kilometers. They basically what
25:16
Speaker 1: these two dudes went from Lubbock, Texas to Nuevo Laredo
25:20
Speaker 1: over the course of I think like eleven hours maybe
25:23
Speaker 1: something like that. And the way that you do this
25:27
Speaker 1: is that you go find these air currents, and there's
25:29
Speaker 1: a couple of places you can reasonably expect you're going
25:33
Speaker 1: to find upward lift from air, right, Yeah, hot air
25:36
Speaker 1: is one way thermal lift. And that's like over a desert,
25:40
Speaker 1: like hot sand or pavement prefer the hot sand over pavement,
25:47
Speaker 1: or if it's super sunny. And and I get the
25:49
Speaker 1: feeling that when the more experience you have, the more
25:52
Speaker 1: you know how to how to look around your environment
25:56
Speaker 1: to feel and see where this might be happening. Yeah,
26:00
Speaker 1: Supposedly one way that they do it is to look
26:02
Speaker 1: for birds that are just sitting there kind of soaring. Uh,
26:06
Speaker 1: and you can just go catch that air column whatever
26:09
Speaker 1: it is that they're soaring on. Right. That's one of
26:11
Speaker 1: the most like relaxing things for me to see. Yeah,
26:14
Speaker 1: there's a hawk, almost emotionless, just sort of floating. Now
26:20
Speaker 1: imagine doing it yourself. Yeah, didn't that seem relaxing? I
26:24
Speaker 1: think it sounds great. Yeah, No, I would. I would
26:27
Speaker 1: enjoy it. I'm sure it's not gonna get through a
26:29
Speaker 1: lot of effort to make it happen. Yeah, apparently I've
26:31
Speaker 1: made it my mission to get you hang gliding for
26:34
Speaker 1: some reason. And what it's a in the Chips episode,
26:38
Speaker 1: you will have rigged my hang glider to cratch right,
26:42
Speaker 1: poor Robert Pine. Uh. And then he's Robert Pine. He
26:47
Speaker 1: was there like captain or sergeant. Yeah, great, great actor.
26:51
Speaker 1: I can picture him immediately in my brain. Uh. And
26:55
Speaker 1: then you've got something called ridge lift, and that's air
26:57
Speaker 1: that's that's deflected up by um like a mountain or
27:01
Speaker 1: a ridge, and the basically the topography of the ground
27:04
Speaker 1: beneath you and around you. You can learn to read
27:08
Speaker 1: that stuff and you know where these swells and columns
27:11
Speaker 1: of air gonna be right. And when you when you
27:13
Speaker 1: find these columns of air, these lifts, like, you don't
27:16
Speaker 1: just fly into them and all of a sudden you're
27:18
Speaker 1: up because they're actually usually fairly small. Um, so you
27:22
Speaker 1: would basically fly right through them, maybe get a little
27:25
Speaker 1: bit of lift, but then you just keep going and
27:27
Speaker 1: start descending again. If you're going to catch an air
27:30
Speaker 1: current and upward air current, you um basically want to
27:34
Speaker 1: enter into a tight spiral, basically an upward corkscrew spiral.
27:40
Speaker 1: You're you're following the air current upward. And to do this,
27:45
Speaker 1: it's all just basically based on simple movements of your body.
27:49
Speaker 1: That's the whole thing with steering and controlling a hand glider.
27:53
Speaker 1: It all has to do with the different um adjustments
27:57
Speaker 1: to the weight you're putting on the control bar at
28:00
Speaker 1: triangle that's in front of you that you're hanging onto.
28:03
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. So um, you know you go left and right,
28:07
Speaker 1: but I think literally shifting your body as it's hanging
28:11
Speaker 1: and you go up and down by tipping and it's
28:14
Speaker 1: you know, it may see encounterintuitive or who knows. Once
28:17
Speaker 1: you're up there. It may seem like the right way
28:19
Speaker 1: to do it, but in order to go up, you
28:21
Speaker 1: tip the nose down, and then vice versa. Yeah, And
28:24
Speaker 1: to tip the nose down, you pull the control bar
28:28
Speaker 1: towards you, so you're shifting your weight forward, and when
28:32
Speaker 1: you push put that that nose down, your trade again
28:35
Speaker 1: some of your altitude. You know, you're you're basically creating
28:40
Speaker 1: a nose dive, but just for just enough to to
28:43
Speaker 1: speed up and then to slow down. You push the
28:47
Speaker 1: control bar away from you, which tips the nose up,
28:50
Speaker 1: which basically stops the um the glide of the glider.
