Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: With me as always is Charles W. Chucker's Chuck Chucky
Speaker 1: Bride of Chucky. You paused as if you forgot who
Speaker 1: I was. I had a thing. I have marble mouth,
Speaker 1: whereas the unusual to Here we go, this podcast brought
Speaker 1: to you by Jolly Rancher. Have you ever mixes with Ziema? No?
Speaker 1: But you know that Oakland Raiders former Oakland Raiders quarterback
Speaker 1: JaMarcus Russell just got busted with. They call it purple
Speaker 1: drank and it's it's like it's codeine syrup and I
Speaker 1: think some sort of carbonet soda and Jolly Rancher, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's robo tripping is what he's doing. Well, it came
Speaker 1: out of the Houston, Texas scene like ten years ago.
Speaker 1: We're drink. I never heard of That's how square I am.
Speaker 1: I haven't heard of it either, So don't feel bad. Okay. Plus,
Speaker 1: it's like that's what they do in Houston. Seriously, that
Speaker 1: what you want your town associated with? Yeah, we use
Speaker 1: code dean water. Yeah, we came up with purple drink.
Speaker 1: Wasn't he the QB for l s U. Yeah. Hey
Speaker 1: that guy, Well he's a bust. He's nothing. Now, well
Speaker 1: he's a big wash. Really. Yeah. He went to the
Speaker 1: NFL and got all fat and through interceptions and he
Speaker 1: was great for LU team. He was so Anyway, I
Speaker 1: guess what all that leads us to, Chuck is saunas. Yes,
Speaker 1: football players, Well they probably your steam room guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk about That's a great place to start, Chuck.
Speaker 1: There's a difference between a sauna and a steam room.
Speaker 1: There's a number of differences, but the mode of heat
Speaker 1: is what's really different. Right. Yeah, And I should point
Speaker 1: out we called this Saunas colon more interesting than you
Speaker 1: think for a reason because Robert lamb Our, a steam
Speaker 1: writer and uh stuff from the Sience Lab. He wrote
Speaker 1: this and he told us like months ago, He's like, dude,
Speaker 1: you should do saunas saunas. It's way cooler than you think,
Speaker 1: and it's dirty and filthy and Mike and he was
Speaker 1: right steeped in history. Yeah, this is uh for my money.
Speaker 1: Robert Williams the best writer on how stuff works out
Speaker 1: com ever. Um, but he wrote an altogether pleasant article
Speaker 1: that I've read like many, many times, and every time
Speaker 1: you just loved the way he wrote it. It's a
Speaker 1: great article. We should read the first line, please do.
Speaker 1: The first line of his article says, you're going to
Speaker 1: want to read this article naked, So please, before you
Speaker 1: go any further, disrobe completely. So if you're in the
Speaker 1: confines of your own home, yeah, if the shades are
Speaker 1: drawn and you're an adult, there's no one else around
Speaker 1: that you're uncomfortable with. Very specifically, Chuck is only talking
Speaker 1: to people who are we'll just go with twenty one
Speaker 1: years of age and older. And you're alone in your house,
Speaker 1: And if you're listening to your podcast and you feel
Speaker 1: like doing so naked right now, please do right now.
Speaker 1: Saunas more interesting than you think. Thank you. Brought to
Speaker 1: you by Jolly Rancher. Uh, Chuck, we were talking about
Speaker 1: the difference between a steam room and a sauna. A
Speaker 1: steam room is heated by moisture vapor, water vapor. Uh.
Speaker 1: And for that reason, the average steam room is going
Speaker 1: to be about a hundred and four degrees fahrenheit, which
Speaker 1: is forty degree celsius. Right, pretty hot it is, but
Speaker 1: you can't check it up much hotter than that, and
Speaker 1: the reason why is because it feels so much hotter
Speaker 1: than it is because it's a moisture rich environment and
Speaker 1: our body cools by sweating, and then the sweat evaporating
Speaker 1: off of the skin that creates our cooling sensation. Well,
Speaker 1: in a steam room, you sweat, you sweat buckets, but
Speaker 1: it never evaporates because for evaporation to occur, the environment,
Speaker 1: the ambient air has to be drier than your skin,
Speaker 1: and if it's equally dry or it's wetter, then your
Speaker 1: sweat is not going to evaporate, no cooling effect, right,
Speaker 1: which is why sweating while you're swimming is is and
Speaker 1: it's a problem, it's yeah, which is what I do. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then in a sauna, conversely, this is dry heat,
Speaker 1: so it's gonna be a lot hotter temperature wise in there, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, if a steam room is a hundred and
Speaker 1: four degrees fahrenheit average, you're talking a hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: six degrees fahrenheit. It's hot eighty degrees celsius in in
Speaker 1: your average sauna. And I do you like saunas and
Speaker 1: steam rooms? You do. I've never really sat in the
Speaker 1: steam room, but I love saunas. Actually, growing up. There's
Speaker 1: a holiday in in Toledo that um my family had
Speaker 1: a pool membership too, and they had a sauna. Who wha, wha,
Speaker 1: wha wha. You could get a pool membership to a
Speaker 1: hotel in Toledo in the seventies, seventies and eighties. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I never heard of that. But I mean now that
Speaker 1: I look back, I'm like, yeah, that's really really weird.
