October 25, 2012 • 30 mins
Since the 1960s, the Pentagon has called for a suit that can make a soldier jump higher, run faster longer and generally be a badder dude. It's only now that the materials needed are coming of age. Listen in to learn the state of exoskeleton technology.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, that continuously, endlessly ill Josh Clark reminiscent of
two thousand Tennish nine. What's craziest, dude? I take such
(00:24):
good care of myself though I drink so much juice,
like fresh juice. You mean I juice almost every day. Well,
that doesn't mean you're in penetrable to sickness and viruses.
I know I don't smoke cigarettes at all. That doesn't
mean you can't get a virus. Um. No, it should,
it should. I am like a fortress here, man. I
exercise a lot. I like I spray lice all in
(00:47):
my face three times a day. That's probably what did it.
It's it's it's lurksome. I know. I feel bad for
you anyway, that's me. Chuck's fine. This is Charles W.
Chuck Bryant that you did across from me. He's totally fine.
That is a biddle. And something I noticed about Chuck
today was a little stirring. Chuck is the spinning image
(01:07):
for Tony Stark. Please do you look exactly like Tony Stark?
Like Robert Downey Jr. No, you do. You've got the
hair like eight Robert Downey you have. You've got the hair,
you have the facial hair, You've got them, the glowing chest,
you have the whole thing going on. All right For
(01:28):
the uninitiated, UM, Tony Stark is iron Man. He's a
billionaire industrialist, iron man, philanthropist. Yeah, and that was clearly
just said to introduce our topic. That is not true.
I patted you on the shoulder and reminded you that
you looked like Tony Stark before we were ever recording. Alright,
(01:50):
but we are talking about exoskeletons, which is the Iron
Man suit for all practical purposes, is an exo skeleton? Yeah,
because one thing I learned reading this article is that
an exo skeleton is also known as a wearable robot,
which falls under the category of human augmentation. Yeah. And
and one of the Japanese versions of that, the how
(02:11):
one that we're going to talk about. I saw some
video today that they had one that was in the
color of the Iron Man suit. Is that right? Yeah,
of course they're going to do that at some point, sure,
but I well, did you see the one on the
on the page zero of this article. It's awesome. It's
pretty cool. It's like an army exo skeleton and next
to it's as future soldier and there's a little there's
(02:32):
nice track lighting above it. For some reason, play more
with claymore. Jeez, that was grim. Um well okay, sorry
but still grim. Okay. Um, yeah, I saw some exo
skeleton videos too that we're pretty awesome. It's pretty amazing
where we're at right now. Yeah, because this is this
(02:52):
is not new, but it turns out the U. S Military,
the Pentagon has been like, give us an exo skeleton,
we want one bad. It's like the six these and
pretty much NonStop. People have been trying to do this
and we're finally getting to the point now where they're
becoming viable. So it's awesome. It is awesome. So, um,
let's talk about the history of this. Like we're saying,
(03:14):
an exoskeleton is a wearable robot um it's also human augmentation.
But you can't confuse it for armor because armor is
not really augmenting anything. It's protecting. Although an exoskeleton would
um customarily be provide some sort of protection like armor,
there's a distinction between the two. Yeah, although these that
(03:35):
they're making now don't have any armament that I can see. No,
it's coming though, yeah sure, yeah these other than protecting
its own systems, right yeah, but yeah, I guess if
your arm happens to be behind that, it's protecting it
as well. It's a win win. So, like I was saying,
let's um, this has been around for a little while,
this idea or the Pentagon's quest for this, but um
(04:00):
Kevin Bondser and Patrick Kiger point out that this idea
goes back to like the nineteenth century. Um, have you
heard of the steam man on the prairies of the Prairie? Yeah? Yeah,
have you seen that? Yeah, it looked it up. It
looks like a robot WC. Fields, it does. It looks
like that might have been the or actually that was PREWC. Fields.
(04:20):
But um, yeah, it's a big It was a book.
It was a little Dime Dime Store novel in eighteen
sixty eight by Edward Sylvester Ellis. And uh, it was
a big, giant W. C. Fields robot that pulled Um,
I guess the creator of said robot in a little cart,
Johnny Brainerd like a rickshaw of sorts pulled by a
(04:41):
robot of sorts. Yeah, so really you could like it
into a robot more than a wearable robot. He was
basically a robot that pulled a cart. But for eighteen
sixty eight for someone to be dreaming this stuff up
pretty remarkable. I say that the nineteenth century was a
had a deep pool of fantastic stick imagination agreed from
like the mid nineteenth century to like the thirties, that's
(05:04):
where it all happened. I mean that's where it all
began at least, and then the seventies happened, and like
that was cool, Like we went back to it a
little bit. But the nineteenth century to the thirties, it
was right there. Man. If they could have thought up
something like the Internet, they would have. And also, um,
you can look up um the steam Man of the Prairies. Uh,
there's images of them all over the Internet. And if
(05:26):
you're interested in that kind of thing, the entire books
on Project Guttenberg. Cool. Yeah, not to check that out.
So I'm doing great work Steve Gutenberg these days. Yeah,
he's killing a project. I mean, who would have thought that,
Like post Police Academy, he would dedicate himself to something
like that noble um, I think some people might think
for serious. Uh So after that, let's flash forward a
(05:50):
bit to one. This is actually a couple of years
before Iron Man. It's kind of remarkable. Even in sixty
three the Iron Man as a comic made its appearance. Well,
I wonder if like this was and this inspired Iron Man.
It probably did. Probably so those Marvel guys, they had
their finger on the pulse of stuff. The Pentagon had
a couple of proposals for the wear wearable robots and uh.
(06:12):
The AP even reported on the quote Servo soldier, the
tom servos soldier, and uh, it was a human tank
equipped with power steering and power breaks, run faster, and
lift heavy objects, immune to germ warfare, poison gas, and
even a nuclear blast. Because that's the whole point. They're
thinking big. It's basically like, we need to come up
(06:33):
with some sort of outfit that a person can wear
that will help them be bigger, faster, stronger, jump higher,
punch harder. Yeah, what's astounding, chuck um is. Within just
a couple of years, Cornell scientists named Neil Meisen had
something that he called the Man amplifier that looks remarkably
(06:53):
similar to the stuff of today. Have you seen it? Yeah,
it's sort of reminded me of the um you saw Aliens, right, Yeah,
remember the little forklift thing. It sort of looked like
that on top, but the base of it instead of legs,
had like a tank caterpillar tracks like a tank. I
didn't see that part. Yeah, the ones I saw look
just like that exoskeleton from Aliens. That might have been
(07:15):
the Superman suit. I think it was the same thing
now that well, the Man amplifier that I saw from
Popular Science, it was like a machine tank track. That's
pretty cool. But even so, it had the big, big
grabby robot arms. Yeah, crush killed Distroy whistles. Yeah. Um.