28:55
Speaker 1: It turns it. Yeah, it turns it into like a
28:58
Speaker 1: piece of fabric trying to go forward through space rather
29:01
Speaker 1: than something just cutting smoothly horizontally. It's it's starting, it's
29:05
Speaker 1: now vertical in some way, and it slows it down.
29:08
Speaker 1: And that's actually the way you land too. Apparently you
29:12
Speaker 1: can land on your feet very gently. Once you're close
29:15
Speaker 1: to the ground, you start to stall by pushing the
29:19
Speaker 1: control bar away from you, That lifts the nose up,
29:22
Speaker 1: cut your speed off, and then you just kind of
29:25
Speaker 1: in a nice gentle trot, hit the ground and and
29:28
Speaker 1: you say, I just hang glided. Yes, I think what
29:31
Speaker 1: I would worry about for myself is that, um, some
29:34
Speaker 1: of this stuff may not be intuitive or instinctive, and
29:38
Speaker 1: I would do the wrong thing and then panic. So, uh,
29:42
Speaker 1: that's actually a really good point. Um. This group called
29:47
Speaker 1: Kitty Hawk Kites from North Carolina, which are actually sited
29:52
Speaker 1: in the House to Works article, they had like a
29:54
Speaker 1: really good tips for beginner's article as well, and they
29:57
Speaker 1: say one of the things that you have to learn
30:00
Speaker 1: is to remain calm, because it takes a bit of finesse.
30:04
Speaker 1: From what I understand it takes. Um. You have to
30:08
Speaker 1: you have to be able to very smoothly move your
30:12
Speaker 1: weight around and if you're anxious and you're hanging onto
30:15
Speaker 1: the control bar too too tight, your movements are going
30:19
Speaker 1: to be kind of herky jerky, and it's it's not
30:21
Speaker 1: a good way to hang glide. So you want to
30:23
Speaker 1: be you want to be relaxed and controlled. And they
30:26
Speaker 1: say that the best way to do this is to
30:29
Speaker 1: have a few tandem lessons. First, I have a few drinks.
30:32
Speaker 1: I would guess that. I don't know if they would
30:35
Speaker 1: recommend that or not. Maybe yeah, and maybe one for
30:41
Speaker 1: when you're up there too. But yeah, yeah, they're like
30:46
Speaker 1: where'd you get that? But they offer like tandem lessons, right,
30:49
Speaker 1: so you're you're on there next to somebody who is
30:53
Speaker 1: an experienced hang glider and they're controlling and then they
30:57
Speaker 1: can hand over the control the control bar to you,
30:59
Speaker 1: but say, okay, now let's go left or let's go right,
31:02
Speaker 1: And all that is is just shifting your weight left,
31:05
Speaker 1: shifting your weight right, shifting your weight forward or backward
31:08
Speaker 1: for up or down. It's as simple as that. But
31:10
Speaker 1: I think remaining calm is a huge part of the
31:13
Speaker 1: whole thing. That's a good point, yeah, for sure. Um
31:17
Speaker 1: So if you're an experienced pilot, you might also have
31:20
Speaker 1: some other gear up there with you, um, like in
31:24
Speaker 1: a variometer, and this is what in a lot of
31:28
Speaker 1: these you can hear, so you don't have to look
31:30
Speaker 1: at it. It'll like, I guess it barks out. You know,
31:33
Speaker 1: you're climbing in descent rate, which is pretty handy. Uh.
31:38
Speaker 1: And then what's the other one the altimeter? Uh altimeter. Yeah,
31:42
Speaker 1: that's the one that just tells you what your altitude
31:44
Speaker 1: is called the altimeter altimet tear and you're gonna want
31:49
Speaker 1: goggles and obviously the helmet. And I think if you
31:53
Speaker 1: do these more, the higher up extreme things, you're gonna
31:56
Speaker 1: also have a parachute. Yeah, when you're hitting thousands of feet. Yeah.
