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Is science phasing out sleep? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know?
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Speaker 1: From House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
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Speaker 1: uh and that makes this stuff you should know? What
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Speaker 1: Criterion Collection? What are you doing tonight? Buddy? What am
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Speaker 1: I doing tonight? What am I doing tonight? I know
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Speaker 1: what you're doing. What I know what we're doing? Oh yeah, tonight,
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Speaker 1: tonight tonight. So not like tonight in our physical new temporality,
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Speaker 1: I mean tonight in the future. Yes, like as of
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Speaker 1: like someone listening to this, it would be there tonight,
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Speaker 1: I would say, possibly on October twelve. I am going
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Speaker 1: to be at the Drunken UNI. That's right, the Drunken
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Speaker 1: Unicorn on East Paul Stallion Avenue in Atlanta, at the
0:59
Speaker 1: n j q CO of course. Yes, sort of hard
1:01
Speaker 1: to find if you don't know where what you're looking for. Well,
1:04
Speaker 1: this is what you do. You go along Ponce until
1:07
Speaker 1: you see the murder Kroger. You left or right, depending
1:11
Speaker 1: on where you're coming from. Chipotle opposite the murder Kroger
1:15
Speaker 1: on the other side of Ponce and Um, behind that
1:19
Speaker 1: is m j Q. Yes. Beside that is Friends on
1:24
Speaker 1: Ponts the bar never been I'll take you there. It's
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Speaker 1: gonna blow your socks off. Uh. And then below Friends
1:33
Speaker 1: is m j Q. Yes, a very little nondescript door,
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Speaker 1: gray steel door. I think some steps down and I
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Speaker 1: don't think there's any signage whatsoever. Chuck. We may have
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Speaker 1: to have stand outside and be like here, everybody, why
1:47
Speaker 1: are there. We're going to be there because our house band,
1:50
Speaker 1: the Henry Clay People, are going to be playing there.
1:54
Speaker 1: And this is kind of the unofficial kickoff for a
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Speaker 1: big trivia event night, which is tomorrow Tomorrow night, which
2:01
Speaker 1: is October, Yes, and that is at the Five Seasons
2:04
Speaker 1: Brewery West Side on Marietta Street. And it is gonna
2:08
Speaker 1: be fun. I'm getting excited. I'm getting pretty excited. It's
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Speaker 1: gonna be pretty cool. We have actor and author and
2:15
Speaker 1: former literary agent John Hodgman, and we have former Dukes
2:19
Speaker 1: of Hazzard co star Joe Randazzo, and we have Squidbillies
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Speaker 1: co creator and Aquitine Hunger Force co creator Dave Willis.
2:29
Speaker 1: I've been really getting into squid Billies. Yeah, it's awesomely wrong.
2:36
Speaker 1: I don't know if he still has it or not
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Speaker 1: an original um squid billies oil painting on wood, and
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Speaker 1: I don't I haven't talked to him in a while,
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Speaker 1: so I don't know if they've will actually painted it,
2:47
Speaker 1: but I mean it is dead on, so I need
2:49
Speaker 1: to ask him, do you also paint? I was watching
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Speaker 1: last night and Earl the Dad Squid had he always
2:56
Speaker 1: has on different baseball caps that say different retenick things,
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Speaker 1: and one of them beware in big letters and then
3:02
Speaker 1: in small little letters that said good stuff. Good stuff.
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Speaker 1: So there's your chance to come out and meet John
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Speaker 1: and Joe and Dave and Us and Jerry and uh
3:16
Speaker 1: that there'll be other podcasters there, imagine the ones that
3:18
Speaker 1: don't hate us will be there. So Strickland Struggle will
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Speaker 1: be there, Strickland will be there, hopefully some other people. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: so we invite everyone to come out six o'clock doors
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Speaker 1: Trivia starts at seven. The Henry Clay People shows one
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Speaker 1: of those later shows, but we encourage you to come.
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Speaker 1: And that's on Tuesday Trivias on Wednesday season Brewer west
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Speaker 1: Side experience some rock and or roll and then some
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Speaker 1: fun trivia and Chuck. Also, you can look up our
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Speaker 1: event on Facebook and there there's all sorts of details
3:51
Speaker 1: and directions and stuff on absolutely yeah check it out,
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Speaker 1: um the stuff you should know trivia event page. And
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Speaker 1: this is the last you will hear of this. That's it.
4:00
Speaker 1: And then what we may be going on a national tour.
4:03
Speaker 1: We're almost definitely going to Austin. It's so funny, like
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Speaker 1: everyone else is so sick of hearing this, but I
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Speaker 1: guarantee you we will get people on that Thursday on Facebook.
4:12
Speaker 1: That's say, well, I never heard anything about your trick,
4:14
Speaker 1: and we'll just be like, go buy a tech hammer
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Speaker 1: at your local Ace Hardware. Take it home, Yes, put
4:21
Speaker 1: the receipt in the garbage can and smack yourself in
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Speaker 1: the forehead with it. Don't return it after all. Right,
4:29
Speaker 1: on with the show, On with the show, Chuck's plug
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Speaker 1: Fest two thousand ten for now. Yeah, So, Chuck, I've
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Speaker 1: got a story for you, alright, story time. Okay, So
4:40
Speaker 1: remember when we were talking about roller Derby's um and
4:44
Speaker 1: there was that whole Transcontinental roller Derby where it was
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Speaker 1: really just a roller rink that people went around fifty
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Speaker 1: seven thousand times for eleven hours a day until they
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Speaker 1: passed out. So I know that that you know that
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Speaker 1: there's all sorts of a thons or what they call
5:00
Speaker 1: what they're called, what they used to be called. People
5:02
Speaker 1: like to just do stuff to the extreme test their endurance. Right,
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Speaker 1: dance a thons, um, hunt nazis a thons. Just anything
5:09
Speaker 1: you could think of in like the forties, fifties and thirties. Well, um,
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Speaker 1: staying awake was not immune to the athon fever. Um.
