Hi, everybody. Chuck Bryant here of Stuff you Should Know and welcome to the weekend. It's Saturday, and you know what that means. It's time for another Stuff you Should Know select episode where Josh and I picked our favorites from the past one thousand plus episodes and repost them and hopes that you might discover something old. Here we go something old? Is that a good way to sell something? That's why we call them classics and selects. July twenty nine, two thousand ten, was a very special day because that is the day we released the episode How Traffic Works. Yes, traffic, not drug trafficking, but traffic, car traffic. We all hate it, but you know what, maybe you should understand it a little better. Really interesting, and I believe Josh even coined his own term. If I'm not mistaken for this one, a break a bubble? Dare I say? Does my memory serve me? We'll find out by listening right now to How Traffic Works. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles Precious Bryant? How you doing, Precious? This is the podcast based on the novel Push by Sapphire. Yeah, that is absolutely right, word for word. Right, Jerry just got back because you did a spoiler. Yeah, for Precious I've known for spoilers, aren't I? At least two? It was Boiling Home. No, there was a there was um six ft under. There was another one I spoiled too, wasn't there? Yeah, there was one you spoiled That was a really old movie, and I was like, come on, that movie is like fifteen years old. There's a statute of limitation, was it, Buck Rubon's I Yeah, I think that was it? Yeah, me too, Chuck. Yes, have you ever been in traffic? That's the best I got. How do you set this up? Chuck? Do you like Steve Winwood? Yeah? You know I was going to make a Traffic the band comment. Have you ever seen the low spark of high heeled boys? Yeah? Yeah, that's it. I'm seriously, I'm like trying to do you know he was like when he first joined Traffic, thinks a he's a lothario. Yeah, and by that I mean in Prodigy. Yeah, yeah, Traffic. I've been in traffic, buddy, you Yes, I have actually been in traffic. Um, happens a lot because I don't ride Marta. You ride are fine, fine, crippled public transit system here in Atlanta. I'm never in traffic anymore. It's it's really been a huge difference in my life. Yeah. Well, I don't ride Marta because, um, I usually I tend to avoid the smell of urine, and UM, reading while moving makes me sick. So I'm you know, plus, I I value I used to value being able to smoke. Yeah, dude, I was just about to say that's why I used to drive. Yeah, and now I'm just like, I just do it out to have it. But I get caught in traffic a lot, and it stinks. I don't see you on a public transport. You're not You're not that kind of social No. That's the other thing too, It's like, oh, hey, we worked together, let's talk the whole time. No, I don't. I wear my sunglasses. It can be dark and raining, and I've told everyone here that if I have my shades on, that means the office is closed. Nice, the store is shut down. That's very nice, stor it looks super cool. Alright. So I'm a jerk that doesn't talk to coworkers. Now moving on, buddy, It's okay, Chuck. Do you remember when we recorded quicksand yes, do you remember how we said that there's like a finite amount of stuff out there about quick thing, because there's a finite amount to know. There's a finite amount to know about traffic. But there's tons of information out there. Yeah, lots of little side things to know for sure. Yeah, Because ultimately, traffic happens in two ways. One is, there is simply congestion. There's just too many cars on the road to carry to carry the flow of traffic quickly. Right. The other way is there is some unpredictable event that somebody's pulled over, somebody's broken down, there's a wreck, whether maybe an event that falls under congestion, police have pulled over a traffic a speeder. People always slow down for that, and that's it. That's it. Those are pretty much the two broad categories that traffic can be created, right, um. And what happens in each of those events is somebody upfront puts on their brakes and that that one press of the brakes travels backward all the way through right when you have a bunch of different cars and different lengthes doing that at the same time, you have traffic you know what that's called traffic wave. Yes, that's true. It's a domino effect. It's very easy, it is. And I came up with my own idea of just scribing this. You're ready by okay, So what I came up with is called the traffic bubble, okay by Josh Clark. So the traffic bubble happens when somebody is driving along and presses their brakes for whatever reason. And just imagine that when they press that break, the big bubble grows over the car, okay, And it starts very slowly traveling backward. And each car behind that car that's that created the traffic bubble isn't allowed to accelerate again until the traffic bubble is passed through them, right, But then the further back the traffic bubble goes, the more it dissipates, until eventually the people far enough back don't have to go through the traffic bubble and they're not affected by it. And does the bubble pass through the front cars to where they can then again accelerate. Is that how you see it as a moving bubble? Yeah? Over the bubble travels backwards over the traffic, and then once it passes over you, you're allowed to accelerate again. I believe you're just going to turn my friends the traffic bubble like that jerk science or no break bubble, that's what I called it. Okay, breaking bubble. Yeah, like a piping effect. I hate that guy and he hates you. I don't care so traffic Josh, you want, We might as well thrown a few stats here. Yeah, this one's that heavy. It is. This this article by our colleague Jonathan Strickland at tech Stuff. Yeah, the bald this podcast on staff here, Uh, what's a good stat here? The estimated traffic costs If you wanna talk about cost of traffic in about five years ago, they estimated about seventy eight billion dollars. And that's only fuel and waste of time. They don't take into account like pollution, environmental damage, health costs due to pollution. I mean it would really add up if you got to, you know, include those things. Yeah, and um with extra gas that was bought in two thousand seven, right, isn't that the year that studies connected or covered UM we in the US bought two point nine billion billion extra gallon of oil because of traffic, and the annual cost for each individual motorists in America was like seven ten bucks just sitting there, just from traffic, not from you know, the gas that you need to actually get from point A to point B, but the extra gas used from idoling. Yeah, crazy, yeah, And I believe l A tops it out obviously at about two weeks a year you potentially spend sitting in your car and traffic. Yeah. L A has um. There's this group called the Texas Transportation Institute, and I think they're out of A and M. Maybe they're awesome. They they they are like the leaders and studying and understanding and trying to mitigate traffic, right um. And they came up with this thing called the travel time index, right yeah. So basically, you take the amount of time it takes and it's specific to each city, and it's for each city. It's not compared from city to city. It's compared to a certain time in one city to another time in the same city. So in an off peak time, say you can travel the speed limit, it takes you one hour to get from point A to point B in Los Angeles, it would take one point nine two hours doubles your time basically during yeah, during rush hour, So it takes twice as long to get from point A to point B during rush hours compared to off peak. That's the travel time index. Yeah, and you know you have to do this anywhere you live where there's heavy traffic. But when I lived in l A, I used to have to always think, all right, well, this would take me forty five minutes normally. So and when you work in the movie business, you you can't be late. That's just not one of the things you do. You've got to be there on time or early. So you're like, well, it's supposed to take me forty five minutes, I'm gonna give myself like two