So this guy Neil Misen had ad this the idea,
(07:39):
the concept down pretty quickly and pretty short order. Right. Um,
he wasn't the only one. This kind of set off.
This Pentagon call for exoskeletons set off like a fervor.
Um g E came up with something called the the
pedipulatory pedipulator. You see that one. It looked like a
(08:02):
modular like you could hook something together. Yeah, it looked
like a sort of like the cab that you ride
in look like a big one of the big bulldozer cabs, right,
and then it had but it had four legs and
actually walked. Did it have four legs? I saw so
the when I saw again, it looked like a um
An ad at right from the Empire st two legs. Yeah, interesting, um,
(08:25):
but they were strung together. There was like four of them,
four legs. No, I had to no, I had died four.
You're thinking of the Tanton. No, the Tanton is the
like the beast. No, the ad At was the big
four leggedge okay, not thinking of the smaller version that's
on two legs in the same scene. Just to act right,
(08:47):
I'm sure there's Star Wars pans out there going it's
called and we're going to hear from. Yeah. I don't
remember what that's called. Um, but you could. You could
combine these things in four and basically like a UM
human excess skeleton centipede. Yeah. But none of these to
me look like exoskeletons. They look like machines that you
sit in and ride. And I got okay. Then I
(09:08):
saw something that said this is Neil Mines and wearing
his man amplifier and it looks exactly like the stuff
that they test out today. Yeah, well, good for him,
Good for Neil. I get the impression that he was
ahead of his time. So most of these things, unfortunately,
of course he was out of his time. Uh ended
it like in somewhat of a dead end. Um. Why
(09:30):
there's some really good reasons why well, yeah, I mean
the reasons you would probably guess, which is its way
too com expensive. Computers aren't fast enough, especially in everything
is too heavy. The batteries. We can't design batteries that
will last long enough. It's like sort of the quest
with all technology is like you gotta make it affordable
(09:50):
and uh light enough to operate and you know call yeah,
I guess suffordable, we cost effective, but all these things
and then technology is just a limits of technology. So
material science basically wasn't where it needed to be and
is only just now starting to get there. One of
the other big problems, one of the other big hurdles
with making a decent exoskeleton is the actuator, which are
(10:13):
them the little muscles that move, the electro mechanical muscles
that move in place of the human muscles. Um. But
we're starting to get there. I mean, computing power is
getting smaller and more um more um portable and incredibly powerful.
That was the word I was looking for. And wait
(10:35):
until we get into quantum computing. Man, it's going to
take off like a rocket. I'm sure, um we are.
Battery life is getting more portable, smaller, more durable, um.
And apparently actuator science is really starting to come around.
So that means that we have all the stuff in place.
And apparently DARPA, the UM Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(11:00):
a k A the Secret Area people. I think Morgan
Freeman heads up that division, is that right? Okay? So? Um?
What's his name? Somebody? Fox? The Fox? Didn't I don't
even remember in the Batman movies. Yeah, I can't remember. Okay,
he's read to me always um, but not Red Fox. Um.
(11:24):
So uh. The DARPA was apparently well aware that this
the material science and computing power was starting to come around,
and they put out another call for exoskeletons, and this
one is starting to pay off, well, a call in
the form of seventy five million dollars worth of funding,
meaning hey, we can actually put a little dough towards
this and they said they started a division called the
(11:45):
Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation, which doesn't spell anything cool. No,
they kind of dropped the ball there, um. And they
wanted something that would accomplish five things. They had a directive.
They wanted something that would, uh allow just a regular
soldier to carry like hundreds of pounds of gear without
much exertion. And this is one of the big applications.
(12:07):
It's not to fly around and shoot people like Iron
Man like a lot of it's kind of boring. It's
like lifting supplies all day long, doing the work of
three soldiers, basically loading missiles. Yeah, really heavy stuff that
you might need a machine to do. You can now
get a man machine. Uh. The second thing they wanted
um to be able to handle heavy weapons that would
(12:28):
require two people. Now you can do it with one.
They wanted to be able to carry soldiers off the field,
which is a huge deal. Uh. And one of the
reasons my brother in law, who's a marine, says that
they don't allow women in combat it is because a
lot of you know, you need someone who can throw
a soldier over their back and trudge through the desert
(12:48):
for a day. If you need to. That's a common
obstacle that's thrown up against female firefighters as well. Oh yeah,
I get that. I'm all for equality, but you gotta
take care of the people. You know what I'm saying.
You're a dangerous water show, no man, I mean, I'm
all for it. If there's a woman who can throw
me on her back and carry me three miles through
the desert, I'm all for it. But just don't leave
(13:09):
me dying out there. Um. They wanted it to be uh,
impenetrable and impenetrable to gunfire, which is pretty key too.
There's the armor thing, the armor thing, and then finally
I think this was the little kid and all of them.
They wanted it to be able to jump really high,
really really high, just like and and make it jump
(13:29):
really high and say cool stuff. And there's actually, um,
there's something called the springtail exoskeleton flying vehicle. Have you
seen that one? Yeah? That I don't know about hovering
motionlessly thousands of feet in the air. I don't think
they're at that point yet. Yeah, and this didn't even
this was not even exo skeleton it No, it was
more like it was like a g I Joe. Um, machine.
(13:50):
And it's not a jet pack either, which was in
this article. No, what it is is, um, it's a
couple of turbines, kind of like two fans. Yeah, um
off to the side in a m with a ladder
in between. But so you're standing under like under a ladder,
which is just bad luck to begin with. And then
(14:11):
connected to the ladder are two turbines on each side
and you just hang on and you take off, which
again I don't think it's a combat exoskeleton, but it
would be very cool if your exoskeleton can fit inside.
