Silly String: Disaster in a Can

It's been a while since we tackled a classic toy, so here we go with all you ever wanted to know about Silly String.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and Jerry's here and we're silly and
this is Stuff you should Know Silly podcast. Boy, did
this one just not reek of the Old House Stuff

(00:24):
Works days? Yeah? But what's awesome is that you knew
that you could just you know, like you didn't have
to double check any facts or anything like that, because
Tracy Wilson was on the case here and she does
not get her facts mixed up. No, this was an
Old House Stuff Works article from Tracy and also got
some stuff from CNN, Gismoto, a mental floss, the Wired,

(00:46):
and Mother Jones, which feels like a veritable greatest hits
of Stuff you should Know reference sites that look at it.
But we're talking about Silly String. We haven't done one
on a classic toy in a long time. It's been
too long. And although this isn't quite as interesting as
like say a Sea monkey, I think it still has

(01:07):
some pretty interesting points. Well, there's a d percent less
Nazis in this one, which I like, not one Nazi.
So um, Silly String is a toy and it's one
of those things that is so ubiquitous and everybody knows
about it and may may even be annoyed by it
or whatever. That, Um, you don't realize that there's people

(01:28):
out there who talk about this stuff and think about
this stuff, and that if you start to dive into
the Internet and look for those people, uh, and you
read what they write, you start to figure out that
they're all very, very wrong in whatever they're saying about
silly string. Yeah, and I think that was I think,
especially at the time Tracy wrote this article, it was

(01:50):
one of those deals where everything on the web basically said,
and we don't even know what's in silly string, And
it's one of those sort of like uh, easy chase.
It's like this sort of mystery what's inside the can
and science can't even figure it out and all we
know is invented by Julius Simon in nineteen sixty nine.

(02:11):
And it turns out that none of that stuff stuff
is actually true. We do know what's in silly string,
and Julius Simon did not invent it. No, And I
think here, um, about a minute and a half into
the podcast, we should probably tell everybody what silly string
is in case they have been in case they haven't heard,
living where living outside of a silly string laden country.

(02:36):
That's right. Silly string comes in an aerosol can. So
if you look at it, it's it might look like
easy cheese or a small can of AquaNet. First spray paint. There,
spray paint. I was trying to think of like antiquated things,
but sure spray paint works as well. Uh. And you
press the nozzle and out comes shooting a pressurized stream

(03:02):
of this foamy string, and you can It depends on
you know, how hard you shake it and your angle
of incidents, I guess, or is that right. I've probably
got that wrong. The angle in which you shoot it. Sure,
angle of attack, angle of attack. But it can travel
you know, five six seven up to ten twelve feet,

(03:23):
and it's like kind of wet and cold cool feeling
when it comes out, comes out very fast and then
very quickly kind of um. It doesn't completely dry. It
still has sort of that tacky feeling because it will
stick to things. But the idea is that it stays
in a string form unless you kind of pull it apart.
That's what makes silly string fun and great. Yeah, it's

(03:47):
not like your grandfather shaving cream that was just foams
up in like into this pile, this bubble that kind
of grows. It holds its shape, and that's a really
important part of it because it wouldn't be a toy
if it just came out like shaving cream. No one
would want to play with it. It certainly would not
have had a very famous uh part of the movie,
the great Tom Hanks movie Big, So you've ever seen Big,

(04:09):
that's silly string in the scene where he and uh
Billy I guess are playing around. All of a sudden,
they have all this money and they buy all this garbage,
candy and stuff, and they buy silly string, and Tom
Hanks acts like he's squirting. It's like snot out of
his nose, and they spray silly string. And that's the
ideas that kids have a good time with it and
parents hate it. Yeah, parents and city council people, as

(04:31):
we'll see. And you said another part of it too
is not only just its shape, but the fact that
it can really travel. You said it can travel up
to ten to twelve feet, which for our friends and
non imperial countries is a handful of meters um, and
that's a lot. You know, like you can be standing
pretty far away from somebody, spray them, drop the can,
and turn and run, and you still have a pretty