Speaker 1: Probably a membership, your dad was probably yeah, we got
Speaker 1: a membership kids, come right, I wonder actually had a
Speaker 1: room key? Is we had I'm pretty sure we had
Speaker 1: a membership, but I don't remember. But they had a
Speaker 1: sauna for sure. Uh. And so I was introduced to
Speaker 1: the sauna like really early on. It was like just
Speaker 1: a normal thing. So when you were a little kid,
Speaker 1: you enjoyed it because it seems like such an old
Speaker 1: person thing or an adult thing to do here in
Speaker 1: the West. If you go to Finland, baby, they are
Speaker 1: all about the saunas. I mean, it's like their national pastime,
Speaker 1: right actually, um, in their national epic, Chuck, it's called
Speaker 1: the calla Valla. This is a little side side note
Speaker 1: that it's their national epic, very very old. Uh. It
Speaker 1: mentioned saunas frequently. Well, of course, okay um, there's about
Speaker 1: one point six million saunas in Finland and uh. The
Speaker 1: first description of a Finnish sauna dates back to eleven thirteen.
Speaker 1: The Ukrainian historian Nestor wrote about him. That was my
Speaker 1: goats name, Nestor? Really did you name it after the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian history house? That was eleven and named him after
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian storian. It was either that or Plato. Did
Speaker 1: your goat love a good fitz? Uh? No, but he
Speaker 1: drank coke from a bottle, which was kind of cute.
Speaker 1: That is so cute. It's cute with goats. It's not
Speaker 1: very cute when you see a human baby drinking coke
Speaker 1: from a bottle, which I've seen and it's disturbing. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're seen, like a one year old drinking a
Speaker 1: bottle of Coca cola, no it ain't right, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not right at all. It's better than an espresso shot,
Speaker 1: I guess, but not much there. And by coke, of course,
Speaker 1: I'm using the Southern colloquialism for coke, which means any
Speaker 1: kind of soda poptu c o a. As always, man,
Speaker 1: we got really far off of saunas, didn't we let's
Speaker 1: go back, So Finland saunas are associated with it, and
Speaker 1: for good reason. Right, did you read the article about
Speaker 1: the Finnish navy fighting pirates. Yeah, they have saunas on
Speaker 1: the pirate fighting boats. Yeah. And not only that, the
Speaker 1: Finnish army and Kosovo built twenty saunas for their for
Speaker 1: their fighters over there, like troops, eight hundred troops, and
Speaker 1: they have them in prison yeah, finished prisons. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's literally a part of daily life. If you go
Speaker 1: camping and you're finish, you take along a portable sauna
Speaker 1: while you're camping, like people take saunas every day. It's
Speaker 1: like showering to us, and this is an addition to showering.
Speaker 1: They shower a lot too. Yeah. Before we breathe past
Speaker 1: the finished prisons on as though, we should uh that
Speaker 1: this is sort of remarkable to me because we'll find out,
Speaker 1: as we said that a lot of about being in
Speaker 1: sauna is being completely naked, especially if you're finished. Americans
Speaker 1: a little more shy, but we'll get to that in
Speaker 1: a minute. But I imagine a finished prison sanna is
Speaker 1: a pretty happening place to be on a Friday night,
Speaker 1: wouldn't you think. Yeah, because the saunas have something of
Speaker 1: a reputation, especially in the seventies. Um they developed the
Speaker 1: reputation for being a swinging gay hangout, right, and that
Speaker 1: is nothing new actually, um saunas, which we'll talk about later,
Speaker 1: the history of them. But they were um kind of
Speaker 1: eradicated thanks to the product start reformation, because they had started,
Speaker 1: they had started to get pretty. Yeah. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: big party in there. Uh and not just gay either, well, no,
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuffy prostitution. Yeah, it's honest, word that.