So you run five hundred miles carrying five hundred pounds
for straight hours, and then you get in this thing
(14:33):
and fly off. I think that's that's where we're trying
to head here. It's like a little personal helicopter at
this point though, Yeah, because I mean, if the company
can crack the this code, they can make all manner
of cool little things right and make them all compatible,
like and then tell the army like, collect all eight
(14:54):
but you have to buy the happy meal, and the
happy meal cost you. We should talk about Arcos, which
would later morph into Raytheon. They're one of the leaders
in the exoskeleton racket. Um guy named Steve Jacobsen is
the uh was the robot maker at Sarkos. I don't know,
is he still let raytheon? You know, I don't know. Okay,
(15:15):
Well he's what started it there though, and um he basically,
uh devised a system where sensors would detect these little
minute contractions in your own muscles, like if you go
to like grab something, your muscle is going to contract
a little bit. And uh, then there were a series
of valves which regulate the flow of this high pressure
(15:36):
juice to these joints. Those joints powered cylinders attached to
cables that were sort of like tendons, and he sort
of made a very basic mechanical version of how our
own muscles and tendons operate well, like an extension of
an augmentation of it, where basically these sensors go, oh,
I know what you're but you let me and um,
you you you will pull your arm off if you
(15:57):
try to pick this up, But me, the exo skeleton
knows what you're trying to do. And then after I'm sure,
training for a few days in this thing, it just
becomes second nature. Yeah, did you see the Iron Man guy,
the dude from the movie No, I tested that video.
I was looking for it. The guy was Clark Gregg.
He was like the agent from the Avengers and the
(16:17):
Ironman movies. And uh, he tried this thing on and
like punched wood blocks and lifted these big weights and
did push ups and it was pretty remarkable. That's pretty cool. Yeah,
it's amazing. Yes, And they called this the XOS this
is the first prototype, and the x OS well that's
actually the x OS two nail Well that was Yeah,
(16:37):
the x OS was the first prototype. But this is
kind of like the UM the Leading Edge, Like I
think the Pentagon and Darker are putting a lot of
funding behind Raytheon's UM x OS. Yeah, they predict by
they could have a tethered module, going, what does that mean?
That means it's tethered. Do I know what the other means?
(17:00):
That means it's attached to something like a cable, right, Oh,
so like it's attached to a power source or something
like that, something like that. UM, and then they're hoping
for a non tethered version and because I mean it's like, hey,
bad guys, come over here. Yeah exactly, I can't get you. Well,
the t other one would be fine for dudes like
loading trucks and things like that on day, but not
(17:22):
in what they call the theater of war, you know,
by the way, Winston Churchill, Yeah, I think so. Um,
I think we forgot to mention that flying vehicle thing.
That thing actually goes over a hundred miles an hour. Now, yeah,
and the XOS runs at least ten miles an hour.
And I remember reading that first and being like whatever,
(17:45):
and then I think, oh, yeah, I can't run ten
miles an hour at all. So this thing running ten
miles an hour. And the point here is it's in dire.
It's because as long as its battery is charged, how
can we run. I mean you could run back get
up there, but for like ten seconds and then your
heart pops. I'm talking to myself. There's I mean ten
(18:06):
miles an hour is Did you walk four miles an
hour if you walked pretty fast? No? Not typically, No,
that's getting into speedwalking. We do not walk four miles
an hour like we walked maybe to two point five. Well,
whenever I did hiking, we always based it on a
four mile an hour pace. That's really fast. I guess
(18:30):
I was a champion hiker thing. I guess you were.
I should have cut that up. You're like, I used
to do it on my hands. So, uh, like we said,
Sarkos turned into Raytheon, and then there's other competing firms
bought by Raytheon. What did I say, it turned into it?
I mean there's a distinction. Then Berkeley Bionics is another company.
(18:50):
Yeah there, um Civilian Peacetime. They're basically helping out the
people who can't walk under their own power any longer.
What they're getting really good at is uh, energy consumption solving,
solving that problem and uh they had something called the
Human Load Carrier which ran for about twenty hours without
(19:11):
a recharge, which is a big deal. Yeah, it's a
big leap forward. Did you see there's another one um
Argo Medical Technologies has something called the rewalk there and
it's like a hundred and fifty green which sounds like
a lot, but at the same time, Um, if you're paralyzed,
this thing lets you walk. Yeah, it's it's basically just
(19:32):
mechanical legs attached to your regular legs with a little
backpack on for the power. Yeah, and it's based on
the segue. As far as like you lean forward and
it walks forward. You lean back and it stops, which
is good because as long as you are as long
as you're not paralyzed, as long as you're you have
(19:53):
mobility from the waist up, I would think you'd be
able to use it because you leave above your waste
that you're sparling. Yeah, and a lot. Actually we should
point out a lot of these exoskeletons that even the
army and the military are working on are Some of
them are just waist down. Some of them are made
for you know, punching and lifting and potentially flying and shooting.
(20:16):
But they have a lot of waist down work too,
which they said helps you like lift things anyway, because
you're supposed to live with your legs, right, It just
transfers the load to the ground. Um and yeah, we're
also these don't look like um pants. They're not like
just exoskeleton pants. Remember fleas um pants made of Teddy Bears.
(20:37):
You don't remember this, you should look it up. It's
pretty awesome. The bass player yeah from Red Hot Chili. Um.
They're they're just kind of like braces with maybe a
foot yeah, that you just step into like you can
step into these things. Yeah, it looks like sort of
like a high tech leg bright So that's a good
way to put it. Yeah, except it walks for you.
But pretty soon it's gonna look like an awesome suit
(20:59):
of r that you can like run and jump and
just hover and just do all sorts of cool stuff.
Like really, reading this, I was like, oh my gosh,
I can't believe this stuff is really good. Yeah, and
then you see the videos and you think, wow, I
bet it's clunky. And then you see the video of
a guy that's never walked get up out of a
chair and walk, and you think, man, I bet he
didn't think it's clunky exactly because he's not trying to
(21:20):
kill anybody. He's just trying to walk exactly. Now, we
just need to get the price down for the average
person who can't walk. Yeah, um, well, how much were
those a hundred and fifteen grand? A hundred and fifty
for the walk device? It's still not too bad, no,
that's what I'm saying, especially if your instruental chip in
uh So, there's a company in Japan called Cyberdyne, and
(21:42):
that sounds like a name that James Cameron would make up.
But it's real. And they have made a real breakthrough
in a couple of ways. One that they don't their
howl machine h a l um. I wonder if Kubrick
was live. I'm sure he's tired of people naming everything.
How it's like enough already. Did you know someone impersonated him?
(22:02):
Oh yeah, they made a movie about it. Yeah, did
you see the movie. It wouldn't be great, but John
Malkovic always great except in that movie. Um. So they
made advances in a couple of ways. One is that
they don't um require the muscle contractions anymore. They pick
up on your brain sensors, your electrical messages being sent
(22:23):
from your brain. That's an enormous, huge breakthrough. Yeah, because
think about it, you don't have to have any mobility whatsoever.
