Stuff You Should KnowIf you grew up in the 70s and 80s in America, you probably have the image of your tattered Guinness Book of Records. The book was ubiquitous then, but is still thriving today in despite the internet.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck Jerry's here too, and that makes this Stuff you Should Know, which holds the record for the longest running podcast in the history of the world as far as I know.
Hey, buddy, before we get going, I wanted to mention with your permission, of course, Granted, I was recently a guest on a very awesome podcast. We don't guess on a lot of shows much anymore, but actor Paul Giamatti has a podcast with his buddy, who is a philosophy professor named Steven Asthma. It's called Chin Wag, and I saw these guys live at sketch Fest and it was great, and I think Stuff you Should Know people will really not only enjoyed my guest appearance, but really love Chin Wag.
Yeah, from what you told me, it sounds pretty awesome. I haven't listened quite yet, but I think I'm going to make my first episode your episode.
It's great. I appreciate that, and you should get on it. I told you that, I'm sure they'd love to have you. But Steven is super smart and mister Paul Giamatti is amazingly smart and just a really well read, cool guy. And the title says it all. A chin Wag is just sort of a free flowing chat, and that's what it is. We you know, the idea was that we're going to talk about the Silurian hypothesis, which they didn't know about yet, and we had just done a thing on so I was like, what a great opportunity. But we ended up talking about nuclear semiotics and the anti CAA, THEEA mechanism, and ghost and religion and monkey intercourse and it's just a really cool talk and I think stuff you should know. People would really dig it. So it's out now at the chin Wag.
Nice Chuck, congrats. I can't wait to listen.
All right, thanks man, And you should be on. Should we get on with the show?
H yeah, let's.
Well, you know what we get to do now in our our typical two episode percession way that is stuff you should know, is we get to wash the stank of Unit seven thirty one off of us talking about a very fun thing, which is the Guinness Book of World's Records or the Guinness World Records. I feel like when I was a kid, it was called the Guinness Book of World Records in the United States. I imagine that we are similar and that you probably had a copy of this in your house. No, oh, you didn't.
No, we weren't all Lotti dah. I had to get from the school library.
We had a copy of the Guinness Book. I think it probably got it as like a Christmas skipt one year and.
Lifted it from his school library. He brought it.
Oh, he may have property of red in elementary school. So I remember very distinctly, though, pouring through this thing as a kid, and just like it was such a big book. It was so thick, and the type was so small, and the pictures weren't great, but like I just like I poured over every page of this thing like it was my Bible or something. I was so into it. I thought it was so cool. Like this may have been my uncle John's bathroom reader for you.
Uh no, I yeah, okay, I got ye both. No no, no, Uncle John's bathroom Reader definitely trumped it, for sure, But at the I was still very much a fan of the Guinness Book of World Records for sure.
Do you remember some of those pictures from the classic edition.
Oh yeah, the guy with the longest fingernails also had a really long beard if I remember correctly. Yeah.
And the two guys, those two heavy twins on the motorbikes.
Yeah, I think the McCrary brothers.
Yeah, the tall guy, that big giant, tall guy tall and the tall lady.
Oh yeah, that's right. I forgot about them. Yeah, that's crazy. We both grew up on the same pictures and they helped shape us that neat.
Yeah, I mean, they're just burned into my brain. I don't remember some of the names. I want to say that guy's name was Robert Wadlow, But that's just literally digging out from my, you know, nine year old lizard brain.
That would be pretty impressive if you just did that.
Will you pull the brothers out of your keyster?
I looked him up. Okay, I'm not walking around with their name in my head. Unfortunately, I'm not that good anyway.
That's what we're talking about, is this this great book that is still going strong at about a million copies a year, And we're going to talk about all about the Guinness Book right now.
Yeah. Let's but before we do, Chuck, let's give a shout out to listener Mallory Stafford, who's the one who suggested that we do an episode on the Guinness Book of World Records. So thanks a lot, Mallory. Yeah, okay, So yes, let's go back, Chuck, way back to the nineteen forties, technically nineteen fifty, but we'll check in in nineteen forty five with a guy named Sir Hugh Beaver. This excuse me, Sir Hugh Beaver. Oh okay, and this was before he was a knight. I believe he was knighted, probably because of his work with the Guinness Book of World Records. That has to be guessing here at this point, but I think it's pretty safe bet, although completely superfluous and an unnecessary one. But he ended up going to work for Guinness and Son, the beer company. So if you've ever wondered if the Guinness Book of World Records is actually connected to the Guinness Beer Company, my friend, yes, they absolutely are. The guy who was the managing director of Guinness Son and Company Limited, the Guinness Beer Company, was also the guy responsible for coming up with the Guinness Book of World Records.
