Stuff You Should Know

How Salt Works

18 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

A Roman senator once said, "Mankind can live without gold, but not without salt." Right he was. The human body needs salt so much we have developed a ...

How Cave Dwellers Work

13 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

You know the cavemen, a race of human cousins who lived exclusively in caves? They didn't exist. Sure prehistoric hominids used caves sometimes but th...

Do objects or experiences make us happier?

11 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Since Sartre classified things that make us happy into the categories of having and doing, science took up the investigation into materialism and expe...

How Sign Language Works

06 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

It wasn't until the was developed and despite its co-existence alongside English, a user would be hard-pressed to sign with a British person. Find out...

Will computers replace doctors?

04 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

With savvy and health-conscious people taking control of their wellbeing through apps and sites, technology is meeting the desire for individuals' res...

What are crystal skulls?

30 Jan 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Back in the early 20th-century mysterious skulls made from polished crystals began to enter the collections of private enthusiasts of the occult. Disc...

What's the deal with the debt ceiling?

28 Jan 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Lately it's been common news fodder that Congress uses its ability to raise the debt ceiling to hold the executive branch hostage to its demands, but ...

How the Deep Web Works

23 Jan 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Perhaps you didn't realize that when you search the web you're only skimming the surface. In fact, the types of web pages that turn up in your search ...

Chuck and Josh Bust a Few Everyday Myths

21 Jan 2014

Contributed by Lukas

There are lots of common "facts" that everyone knows, but it turns out a lot of them are actually false. Join Josh and Chuck as they put on their bere...

How Pet Psychics Work

16 Jan 2014

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 21st century a trend of people who claim to be able to telepathically and clairvoyantly communicate with animals has grown. Today, the co...

Was there a real King Arthur?

14 Jan 2014

Contributed by Lukas

The legend of King Arthur is very old and very established. By the time the king who saved Britain and united it was first written about, his story wa...

Your limb is torn off - now what?

07 Jan 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Were you to be the unfortunate victim of a limb removal of any sort, you could take hope. Here in the 21st century, doctors have gotten pretty handy a...

Could you live without a refrigerator?

02 Jan 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Do you know that hulking refrigerator in your kitchen emits CO2 thanks to the electricity it uses each year? It's a comparatively small amount, in tru...

Will solar sails take us to the stars?

31 Dec 2013

Contributed by Lukas

We have within our grasp here on Earth the technology that could make interstellar travel a reality within as little as a few decades and it doesn't r...

How Fire Breathing Works

26 Dec 2013

Contributed by Lukas

As part of their strange, ongoing suite on circus arts, Chuck and Josh discuss one of the more dangerous crowd favorites, aspirating extremely flammab...

Josh and Chuck's Warm and Cozy Christmas Extravaganza 2013

24 Dec 2013

Contributed by Lukas

It's finally here, the best episode of the year! It's time to settle in by a nice fire, wrap up in a blanket, heat up a toddy and gather your loved on...

Is lethal injection humane?

19 Dec 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Since the Supreme Court's ban on capital punishment was reversed, states have sought a humane method of killing sentenced criminals. They settled on l...

How Manhunts Work

17 Dec 2013

Contributed by Lukas

When a suspect or prisoner goes on the lam there are plenty of ways to hide: in plain sight, in the mountains, in another country. There are as many t...

How Underwater Tunnels Work

12 Dec 2013

Contributed by Lukas

It's a pretty amazing feat to dig a tunnel beneath a body of water that's big enough (and safe enough) to drive a train through. While humans have bee...

How Maglev Trains Work

05 Dec 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Thanks to the amazing properties of magnets, clever engineers have figured out how to make entire trains levitate above their tracks, letting them mov...

How Castration Works

03 Dec 2013

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Josh and Chuck teach you everything you ever wanted to know but were too freaked out to ask about castration. Learn about the history...

How Black Friday Works

28 Nov 2013

Contributed by Lukas

On the day after Thanksgiving, Americans go kind of crazy for the deep discount sales that kick off the holiday shopping season in stores. So crazy, i...

Is there a scientific formula for funny?

26 Nov 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Recorded live at the Los Angeles PodFest, this episode of SYSK delves into the longstanding attempt to break down what humans find funny into a scient...

Who killed JFK?

21 Nov 2013

Contributed by Lukas

For the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Josh and Chuck delve into the killing, the investigations and th...

How Chocolate Works

19 Nov 2013

Contributed by Lukas

People have been consuming chocolate for at least a couple thousand years, but it's only been in the last hundred that humanity has arrived at its cro...

How Werewolves Work

14 Nov 2013

Contributed by Lukas

If you've ever been bitten by a wolf, you're probably familiar with the anxiety of waiting for the next full moon to see if you become a werewolf. Lea...