Like you could be Stephen Hawking and like run around
and like pick up stuff and people and throw them.
If you can think it, you can do it. That
should be their motto. And the other breakthrough is is
I'm sure you saw the how it's like really streamlined
at this point. The Japanese for like robotic design. Yeah,
(22:46):
I mean it's pretty sleek. Yeah, they know what they're
doing very much um, and now we can flash forward
all the way to two thousand ten. You know, it
would be really cool if they've made an exoskeleton, but
they made it like look like an Andrew roid, so
you put on like this kind of rubbery face too,
and like it it had facial expressions and things like that.
(23:07):
I think that would be better than this, like really
cool suit to go into battle. Just terrorize anybody who
saw like this like weird plastic ee human like thing
coming at you with like fifty caliber machine gun holding
it like it's nothing. My guess is the way the
war is going down today. People are already pretty frightened
by these soldiers coming in I guess in the dark
(23:30):
and have laser sightings. Yeah, I think you're probably frightened anyway.
Even old timey war is probably very frightening. Maybe we
should not make it more frightening, now that I think
about it. Okay, maybe we should make them look like
little lambs that explode on contact. Alright, so we're in
two thousand ten. Um, DARPA has made some serious headway. Now.
(23:51):
Their suit weighs about fifty five pounds, which is like,
I think this is the XOS is its two yeah,
and uh, I can carry two hun pounds and with
no fatigue going on, like you said, ten miles an hour,
can run and that's pretty impressive. I think it's an
it's good enough, especially if the thing can run. Yeah,
(24:12):
because this thing is running for you. You're moving, but
you're just barely moving and you're not going to get
fatigued at running ten miles an hour. And I can imagine,
like you can cover some ground in ten miles an hour.
I think about this. You can cover ten miles in
one single hour. That's straight. That's true. That's a lot,
that's very true. Uh. Eventually they're gonna hook GPS systems
(24:32):
up to this. Um it says one of the uses
for soldiers would be to obtain info about approaching terrain.
So I guess they could send him out ahead or whatever.
My friend, have you seen Predator? Yeah, the first one.
I don't think that that's not going to be inserted
into this. This whole technology. The thermal thermal Yeah, thermal imaging.
(24:55):
So you're just running along ten miles an hour and
you have been for twenty straight hours, and you're running
through say the desert, and you see everything thermally you're fine.
You're gonna be just fine. Yeah, that's a good point,
especially if you can jump really high, uh, really really high. Uh.
And then they're also working on some uh some computerized
(25:17):
fabric that they would wear that would like monitor all
your systems. So I guess the point there is it
would be light, Like I'm sure they can monitor your
systems now, but it probably too bulky, So you want
they're going, You're going to wear the computer as you
wear the robot. Pretty amazing. Yeah, And what I mean,
we're talking like we're not very far off from this
(25:38):
ten fifteen years maybe, Yeah. And it's not all soldiers,
like we said, they're using it a lot of the
researches for people with spinal injuries and stuff like that.
So pacifists can get on board too, exactly rich pacifists. Um. Also,
I want to say, like I came across a really
cool website called cybernetic zoo dot com. And if you're
into like old timey popular sign and drawings of stuff
(26:01):
like this school stuff this covered up in it, so
I would recommend checking that out. You've got anything else
on next to skeletons, I want one. That's what I
got just give it a few years. Man, I'm gonna
get you one that looks like W. C. Fields, okay,
and the Man on the Prairie. It looked like a
cross between W. C. Fields if w C. Fields mated
with the Jetsins Robot made. This is what this thing
(26:23):
would look like. Roxy Rosie, Rosie, I think so, I
think Rosie. Uh. Okay. If you want to learn more
about Exo skeletons, you can type it into the search
bar at how stuffworks dot com and it'll bring up
this awesome marketcle to check it out, I said, search bar,
(26:45):
this your mail time is mat Uh. This one's kind
of a downer, but I feel like we should read
it because it's, you know, you need to get the
stuff out there. I'm gonna call it abusive grandparents. Oh man,
I saw this. Yeah. We we sort of made some
jokes in our time travel cast about the grandfather paradox,
and like, are the abusive grandparents because they're also sweet?
(27:07):
And there are, of course there are. It's very sad.
I think we knew that. Yeah. Hey, guys, today I
was listening to the podcast and you brought up abuse
of grandparents. You both sounded like it was a tough
concept to swallow, and I agree it is that being said,
I'm writing you to say that, yes, sadly, there are
abuse of grandparents. I was raised from the age of
(27:27):
five by my maternal grandmother, who was physically, mentally and
emotionally abusive most of my life. She was abusive to
every child who ever came to her house, her children, me,
her nieces and nephews. She herself was heavily abused as
a child by her mother and father that went on
to be married twice to abuse of husbands. Unfortunately, she
wasn't strong enough to break the cycle, and in fact,
(27:49):
she encouraged my own mother, her daughter, to hit me.
She kicked me out often, and at the age of twelve,
I was sent to live with my dead beat father
and his wife for a summer. At fourteen, she kicked
me out to go live with my mother and her husband.
I lived there for a few years, then back to
my grandmother because her home was close from my school.
(28:10):
Two weeks before my eighteenth birthday, she instructed my mother
to beat me because I stayed home from school to
go to the doctor for tonsilitis. I ran away that
day and never went back. I moved in with my
now husband and his parents, where I lived through the
rest of my high school, senior year in college. It
has been ten plus years and I have no contact
with that grandmother. I've been in therapy for about four
(28:31):
of those years. And uh so I just wanted to say, yes,
there are abus of grandparents. Um. And in fact, knew
of another girl at my age who was also being
raised by interviews of grandmother, and that is Amanda in
North Carolina. And I wrote her and she said that
she has a nine month old girl and she is
going to be the first one in the family to
(28:52):
break this cycle of abuse. Yeah. So sat all the
way around the grandmother that was abused and then had
abuse of husbands and then took that out on her
grandkids and nephews and daughters. And it's just the cycle
of abuses horrific and it's up to you to break it. Well,
thank you very much, Amanda in North Carolina. We appreciate
(29:14):
the candor. That's awesome. I agreed, and congratulations to break
into cycle. Um, well, let's see if you have a
story that you want to share with us. When we
were flipped with something we shouldn't have been we'd like
to hear about it. Um. You can tweet to us
at s y s K podcast. You can send us
a Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know message
(29:37):
post on our wall there that was a clumsy way
to quit it. You can also send us a regular
old email at stuff podcast at Discovery dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is it
how stuff works dot com, m
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, that continuously, endlessly ill Josh Clark reminiscent of
two thousand Tennish nine. What's craziest, dude? I take such
(00:24):
good care of myself though I drink so much juice,
like fresh juice. You mean I juice almost every day. Well,
that doesn't mean you're in penetrable to sickness and viruses.