5:17
Speaker 1: There's a guy in the nineteen fifty nine. He's thirty
5:19
Speaker 1: two years old at the time. His name is Peter Tripp,
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Speaker 1: and he's a disc jockey in New York City, New
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Speaker 1: York City. Yeah, and um, he made a little studio
5:29
Speaker 1: in the storefront and said I'm going to stay awake
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Speaker 1: for as long as I can. And he did. And
5:34
Speaker 1: while he's doing it, oh yeah, he did for two
5:37
Speaker 1: one straight hours. Wow. Yeah, Um he did. This is
5:44
Speaker 1: kind of a mark against him as far as stay
5:47
Speaker 1: awake a thonors or than enthusiasts. But he was given
5:51
Speaker 1: him feta means by two physicians to keep him up. Physicians.
5:55
Speaker 1: But the guy, yeah, well back in those days, Joey
5:58
Speaker 1: in the corner, Yeah, his physicis. Um. I was gonna say,
6:03
Speaker 1: back in those days, you know, like you like doctors
6:05
Speaker 1: prescribed to anything, and I thought, oh, yeah, nothing's changed, right, Um,
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Speaker 1: But he stayed awake for two d one hours, assisted
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Speaker 1: by amphetamans, but still right. Quite an accomplishment it was,
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Speaker 1: and it stood for a while as I think the
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Speaker 1: longest to anyone ever stayed awake, and then people started
6:21
Speaker 1: topping it and topping it, and then finally in nineteen four,
6:24
Speaker 1: there was a teenager in San Diego, which is a
6:26
Speaker 1: town I know you love, uh, And his name was
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Speaker 1: Randy Gardner and he's actually still around. That kid stayed
6:33
Speaker 1: up with nothing, no assistance whatsoever, for two hundred and
6:38
Speaker 1: sixty four hours on purpose to try and set the record. Yeah,
6:41
Speaker 1: for a science fairs. It was a science experiment, and
6:45
Speaker 1: the guy ended up setting the world record for a while.
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Speaker 1: I bet he hallucinated like crazy. Now, yes, here's the thing, Um,
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Speaker 1: I think Randy had a bit of a hard time.
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Speaker 1: He um had something kind of a some sort of
7:01
Speaker 1: psychotic break here there. Um. Peter Tripp particularly had a
7:05
Speaker 1: hard time, especially because of the amphetamines he hallucinated. UM.
7:10
Speaker 1: Cats chasing mice in the little studio. I thought one
7:12
Speaker 1: of the desk drawers that um he was seated at
7:15
Speaker 1: where it was on fire. A man uh showed up
7:19
Speaker 1: in a dark suit, and he confused him for an
7:21
Speaker 1: undertaker and ran out because it was an undertaker probably um.
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Speaker 1: So yeah, there's all sorts of horrible stuff associated with
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Speaker 1: sleep deprivation. I don't like it. Bear with me, I'm
7:31
Speaker 1: with you. We're about to get to the want, Want
7:33
Speaker 1: Want moment. Okay. In two thou seven you may remember
7:37
Speaker 1: there was a guy named um Mr Wright. I can't
7:40
Speaker 1: remember Mr Wright's first name, can you, Tony? He was
7:44
Speaker 1: from Cornwall, England? Oh yeah, I stayed up for eleven
7:48
Speaker 1: days pub in Cornwall, playing pool, just hanging out. We
7:51
Speaker 1: did down the webcast right. Yes, he broke the record
7:58
Speaker 1: and I'm making air quotes here. He broke um Randy
8:01
Speaker 1: um Gardner's record. What he didn't know is that a
8:04
Speaker 1: year after Randy Gardner set the record, a guy in
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Speaker 1: Finland beat Randy Gardner's records. So two problems here, Tony
8:11
Speaker 1: Wright didn't actually beat the world record, And the second
8:15
Speaker 1: part is in Guinness stopped acknowledging the world records for
8:20
Speaker 1: staying awake the longest because of health reasons. So Tony
8:24
Speaker 1: Wright stayed awake for eleven days for absolutely nothing. Well,
8:27
Speaker 1: he got a lot of coverage and he was a
8:30
Speaker 1: national hero in Wales from what I understand. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
8:36
Speaker 1: I would have looked into that beforehand. I would have
8:37
Speaker 1: called Guinness, the Guinness people. Yeah. One of his friends's
8:40
Speaker 1: quota is saying like, we've never heard of this guy
8:42
Speaker 1: in Finland. His name was Tomoy so annoy No, toy me,
8:49
Speaker 1: that's got it. I've got it. His name is Toymi
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Speaker 1: Soyny of Finland. I've never heard of him either, and
8:56
Speaker 1: that's a name you wouldn't forget. No, but thank you
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Speaker 1: for bearing with me through that horribly long introduction. That
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Speaker 1: was good. My point was this, we have this weird
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Speaker 1: obsession with staying awake sometimes, right, it's it's well, some
9:12
Speaker 1: people do. It's it's like an endurance contest. And the
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Speaker 1: guy in New York, Peter Tripp, was assisted by amphetamines.
9:21
Speaker 1: These days, there's entirely new classes of drugs that are
9:24
Speaker 1: designed to keep us awake. Right, Yes, they're called drugs.
9:28
Speaker 1: I don't want anywhere near me. So Chuck, you you
9:32
Speaker 1: were big on sleeping. Right, Well, yeah, but I don't.