hours. I gave myself more than double to get anywhere I needed to go. That's that's very smart. It's awful, is what it is. Yeah. L A's kind of bad, but chuck, we have it pretty bad too. Yeah, Land is really bad. We're among like probably I think the top three or four. I heard a year or so ago that Atlanta had toppled l A, but I never saw any citation. Well, all those it depends on how they are rating. It. Some they rade the differently, like the amount of time you spend in your car commuting or the amount of time you sit idling, So it kind of depends. But Atlanta's way up there, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco actually think is absent from that. Oh really, I think that they have made some moves that have kind of mitigated traffic and gotten them off some of the I know, the Big Dig was messing everything up. The Big Dig was just killing people. Yeah, and d C is awful. Have you ever driven around there? Uh? No, I haven't. You was talking about how especially during the summer, during the travel or the tourist season, it's just mind numbing it is. Yeah, I mean way out into the suburbs in Virginia and Maryland sitting there. Yeah. You know what they did in l A that I saw one time that I had never seen was I was going down the highway one day and I noticed everyone was slowing down. And I looked up ahead on the expressway and they were to California Highway patrol cars doing huge slow ses back and forth on the six lanes of expressway, not letting, like keeping everyone back like a nask, like a like a paste. Yeah, like a pace car. But you know they weren't driving straight. They were driving these big s. Is like, don't go buy me. I've never seen that before in my life. What would have made it even funnier is if they've been driving those ses with their hands out their window and their guns just shooting into the area while they were doing it. That would really say, don't drive past me. Yeah, that would have been great. And apparently that was they do that. It's a I don't know what they call it, but that's too slow everyone down. It's called being a yes. And on that note, my friend Derek has a joke about Atlanta traffic, and he's right, because Atlanta before their traffic, everyone's driving really really what fast. Yeah, that's one of the great characteristics about it LANDA as far as i'm can, you go as fast as you can. I mean, the average um flow of traffic, I would say it's about seventy miles an hour around here, and that's with like a lot of people all around you. Yeah, everybody's bumper to bumper going at least seventy and the cops don't pull you over unless you're going over seventy and even then like, it's usually like you're going eighty or ninety when you get pulled over because everybody else is going seventy. Right, And that's my buddy Derek's joke is in Atlanta, and it's really true. It's not a joke. Everyone drives as fast as they can every day until someone and then someone recks, right, and then traffic backs up every single day. That's Atlanta traffic. Are we done? So let's just sit here and do traffic stories about what what angers us? So check. There's a lot of smart people who study traffic because like you said, there's um, what was it, how much money in two eight billion just from fuel and wasted time? Because think about it, a person's time is money, right, And if you're sitting in traffic, unless you're one of those jerks like me who has an iPhone that emails while he's driving, then you're wasting money, right. Um. And actually there's this there's a group called Commute Solutions are out of Santa Cruz and they calculated the actual cost per mile of driving, not just traffic, but driving to each person is one point nineteen one dollar nineteen cents per mile. Yeah, and that includes everything I don't know how they came up with that number, but check it out. Well, if we're talking about highways and stats, we might as well talk about the same. Texas group did a study and um they found that traffic over the past years increased and by they predict it will go up another And here's what's remarkable. One only one of all our roads are highways, yet they shoulder half the traffic, half the car travel. Yeah. Crazy, it is crazy, And you don't usually think about when you think about traffic. I usually think about the highway myself, although I rarely get on the highway anymore. It's all surface streets that I take to and from work. Yeah, what do you go? Duid hills? Okay? I go basically up Piedmont um. But it's it's traffic every day. But I don't think of it as traffic. And I think of traffic, I think of seventy five at rush hour. And just like UH exit ramps backed up, the the thing is is our surface streets are also intended to handle overflow of highway traffic. Right, not just people who are backed up from the exit ramp back onto the street, but I mean people who are making a con just decision like me to find a different way that doesn't have anything to do with the highway. Right, And they found that if you want to widen a highway, I think we talked about this in like the urban planning one um that when you when you widen the highway, Um, there's something called latent demand. It's a theory that if you want in the highway, people like me are going to be like, oh well, now there's a leven lanes instead of five, so I'll just hop on the highway. And so the demand increases in step with the widening of the lanes. So it actually doesn't mitigate anything by adding more lanes to a highway, right. I think they said the only way that will work is if they outpaced demand with lanes, and that just doesn't happen. There's too many cars expensive, But that kind of makes sense to throw that money then instead into upfront costs for a light rail system, you know, hippie. Actually I'm still holding up for personal rapid transit. That was a palette in me podcast, but it was interesting. It's a good one. Uh RAMT metering. If if you're talking about solutions, that's another one. And they had these in l A. And they have them here in Atlanta. Now. It's where when you go to get on the highway. Now they have stoplights that just allow like one car through every few seconds. So you know, when you get on at Freedom Parkway, I used to fly around that curve it was fun and jump into traffic and squeeze in however I could. And that's you know, I was one of those jerks causing traffic. Well, I think anybody entering is that, because again with traffic, especially with just straight up congestion, there's just too many cars in one place, especially when you have a line of traffic and then more people directly adding to that lane. Yeah. Right, But RAMT metering really really works. They did a study in Minnesota. They have four d and thirty RAMT meters and in two thousand they shut them all down for seven weeks and during that time traffic accidents increased. And then afterward they re reinstituted it and they saw the capacity increased by fourteen percent, and they walked away from that project going like with their hands in their pockets. Yeah, like, we should probably not tell anybody about that. Yeah, I was trying to do a Minnesota accent. But that was pretty good. I couldn't do it. All I said was, oh no, it wasn't bad though. That's how they say it. H O V lanes is another thing that they've done pretty much countrywide. Carpool lanes as help. Yeah, I always forget when I have another person in the car, though. Uh yeah, I'll get like halfway where I'm going and say, oh man, let's get in the carpool lane. Yeah, I have to say though. The h O V lane, to me, it's it's an extension of the fast lane. So you got the fast lane and then you have the h O V lane, And I hate it when it's the fast lane is just the fast ling. The HOV lane is like, I drive as slow as I want, but I have, you know, four people in my car. It makes it difficult. It's it's kind of like the h O V lane to me, is you have two or more people, you're willing to drive ten miles faster than anybody else on the highway. Agreed, And since we talked about pet peeves in our last podcast, My one of my largest pet peeves is when I'm sitting in traffic and I'll see people speeding by me in the h OV lane by themselves. Nothing