I know I don't smoke cigarettes at all. That doesn't
mean you can't get a virus. Um. No, it should,
it should. I am like a fortress here, man. I
exercise a lot. I like I spray lice all in
(00:47):
my face three times a day. That's probably what did it.
It's it's it's lurksome. I know. I feel bad for
you anyway, that's me. Chuck's fine. This is Charles W.
Chuck Bryant that you did across from me. He's totally fine.
That is a biddle. And something I noticed about Chuck
today was a little stirring. Chuck is the spinning image
(01:07):
for Tony Stark. Please do you look exactly like Tony Stark?
Like Robert Downey Jr. No, you do. You've got the
hair like eight Robert Downey you have. You've got the hair,
you have the facial hair, You've got them, the glowing chest,
you have the whole thing going on. All right For
(01:28):
the uninitiated, UM, Tony Stark is iron Man. He's a
billionaire industrialist, iron man, philanthropist. Yeah, and that was clearly
just said to introduce our topic. That is not true.
I patted you on the shoulder and reminded you that
you looked like Tony Stark before we were ever recording. Alright,
(01:50):
but we are talking about exoskeletons, which is the Iron
Man suit for all practical purposes, is an exo skeleton? Yeah,
because one thing I learned reading this article is that
an exo skeleton is also known as a wearable robot,
which falls under the category of human augmentation. Yeah. And
and one of the Japanese versions of that, the how
(02:11):
one that we're going to talk about. I saw some
video today that they had one that was in the
color of the Iron Man suit. Is that right? Yeah,
of course they're going to do that at some point, sure,
but I well, did you see the one on the
on the page zero of this article. It's awesome. It's
pretty cool. It's like an army exo skeleton and next
to it's as future soldier and there's a little there's
(02:32):
nice track lighting above it. For some reason, play more
with claymore. Jeez, that was grim. Um well okay, sorry
but still grim. Okay. Um, yeah, I saw some exo
skeleton videos too that we're pretty awesome. It's pretty amazing
where we're at right now. Yeah, because this is this
(02:52):
is not new, but it turns out the U. S Military,
the Pentagon has been like, give us an exo skeleton,
we want one bad. It's like the six these and
pretty much NonStop. People have been trying to do this
and we're finally getting to the point now where they're
becoming viable. So it's awesome. It is awesome. So, um,
let's talk about the history of this. Like we're saying,
(03:14):
an exoskeleton is a wearable robot um it's also human augmentation.
But you can't confuse it for armor because armor is
not really augmenting anything. It's protecting. Although an exoskeleton would
um customarily be provide some sort of protection like armor,
there's a distinction between the two. Yeah, although these that
(03:35):
they're making now don't have any armament that I can see. No,
it's coming though, yeah sure, yeah these other than protecting
its own systems, right yeah, but yeah, I guess if
your arm happens to be behind that, it's protecting it
as well. It's a win win. So, like I was saying,
let's um, this has been around for a little while,
this idea or the Pentagon's quest for this, but um
(04:00):
Kevin Bondser and Patrick Kiger point out that this idea
goes back to like the nineteenth century. Um, have you
heard of the steam man on the prairies of the Prairie? Yeah? Yeah,
have you seen that? Yeah, it looked it up. It
looks like a robot WC. Fields, it does. It looks
like that might have been the or actually that was PREWC. Fields.
(04:20):
But um, yeah, it's a big It was a book.
It was a little Dime Dime Store novel in eighteen
sixty eight by Edward Sylvester Ellis. And uh, it was
a big, giant W. C. Fields robot that pulled Um,
I guess the creator of said robot in a little cart,
Johnny Brainerd like a rickshaw of sorts pulled by a
(04:41):
robot of sorts. Yeah, so really you could like it
into a robot more than a wearable robot. He was
basically a robot that pulled a cart. But for eighteen
sixty eight for someone to be dreaming this stuff up
pretty remarkable. I say that the nineteenth century was a
had a deep pool of fantastic stick imagination agreed from
like the mid nineteenth century to like the thirties, that's
(05:04):
where it all happened. I mean that's where it all
began at least, and then the seventies happened, and like
that was cool, Like we went back to it a
little bit. But the nineteenth century to the thirties, it
was right there. Man. If they could have thought up
something like the Internet, they would have. And also, um,
you can look up um the steam Man of the Prairies. Uh,
there's images of them all over the Internet. And if
(05:26):
you're interested in that kind of thing, the entire books
on Project Guttenberg. Cool. Yeah, not to check that out.
So I'm doing great work Steve Gutenberg these days. Yeah,
he's killing a project. I mean, who would have thought that,
Like post Police Academy, he would dedicate himself to something
like that noble um, I think some people might think
for serious. Uh So after that, let's flash forward a
(05:50):
bit to one. This is actually a couple of years
before Iron Man. It's kind of remarkable. Even in sixty
three the Iron Man as a comic made its appearance. Well,
I wonder if like this was and this inspired Iron Man.
It probably did. Probably so those Marvel guys, they had
their finger on the pulse of stuff. The Pentagon had
a couple of proposals for the wear wearable robots and uh.
(06:12):
The AP even reported on the quote Servo soldier, the
tom servos soldier, and uh, it was a human tank
equipped with power steering and power breaks, run faster, and
lift heavy objects, immune to germ warfare, poison gas, and
even a nuclear blast. Because that's the whole point. They're
thinking big. It's basically like, we need to come up
(06:33):
with some sort of outfit that a person can wear
that will help them be bigger, faster, stronger, jump higher,
punch harder. Yeah, what's astounding, chuck um is. Within just
a couple of years, Cornell scientists named Neil Meisen had
something that he called the Man amplifier that looks remarkably
(06:53):
similar to the stuff of today. Have you seen it? Yeah,
it's sort of reminded me of the um you saw Aliens, right, Yeah,
remember the little forklift thing. It sort of looked like
that on top, but the base of it instead of legs,
had like a tank caterpillar tracks like a tank. I
didn't see that part. Yeah, the ones I saw look
just like that exoskeleton from Aliens. That might have been
(07:15):
the Superman suit. I think it was the same thing
now that well, the Man amplifier that I saw from
Popular Science, it was like a machine tank track. That's
pretty cool. But even so, it had the big, big
grabby robot arms. Yeah, crush killed Distroy whistles. Yeah. Um.