(04:51):
good head start on them chasing you. That's right. So
the story of Silly String Chuck is actually pretty interesting one.
I love ones that like toy that started out as
something else, which seems like every toy we've ever talked about.
It started, it started life as it's like a different thing,
and then somebody was like, actually this is a pretty
good toy, and everyone said agreed, and it became a

(05:11):
classic toy, and then we podcasted on it sixty years later,
that's right, Uh, not quite sixty, but in this case
it was. If you look at the actual patent from
n seventy two for foamable resinous uh for a foamable
resinous composition, you will find Robert Peacox and Leonard A Fish.
Fish was an inventor. Cox was a chemist, and what

(05:35):
they were trying to originally invent was a medical device
kind of an emergency largely battlefield, but an emergency cast
that you could spray on like a spray on cast
if you break a bone, that would sort of and
if you think about silly string in a different application,
and if you think about it, what if it instead

(05:56):
came out and coated your arm and solidified. That's the idea,
and from what I could tell, they were successful in
that um. But part of what they were trying to
do was find the right nozzle. They they have apparently
tested like five hundred nozzles, uh, and one of those
nozzles shot this stuff out, this concoction that they came

(06:18):
up with in a string uh really far and that
string held its shape. So they were like, let's put
a button on this particular nozzle. I'm sure Leonard A
Fish walked around with it in his little change pocket
of his levies for many years. And then when the
time was right, they said, we should get back to
that because we've got the we've got the spray on

(06:38):
cast down. Pat, I think that other thing would make
a really good toy, And Robert Peacock said, agreed Leonard Fish,
and Leonard Fish nodded silently. That's right. As the legend goes,
they did not know anything about toy marketing, obviously, so
they made an appointment with who at the time was
probably the biggest name in toys in the early seventies,

(07:00):
Wammo still a big name in toys, and uh, we
covered Frisbees and Yo Yo's, Like the Wammos has made
an appearance in a lot of these episodes. Yo Yo's
was one of our better episodes if I remember correctly. Yeah,
it was a good one. Um. So they went to Wammo,
as legend has it, they sprayed the stuff all over
the office and the person they were meeting with as well,

(07:22):
and they said, get out of here. This stuff is
like how dare you? Kind of reaction. And the next day,
though apparently, fish got a telegram saying from WAMO saying
we need twenty four cans of the stuff as a
marketing test stop to stop right there. Uh and the

(07:43):
the idea and this sounds very much like a legend,
but who knows, it may be true. The idea is
that the next day they cleaned it up. But there
was one hangy string on a lamp that one of
the owners of WAMO saw and picked up and said,
what is this stuff? It's it's fantastic. It's like Paul
Newman from Hudsucker Proxy. Okay, I haven't seen that one.

(08:05):
I guess I don't know. I know I at least
started it. Okay. It had to do with the invention
of the hula hoop. Okay, yeah, I saw a lot
of that, but it was some some Coen Brothers movies
are just not for me. Yeah, yeah, I hear you.
I like them all, but I get Emily doesn't like
a lot of them because they they do mean things
to animals and almost every movie. I never noticed that. Yeah,

(08:28):
it's a Cohen Brothers thing. Okay, So they basically say,
get these guys in here. This stuff is brilliant, and
they did, and apparently within a couple of weeks they
had a contract with WAMO to license and sell silly string.
But that still doesn't explain Julian Simon, right, No, Julian Simon,
the guy who is legendarily the person who invented silly

(08:49):
string back in nineteen sixty nine, actually does have something
to do with silly string. But he came into the
picture thirty years after he was reputed too, because in
WAMO said we've spent our silly string, We're done with this.
Who wants it? And Julius Simon had a company called
Julius Simon Limited, which was the parent company of the

(09:10):
car Freshener Corporation. How great is that? And car Freshener
had a subsidiary, a toy division called Just for Kicks,
and Just for Kicks bought the rights to make silly
string in and if car Freshener Corporation just rings the slightest,
tiniest bell, you might have seen it in really little