bothers me more than people that think the rules don't apply to them. I hate that. I hate those people, or people who um use the shoulder and just drive along in traffic as far as they can to get like fifty cars ahead. Yeah. I almost got plowed over in l A one time. I was getting out to get in the regular exit lane and almost got creamed by a truck that was on the shoulder, and I screamed at him that he almost killed me, and he says, what are you a cop? That's l a for you. It was like, he literally almost killed me. What are you a cop? If you're a cop, you'd be making lazy ss is in front of try ands firing my gun into the air. Exactly. What else, Josh, Uh, there's matting lanes. We already talked about that, But there's that one. Then there's um probably the most uh contentious idea cones shim pricing, which is basically taxing people to drive. And there's a guy named Alistair Darling. I don't know if he's still the Transportation secretary, but he's something of a rock star in the transportation world because he was a huge proponent of this, and he said in England, yeah, he was the British Transportation secretary. He basically said, you know, cars exact a toll on the environment and on the road, um, just by driving on him, So we should charge people to drive on the roads. What he failed to mention is that we already do. There are things called taxes, and those are meant to pay for the roads. Right, he's forgetting about you know, all the other misused money. Um. But they did actually have one in Great Britain. Do they still chuck? No, I don't think they ever instituted. They had a pilot program from two thousand three to seven and it worked like a champ for him in London at least. Yeah, there was a thirty percent dropping congest shin decrease in in fossil fuel consumption, decrease in CEO two emissions. So like in London, Singapore, Stockholm, San Francisco, San Francisco, the Institute one No, San Francisco is studying a New York Bloomberg has proposed it and they've studied it. And I just pulled this from this week. Actually, Lord Adonis is actually he's the Transport Secretary unless it's a new guy. What was your guy? His name is Lord Adonis. Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary came up with a new hotel student. Yeah, that's where Joshua be staying in New York under Lord uh he. It says it's ruled out the introduction of a national road pricing for the next parliament. But they uncovered that civil servants are still involved with the project and spending money on research even though they supposedly took it off the table. It was kind of a secret that they were still like tinkering with Oh. I thought you were like saying this these board paying for this research o their own paychecks. No, but they've sunk seven point two million pounds that I guess the public didn't know. They thought it was off the table. So they're kind of under some hot water, in some hot water. They're they're in some deep quicksand yeah, they said, Golden Brown and Alista Darling have been caught red handed planning a spy in the sky system A spy in the sky. Nice. Yeah, yeah, because I guess we should probably explain congestion pricing basically every car on the road. I guess when you would go get your vehicle tag or something. You also get a radio frequency identifier, right, and as you're driving, some satellite is tracking you, or you pass through some sector or something like that, and all of a sudden you're being you're in a toll area. And much like say, uh, one of those toll passes, UM, you are sent a bill or there's like you have to set up like a credit card or a bank account, attach that to your to your tag, and it just draws money from it based on however much you drive in there. In Singapore, when they first instituted, there's an actually UM they had a flat rate for downtown, which is the most congested during peak hours. You had to pay three bucks to just drive around downtown and you could drive around all you wanted. Uh. And as they as as they've gotten better at it, they're they're getting a little fancy schmancy with it, you know, like, UM, well, if you want to drive here, it's a dollar seventy five for twenty minutes, but you can back, you know, two blocks over and it's just fifty cents and so on. Well, that's one of the rubs that UM. One of the big things is in England at least in other places too. I think they've suggested paying more for peak hour so be flexible in your work schedule. But then, of course people that are a friend of the poor say that's progressive taxation because white color dudes can be all flexible and work from home, but the poor have to get up and go to work during peak hours. So you're they're basically paying for the road that the rich man drives on. Exactly, That's exactly right, And that's the big problem. I mean, aside from having to pay to drive with with a with a congestion tax. Yeah, um, what else can you do? Chuck? And also remember we were talking it's this isn't just highways surface streets to everybody. Don't get all anxious. We're talking about surface streets as well. Yes, uh, surface streets. You get a lot of suburban sprawl, you know, like here in Atlanta, you've got like out in Roswell twenty years ago it was it was desolate cow patties and now it's all uh, you know, young families moving out there who don't want to be around urban types. Yeah, and you have a lot of a lot more cars. Um, you have again that that one of two ways that you can cause traffic. Just put more cars on a road than it than it's designed to hand and and out in the booneties like that. They weren't built for you know, they were built for farmland. All of a sudden they got these suburban people moving out there. And so, yeah, traffic lights is something they can do. Yeah, this one disturbed me. Um that even the So you have a traffic light that is on a timer, right, which is especially when they're poorly timed. Yes, Yeah, decator is awful. There's another one for the Piedmont Park parking deck and it just does whatever it wants, no matter what time and day, and if there's a car, they're not and people are just stopped in either direction, right, And um, that's a timed light, and time lights are awful, They're awful. Right. Then you have um sensored lights, which are awesome, right because you just come up in the way to your car triggers it good. Yeah, Or you have a mixed system that uses time timing and sensors and it changes depending on the kind of day where it is. It's like you can set up a citywide comprehensive traffic light plan. Some cities have this. Even the best mixed citywide comprehensive traffic light plan reduced is congestion by one. Really Yeah, yeah, Atlanta is bad about that. At least in my area there's and Jerry can confirm this, she kind of lives over near me. But there's all these scenarios where you'll you'll stop at a light that's timed to not the part of the smart light system is that they're all time to work together. So like if you sit here at this corner and you take a ride on red, there's not another red light waiting on you, and then that turns green, and then thirty more feet there's another red light. They should be timed out to where they were green. In l A, It's like, I mean, that's the one thing I will say. There's a lot of traffic. It's just because the people they do the best they can. You look down. They have these long, long, long straight streets in Hollywood, and late at night you'll be sitting, like on Hollywood Boulevard at a red light and you'll see wink winkink blank, You'll see like eight lights turn green. All in that New Balance commercial, Yeah, with that woman running and she pushes herself to make all the lights. Yeah, doomed a failure, but still it was a nice effort. I would I would go longer in l A just to get off the highway, even if it took me longer, just to feel like I was moving. And Chuck, I'm about to spoil it for all of our British, UK, English, Welsh, Irish, Scottish friends who are typing an angry corrective email about Alistair Darling. He is not the Transportation Secretary. He was the British Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Lord Adonis is the Transport Secretary, that