That's right, It was a Guinness product in fact, and we'll get to all that. But that to me is right out of the gate. You got one of the facts of the podcast. If people, next time you're in a bar and someone draws up a Guinness, just say, hey, you know the Guinness Book of World Record is started out because of the Guinness beer. And if they say no, you just smash their face on the bar, dump that Guinness all over their head.
Knowing me, in my luck, I would say that and they'd be like, oh really, you won't think everybody know that? Right, That's what I would be met with, and then I'd smash their face on the bar.
Right. So there's a pretty good story here that kind of is the seed of this whole idea, and it goes as follows. In nineteen fifty, as you promised, Sir Hugh Beaver was hunting with some friends in Ireland and missed a shot and boy just seemed to really get at this guy. He missed a shot of a golden plover or plover bird and was like, hey, did you see that? How fast that thing was? Like, nobody could shoot that thing. That's got to be the fastest game bird in Europe. And they were like, ah, you kidding me, that thing's not that fast. There's no way you just miss franquilizers. Yeah, you just missed the shot. My friend, that's not the fastest game bird. And he was like, oh, I got to find an answer to this, and he could not find it in a reference book. So I said, this really bothered the guy. And this is how I know is that four years later he's still thinking about missing that shot and he's like, oh, you know what we need as a book that says stuff like this.
Yeah, that was the origin of the Guinness Book of World Records. That missed shot, that golden plover that lived. Had it not lived, maybe this whole thing would have never happened.
Seriously, had he shot that bird, we may not have gotten those twins on the motorbike.
No, and it's a good thing that that golden plover lived for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that the golden plover got to live, but because it stuck with Sir Hugh Beaver for so long, for four years that he finally was like it morphed. I can't imagine how many times he chewed it over before it finally became the idea for a book that actually has facts like what's the fastest game bird in all of Europe? And so he went to the people that he worked for at Guinness as the managing director is like, I got this great idea. We can put together a book of facts that can settle the kind of like arguments and disputes that arise at a pub, and we'll give them as free Guinness giveaways at pubs. And we're even gonna make the cover waterproof so that if you still beer on it, so it'll be fine. Every pub in all of England's going to have one of these things, and anytime there's an argument at a pub, they're going to pull this thing out. That was the original idea for the Guinness Book of World Records, and it's a genius.
Idea, yeah, and just fun, Like I just love the whole spirit behind it. That very first version has a forward that said that the hope was that it could resolve arguments and turn heat into light. So you know, just the very idea of the pub argument is just sort of fun to think about. I think, period for sure. And now you have an actual water proof covered book that they're given out with that Guinness name on it is pretty pretty brilliant.
Yeah. So Hugh Beaver, though, was like, Hugh Beaver, Okay, there's different ways to say it. Hugh Beaver. Sure, I mean I know what you're getting at. I'm just being playful.
I'm not getting at anything, buddy. Oh you face on the bar.
So Hugh Beaver, I said. Hugh Beaver, by the way, okay, he was not one to go around and like make books. He was kind of like an idea guy rather than a book making guy. So he turned to two guys who were this was just right up their alley. They were identical twins named Norris and Ross McWhorter, and they ran an agency that essentially was a fact checking and fact providing well agency for newspapers and things like that, media outlets.
Like fun stuff though if.
They yeah, but it was also I think if you had a fact you wanted to confirm, you'd call them and they would turn to their encyclopedias and be like, h yes, off the top of my head, I know that that's correct, right, That's what the mcquarters did. And so it was a great idea to reach out to these guys and be like, hey, what if you take your entire profession and make it a book, but just select the most interesting stuff and put it into a book. And that's what we're going to make. And they said, let's do it.
That's right. They formed their own company based in London called Guinness Superlatives, and they spent about four months with just the sort of sourcing of what would go in the book. It took about a year to get the book the first to dish out, but they spent about four months just sending you know, this is nineteen fifty four, so they're sending letters to experts. They're sending letters to people all over the world saying, you know, what's the biggest thing, what's the smallest, this, what's the fastest that? Just like thousands and thousands of juries. And they were pretty serious, you know, they wanted this to be a legitimate, like factual book. So they were from the from the get. They were very fastidious in their research, and they found that even experts sometimes it would either get things wrong or exaggerate stuff. What Lvia found this great thing. She put together a really good bass article for this one, and she said one of the things that they found was one expert said that there was a fly that broke the speed of sound that flew at eight hundred and twenty miles per hour. So they were like, all right, we have to do more work, even though we're getting in touch with experts.
Yeah, that was all the way back in nineteen twenty six. So for decades people have been walking around thinking that that fly, that there was a fly that could do that. Did these guys wind right? These guys were the kind who would just come along and be like, that's not true. So, like the Guinness Book of World Records, Long had and starting out of the gate, Long had this reputation for like being just accurate and correct, Like they really did their research and they really double checked, and the people that they were siting and polling and going to were experts in their field, and not even crackpot experts in their field.