9:35
Speaker 1: I don't sleep like Emily sleep. She can sleep. Yeah,
9:39
Speaker 1: I mean I'm still you know, you get older, you
9:41
Speaker 1: start waking up early no matter what. So even if
9:43
Speaker 1: I have a late night at like two am, I'm
9:45
Speaker 1: still up at seven. Yes, okay, but you still require sleep. Yes,
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Speaker 1: I for one am alarmed at the concept of synthetically
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Speaker 1: phasing sleep out, even if we don't need it, even
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Speaker 1: if we figure out how to get asked without sleep,
10:01
Speaker 1: it just seems wrong. Well it is. You know. We'll
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Speaker 1: talk a bit more about that, because I have pretty
10:06
Speaker 1: strong feelings about messing with you know, your natural human biology. Now,
10:12
Speaker 1: we do already chuck through things like caffeine, speed, we
10:16
Speaker 1: stay awake. I know you're huge on speed greenies. Not true,
10:21
Speaker 1: absolutely not true. Um, but what are these things do
10:25
Speaker 1: to you? There's problems, there's side effects, right, but there's
10:28
Speaker 1: a problem. Yeah, caffeine. Um, although there are studies now
10:31
Speaker 1: that say that caffeine can be good for you in
10:33
Speaker 1: certain amounts, But caffeine can make you crash, it can
10:36
Speaker 1: give you diarrhea, it can make you really irritable. If
10:40
Speaker 1: you don't get your caffeine in your system, and the
10:45
Speaker 1: same with amphetamines. You have a serious crash after an
10:49
Speaker 1: amphetamine high. Yes, and that's not what you're looking for. No,
10:53
Speaker 1: that's called sleep debt. Yeah, and you gotta pay it
10:56
Speaker 1: back with amphetamines, right, So sleep for half a day
10:58
Speaker 1: if you've been up on Greenies? Yes, Um, I think
11:01
Speaker 1: when did Greenies? That was big and major League Baseball
11:05
Speaker 1: they called him Greenies? Is that a bunch of baseball
11:07
Speaker 1: players used to them being called Benny's a lot of
11:10
Speaker 1: Caro aquinos in high school's Yeah, that's short for Ben's
11:14
Speaker 1: a dream. Yeah. Yeah, So that's the bad effects of
11:19
Speaker 1: caffeine and sleepitteriness, diarrhea. Plus the problem is that you're
11:25
Speaker 1: being kept awake. You're awake, but you're not There's no
11:30
Speaker 1: rest whatsoever. Yeah, your body is not getting used to
11:32
Speaker 1: it or anything. No, and your mental faculties begin to
11:35
Speaker 1: decline pretty rapidly once it starts, right, So, Chuck, what's
11:39
Speaker 1: somebody who wants to stay up? It doesn't feel like
11:41
Speaker 1: getting addicted to speed going to do? What can you do? Well, Josh?
11:46
Speaker 1: You should try madefanel. What's medeffanel? It is a sort
11:52
Speaker 1: of new drug. What is it about? Twelve? Years old
11:55
Speaker 1: in total. No, some French researchers were even cats in
12:00
Speaker 1: the early nineties, but it's really kind of taken off
12:03
Speaker 1: for human use beginning in ninety I think it's Uh.
12:07
Speaker 1: It's in a class of drugs called eugeroics, yeah, which
12:11
Speaker 1: is Greek for quote good arousal. Yeah. So the idea
12:16
Speaker 1: here is that you can stay awake uh with medeffanel
12:20
Speaker 1: and it goes like all drugs, it goes by like
12:21
Speaker 1: a dozen different names, and you don't have a sleep debt.
12:26
Speaker 1: That's pretty amazing. It is. Um. What's more, it's in
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Speaker 1: this This article was written by Julia Layton on March seventh,
12:34
Speaker 1: two thousand seven. It has quite a bit um. It's
12:40
Speaker 1: at the time at two thousand and seven, medaffanel was
12:42
Speaker 1: like this promise of the future. Um. And and not
12:46
Speaker 1: only no side effects, no addictiveness. Um. All of this
12:51
Speaker 1: stuff has been proven untrue over time. And it's actually
12:56
Speaker 1: I've read one study that found that medaffanel for use
12:59
Speaker 1: and shift to workers late shift workers, it kept them
13:02
Speaker 1: awake one point seven minutes longer than a placebo. Yeah,
13:07
Speaker 1: so it may not even work. But um, let's let's
13:11
Speaker 1: take the two thousand seven view of my daffa. No first, Okay, okay,
13:15
Speaker 1: so it's non addictive. How could that possibly be? Well,
13:20
Speaker 1: it can't, but sorry, we're back in time. This is well,
13:25
Speaker 1: are we explaining how it works? Um? Specifically, it doesn't
13:30
Speaker 1: do what caffeine and emphetamines do, things like blocking uh
13:36
Speaker 1: neuro receptors that triggered drowsiness. UM one's called a dinna
13:39
Speaker 1: scene and they block the receptors that bind to it.
13:42
Speaker 1: Caffeine does, and so it will keep you awake basically
13:46
Speaker 1: because you're not feeling tired. Right. So, like your neurotransmitters,
13:50
Speaker 1: all of our neurotransmitters function by a release and then
13:53
Speaker 1: they float around and have their effect and then they're
13:56
Speaker 1: they're taken back up uptake re uptake. Yeah, well, in
13:59
Speaker 1: dopamine plays a big part two in both of these, right.
14:01
Speaker 1: But with with the neurotransmitter, including dopamine, you can activate
14:06
Speaker 1: its release and or prevent its reuptake, so you're either
14:10
Speaker 1: flooding the brain with it and or keeping it in
14:14
Speaker 1: the brain longer. Right. Well, and that's what amphetamines too, specifically,
14:17
Speaker 1: is they give the dopamine nowhere to go, so you're
14:20
Speaker 1: just euphork sounds pretty good to me. It does sound good.