is, and me and your hotel names. We were talking about people um studying this kind of thing. There's all sorts of really cool quantifications for traffic. My favorite is the passenger car equivalent. Let's hear it. Okay, So you have a passenger car is say a city at an averag city Anda Toyota camera all right, or to be fair, Honda court right. Um. That is like just an average car that you can fit four people into and it drives down the road and it's pretty responsive. And um, an suv or a bus or a van is not as responsive because they're larger and because they take up more space, they're slower to accelerate, and so they they exact a heavier burden on a highway during congestion. Right, So what they've come up with our passenger car equivalent. So an suv is one point four pc, right, and then a city bus is like four point four pc. It's like four cars, right. Yeah, it has the same as far as like accelerating after breaking and just the space that's taking up. That's the equivalent of a passenger car. So one good solution to traffic is everybody driving smaller car, no kidding, and virtual slots, right, yeah, what's the deal there. Each car has a certain amount of space it takes up, and don't try and fit into a slot that's a bit smaller than your car. What is that? How you know? That's pretty much virtual slots like tetris. Yeah, if you just amagement that there is a basically a rectangle around your car bubble, a bubble, but not a break bubble. You want to avoid the brake bubble um, but this is more of a rectangle and it kind of hugs the sides of your cars, but it is longer on the front and back. And if every everybody's car stays in these slots that are on the highway, you just kind of pull into them as you're driving, and the slots are going like all the same rate. Then as long as there's not too many cars on the road or more more cars than there are slots, there should be no traffic. Yeah, but that never happens because all this is pie in the sky stuff. Well yeah, because when in areably you're sitting in the lane and you're like that lanes moving now, and then you get over in that lane you're like, well, now that lanes moving and you keep going back and forth where if you stayed where you are, if everyone stay where they were, you would all get there quicker. Or if everybody just stayed at home. Yeah, yes, good point. Put your jobs stay at home. Right. So that's uh, that's our two cents, And uh, if you want to learn more about traffic, we we've been killing the articles with cool flash animations, haven't we did? The one it has a flash animation about a traffic wave. Cool no break bubble. I'm going to see about having somebody add one of those. Coined the term my friend, you can type in traffic. I think it'll bring up a bunch of stuff in the handy search bar how stuff works dot com, which means it's time for listener questions. It's time for Facebook questions. Yes, as we said in that other podcast on quicksand we took, we post on Facebook. Hey, give us some questions. We'll answer like ten of them really quickly. We got them in an hour. This comes from Chelsea. What's the most unusual thing you've ever eaten? Uh? Tripe for me, which is intestines? Go ahead, what's yours? Um? I've had fried chicken hearts, I've had beef tongue. My favorite is um bone marrow really highly highly recommend. Anywhere you can find bone marrow, just eat it. The only place down here is rathbuts and it's okay, yeah, yeah, you gotta wrath buns. You gotta get one of the steaks. No, not not rathbunds, steaks, regular wrath buns. Yeah. Strangely he doesn't have bone marrow there, but yes, those weird stuff. All right, what I got you questions right there? You want to read one? Yeah, I guess this one's from Jacob. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around here, and Jacob hyphenates no one, which frankly I find like flourish nice. Yes, except for a tape recorder which absorbs the radiant vibrations and can later play them back because audible waves. Did the tree really make a sound? The answer is yes, yes. Uh. Kristen says, where are christ and Candice now? And who does the intro for the podcast? Chris Palette is um co host of Tech Stuff Now and has been for quite a while. He's made it hometown boy made Good. Candice Gibson Keener has gotten married and she stepped out of the limelight to concentrate on just being an editor, but she's still here. Sits right next to Josh and uh. Roxanne does the intros for the podcast. She's our head of video. There you go. That is not Jerry. A lot of people think it's Jerry. There's some comprehensive answers right there. Rachel says she currently lives in Athens, g A. I'd love to hear more about your experience living here, where you hung out your favorite bands, to see what other fond or not so fond memories you might have of Athens she says, we have quite a following there. Did you know that? I didn't either. My bar was Roadhouse. I hung out of Roadhouse all the time. I was a Georgia bar guy, did you Yes? And we should point out though the Georgia Bar, the Globe, and the Roadhouse made up the bar Muda triangle, and you could access them all through the alley to get to the next so most decidedly could. Quite often you would hop around, depending on just stayed at Roadhouse. I hope Roadhouse still there. It's gotten to be, Yeah, it is. And then of course, um, I always liked wilson Soul Food and Guthrie's, which in my opinion is superior to Zaxepiece, even though it's the same thing. Yeah, I was Automatic for the people. Well, yeah, I lived right around the corner from there. So remember what was the name of that restaurant. I went to Weaverde's Automatic for the people. Yes, that was good too. I liked Wilson's because the owner walked around and he's like four ft tall and he shook hands with everybody, right, nice guy. Um, And of course Harry Bassett's. I never went there. Oh my god, that was a frat bar. You went there, I could go. It wasn't just the bar, like the food was amazing, wasn't I put the food up against any in Atlanta? Euro wrap? Nanna a lot of e rose in college. That's good alright? Uh? Kristen, No, Randy, who's the cat who won't cop out when there's danger all about out? I think we both know shaft nice who's the cat that won't cup out? That's one of the lesser quoted lines from that song. Yeah, I've got one from chavon. How do your significant others feel about your legion of man crushes and equally strong lady crushes? Chuck, I wasn't aware that anyone had to crush on us where you I didn't know that I've seen that before. But Emily thinks it's funny. Sure, yeah it is funny. She's now I'm not going it is. I mean, if you if only people can see our stomachs so much hair? And Laura, how many emails do you get per podcast? We get about three d a week. Laura, Alan who put the bomb in the bomb? Sha bomp shabomp um. The only reason I read that it's because he stressed his mill house and his picture nice And who is your most surprising celebrity fan. We've only got a few that we know of, and they're all surprised. This one is more surprising than I've got one. Um oh, I can't remember her name. There's a girl who stars in Secret Life of the American Teenager Is. She's a fan of the show. She tweeted that she was on set like in between um, shooting and listening to stuff you should know. Yeah, John Hodgman, I was pretty knocked out by that. That's pretty cool. Bradley Cooper, Yeah, Will Wheaton, Yeah, Rene's l Wager, Aisha Tyler Yes. And the couple of The Daily Show guys why Senec Yeah. Joe Randazzo, the editor in chief of The Onion. If you are a celebrity that we did not mention, we would love to know that you listened to us, because we're just kind of thrilling. We're like, we're nobody, So when we hear that, I think it's cool. Yeah, uh yeah, I got one more. Pirates Shelley says pirates are Ninja's Ninja's clearly definitely that's it. Okay, Chuck's given the He's out isn't that called Vegas. Yeah, it's like when the dealer finishes there around or whatever. There's gotta be a name for it. If you know the name for that, we want to know. Send it in an email to stuff podcast at house stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot com home page.

