May 21, 2019 • 48 mins
In a new age shop or on display at the Smithsonian, there are varying interpretations of what crystals can be used for. But at their base, they are a thumb in the eye to entropy, a perfectly ordered piece of matter.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. He and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
there's Jerry over there. And this is crystals. How you doing? Man? Well,
(00:23):
what do you think? This is? This? It's okay? Is it?
The the source material is not great. We won't say
where we got it. But um, I think that once
we kind of make it through the the structure part
will will be home free. Plus it's I mean plus
it's crystals, like they're they're so worth understanding, going to
(00:45):
the trouble of understanding because they are um basically a
finger in the eye to the tendency of the universe
to move towards chaos and disorder. Because a crystal is
the most ordered structure in the universe. It's a a
(01:06):
pattern that repeats over and over and over again, so
much so that in a crystal, if you look at
a perfectly formed, pure crystal that that came to be
under ideal conditions, the shape that you're looking at, if
you could zoom in to the smallest three dimensional unit
(01:28):
of atoms inside that crystal, it would be the exact
same shape. Yeah, I mean that is one uh, the
one positive I took out of this article was just
that thing. Early on the author did about the word
crystallize m that we take colloquially. Colloquially, that was a
(01:50):
couple of extrals in there that we take to you
know what, everyone knows what that means, and it means like,
you know, someone has distilled and made order out of
something tough, uh, with their with their mouth words, right,
and that makes sense. Yeah, So when you when you
think about like an actual physical crystal, you get why
(02:11):
that word came from that, because it is that it
is this extreme order where all these molecules come together
as friends to be perfect together. So um, so we
both love crystals for basically the same reason. It sounds like, right, yeah,
and like that. Before I started researching this, I just thought,
(02:34):
I don't know, like crystals were just the things you
buy in little five points at the shop with the
cookie person who you know, wears them on their forehead
for healing chakras. Before they were cool and I didn't
I didn't even realize that It's like crystals are also
salt and sugar and snowflakes and diamonds and rubies. It's
(02:54):
it's uh like you're you're a crystal as far as
I'm concerned, So are you, Chuck? Thanks? Can we all
be crystals in our heart? Should our heart chakras? Yes? So?
Um yeah. There was a big takeaway from me too,
was the fact that crystals aren't necessarily a thing. There
a type of structure that a thing can fall into,
(03:16):
you know what I mean? Ye, and there and there's
seven basic shapes or lattices that a crystal can take cubic, trigonal,
try clinic, mh orthorhombic, triamic, triaminic, hexagonal, tetragonal, and monoclinic monoclinic.
(03:39):
I don't I think there's like ten people on the
planet who say that word out loud. Ever, so however
you want to say, nine of them will email us, right,
so um yeah, And again there's lattice shapes that you
just described. Those are three dimensional structures arrangements of atoms
and the crystal itself that you can sit and hold
in your hand and be like, I can feel the
(04:00):
energy just pulsating through this um. If you zoomed in
the smallest three dimensional arrangement of atoms that that forms
a pattern that can be repeated. The minimal size pattern
that's repeated is called the unit cell that is the
exact same shape. I just I can't. I'm gonna say
that five different times I think in this episode. So
(04:22):
there's two okay, and um, oh hey sorry, I know
we've already gotten started, but do you mind if I
do a little plug here? Who I know it's yeah, sure,
Josh's Crystal Shop. So just real quick, everybody, jeez, this
is really poorly placed, isn't it. I think it's great.
(04:42):
We're not talking about Crystal, so it's good. Right, So
I wanted to plug. I'm gonna do some live shows chuck. Yeah. Um,
I'm going to be in Minneapolis at the Parkway Theater
on June eight, okay, okay, and then the next night
(05:03):
on June time supposed to be Yes, you are. I've
got a firm row seat reserve for you both, and
it's gonna I'm gonna have actually a cardboard cutout of
you sitting there so everybody will know, they'll notice have
chucked in and show up, you know what I mean.
The next night, Um, you're going to have to travel
to d C. Because that's where I will be at
the Miracle Theater on June. And um, if people were
(05:28):
so inclined to buy tickets, they could go to the
the Parkway Theater dot com or the Miracle Theater dot
com and there's tickets there. And I assume this is
into the World material correct, Yeah, sorry, thanks for that.
I'm so bad at this. Um the the It's the
End of the World Live. And whether you've seen the
Listen to the End of the World series by now
the podcast series and made um or not, you would
(05:51):
still get something out of This is gonna be a
pretty cool show because it kind of takes these seams
and expands on them and explores other other avenues, other
blind allies that I can't go down in the series.
I love it. Go everybody, go, go go. I appreciate that,
of course. So obviously we're talking about crystals again now, Yeah, so, uh,
(06:11):
crystals can be very small, like and we you know,
are a great snowflake episode is a pretty good example,
or they can be very big and the longer these
crystals grow, the bigger they're gonna get and they're gonna
have fewer contaminants. Although as we will learn when we
talk about gemstones, those contaminants are where they get their
brilliant colors. Right, yeah, so you kind of want contaminants.
(06:35):
But most crystals, from from what I understand, are colorless,
Like most um uh, pure crystals are colorless. Pure just
don't say pure crystal. That's different. That's different things. So, um,
you hit upon something that I think is also worth
pointing out. Like usually when people think of crystals, again,
they're thinking of like that little five points hippie shop
(06:55):
kind of crystal, and you imagine it being formed in
like a cave or in some sort of fissure in
the earth or something like that somewhere inside the earth.
But like you said, snowflakes they form above the earth,
Salt forms on the earth surface. These are all crystals.
So again, a crystal is not necessarily just a thing.
It's a it's a structure. It's a repeating pattern of
(07:19):
an arrangement of atoms that is a crystal. And one
way to remember this um or to really just kind
of have the the awe smacked into your your forehead
chakra is carbon can be arranged in different ways, so
the same the same molecule of carbon can be arranged
in a way, um that makes it graphite or makes
(07:42):
it a diamond. So, chemically speaking, diamonds and graphites are
the exact same thing. Um. Crystallogically speaking, they are two
different things because they form two different crystalline structures. Right.
And if you're confused by saying the words little five
points to time times, uh, we just assume everyone is
(08:02):
from our neighborhood in Atlanta. But that isn't an area
of Atlanta where you can find a drum circle or
buy a crystal or some parking stocks, or some high
quality incense, or pure crystal, or probably pure crystal in
the white corner. If there's a pretty good Halloween parade too. Yeah,
(08:24):
you know, it's great. It's it's remained fairly unchanged since
I was hanging out there in high school. It's it's
kind of kind of great in that way. I would
think just about every city has its own version of
little five points, wouldn't you. Yeah, absolutely, I've been to
them in every city. Okay, so there you go. So
that's what we're talking about when we see a little
five points everybody. Yes, So, um, let's talk crystal, Let's
(08:44):
talk how how um like what an actual crystal is
made from or how it's made. I guess no, No,
I still can't come up with the word what makes
a crystal? Crystal? That's what I'm looking for, Yeah, because
it can get really confusing if you think about the
fact that crystals can be salt or snowflakes, or semiconductors
(09:05):
or in a computer display monitor or a television as
liquid crystal. It's and I know we've hammered this home,
but it's it's really all those things. Because crystals are
a formation, right, right, So you you take atoms of
a certain type of variety UM. Usually ions are a
(09:27):
big early like predecessor atom of um crystals ions, right,
they're either positively or negatively charged atoms as an ion, right,
so they've got an extra electron. They are missing an electron.
Something went horribly awry with their electrons and it converted
this atom into a charged atom. And those ions can
(09:49):
attract other ions, they can repel certain kinds of ions,
and they start to clump together in a certain way,
and they will depending on the ion um or eventually
the atom. I don't think you have to have ions
to have crystals. I just think they're the most common
basic type of atom that you find in a crystal.
But depending on the type of ion or atom that
(10:12):
starts setting off this um aggregation or attraction of other
atoms into a clump, it's going to start to form
a three dimensional model what I spoke about earlier, what
are called unit cells, and that little three dimensional model
is going to start attracting more atoms, and another three
dimensional model the exact same variety is going to be built.
(10:35):
And now you've just gone from a unit cell, the
most basic unit of the three dimensional shape of a crystal,
into the lattice, which is the build out of that
that unit upon unit upon unit upon unit that just
can keep going and going virtually and definitely. Yeah, it's
almost like they these ions are attracted and when they
(10:59):
get there or they see what's going on, what kind
of party they're having, and they're like that looks great
to me. Yep, Like I'm gonna jump in there, and
why would I want to mess it up by being
any different? Yeah, I really feel like falling in line.
It's kind of a fastest piece of matter if you
think about it, a crystal. Yeah, And there were another
couple of decent descriptions um or metaphors, I guess in
(11:21):
this article in terms of long range order and short
range order. I thought that made a little bit of sense.
Um uh if if because crystals, like you said, can
it can be a single crystal, or it can be
a very large structure. And if it's a long range order,
they liken it to like a halftime band, all marching
(11:45):
in formation, like two people all together in synchronicity like that. Okay,
does that sound about right? Yeah? I just found that
deeply confusing, but I got it now once you explained it,
I got it. Uh. Short range order, on the other hand,
they like into that marching band, scattering around into smaller
(12:05):
sub units, and this is more like liquid crystal like
you would find in a TV monitor. Yeah. And so
from the research that I saw this, short range crystals
almost didn't even need to be mentioned in this UM
article because it has so few um it appears in
so few places that really, when you're talking about crystals,
(12:26):
it almost by definition has to have long range structure.