Speaker 1: All they were missing was a disco ball in uh
Speaker 1: Andy Warhol and it could have been a studio. Uh
Speaker 1: So let's get but let's crawl back inside the sauna
Speaker 1: for a minute. Okay, you know all the spruce cedar.
Speaker 1: Would that looks so nice and feel so good on
Speaker 1: your bottom? Yes? I always thought that was just like
Speaker 1: I mean, I knew obviously they weren't gonna put stainless
Speaker 1: steel in there, but I never really figured out it's would.
Speaker 1: But I never gave it two thoughts. Right, you would
Speaker 1: think that it was just a traditional and it is traditional.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, yeah, it's never been updated
Speaker 1: in that respect because if you did put in stainless steel,
Speaker 1: you would leave many, many layers of skin in the
Speaker 1: sauna from your bottom every time you sat down. Same
Speaker 1: with plastic um, you'd just be in big trouble. So
Speaker 1: would absorbs heat, and it remains relatively cool at high temperatures,
Speaker 1: which is why I mean, it's still warm. Your tookis
Speaker 1: is hot, but it's not like you're not hurting yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Robert also pointed out that it's absorbs steam and
Speaker 1: stores heat and releases like that fine ceedar smell, right,
Speaker 1: which is why the youth ceedar and spruce because they
Speaker 1: have natural aromatics trapped within more than others. Right. I
Speaker 1: love cedar except pine. But I don't know if you'd
Speaker 1: want to sit there and smell pine the whole time,
Speaker 1: would you? Maybe you get a little crazy? I think yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so, so, Chuck. Let's talk about the original
Speaker 1: finished sauna, the Savusana. Yeah, it looks sort of like
Speaker 1: the Unibomber cabin. It's literally a cabin like structure, no windows,
Speaker 1: no chimney, no chimney, which is important because it is
Speaker 1: a wood fire sauna. Yeah. And it's a little disconcerting. Apparently,
Speaker 1: if you have an original savosana, it takes like all
Speaker 1: day to get it hot enough. You're burning wood, they're
Speaker 1: smoke in there. Yeah, it's black soot on the walls
Speaker 1: and this is where you're supposed to go in and sit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It sounds very dangerous to me. It does. It doesn't
Speaker 1: sound healthy, um, which is why the savo sauna UM,
Speaker 1: because of the eye irritants, the fact that you're inhaling
Speaker 1: carbon monoxide and all sorts of other stuff UM is
Speaker 1: generally relegated to sauna purists. According to Mr r L
Speaker 1: A M. Yeah, but I get the idea that you're
Speaker 1: supposed to let the smoke clear out as much as possible,
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah? Like, but how how do you
Speaker 1: do that well? Because you're just letting all the heat
Speaker 1: out you know? Yeah that he said it seeps through
Speaker 1: uh in the roof? Yeah yeah. Stick to me, And
Speaker 1: I mean you're getting hot enough. As a c O,
Speaker 1: I would say, please do not try to build your
Speaker 1: own savo sana because you will likely die off. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Like, I don't understand how people survive
Speaker 1: the saunas, right, So, um. They're generally left to sauna
Speaker 1: purists and the rest of us just use regular saunas.
Speaker 1: It's just called the sauna. And this is the very
Speaker 1: recognizable sauna with spruce or cedar would um and a stove.
Speaker 1: Most of the time these stove called kiowas, are electric
Speaker 1: these days, although you can have a wood burning kiowa
Speaker 1: kiowas k i u a s um that has a chimney.
Speaker 1: So the main feature isn't that it's wood heated for
Speaker 1: a sava sauna, it's that there's no chimney and you're inhaling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and well we should point out to like whether it's
Speaker 1: wood or gas or electric or whatever, it's not that's
Speaker 1: not providing the heat. You're heating rocks, right, and then
Speaker 1: the rocks transfer the heat to the surrounding environment. And
Speaker 1: if you want to jack the temperature a little bit,
Speaker 1: remember we talked about steam room, uh huh, that it's
Speaker 1: heated by water vapor. You can actually use the same
Speaker 1: thing for a sauna. You take a little water too
Speaker 1: later from a bucket, splash it on the rocks, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you have with the Finns call loyally,
Speaker 1: there's a lot in there, I know, and I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm not big on Finnish pronuncia Asian. I know how
Speaker 1: to say semohaya, and I'm not even sure I'm saying
Speaker 1: that right. I'm gonna go with literally literally literally convening.
Speaker 1: That's Swedish. I'm sorry, Yes, I just said something in Swedish.