Some Interesting Things You Didn't Know About Stephen Hawking

12 Nov 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Everybody knows that cosmologist Stephen Hawking has an enormous brain, but did you also know he has an equal wit? Learn about some of the lesser-know...

How Lewis and Clark Worked

07 Nov 2013

Contributed by Lukas

They may be the most famous explorers in U.S. history, but there are plenty of interesting details to the Lewis and Clark expedition that history has ...

How Chess Works

05 Nov 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Despite its knights, bishops and castles, the game of chess has been around a lot longer since the Medieval Age. And it wasn't even invented in Europe...

What's with the Winchester Mystery House?

31 Oct 2013

Contributed by Lukas

After her daughter and husband died, heiress Sarah Winchester became obsessed with the idea that spirits haunted her and to appease them she had to ha...

The Empty House

30 Oct 2013

Contributed by Lukas

It's Halloween, and Josh and Chuck are ready to creep you out with this year's spooky story, Algernon Blackwood's scary short story, The Empty House. ...

How Ouija Boards Work

29 Oct 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Although most people who've used Ouija boards don't think they're communicating with the beyond, there is something mysterious about how it works. Lea...

How Guide Dogs Work

22 Oct 2013

Contributed by Lukas

You know how when you see a guide dog leading a blind person to their destination and you think, "There goes a truly great dog?" It turns out you are ...

10 Easy Ways to Save Money

17 Oct 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Times are still kind of tough, but there are some time-tested and easy ways to get ahead and in this episode Josh and Chuck explore them. Learn about ...

How the Maori Work

15 Oct 2013

Contributed by Lukas

It's a familiar theme, an indigenous group's culture falls apart when exposed to European ideals, weapons and disease. For the Maori of New Zealand, h...

Did Archimedes build a death ray?

08 Oct 2013

Contributed by Lukas

During the siege of Syracuse in 214 BCE, the city-state's resident genius, Archimedes, built a number of clever war machines to thwart the invading Ro...

Can NASA predict natural disasters?

03 Oct 2013

Contributed by Lukas

The US has developed some great equipment for peering into deep space that can also be used to great effect when trained on Earth. Now NASA is using s...

What's the deal with diplomatic immunity?

01 Oct 2013

Contributed by Lukas

You've heard all about diplomatic immunity, but we'll bet you don't really know how it works. Take some time to get into the nuts and bolts of this an...

Does owning a gun change your behavior?

26 Sep 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Back in the 1990s, Congress effectively banned the scientific study of gun violence. Still, a handful of researchers plugged on and produced a small b...

How Crack Works

24 Sep 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Back in the mid-1980s a new and extremely potent drug hit the scene: crack cocaine. In short order, America was in the grip of both a sweeping addicti...

How Dying Works

19 Sep 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Chuck and Josh have covered just about every aspect of death except dying itself. Here, they fulfill the death suite of podcasts with an in-depth look...

How IEDs Work

17 Sep 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Improvised explosive devices were the primary killer of American troops in Iraq and continue to top the list in Afghanistan. Their use is so prevalent...

How much money is in the world?

05 Sep 2013

Contributed by Lukas

There are few things more futile than trying to count all of the money in the world. Even many governments have no idea how much currency they have is...

How the Rosetta Stone Works

03 Sep 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Sometimes providence smiles on historians. Thus is the case with the Rosetta stone, an ancient Egyptian tablet that served as the key for unlocking hi...

How did 168 conquistadors take down the Inca empire?

29 Aug 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Just before Francisco Pizarro arrived in South American in 1532, the Inca empire covered 350,000 square miles and boasted a million inhabitants. Yet P...

How Broken Bones Work

27 Aug 2013

Contributed by Lukas

It's a pretty miserable thing to break a bone. There's the initial blinding pain, all of the medical procedures during a trip to the hospital and then...

History's Greatest Traitors

22 Aug 2013

Contributed by Lukas

The annals of history hold a special place for people who have carried out treachery and betrayed their own. Thousands of years later, their names are...

How Ejection Seats Work

20 Aug 2013

Contributed by Lukas

When the Jet Age came about, pilots found they had a brand new problem with their brand new planes: how to bail out when they found themselves in a pi...

How Cockroaches Work

15 Aug 2013

Contributed by Lukas

You've seen them in your home and probably squealed in terror, but now it's time to learn all about cockroaches. From their ability to run incredibly ...

Why was Davy Crockett king of the wild frontier?

13 Aug 2013

Contributed by Lukas

If there is an American legend who is both real-life and larger-than-life it is Davy Crockett. While he may not have ""kilt him a b'ar"" when he was t...

How does a diving bell work?

08 Aug 2013

Contributed by Lukas

About 2,400 years ago Aristotle mentions the use of diving bells, apparatuses that convey divers to the bottom of the sea -- or at least below the sur...