I mean you usually think almost always of crystals is
solid manner right exactly, um with with basically short ranges,
just this crystalline structure, the unit cell forms over a
few atoms, and anything beyond that is long range, and
that's when you start to get into the money. Crystals,
(12:48):
I guess is what you call them. Yeah, you want
to take a break. Sure you're feeling okay so far?
I'm all right. Yeah, me too. Man, Uh, we will
be right back, everybody. We're gonna go breathe into a
paper bag. Okay, we're back. We went through three paper bags.
(13:25):
It's so funny after eleven years, we still care enough
that we can feel like we're hanging on by our fingernails,
but we still pushed through and generally get it right.
I'm good with generally correct, right, Yeah, Um, most of
the time we get it right. There's there's that little
bit of impurity, and those impurities give the individual podcasts.
(13:47):
They're brilliant hues. That makes some jams very nice. So, um,
there's a little more to talk about about how crystals form.
Right again, when we're talking about crystals, I guarantee you
the thing coming into your mind is an amethyst or
maybe even you're you're savvy enough to know that precious
gems are also crystals, like sapphires or rubies or something
(14:08):
like that. Um, that's probably what's coming into your head
and what you're seeing there, what you're imagining this brilliant, beautiful, translucent,
uh perfect shape with a bunch of different facets that
are on display. That is, that's a kind of crystal.
But what you're talking about is a kind of crystal
(14:29):
that formed under ideal conditions. And those ideal conditions are
very rare, which is why gemstones tend to be pretty
rare more often than not. What what you will see
in nature or you know, just on the ground, or
you know, in some kids backpack. I don't know, I'm
grasping at straws right now. Um are what are called
poly crystals where the conditions that the crystals formed under
(14:52):
and we'll talk about how crystals form in a second,
but the conditions that they formed under were not ideal,
and there were a bunch of different kinds of ad
is present. And so rather than forming one beautiful single crystal,
because again, when you have this giant, beautiful tetrahedron of
amethyst in your hand, that is one that's considered one
single crystal, it's one giant crystal. If you have a
(15:16):
big rock with a bunch of like um, pyrite in
it just kind of sparkling back at you. What you're
holding is a countless number of individual crystals that all
kind of grew together, and rather than forming one beautiful crystal,
they formed one big lump or mass, and it's still
a bunch of crystals, and it's still as crystalline structure.
(15:38):
It's just multiple crystals, and it's called a poly crystal,
and that's what you see much more frequently, because again,
conditions for crystals to grow under are infrequently ideal. Right,
And this is where I step in and make the
one joke that I thought up during that which that
Tetrahydron of Amethysts was the best Yes album. Yeah, let's
(16:00):
a good one. Yes, I have to say, Yes did
second to Iron Maiden and Beautiful album covers. They were
pretty good. They had great ones. Um So, polychress, contrary
to what you might think or here or read, are
not stronger than single crystals because it's like, uh, I mean,
(16:21):
it kind of makes sense. If you're assembling a model
from a hundred pieces, it's probably not as strong as
something that's made from one thing because where they join,
it's gonna have weak points. That's a million percent right right,
Because again, if you if you realize that a beautiful
giant crystal is just one solid piece, those all those
little smaller crystals, they they're going to break apart much
(16:41):
more easily because they have weak spots. They're not joined
together with these amazing covalent or ionic bonds that are
holding that that single crystal together. So it makes sense
in that respect. So, um, let's talk about how crystals
are formed. Do you want to? There's really basically just
three ways that before and whether whether they're human made
(17:02):
or made in nature, they basically come about three different ways. Yeah,
And um, I'm gonna skip out of order here because
for the kids out there, you can actually grow a
crystal at home in pretty short order and it's pretty neat.
So if you are a kid, or if you're a
parent with some kids, here's what one kind of fun
thing that you can do. And this is how to
make a crystal out of a solution, which is one
(17:25):
of the three ways. Uh, you can actually grow a
sodium chloride salt crystal in just a few days. It's
not the kind of thing you need to wait around
like a year, four or millions of years. That's right.
So to do this, kids, you need get some whatever
kind of salt you can, but you can just get
regular sodium chloride, table salt, some distilled water, a glass,
(17:47):
uh like bell jar, any kind of glass is great, um,
and then a spoon. You stir salt into boiling hot
water until no more of it will dissolve, and you're
gonna start to see some crystal start starting to appear
at the bottom of this thing. And make sure the
water is as close to boiling as you can get.
Then you're gonna pour that solution into that clear jar
(18:08):
and you put the spoon there is just to make
sure the jar doesn't break. That always helps, okay. Is
that we've got to do a short stuff on the
physics of that someday. Yeah, yeah, I remember that was
an old like uh waiting tables trick when you made
ice coffee, which is just when what we did was
just pour hot coffee and a big thing ice. Sure,
(18:29):
well this is pre hot coffee cold brew. Yeah. Um.
So then you suspend a string, that string that I
told you about, uh into the jar from a spoon
and just laid across the top of the jar, so
it's hanging down in that solution and then just don't
touch it for a while and you will literally see
crystals forming on this string over the next few days. Yep,
(18:51):
it's really really cool. It is very cool. Um. I
saw another experiment you could do at home. It's got
a couple of extra steps, but you can make um
a beautiful kind a magenta colored crystal with um just
straight up album and a couple of things. You grow
a seed crystal and you use that you dangle it
like on a string, like you were saying, but it
(19:12):
actually grows more crystals up to it as well, So
you can grow the stuff at home. And both of
those are crystal grown from solution and crystal grown from solution.
Is like you were just saying. You put in salt
into hot water until you can't dissolve it anymore. That
means that the salt or the water has become saturated
(19:32):
with salt. No, it cannot hold any more salt, right, sorry,
t s. But that salt gotta go somewhere and it
will eventually be forced into a solid state, especially as
that liquid cools. Because water that's warmer or anything that's warmer,
means that that the atoms and the molecules are further apart,
(19:52):
which means there's more space for salt. But as that
water cools down, that space shrinks and that salt's gotta
go somewhere, so it turn into the solid state and
forms crystals. And it's that that happens with salt at
a relatively cool temperature at a relatively low pressure, you know,
basically sea level pressure on Earth. But that same thing
(20:15):
can happen under water and hydrothermal vents. It can happen
with magma inside the mantle of the Earth. Um, there's
there's the ship. The conditions can change, so you have
different temperatures, different pressures, different types of atoms, and they'll
form under those different conditions, different kinds of things. But
crystals can form anywhere. They can form on the surface
(20:38):
of the Earth again, in clouds and inside the Earth itself. Yeah,
And if you're going to grow from a solution like that,
like you do in your kitchen, you can produce crystals
much much faster, and produce bigger crystals than you can
with a vapor deposition, which is you know, snowflakes, which
we've talked about a lot on the show, which is
(20:59):
basically so vapor depic is basically the same thing. Instead
of a liquid solution becoming super saturated, a gaseous solution
has become super saturated saturated and so that the water
vapor can't the air can't hold anymore, so it pushes
it into a solid state and forms snow flakes. Yeah.
(21:21):
Then there's a third method, uh, from growth from melt,
which is really kind of interesting. And there's a few
different ways to do this too. Um. But basically what
you're doing is you're cooling a gas until it's a
liquid and then chilling that liquid until it starts that
you know, crystallization process. Uh. And there's there's a few ways.
(21:42):
There's one called crystal pulling or the here we go
zakrawl Ski method. Yeah. And this is this is a
human made method of creating crystals, right. Yeah. It was
named from a Polish scientist by the name of Za
karl Ski Kasimir funk Uh in nineteen fifteen. And this,
you know, all of these involved actual machines and this
(22:04):
you know when you hear about superconductors and stuff like that,
like this is these are man made things. Are human
made things, uh, And methods and processes that people figured
out a long long time ago, right, Crystal pulling is
pretty not so amazing. Did you see any videos on it? Yeah,
I watched some videos and looked at like some still
images of the machinery. It is pretty cool. So it's like,
(22:24):
do you do that science experiment that I found where
you created crystal and then you tie it to a
fishing line. You basically just hang it over the solution.
This is that's a very simple version of what they're
doing with crystal pulling. You're using a seed crystal that
is basically providing the structure for the solution below it.
You you just touch that seed crystal just to the solution,
(22:47):
and it basically sets off an attractive chain reaction that
creates a crystal. So you slowly raise the crystal upward
or that seed crystal upward, and the crystal follows it
out of the solution. Essentially. Yes, it is. That's another
reason why I love crystals. It's just the way that
(23:10):
they form is so astounding ly awesome. And and with
crystal pulling in particular, this is kind of an old technology.
I think it's from the early nineteen hundreds when it
was first invented, and um since then, they've gotten so
good at it, and it's so perfectly automated that they
can calculate how fast the crystal forms went under crystal pulling,
(23:35):
and so they will have the machine raise that seed
crystal at the rate of crystal formation. And now they
can get to places where they're forming um crystals that
have like, uh, there are a foot around in diameter
that that are just perfect, absolutely perfect crystals because also
the solution that they're using that they're dipping that that
(23:57):
seed crystal into has been purified, so it's the absolutely
pure version of whatever you're trying to make a crystal
out of. So, uh, say that you could make diamonds
out of this, you could. You would have pure carbon
in in a solution usually melted, and then you would
have a diamond um dangling down as the seed and
you would grow a seed diamond. That's not how you
(24:19):
can make diamonds, but that's how they that's what they
do with um silicon. Actually, yeah, and there's another method
um from from with the you know, the melting method
called the Bridgeman stock Barger method, named for Percy Bridgeman
and Donald stock Barger. I guess it's so hard g right. Sure,
he's stock Barger. He's the Art Garfunkle of the crystal
(24:41):
manufacturing world. And from what I got, this is used
when the crystal pulling method isn't so great for certain materials. Right,
And in this case, you take it's sort of like
take an ice cream cone shape, a conical shape, and
you lower it, uh, fill it with molten material, lower
(25:01):
it into a cooler area, so it cools from that
very bottom tip, just the tip, just the tip upward. Um,
and it just kind of the same way. It just
sort of works this way up joining the party saying
this looks good. I like the way you guys are
shaped and ordered. I'm just gonna jump right in. Yeah.