Speaker 1: So since we were talking about the rocks, so we
Speaker 1: should say that the rocks. It's very important. You can't
Speaker 1: just throw granite in there, because granite will probably explode
Speaker 1: in your face. I think it's that hot, sup, But
Speaker 1: water on real dangers are not good. No, you need
Speaker 1: unweathered quarry rock. And he listed a few. Hornblenda is
Speaker 1: my favorite. The one they like the most is, uh,
Speaker 1: what is it? Periodote, periodotite, peridotite, because there's an there's
Speaker 1: there's a semi precious mineral called parado. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: imagine this is where it comes from. Paradotype or old
Speaker 1: friend basalt. Yeah, why why can't we get that one?
Speaker 1: It won't stick in our head like there's no um
Speaker 1: neural pathway forming when we hear that word. So anyway, paradotite.
Speaker 1: So those those are the rocks, the unweathered corey rock
Speaker 1: that that you can use to get really really hot.
Speaker 1: You can pour water on them. It'll steam, it'll hiss,
Speaker 1: but it won't blow up in your face right again,
Speaker 1: which is very important. I was surprised to find that
Speaker 1: the Swedes don't have a name for the pile of
Speaker 1: rocks that heat the sauna. They have a name for
Speaker 1: the stove kios. They have a name for the steam,
Speaker 1: which is yeah, they don't have a name for the
Speaker 1: rocks called the pile of rocks. The water on the
Speaker 1: pile of rocks and make us some really uh josh.
Speaker 1: You can also have what's called an infrared sauna, and
Speaker 1: that's the latest and greatest. And people say, people that
Speaker 1: believe in the infrareds honest say that it actually penetrates
Speaker 1: like into your bones, which it's good and bad. If
Speaker 1: you listen to the Butterfly Wings podcast, you know, infred
Speaker 1: means redder than red on the on the spectrum of light,
Speaker 1: right yeah, and it's radiation, sure exists, radiation that's good. Basically,
Speaker 1: what's going on is you're being bathed in infrared radiation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it heats you up. I'm a semi purist. I
Speaker 1: think yeah, I think I would just like a regular sauna,
Speaker 1: not a savos stove a key us exactly, kind of
Speaker 1: like they have at the gym, yeah, or at the
Speaker 1: holiday and without the old naked men. Well, that is
Speaker 1: the thing about um SAA's that you're going to run into,
Speaker 1: chuck is naked men and naked women even depending on
Speaker 1: why not, Yeah, that's um. Robert made sure to point
Speaker 1: out that depending on where you are in the world,
Speaker 1: different cultures have different traditions. Finland, a lot of Eastern Europe, Russia,
Speaker 1: you can pretty much drop everything. You gotta have your
Speaker 1: towel though, because you gotta sit on it. Right. You
Speaker 1: you may be completely naked, but you still have to
Speaker 1: have a towel for hygienic reasons. You don't want to
Speaker 1: just sit your butt on the cedar plank where somebody
Speaker 1: else just said there but because there's a transfer of
Speaker 1: butt funk. Yeah. But you know what also I thought
Speaker 1: was funny. He said that they don't like Americans who
Speaker 1: want to wear like their bathing suit in there. They're
Speaker 1: really frowned upon because of hygienic reasons. Right, you just
Speaker 1: cover up with a towel. Yeah, but why is that
Speaker 1: not hygienic to wear like your speedo in there? Does
Speaker 1: a butt funk get trapped in the I think the
Speaker 1: butt funk can make it through the licra to the
Speaker 1: outside of it. Is that it? Maybe? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just thought that was odd because here in the
Speaker 1: U S we're like, now, you wear a bathing suit
Speaker 1: for hygienic reasons. That's my point. Yeah, that's some my point.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe it's because we don't wash our bathing suits
Speaker 1: quite as often as we wash our selves are naked bodies.
Speaker 1: This is a steamy episode. Should know, well, we are
Speaker 1: talking about nakedness, and we also should mention that, um,
Speaker 1: same sex saunas are found all over the place in Europe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where saunas have traditionally been around for a very long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they tend to have same sex, although they'll also have
Speaker 1: mixed sex um as well. Yeah there's both. Wait, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: The places where the songs have been around the most
Speaker 1: are more likely to have mixed sex. Places where it
Speaker 1: went away for a while and came back would have
Speaker 1: more like same sex saunas. Right right, I was confused. Germany, Austria, Scandinavia,
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe. He says generally offer nude, mixed company bathing.