So this guy Neil Misen had ad this the idea,
(07:39):
the concept down pretty quickly and pretty short order. Right. Um,
he wasn't the only one. This kind of set off.
This Pentagon call for exoskeletons set off like a fervor.
Um g E came up with something called the the
pedipulatory pedipulator. You see that one. It looked like a
(08:02):
modular like you could hook something together. Yeah, it looked
like a sort of like the cab that you ride
in look like a big one of the big bulldozer cabs, right,
and then it had but it had four legs and
actually walked. Did it have four legs? I saw so
the when I saw again, it looked like a um
An ad at right from the Empire st two legs. Yeah, interesting, um,
(08:25):
but they were strung together. There was like four of them,
four legs. No, I had to no, I had died four.
You're thinking of the Tanton. No, the Tanton is the
like the beast. No, the ad At was the big
four leggedge okay, not thinking of the smaller version that's
on two legs in the same scene. Just to act right,
(08:47):
I'm sure there's Star Wars pans out there going it's
called and we're going to hear from. Yeah. I don't
remember what that's called. Um, but you could. You could
combine these things in four and basically like a UM
human excess skeleton centipede. Yeah. But none of these to
me look like exoskeletons. They look like machines that you
sit in and ride. And I got okay. Then I
(09:08):
saw something that said this is Neil Mines and wearing
his man amplifier and it looks exactly like the stuff
that they test out today. Yeah, well, good for him,
Good for Neil. I get the impression that he was
ahead of his time. So most of these things, unfortunately,
of course he was out of his time. Uh ended
it like in somewhat of a dead end. Um. Why
(09:30):
there's some really good reasons why well, yeah, I mean
the reasons you would probably guess, which is its way
too com expensive. Computers aren't fast enough, especially in everything
is too heavy. The batteries. We can't design batteries that
will last long enough. It's like sort of the quest
with all technology is like you gotta make it affordable
(09:50):
and uh light enough to operate and you know call yeah,
I guess suffordable, we cost effective, but all these things
and then technology is just a limits of technology. So
material science basically wasn't where it needed to be and
is only just now starting to get there. One of
the other big problems, one of the other big hurdles
with making a decent exoskeleton is the actuator, which are
(10:13):
them the little muscles that move, the electro mechanical muscles
that move in place of the human muscles. Um. But
we're starting to get there. I mean, computing power is
getting smaller and more um more um portable and incredibly powerful.
That was the word I was looking for. And wait
(10:35):
until we get into quantum computing. Man, it's going to
take off like a rocket. I'm sure, um we are.
Battery life is getting more portable, smaller, more durable, um.
And apparently actuator science is really starting to come around.
So that means that we have all the stuff in place.
And apparently DARPA, the UM Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(11:00):
a k A the Secret Area people. I think Morgan
Freeman heads up that division, is that right? Okay? So? Um?
What's his name? Somebody? Fox? The Fox? Didn't I don't
even remember in the Batman movies. Yeah, I can't remember. Okay,
he's read to me always um, but not Red Fox. Um.
(11:24):
So uh. The DARPA was apparently well aware that this
the material science and computing power was starting to come around,
and they put out another call for exoskeletons, and this
one is starting to pay off, well, a call in
the form of seventy five million dollars worth of funding,
meaning hey, we can actually put a little dough towards
this and they said they started a division called the
(11:45):
Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation, which doesn't spell anything cool. No,
they kind of dropped the ball there, um. And they
wanted something that would accomplish five things. They had a directive.
They wanted something that would, uh allow just a regular
soldier to carry like hundreds of pounds of gear without
much exertion. And this is one of the big applications.
(12:07):
It's not to fly around and shoot people like Iron
Man like a lot of it's kind of boring. It's
like lifting supplies all day long, doing the work of
three soldiers, basically loading missiles. Yeah, really heavy stuff that
you might need a machine to do. You can now
get a man machine. Uh. The second thing they wanted
um to be able to handle heavy weapons that would
(12:28):
require two people. Now you can do it with one.
They wanted to be able to carry soldiers off the field,
which is a huge deal. Uh. And one of the
reasons my brother in law, who's a marine, says that
they don't allow women in combat it is because a
lot of you know, you need someone who can throw
a soldier over their back and trudge through the desert
(12:48):
for a day. If you need to. That's a common
obstacle that's thrown up against female firefighters as well. Oh yeah,
I get that. I'm all for equality, but you gotta
take care of the people. You know what I'm saying.
You're a dangerous water show, no man, I mean, I'm
all for it. If there's a woman who can throw
me on her back and carry me three miles through
the desert, I'm all for it. But just don't leave
(13:09):
me dying out there. Um. They wanted it to be uh,
impenetrable and impenetrable to gunfire, which is pretty key too.
There's the armor thing, the armor thing, and then finally
I think this was the little kid and all of them.
They wanted it to be able to jump really high,
really really high, just like and and make it jump
(13:29):
really high and say cool stuff. And there's actually, um,
there's something called the springtail exoskeleton flying vehicle. Have you
seen that one? Yeah? That I don't know about hovering
motionlessly thousands of feet in the air. I don't think
they're at that point yet. Yeah, and this didn't even
this was not even exo skeleton it No, it was
more like it was like a g I Joe. Um, machine.
(13:50):
And it's not a jet pack either, which was in
this article. No, what it is is, um, it's a
couple of turbines, kind of like two fans. Yeah, um
off to the side in a m with a ladder
in between. But so you're standing under like under a ladder,
which is just bad luck to begin with. And then
(14:11):
connected to the ladder are two turbines on each side
and you just hang on and you take off, which
again I don't think it's a combat exoskeleton, but it
would be very cool if your exoskeleton can fit inside.