So as the tip of that cone goes further downward
into the colder temperature, that crystal grows upward in the tube,
(25:26):
right yeah. And then eventually you have a whole tube
that's just one one giant crystal, that's right. And then
you think, how am I going to get that out
of here? Oh? Yeah, I hadn't really pluck this out
all the way. I just got a beautiful crystal trapped
into a canonical tube. I'm sure this, I'm sure it
opens don't you think, Well, maybe that's where what was
(25:46):
the second name of that, I can't remember Donald, this
is his first name. Well maybe that's where Donald. That
was his big contribution was maybe having a hatch on
the back. Yeah, I imagine there's something like that. So
if I were going to put my money down on
the best human made synthetic crystal um process, it would
be epitaxi and in particular UM molecular deposition, molecular molecular
(26:12):
beam epitaxi. Yeah, and this is one again where you're growing.
I mean, all of these kind of start with a
base crystal and it grows from there. And in this case,
the base has to be just like atomically flat. That's
a good band name too. Atomically flat is pretty good
(26:33):
not bad math rock. Yeah, of course. So with the
with the reason it has to be atomically flat is
because you want to build from a pure crystal structure.
And again, if you introduce atoms, especially like um, previously
sordid atoms, like the kind of atoms you want UH
(26:53):
to build this crystal structure out of um, they will
fall into this arrangement when they're introduced to a crystalline structure.
That's already there, and then they layer by layer, atomic
layer by atomic layer will form a crystal. Uh. That
that's built out. And with molecular beam in particular, you're
shooting a beam of atoms across this perfectly flat substrate,
(27:18):
and um, they are. They're introduced in a way so
they don't collide with one another. They just click click
click right into place. Yeah. Again this There were a
couple of decent um examples in here, and this one
they said, if you think of a wrack of billiard balls,
and if you just throw a ball on top of that,
it will come to rest somewhere, you know, who knows where,
(27:39):
but somewhere between those other balls. It's not gonna It
would be pretty amazing if it just sat directly on
top of one of the balls, but that's not gonna happen.
It's gonna find its place where it fits best. It
gets in where it fits in. Yeah. Um. And then
that was from roundabout. Uh. Then there's chemical vapor death position,
which is the same thing, but instead of a beam
(27:59):
of molecules that you're sending over that substrate, you're shooting vapor.
You're just blowing vapor over it. And that way the
atoms kind of link up too. Yeah, and that's faster, right,
it's faster. And that's what they used for synthetic diamonds. Now,
I know I needed it yesterday. Remember the diamonique from
(28:20):
the nineties. I don't remember diamonique. Remember diamonoid and diamels
it's all the same, I'm sure, yeah, or cubic or conia. Yeah,
those were probably just all trade names, right, I would guess,
so shure um diamonique just always stuck with me. Just
sounded so fancy. It's a nice name. Um. And then lastly,
there's liquid phase epitaxi, which is pretty awesome. So imagine
(28:43):
a solution and you have a um that perfectly flat
atomic substrate crystal, and you just lifted up out of
the solution, and as it comes up out of the solution,
a crystal just forms out of nothing. Amazing. Oh my goodness,
I can't take a chuck. You want to take a break. Yeah,
(29:06):
we'll take another break and we'll talk about jimstones and
then crystal healing and what that's all about. Right after this. Okay, dude,
(29:33):
I should say I was at UM the Smithsonian the
other day. You know, I went up to d C
because to hear Jeff Bezos delivers news about Blue Origin
landing on the Moon. It was awesome. It was really cool,
Like he was up there on stage and um, it
was probably a room of hundred hundred fifty people maybe,
(29:53):
and um, behind him, the curtain comes down and there's
a full scale model of the Lunar Lander he's gonna
send up in like three years. It's pretty cool. Everyone
gasp yes and clapped appropriately. So. But um, so, while
I was there, I killed some time at the Museum
of Natural History, and uh, I was just in trance
(30:15):
that as a matter of fact, we're doing this episode
because of their the crystal um display there. I was like,
have we never done one on crystals? And I thought, no,
we haven't, and and then I thought, well, we really should.
And then I thought, well, let's go get a sandwich
in the meantime. And I wasn't there to knock you
over the head with a rubber mallet. Yeah, to knock
me out of the loop and be like, what happened?
(30:36):
I don't know, man, you just passed out. He had
a sandwich in his hand, but the mineral um, the
mineral in crystal and gem collection they have there is
just amazing. It's just so beautiful. It's like just a
little wondering and you're just wandering around from case to
case staring at crystals. It's really neat, and there's one
(30:56):
in particular that really caught my fancy. It's, uh, they
just look like ordinary dumb rocks or whatever. And then
the light goes out in a black light comes on
in this little display case and they're fluorescent crystals embedded
in the rocks. And then the light comes back on
and then it goes back out and then back gut
and it's really amazing to watch. And then the light
(31:16):
came on and your pants were down, do you know,
fallow my own everybody. I'm just selling this whole thing.
So jim Stones, like we said a couple of times,
they are crystals, um. And here's the deal, Like depending
on the type of um. I mean, we're not calling
them imperfections or I guess impurities is flaws, yeah, flaws,
(31:39):
shameful flaws. Yeah, that's where they get their color. So
like a ruby and a sapphire, they're both corundum, but
rubies are red because of a little bit of chromium
that replaces a little bit of aluminum aluminum in the structure,
whereas sapphire comes blue because of iron and titanium instead.
Right wise, they're kind of the same thing. Yeah, just
(32:02):
somehow some of those um, some chromium or some iron
or titanium atoms got sucked into the mix and they said, Hey,
I kind of like this crystal structure thing. I'm gonna
hang out here. And they did, and they said, I'm
gonna turn this thing blue. Watch this. Yeah, And even
the name crystal, didn't that come from the Greek? From quartz?
It's yeah, that's what they called courts was crystallos, which
(32:24):
is cold drop, which we take to mean as ice um.
And I read in this article. I didn't see it
anywhere else that the apparently the Greeks thought courts was
ice that have frozen so solid it would never melt.
It sounds a little dumb to me for the Greeks.
I think the Greeks were a little hipper than that, um,
because I mean, just think for a second Greeks and
(32:47):
they would say, yes, you're right, this is something else entirely.
But that's where crystal came from. Was that Greek word crystallos. Yeah,
and courts. I mean, like amethyst is a kind of quartz.
It's just courts with the right kind of impurity that
gives it color. Yeah. And apparently they have not figured
out exactly what gives amethysts its purple color. Um. There's
(33:08):
a debate over whether it's iron oxide or manganese or
some sort of non specific hydrocarbons. Um. But if you
take amethyst, so remember, crystal is just the chemistry can
be exactly the same, like diamonds and graphite, but the
conditions are different under which they form, and so they
form different crystalline structures and appear to be totally different
(33:31):
from one another. Same thing happens with amethyst. If you
take amethyst and the conditions are different in that the
temperatures are much greater, it doesn't form purple amethysts. It
forms yellow citrine, which is pretty pretty amazing. I love crystals,
and I mean we could probably go on and on
(33:51):
with different types of gemstones, but I think everyone gets
the point. Yeah, yeah, the I think they do as well.
Like you could take any gemstone and break it down
and explain exactly what gives it it's hugh and uh,
but but I think it's I think it's all here right. So, um,
that is how crystals form. And for a very long
(34:15):
time people just kind of appreciated crystals as um for
their beauty or their shape or something like that. One
thing we didn't say that, I think we should say
Chuck is a crystal. It forms under ideal conditions, will
take one of those seven shapes you mentioned, um, but
the since the conditions are rarely ever ideal, they'll actually
(34:36):
form other shapes under different conditions, things like plate shaped
or table shaped or um needle shaped a a sicular
acicular um. So there's other shapes they can take. And
people have appreciated these things all the time, Like if
you've ever looked at it crystal, it's just like a
shock of what looks like incredibly sharp needles, or just
(34:58):
a tumble of perfectly shape cubes growing out of some
lumpy rock or something like that. There's a lot to
to appreciate their um and if you if you subscribe
to crystal healing, which has become a thing again. Um,
this has been going on, this idea that these things
are not only beautiful, but that they contain some sort
of energy that humans can harness to uh maybe straighten
(35:21):
our own energy out or overcome disease or something like that.
Um that this has been going on for thousands and
thousands of years. Yeah, so just a quick shout before
we get fully into crystal healing and that's all about. Um.
Everyone want to encourage everyone to go look up some
images of uh the Queva de Los crystals, the Cave
(35:42):
of Crystals in Chihuahua, Mexico. Unbelievable if you want to
see like some of the most beautiful stuff you've seen
in your life that looks like something from a movie,
Like it looks like the Fortress of Solitude uh in Superman. Yeah,
just unbelievable. Um, these these images of Spelunker and like
these caves where some of these crystals are believed to
(36:04):
have been growing for like half a million years. It's
really really something else. Yeah, that was one thing. So
we talked about how fast that they can grow. Um,
they can also take a very very long time. Those
are the big ones. Yeah, they're the big ones. But also, um,
some crystals form just by nature slowly, whether they're bigg
or small. So like garnet in particular, forms atom layer
(36:28):
atomic layer by atomic layer year by year, and so
it can take ten million years for just a two
centimeter garnet to grow over time. Amazing. So, like I
was saying with this with crystal healing in particular, Chuck,
these things are not only awesome or amazing or beautiful, um,
they also supposedly contain some sort of energy. Yeah. I mean,
(36:49):
this is where it gets a little hinky, because this
is one of those um things that Western medicine, for
lack of a better term, has pretty much generally poo
pooed uh as pseudoscience. But the idea is that these
crystals UM can carry and transfer energy that can facilitate
healing of like disease. Let's say, so you would book
(37:13):
a session with a crystal healer UM. And we'll get
into whether or not those people are credential at all
here in a minute. But UM, and they will lay
you down on a table and they will put different
crystals um. Some crystals facilitate some sort of energy, others
facilitate another sort of energy, and they don't all agree
(37:34):
on on that as well. We should point out that's
kind of a big red flag. It's a big red flag. Uh.