Speaker 1: I yeah, mixed company like men and women. You got it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: in Russian banyas. Did you ever see Eastern Promises? Yes,
Speaker 1: such a good movie. Has there ever been a more
Speaker 1: uncomfortable fight scene in your life? Completely naked? A couple
Speaker 1: of guys, it was you. Yeah, it's awesome movie. Um,
Speaker 1: it's for adults. It's rated R or maybe n C
Speaker 1: seventeen even possibly triple X, triple X, triple X. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a fight scene where Vigo is completely naked in
Speaker 1: a bath house and fights these guys. I can't imagine
Speaker 1: anything worse than being in a fight when I'm completely naked.
Speaker 1: I would just that gives me the hives. It does
Speaker 1: me as well. Yeah, let's talk about sweat. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the science of it. Huh Okay, that's what
Speaker 1: it's all about. Yeah, but a lot of people who um,
Speaker 1: who use saunas say that they're very healthy, and as
Speaker 1: Lamb gets into that goes back to the idea that
Speaker 1: sweat is excretion and excreting anything is healthy. But he
Speaker 1: also points out that it's very easy to make this mistake,
Speaker 1: this this idea of any excretion is good. Has been
Speaker 1: around for a very long time. And don't forget what
Speaker 1: we used to use leeches to suck our blood. Um.
Speaker 1: We used to believe that UM pooping as much as
Speaker 1: we could was a good idea, UM, which I kind
Speaker 1: of still into that one. I do too. I'm a
Speaker 1: big believer in it. Uh. If you're talking sweat, josh, Um,
Speaker 1: what happens is nerve endings are triggered by heat and
Speaker 1: it releases a neurotransmitter called acetal colie exactly, and he
Speaker 1: says there are two point three million sweat glands that
Speaker 1: all a sudden kick into action, which are also called
Speaker 1: ekring glands, are different from apo kringla. I feel like
Speaker 1: I have more, but it's probably not the case. Mine
Speaker 1: are just overactive. That's possible. Hard working you do, I've
Speaker 1: seen I've seen you sweat in a seventy degree farrenheight
Speaker 1: tank which is chili. You have to have a wet
Speaker 1: suit for that. And Chuck is still sweating again with
Speaker 1: the swimming and sweating. Uh So he claims that in
Speaker 1: a fifteen minutes sauna, the average person sweats about four
Speaker 1: cups about a leader of sweat, which is way more
Speaker 1: for me in fifteen minutes, right yeah, I sweat about
Speaker 1: a gallon in fifteen minutes. I guarantee that's a lot, man.
Speaker 1: A leader of sweat is a lot of water to lose.
Speaker 1: It is, you know. But you should see me in
Speaker 1: a sauna. It's awesome. It's one of the best feelings.
Speaker 1: But I'm not exactly uh sweating out toxins, am I. No,
Speaker 1: you're sweating out salt uric acid, not to be confused
Speaker 1: with Robert uruk um. And that's pretty much it. You
Speaker 1: can you can you do excrete toxins, right yeah, but
Speaker 1: not much. No. For the most part, toxins are excreted
Speaker 1: through your kidneys. This is your go to um excretion,
Speaker 1: right um. And the researchers have found that in heavy sweat,
Speaker 1: about one percent of mercury found in the bloodstream is released,
Speaker 1: where the other that's released goes through the kidneys. It
Speaker 1: either comes out in the stool or the urine, right right, uh.
Speaker 1: And this is it has no the The concentration of
Speaker 1: a toxin in the blood stream appears to have no
Speaker 1: bearing on how much is released through the sweat. It's
Speaker 1: almost like our sweat glands are set up to just
Speaker 1: do one percent. But people who use saunas, say, man,
Speaker 1: one percent of a concentration of mercury. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: definitely worth fifteen minutes in the sauna. Absolutely, you know,
Speaker 1: so they can. But I think it's not just feeling healthier.
Speaker 1: They're saying, Look, there's a science behind it as well,
Speaker 1: right right, exactly. Um. Another benefit of a good sauna
Speaker 1: sweat or a good sweat period is this really good
Speaker 1: for your skin. It opens your pores, keeps them nice, impliant,
Speaker 1: and the uh there's a study by the Journal of
Speaker 1: Dermatology that said, you know, a regular sweat from a
Speaker 1: sauna has a proactive effect on your skin and like
Speaker 1: helps out with ex amaun and all kinds of dry
Speaker 1: skin conditions. And also um Land points out that we
Speaker 1: have long associated like bathing rituals with kind of um
Speaker 1: clearing away the like a spiritual the psychic funk. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: not just bottom funk, but head funk. Yeah. Uh. And
Speaker 1: anybody who's felt poorly uh and it's taking a shower
Speaker 1: can attest to that. You just feel better somehow after
Speaker 1: a shower, And there's nothing worse than the feeling of
Speaker 1: taking a shower, stepping out and still feeling bad because
Speaker 1: you know it's gonna be another twenty four hours before
Speaker 1: and you're going to feel start to feel good. Like
Speaker 1: you know, you've screwed up big time if you take
Speaker 1: a shower and you still don't feel good afterwards, right
Speaker 1: you are, Josh, A great shower, like a great sweat
Speaker 1: or a good steam. Good fits good, fits does a
Speaker 1: body good. Um, we're talking about the Russian banya, the
Speaker 1: saunas there the bath house. They also would beat themselves.