The Shark Diaries

07 Aug 2013

Contributed by Lukas

In this special episode of Stuff You Should Know, Chuck and Josh tip their hats to Shark Week with an old-fashioned radio play. Join the guys (and a f...

How Horseshoes Work

06 Aug 2013

Contributed by Lukas

That laziest of backyard games, horseshoes, is also a very ancient one, developed by people following Greek armies more than 2,000 years ago. Since th...

How Fingerprinting Works

01 Aug 2013

Contributed by Lukas

The Babylonians, one of the earliest civilizations, were the first to use fingerprints to differentiate people, but it wasn't until the 19th century t...

How LARP Works

30 Jul 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Dressing up in duct tape-covered cardboard suit of armor and pretending you're an elf warrior for a weekend at a state park might sound like a pretty ...

Why should you never scare a vulture?

23 Jul 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Being ravenous eaters of decaying flesh, vultures have long been shunned by humans. But because of their disgusting habits, vultures provide a much-ne...

Who owns an abandoned house?

18 Jul 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Ever since the real estate bubble in the U.S. burst in 2008, American cities have had to deal with a substantial uptick in abandoned houses. Faced wit...

How Building Implosions Work

16 Jul 2013

Contributed by Lukas

When you need to take down a 20-story building, a wrecking ball won't do. Instead, you'll need to turn to the handful of companies in the world that a...

How Hip-hop Works

11 Jul 2013

Contributed by Lukas

In this week's SYSK Select, what you hear is not a test, instead it's Chuck and Josh discussing the cultural history of the Hip-Hop movement. Born out...

10 Medieval Torture Devices

09 Jul 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Warning: This episode on instruments designed solely to produce extreme human suffering during the Middle Ages in Europe is very graphic in nature. Se...

How Miranda Rights Work

04 Jul 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Back in 1966, the Supreme Court decided that suspects in criminal cases had the right to be reminded that they didn't have to talk to the fuzz if they...

How Pollen Works

02 Jul 2013

Contributed by Lukas

For about 375 million years, plants have been using pollen (aka plant sperm) to propagate their species. And the technique has stuck around because it...

How Burning Man Works

27 Jun 2013

Contributed by Lukas

You've probably heard about Burning Man, it's a week-long party in the middle of a desert made of 50 thousand people living pretty much without rules,...

How Ghosts Work

20 Jun 2013

Contributed by Lukas

According to a 2009 poll, more Americans believe in ghosts than don't. But what are ghosts exactly? If they do exist, what are they made of and why ar...

How Bitcoin Works

17 Jun 2013

Contributed by Lukas

In 2008 Bitcoin, the world's first decentralized, anarchistic all-digital currency, was introduced to the world. Its value has risen, fallen and risen...

Capgras Syndrome: You Are Not Who You Think You Are

11 Jun 2013

Contributed by Lukas

There is an extremely rare condition where the sufferer is convinced that everyone around him is an impostor posing as their friends and family. Learn...

How Drag Queens Work

11 Jun 2013

Contributed by Lukas

You can trace the origin of men dressing as women in public back to classic Greek theater, but modern drag queens owe their real inception to vaudevil...

How do trees affect the weather?

06 Jun 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Sure, you know that trees have an impact on climate change: to wit, fewer trees mean more atmospheric CO2. But did you know that trees can actually im...

What happened to the lost colony at Roanoke?

04 Jun 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Before Jamestown became the first successful English colony in the New World, an entire group of settlers vanished. For the last 430 years, Roanoke ha...

How Coffins Work

28 May 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Sure, you've probably laid in one at the store or a funeral home, but how much do you know about receptacles used to bury the dead? We'll bet you'll l...

How Police Chases Work

28 May 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Entire TV shows are dedicated to them and Americans love to watch a live one, but police chases aren't as routine as they seem. While police assert ch...

How PTSD Works

23 May 2013

Contributed by Lukas

With Post-traumatic Stress Disorder the sufferer relives, over and over again, the worst moment of his life. What's worse is medicine still doesn't kn...

How Cicadas Work

21 May 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Cicadas are crawling out from underground, where they have been hiding in the darkness for almost two decades. As of May 2013, they're invading the Ea...

How Aerosol Cans Work

16 May 2013

Contributed by Lukas

In the 87 years since they were invented aerosol cans have protected soldiers, temporarily fixed flat tires, killed a boy who used too much deodorant ...

How Electroconvulsive Therapy Works

14 May 2013

Contributed by Lukas

With the exception of lobotomies, no other psychological treatment has a worse reputation. But thanks to some thoughtful tweaks, ECT has lately emerge...