And then these crystals are placed on your body in
various points, and um, they will tell you that that
will uh bring in good healing energy and channel out
bad diseased energy. Yeah, and and those those points on
(37:54):
your body are actually pretty specific and they follow the
Buddhist or the Hindu chakras. Right. So you've got one
on the top of your head, you have one on
your forehead, on your throat, your chest, somewhere around your heart,
your stomach, your gut, and then around your groin for
your root chakra. And there's a different color um stone
that's supposed to be associated with each of the chakras.
(38:16):
And there's different stones that can be roughly of that
color that you could use for that chakra. And then
like you were saying, they they free up energy. Like
according to this this idea, energy can get kind of
gunked up. And if you have a bunch of negative
energy hanging around, um, it's gonna just do you wrong
until you get rid of it. With crystal therapy that
(38:37):
kind of stuff. UM, some crystals you can just put
in a room and they'll help direct energy better. Like, UM,
I can't remember what crystal I saw, but it's it's
it's known for its properties of facilitating communications. So really
we should have one in here for me and Jerry. Um. Like,
if people are talking to one another and they don't
(38:57):
understand what the other one saying, this crystal will kind
of here that Um. And so you are you're you're
pink turmaline chuck. UM. So like this is the kind
of this is the idea behind crystal energy. And as
I was saying a minute ago, if you follow this
kind of stuff, there's a whole crystal lore and supposedly
(39:18):
this dates back thousands of years to the Sumerians, the Egyptians,
the Greeks all use crystals for healing. The problem is,
there's absolutely no evidence that that's the case at all. Um.
People have been writing about crystals since the the the
classical Romans, but they didn't talk about the energy properties
they had. They just described them and tried to classify them.
(39:41):
It wasn't until like the seventies or eighties that that
the idea that they contain energy really seemed to catch on. Yeah,
and there haven't been scientific studies really done because um,
mainstream science just kind of doesn't study stuff like that.
But they have done some other kind of studies notably,
almost twenty years ago, UM there was a study done
(40:03):
at the University of London where they got how many
people was eighty people together and they said, here's what
we're gonna do, UM, go meditate for five minutes. Hold
this UH quartz crystal in your hand. They're not gonna
they don't say this, of course, but some of those
are real crystals. Some of them are completely faked, but
(40:24):
they all believed that they're real. They were lied to,
They were blatantly liked. Half of the participants, forty of
them were primed beforehand to say, you know, just think
about any effects and see if you can notice any
effects that these crystals are having. And so after meditating
they did a Q and A session UH in a
questionnaire and said basically like, how do you feel the
(40:48):
crystal affected this healing session? And they found out that
the effects reported by those who held the fake crystals
while meditating were no different at all than people who
had the real crystals. UM. Both reported feeling like a
warm sensation in their hand holding either the fake of
the real crystal, and both reported feeling an increased overall
(41:09):
feeling of well being. But the people who have been
primed those forty two, you know, basically like think about
how you're feeling and how this crystal is making you feel.
They reported stronger effects than those who had not been primed.
So it all sounds like placebo. Well that's yeah, that's
what they attributed to. The whole thing is placebo, which
(41:30):
as far as Western medicines concerned, placebo is great. You know,
if it's if you have some sort of ailment that
this can help you get over through the placebo effect, fantastic.
They they seem to kind of walk a fine line
with that though, and that they are worried that people
will say, oh, I'll just use crystals sat her cancer
(41:50):
rather than chemotherapy, um, and that probably won't work. The
placebo effect can't take on absolutely everything that ails you um.
And so if crystals are based on placebo, that's one
way they could be dangerous, but for the most part
is considered pretty harmless. Yeah. I just know that you're
going in to see someone who is not like licensed
(42:13):
or uh certainly not medically licensed. But I think generally
in all states there's no like licensing of crystal healers.
There's no organization looking over that. Now, I think there
are some organizations but the that that do um accredit
individual healers. But those are organizations aren't accredited for themselves.
(42:33):
So it's like at some point down the line, some
like the the accreditations is being pulled out of the air. Yeah.
And then there's this other thing that's a little more
troublesome when it comes to babies. Um, there's this belief
by some that baltic amber necklaces will help your baby's teething.
Have you heard of that or your toddler's teething? No,
(42:55):
I hadn't heard this, but um, the idea is that
something called uh succinic acid is released. It's pain relieving,
and it's released from the baltic amber because your child
is wearing this necklace and the skin of the child
is heating up this baltic amber and it's being released
uh and like gathered into the bloodstream and making your
(43:18):
little kids teething better. Right, But there's and there is
scenic acid in baltic amber. It's true, but apparently it's
just like one of those kernel of true things because
it's not it's not been shown to be able to
be released from the baltic amber. By saliva or body heat. So,
and it's dangerous because you should not put a necklace
(43:39):
around your baby or toddler's neck when they sleep because
their um are they put stuff in their mouth. Well,
that's what for them to teeth on. Are these little
necklaces made of this? These stones? Oh? I didn't think
they're supposed to chew on them. I thought i'd just
laid against their throat. No, I think they're supposed to
chew on them. Mm hmmm, that's what I got. I'll
(44:00):
have to look that up. I thought the idea was
it laid against their skin and it was absorbed into
the skin through body heat. I think that's part of it.
But I think it also they chew on it too,
That's what I got from it. Boy, you're really doing
it wrong if you keep your baby necklace to chew
on in their sleep, right. So, so um, I have
(44:23):
no issues with that, though, I should say I used
to carry around to crystal um in my pocket all
the time. Yeah, yeah, all the time for years and
years and years, and like I don't recall really thinking
it contained any energy or anythinking. It was more like
just a neat thing to just kind of rub kind
of like a fidget spinner, but but much prettier to
(44:45):
look at. You know, just just something to have in
your hand or whatever, keep it in your pocket, like twenties.
I think that explains a lot. Yeah sure, So why
what age is appropriate for carrying a crystal around your pocket? Okay? Okay,
that's when that happens. That's when you listen to the
doors and you burn incense and stuff like that. That's right. Um.
(45:10):
So yeah, more power to you if you're into crystals.
Just don't don't shun medical advice if you have a
real big problem. No, definitely don't. Um. And that's Oh.
I have one more thing about crystals, Chuck, you got
a second. Okay, remember how I said that graphite and
diamonds are the exact same thing. They're just arranged differently
crystal wise. I saw in a couple of different places
(45:34):
that a diamond, since they're formed under tremendous temperature and pressure,
when they're taken out of that environment and brought up
to Earth, they will, over a long enough time period,
melt into graphite. Amazing. It's just too long of a
time period for humans to ever witness it. Hmm. Yeah.
(45:55):
So that's crystals. Get you to the Smithsonium. Whenever you
get a chance, go to the Museum of Natural History
and just gaze and wonder and also wonder how your
pants got down when the light came back on in
the fluorescent mineral display. Because, as I said that, it's
time for listener mail. Yeah, which one should I do here?
How about nicknames? Hey, guys, really enjoying the short stuffs
(46:23):
and the nicknames episode was no exception, um, But I
was surprised that you didn't go into the origin of
the term nickname. I didn't think about that. I didn't either.
I felt pretty shame. Yeah, I'd always assumed this might
sound silly, that the first true nickname was Nicholas, shortened
to nick, so they called them nicknames. But she did
a little searching and said that it's not quite right.
Looks like the term started as a Middle English word
(46:44):
in the undreds H E K. E. Dash name pronounced
nick name, meaning additional name. So over time, as people
said an nickname became nickname and it's nickname. We didn't
have time to look this one up. But I'm the
trusting Liz. Yeah, Liz, I hope you're not steering us wrong. Yeah,
(47:07):
she said, my husband's name is Nick. This is what
got me thinking of it, and I jumped to that conclusion.
You could give Nick a shout on us on your show,
would be great. His birthday is next week, which means
by now, it's probably a couple of weeks ago. So
happy birthday, Nick, Happy birthday. Uh. And they are counting
down the weeks until their twins are born. Liz is
(47:28):
expecting a baby girl and a baby boy in late June,
their first children. And she said, We've been listened to
a lot of your show, well pregnant for getting Mozart
and Beethoven. I'm convinced at listening to stuff you should
know in utero makes baby smarter. Of course it does.
And that's from Liza Nick. And babies that will be named, uh,
Josh and Chuck and Jerry, that's right. Yeah, they need
(47:51):
to have triplets, huh. I think Chuck and Jerry is
a good name. And Josh, yeah, the outsider Josh. No,
it could be Josh and Jerry or Josh and Chuck.
What if? What if both of them's middle name is Jerry, Josh,
Jerry and Chuck Jerry? And I think that sounds great.
I think it does too well. Thanks again, Liz. I
(48:12):
hope you're right on this one, because if not, we're
going to have follow up. Listen to yourmail from other
people who are pointing out how you're wrong. Either way,
best wishes on your new expanded family and happy birthday, Nick.