32:02
Speaker 1: They say that most of the accidents that happened happened
32:04
Speaker 1: on takeoff or landing, that it's rarely. Um, does somebody
32:09
Speaker 1: just fall out of the sky even when they hit turbulence.
32:11
Speaker 1: You're not gonna like just drop out of the sky
32:13
Speaker 1: like a stone. Um, that's just not how aerodynamics works.
32:17
Speaker 1: But you'll have a bumpy ride. It's more like you, um,
32:22
Speaker 1: you hit a tree or you um like you feel
32:26
Speaker 1: like you fall off the cliff, like you're your your
32:29
Speaker 1: hand glider doesn't catch air right or something like that.
32:32
Speaker 1: That that's usually on takeoff or landing when you when
32:35
Speaker 1: you have a crash. Although I did see, um I
32:39
Speaker 1: think it was might have and because that is of course,
32:43
Speaker 1: looked up hand gliding deaths and um, this one guy
32:47
Speaker 1: like fell out of his hand glider entirely, oh man
32:50
Speaker 1: and went to the ground. Yeah, that would be That'd
32:53
Speaker 1: be one way that it could happen too. And I
32:55
Speaker 1: don't know if we said or not. Otto Lilienthal died
32:58
Speaker 1: in a hand gliding crash. That's how he went, Oh,
33:00
Speaker 1: I don't think I need that very appropriately, you know,
33:04
Speaker 1: so um in reading Kittie hawk Kites description of you
33:08
Speaker 1: know what what it feels like when you're learning how
33:10
Speaker 1: to hang glide? So they hang glide on sand dunes,
33:14
Speaker 1: which is virtually the same area that the Wright brothers
33:18
Speaker 1: tried their stuff out on. And the reason why they
33:21
Speaker 1: use sand dunes because there's a gentle slope for one,
33:24
Speaker 1: but number two, if you fall, you fall into sand,
33:28
Speaker 1: which is much more forgiving than, like you said, pavement. Right,
33:32
Speaker 1: But when you're when you're hang gliding, when you're learning
33:35
Speaker 1: how to do this, the whole point is, man, they
33:38
Speaker 1: did such a good job describing me. And basically they said,
33:41
Speaker 1: imagine you're running down a hill, right, and you don't
33:44
Speaker 1: have a hang glider. You're just running downhill. Eventually you're
33:47
Speaker 1: gonna pick up enough speed that your legs can't keep
33:50
Speaker 1: up with it. Gravity is pulling you downward, and you're
33:53
Speaker 1: gonna start tumbling downhill. So it's you you just crashed
33:57
Speaker 1: running downhill, right, they said. With a hang glider, what
34:00
Speaker 1: you're doing is you're running downhill and you're picking up
34:03
Speaker 1: that same speed. But you're using the hang glider to
34:06
Speaker 1: stabilize yourself so that your legs don't get ahead of yourself.
34:10
Speaker 1: And if you can find that balance, and it just
34:12
Speaker 1: takes a few times to practice this, well, probably several times,
34:15
Speaker 1: but if you can find that balance to where you
34:17
Speaker 1: can trust and stabilize yourself with the hang glider as
34:20
Speaker 1: you're running down the slope, eventually the weight of your
34:24
Speaker 1: body and the hand glider that you're holding, because remember
34:27
Speaker 1: it ways up to about seventy pounds, the weight of
34:30
Speaker 1: the two things starts to be transferred as the there
34:33
Speaker 1: as lift is produced under the hand glider from the
34:36
Speaker 1: bottoms of your feet to the straps of your harness,
34:39
Speaker 1: and little by little that that weight is transferred and
34:44
Speaker 1: eventually your feet are no longer making contact with the ground.