14:24
Speaker 1: But the problem is is your brains like, oh, you
14:27
Speaker 1: want to play that game, huh, while I'm just gonna
14:29
Speaker 1: withhold dopamine unnaturally, So you're gonna be depressed for three
14:33
Speaker 1: or four days. Okay. So that's how you get addicted
14:37
Speaker 1: to something. Though, anytime dopamine is released artificially in the brain,
14:41
Speaker 1: your body loves it, right, And that's here's the problem.
14:45
Speaker 1: You're Dopamine is the centerpiece of the brain's reward system.
14:51
Speaker 1: It's how we learn to eat and have sex, to
14:54
Speaker 1: reproduce or have sex for whatever reason, and anything that
14:58
Speaker 1: gives us a sense of pleasure. Dopa means involved, and
15:01
Speaker 1: we're taught we're motivated to repeat that behavior through the
15:05
Speaker 1: release of dopamine. So if we drink caffeine or take
15:09
Speaker 1: speed or do cocaine or whatever, and dopamins released, we're
15:13
Speaker 1: taught to do it again, which is the basis of addiction, which,
15:17
Speaker 1: by the way, I think we should do a podcast
15:19
Speaker 1: on just addiction. Yeah, it's a really interesting about that
15:23
Speaker 1: how addiction works. Well, let's do it. Okay, let's do
15:26
Speaker 1: it right now. Alright, you're ready, I'm not prepared. So
15:29
Speaker 1: that's how those other uh well in two thousand seven,
15:33
Speaker 1: more nefarious drugs would help keep you awake, and um,
15:36
Speaker 1: medefanel didn't do that for some reason. It activated dopamine,
15:40
Speaker 1: but just maybe not as much, right, And they believe
15:43
Speaker 1: that medefanel actually targets a neurotransmitter G A B A.
15:48
Speaker 1: We'll just call it gabba gabba, gabba gabba, and that
15:51
Speaker 1: is the sleep regulator of the brain. And it seemed
15:54
Speaker 1: to slow down uh gabba's release. So basically your brain
16:00
Speaker 1: at it now that hey, it's time to go to
16:02
Speaker 1: sleep now, right, like your circadian rhythms thrown off, right, Yeah,
16:05
Speaker 1: So it's specifically targeted that and well not that alone,
16:08
Speaker 1: because it did release a little bit of dopamine, right,
16:11
Speaker 1: it did, But what they were saying was like it's
16:14
Speaker 1: just such a little amount that you're not becoming addicted
16:17
Speaker 1: like it does. But you're not becoming addicted. Don't worry
16:19
Speaker 1: about it. Um gaba is not the only and there's
16:23
Speaker 1: also um from what I found, there's four types of
16:25
Speaker 1: gab gabba and apparently like gab before is like the
16:28
Speaker 1: most sensitive one, and that's like the real it's the
16:31
Speaker 1: trux of research right now is trying to figure out
16:33
Speaker 1: GABBA or GABA four um. But in addition to GABA,
16:38
Speaker 1: there's also histamines which make us drowsy. That's why antihistamines
16:43
Speaker 1: can jet you up. UM. And there's also glutamate, and
16:48
Speaker 1: glutamate is um basically the brain's natural speed, right um.
16:53
Speaker 1: So they think that I think they figured it out
16:57
Speaker 1: by now. But two thousand seven thought was that the
17:02
Speaker 1: the medaffanel prevented the reuptake of glutamate, which keeps you
17:07
Speaker 1: alert and functioning right. Yeah. And the end result of
17:10
Speaker 1: all this is what they found was a miracle drug,
17:13
Speaker 1: is what they called it, because there was no sleep
17:15
Speaker 1: that when you came off of um this drug, you
17:17
Speaker 1: didn't need to sleep for a half a day to
17:20
Speaker 1: catch up on things. You would just go back and
17:21
Speaker 1: fall into your regular pattern and be all rested. Yeah
17:24
Speaker 1: it sounds great. Yeah, it does sound great. I mean
17:26
Speaker 1: staying up for four day hours and then just being
17:28
Speaker 1: able to get an average eight hour night sleep and
17:32
Speaker 1: you're fine. I mean, why why wouldn't you want to
17:34
Speaker 1: do that? Me personally, Well, we'll get to that later.
17:37
Speaker 1: Well we should say too though, that it was developed
17:39
Speaker 1: to treat U narcolepsy specifically, right, and we should probably
17:43
Speaker 1: talk about this. There's a company called Cephalon, and Cephalon
17:46
Speaker 1: took Madeffanel and marketed the heck out of it as
17:50
Speaker 1: a pro vagil and provagil. According to a two thousand
17:53
Speaker 1: two New York Times article, we read UM said call
17:57
Speaker 1: said that um. It means provides vigilance. Right, And basically
18:06
Speaker 1: it was adopted for off label use by everyone from
18:11
Speaker 1: college students to the CEO of of UM Cephalon. Yeah,
18:16
Speaker 1: what's uh, Frank Cabaldino. Frank Baldino, he took it and
18:21
Speaker 1: he didn't say why he was taking it. No, but
18:23
Speaker 1: the only thing it's approof for is NARCILEPSI is a
18:27
Speaker 1: treatment of narcilepsy. They've tried to get it a proof
18:30
Speaker 1: for jet lag, they tried to get it a proof
18:32
Speaker 1: for shift workers UM syndrome. They tried to get it
18:36
Speaker 1: a proof for general drowsiness tiredness UM and they couldn't that.