So you run five hundred miles carrying five hundred pounds
for straight hours, and then you get in this thing
(14:33):
and fly off. I think that's that's where we're trying
to head here. It's like a little personal helicopter at
this point though, Yeah, because I mean, if the company
can crack the this code, they can make all manner
of cool little things right and make them all compatible,
like and then tell the army like, collect all eight
(14:54):
but you have to buy the happy meal, and the
happy meal cost you. We should talk about Arcos, which
would later morph into Raytheon. They're one of the leaders
in the exoskeleton racket. Um guy named Steve Jacobsen is
the uh was the robot maker at Sarkos. I don't know,
is he still let raytheon? You know, I don't know. Okay,
(15:15):
Well he's what started it there though, and um he basically,
uh devised a system where sensors would detect these little
minute contractions in your own muscles, like if you go
to like grab something, your muscle is going to contract
a little bit. And uh, then there were a series
of valves which regulate the flow of this high pressure
(15:36):
juice to these joints. Those joints powered cylinders attached to
cables that were sort of like tendons, and he sort
of made a very basic mechanical version of how our
own muscles and tendons operate well, like an extension of
an augmentation of it, where basically these sensors go, oh,
I know what you're but you let me and um,
you you you will pull your arm off if you
(15:57):
try to pick this up, But me, the exo skeleton
knows what you're trying to do. And then after I'm sure,
training for a few days in this thing, it just
becomes second nature. Yeah, did you see the Iron Man guy,
the dude from the movie No, I tested that video.
I was looking for it. The guy was Clark Gregg.
He was like the agent from the Avengers and the
(16:17):
Ironman movies. And uh, he tried this thing on and
like punched wood blocks and lifted these big weights and
did push ups and it was pretty remarkable. That's pretty cool. Yeah,
it's amazing. Yes, And they called this the XOS this
is the first prototype, and the x OS well that's
actually the x OS two nail Well that was Yeah,
(16:37):
the x OS was the first prototype. But this is
kind of like the UM the Leading Edge, Like I
think the Pentagon and Darker are putting a lot of
funding behind Raytheon's UM x OS. Yeah, they predict by
they could have a tethered module, going, what does that mean?
That means it's tethered. Do I know what the other means?
(17:00):
That means it's attached to something like a cable, right, Oh,
so like it's attached to a power source or something
like that, something like that. UM, and then they're hoping
for a non tethered version and because I mean it's like, hey,
bad guys, come over here. Yeah exactly, I can't get you. Well,
the t other one would be fine for dudes like
loading trucks and things like that on day, but not
(17:22):
in what they call the theater of war, you know,
by the way, Winston Churchill, Yeah, I think so. Um,
I think we forgot to mention that flying vehicle thing.
That thing actually goes over a hundred miles an hour. Now, yeah,
and the XOS runs at least ten miles an hour.
And I remember reading that first and being like whatever,
(17:45):
and then I think, oh, yeah, I can't run ten
miles an hour at all. So this thing running ten
miles an hour. And the point here is it's in dire.
It's because as long as its battery is charged, how
can we run. I mean you could run back get
up there, but for like ten seconds and then your
heart pops. I'm talking to myself. There's I mean ten
(18:06):
miles an hour is Did you walk four miles an
hour if you walked pretty fast? No? Not typically, No,
that's getting into speedwalking. We do not walk four miles
an hour like we walked maybe to two point five. Well,
whenever I did hiking, we always based it on a
four mile an hour pace. That's really fast. I guess
(18:30):
I was a champion hiker thing. I guess you were.
I should have cut that up. You're like, I used
to do it on my hands. So, uh, like we said,
Sarkos turned into Raytheon, and then there's other competing firms
bought by Raytheon. What did I say, it turned into it?
I mean there's a distinction. Then Berkeley Bionics is another company.
(18:50):
Yeah there, um Civilian Peacetime. They're basically helping out the
people who can't walk under their own power any longer.
What they're getting really good at is uh, energy consumption solving,
solving that problem and uh they had something called the
Human Load Carrier which ran for about twenty hours without
(19:11):
a recharge, which is a big deal. Yeah, it's a
big leap forward. Did you see there's another one um
Argo Medical Technologies has something called the rewalk there and
it's like a hundred and fifty green which sounds like
a lot, but at the same time, Um, if you're paralyzed,
this thing lets you walk. Yeah, it's it's basically just
(19:32):
mechanical legs attached to your regular legs with a little
backpack on for the power. Yeah, and it's based on
the segue. As far as like you lean forward and
it walks forward. You lean back and it stops, which
is good because as long as you are as long
as you're not paralyzed, as long as you're you have
(19:53):
mobility from the waist up, I would think you'd be
able to use it because you leave above your waste
that you're sparling. Yeah, and a lot. Actually we should
point out a lot of these exoskeletons that even the
army and the military are working on are Some of
them are just waist down. Some of them are made
for you know, punching and lifting and potentially flying and shooting.
(20:16):
But they have a lot of waist down work too,
which they said helps you like lift things anyway, because
you're supposed to live with your legs, right, It just
transfers the load to the ground. Um and yeah, we're
also these don't look like um pants. They're not like
just exoskeleton pants. Remember fleas um pants made of Teddy Bears.
(20:37):
You don't remember this, you should look it up. It's
pretty awesome. The bass player yeah from Red Hot Chili. Um.
They're they're just kind of like braces with maybe a
foot yeah, that you just step into like you can
step into these things. Yeah, it looks like sort of
like a high tech leg bright So that's a good
way to put it. Yeah, except it walks for you.
But pretty soon it's gonna look like an awesome suit
(20:59):
of r that you can like run and jump and
just hover and just do all sorts of cool stuff.
Like really, reading this, I was like, oh my gosh,
I can't believe this stuff is really good. Yeah, and
then you see the videos and you think, wow, I
bet it's clunky. And then you see the video of
a guy that's never walked get up out of a
chair and walk, and you think, man, I bet he
didn't think it's clunky exactly because he's not trying to
(21:20):
kill anybody. He's just trying to walk exactly. Now, we
just need to get the price down for the average
person who can't walk. Yeah, um, well, how much were
those a hundred and fifteen grand? A hundred and fifty
for the walk device? It's still not too bad, no,
that's what I'm saying, especially if your instruental chip in
uh So, there's a company in Japan called Cyberdyne, and
(21:42):
that sounds like a name that James Cameron would make up.
But it's real. And they have made a real breakthrough
in a couple of ways. One that they don't their
howl machine h a l um. I wonder if Kubrick
was live. I'm sure he's tired of people naming everything.
How it's like enough already. Did you know someone impersonated him?
(22:02):
Oh yeah, they made a movie about it. Yeah, did
you see the movie. It wouldn't be great, but John
Malkovic always great except in that movie. Um. So they
made advances in a couple of ways. One is that
they don't um require the muscle contractions anymore. They pick
up on your brain sensors, your electrical messages being sent
(22:23):
from your brain. That's an enormous, huge breakthrough. Yeah, because
think about it, you don't have to have any mobility whatsoever.