If you want to get in touch with this, like
Liz did, you can go on to stuff you Should
Know dot com, check out our social links, or you
can send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeart
(48:33):
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. He and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and
there's Jerry over there. And this is crystals. How you doing? Man? Well,
(00:23):
what do you think? This is? This? It's okay? Is it?
The the source material is not great. We won't say
where we got it. But um, I think that once
we kind of make it through the the structure part
will will be home free. Plus it's I mean plus
it's crystals, like they're they're so worth understanding, going to
(00:45):
the trouble of understanding because they are um basically a
finger in the eye to the tendency of the universe
to move towards chaos and disorder. Because a crystal is
the most ordered structure in the universe. It's a a
(01:06):
pattern that repeats over and over and over again, so
much so that in a crystal, if you look at
a perfectly formed, pure crystal that that came to be
under ideal conditions, the shape that you're looking at, if
you could zoom in to the smallest three dimensional unit
(01:28):
of atoms inside that crystal, it would be the exact
same shape. Yeah, I mean that is one uh, the
one positive I took out of this article was just
that thing. Early on the author did about the word
crystallize m that we take colloquially. Colloquially, that was a
(01:50):
couple of extrals in there that we take to you
know what, everyone knows what that means, and it means like,
you know, someone has distilled and made order out of
something tough, uh, with their with their mouth words, right,
and that makes sense. Yeah, So when you when you
think about like an actual physical crystal, you get why
(02:11):
that word came from that, because it is that it
is this extreme order where all these molecules come together
as friends to be perfect together. So um, so we
both love crystals for basically the same reason. It sounds like, right, yeah,
and like that. Before I started researching this, I just thought,
(02:34):
I don't know, like crystals were just the things you
buy in little five points at the shop with the
cookie person who you know, wears them on their forehead
for healing chakras. Before they were cool and I didn't
I didn't even realize that It's like crystals are also
salt and sugar and snowflakes and diamonds and rubies. It's
(02:54):
it's uh like you're you're a crystal as far as
I'm concerned, So are you, Chuck? Thanks? Can we all
be crystals in our heart? Should our heart chakras? Yes? So?
Um yeah. There was a big takeaway from me too,
was the fact that crystals aren't necessarily a thing. There
a type of structure that a thing can fall into,
(03:16):
you know what I mean? Ye, and there and there's
seven basic shapes or lattices that a crystal can take cubic, trigonal,
try clinic, mh orthorhombic, triamic, triaminic, hexagonal, tetragonal, and monoclinic monoclinic.
(03:39):
I don't I think there's like ten people on the
planet who say that word out loud. Ever, so however
you want to say, nine of them will email us, right,
so um yeah, And again there's lattice shapes that you
just described. Those are three dimensional structures arrangements of atoms
and the crystal itself that you can sit and hold
in your hand and be like, I can feel the
(04:00):
energy just pulsating through this um. If you zoomed in
the smallest three dimensional arrangement of atoms that that forms
a pattern that can be repeated. The minimal size pattern
that's repeated is called the unit cell that is the
exact same shape. I just I can't. I'm gonna say
that five different times I think in this episode. So
(04:22):
there's two okay, and um, oh hey sorry, I know
we've already gotten started, but do you mind if I
do a little plug here? Who I know it's yeah, sure,
Josh's Crystal Shop. So just real quick, everybody, jeez, this
is really poorly placed, isn't it. I think it's great.
(04:42):
We're not talking about Crystal, so it's good. Right, So
I wanted to plug. I'm gonna do some live shows chuck. Yeah. Um,
I'm going to be in Minneapolis at the Parkway Theater
on June eight, okay, okay, and then the next night
(05:03):
on June time supposed to be Yes, you are. I've
got a firm row seat reserve for you both, and
it's gonna I'm gonna have actually a cardboard cutout of
you sitting there so everybody will know, they'll notice have
chucked in and show up, you know what I mean.
The next night, Um, you're going to have to travel
to d C. Because that's where I will be at
the Miracle Theater on June. And um, if people were
(05:28):
so inclined to buy tickets, they could go to the
the Parkway Theater dot com or the Miracle Theater dot
com and there's tickets there. And I assume this is
into the World material correct, Yeah, sorry, thanks for that.
I'm so bad at this. Um the the It's the
End of the World Live. And whether you've seen the
Listen to the End of the World series by now
the podcast series and made um or not, you would
(05:51):
still get something out of This is gonna be a
pretty cool show because it kind of takes these seams
and expands on them and explores other other avenues, other
blind allies that I can't go down in the series.
I love it. Go everybody, go, go go. I appreciate that,
of course. So obviously we're talking about crystals again now, Yeah, so, uh,
(06:11):
crystals can be very small, like and we you know,
are a great snowflake episode is a pretty good example,
or they can be very big and the longer these
crystals grow, the bigger they're gonna get and they're gonna
have fewer contaminants. Although as we will learn when we
talk about gemstones, those contaminants are where they get their
brilliant colors. Right, yeah, so you kind of want contaminants.
(06:35):
But most crystals, from from what I understand, are colorless,
Like most um uh, pure crystals are colorless. Pure just
don't say pure crystal. That's different. That's different things. So, um,
you hit upon something that I think is also worth
pointing out. Like usually when people think of crystals, again,
they're thinking of like that little five points hippie shop
(06:55):
kind of crystal, and you imagine it being formed in
like a cave or in some sort of fissure in
the earth or something like that somewhere inside the earth.
But like you said, snowflakes they form above the earth,
Salt forms on the earth surface. These are all crystals.
So again, a crystal is not necessarily just a thing.
It's a it's a structure. It's a repeating pattern of
(07:19):
an arrangement of atoms that is a crystal. And one
way to remember this um or to really just kind
of have the the awe smacked into your your forehead
chakra is carbon can be arranged in different ways, so
the same the same molecule of carbon can be arranged
in a way, um that makes it graphite or makes
(07:42):
it a diamond. So, chemically speaking, diamonds and graphites are
the exact same thing. Um. Crystallogically speaking, they are two
different things because they form two different crystalline structures. Right.
And if you're confused by saying the words little five
points to time times, uh, we just assume everyone is
(08:02):
from our neighborhood in Atlanta. But that isn't an area
of Atlanta where you can find a drum circle or
buy a crystal or some parking stocks, or some high
quality incense, or pure crystal, or probably pure crystal in
the white corner. If there's a pretty good Halloween parade too. Yeah,
(08:24):
you know, it's great. It's it's remained fairly unchanged since
I was hanging out there in high school. It's it's
kind of kind of great in that way. I would
think just about every city has its own version of
little five points, wouldn't you. Yeah, absolutely, I've been to
them in every city. Okay, so there you go. So
that's what we're talking about when we see a little
five points everybody. Yes, So, um, let's talk crystal, Let's
(08:44):
talk how how um like what an actual crystal is
made from or how it's made. I guess no, No,
I still can't come up with the word what makes
a crystal? Crystal? That's what I'm looking for, Yeah, because
it can get really confusing if you think about the
fact that crystals can be salt or snowflakes, or semiconductors
(09:05):
or in a computer display monitor or a television as
liquid crystal. It's and I know we've hammered this home,
but it's it's really all those things. Because crystals are
a formation, right, right, So you you take atoms of
a certain type of variety UM. Usually ions are a
(09:27):
big early like predecessor atom of um crystals ions, right,
they're either positively or negatively charged atoms as an ion, right,
so they've got an extra electron. They are missing an electron.
Something went horribly awry with their electrons and it converted
this atom into a charged atom. And those ions can
(09:49):
attract other ions, they can repel certain kinds of ions,
and they start to clump together in a certain way,
and they will depending on the ion um or eventually
the atom. I don't think you have to have ions
to have crystals. I just think they're the most common
basic type of atom that you find in a crystal.
But depending on the type of ion or atom that
(10:12):
starts setting off this um aggregation or attraction of other
atoms into a clump, it's going to start to form
a three dimensional model what I spoke about earlier, what
are called unit cells, and that little three dimensional model
is going to start attracting more atoms, and another three
dimensional model the exact same variety is going to be built.
(10:35):
And now you've just gone from a unit cell, the
most basic unit of the three dimensional shape of a crystal,
into the lattice, which is the build out of that
that unit upon unit upon unit upon unit that just
can keep going and going virtually and definitely. Yeah, it's
almost like they these ions are attracted and when they
(10:59):
get there or they see what's going on, what kind
of party they're having, and they're like that looks great
to me. Yep, Like I'm gonna jump in there, and
why would I want to mess it up by being
any different? Yeah, I really feel like falling in line.
It's kind of a fastest piece of matter if you
think about it, a crystal. Yeah, And there were another
couple of decent descriptions um or metaphors, I guess in
(11:21):
this article in terms of long range order and short
range order. I thought that made a little bit of sense.
Um uh if if because crystals, like you said, can
it can be a single crystal, or it can be
a very large structure. And if it's a long range order,
they liken it to like a halftime band, all marching
(11:45):
in formation, like two people all together in synchronicity like that. Okay,
does that sound about right? Yeah? I just found that
deeply confusing, but I got it now once you explained it,
I got it. Uh. Short range order, on the other hand,
they like into that marching band, scattering around into smaller
(12:05):
sub units, and this is more like liquid crystal like
you would find in a TV monitor. Yeah. And so
from the research that I saw this, short range crystals
almost didn't even need to be mentioned in this UM
article because it has so few um it appears in
so few places that really, when you're talking about crystals,
(12:26):
it almost by definition has to have long range structure.
I mean you usually think almost always of crystals is
solid manner right exactly, um with with basically short ranges,
just this crystalline structure, the unit cell forms over a
few atoms, and anything beyond that is long range, and
that's when you start to get into the money. Crystals,
(12:48):
I guess is what you call them. Yeah, you want
to take a break. Sure you're feeling okay so far?