18:42
Speaker 1: THEA was like, no, we'll let you sell this for narcilepsy,
18:44
Speaker 1: to treat narcileptics. The problem is it's not how it
18:48
Speaker 1: wor right. Well, the problem is there's only about two
18:51
Speaker 1: thousand narcileptics in the United States. So Cephalon is like,
18:54
Speaker 1: we need to get this out there, and they started
18:57
Speaker 1: marketing it off label. It's kind of nefariously as well. Yeah,
19:02
Speaker 1: it became a lifestyle drug, is what they classified it as. Yeah,
19:05
Speaker 1: UM a new tropic and O O T R O
19:08
Speaker 1: P I C, which means it's it's another name for
19:11
Speaker 1: smart drug, like trans humanists love new tropics. Yes, all
19:16
Speaker 1: those farmer names were so like, I don't know, they
19:18
Speaker 1: rubbed me the wrong way. So like I said, uh, nefarious,
19:22
Speaker 1: I'm basing this nefarious nous on UM. This really great article, Chuck.
19:26
Speaker 1: There's two parts called UM The Rise and Fall of Provigil,
19:30
Speaker 1: and it's by UM investigative journalist Evelyn Pringle, And I
19:33
Speaker 1: think everybody should read this. It's really interesting. This is
19:36
Speaker 1: hot off like yesterday it was released. I think, yeah,
19:39
Speaker 1: it was hot off the press. How how odd is
19:42
Speaker 1: that I know that you picked this, Yeah, because I
19:44
Speaker 1: had no idea that this was written yesterday and we
19:47
Speaker 1: picked it like two days before a week before. Anyway,
19:51
Speaker 1: in the article, she talks about how um Cephalon had
19:56
Speaker 1: UM physicians that they were underwriting. It didn't reveal their
20:00
Speaker 1: relationship to the company. But we're saying, like, this is
20:03
Speaker 1: a great drug and it should be used for all
20:05
Speaker 1: these off market purposes. Stuff that if the company had
20:08
Speaker 1: done it, they would have been prosecuted federally. There was
20:11
Speaker 1: a and the Attorney General of Pennsylvania oversaw a bunch
20:15
Speaker 1: of lawsuits and the company hired him as executive legal counsel. Yeah,
20:20
Speaker 1: just all sorts of stuff like that. There's allegations of
20:23
Speaker 1: UM paid to delay UM programs with UH, with their
20:28
Speaker 1: competitors that they found that of the prescriptions written had
20:33
Speaker 1: nothing to do with an ecalepsy. Yeah, it was depression, MS, sleepiness,
20:40
Speaker 1: and like you said, the shift workers syndrome. They were
20:44
Speaker 1: prescribing it for all kinds of things, basically to make
20:46
Speaker 1: you feel better. They had their UM reps actually visiting psychiatrists,
20:50
Speaker 1: dentists were prescribing this stuff. Yeah, UM. And and again
20:55
Speaker 1: two arcileptics of them were on the drug within a
20:59
Speaker 1: year of its release, right, Yeah, And it just wasn't enough. Well,
21:04
Speaker 1: and then that's when they started jacking up the price,
21:06
Speaker 1: when they found out that people really love this stuff.
21:09
Speaker 1: From November to March it rose in price and it
21:14
Speaker 1: was seventy seventy percent more expensive than it was four
21:17
Speaker 1: years previous in two thousand four, and I think it
21:19
Speaker 1: topped out at like thirteen eighteen dollars a pill. That
21:24
Speaker 1: is insane. And the long and short of all this,
21:27
Speaker 1: as of this week, the European Medicines Agency basically came
21:32
Speaker 1: out and said, you know what, you can't use this
21:34
Speaker 1: for anything but narcolepsy, because we have found out that
21:38
Speaker 1: there are certain psychiatric disorders this causes, like suicidal thoughts
21:42
Speaker 1: and depression in psychotic episodes and potentially life threatening skin reactions.
21:47
Speaker 1: And also, first, I'm sorry, you're right it topped out
21:49
Speaker 1: at thirteen sixty two a pill when it was originally
21:52
Speaker 1: five dollars and fifty three cents a pill for no
21:55
Speaker 1: reason whatsoever. It just rose and costs in the US
21:58
Speaker 1: make money, UM, and you were talking king about the
22:00
Speaker 1: psychiatric disorders that it exacerbated. They basically reformulated um MD
22:07
Speaker 1: affodel into a kid's version for the treatment of a
22:12
Speaker 1: d h D, and they found that what would be
22:15
Speaker 1: the equivalent in the in the UM actual population of
22:19
Speaker 1: one in about two hundred or no. Twenty in a
22:22
Speaker 1: hundred cases of things like psychotic breaks, suicidal thoughts and children.
22:28
Speaker 1: And this drug, it was called Sparlon, was taken out
22:31
Speaker 1: of FDA testing. They just dropped it. Yeah. Well, and
22:35
Speaker 1: not only that, but it's supposedly non addictive. Not so.
22:39
Speaker 1: In two thousand nine, a psychiatrist an addiction specialists said
22:43
Speaker 1: UH to USA Today that he had seen his third
22:46
Speaker 1: case of probagil addiction and UM two doctors back to
22:52
Speaker 1: back admitted that they were addicted to it and they
22:54
Speaker 1: were also alcoholics. Right, And it's kind of interesting. I guess.
22:58
Speaker 1: So the hammer kind of all down on um munafodil
23:02
Speaker 1: and cephalon kind of simultaneously. It's currently falling. It sounds like, yeah,
23:07
Speaker 1: the um FTC has a lawsuit. There's UM. I think
23:10
Speaker 1: three different employees turned whistleblow around the company and file
23:14
Speaker 1: lawsuits against it UM. And then yeah, that psychiatrists came
23:18
Speaker 1: out in USA today and said that he was treating
23:21
Speaker 1: people for addiction to it, which is huge. And then
23:24
Speaker 1: Bloomberg also the same day, Bloomberg News released a report
23:29
Speaker 1: about its addictiveness. But it's really interesting to read the
23:32
Speaker 1: stuff that's going on now compared to our two thousand
23:35
Speaker 1: seven articles that I think probably should be taken down
23:38
Speaker 1: and rewritten pretty soon because it's basically claims it's a
23:42
Speaker 1: wonder drug, like, yeah, it makes it actually compared it
23:45
Speaker 1: to viagran and says it's better because you don't get
23:47
Speaker 1: five hour erections, right or worse depending on your viewpoint.