Hi, everybody. Chuck Bryant here of Stuff you Should Know and welcome to the weekend. It's Saturday, and you know what that means. It's time for another Stuff you Should Know select episode where Josh and I picked our favorites from the past one thousand plus episodes and repost them and hopes that you might discover something old. Here we go something old? Is that a good way to sell something? That's why we call them classics and selects. July twenty nine, two thousand ten, was a very special day because that is the day we released the episode How Traffic Works. Yes, traffic, not drug trafficking, but traffic, car traffic. We all hate it, but you know what, maybe you should understand it a little better. Really interesting, and I believe Josh even coined his own term. If I'm not mistaken for this one, a break a bubble? Dare I say? Does my memory serve me? We'll find out by listening right now to How Traffic Works. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Charles Precious Bryant? How you doing, Precious? This is the podcast based on the novel Push by Sapphire. Yeah, that is absolutely right, word for word. Right, Jerry just got back because you did a spoiler. Yeah, for Precious I've known for spoilers, aren't I? At least two? It was Boiling Home. No, there was a there was um six ft under. There was another one I spoiled too, wasn't there? Yeah, there was one you spoiled That was a really old movie, and I was like, come on, that movie is like fifteen years old. There's a statute of limitation, was it, Buck Rubon's I Yeah, I think that was it? Yeah, me too, Chuck. Yes, have you ever been in traffic? That's the best I got. How do you set this up? Chuck? Do you like Steve Winwood? Yeah? You know I was going to make a Traffic the band comment. Have you ever seen the low spark of high heeled boys? Yeah? Yeah, that's it. I'm seriously, I'm like trying to do you know he was like when he first joined Traffic, thinks a he's a lothario. Yeah, and by that I mean in Prodigy. Yeah, yeah, Traffic. I've been in traffic, buddy, you Yes, I have actually been in traffic. Um, happens a lot because I don't ride Marta. You ride are fine, fine, crippled public transit system here in Atlanta. I'm never in traffic anymore. It's it's really been a huge difference in my life. Yeah. Well, I don't ride Marta because, um, I usually I tend to avoid the smell of urine, and UM, reading while moving makes me sick. So I'm you know, plus, I I value I used to value being able to smoke. Yeah, dude, I was just about to say that's why I used to drive. Yeah, and now I'm just like, I just do it out to have it. But I get caught in traffic a lot, and it stinks. I don't see you on a public transport. You're not You're not that kind of social No. That's the other thing too, It's like, oh, hey, we worked together, let's talk the whole time. No, I don't. I wear my sunglasses. It can be dark and raining, and I've told everyone here that if I have my shades on, that means the office is closed. Nice, the store is shut down. That's very nice, stor it looks super cool. Alright. So I'm a jerk that doesn't talk to coworkers. Now moving on, buddy, It's okay, Chuck. Do you remember when we recorded quicksand yes, do you remember how we said that there's like a finite amount of stuff out there about quick thing, because there's a finite amount to know. There's a finite amount to know about traffic. But there's tons of information out there. Yeah, lots of little side things to know for sure. Yeah, Because ultimately, traffic happens in two ways. One is, there is simply congestion. There's just too many cars on the road to carry to carry the flow of traffic quickly. Right. The other way is there is some unpredictable event that somebody's pulled over, somebody's broken down, there's a wreck, whether maybe an event that falls under congestion, police have pulled over a traffic a speeder. People always slow down for that, and that's it. That's it. Those are pretty much the two broad categories that traffic can be created, right, um. And what happens in each of those events is somebody upfront puts on their brakes and that that one press of the brakes travels backward all the way through right when you have a bunch of different cars and different lengthes doing that at the same time, you have traffic you know what that's called traffic wave. Yes, that's true. It's a domino effect. It's very easy, it is. And I came up with my own idea of just scribing this. You're ready by okay, So what I came up with is called the traffic bubble, okay by Josh Clark. So the traffic bubble happens when somebody is driving along and presses their brakes for whatever reason. And just imagine that when they press that break, the big bubble grows over the car, okay, And it starts very slowly traveling backward. And each car behind that car that's that created the traffic bubble isn't allowed to accelerate again until the traffic bubble is passed through them, right, But then the further back the traffic bubble goes, the more it dissipates, until eventually the people far enough back don't have to go through the traffic bubble and they're not affected by it. And does the bubble pass through the front cars to where they can then again accelerate. Is that how you see it as a moving bubble? Yeah? Over the bubble travels backwards over the traffic, and then once it passes over you, you're allowed to accelerate again. I believe you're just going to turn my friends the traffic bubble like that jerk science or no break bubble, that's what I called it. Okay, breaking bubble. Yeah, like a piping effect. I hate that guy and he hates you. I don't care so traffic Josh, you want, We might as well thrown a few stats here. Yeah, this one's that heavy. It is. This this article by our colleague Jonathan Strickland at tech Stuff. Yeah, the bald this podcast on staff here, Uh, what's a good stat here? The estimated traffic costs If you wanna talk about cost of traffic in about five years ago, they estimated about seventy eight billion dollars. And that's only fuel and waste of time. They don't take into account like pollution, environmental damage, health costs due to pollution. I mean it would really add up if you got to, you know, include those things. Yeah, and um with extra gas that was bought in two thousand seven, right, isn't that the year that studies connected or covered UM we in the US bought two point nine billion billion extra gallon of oil because of traffic, and the annual cost for each individual motorists in America was like seven ten bucks just sitting there, just from traffic, not from you know, the gas that you need to actually get from point A to point B, but the extra gas used from idoling. Yeah, crazy, yeah, And I believe l A tops it out obviously at about two weeks a year you potentially spend sitting in your car and traffic. Yeah. L A has um. There's this group called the Texas Transportation Institute, and I think they're out of A and M. Maybe they're awesome. They they they are like the leaders and studying and understanding and trying to mitigate traffic, right um. And they came up with this thing called the travel time index, right yeah. So basically, you take the amount of time it takes and it's specific to each city, and it's for each city. It's not compared from city to city. It's compared to a certain time in one city to another time in the same city. So in an off peak time, say you can travel the speed limit, it takes you one hour to get from point A to point B in Los Angeles, it would take one point nine two hours doubles your time basically during yeah, during rush hour, So it takes twice as long to get from point A to point B during rush hours compared to off peak. That's the travel time index. Yeah, and you know you have to do this anywhere you live where there's heavy traffic. But when I lived in l A, I used to have to always think, all right, well, this would take me forty five minutes normally. So and when you work in the movie business, you you can't be late. That's just not one of the things you do. You've got to be there on time or early. So you're like, well, it's supposed to take me forty five minutes, I'm gonna give myself like two