34:47
Speaker 1: And I'll bet there's a cute few seconds where your
34:49
Speaker 1: feet are just going through the area, you know, and
34:52
Speaker 1: the it's now the straps holding you up and through
34:56
Speaker 1: so it's the hang glider through the straps holding you up,
34:58
Speaker 1: and you've just taken off and now you're so ring
35:00
Speaker 1: but I would be like, I'm not ready yet, and
35:02
Speaker 1: then then you just pull the pull back on the
35:05
Speaker 1: control bar or push No, I'm sorry, you push forward
35:07
Speaker 1: on the control bar, the nose would go up and
35:09
Speaker 1: you'd you'd land after just you know, being a couple
35:12
Speaker 1: of feet off the ground if you had your head
35:14
Speaker 1: about you. But what they're saying is is like, even
35:18
Speaker 1: if you never do catch air, as long as you
35:21
Speaker 1: don't hesitate and you just keep you know, using the
35:24
Speaker 1: hand glider to stabilize yourself, at the worst, you're gonna
35:27
Speaker 1: just end up at the bottom of the hill having
35:30
Speaker 1: run down there and never caught air. At best you
35:32
Speaker 1: will have caught air right and you'll just taken off.
35:35
Speaker 1: But the whole point with them is is that you're
35:37
Speaker 1: training on sand, so even if you bite it, you're
35:39
Speaker 1: still just in sand, so it's fine. All this explains though,
35:44
Speaker 1: why they don't just say, okay, here's a cliff with
35:47
Speaker 1: a lawn tramp run off. You have to know what
35:50
Speaker 1: you're doing and it eventually you wanted to be You
35:52
Speaker 1: wanted to go from a gradual transfer to a very
35:55
Speaker 1: sudden transfer of weight from your feet to the strap
36:00
Speaker 1: to the harness. Correct. Yeah, And then there's one other
36:03
Speaker 1: way that you can do this too, and it's being
36:06
Speaker 1: towed by a machine. Like Paris sailing right, you're being
36:10
Speaker 1: towed by a boat. Well, I was reading this article
36:13
Speaker 1: from I think, and people in Kansas they have nothing
36:17
Speaker 1: to launch off of. But they were still in hang gliding,
36:21
Speaker 1: so they were using tow trucks or not toe trucks,
36:24
Speaker 1: pickup trucks. They just sit in the back of pickup
36:27
Speaker 1: trucks with like a little cable attached to them, and
36:30
Speaker 1: as the pickup chuck gain speed, there glider would start
36:33
Speaker 1: to be picked up and they eventually disconnect themselves and
36:36
Speaker 1: hang glide around. Kansas launched me a pickup of course,
36:40
Speaker 1: it's Kansas awesome. It does not surprise me. No, that
36:45
Speaker 1: makes sense. I think I might even feel a little
36:47
Speaker 1: better about automobile doing the work for me. Oh really,
36:52
Speaker 1: a pickup chuck? Well maybe, I mean, do they do
36:56
Speaker 1: they just tell you around? Literally parasl styled. Do they
36:59
Speaker 1: tell you to ord a Well, they don't have any
37:02
Speaker 1: cliffs in Kansas. No, they don't. They don't have anything.
37:04
Speaker 1: You're your your golden in that respect. The only cliffs
37:07
Speaker 1: in Kansas are delivering your mail. Nice one, Um, I
37:13
Speaker 1: have one more thing, You got anything else? I got
37:16
Speaker 1: one more thing. So the earliest earliest hand gliding designs
37:20
Speaker 1: didn't use a harness. It was like a hang glider
37:24
Speaker 1: like you have, right, but you would run and then eventually,
37:27
Speaker 1: like the hang glider would would just lift off and
37:30
Speaker 1: you'd be dangling like a rock from the control bar,
37:36
Speaker 1: hanging on for dear life. Rather than being connected by
37:39
Speaker 1: a harness in a prone position. You would just be
37:42
Speaker 1: hanging from like downward from the control bard. Yeah. I
37:48
Speaker 1: mean it was nothing like the hang glider like experience
37:52
Speaker 1: that we have now. They didn't last very long and
37:54
Speaker 1: they didn't go very far and get very high. But
37:57
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of like a zip line. Wow. Yeah,
38:03
Speaker 1: so that's it. That's hang glider man. There you have it.