23:53
Speaker 1: Uh So, Josh, that is just one drug that we
23:55
Speaker 1: have picked out, but that is not the whole story
23:58
Speaker 1: of science phasing out sleep. Yeah, and this, this whole
24:02
Speaker 1: podcast isn't intended to to target cephalon. It was just
24:05
Speaker 1: really interesting that we ran across this during our research.
24:08
Speaker 1: And again, I think you should read um The Rise
24:10
Speaker 1: and Fall of Provigil by Evelyn Pringle. Just look it
24:14
Speaker 1: up online. I think it's up there for free, right. Yeah,
24:16
Speaker 1: it's a good one. So, uh, Munafodel is not the
24:19
Speaker 1: only thing, like you said, targeting sleep. There's another drug
24:23
Speaker 1: from Cortex, the pharmaceutical company called c X seven seventeen,
24:28
Speaker 1: and it works sort of like the other one, and
24:30
Speaker 1: that it keeps you awake by triggering glutamate activity and
24:37
Speaker 1: specifically triggers that and it also targets histamine, so it
24:41
Speaker 1: sort of works in the same way. But science is
24:44
Speaker 1: all over. What they're trying to do is they're trying
24:47
Speaker 1: to research and see if they can get people by
24:51
Speaker 1: on less sleep with the same effects as having a
24:55
Speaker 1: full nine a sleep. That seems to be the goal.
24:57
Speaker 1: Get three hours of sleep, but your body feel is
25:00
Speaker 1: like it got eight hours, and not only hours, the
25:02
Speaker 1: best eight hours bets and it's safe. It can't be addictive,
25:06
Speaker 1: which means it can't have any effect on your reward system,
25:09
Speaker 1: so no dopamine could be released, right, Um, and that
25:13
Speaker 1: what you were talking about c X seventeen seven seventeen.
25:16
Speaker 1: C X seven seventeen. It's an amp keene. That's the
25:19
Speaker 1: class of drug and like you said, it targets the reuptake.
25:22
Speaker 1: A glutamate has nothing to do with the reward system
25:24
Speaker 1: as far as we know right now, And that's the
25:26
Speaker 1: one that DARP was looking into. DARP is leading the
25:30
Speaker 1: way they're driving this sleep deprivation research because you know
25:34
Speaker 1: it's military, yes, and apparently the special ops guys have
25:40
Speaker 1: to stay up for seventy two straight hours usually with
25:43
Speaker 1: very very little, if any rest, and be sharp enough
25:46
Speaker 1: to you know, assassinate somebody. Um, well, the military did
25:50
Speaker 1: a lot of testing on nafadel. Yes, and this is
25:55
Speaker 1: the this is a I can't remember what article it was,
25:58
Speaker 1: but somebody talked to a Darper research true who said,
26:01
Speaker 1: we we found it was about as good as caffeine,
26:04
Speaker 1: which is weird. Like, I don't understand because this, the
26:07
Speaker 1: article that Layton wrote, is saying like this has a
26:11
Speaker 1: huge following. People swear by the stuff. It clearly did
26:15
Speaker 1: and probably still does. So I don't understand how clinical
26:19
Speaker 1: results could show it's no better than caffeine while other
26:21
Speaker 1: people are like, this is the greatest thing ever. Well,
26:24
Speaker 1: it could be the placebo going on again. I guess
26:25
Speaker 1: it could be. With the military though, they would give
26:28
Speaker 1: it to these pilots for a couple of days, make
26:30
Speaker 1: them stay awake, and then have them go out and
26:32
Speaker 1: fight their fighter jet and just to see what happened,
26:36
Speaker 1: and they found that after that it did. It did
26:38
Speaker 1: a good job till about the forty eight hour point,
26:41
Speaker 1: and then after that, regardless of what you're on, your
26:43
Speaker 1: body is going to start showing effects of sluggishness and
26:46
Speaker 1: maybe hallucinations and the things that you don't want if
26:49
Speaker 1: you're a fighter pilot, no, or just a regular guy
26:52
Speaker 1: trying to make a living in this world. Exactly. There
26:55
Speaker 1: was a two thousand ninth study, Munofadel actually did contribute
26:58
Speaker 1: to our understanding of the human brain. Um. Some researchers
27:02
Speaker 1: that you see Davis slapped people into a wonder machine,
27:05
Speaker 1: loaded them up on munofadel, kept them awake, and watched
27:10
Speaker 1: their brain, and they saw heightened activity in the locusts ceruleus.
27:15
Speaker 1: I can't imagine being in a wonder machine for two
27:18
Speaker 1: days straight. I think they probably sleep deprived him and
27:22
Speaker 1: then probably towards the end of the second day or
27:23
Speaker 1: something they put them I don't know. But they also
27:26
Speaker 1: gave them tests and found that that some tests have
27:29
Speaker 1: found that people actually do better on psychological tests, tests
27:35
Speaker 1: of skill, feats of strength, you know, festivus stuff um
27:40
Speaker 1: on munofadel. Then they do, you know, just awake or
27:43
Speaker 1: on caffeine or in photomanes or something like that. So
27:45
Speaker 1: that mixed results. But we didn't know what part of
27:48
Speaker 1: the brain was keeping people awake or was subject to
27:51
Speaker 1: sleep deprivation, and now we do it's the locus ceruleus.