I'm all right. Yeah, me too. Man, Uh, we will
be right back, everybody. We're gonna go breathe into a
paper bag. Okay, we're back. We went through three paper bags.
(13:25):
It's so funny after eleven years, we still care enough
that we can feel like we're hanging on by our fingernails,
but we still pushed through and generally get it right.
I'm good with generally correct, right, Yeah, Um, most of
the time we get it right. There's there's that little
bit of impurity, and those impurities give the individual podcasts.
(13:47):
They're brilliant hues. That makes some jams very nice. So, um,
there's a little more to talk about about how crystals form.
Right again, when we're talking about crystals, I guarantee you
the thing coming into your mind is an amethyst or
maybe even you're you're savvy enough to know that precious
gems are also crystals, like sapphires or rubies or something
(14:08):
like that. Um, that's probably what's coming into your head
and what you're seeing there, what you're imagining this brilliant, beautiful, translucent,
uh perfect shape with a bunch of different facets that
are on display. That is, that's a kind of crystal.
But what you're talking about is a kind of crystal
(14:29):
that formed under ideal conditions. And those ideal conditions are
very rare, which is why gemstones tend to be pretty
rare more often than not. What what you will see
in nature or you know, just on the ground, or
you know, in some kids backpack. I don't know, I'm
grasping at straws right now. Um are what are called
poly crystals where the conditions that the crystals formed under
(14:52):
and we'll talk about how crystals form in a second,
but the conditions that they formed under were not ideal,
and there were a bunch of different kinds of ad
is present. And so rather than forming one beautiful single crystal,
because again, when you have this giant, beautiful tetrahedron of
amethyst in your hand, that is one that's considered one
single crystal, it's one giant crystal. If you have a
(15:16):
big rock with a bunch of like um, pyrite in
it just kind of sparkling back at you. What you're
holding is a countless number of individual crystals that all
kind of grew together, and rather than forming one beautiful crystal,
they formed one big lump or mass, and it's still
a bunch of crystals, and it's still as crystalline structure.
(15:38):
It's just multiple crystals, and it's called a poly crystal,
and that's what you see much more frequently, because again,
conditions for crystals to grow under are infrequently ideal. Right,
And this is where I step in and make the
one joke that I thought up during that which that
Tetrahydron of Amethysts was the best Yes album. Yeah, let's
(16:00):
a good one. Yes, I have to say, Yes did
second to Iron Maiden and Beautiful album covers. They were
pretty good. They had great ones. Um So, polychress, contrary
to what you might think or here or read, are
not stronger than single crystals because it's like, uh, I mean,
(16:21):
it kind of makes sense. If you're assembling a model
from a hundred pieces, it's probably not as strong as
something that's made from one thing because where they join,
it's gonna have weak points. That's a million percent right right,
Because again, if you if you realize that a beautiful
giant crystal is just one solid piece, those all those
little smaller crystals, they they're going to break apart much
(16:41):
more easily because they have weak spots. They're not joined
together with these amazing covalent or ionic bonds that are
holding that that single crystal together. So it makes sense
in that respect. So, um, let's talk about how crystals
are formed. Do you want to? There's really basically just
three ways that before and whether whether they're human made
(17:02):
or made in nature, they basically come about three different ways. Yeah,
And um, I'm gonna skip out of order here because
for the kids out there, you can actually grow a
crystal at home in pretty short order and it's pretty neat.
So if you are a kid, or if you're a
parent with some kids, here's what one kind of fun
thing that you can do. And this is how to
make a crystal out of a solution, which is one
(17:25):
of the three ways. Uh, you can actually grow a
sodium chloride salt crystal in just a few days. It's
not the kind of thing you need to wait around
like a year, four or millions of years. That's right.
So to do this, kids, you need get some whatever
kind of salt you can, but you can just get
regular sodium chloride, table salt, some distilled water, a glass,
(17:47):
uh like bell jar, any kind of glass is great, um,
and then a spoon. You stir salt into boiling hot
water until no more of it will dissolve, and you're
gonna start to see some crystal start starting to appear
at the bottom of this thing. And make sure the
water is as close to boiling as you can get.
Then you're gonna pour that solution into that clear jar
(18:08):
and you put the spoon there is just to make
sure the jar doesn't break. That always helps, okay. Is
that we've got to do a short stuff on the
physics of that someday. Yeah, yeah, I remember that was
an old like uh waiting tables trick when you made
ice coffee, which is just when what we did was
just pour hot coffee and a big thing ice. Sure,
(18:29):
well this is pre hot coffee cold brew. Yeah. Um.
So then you suspend a string, that string that I
told you about, uh into the jar from a spoon
and just laid across the top of the jar, so
it's hanging down in that solution and then just don't
touch it for a while and you will literally see
crystals forming on this string over the next few days. Yep,
(18:51):
it's really really cool. It is very cool. Um. I
saw another experiment you could do at home. It's got
a couple of extra steps, but you can make um
a beautiful kind a magenta colored crystal with um just
straight up album and a couple of things. You grow
a seed crystal and you use that you dangle it
like on a string, like you were saying, but it
(19:12):
actually grows more crystals up to it as well, So
you can grow the stuff at home. And both of
those are crystal grown from solution and crystal grown from solution.
Is like you were just saying. You put in salt
into hot water until you can't dissolve it anymore. That
means that the salt or the water has become saturated
(19:32):
with salt. No, it cannot hold any more salt, right, sorry,
t s. But that salt gotta go somewhere and it
will eventually be forced into a solid state, especially as
that liquid cools. Because water that's warmer or anything that's warmer,
means that that the atoms and the molecules are further apart,
(19:52):
which means there's more space for salt. But as that
water cools down, that space shrinks and that salt's gotta
go somewhere, so it turn into the solid state and
forms crystals. And it's that that happens with salt at
a relatively cool temperature at a relatively low pressure, you know,
basically sea level pressure on Earth. But that same thing
(20:15):
can happen under water and hydrothermal vents. It can happen
with magma inside the mantle of the Earth. Um, there's
there's the ship. The conditions can change, so you have
different temperatures, different pressures, different types of atoms, and they'll
form under those different conditions, different kinds of things. But
crystals can form anywhere. They can form on the surface
(20:38):
of the Earth again, in clouds and inside the Earth itself. Yeah,
And if you're going to grow from a solution like that,
like you do in your kitchen, you can produce crystals
much much faster, and produce bigger crystals than you can
with a vapor deposition, which is you know, snowflakes, which
we've talked about a lot on the show, which is
(20:59):
basically so vapor depic is basically the same thing. Instead
of a liquid solution becoming super saturated, a gaseous solution
has become super saturated saturated and so that the water
vapor can't the air can't hold anymore, so it pushes
it into a solid state and forms snow flakes. Yeah.
(21:21):
Then there's a third method, uh, from growth from melt,
which is really kind of interesting. And there's a few
different ways to do this too. Um. But basically what
you're doing is you're cooling a gas until it's a
liquid and then chilling that liquid until it starts that
you know, crystallization process. Uh. And there's there's a few ways.
(21:42):
There's one called crystal pulling or the here we go
zakrawl Ski method. Yeah. And this is this is a
human made method of creating crystals, right. Yeah. It was
named from a Polish scientist by the name of Za
karl Ski Kasimir funk Uh in nineteen fifteen. And this,
you know, all of these involved actual machines and this
(22:04):
you know when you hear about superconductors and stuff like that,
like this is these are man made things. Are human
made things, uh, And methods and processes that people figured
out a long long time ago, right, Crystal pulling is
pretty not so amazing. Did you see any videos on it? Yeah,
I watched some videos and looked at like some still
images of the machinery. It is pretty cool. So it's like,
(22:24):
do you do that science experiment that I found where
you created crystal and then you tie it to a
fishing line. You basically just hang it over the solution.
This is that's a very simple version of what they're
doing with crystal pulling. You're using a seed crystal that
is basically providing the structure for the solution below it.
You you just touch that seed crystal just to the solution,
(22:47):
and it basically sets off an attractive chain reaction that
creates a crystal. So you slowly raise the crystal upward
or that seed crystal upward, and the crystal follows it
out of the solution. Essentially. Yes, it is. That's another
reason why I love crystals. It's just the way that
(23:10):
they form is so astounding ly awesome. And and with
crystal pulling in particular, this is kind of an old technology.
I think it's from the early nineteen hundreds when it
was first invented, and um since then, they've gotten so
good at it, and it's so perfectly automated that they
can calculate how fast the crystal forms went under crystal pulling,
(23:35):
and so they will have the machine raise that seed
crystal at the rate of crystal formation. And now they
can get to places where they're forming um crystals that
have like, uh, there are a foot around in diameter
that that are just perfect, absolutely perfect crystals because also
the solution that they're using that they're dipping that that
(23:57):
seed crystal into has been purified, so it's the absolutely
pure version of whatever you're trying to make a crystal
out of. So, uh, say that you could make diamonds
out of this, you could. You would have pure carbon
in in a solution usually melted, and then you would
have a diamond um dangling down as the seed and
you would grow a seed diamond. That's not how you
(24:19):
can make diamonds, but that's how they that's what they
do with um silicon. Actually, yeah, and there's another method
um from from with the you know, the melting method
called the Bridgeman stock Barger method, named for Percy Bridgeman
and Donald stock Barger. I guess it's so hard g right. Sure,
he's stock Barger. He's the Art Garfunkle of the crystal
(24:41):
manufacturing world. And from what I got, this is used
when the crystal pulling method isn't so great for certain materials. Right,
And in this case, you take it's sort of like
take an ice cream cone shape, a conical shape, and
you lower it, uh, fill it with molten material, lower
(25:01):
it into a cooler area, so it cools from that
very bottom tip, just the tip, just the tip upward. Um,
and it just kind of the same way. It just
sort of works this way up joining the party saying
this looks good. I like the way you guys are
shaped and ordered. I'm just gonna jump right in. Yeah.
