Stuff You Should Know

The death cap mushroom lives up to its name. It’s a mushroom cap that causes death. Find out why.

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Sound effects are one of the unsung parts of any movie or TV show – they’re best when you don’t even notice them making what you see on screen even more real, and when they’re off you notice immediately. Learn how hard this amazing craft is in this episode.

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If you’ve ever wandered past what looked like a pile of dog barf on a log during a hike in the woods, you’d just seen slime mold - one of the most perplexing organisms on Earth. Listen to this classic episode and get as amazed as Josh and Chuck were when they recorded it.

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As part of our shameful history series, today we dive into the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments of the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s and into the 70s.

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If you try to kill someone who was already dead is that a bad thing? Yeah? How bad?

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Say one thing about Mao's communist China, they could kill some sparrows. Learn why and how in today's episode.

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Subpoenas are all the rage. But what do they even mean if someone can just ignore it? Learn this and a lot more in this classic episode.

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It’s an understated miracle that humans can get across ideas to one another by saying things out loud. We’re strangely good at not constantly talking over each other, interrupting one another, and correcting misunderstandings. All just by conversing! 

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One of the last uncontacted people in the world live in the Bay of Bengal and they have made it clear they don’t want you to visit.

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Aussie James Harrison gave blood close to 1,200 times over a 60 year period and saved 2.5 million babies in the process. That makes him a hero. 

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If you’ve ever found your blood pressure rising because some guy down the street doesn’t know how to keep the trigger on a leaf blower pulled all the way, then you’ve experienced noise pollution. Not only is it annoying, it turns out it’s deadly too! Learn all about it in this classic episode.

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In the 1960s, America took stock of itself when scores of low-income cities broke out in riots. It found that racism was at the root of many social problems. Instead of addressing the underlying issues, the country decided instead to militarize the police.

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Why does water seem to freeze faster when it starts out warmer?

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E-e-e-eek! E-e-e-eek, we say! Adding to the tradition of our wonderful animal episodes we contribute this amazing installment on one of the all-time great sea creatures, the dolphin! Attach a sponge to your rostrum and dive in with Josh and Chuck!

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A pair of old timey fossil hunters had a rootin’ tootin’ rivalry that spilled from academic journals into the American Wild West - where fossils were dynamited and employees turned double agent. Learn about the two-fisted origins of American paleontology in this classic episode.

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Blue zones are areas where people supposedly have more 100+ year-olds than average. But is it all based on faulty records?

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An amazing case of an early modern mass sighting of UFOs came in Nuremberg, Germany in 1561. Except it wasn’t that at all.

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Crooked teeth have always been a thing, but it took us a long time to do something about it. Learn about the twisted history of orthodontics today!

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In December 1900 three lighthouse keepers vanished without a trace from a deserted island in Scotland. To this day no one knows exactly what happened to them. Find out all about this strange situation in this classic episode.

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