Like the fly guy, the fly Jeff Goldlum, No.
The guy who said the expert who said that the deer bot fly could fly faster than the speed of sound. I was kidding, you know, Oh, I thought you'd forgotten already.
No, no, no, or maybe it was Jeff goldlum For all we know, it could have been. So in August August twenty seventh, in fact. Nineteen fifty five, the very first edition came out. It was titled Guinness Book of Records, close to two hundred pages, one hundred and ninety eight pages that had about initially four thousand just factual entries, and then just a collection not too many, but about eighteen pages of some photographs, black and white pictures, a few pen and ink drawings, and it was pretty successful. They were like, let's print fifty thousand of these, give them out at pubs. But they realized very very quickly. I mean it came out August twenty seven. Then they were like, we can actually sell these things. So they started selling that fall, just a couple of months later, and by Christmas had sold one hundred and eighty seven thousand of these.
Yeah. Supposedly, since then it's sold about one hundred and fifty million copies worldwide. Wow, which is just astronomical. That's just such a crazy amount of books and just out of the gate, like they clearly tapped into something that people love. People love that kind of thing. They created the internet and book form before anyone even thought of the internet or computers.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
So they were like, well, this is great, let's start churning out more and more of these, and they started putting out the first American edition that came out the next year, country specific editions and the years that followed. And even while they were doing this, even while they were cranking these things out, the mcquorters were like, we're not going to sacrifice accuracy or factualness, like that is like the pinnacle of what we're doing has to be accurate, and yeah, it can be super interesting, but also we need to kind of keep it family friendly. And there was a famous quote from Norris, who was apparently like the heart and soul of the book Norris was. He said that ours is the kind of book maiden aunts give to their nieces, basically saying like, we can't have smut in there. Probably the word that Norris would have used with smut.
Yeah, like us, you know, with I mean they were g rated. We're probably PG.
Oh yeah, sometimes PG thirteen.
Frankly, yeah, I mean, we are the kind of guys that'll sit around and make jokes about Sir Hugh Beaver. So while they're researching, they do finally, and this is just a side note, they get to the bottom of this fastest European game bird that plover was sixty two miles an hour, and apparently the spur wing Goose is eighty eight. But now apparently on the website there's a red breasted Merganzer that can go I guess that's ninety one miles hour.
No, I think that the spur wing Goose's record of eighty eight is so thoroughly debated that they can't say for certain that it's the fastest European game bird, the one that Yeah, that's what I've gotten from it. Okay, So there's like a horrible twist to all this. Yeah, suddenly that happened well twenty five years after the first book came out, Like they've been churning out editions every year, multiple editions a year, and so in the midst of all this, Ross and Norris are just still doing their job, but they've gotten kind of wealthy along the way. And apparently Ross was not very happy that the IRA was bombing places in Britain, in England in particular, and he offered a fifty thousand pound reward. This is back in nineteen seventy five. I didn't do the conversion. So let's just say I could buy you a lot of Big Macs today a fifty thousand pound reward for any information that would help convict IRA bombers. And I guess he thought that this was going to be effective, and it was not at all effective. It actually turned out to be a terrible move for him.
Yeah. Ross was a fairly controversial political activist in addition to his job, and the IRA did not cot into that. So on November twenty seventh of nineteen seventy five, Harry Duggan and Hugh Doherty of the Balcom Street Gang shot him point blank in the head and chest with a three fifty seven outside of his house and killed him dead. And so Ross was what was gone, and I'm sure Norris was devastated, but kept on as the editor. Norris did until nineteen eighty six and then for another decade as an advisor to the project.
Yes, eventually, Guinness the Beer Company was like, this has been a pretty good run. We've been doing this for over half a century now, and they eventually sold the Guinness World Records gw R is what it's usually referred to to. Another company, a company called Gulane, which was a production company for children's television shows including Thomas the tank engine, and I guess the head of Gulaane sobered up a couple of days later and was like, what am I going to do with this? And ended up selling it to the Jim Pattison Group, which is owned by a Canadian billionaire named Jim Pattison and bears more than a small resemblance to the shinehart Wig Company, and that they have their hands in like everything they owned Peterbilt, they owned the Great Wolf Lodges, they own Associated Grossers, they own everything, including the Guinness Book of World Records as well as Ripley Entertainment, and so over time they've kind of added to what the Guinness World Records does. It's the reason one of the reasons why you don't say the Guinness Book of World Records is because they've definitely expanded beyond the book.