hours. I gave myself more than double to get anywhere I needed to go. That's that's very smart. It's awful, is what it is. Yeah. L A's kind of bad, but chuck, we have it pretty bad too. Yeah, Land is really bad. We're among like probably I think the top three or four. I heard a year or so ago that Atlanta had toppled l A, but I never saw any citation. Well, all those it depends on how they are rating. It. Some they rade the differently, like the amount of time you spend in your car commuting or the amount of time you sit idling, So it kind of depends. But Atlanta's way up there, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco actually think is absent from that. Oh really, I think that they have made some moves that have kind of mitigated traffic and gotten them off some of the I know, the Big Dig was messing everything up. The Big Dig was just killing people. Yeah, and d C is awful. Have you ever driven around there? Uh? No, I haven't. You was talking about how especially during the summer, during the travel or the tourist season, it's just mind numbing it is. Yeah, I mean way out into the suburbs in Virginia and Maryland sitting there. Yeah. You know what they did in l A that I saw one time that I had never seen was I was going down the highway one day and I noticed everyone was slowing down. And I looked up ahead on the expressway and they were to California Highway patrol cars doing huge slow ses back and forth on the six lanes of expressway, not letting, like keeping everyone back like a nask, like a like a paste. Yeah, like a pace car. But you know they weren't driving straight. They were driving these big s. Is like, don't go buy me. I've never seen that before in my life. What would have made it even funnier is if they've been driving those ses with their hands out their window and their guns just shooting into the area while they were doing it. That would really say, don't drive past me. Yeah, that would have been great. And apparently that was they do that. It's a I don't know what they call it, but that's too slow everyone down. It's called being a yes. And on that note, my friend Derek has a joke about Atlanta traffic, and he's right, because Atlanta before their traffic, everyone's driving really really what fast. Yeah, that's one of the great characteristics about it LANDA as far as i'm can, you go as fast as you can. I mean, the average um flow of traffic, I would say it's about seventy miles an hour around here, and that's with like a lot of people all around you. Yeah, everybody's bumper to bumper going at least seventy and the cops don't pull you over unless you're going over seventy and even then like, it's usually like you're going eighty or ninety when you get pulled over because everybody else is going seventy. Right, And that's my buddy Derek's joke is in Atlanta, and it's really true. It's not a joke. Everyone drives as fast as they can every day until someone and then someone recks, right, and then traffic backs up every single day. That's Atlanta traffic. Are we done? So let's just sit here and do traffic stories about what what angers us? So check. There's a lot of smart people who study traffic because like you said, there's um, what was it, how much money in two eight billion just from fuel and wasted time? Because think about it, a person's time is money, right, And if you're sitting in traffic, unless you're one of those jerks like me who has an iPhone that emails while he's driving, then you're wasting money, right. Um. And actually there's this there's a group called Commute Solutions are out of Santa Cruz and they calculated the actual cost per mile of driving, not just traffic, but driving to each person is one point nineteen one dollar nineteen cents per mile. Yeah, and that includes everything I don't know how they came up with that number, but check it out. Well, if we're talking about highways and stats, we might as well talk about the same. Texas group did a study and um they found that traffic over the past years increased and by they predict it will go up another And here's what's remarkable. One only one of all our roads are highways, yet they shoulder half the traffic, half the car travel. Yeah. Crazy, it is crazy, And you don't usually think about when you think about traffic. I usually think about the highway myself, although I rarely get on the highway anymore. It's all surface streets that I take to and from work. Yeah, what do you go? Duid hills? Okay? I go basically up Piedmont um. But it's it's traffic every day. But I don't think of it as traffic. And I think of traffic, I think of seventy five at rush hour. And just like UH exit ramps backed up, the the thing is is our surface streets are also intended to handle overflow of highway traffic. Right, not just people who are backed up from the exit ramp back onto the street, but I mean people who are making a con just decision like me to find a different way that doesn't have anything to do with the highway. Right, And they found that if you want to widen a highway, I think we talked about this in like the urban planning one um that when you when you widen the highway, Um, there's something called latent demand. It's a theory that if you want in the highway, people like me are going to be like, oh well, now there's a leven lanes instead of five, so I'll just hop on the highway. And so the demand increases in step with the widening of the lanes. So it actually doesn't mitigate anything by adding more lanes to a highway, right. I think they said the only way that will work is if they outpaced demand with lanes, and that just doesn't happen. There's too many cars expensive, But that kind of makes sense to throw that money then instead into upfront costs for a light rail system, you know, hippie. Actually I'm still holding up for personal rapid transit. That was a palette in me podcast, but it was interesting. It's a good one. Uh RAMT metering. If if you're talking about solutions, that's another one. And they had these in l A. And they have them here in Atlanta. Now. It's where when you go to get on the highway. Now they have stoplights that just allow like one car through every few seconds. So you know, when you get on at Freedom Parkway, I used to fly around that curve it was fun and jump into traffic and squeeze in however I could. And that's you know, I was one of those jerks causing traffic. Well, I think anybody entering is that, because again with traffic, especially with just straight up congestion, there's just too many cars in one place, especially when you have a line of traffic and then more people directly adding to that lane. Yeah. Right, But RAMT metering really really works. They did a study in Minnesota. They have four d and thirty RAMT meters and in two thousand they shut them all down for seven weeks and during that time traffic accidents increased. And then afterward they re reinstituted it and they saw the capacity increased by fourteen percent, and they walked away from that project going like with their hands in their pockets. Yeah, like, we should probably not tell anybody about that. Yeah, I was trying to do a Minnesota accent. But that was pretty good. I couldn't do it. All I said was, oh no, it wasn't bad though. That's how they say it. H O V lanes is another thing that they've done pretty much countrywide. Carpool lanes as help. Yeah, I always forget when I have another person in the car, though. Uh yeah, I'll get like halfway where I'm going and say, oh man, let's get in the carpool lane. Yeah, I have to say though. The h O V lane, to me, it's it's an extension of the fast lane. So you got the fast lane and then you have the h O V lane, And I hate it when it's the fast lane is just the fast ling. The HOV lane is like, I drive as slow as I want, but I have, you know, four people in my car. It makes it difficult. It's it's kind of like the h O V lane to me, is you have two or more people, you're willing to drive ten miles faster than anybody else on the highway. Agreed, And since we talked about pet peeves in our last podcast, My one of my largest pet peeves is when I'm sitting in traffic and I'll see people speeding by me in the h OV lane by themselves. Nothing