(09:31):
script on your tree air freshener that is dangling from
your rear view mirror. So Julius Simon is the gentleman
who holds the patent to the fur tree air freshener.
It's amazing, another ubiquitous product I've never owned. Yeah, the
same here. I never got into those either. He had

(09:52):
he had two patents and one was for the tree
shaped air freshener. Another one was, uh the Undressed Nake
Lady silhouette air freshener. Those were two pads. Well, I
guess he saw it on a mud flap and was like,
I think that was the great at an air freshener. Yeah,
I've never seen that one, but I can. I would
guess it's kind of that mud flappy thing too. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(10:14):
I feel like mud flaps it's either Yosemite Sam saying
back off, or it's like silhouette of a naked lady. Yeah,
that's your mud flap selection. Um, all right, I think
that's good enough for the first segment, which we'll just
call history, and in our second segment after the break,
we will bore you to tears by talking about the

(10:37):
chemical contents of silly stringth That is not true, everybody, So, Chuck,

(11:07):
I just want to say before we get started, I
want to explain myself when I was saying stop while
you were talking about the telegram, I wasn't telling you
to stop a telegram. Stop. Yeah, yeah, I have. Have
you ever heard the legend behind why people said stop
instead of just adding a period? No, but I think
this is definitely the episode to put that. Okay, So apparently,

(11:28):
if you were sending a telegram, letters were very cheap,
but punctuation was expensive, so you actually paid less to
spell out the four letters then paying for a period.
That's why people had stopped in the middle of their sentences.
But the big dumb dumb would say stop exclamation point right,

(11:48):
I really mean it period here. That's amazing. What a
great little factory to be able to throw out at
the next dinner party. It is a factory. It's a
tenth of a fact. Oh wait, I might have my
wires crossed. I know what you mean. There's probably a
couple of listeners who get it. All right, let's dive
into a can of silly string, because, uh, what it

(12:11):
inside a can of silly string is known generally to
the public now, although some of the stuff on the
original patent is has had been changed since then, so
I think there are some trade secrets. But let's just
say it's definitely a liquid inside the can and it
becomes the string outside the can because of the stuff

(12:34):
that's inside the can. It is very lightweight, and like
we said, it does have an adhesive quality. But it's
got to be just the right mix that you want
it to stick to a lampshade or stick to a wall,
or stick to a person's like ears and hair if
you're draping it over the room, over them, over the room.
But you don't want it to be so sticky that

(12:55):
you can't get it off of something. You want to
be able to you know, it's got to be cohesive.
You want to be able to pull it out and
have it kind of generally come in one big ball
as you're trying to clean up afterwards. Right, So that's
the tension between the adhesiveness of it and the cohesiveness
of it. And as long as it's more cohesive, meaning
it'll it'll hold its shape when you pull on it

(13:16):
um than it is adhesive, So it's it takes less
forced to pull it off somebody than it does to
take to pull it apart. That's why it's so easily
cleaned up because it is a little bit sticky, but
not fully sticky, and that that has to do with
the genius of some of the stuff that's in it. Yeah,
and imagine getting this right is I mean it sounds well,
it's about to say it sounds silly, um to to

(13:38):
put this much research and thought into a product like this,
But if you get it wrong, no one's gonna buy it.
If it sticks so bad everything that parents can't clean
it up, they're not gonna buy it for their kids. Uh.
It's it's kind of genius in a way that they
figured like the exact recipe to make it fun for kids,
but something that you could generally just sort of pull
off and ball up and throw in the trash. Yeah,

(14:00):
and Robert Pea Cox and Leonard A. Fish are the
people who did spend that time figuring that out. Because
you couldn't make an instant cast with the stuff that
comes out of a can of silly string. So they
had to go back and figure out how to make it,
you know, very colorful, how to make it so it
didn't stick too much, how it was cohesive, all that stuff,
and they did. They managed to come up with the
perfect mixture of basically three ingredients, although there's more than three. Um,

(14:25):
there's I don't know why everybody says three, but everyone
does say three. Three is the magic three. And then
some other stuff. So there's a resin, a surfactant, and
a propellant, and apparently there's also a solvent which is
very important. There's also talc, which is very important, as
we'll see. But each one of these things plays a
really uh important role in the creation of the silly string.