Now, Yeah, I think Ripley sort of laid the mold, as in having like a Ripley Museum of Curiosity is that kind of thing. There are now Guinness Museums and stuff like that, and it's kind of become an attraction here in different cities. I don't I know, I've never been to one. I'm trying to think where I've even seen one. Maybe maybe Hollywood has one. I don't know they've got they've got a ripley. But yeah, they've become a part part tourist attraction as well, and maybe that's a good place to break.
Oh yeah, let's do that.
Yeah, we can find out where one of these is and we'll go and then we'll come back.
Okay, Chuck, that was a fantastic road trip. I've never drank so much coke zero in my entire life.
Oh man, I've been drinking Guinness. Glad you were driving.
I know I've been driving. Well anyway, getting back to Guinness the World Records, not all the beer you've been drinking on our road trip. They are even though they're owned by the Jim Pattison Group, they still are their own company doing their own thing. And they're headquartered in London, but they also have offices in Dubai, Tokyo, New York, Beijing, and there's like four hundred people that work for Guinness World Records around the world.
Yeah, amazing on the book. Just you know, let's go to the stats. You mentioned over one hundred and fifty million total copies I believe I said, still about a million a year. It's been translated into forty different languages. When you open up one of those books, you're going to find a couple of different things. Well you'll find tons of things, but kind of a couple of different categories. One is all that stuff we were talking about, like the fastest bird, the tallest this or that, like the tallest skyscraper, just sort of things that have hit a superlative. You're also going to find a lot of firsts, like the first person to do this, the first person to complete this. And then you're going to find a bunch of kind of goofy fun records, which is the whole category where people are like, I want to get in that book, and so I can either break a record that's in there, or I can think of my own, like hula hooping or well, I'm sure that's in there, but you know, the longest under underwater tea party. That's probably in there for all I know, but I just made that up. But stuff like.
That, Yeah, no, that's I'm sure that's in there. I know there's like the most number of magic tricks performed underwater, like if it's to be done underwater, and the reason that there are so many records because apparently tens of thousands of people every single year. I think the number that I saw back in two thousand and eight on a Freakonomics interview with the current editor in chief, a guy named Craig Glenday, he put it at about fifty thousand applicants per year, people who are like, I'm I either just I think I just did break a record, or I'm going to attempt to break a record. So let's go. Let's do this. Fifty thousand people a year. Try to do that.
I would. I wonder how many morning pictures of a toilet they get every year where someone's like, I think I just broke a record.
No gross PG, that's PG.
Yeah, But you know, I bet people do it. Fifty thousand entries they're. What you do is so you apply again to either break a record or create a new thing, and you log. You get a you know, a log into the system as an official applicant. When you are part of that process, you can then search their own private database. There is a public facing database, but the real goal all the stuff is in that private database where you can just look through all those records see if there's anything you think you can break and then look at all the guidelines and this is where apparently about half the people drop out is when they see like all the stuff that you have to do to make it an official like legit submitted record.
Yeah, because the guidelines can reach into the dozens of pages sometimes, like they're so specific in detailed about what constitutes a record, what specifically you have to do, a lot about what you can't do. And I read an interview with Craig glenday by Imaging west Nights in The Guardian. If she doesn't sound like a Guardian writer, I don't know who does. Yeah, but she she said that she tried to break the record for standing on one leg blindfolded. Apparently it's like thirty something minutes and she got to like thirty seconds I think, on her three tries. But she said that it had six pages of guidelines just that. Yes. Yeah, So the more detail, the more intricate the actual record is, the longer the guidelines are going to be. So, like you said, about half the people are like nuts to this, I don't care that much about this, and that really kind of separates a lot of the posers out, which you have left for the real deal record breaker people.
I'm sure a lot of people are like, I probably just have to click a thing and upload a video.
I think a lot of people think that, Yeah.
You know, yeah, not again, wrong, wrong, wrong.
All right.
So here's just a few things. If you want to qualify for a title, a record has to be the following. Has to be measurable easy. It has to be breakable unless it's a quote significant first like first person to do something. It has to be something that someone else can try to do and break.
Check.
It has to be standardizable, which is anyone all over the world could try and do this thing.
I think that's great. That's very inclusive.
Yeah, I like it too. It has to be verifiable, ibby.
Like, you can't be the person with the most ghosts haunting them.
No, right, exactly, most haunted person. Right, this one is interesting. It has to involve a single variable. So you could be like the longest underwater tea party. But if there is that record, you can't be like, well, I'm the longest underwater tea party wearing it too too.
Right, Yeah, for sure, they definitely. The guy explained in that a Freakonomics interview that if you open it up like that. It just it's gonna just grow exponentially in it's just dumb. He's like, no underwater tea party, longest underwater tea party, that's interesting. Who cares if you're wearing A two two or not. Frankly, you should be wearing a too two If you have an underwater tea party, that should be you know, it should go without saying.