bothers me more than people that think the rules don't apply to them. I hate that. I hate those people, or people who um use the shoulder and just drive along in traffic as far as they can to get like fifty cars ahead. Yeah. I almost got plowed over in l A one time. I was getting out to get in the regular exit lane and almost got creamed by a truck that was on the shoulder, and I screamed at him that he almost killed me, and he says, what are you a cop? That's l a for you. It was like, he literally almost killed me. What are you a cop? If you're a cop, you'd be making lazy ss is in front of try ands firing my gun into the air. Exactly. What else, Josh, Uh, there's matting lanes. We already talked about that, But there's that one. Then there's um probably the most uh contentious idea cones shim pricing, which is basically taxing people to drive. And there's a guy named Alistair Darling. I don't know if he's still the Transportation secretary, but he's something of a rock star in the transportation world because he was a huge proponent of this, and he said in England, yeah, he was the British Transportation secretary. He basically said, you know, cars exact a toll on the environment and on the road, um, just by driving on him, So we should charge people to drive on the roads. What he failed to mention is that we already do. There are things called taxes, and those are meant to pay for the roads. Right, he's forgetting about you know, all the other misused money. Um. But they did actually have one in Great Britain. Do they still chuck? No, I don't think they ever instituted. They had a pilot program from two thousand three to seven and it worked like a champ for him in London at least. Yeah, there was a thirty percent dropping congest shin decrease in in fossil fuel consumption, decrease in CEO two emissions. So like in London, Singapore, Stockholm, San Francisco, San Francisco, the Institute one No, San Francisco is studying a New York Bloomberg has proposed it and they've studied it. And I just pulled this from this week. Actually, Lord Adonis is actually he's the Transport Secretary unless it's a new guy. What was your guy? His name is Lord Adonis. Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary came up with a new hotel student. Yeah, that's where Joshua be staying in New York under Lord uh he. It says it's ruled out the introduction of a national road pricing for the next parliament. But they uncovered that civil servants are still involved with the project and spending money on research even though they supposedly took it off the table. It was kind of a secret that they were still like tinkering with Oh. I thought you were like saying this these board paying for this research o their own paychecks. No, but they've sunk seven point two million pounds that I guess the public didn't know. They thought it was off the table. So they're kind of under some hot water, in some hot water. They're they're in some deep quicksand yeah, they said, Golden Brown and Alista Darling have been caught red handed planning a spy in the sky system A spy in the sky. Nice. Yeah, yeah, because I guess we should probably explain congestion pricing basically every car on the road. I guess when you would go get your vehicle tag or something. You also get a radio frequency identifier, right, and as you're driving, some satellite is tracking you, or you pass through some sector or something like that, and all of a sudden you're being you're in a toll area. And much like say, uh, one of those toll passes, UM, you are sent a bill or there's like you have to set up like a credit card or a bank account, attach that to your to your tag, and it just draws money from it based on however much you drive in there. In Singapore, when they first instituted, there's an actually UM they had a flat rate for downtown, which is the most congested during peak hours. You had to pay three bucks to just drive around downtown and you could drive around all you wanted. Uh. And as they as as they've gotten better at it, they're they're getting a little fancy schmancy with it, you know, like, UM, well, if you want to drive here, it's a dollar seventy five for twenty minutes, but you can back, you know, two blocks over and it's just fifty cents and so on. Well, that's one of the rubs that UM. One of the big things is in England at least in other places too. I think they've suggested paying more for peak hour so be flexible in your work schedule. But then, of course people that are a friend of the poor say that's progressive taxation because white color dudes can be all flexible and work from home, but the poor have to get up and go to work during peak hours. So you're they're basically paying for the road that the rich man drives on. Exactly, That's exactly right, And that's the big problem. I mean, aside from having to pay to drive with with a with a congestion tax. Yeah, um, what else can you do? Chuck? And also remember we were talking it's this isn't just highways surface streets to everybody. Don't get all anxious. We're talking about surface streets as well. Yes, uh, surface streets. You get a lot of suburban sprawl, you know, like here in Atlanta, you've got like out in Roswell twenty years ago it was it was desolate cow patties and now it's all uh, you know, young families moving out there who don't want to be around urban types. Yeah, and you have a lot of a lot more cars. Um, you have again that that one of two ways that you can cause traffic. Just put more cars on a road than it than it's designed to hand and and out in the booneties like that. They weren't built for you know, they were built for farmland. All of a sudden they got these suburban people moving out there. And so, yeah, traffic lights is something they can do. Yeah, this one disturbed me. Um that even the So you have a traffic light that is on a timer, right, which is especially when they're poorly timed. Yes, Yeah, decator is awful. There's another one for the Piedmont Park parking deck and it just does whatever it wants, no matter what time and day, and if there's a car, they're not and people are just stopped in either direction, right, And um, that's a timed light, and time lights are awful, They're awful. Right. Then you have um sensored lights, which are awesome, right because you just come up in the way to your car triggers it good. Yeah, Or you have a mixed system that uses time timing and sensors and it changes depending on the kind of day where it is. It's like you can set up a citywide comprehensive traffic light plan. Some cities have this. Even the best mixed citywide comprehensive traffic light plan reduced is congestion by one. Really Yeah, yeah, Atlanta is bad about that. At least in my area there's and Jerry can confirm this, she kind of lives over near me. But there's all these scenarios where you'll you'll stop at a light that's timed to not the part of the smart light system is that they're all time to work together. So like if you sit here at this corner and you take a ride on red, there's not another red light waiting on you, and then that turns green, and then thirty more feet there's another red light. They should be timed out to where they were green. In l A, It's like, I mean, that's the one thing I will say. There's a lot of traffic. It's just because the people they do the best they can. You look down. They have these long, long, long straight streets in Hollywood, and late at night you'll be sitting, like on Hollywood Boulevard at a red light and you'll see wink winkink blank, You'll see like eight lights turn green. All in that New Balance commercial, Yeah, with that woman running and she pushes herself to make all the lights. Yeah, doomed a failure, but still it was a nice effort. I would I would go longer in l A just to get off the highway, even if it took me longer, just to feel like I was moving. And Chuck, I'm about to spoil it for all of our British, UK, English, Welsh, Irish, Scottish friends who are typing an angry corrective email about Alistair Darling. He is not the Transportation Secretary. He was the British Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Lord Adonis is the Transport Secretary, that