(14:48):
And you know, like you said, it has to be
just right or else the whole thing is going the
whole enterprise is going to collapse. I've picture doctor Strange
Love wheeling into the room all of a sudden mind podcast.
Uh So you've got your resin that's gonna form that

(15:09):
plastic structure, that exoskeleton of the strand, and an original
form on that patent it was an acrylic resin using
poly isobutal methacry late. And the resin is like everything
else with the silly string, you gotta get it just right. Um,

(15:30):
that is the framework of those strands. If you have
too much resin, it's not gonna foam like you wanted
to foam, and it'd be more like shooting cock at somebody.
And I think we can all agree that's no fun.
There's no such thing as silly cock. Uh. If you
have too little of the stuff, then they're not gonna
hold together. And if silly string, I think we agree

(15:50):
that if it came out as tiny little foam bullets,
it wouldn't be as fun as if it comes out
as a big string. But the whole point is is
once this thing is propelled into the air, then it
forms that shell that if you don't mess with it like,
it'll stay there for a while. It's not like it
just disappears. Yeah, because of the resin, that plastic structure

(16:11):
that it lends to the whole thing. Um, Yeah, if
you leave it alone, it can it can survive for
weeks basically, I would guess indefinitely. I'm sure it's like
how many licks it takes to get to the center
of it pop. No one really knows because no one's
just left silly string indefinitely, you know, talk about a monster.
So the propellant is also really important too for a

(16:32):
couple of reasons. Um, whatever propellant they're using is at
room temperature and normal sea level pressure UM, which is
what it's like outside of the can. It would be
a gas, but the contents of an aerosolt can is
under so much pressure that it's actually in its liquid
state UM. And the propellant when it when it emerges

(16:53):
from that can, it essentially boils. It changes from liquid
to a gas. And as it does that, because is
everything else is mixed up with that propellant. As we'll see,
it takes all of those other components there, resid surfactant,
the solvent on a wild ride, and they all combined
with one another and turned foamy. So again, the structure

(17:14):
of the exoskeleton the thing that lends the whole thing,
it's initial support, that's the resin. Yeah, and The other
thing the propellant does is that it also helps that
resin form basically and uh helps sort of create that
that foamy exterior because once that propellant is shot out,
it evaporates very quickly. Uh if you if you shoot

(17:36):
it at a normal distance, if you've ever taken silly
string and like shot it into your like a closed
palm or a fist or something, it's gonna be different.
It's gonna be like a lot more wet because it
doesn't have that chance to spread out and quickly evaporate,
and it's gonna be a lot more brittle. That's why
you're supposed to shoot you know, the propellant across the room.
Is it sort of lends itself to doing what it

(17:58):
does best. By doing what it does best, you're right,
which is propelling things. So um, they used to originally
use die chlora flora methane also known as free on
twelve and free on twelve is so bad for the
ozone layer that there is a global law against manufacturing

(18:19):
free on. Like think about how many global laws there
are that might be the only one. Um, I guess so,
but yeah, this is this is like an actual yeah
murder but still, how about like a global regulation maybe okay, sure,
or something that has to do with industry you're manufacturing
rather than you know, killing people. So so they used

(18:43):
to use free on, but you can't use free on anymore. Um.
You actually can use it in some applications. There's this
a finite stock of free on left on earth, um,
and you're allowed to use those. You just can't manufacture anymore.
So eventually we'll run out of free on. Um. They
had to figure out something else to use, and they did. So.
You don't find free on twelve inside of silly string

(19:03):
anymore because it's really bad for the ozone layer. That's right.
Although as we learned in our research over the years,
there have been various UH rogue off brands UH that
have used free on that have popped up, like in
the two thousands, and I think even in the two
thousand tens, they would find some random silly string shipment