Yeah. The last two things are it has to be universal, so like, because they sell this book all over the world, that has to be something that everyone can kind of see and understand and enjoy. Very inclusive again, yeah, very much inclusive. And then finally it has to be substantially different than a current record.
Yeah, which ties into that underwater tea party two two thing.
Yeah a little bit.
I think so about fifty thousand applications a year, like we said, and I think something like every year two thousand new records are added to the Guinness War Records database. So say twenty five thousand give it a try, two thousand are successful. That's what between five and ten percent I think of attempts are successful. It's actually not too bad. And this database just keeps growing and growing apparently, there's like forty thousand records, and if you're trying to set a record, you have access to all forty thousand because you need to. But if you're just hanging out on the website and just looking up stuff for fun, so you can still see fifteen thousand different records, but only four thousand records are put into the book every year, and a lot of those are like classics, Like I think at least half are like classic ones that have been in there for years and years and years that people just want to see that weren't necessarily broken in the past year.
Yeah, I tried to find new entries in the book each year, and I couldn't find that number. But I mean it's not a lot, so less than five percent even get that world record. So out of fifty thousand people, you have a very very slim chance of making it in that book. If that's what you're and that's kind of what everyone's goal is, you want to be in the.
Book, you do, because that's the thing. Even if you set a record, you're not necessarily going to be in the book. Like you said, that's actually a slim You have a slim chance of being in the book. Even if you break a record, the thing you can definitely be guaranteed to get is a certificate saying that you are the official record holder and you'll be in that giant database.
Yeah. Should we tell the story of our our friend and a guy who designed our.
Website, the webmaster.
Yeah, our buddy Brandon. I mean you should tell the story because you understand more about this. I guess that you knew that Brandon had briefly held againness record. Is that right? And you emailed about it?
Yes, he and a friend. So apparently Brandon was one of those people who will kind of touch on later on in the show. But he's one of those people who just had like a lifelong ambition. It was on his life list, as he put it, to break a world record, to be a world record holder. So just wanted to do it. Yeah, so he said he looked into all sorts of different stuff. I think one of them is like fastest moonwalk in one hundred meters, longest distance travel like a bouncy ball, And he finally came up with fastest four hundred meter piggyback ride. Okay, and he and friend trained for that for a while. From what I remember, and they finally did it. They broke the record, and apparently the record he chose was just randomly not the record he should have chosen, because they had their record broken by somebody else so quickly that he wasn't even able to get a certificate, so that he got an email saying, like, you, actually your record was broken, but for a very brief time, you were the world record holder on the four hundred meter piggyback ride. Oh man, I know, I know, but he's got that to carry around with him. He was. He achieved his life goal because I mean, think about it. He could have trained for years and still never broken the record, but he did.
Do you know if he was the piggybacker or piggybacky.
I believe he was the Well, which one's which one?
I honestly don't know.
Okay, So here's the guy carrying the piggy as far as I remember.
Okay, I think that would be the piggybacker. Oh no, maybe the piggybacky.
Yeah, I would say the piggybacky is probably what that would be.
Let's go to the polls, okay, all right, so we talked a little bit about they what you have to do to get a record or what qualifies they do exclude here's here's what you can't do. You can't do something that's dangerous to other people if you're a grown adult and you want to try something you know reasonably dangerous, like a skydive or something. I think Olivia found the example of a Bonzie skydive. That's when I'd never heard of this. That's when you throw your parachute out of the plane. Then you jump out and you wait as long as you can before like grabbing hold of this thing and deploying it. So you can do something like that if you're a grown adult and decide that you want to undertake that danger. What you can't do is put someone else in danger.
Right, And there's some other stuff too that that they they're like, we're not doing this anymore, like anything that has to do with pets that involves that they could be dangerous to them like they used to do like the heaviest pet thing. And then they were like, you know, just having a record out there constitutes a dare to some people. Some things we shouldn't do, and encouraging people to overfeed their pet so that they can become the world record holders, as that's just one we should avoid excessive eating for people as well, like humans as well.
Yeah, for sure, what else anything involving drinking funny kind of forgeinness, but they're like, yeah, I mean I get the spirit, but you can't try and set the record for you know, funneling Jack Daniels.
Just maybe nauseated man.
Anything illegal obviously is not allowed. And and anything involving kids under sixteen that they deem unsuitable. If you're between sixteen and eighteen and it is suitable, you have to still have to have a parent or guardian sort of sign up with you.