Like you could be Stephen Hawking and like run around
and like pick up stuff and people and throw them.
If you can think it, you can do it. That
should be their motto. And the other breakthrough is is
I'm sure you saw the how it's like really streamlined
at this point. The Japanese for like robotic design. Yeah,
(22:46):
I mean it's pretty sleek. Yeah, they know what they're
doing very much um, and now we can flash forward
all the way to two thousand ten. You know, it
would be really cool if they've made an exoskeleton, but
they made it like look like an Andrew roid, so
you put on like this kind of rubbery face too,
and like it it had facial expressions and things like that.
(23:07):
I think that would be better than this, like really
cool suit to go into battle. Just terrorize anybody who
saw like this like weird plastic ee human like thing
coming at you with like fifty caliber machine gun holding
it like it's nothing. My guess is the way the
war is going down today. People are already pretty frightened
by these soldiers coming in I guess in the dark
(23:30):
and have laser sightings. Yeah, I think you're probably frightened anyway.
Even old timey war is probably very frightening. Maybe we
should not make it more frightening, now that I think
about it. Okay, maybe we should make them look like
little lambs that explode on contact. Alright, so we're in
two thousand ten. Um, DARPA has made some serious headway. Now.
(23:51):
Their suit weighs about fifty five pounds, which is like,
I think this is the XOS is its two yeah,
and uh, I can carry two hun pounds and with
no fatigue going on, like you said, ten miles an hour,
can run and that's pretty impressive. I think it's an
it's good enough, especially if the thing can run. Yeah,
(24:12):
because this thing is running for you. You're moving, but
you're just barely moving and you're not going to get
fatigued at running ten miles an hour. And I can imagine,
like you can cover some ground in ten miles an hour.
I think about this. You can cover ten miles in
one single hour. That's straight. That's true. That's a lot,
that's very true. Uh. Eventually they're gonna hook GPS systems
(24:32):
up to this. Um it says one of the uses
for soldiers would be to obtain info about approaching terrain.
So I guess they could send him out ahead or whatever.
My friend, have you seen Predator? Yeah, the first one.
I don't think that that's not going to be inserted
into this. This whole technology. The thermal thermal Yeah, thermal imaging.
(24:55):
So you're just running along ten miles an hour and
you have been for twenty straight hours, and you're running
through say the desert, and you see everything thermally you're fine.
You're gonna be just fine. Yeah, that's a good point,
especially if you can jump really high, uh, really really high. Uh.
And then they're also working on some uh some computerized
(25:17):
fabric that they would wear that would like monitor all
your systems. So I guess the point there is it
would be light, Like I'm sure they can monitor your
systems now, but it probably too bulky, So you want
they're going, You're going to wear the computer as you
wear the robot. Pretty amazing. Yeah, And what I mean,
we're talking like we're not very far off from this
(25:38):
ten fifteen years maybe, Yeah. And it's not all soldiers,
like we said, they're using it a lot of the
researches for people with spinal injuries and stuff like that.
So pacifists can get on board too, exactly rich pacifists. Um. Also,
I want to say, like I came across a really
cool website called cybernetic zoo dot com. And if you're
into like old timey popular sign and drawings of stuff
(26:01):
like this school stuff this covered up in it, so
I would recommend checking that out. You've got anything else
on next to skeletons, I want one. That's what I
got just give it a few years. Man, I'm gonna
get you one that looks like W. C. Fields, okay,
and the Man on the Prairie. It looked like a
cross between W. C. Fields if w C. Fields mated
with the Jetsins Robot made. This is what this thing
(26:23):
would look like. Roxy Rosie, Rosie, I think so, I
think Rosie. Uh. Okay. If you want to learn more
about Exo skeletons, you can type it into the search
bar at how stuffworks dot com and it'll bring up
this awesome marketcle to check it out, I said, search bar,
(26:45):
this your mail time is mat Uh. This one's kind
of a downer, but I feel like we should read
it because it's, you know, you need to get the
stuff out there. I'm gonna call it abusive grandparents. Oh man,
I saw this. Yeah. We we sort of made some
jokes in our time travel cast about the grandfather paradox,
and like, are the abusive grandparents because they're also sweet?
(27:07):
And there are, of course there are. It's very sad.
I think we knew that. Yeah. Hey, guys, today I
was listening to the podcast and you brought up abuse
of grandparents. You both sounded like it was a tough
concept to swallow, and I agree it is that being said,
I'm writing you to say that, yes, sadly, there are
abuse of grandparents. I was raised from the age of
(27:27):
five by my maternal grandmother, who was physically, mentally and
emotionally abusive most of my life. She was abusive to
every child who ever came to her house, her children, me,
her nieces and nephews. She herself was heavily abused as
a child by her mother and father that went on
to be married twice to abuse of husbands. Unfortunately, she
wasn't strong enough to break the cycle, and in fact,
(27:49):
she encouraged my own mother, her daughter, to hit me.
She kicked me out often, and at the age of twelve,
I was sent to live with my dead beat father
and his wife for a summer. At fourteen, she kicked
me out to go live with my mother and her husband.
I lived there for a few years, then back to
my grandmother because her home was close from my school.
(28:10):
Two weeks before my eighteenth birthday, she instructed my mother
to beat me because I stayed home from school to
go to the doctor for tonsilitis. I ran away that
day and never went back. I moved in with my
now husband and his parents, where I lived through the
rest of my high school, senior year in college. It
has been ten plus years and I have no contact
with that grandmother. I've been in therapy for about four
(28:31):
of those years. And uh so I just wanted to say, yes,
there are abus of grandparents. Um. And in fact, knew
of another girl at my age who was also being
raised by interviews of grandmother, and that is Amanda in
North Carolina. And I wrote her and she said that
she has a nine month old girl and she is
going to be the first one in the family to
(28:52):
break this cycle of abuse. Yeah. So sat all the
way around the grandmother that was abused and then had
abuse of husbands and then took that out on her
grandkids and nephews and daughters. And it's just the cycle
of abuses horrific and it's up to you to break it. Well,
thank you very much, Amanda in North Carolina. We appreciate
(29:14):
the candor. That's awesome. I agreed, and congratulations to break
into cycle. Um, well, let's see if you have a
story that you want to share with us. When we
were flipped with something we shouldn't have been we'd like
to hear about it. Um. You can tweet to us
at s y s K podcast. You can send us
a Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know message
(29:37):
post on our wall there that was a clumsy way
to quit it. You can also send us a regular
old email at stuff podcast at Discovery dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is it
how stuff works dot com, m
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