Speaker 1: I think they probably still do. You would flog your
Speaker 1: skin with what's called the venic and it's a bundle
Speaker 1: of leafy branches like oak and maple and birch branches, right,
Speaker 1: And by doing that, they're they're stimulating circulation because the
Speaker 1: skin's like, what's gonna quit that? Send some blood there,
Speaker 1: find out what's going on, right, let me know what's
Speaker 1: going on after you get there. See, And um, that's
Speaker 1: what that's what the skin is doing, right. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it also um produces a mild euphoric effect apparently releases
Speaker 1: the plant oils, which is also a good thing. And
Speaker 1: uh yeah, he said. It stimulates the production of opiate
Speaker 1: endorphins and it's like a mild narcotic effect crazy, which
Speaker 1: I love that that those three words together. Mild narcotic effect,
Speaker 1: that's great. It's almost like cellar door. Mild narcotic effect.
Speaker 1: That's better than massive narcotic effect. Right, and then you're
Speaker 1: in trouble. Then that shower doesn't work. Um chuck. Also,
Speaker 1: saunas produce a mock fever. Yeah, I thought that was
Speaker 1: kind of cool. So your internal body temperature can raise
Speaker 1: as much as five point four degrease fahrenheight, right, and uh,
Speaker 1: the temperature at your skin can increase by as much
Speaker 1: as eighteen degrees fahrenheight. That's a lot. That is a
Speaker 1: serious amount. And by doing that, your body is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm sick. I need to jack my immune system up.
Speaker 1: So white blood cell count or white blood cell production
Speaker 1: is increased. UM. The limph nodes, which are another internal
Speaker 1: waste system, a very important one, UM, are flushed. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you start to sweat even four even further. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't increase your blood pressure. Increases your blood
Speaker 1: pump circulation circulation, but not your blood pressure. No, but
Speaker 1: if you do have high blood pressure, we should say
Speaker 1: saunas are not recommended for you. Well, we should just
Speaker 1: go ahead and say, who all, it's not recommended for
Speaker 1: kids and old people, it's not recommended pregnant ladies. Um,
Speaker 1: but it is good. Um, like those people shouldn't get in,
Speaker 1: but women definitely might want to get in because it
Speaker 1: apparently alleviates menstrual cramps really well. Right, but if you're
Speaker 1: pregnant again, you want to stay away from the sauna
Speaker 1: if you're pregnant, right, very very astute point, Chuck, thank you. Um.
Speaker 1: Lastly about physiology and saunaing, Um, what you want to
Speaker 1: do is keep yourself very hydrated because the irony is
Speaker 1: while you're excreting that one percent the go to excreaseing
Speaker 1: excreting organs, the kidneys need water to excrete the other
Speaker 1: and if you're sweating all of it out, things get
Speaker 1: backed up toxic levels, raising your body and you can
Speaker 1: do some real damage to yourself. So every time you
Speaker 1: go into the sauna, you want to take a jug
Speaker 1: of water with you with at least a leader. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say if you have gout, the sauna is
Speaker 1: probably a good place to go. You think so, oh,
Speaker 1: because you're a acid builds up. Yeah, it's your all
Speaker 1: this is a build up. If you're a acid and
Speaker 1: you're well, your is you're a acid. So if you
Speaker 1: have gout, can get thee to a sauna. Okay Um,
Speaker 1: And there was one other cool thing about the physical
Speaker 1: Oh the reason they one reason they recommend heart patients
Speaker 1: not getting saunas is because one of the traditions is
Speaker 1: to jump from the sauna, either into a snow bank
Speaker 1: or into a cool pool water in Finland, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: shock your body. And the old urban legend that you
Speaker 1: heard when your kids about going from the hot tub
Speaker 1: to the pool and you'll you'll drown because your pores
Speaker 1: are open. That's so not true. Actually, it's big in
Speaker 1: Turkey too. There's the Turkish bath, which is like a
Speaker 1: hot tub and then a cool tub, right, and you
Speaker 1: go from one to the other. I did not know
Speaker 1: that far as I know, that's what I've always heard it.