(19:26):
that came from you know, Taiwan or China that still
had that free on twelve in it, and you know,
confiscate that stuff quick and get rid of it, right.
So UM. One of the other things moving on from
the propellant, which again it's really really important stuff. But
all of these things are important. Each one plays its
own role, and and the surfactant plays a really interesting

(19:48):
role too, because it helps the resin foam, it helps
the resin expand. And the surfactant does this by um,
by the fact that it's ampiphilic and amphiphil. Sorry, it's
hydrophobic and it's hydrophilic, so it repels water and it
attracts water. It doesn't know what it's doing, but it
does both of those things. And in that sense, it

(20:09):
actually manages to keep molecules cohesive, so it lends it
it's cohesive um property um. It also lends it a
little bit of stickiness, but I saw that it keeps
it from being too sticky. So this is like the
surfactan is just a wonder chemical because it's doing the
opposite at the same time. Yeah, and the surfactant is uh,

(20:34):
like Tracy says, you know, so many years ago in
this article that it's just sort of a fancy name
for a detergent. And the idea is if you think
about like, um, like if you have a sink full
of water and you just squirt some soap, like dish soap,
in there. It's just gonna sort of sit there, and
you might not even know there's any soap in there

(20:56):
until you turn on that uh that high pressure from
the sink and maybe even put your finger over it.
Then that stuff's gonna foam up all of a sudden.
And that's sort of what's going on with this can
of silly string, right, And originally on the patent they
listed the surfactan as sorbitan trioliate, which has a trade

(21:19):
name of get this tween five tween. Yeah, that's weird.
It sounds like a super weird. Yeah, that sounds like
a an Internet name for a predator. It does, for sure.
But it's also one of those things that's like so
innocuous that it almost makes you wonder if they went

(21:39):
to great links to come up with something. You just
look right past, you know, uh as far um as
far as how much of this stuff is in there?
Of what stuff is in there, um, the resin is
about ten to fiftent. Surfactin is actually less than five percent.
Most of what's in that can as that propellant. So
if you had a see through can of silly string,

(22:02):
it would be mostly that liquid propellant. Well, I guess
it's all liquid at the time until it comes out
like we said, um, but mostly propellant. But you did
mention talc in there. I think without the talc it
would it wouldn't have much body to it. Is that
the idea? Yeah, it would, it would. I can't even

(22:25):
imagine it will be like, yeah, just be like kind
of flucky plastic e exoskeleton without it the foam, I
guess is what what I saw. And I also saw
get this, so I've been doing a little bit of sleuthing.
Tween eighty five is actually used as an emulsifier for
mixing mineral oil with other stuff in other applications, So

(22:46):
I believe that tween eighty five serves a double duty
as a surfactant but also an emulsifier for the talc
as well. Oh okay, okay, did you just do that
on the fly? I mean when I was researching it. Okay,
it sounded in the moment. No, I mean I don't
walk around knowing other industrial uses for tween eighty five

(23:08):
that he just happened to look it up or something. No, no, no, no,
I looked it up and wrote it down. I was like,
this is juicy I can't leave this one out. It's
pretty juicy. You also have h anytime you have something
like this, you're gonna need a stabilizer. And in this
case they use ammonia and is a prop alcohol And uh,
I think the ammonia keeps it from corroding inside the can,

(23:32):
and the alcohol stops bugs basically like stars life from forming. Right.
I didn't find that anywhere else on the entire Internet.
I looked in every single corner. I didn't find it,
not only in relation to to silly string, but in
relation to aerosol cans in general. Like, I have no
idea where that came from, but I did some more sleuthing.