27:54
Speaker 1: So that's probably going to play a role in this
27:57
Speaker 1: endless quest to do away with sleep, right part of it. Yeah,
28:00
Speaker 1: it's not just drugs either. They're looking for a sleep gene.
28:03
Speaker 1: That one's really interesting to me, don't you think take
28:06
Speaker 1: it away? Because drugs are drugs. But they believe that
28:10
Speaker 1: there are people that can get by on less sleep,
28:11
Speaker 1: that they're called short sleepers. About one in a thousand
28:14
Speaker 1: people can function just fine on a few hours asleep.
28:18
Speaker 1: They don't need a big eight or nine hours. And uh,
28:21
Speaker 1: they believe it's hereditary and they're trying to find this
28:24
Speaker 1: gene so they can tweak it and make us all
28:27
Speaker 1: into short sleeper so wet all get more stuff done? Yeah,
28:30
Speaker 1: and there's um, there's actually a species of fruit fly
28:35
Speaker 1: that is a short sleeper fruit fly and it has
28:37
Speaker 1: a mutation. And what they found is a mutation has
28:40
Speaker 1: to do with potassium channels. No one knows exactly what yet,
28:44
Speaker 1: but that's interesting because there's an autoimmune deficiency or an
28:48
Speaker 1: autoimmune disease called more Vans syndrome and people in more
28:53
Speaker 1: vents and people with more Van syndrome have trouble sleeping.
28:57
Speaker 1: And there's uh, their syndrome has a affects the transport
29:01
Speaker 1: of potassium through sheell membranes. So there's a tie there
29:03
Speaker 1: for sure. Definitely. So it has something to do with bananas.
29:06
Speaker 1: Is that where this is all headed. I guess fruit
29:09
Speaker 1: flies potassium. Oh my god. So if they find this gene,
29:15
Speaker 1: I think what they're looking for as a future where
29:19
Speaker 1: people can um program their lifestyle how they want it.
29:24
Speaker 1: If you're if you want to work eighty hours a
29:26
Speaker 1: week and work till four am and get up at seven,
29:29
Speaker 1: maybe there's a pill that can help you do that
29:31
Speaker 1: with no side effects. Maybe I don't. What I find
29:35
Speaker 1: alarming is that sleep, um like sleep being synthetically reduced
29:41
Speaker 1: or eliminated natural sleep. Even among sleep researchers who are like,
29:47
Speaker 1: this is a horrible, horrible idea, they still say it's inevitable.
29:52
Speaker 1: And apparently the predictions are like ten to twenty years off,
29:54
Speaker 1: where we either have a pill that we can take
29:57
Speaker 1: and sleep for three hours but feel like we slept
29:59
Speaker 1: for a and keep going, or we won't have to
30:02
Speaker 1: sleep at all. Um. The problem is remember John Maynard Keynes,
30:07
Speaker 1: the economists, and he came up with the leisure society
30:12
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties. He was like, people in a
30:14
Speaker 1: hundred years won't even have to work, and we'll all
30:16
Speaker 1: just sit around and and have fun. He was right
30:20
Speaker 1: about us being wealthy and having more leisure time. But
30:24
Speaker 1: what he missed the mark on was that we don't
30:27
Speaker 1: spend our leisure time on leisure now, we'd spent it
30:29
Speaker 1: trying to acquire more wealth. So why why would you
30:33
Speaker 1: possibly want to have a twenty two hour day of wakefulness?
30:37
Speaker 1: The whole point of our eight hour work day is
30:40
Speaker 1: to divide the day into three parts, eight hours working,
30:44
Speaker 1: eight hours of leisure time, which we now spend vacuuming
30:47
Speaker 1: and going to the grocery store, and eight hours for sleep.
30:51
Speaker 1: I find it really discouraging to think that we're going
30:54
Speaker 1: in that direction to where we're carving at the eight hours.
30:57
Speaker 1: We've already done away with the eight hours of leisure
31:00
Speaker 1: your time, and now we're going after sleep. Would mistake.
31:04
Speaker 1: I think it's a huge mistake. But there are some
31:06
Speaker 1: people out there that would love to be able to
31:08
Speaker 1: only get three hours of sleep at night and all
31:10
Speaker 1: the stuff that they could get done. Ah, I don't know, man,
31:14
Speaker 1: I mean, what is there to do from two am
31:17
Speaker 1: to five am? Oh? They'll be I mean, first of all,
31:22
Speaker 1: you got taco bell, right, so you can go to
31:24
Speaker 1: taco Bell. It's one thing. There's all sorts of stuff
31:27
Speaker 1: you can do. But imagine if everybody else is up. Well,
31:30
Speaker 1: that's true. And I guess if if they build a
31:33
Speaker 1: twenty four hour society like New York City, those freaks
31:37
Speaker 1: in that town, it would there would be more things,
31:40
Speaker 1: would be, libraries open, businesses would be open, everything would
31:43
Speaker 1: be open for twenty four hours. Everything would go to
31:45
Speaker 1: shift work. The key here is, if we're going to
31:48
Speaker 1: do that, don't ever ever agree to a salaried position.
31:53
Speaker 1: Always always make it hourly or else you're just in
31:56
Speaker 1: big trouble. Yeah, so I say no, thank you, I
32:00
Speaker 1: do too, chuckers um. Also, if the pills don't work,
32:04
Speaker 1: if they don't find the sleep gene, they've got this
32:06
Speaker 1: one thing. It's called brain polarization. Remember transcranial magnetic stimulation.
32:13
Speaker 1: How could I forget? Okay, So this is called the
32:15
Speaker 1: poor man's version of that, where rather than using electromagnetism,
32:20
Speaker 1: it uses a DC current to jolt your brain awake.