Speaker 1: I had no idea. Um, Chuck, I think it's high
Speaker 1: time we talked about the history of the sauna. And
Speaker 1: saunas are very very old. Yeah, Neolithic tribes. I love
Speaker 1: how he tied culture and uh humans like culture springing
Speaker 1: up around human physiological needs and bathing he said was
Speaker 1: like the first people that bathe and hot springs lead
Speaker 1: to saunas. They're like, wow, this is fantastic. I really
Speaker 1: like this. Yeah. Um, And I think in France and
Speaker 1: Spain especially, a lot of the Neolithic settlements are located
Speaker 1: very close to hot springs and not by accident either. Right. No, Um,
Speaker 1: as people were remained nomadic, apparently, we started creating collapsible,
Speaker 1: portable saunas that resemble like sweat lodges in Native America. Um.
Speaker 1: And then as we began to settle down and become sedentary, uh,
Speaker 1: they made more permanent structures like dugouts in Earthen dugouts uh.
Speaker 1: And then eventually the Savo saunas, and then which remember
Speaker 1: day back at least to the twelfth century, right, that's
Speaker 1: the humily a lot further than that. Apparently, as Finland
Speaker 1: settled by modern Finns, um, the the sauna was pretty
Speaker 1: much brought with them. Yeah. And through the Middle Ages
Speaker 1: it was like the common people. It wasn't just for
Speaker 1: the rich or anything. The common like whole villages would
Speaker 1: would sauna together, sweat it out together, men, women and children,
Speaker 1: and at the local bathhouse they would actually feast inside
Speaker 1: the sauna. Yes, is really gross. It is they would
Speaker 1: get married, um, and they would get they would have
Speaker 1: babes on. Yes, prostitution what they called the stews was
Speaker 1: the nickname they had. Yes, Yeah, that's not a stew.
Speaker 1: You want to eat with crackers, um maybe afterwards, yeah, perhaps.
Speaker 1: So this this association, like we said, with saw and
Speaker 1: places where you could find a prostitute and have sex
Speaker 1: with said prostitute. Um. And just kind of that Roman
Speaker 1: diane ie in orgiastic um kind of vibe going on
Speaker 1: in the Saunus was one of the reasons why they
Speaker 1: were eradicated by Europe because in the early sixteenth century
Speaker 1: Europe got a little tense. Yeah, Protestant Reformation just ruined everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're kind of like, you can't do that you put
Speaker 1: a put a hat with a buckle on right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't do that either or that or that or
Speaker 1: that right, get out to start crying right now, let
Speaker 1: me teach you what guilt is all about. Right. And
Speaker 1: then that lasted for about five hundred years, and then
Speaker 1: finally in the late twentieth century, thanks to the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: people began to loosen up again and get climbed back
Speaker 1: into the sauna right, and the sauna immediately became associated
Speaker 1: with sex again, like the gay bath houses that we
Speaker 1: were talking about. Have you ever seen in the band
Speaker 1: played on? Uh No, but my brother worked on that.
Speaker 1: I think we talked about that. Um and I think
Speaker 1: you said they your brother worked on it too, But um,
Speaker 1: Phil Collins plays a bath house owner, and I think
Speaker 1: it's Richard Gear who's like trying to track patient zero,
Speaker 1: is trying to convince him to like shut down the
Speaker 1: bath house because there's like this epidemic that no one's
Speaker 1: paying attention to. That back then they called gay cancer,
Speaker 1: which is now called HIV or AIDS. They called the
Speaker 1: gay cancer they did originally crazy Yeah, um, and so
Speaker 1: the bath houses featured prominently, and Sauna's feature prominently in
Speaker 1: the bath Houses Phil Collins, Phil Collins SUSU studio was Yeah,
Speaker 1: they did a good job the bath house. I think
Speaker 1: we talked about what a good job Phil Collins did too. Dude,
Speaker 1: that was a long time ago. So if that's the case,
Speaker 1: then people, you know, that's like a two year old podcast.
Speaker 1: So I don't mind repeating things every once in a while.