(23:54):
Oh boy, that was from the Wired article. Right, maybe
I think so? Actually, yeah, but I just don't understand
what they're talking about. Um, I mean it makes sense,
but I just haven't seen it anywhere else. But a
propol alcohol is also commonly used as a solvent, So
the unnamed solvent might actually be named. They might have

(24:16):
all the ingredients listed here, but they're just not saying
this thing is also as well. Yeah, a little bit
of sleight of hand and what's it called misguidance? Uh,
misdirection yeah, yeah, misdirection, that's right, misguid Yeah, you'd be
a heck of a magician. I'm misguiding you. Everyone's like what,

(24:40):
I don't think you're supposed an outst either, right, that's right, man,
I would be terrible at this. If you think the
coin would fall out of my knuckles. If you look
at my right hand and not my left, you will
notice miss guidance. All right? Is that Does that cover
the ingredients? Oh? Just one more thing, No, I guess

(25:03):
we already talked about it about how like the um,
the aerosol um, the propellant boils and carries everything else
out on it. And if you're just like, man, I
need more, tell me more about the manufacturing of aerosol cans.
But you're in luck because we actually did an entire
episode on aerosol cans before, did we Really? That sounded familiar.

(25:25):
That's an old one. Huh. Yeah. I was back and
we were just casting about at the time, obviously, but
if I remor correctly, we we did it. It was done.
You know. When when we were finished, we were casting
about trying to sell Toyota cameras. That's right, the two
thou twelve camera are you ready alight, let's take that break.

(25:46):
I'm gonna go fire up the camera and get the
A C going because it's hot here. I'm ready to leave,
and we'll talk about some interesting other uses in the
environmental impact right after this. I can just see that

(26:22):
two thousand twelve camera in your driveway with like the
the ceiling liner kind of hanging down a little bit
like it it came undone in one spot and it
just kept going from those ceiling liners last forever. They
sure do way beyond. I like the idea that people
actually might think that they gave us like cameras right around. No,

(26:44):
it's true. I mean seriously, there's still old episodes that
had that that that ad embedded in. It's hilariousing that
then won't go away. They really got their money's worth
out of that one, Yes, and still do. One of
the interesting uses of uh silly string popped up during
in the War and a Rock when the US military,
although they didn't officially endorse it and like buy this

(27:06):
stuff for the troops, which I'm not sure why they wouldn't.
Um they would use them to find I E. D
s and trip wires, so they would like go up
to like the doorway of a room and they would
spray silly string around and see if they were if
it hung on invisible trip wires, not invisible but you know,
hard to see trip wires, Yeah, which is really awesome.

(27:29):
It's kind of like Katherine Zeta Jones spraying that powder
or whatever in that one movie. Um, I can't remember that.
I don't remember Tom's kind of Affair. Maybe it was
the one with Sean Connery. I can't remember the name
of it, but um, it was just yeah, nineties dumb movie.
But yeah, same thing, but using silly string in in
in a rock taking out i e. D s rather

(27:51):
than trying to steal a diamond or something. That's for
some differences, but it's the same principle. Yeah. And there
was a kind of a cool story from two thousand
seven when a I think a soldier's mother in New Jersey. Uh,
they were they wanted to get their hands on some
of this stuff, and so she mounted a drive and
collected about eighty thousand kinds of silly string to send
to the troops. I think the sort of bummer ending

(28:12):
in that story as she had trouble getting it shipped
or something and I think a lot of it went bad.
I never saw anytime there's like not a great follow up.
It's probably not a great ending, right, or the media
just got bored with it. Yeah, they're like, we're really,
can we just write a listical again? I've got it now,
chuck the two thousand and twelve camera, it's ready. Are

(28:34):
you ready now? I still don't have it. Uh So
if you heard us listing all these ingredients, even though
free untwelve isn't in there anymore, you might think that
it's probably um not something that's great for the environment.
Uh And like you said, in the seventies and eighties,

(28:54):
kind of right as this was being born, they immediately
were uh started a um get rid of CFCs and
hc fcs. Hydro chloro flora carbon's the greatest named carbons
of all. Yeah, there's a lot of letters in that word.
One of the problems was that they replaced um hydro

(29:16):
chlora flora carbons with just plain old hydrofloora carbons, so
you can tell fewer letters. Obviously, it's not nearly as dangerous. Right.
The thing is, they're they're fine for the ozone layer.
They basically do nothing for the ozone layer but keep
it in place. So that's good. But they're finding that
they also have a high global warming potential. So like