32:23
Speaker 1: Oh that's that machine. So look for that. Look for
32:26
Speaker 1: a future where you're you have a cattle prod in
32:28
Speaker 1: your brain so you can work longer. You think, really sleep,
32:31
Speaker 1: I'm falling asleep and it feels so good. Yeah, Oh,
32:34
Speaker 1: I feel great and I can get some more spreadsheets done. Yes. Uh,
32:38
Speaker 1: if there's going to be any future for humanity, we
32:40
Speaker 1: have to rail against this, everybody. So let's stand together. Else,
32:43
Speaker 1: everyone go to sleep. You should probably go onto how
32:46
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com and read the hilariously out of
32:49
Speaker 1: date is Science Phasing out sleep, type in phasing and
32:53
Speaker 1: sleep in the search bar at how stuff works dot Com.
32:55
Speaker 1: That will take you elsewhere. Also, don't forget the Rise
32:58
Speaker 1: and Fall of Provigil p R O V I g
33:01
Speaker 1: I L by Evelyn Pringle, and also the Stay Awake
33:05
Speaker 1: Men on the New York Times. It was an opinion
33:08
Speaker 1: calum written by Thomas Bartlett. Pretty good stuff, just his opinion. Yeah,
33:12
Speaker 1: all right, it's time for what listener mail? Do we
33:14
Speaker 1: have listener mail? Yeah? We do. Let's do it. The
33:19
Speaker 1: return of listener Mail Josh. And this is specific to
33:21
Speaker 1: our trivia night because it is about Aquitine Hunger course awesome.
33:25
Speaker 1: This is from Kate and Hunter, who are married. Hey, guys,
33:29
Speaker 1: when I heard that the creator of Aquitine would be
33:31
Speaker 1: joining your trivia festival and Trivia Festival, I felt compelled
33:35
Speaker 1: to write you guys to tell you of how that
33:37
Speaker 1: show changed my life. I was in my junior year
33:39
Speaker 1: of college, when I went to a potluck dinner at
33:41
Speaker 1: a friend's apartment. I met a sweet, handsome and funny
33:44
Speaker 1: guy there and we chatted most of the evening. At
33:46
Speaker 1: the end of the night, he mentioned aquitine. He did
33:49
Speaker 1: his meat Wad voice and asked if I'd like to
33:51
Speaker 1: go over to his place and watch a t H
33:55
Speaker 1: because he had season one on DVD. It's like the
33:57
Speaker 1: Etchings of the Century. You want to come inspect to
34:00
Speaker 1: my place? My Actually, he's a very smooth character. We
34:04
Speaker 1: stayed up all night watching the show, laughing and talking.
34:06
Speaker 1: Two years later, we were spending our date night watching
34:09
Speaker 1: a t H and eating pizza when he proposed to me.
34:12
Speaker 1: When we were planning our wedding, we wanted to put
34:14
Speaker 1: meat Wad and Master Shake on top of the cake
34:17
Speaker 1: asaid homage to their role in our meeting with Frylock
34:21
Speaker 1: as the minister, but we couldn't find any little figures
34:24
Speaker 1: of them. We tried several times to get in touch
34:26
Speaker 1: with someone connected to the show see if they could
34:28
Speaker 1: hook us up or tell us where we could buy them,
34:30
Speaker 1: but we never had any luck. Our wedding was perfect anyway,
34:32
Speaker 1: and we've been married close to three years now. Needless
34:36
Speaker 1: to say, we still love Aquitine. So if you guys
34:39
Speaker 1: think to share our story with Dave Willis, tell him
34:42
Speaker 1: thank you for us from Kate and Hunter and this
34:45
Speaker 1: is our way of sharing it. And I hope everybody
34:48
Speaker 1: is listening to our show. Yeah, I wonder if he
34:51
Speaker 1: does now now that he's like, oh, I didn't know
34:53
Speaker 1: these guys existed. I guess I'll listen to him since
34:55
Speaker 1: I'm playing Betty he checked it out and uh may
34:59
Speaker 1: have listened to poor episode and never tuned an again,
35:02
Speaker 1: or maybe he's our number one fan. Now. Yeah, I
35:04
Speaker 1: think that's a great story, And I for one think
35:07
Speaker 1: that they should manufacture the characters from Aquatine Hunger Force,
35:10
Speaker 1: like remember the little figurings. Yeah, perfect size handy. You know,
35:16
Speaker 1: back in the day when South Park first came on,
35:19
Speaker 1: I made uh little Sculpi. You know what Sculpi is,
35:24
Speaker 1: very sculpie. It's like Plato and Clay, but you can
35:28
Speaker 1: bake it in your oven at home. Yeah, yeah, sculp
35:31
Speaker 1: I made little Sculpie South Park guys, because they didn't
35:34
Speaker 1: exist at the time. It was so new and people
35:37
Speaker 1: are like, oh my gosh, where'd you get those? And
35:39
Speaker 1: said I made him? And then you know they started
35:41
Speaker 1: mass manufacturing South Park and everything after that. Anyway, I
35:46
Speaker 1: would have recommended to Kate and Hunter to get sculpie
35:48
Speaker 1: and make your frylock and master shaking meat one. They're
35:51
Speaker 1: pretty demanding. They like things to just be kind of
35:54
Speaker 1: given to him, and it sounds like it. Well. Thanks Kate,
35:57
Speaker 1: Thanks Hunter Mozeltov on your wedding. Sorry it didn't work
36:00
Speaker 1: out exactly according to plan, but we'll see if um
36:04
Speaker 1: God can change things for you. If you have something
36:08
Speaker 1: you want to um, let us know about a wedding,
36:11
Speaker 1: a funeral, um or a voyagency. We want to hear
36:18
Speaker 1: about it. Wrapping up in an email and send it
36:21
Speaker 1: to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com For
36:29
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
36:31
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
36:35
Speaker 1: check out our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot
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