So as the tip of that cone goes further downward
into the colder temperature, that crystal grows upward in the tube,
(25:26):
right yeah. And then eventually you have a whole tube
that's just one one giant crystal, that's right. And then
you think, how am I going to get that out
of here? Oh? Yeah, I hadn't really pluck this out
all the way. I just got a beautiful crystal trapped
into a canonical tube. I'm sure this, I'm sure it
opens don't you think, Well, maybe that's where what was
(25:46):
the second name of that, I can't remember Donald, this
is his first name. Well maybe that's where Donald. That
was his big contribution was maybe having a hatch on
the back. Yeah, I imagine there's something like that. So
if I were going to put my money down on
the best human made synthetic crystal um process, it would
be epitaxi and in particular UM molecular deposition, molecular molecular
(26:12):
beam epitaxi. Yeah, and this is one again where you're growing.
I mean, all of these kind of start with a
base crystal and it grows from there. And in this case,
the base has to be just like atomically flat. That's
a good band name too. Atomically flat is pretty good
(26:33):
not bad math rock. Yeah, of course. So with the
with the reason it has to be atomically flat is
because you want to build from a pure crystal structure.
And again, if you introduce atoms, especially like um, previously
sordid atoms, like the kind of atoms you want UH
(26:53):
to build this crystal structure out of um, they will
fall into this arrangement when they're introduced to a crystalline structure.
That's already there, and then they layer by layer, atomic
layer by atomic layer will form a crystal. Uh. That
that's built out. And with molecular beam in particular, you're
shooting a beam of atoms across this perfectly flat substrate,
(27:18):
and um, they are. They're introduced in a way so
they don't collide with one another. They just click click
click right into place. Yeah. Again this There were a
couple of decent um examples in here, and this one
they said, if you think of a wrack of billiard balls,
and if you just throw a ball on top of that,
it will come to rest somewhere, you know, who knows where,
(27:39):
but somewhere between those other balls. It's not gonna It
would be pretty amazing if it just sat directly on
top of one of the balls, but that's not gonna happen.
It's gonna find its place where it fits best. It
gets in where it fits in. Yeah. Um. And then
that was from roundabout. Uh. Then there's chemical vapor death position,
which is the same thing, but instead of a beam
(27:59):
of molecules that you're sending over that substrate, you're shooting vapor.
You're just blowing vapor over it. And that way the
atoms kind of link up too. Yeah, and that's faster, right,
it's faster. And that's what they used for synthetic diamonds. Now,
I know I needed it yesterday. Remember the diamonique from
(28:20):
the nineties. I don't remember diamonique. Remember diamonoid and diamels
it's all the same, I'm sure, yeah, or cubic or conia. Yeah,
those were probably just all trade names, right, I would guess,
so shure um diamonique just always stuck with me. Just
sounded so fancy. It's a nice name. Um. And then lastly,
there's liquid phase epitaxi, which is pretty awesome. So imagine
(28:43):
a solution and you have a um that perfectly flat
atomic substrate crystal, and you just lifted up out of
the solution, and as it comes up out of the solution,
a crystal just forms out of nothing. Amazing. Oh my goodness,
I can't take a chuck. You want to take a break. Yeah,
(29:06):
we'll take another break and we'll talk about jimstones and
then crystal healing and what that's all about. Right after this. Okay, dude,
(29:33):
I should say I was at UM the Smithsonian the
other day. You know, I went up to d C
because to hear Jeff Bezos delivers news about Blue Origin
landing on the Moon. It was awesome. It was really cool,
Like he was up there on stage and um, it
was probably a room of hundred hundred fifty people maybe,
(29:53):
and um, behind him, the curtain comes down and there's
a full scale model of the Lunar Lander he's gonna
send up in like three years. It's pretty cool. Everyone
gasp yes and clapped appropriately. So. But um, so, while
I was there, I killed some time at the Museum
of Natural History, and uh, I was just in trance
(30:15):
that as a matter of fact, we're doing this episode
because of their the crystal um display there. I was like,
have we never done one on crystals? And I thought, no,
we haven't, and and then I thought, well, we really should.
And then I thought, well, let's go get a sandwich
in the meantime. And I wasn't there to knock you
over the head with a rubber mallet. Yeah, to knock
me out of the loop and be like, what happened?
(30:36):
I don't know, man, you just passed out. He had
a sandwich in his hand, but the mineral um, the
mineral in crystal and gem collection they have there is
just amazing. It's just so beautiful. It's like just a
little wondering and you're just wandering around from case to
case staring at crystals. It's really neat, and there's one
(30:56):
in particular that really caught my fancy. It's, uh, they
just look like ordinary dumb rocks or whatever. And then
the light goes out in a black light comes on
in this little display case and they're fluorescent crystals embedded
in the rocks. And then the light comes back on
and then it goes back out and then back gut
and it's really amazing to watch. And then the light
(31:16):
came on and your pants were down, do you know,
fallow my own everybody. I'm just selling this whole thing.
So jim Stones, like we said a couple of times,
they are crystals, um. And here's the deal, Like depending
on the type of um. I mean, we're not calling
them imperfections or I guess impurities is flaws, yeah, flaws,
(31:39):
shameful flaws. Yeah, that's where they get their color. So
like a ruby and a sapphire, they're both corundum, but
rubies are red because of a little bit of chromium
that replaces a little bit of aluminum aluminum in the structure,
whereas sapphire comes blue because of iron and titanium instead.
Right wise, they're kind of the same thing. Yeah, just
(32:02):
somehow some of those um, some chromium or some iron
or titanium atoms got sucked into the mix and they said, Hey,
I kind of like this crystal structure thing. I'm gonna
hang out here. And they did, and they said, I'm
gonna turn this thing blue. Watch this. Yeah, And even
the name crystal, didn't that come from the Greek? From quartz?
It's yeah, that's what they called courts was crystallos, which
(32:24):
is cold drop, which we take to mean as ice um.
And I read in this article. I didn't see it
anywhere else that the apparently the Greeks thought courts was
ice that have frozen so solid it would never melt.
It sounds a little dumb to me for the Greeks.
I think the Greeks were a little hipper than that, um,
because I mean, just think for a second Greeks and
(32:47):
they would say, yes, you're right, this is something else entirely.
But that's where crystal came from. Was that Greek word crystallos. Yeah,
and courts. I mean, like amethyst is a kind of quartz.
It's just courts with the right kind of impurity that
gives it color. Yeah. And apparently they have not figured
out exactly what gives amethysts its purple color. Um. There's
(33:08):
a debate over whether it's iron oxide or manganese or
some sort of non specific hydrocarbons. Um. But if you
take amethyst, so remember, crystal is just the chemistry can
be exactly the same, like diamonds and graphite, but the
conditions are different under which they form, and so they
form different crystalline structures and appear to be totally different
(33:31):
from one another. Same thing happens with amethyst. If you
take amethyst and the conditions are different in that the
temperatures are much greater, it doesn't form purple amethysts. It
forms yellow citrine, which is pretty pretty amazing. I love crystals,
and I mean we could probably go on and on
(33:51):
with different types of gemstones, but I think everyone gets
the point. Yeah, yeah, the I think they do as well.
Like you could take any gemstone and break it down
and explain exactly what gives it it's hugh and uh,
but but I think it's I think it's all here right. So, um,
that is how crystals form. And for a very long
(34:15):
time people just kind of appreciated crystals as um for
their beauty or their shape or something like that. One
thing we didn't say that, I think we should say
Chuck is a crystal. It forms under ideal conditions, will
take one of those seven shapes you mentioned, um, but
the since the conditions are rarely ever ideal, they'll actually
(34:36):
form other shapes under different conditions, things like plate shaped
or table shaped or um needle shaped a a sicular
acicular um. So there's other shapes they can take. And
people have appreciated these things all the time, Like if
you've ever looked at it crystal, it's just like a
shock of what looks like incredibly sharp needles, or just
(34:58):
a tumble of perfectly shape cubes growing out of some
lumpy rock or something like that. There's a lot to
to appreciate their um and if you if you subscribe
to crystal healing, which has become a thing again. Um,
this has been going on, this idea that these things
are not only beautiful, but that they contain some sort
of energy that humans can harness to uh maybe straighten
(35:21):
our own energy out or overcome disease or something like that.
Um that this has been going on for thousands and
thousands of years. Yeah, so just a quick shout before
we get fully into crystal healing and that's all about. Um.
Everyone want to encourage everyone to go look up some
images of uh the Queva de Los crystals, the Cave
(35:42):
of Crystals in Chihuahua, Mexico. Unbelievable if you want to
see like some of the most beautiful stuff you've seen
in your life that looks like something from a movie,
Like it looks like the Fortress of Solitude uh in Superman. Yeah,
just unbelievable. Um, these these images of Spelunker and like
these caves where some of these crystals are believed to
(36:04):
have been growing for like half a million years. It's
really really something else. Yeah, that was one thing. So
we talked about how fast that they can grow. Um,
they can also take a very very long time. Those
are the big ones. Yeah, they're the big ones. But also, um,
some crystals form just by nature slowly, whether they're bigg
or small. So like garnet in particular, forms atom layer
(36:28):
atomic layer by atomic layer year by year, and so
it can take ten million years for just a two
centimeter garnet to grow over time. Amazing. So, like I
was saying with this with crystal healing in particular, Chuck,
these things are not only awesome or amazing or beautiful, um,
they also supposedly contain some sort of energy. Yeah. I mean,
(36:49):
this is where it gets a little hinky, because this
is one of those um things that Western medicine, for
lack of a better term, has pretty much generally poo
pooed uh as pseudoscience. But the idea is that these
crystals UM can carry and transfer energy that can facilitate
healing of like disease. Let's say, so you would book
(37:13):
a session with a crystal healer UM. And we'll get
into whether or not those people are credential at all
here in a minute. But UM, and they will lay
you down on a table and they will put different
crystals um. Some crystals facilitate some sort of energy, others
facilitate another sort of energy, and they don't all agree
(37:34):
on on that as well. We should point out that's
kind of a big red flag. It's a big red flag. Uh.