Yeah. That. Craig Glenday, the editor in chief, is like, you know, we actually don't trust parents to not give their kids steroids to break someone's record, So we're just not gonna do that at all. Some of the other ones, they used to do longest kiss, but like you have to keep kissing, and people would kiss for literally days and it's just dangerous. Dance marathon, same thing. Yeah, and then invasive surgery, Chuck. They used to have stuff for invasive surgery, and now they're like people will actually go get surgery just to be a record holder. So we should stop stop doing that as well.
Holy boy. All right, so let's take another break and we'll talk about how these things are judged or you know, kind of the oversight. I guess right after this sweat shop stop. All right, so we promised talk of oversight. Very exciting stuff. But you can't just willy nilly, send in a video and say all right, I've done my job. They employ what's what are called adjudicators either adjudicator that's right. They're about ninety of them that travel all over the world and in pre you know, sort of digital age. This is the only way to do it. You would have an adjudicator come to you.
Uh.
The adjudicators apparently have to. It's sort of like mission impossible. You agree to you know, like hey, I got to go to Singapore and then you find out what record that you're agreeing to oversee, which is interesting. What else, what's this business about a jacket?
Oh well, you have to wear the officially approved outerwear, a jacket that has like the Guinness World Records logo on it. You also there's other rules too. You can't socialize with the record attempters or there are people after hours to be a very professional. Yeah, no fraightnization. You can't eat or drink during the whole thing. Like you're just meant to be an impartial business like professional. Yeah, that's what your job is. No matter how wacky or nuts, what the person is trying to do is you're taking it seriously. They're trying to break a record. That's your job as an adjudicator. And like you said, they travel the world. Apparently there's a huge emphasis on speaking to the media because that's a big role for Guinness World Record. It's there a media company that's extraordinarily media savvy, so they make sure that they're ninety adjudicators are savvy as well.
Yeah, and you know, you go through about a week of training and part of that is media training and just simple stuff like how to work a measuring tape or how to measure whatever you need to measure. You mentioned that they have to take it seriously, even if it's dumb. You also have to have the very you know, your face with a very tough job of telling someone sometimes a small child is trying to break a record that they failed and that they didn't get it. So you have to be able to break the news to people in a in a way that I would assume is has some compassion, a note of compassion, and then sometimes you might be in a situation that you need to get out of, like Glen Day was talking about this. One adjudicator was or maybe Glen Day was, I think it was him.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a Moscow or attempt to an attempt to break the largest concrete pouring. The engineers learned that they couldn't make it possible due to weather the weather conditions, said they were going to try and fake it. So he's there in Moscow. These guys are trying to fake this thing, and the idea that they came up with was which was officially sanctioned, and I guess this is probably a rule, is like, hey, if you're in a scary situation like that, just tell them they got the record and get out of there and we'll revoke it the next day.
Yeah, that's what he did. He was worried about standing on the edge of a massive hole with the kind of people who would try to break a concrete pouring record. Yeah, and be upset when you told them that they didn't break the record. He's like, Nah, I'm just gonna go ahead and say yes, congratulations, and then the next day text them sorry after revoke it.
Lol. Yeah, they come with that certificate frame certificate. If they fail, they shred it. I was gonna say, right in front of their face.
I was gonna say, hopefully not in front of them.
They shred it to make sure it's not stolen from somebody.
They shred it and then they make the attempter eat the shredded paper.
This is marinera. But these days, you know, obviously, even when ninety adjudicators there are fifty thousand entries, even if half of those drop out, you still can't send these people all over the world that much. So now in the digital age, most of this stuff is remote, but there are lots of strict rules and hoops you have to jump through to prove that you're not faking. Again just some video that you've deep faked or something.
Yeah, I mean they take this quite seriously, like you can't send a video that shows it and just that like you just did it yourself. You set up a camera on a tripod and you may very well have broken the record, but that doesn't cut it. You have to have actual live witnesses who are not family members who are not even friends necessarily. There's a lot, Like there's a lot, right, there's a lot you want to do ahead of time to understand and make sure that you're doing everything correctly, which is why they have those guidelines, which again is why a lot of people drop out, because they think, I just need to set up a phone on like one of those right tabletop mounts and you know, hula hoop for eighteen days in front of it and then do that.
Yeah, you can, though you know I mentioned the adjudicators obviously can't go to that many places. It seems like they're pretty much reserved these days for paid appearances. So you can fast track. If you've got six thousand pounds or almost seventy five hundred American US dollars, you can fast track your record and get that adjudicator to come out. It's a lot of money to drop on a world record, but if you're into that, then you can spend that.