38:06
Speaker 1: We're gonna go do it this uh this spring. We
38:09
Speaker 1: are yes, we are all right. If you want to
38:12
Speaker 1: know more about hand gladding, go take a lesson and
38:14
Speaker 1: try it yourself. And in the meantime you can go
38:16
Speaker 1: check out this ancient how stuff works article. It's hilarious. Um,
38:20
Speaker 1: and just type in hand gliding and the search bar,
38:23
Speaker 1: you know, bring this up and said say said that
38:25
Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this, uh,
38:31
Speaker 1: just a really nice email from a nice, dude, o't nice. Hey, guys,
38:35
Speaker 1: just recently finished my second run of every episode. How
38:40
Speaker 1: about that. Hats off to you, dude, after hearing the
38:43
Speaker 1: Simpsons podcasts and understanding how it shaped so many lives.
38:46
Speaker 1: We'll let you know the stuff. You should know. It's
38:48
Speaker 1: helped me just as much, if not more. Just as
38:51
Speaker 1: you said, the Simpsons pointed me, you guys into the
38:54
Speaker 1: direction of pop pop culture. I think you said that. Um,
38:57
Speaker 1: your podcast shared of and shared knowledge have done the
39:00
Speaker 1: same for me and many other people who listen. I've
39:02
Speaker 1: been listening since two thousand nine, when I got my
39:04
Speaker 1: first iPod at sixteen. Oh that's adorable, And at that
39:09
Speaker 1: time it did not have many friends, suffered from depression,
39:11
Speaker 1: and was dealing with a stressful life at home. When
39:14
Speaker 1: I first found the podcast, I was immediately hooked because
39:16
Speaker 1: it seemed like an audio version of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader,
39:19
Speaker 1: which I was already an avid van of. Man, this
39:22
Speaker 1: kid's got it nailed. Um, I know he mentioned Mad Magazine,
39:25
Speaker 1: then I'll know it's you. He As I continue to listen,
39:30
Speaker 1: I grew more and more attached to the comforting feeling
39:32
Speaker 1: of two intelligent guys having a friendly talk about interesting information.
39:36
Speaker 1: The show managed to give me a mental safe haven
39:38
Speaker 1: during rough times at home, and your nuggets of wisdom
39:41
Speaker 1: throughout the shows provide subtle life lessons that were crucial
39:45
Speaker 1: to my formative years. The constant awareness of guiding listeners
39:49
Speaker 1: to have an open mind and warm heart is a
39:50
Speaker 1: needed reminder to be the best person I can be,
39:53
Speaker 1: to be more like Josh and Chuck. After high school,
39:56
Speaker 1: I joined the army and was isolated often in different
40:00
Speaker 1: parts of the country. Knowing that I could hear the witty,
40:03
Speaker 1: friendly banter of you two whenever I wanted always made
40:05
Speaker 1: me feel right at home. Right now, I am finally
40:08
Speaker 1: going back to college the Rifles, age twenty four and
40:12
Speaker 1: is mostly thanks to you guys. You are my academic heroes.
40:16
Speaker 1: Stuff you should know. May not have changed the world
40:18
Speaker 1: as much as The Simpsons yet, but it has certainly
40:22
Speaker 1: changed mind. Man. How about that That was a great email.
40:26
Speaker 1: Thanks for picking that one, man, it was Thanks for
40:28
Speaker 1: always being there. It means more than you can ever know.
40:30
Speaker 1: Christian Stanley p s. If you read this for listener mail,
40:34
Speaker 1: it would be one of the highlights of my life.
40:36
Speaker 1: And will there you go, Christian Highlight achieved level up.
40:41
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for that. That was a really
40:43
Speaker 1: great email, and thanks for listening all these years. We
40:45
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Yeah, Christian, we'd super duper appreciate it. And
40:49
Speaker 1: if you want to tell us high and that, uh
40:52
Speaker 1: you have been listening all these years, well we appreciate
40:54
Speaker 1: you too. You can let us know via Twitter at
40:58
Speaker 1: Josh M Clark or s y SK Podcasts on Facebook
41:02
Speaker 1: dot com, slash stuff you Should Know or slash Charles W.
41:05
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant. You can send us an email to stuff
41:07
Speaker 1: Podcasts at how stuff Works dot com and has always
41:10
Speaker 1: joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
41:12
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands
41:19
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com