How Foot Binding Worked

09 May 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Once in a while, all the necessary factors converge to produce a peculiar nationalized sexual fetish. In China, that fetish was foot binding and over ...

How Fair Trade Works

07 May 2013

Contributed by Lukas

The West has gotten rich off the backs of underpaid labor living elsewhere; people who are dedicated to Fair Trade feel it's time people at a disadvan...

How Dungeons and Dragons Works

02 May 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Despite what you've heard, Dungeons and Dragons isn't just for geeks, it isn't satanic and it's actually a pretty great way to exercise your imaginati...

What makes us yawn?

25 Apr 2013

Contributed by Lukas

What is it that makes us suddenly draw in a deep breath through a wide-open mouth? The beautiful thing about yawning is that researchers really don't ...

How Magnets Work

23 Apr 2013

Contributed by Lukas

You can stick them to the fridge or use them to transpose sound to tape, whatever they are used for magnets are surprisingly interesting. And knowing ...

Uses of the Insanity Defense

18 Apr 2013

Contributed by Lukas

The idea that a person who can't understand the crime they've committed is wrong lets them off the hook from culpability for their actions is a longst...

How Marriage Works

16 Apr 2013

Contributed by Lukas

You can tell a lot about a culture through marriage statistics: what age people get married, how many divorce, who is excluded from legal marriage. It...

Do men and women have different brains?

11 Apr 2013

Contributed by Lukas

It's a pretty touchy subject because of the possible implications - if you find differences between the brains of men and women, does that mean there ...

What's the deal with duckbill platypuses?

09 Apr 2013

Contributed by Lukas

It is pretty much impossible to describe duckbill platypuses without using the word "hodgepodge" and for good reason. These mammals also share feature...

How Grief Works

04 Apr 2013

Contributed by Lukas

You can probably name the five stages of grief - from denial to acceptance - they've become pretty well known since being proposed in 1969. But later ...

How the Panama Canal Works

02 Apr 2013

Contributed by Lukas

It's on more than one list of the Seven Wonders of the World and for good reason - the Panama Canal is one of the great feats of engineering ever unde...

How No-fly Zones Work

28 Mar 2013

Contributed by Lukas

They have become such a ubiquitous tool used by the UN and NATO to intervene in international crises, that it seems like no-fly zones have been around...

How Apartheid Worked

19 Mar 2013

Contributed by Lukas

After WWII, while the rest of the world grew more socially progressive, the government of South Africa turned inward to focus its attention on dominat...

How the U.S. Postal Service Works

14 Mar 2013

Contributed by Lukas

The USPS is currently teetering on the edge of going under and there are a lot of plans to save it, from cutting Saturday service to creating federall...

How Police Sketches Work

12 Mar 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Creating composite drawings of suspected criminals from eyewitness accounts has been around since a Frenchman introduced it in the 19th century. Despi...

Can We Build an Elevator to Space?

09 Mar 2013

Contributed by Lukas

With the end of the shuttle program and an International Space Station still in need of supplies, the aerospace industry is working the kinks of out o...

Do People Really Run Off to Join the French Foreign Legion?

07 Mar 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Anyone who knows anything about Jean-Claude Van Damme knows he played a French legionnaire in the movies. He was just one of many actors to star in fi...

What Makes a One-hit Wonder?

05 Mar 2013

Contributed by Lukas

The term "one-hit wonder" gets thrown around a lot, and - yes - you probably are using it correctly, but Chuck Bryant went to the trouble to really de...

How the Papacy Works

28 Feb 2013

Contributed by Lukas

In February 2013, Pope Benedict said he would become the first pope to retire in 600 years. Check out this episode of Stuff You Should Know to find ou...

How CPR Works

26 Feb 2013

Contributed by Lukas

You have a golden opportunity to make yourself into a worthwhile human being simply by learning how to perform CPR. The chances are you'll never need ...

How Spies Work

23 Feb 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Psst. You want to know how governments and corporations get the drop on one another? The frontline of intelligence is populated by spies. Learn about ...

What Would Happen If the World Stopped Spinning?

21 Feb 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Over the last 400 million years, the day has grown longer by two full hours thanks to a slowing of the rotation of the Earth on its axis. While it wil...

How Surfing Works

19 Feb 2013

Contributed by Lukas

You know the Beach Boys and you've seen those Hang Ten shirts with the little feet emblem, but there's a lot more to surfing than appears on pop cultu...

Myths About the Brain

14 Feb 2013

Contributed by Lukas

As is usual for SYSK, Josh and Chuck go over some, but not all, of the entries in this list of ten common myths about the brain. While it lives there ...

How Jet Lag Works

12 Feb 2013

Contributed by Lukas

It was only since 1958 that the Jet Age began, and jet lag became a real condition. Also known as desynchronosis, jet lag can lead to all manner of ai...