My friend, you think that's a lot of money, Imagine eleven thousand pounds to get an adjudicator to come out. And what is that, Well, that is actually like a separate wing of Guinness World Records GWR. Consultancy, and it's a controversial new revenue stream, as the HR would put it, where if you're a company, you're a brand again, as HR would put it, you can go to GWR Consultancy and say like, hey, I'm not getting a lot of play on Instagram these days? How can I get my brand out there in a really eye popping way? And GWR Consultancy says, well, let's figure out a record you can break that may or may not be tied to your business, but either way, we're gonna make a big deal out of it, and you will get some media exposure even if you don't break the record, but you're gonna have to pay us some money first. And everything that they're doing is above the boards. It like when you when the company tries to break the record of supposedly like a quarter of them don't do it. Even though this is like almost tailor are made for their company, they still don't necessarily succeed and none of them make it in the book. It's a money making side, but they're still legitimately setting or breaking records.
Yeah, I'm trying not to like knock it too much. About half their revenue comes from that companies. You know, companies need to make money, but it almost just feels like, hey, if you want to pay for this official stamp, then you can do.
So, like the Better Business Bureau, like you can pay to get a higher rating, yeah, which is like, well what's the point of the Better Business Bureau. That doesn't quite rise to that with Guinness World Records, because they're still saying like, yes, they paid to get you know, their thing fast tracked and getting adjudicator out there to work with them about figuring it, like we worked with them, but they're actually doing this actual thing and they may or may not succeed, so it is legitimate. It is very like I said, it's controversial and a lot of people like you don't like it. They're there are some that have been way more controversial than others. Guinness got itself in a little bit of international hot water because apparently Turkmenistan's dictator Gribon Ghuli Birdie Muhemenoff he I practiced that so much, Chuck, and I still didn't get it quite right. I'm gonna try to again. Gribon Guli Birded Muhemedov, I think that's right. So I found his name from John Yeah, John Oliver on last week tonight.
Oh you didn't say it with the British accent, No, And he's.
Like, not to be confused with the gribon Guli Birdie Muhamedov that you went to high school. This is the dictator from Turkmenistan and the reason that he was apparently a fan of the Guinness World Records and so we started like ordering his country to start breaking records, and Guinness worked with him and took a lot of heat for it.
Yeah, I mean this record is so one of the ones that was successful was highest density of buildings with white marble cladding.
Yes, but he didn't have that already and then called Guinness. He ordered that to be built in one of the cities in turk Menistan so that he like that turk Menistan could have this record. Yeah.
Well, because of stuff like this, some of the old guard is they used to work there isn't too thrilled with the direction the company's taken. There's a woman named Anna Nicholas who was the head of PR in the eighties and nineties. In a Guardian interview that was just saying, like, you know, they've kind of lost their way they're more sensationalists too, sensationalists now and Norris McWhorter's own son, Alistair said they've lost the intellectual integrity that the twins.
Had as well as that love and feeling.
That's right. Should we talk about some fun records.
Let's but real quick. I just wanted to kind of put a bow on that whole thing. What we're talking about is the Guinness Book of World Records not just surviving but actually thriving in the Internet age. And that is just amazing in and of itself that it's not just like some brand that's on like its last leg or something like that. It still sells a million books a year. It still makes like international news. They're very media savvy, like they'll tie world records to you know, international news, and all of a sudden they're in the international news cycle like they're still around. And one of the reasons why is because they still adhere to like the principles that Norris and Ross created, which is like it has to be correct, it has to be accurate, it has to be factual, it has to be legitimate, and they try to do that as much as possible. I think some people are like they're playing way too fast and loose for that to be to be the case. Still, but there's still like they're still doing it, and I say, hats off. I'm really glad that the Guinness World Records are.
Still around, totally absolutely.
Okay, now we can talk about some funny records.
Okay, good, We'll talk fingernails, because we mentioned that early that was one of the just sort of legendary pictures from those early books was that Chinese priest didn't even have a name on this guy who had those curly those you know, long curly fingernails twenty two and three quarters inches. Today, the woman who owns that record is a woman named Diana Armstrong. I believe she's from Minnesota, and her total fingernail length is over forty two feet close to forty three forty two feet ten point four inches, and she this is very sad, but she hasn't cut her nails since nineteen ninety seven when her sixteen year old daughter died from an asthma attack in her sleep, and her daughter apparently loved her mom's fingernails, helped her do her nails. So Diana Armstrong was like him, never cutting these and if you wonder what forty two feet fingernails looks like.
It's astounding.
Yeah, Like she's there's there's pictures where she's holding her hand about shoulder height and the fingernails reach all the way down to the floor like a cane, and they are just astounding looking. I don't I don't know how she gets anything done.
Yeah, and we also we have to like give credit to the previous record holder, a woman named Lee Redman who held the record before Diana Armstrong. And who I guess is like, Okay, we're gonna lose it to somebody else. Like that's a pretty good person to lose it to.
Yeah.
So what about Evil Kniebel? I remember we mentioned this in the Evil Knievel two parter, which I still can't believe we did.