And then these crystals are placed on your body in
various points, and um, they will tell you that that
will uh bring in good healing energy and channel out
bad diseased energy. Yeah, and and those those points on
(37:54):
your body are actually pretty specific and they follow the
Buddhist or the Hindu chakras. Right. So you've got one
on the top of your head, you have one on
your forehead, on your throat, your chest, somewhere around your heart,
your stomach, your gut, and then around your groin for
your root chakra. And there's a different color um stone
that's supposed to be associated with each of the chakras.
(38:16):
And there's different stones that can be roughly of that
color that you could use for that chakra. And then
like you were saying, they they free up energy. Like
according to this this idea, energy can get kind of
gunked up. And if you have a bunch of negative
energy hanging around, um, it's gonna just do you wrong
until you get rid of it. With crystal therapy that
(38:37):
kind of stuff. UM, some crystals you can just put
in a room and they'll help direct energy better. Like, UM,
I can't remember what crystal I saw, but it's it's
it's known for its properties of facilitating communications. So really
we should have one in here for me and Jerry. Um. Like,
if people are talking to one another and they don't
(38:57):
understand what the other one saying, this crystal will kind
of here that Um. And so you are you're you're
pink turmaline chuck. UM. So like this is the kind
of this is the idea behind crystal energy. And as
I was saying a minute ago, if you follow this
kind of stuff, there's a whole crystal lore and supposedly
(39:18):
this dates back thousands of years to the Sumerians, the Egyptians,
the Greeks all use crystals for healing. The problem is,
there's absolutely no evidence that that's the case at all. Um.
People have been writing about crystals since the the the
classical Romans, but they didn't talk about the energy properties
they had. They just described them and tried to classify them.
(39:41):
It wasn't until like the seventies or eighties that that
the idea that they contain energy really seemed to catch on. Yeah,
and there haven't been scientific studies really done because um,
mainstream science just kind of doesn't study stuff like that.
But they have done some other kind of studies notably,
almost twenty years ago, UM there was a study done
(40:03):
at the University of London where they got how many
people was eighty people together and they said, here's what
we're gonna do, UM, go meditate for five minutes. Hold
this UH quartz crystal in your hand. They're not gonna
they don't say this, of course, but some of those
are real crystals. Some of them are completely faked, but
(40:24):
they all believed that they're real. They were lied to,
They were blatantly liked. Half of the participants, forty of
them were primed beforehand to say, you know, just think
about any effects and see if you can notice any
effects that these crystals are having. And so after meditating
they did a Q and A session UH in a
questionnaire and said basically like, how do you feel the
(40:48):
crystal affected this healing session? And they found out that
the effects reported by those who held the fake crystals
while meditating were no different at all than people who
had the real crystals. UM. Both reported feeling like a
warm sensation in their hand holding either the fake of
the real crystal, and both reported feeling an increased overall
(41:09):
feeling of well being. But the people who have been
primed those forty two, you know, basically like think about
how you're feeling and how this crystal is making you feel.
They reported stronger effects than those who had not been primed.
So it all sounds like placebo. Well that's yeah, that's
what they attributed to. The whole thing is placebo, which
(41:30):
as far as Western medicines concerned, placebo is great. You know,
if it's if you have some sort of ailment that
this can help you get over through the placebo effect, fantastic.
They they seem to kind of walk a fine line
with that though, and that they are worried that people
will say, oh, I'll just use crystals sat her cancer
(41:50):
rather than chemotherapy, um, and that probably won't work. The
placebo effect can't take on absolutely everything that ails you um.
And so if crystals are based on placebo, that's one
way they could be dangerous, but for the most part
is considered pretty harmless. Yeah. I just know that you're
going in to see someone who is not like licensed
(42:13):
or uh certainly not medically licensed. But I think generally
in all states there's no like licensing of crystal healers.
There's no organization looking over that. Now, I think there
are some organizations but the that that do um accredit
individual healers. But those are organizations aren't accredited for themselves.
(42:33):
So it's like at some point down the line, some
like the the accreditations is being pulled out of the air. Yeah.
And then there's this other thing that's a little more
troublesome when it comes to babies. Um, there's this belief
by some that baltic amber necklaces will help your baby's teething.
Have you heard of that or your toddler's teething? No,
(42:55):
I hadn't heard this, but um, the idea is that
something called uh succinic acid is released. It's pain relieving,
and it's released from the baltic amber because your child
is wearing this necklace and the skin of the child
is heating up this baltic amber and it's being released
uh and like gathered into the bloodstream and making your
(43:18):
little kids teething better. Right, But there's and there is
scenic acid in baltic amber. It's true, but apparently it's
just like one of those kernel of true things because
it's not it's not been shown to be able to
be released from the baltic amber. By saliva or body heat. So,
and it's dangerous because you should not put a necklace
(43:39):
around your baby or toddler's neck when they sleep because
their um are they put stuff in their mouth. Well,
that's what for them to teeth on. Are these little
necklaces made of this? These stones? Oh? I didn't think
they're supposed to chew on them. I thought i'd just
laid against their throat. No, I think they're supposed to
chew on them. Mm hmmm, that's what I got. I'll
(44:00):
have to look that up. I thought the idea was
it laid against their skin and it was absorbed into
the skin through body heat. I think that's part of it.
But I think it also they chew on it too,
That's what I got from it. Boy, you're really doing
it wrong if you keep your baby necklace to chew
on in their sleep, right. So, so um, I have
(44:23):
no issues with that, though, I should say I used
to carry around to crystal um in my pocket all
the time. Yeah, yeah, all the time for years and
years and years, and like I don't recall really thinking
it contained any energy or anythinking. It was more like
just a neat thing to just kind of rub kind
of like a fidget spinner, but but much prettier to
(44:45):
look at. You know, just just something to have in
your hand or whatever, keep it in your pocket, like twenties.
I think that explains a lot. Yeah sure, So why
what age is appropriate for carrying a crystal around your pocket? Okay? Okay,
that's when that happens. That's when you listen to the
doors and you burn incense and stuff like that. That's right. Um.
(45:10):
So yeah, more power to you if you're into crystals.
Just don't don't shun medical advice if you have a
real big problem. No, definitely don't. Um. And that's Oh.
I have one more thing about crystals, Chuck, you got
a second. Okay, remember how I said that graphite and
diamonds are the exact same thing. They're just arranged differently
crystal wise. I saw in a couple of different places
(45:34):
that a diamond, since they're formed under tremendous temperature and pressure,
when they're taken out of that environment and brought up
to Earth, they will, over a long enough time period,
melt into graphite. Amazing. It's just too long of a
time period for humans to ever witness it. Hmm. Yeah.
(45:55):
So that's crystals. Get you to the Smithsonium. Whenever you
get a chance, go to the Museum of Natural History
and just gaze and wonder and also wonder how your
pants got down when the light came back on in
the fluorescent mineral display. Because, as I said that, it's
time for listener mail. Yeah, which one should I do here?
How about nicknames? Hey, guys, really enjoying the short stuffs
(46:23):
and the nicknames episode was no exception, um, But I
was surprised that you didn't go into the origin of
the term nickname. I didn't think about that. I didn't either.
I felt pretty shame. Yeah, I'd always assumed this might
sound silly, that the first true nickname was Nicholas, shortened
to nick, so they called them nicknames. But she did
a little searching and said that it's not quite right.
Looks like the term started as a Middle English word
(46:44):
in the undreds H E K. E. Dash name pronounced
nick name, meaning additional name. So over time, as people
said an nickname became nickname and it's nickname. We didn't
have time to look this one up. But I'm the
trusting Liz. Yeah, Liz, I hope you're not steering us wrong. Yeah,
(47:07):
she said, my husband's name is Nick. This is what
got me thinking of it, and I jumped to that conclusion.
You could give Nick a shout on us on your show,
would be great. His birthday is next week, which means
by now, it's probably a couple of weeks ago. So
happy birthday, Nick, Happy birthday. Uh. And they are counting
down the weeks until their twins are born. Liz is
(47:28):
expecting a baby girl and a baby boy in late June,
their first children. And she said, We've been listened to
a lot of your show, well pregnant for getting Mozart
and Beethoven. I'm convinced at listening to stuff you should
know in utero makes baby smarter. Of course it does.
And that's from Liza Nick. And babies that will be named, uh,
Josh and Chuck and Jerry, that's right. Yeah, they need
(47:51):
to have triplets, huh. I think Chuck and Jerry is
a good name. And Josh, yeah, the outsider Josh. No,
it could be Josh and Jerry or Josh and Chuck.
What if? What if both of them's middle name is Jerry, Josh,
Jerry and Chuck Jerry? And I think that sounds great.
I think it does too well. Thanks again, Liz. I
(48:12):
hope you're right on this one, because if not, we're
going to have follow up. Listen to yourmail from other
people who are pointing out how you're wrong. Either way,
best wishes on your new expanded family and happy birthday, Nick.
If you want to get in touch with this, like
Liz did, you can go on to stuff you Should
Know dot com, check out our social links, or you
can send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeart
(48:33):
radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
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Josh Clark
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