is, and me and your hotel names. We were talking about people um studying this kind of thing. There's all sorts of really cool quantifications for traffic. My favorite is the passenger car equivalent. Let's hear it. Okay, So you have a passenger car is say a city at an averag city Anda Toyota camera all right, or to be fair, Honda court right. Um. That is like just an average car that you can fit four people into and it drives down the road and it's pretty responsive. And um, an suv or a bus or a van is not as responsive because they're larger and because they take up more space, they're slower to accelerate, and so they they exact a heavier burden on a highway during congestion. Right, So what they've come up with our passenger car equivalent. So an suv is one point four pc, right, and then a city bus is like four point four pc. It's like four cars, right. Yeah, it has the same as far as like accelerating after breaking and just the space that's taking up. That's the equivalent of a passenger car. So one good solution to traffic is everybody driving smaller car, no kidding, and virtual slots, right, yeah, what's the deal there. Each car has a certain amount of space it takes up, and don't try and fit into a slot that's a bit smaller than your car. What is that? How you know? That's pretty much virtual slots like tetris. Yeah, if you just amagement that there is a basically a rectangle around your car bubble, a bubble, but not a break bubble. You want to avoid the brake bubble um, but this is more of a rectangle and it kind of hugs the sides of your cars, but it is longer on the front and back. And if every everybody's car stays in these slots that are on the highway, you just kind of pull into them as you're driving, and the slots are going like all the same rate. Then as long as there's not too many cars on the road or more more cars than there are slots, there should be no traffic. Yeah, but that never happens because all this is pie in the sky stuff. Well yeah, because when in areably you're sitting in the lane and you're like that lanes moving now, and then you get over in that lane you're like, well, now that lanes moving and you keep going back and forth where if you stayed where you are, if everyone stay where they were, you would all get there quicker. Or if everybody just stayed at home. Yeah, yes, good point. Put your jobs stay at home. Right. So that's uh, that's our two cents, And uh, if you want to learn more about traffic, we we've been killing the articles with cool flash animations, haven't we did? The one it has a flash animation about a traffic wave. Cool no break bubble. I'm going to see about having somebody add one of those. Coined the term my friend, you can type in traffic. I think it'll bring up a bunch of stuff in the handy search bar how stuff works dot com, which means it's time for listener questions. It's time for Facebook questions. Yes, as we said in that other podcast on quicksand we took, we post on Facebook. Hey, give us some questions. We'll answer like ten of them really quickly. We got them in an hour. This comes from Chelsea. What's the most unusual thing you've ever eaten? Uh? Tripe for me, which is intestines? Go ahead, what's yours? Um? I've had fried chicken hearts, I've had beef tongue. My favorite is um bone marrow really highly highly recommend. Anywhere you can find bone marrow, just eat it. The only place down here is rathbuts and it's okay, yeah, yeah, you gotta wrath buns. You gotta get one of the steaks. No, not not rathbunds, steaks, regular wrath buns. Yeah. Strangely he doesn't have bone marrow there, but yes, those weird stuff. All right, what I got you questions right there? You want to read one? Yeah, I guess this one's from Jacob. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around here, and Jacob hyphenates no one, which frankly I find like flourish nice. Yes, except for a tape recorder which absorbs the radiant vibrations and can later play them back because audible waves. Did the tree really make a sound? The answer is yes, yes. Uh. Kristen says, where are christ and Candice now? And who does the intro for the podcast? Chris Palette is um co host of Tech Stuff Now and has been for quite a while. He's made it hometown boy made Good. Candice Gibson Keener has gotten married and she stepped out of the limelight to concentrate on just being an editor, but she's still here. Sits right next to Josh and uh. Roxanne does the intros for the podcast. She's our head of video. There you go. That is not Jerry. A lot of people think it's Jerry. There's some comprehensive answers right there. Rachel says she currently lives in Athens, g A. I'd love to hear more about your experience living here, where you hung out your favorite bands, to see what other fond or not so fond memories you might have of Athens she says, we have quite a following there. Did you know that? I didn't either. My bar was Roadhouse. I hung out of Roadhouse all the time. I was a Georgia bar guy, did you Yes? And we should point out though the Georgia Bar, the Globe, and the Roadhouse made up the bar Muda triangle, and you could access them all through the alley to get to the next so most decidedly could. Quite often you would hop around, depending on just stayed at Roadhouse. I hope Roadhouse still there. It's gotten to be, Yeah, it is. And then of course, um, I always liked wilson Soul Food and Guthrie's, which in my opinion is superior to Zaxepiece, even though it's the same thing. Yeah, I was Automatic for the people. Well, yeah, I lived right around the corner from there. So remember what was the name of that restaurant. I went to Weaverde's Automatic for the people. Yes, that was good too. I liked Wilson's because the owner walked around and he's like four ft tall and he shook hands with everybody, right, nice guy. Um, And of course Harry Bassett's. I never went there. Oh my god, that was a frat bar. You went there, I could go. It wasn't just the bar, like the food was amazing, wasn't I put the food up against any in Atlanta? Euro wrap? Nanna a lot of e rose in college. That's good alright? Uh? Kristen, No, Randy, who's the cat who won't cop out when there's danger all about out? I think we both know shaft nice who's the cat that won't cup out? That's one of the lesser quoted lines from that song. Yeah, I've got one from chavon. How do your significant others feel about your legion of man crushes and equally strong lady crushes? Chuck, I wasn't aware that anyone had to crush on us where you I didn't know that I've seen that before. But Emily thinks it's funny. Sure, yeah it is funny. She's now I'm not going it is. I mean, if you if only people can see our stomachs so much hair? And Laura, how many emails do you get per podcast? We get about three d a week. Laura, Alan who put the bomb in the bomb? Sha bomp shabomp um. The only reason I read that it's because he stressed his mill house and his picture nice And who is your most surprising celebrity fan. We've only got a few that we know of, and they're all surprised. This one is more surprising than I've got one. Um oh, I can't remember her name. There's a girl who stars in Secret Life of the American Teenager Is. She's a fan of the show. She tweeted that she was on set like in between um, shooting and listening to stuff you should know. Yeah, John Hodgman, I was pretty knocked out by that. That's pretty cool. Bradley Cooper, Yeah, Will Wheaton, Yeah, Rene's l Wager, Aisha Tyler Yes. And the couple of The Daily Show guys why Senec Yeah. Joe Randazzo, the editor in chief of The Onion. If you are a celebrity that we did not mention, we would love to know that you listened to us, because we're just kind of thrilling. We're like, we're nobody, So when we hear that, I think it's cool. Yeah, uh yeah, I got one more. Pirates Shelley says pirates are Ninja's Ninja's clearly definitely that's it. Okay, Chuck's given the He's out isn't that called Vegas. Yeah, it's like when the dealer finishes there around or whatever. There's gotta be a name for it. If you know the name for that, we want to know. Send it in an email to stuff podcast at house stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot com home page.