Yeah, broken bones by a human.
Yeah, four hundred and thirty three, as the story goes, Yeah, no, not all at once. There's a guy named George Kaminski who was serving a life sentence in Pennsylvania, and apparently the prison yards in Pennsylvania were full of four leaf clovers, and for a little while, Kaminski held the largest collection of four leaf clovers at just under seventy three thousand four leaf clovers that he collected while in prison, and then they moved him to a prison with fewer four leaf clovers in the prison yard, and he suddenly was quickly he lost his record.
All right, I would like to mention Ashrita Furman, because if you're wondering if someone wanted to hold like the record for Guinness Records, then that of course has happened. This is a dude in New York City. He has the record for the most world records and he's been doing this for forty years plus. He was a kid just like us that was sort of obsessed with this book, and in the late nineteen seventies was like, all right, here's my deal. I want to get in that book more than anyone else by doing stuff like jumping jacks and farthest distance treked on while balancing a bike on a chin, hula, hooping underwater. These are the sort of little, just funny, odd human feats that Ashrida has made over the years. And you know how many records?
Is it?
Seven hundred plus seven hundred plus?
Yeah? I mean, he just said it's his life's work to hold as many records as he possibly could. And he holds the record for the most records, right.
Yeah, Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
That's just amazing, man, I love that.
Yeah.
He's apparently a really good guy too, Like he helps other people who are like him figure out, you know, what records to go after, because he's like a jack of all trades. Yeah, and I've noticed. I think there's an economy of scale to it. So, for example, he holds the record for longest distance I guess walked or whatever with a bicycle balanced on your chin. He also holds the record for the most pine classes balanced on your chin eighty one. That's a lot of pine classes, glass pine classes.
You gotta get it balancing things on his gin.
Yeah, So I think that's what he'll do. He'll like dedicate himself to learning something and then you can break a bunch of different records by doing similar things, right, like balancing stuff on your chin. But he's all over the place, like most arrow's broken with your neck in one minute shu, like hula hooping underwater. Like he's like he's not a one trick pony, He's a multiple trick pony. I guess is the best way to put it.
Hey, you gotta be if you want to set the record for records exactly.
That's exactly right, John. Yeah, there's so much more I want to say, but it will never come up with a better ending for this episode than that, So let's.
Leave it at that, agreed.
If you want to know more about Guinness World Records than friends, there are some great ones out there that you can delight and amuse yourself and you're friends with. Just go all over the internet, or even better, go buy a copy of Guinness Book of World Records. Comes out every year. And since I said it comes out every year, that's triggered listener mail.
Well, I'm gonna call this wind power in Texas. We've heard from quite a few Texans. This from Ben and Denton, Texas. Hey, guys, it's fun to hear you talk about the great ways that we bolstered our wind and solar over the years. A lot of people don't realize that Texas has its own grid. And another thing people don't realize is that there are many municipally owned utility companies here and Denton is one of the City of Denton owns and manages utilities for its citizens. I was actually a member of the Public Utilities Board for a couple of years, which is a board made just of citizens to have oversight of the city's utility operations. And I really learned a lot, namely that Denton has pushed to source our electricity supply exclusively from renewable resources for many years now. Denton also has a huge push for other renewable energy efficient options for its citizens, from discounts on solar panels and smart thermostats to free trees for your property.
Nice.
While we're talking about Texas, Denton is the home to one of the largest universities in Texas, University of North Texas. Oh I didn't meant to look at their mascot, failed to do so, which makes it a little bit of a liberal leaning town in a lot of ways. But much of Texas obviously is still hyper conservative. It's a real shame how many politicians here seem to be arbitrarily pushing it to shut down solar and wind farms. There's no logical reason for it. Sure, it doesn't grow the oil industry, but it does grow our supply in total, which is what we need, and it's sustainable, which is a win win in my book. Anyways, as always, I appreciate what you guys do, what you say and how you say it, and I'd always agree. But that's life. That is from Ben Jumper.
Very nice, Thanks a lot, Ben.
What are they? Did you look it up?
Do you want me to look at us? It's the the University of North Texas?
Right, uh yeah, sure?
Can you hear me going be b b b boop. I'm looking at that.
I've got it right here. Scrappy the Eagle.
I would have never come up with that.
That's their mascot. They say they're the mean Green Nation. Okay, so yeah, they're the North Texas mean Green. There you go, so go mean Green.
Yes, and go wind Energy. Who is that from? Again?
That was from Ben Jumper.
Thanks a lot, Ben. That's wonderful. Glad you're doing great work out there. Keep it up, buddy. And if you want to be like Ben and tell us about some great work your town, or your region, or your country or your universe is doing, we want to hear about it. You can send it via email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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