(29:39):
any chemical that can enter the atmosphere, it can be
given a global warming potential, and the lower the number,
the less effective will have on changing the climate. The
higher the number, the more greenhouse gas it is. And
some of these h f c s are kind of
high greenhouse gases. They have a high global warming potential,
so we still need to keep figuring out how to

(30:01):
get aerosols out. Yeah, I kind of had that feeling.
I'm glad you look that up, because my feeling was like,
surely they didn't solve that to where this is just
like great and not a problem. And I imagine if
even though we didn't see the ammonia in anywhere else
on the internet, it can't be great to be squirting

(30:23):
out something with ammonia everywhere, right, I don't know, I
really don't know, and I know that, so, No, it
wasn't the ammonia that I didn't see. I didn't see
people putting ice aprople alcohol in an aerosol can to
keep things from growing inside of it. That's what I
didn't see. Okay, people do use ammonia. Yeah. Here's what
I will say though, is that, UM, I haven't looked

(30:45):
at a can in a while, and I don't know
what warnings come on it, but I bet one of
them should be like don't let your pets eat it
and that kind of thing, or don't let humans or
your little sister eat it. Yeah. Well also, yeah, that's
just good advice. UM. There's also you can find some
um warnings depending on what UM what kind of propellant

(31:06):
is used in the can, UM to say, hey, uh,
this is flammable, don't spray it to it camp fire,
although it will look really awesome, because that's really dangerous.
Another one is um it can freeze. It can like
basically freeze your skin. And the reason why is because
when that um compressed liquid is converting into a gas

(31:28):
undergoing a phase change, part of that phase changes that
it's it's drawing heat from any available immediate source that
includes the can. So it turns the cant ice cold
because it takes all the heat out of it to
to help turn that um, that gas or that liquid
into a gas. I did something kind of dumb a
number of years ago, I you know, I have these

(31:49):
little skin tags and I would go to the dermatologist
to get them clipped. And then I thought, you know what,
I'm just gonna buy some of that freeze spray and
I'm gonna freeze and clip on myself because that's gotta
be easy. And I got some of that spray, and
I guess the idea is that it's not for that purpose,
and you spray kind of from a distance to to

(32:11):
maybe numb something. And I got it right up on
that thing and sprayed it and it burned like the
fires of hell. It hurts so bad. It felt like
someone pressed a hot, like glowing piece of metal into
my skin. I can imagine. I know where you're coming from, actually,
because I went through a phase when I was a

(32:31):
tween eighty five weirdly enough about in eighty five um
and uh, where I had warts, especially on my elbows
for some reason, and I had to go to the
doctor like every couple of months and they would burn
them off with liquid liquid nitrogen frozen nitrogen um. And yeah,

(32:52):
if they missed even a little bit, it would really hurt.
It was really damaging. But if they just got it
on the work, which they normally did. It was weird.
There was like no sensation whatsoever. I we should do
a shorty on words. Sure, I don't know. That might
be our At least listened to episode you'd think, yeah,
I think so, even even less than ariosol Canes, that's right,

(33:16):
or our poop centric episodes. People love those. Can we
finish this one? The two thousand twelve camera? Who's up
for one? I don't think that was it either. So
the last thing will say is that we mentioned earlier
about city council people. Uh, it has been banned here
and there because it's such a pain. And uh, in

(33:37):
the mid two thousand's, I think two thousand four, there
was a city council person named Tom la Bonga in
Los Angeles. You know, Hollywood just goes crazy on Halloween.
There's like a lot of party in and right there
in central Hollywood. And apparently the silly string was out
of hand with people spraying it, with people getting on
fights from getting sprayed with it, and that they actually

(34:00):
put a price tag on that that said silly string
remediation was costing the city of Los Angeles two hundred
more than two hundred thousand dollars each year from that
one night just from Halloween. So they said no more. Uh,
not on Halloween, not in l A. Yeah, some fat
cat silly string cleaner upper was making two d k

(34:23):
on November one every year, so so they they actually
passed an ordinance where silly string is outlawed one day
a year Halloween in Los Angeles. Um, at the very
least in Hollywood. And I did not go back and
find out if there had been any change to this law.
So let's talk about it as a potential if that

(34:45):
existed at least in the past, if not currently, right,
because there's because Tracy says that, um, these sanctions are
even worse than a pot charge, and I don't think
you can get charged for pot anymore in California, right, No,
it's legal, right, Okay, So this fine of just carrying
a can of silly string could get you a misdemeanor,

(35:06):
a thousand dollar fine and up to six months in
jail in in l A. Which is like a pretty
glamorous jail, but it's still jail for six months. Yeah.
They put it on par at the time, at least
uh with um like a drunken disorderly charge bicycling or
hunting while drunk was two fifty and respectively. Uh find

(35:33):
hunting will drunk did not know that? Well, No, And
I mean like each of those separately, it makes a
lot of sense, but if you put them together, that's
when it starts to get hilarious. You could have broken
into the l A zoo and gotten a mirror two
hundred and fifty dollar fine. If you had a can
of silly string, it was a thousand. Did you see
the video recently of that poor dog who got into

(35:53):
a guerrilla enclosure. He was so scared and the gorillas
weren't happy that he was there either, but he did
not want to be in there, and um, when they
finally got him out animal control got him out, he
had like the guiltiest look on his face, like I'm sorry,
I didn't want to go in there, but it just happened.
He got out. Yeah, everybody was safe. It worked out

(36:16):
very well. But yeah, he was really nervous and not happy.
No one was. I guess you wouldn't be telling that
story like, oh man, I got mauled into a million pieces. Yeah,
he looks like a two thousand twelve camera now very
nice full circle. Do you got anything else? No, just
the rule of threes accomplished that. I think that was

(36:38):
four or five tween eighty five words more than three
as well, we're failing. Yeah, we're screwing it up left
and right. Since I said we're screwing it up left
and right, everybody, obviously it's time for listener mail. I'm
gonna read this just because it's just a nice person
saying thank you. We don't do these much, and we
get to also answer a question. Hey, guys, want to

(37:00):
write not about a specific episode, but rather to comment
on your overall series. I've been listening for years now
and continue to find episodes delightfully upbeat, informative, and extremely
respectful of different viewpoints. Uh. The chemistry that you two
have with each other as apparent to the listener through
the silly banter and fun tangents. I love how one
of you can say something like you know that thing,
and the other one can name exactly what he means.

(37:22):
I also have to say that I crack up just
about every time Josh says well, since Chuck said blank,
it's time for a listener mail. There's no rhyme or
reason to the transitional phrase, and it up makes it
all the better when you say it, I like that too,
if that's one of the nice traditions here. Definitely, as
a lifelong learner, your work on this podcast seems to
be a dream job. It is. Uh, then I didn't

(37:43):
mean that as a question. It is. Uh. You get
to research an immense range of topics and you make
them so accessible to the audience. Uh, something I appreciate
as a teacher. Also applaud you for doing such a
thorough job at being diligent with and mindful of your sources.
That such a teach your word. Yeah, Uh what diligent
h Yeah, Uh, one thing I always look forward to,

(38:06):
as well as the fun musical interludes going in and
out at the commercial breaks. Always wondered how you get
them to fan submit them? Where do they come from?
Keeps episodes fresh even after the many years that you
have decided dedicated to your show. Uh. And so Amy
from Agora Hills, California. Yes, those are absolutely listeners. Uh.
They have been sending them in for years and they

(38:28):
continue to and they're always fun and amazing and uh,
it's just kind of one of the fun ways that
we can make listeners a part of the show. Yeah.
Like super big time. Thanks to every single person who
submitted an ad jingle for us. They just agreed they
keep the show fresh and happening. Indeed, who is that from?
Chuck Amy from Agora Hills, California. Okay, Amy, thank you

(38:51):
very much for that email. That was really kind of you.
If you want to get in touch with us like
Amy did and say some kind words or call us
out for something, whatever, you can send us an email
to Stuff podcast at i heeart radio dot com. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,

(39:13):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
H