Speaker 1: We should do one on things to do with the
Speaker 1: Dead body or synesthesia. That'd be a great one. That's
Speaker 1: what SKO shouldn't. That's what sk so chuck. The saunas
Speaker 1: make their comeback now. You can find them at holiday
Speaker 1: inns around the world. Actually it's not true. I've never
Speaker 1: seen a sauna at a holiday in since they had
Speaker 1: my last really crappy job. They had um a gem
Speaker 1: in the building, which was one cool part because you
Speaker 1: could go down, like during lunch and work out and
Speaker 1: they had a saun in there and I would work
Speaker 1: out and then I would could theoretically I did for
Speaker 1: a time, and I would go sit in the sauna
Speaker 1: and it's just the best man. Yeah, just sitting there
Speaker 1: just like there's something. I see why the intercourse happened,
Speaker 1: because there's something very primal about just sitting there naked
Speaker 1: and just sweating and sweating and sweating. But I never
Speaker 1: had a desire to like eat food or meet anyone special.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying? Is that clear? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: got it. I get hint hint um. For those of
Speaker 1: you can't see, I just winked that, chuck um uh
Speaker 1: so chuck. Let's say that you have been inspired to
Speaker 1: go out to take a sauna from listening to this,
Speaker 1: because there's actually something called sauna etiquette that you need
Speaker 1: to know about. First of all, if you're in a
Speaker 1: country and they speak German and you decide to go
Speaker 1: to a sauna, there will be a person in there
Speaker 1: named the sauna maister. The sona maister is in charge
Speaker 1: for basically running a very strict ten minute session where
Speaker 1: your entire job is to go in there and sit
Speaker 1: down and shut up, right. Uh, basically follow the son
Speaker 1: of Myster's lead. You're not allowed to leave once the
Speaker 1: ten minutes has started. You're not allowed to come in
Speaker 1: once the ten minutes. Definitely, never ever put your hands
Speaker 1: on that later. No, that's the son of master's job.
Speaker 1: Do not wet the rocks if you have a son
Speaker 1: of mister. No, that's that's the song. And I got
Speaker 1: the impression. I was looking around, I couldn't find anything
Speaker 1: that wasn't in German and that I could translate. Um,
Speaker 1: but I get the impression that the sona myster is
Speaker 1: actually a paid professional. Well I hope, because if someone's
Speaker 1: just doing that for kicks, then no, you know, there's
Speaker 1: like jerks out there, They're like, I'm the so on
Speaker 1: a monster, come here, all the time. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: no one a mister. It just goes on like that
Speaker 1: for a long time. And then they wrist wrestle and
Speaker 1: what's that? Yeah, they like wrestle. Yeah with that with
Speaker 1: just towels on. God, how about those guys that walk
Speaker 1: around the gym with the towel over their shoulder but naked,
Speaker 1: I know? And why are they always like seventy I know?
Speaker 1: And they pretend like, hey, everybody else is subject to
Speaker 1: the Protestant Reformation. I'm free. It's like put a towel on, hippie.
Speaker 1: I don't even like, I'm this close to being a
Speaker 1: never nude myself, are you? I don't like you have
Speaker 1: the Denom jeans. Yeah, shower with Denom jeans now, But
Speaker 1: I don't. I mean, I mean, I'm I'm not into that.
Speaker 1: Put some clothes on. Protestant Reformation. No one can escape it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no one escapes the Protestant Reformation the sun myself. So lastly,
Speaker 1: with sauna etiquette, basically the whole thing comes down to
Speaker 1: putting the ladle on. If you're alone in the sauna,
Speaker 1: feel free to add some loyally, Yeah, do whatever you want.
Speaker 1: Somebody in there. It's probably one of those things where
Speaker 1: you want to be quiet and then just say, hey,
Speaker 1: do you mind if I put some water on the rocks.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to be a pretty quiet environment. Don't go
Speaker 1: in there like some chowder head with your cell phone. Right,
Speaker 1: and um, when you go in and out, you want
Speaker 1: to come in in out as fast as possible because
Speaker 1: that open door changes the temperature very quickly. Right, and
Speaker 1: just be considered, don't be a jerky. I saw him.
Speaker 1: That just reminded me. I saw The War of the
Speaker 1: Roses again the End of the Night for like the
Speaker 1: fiftieth time. And remember Kathleen Turner locks Michael Douglas and
Speaker 1: the sauna, and then the next shot after he like
Speaker 1: some like falls out of the sauna is him drinking
Speaker 1: gatorade in the office. The next day He's got like
Speaker 1: a gallon of gatorade. And that was good. Didn't Danny
Speaker 1: de Vito directly? Man, this is one of my favorite movies.
Speaker 1: Has a brilliant mind. Lastly, Chuck, let's talk about the
Speaker 1: world record for saunaing. Uh. There is a guy named
Speaker 1: timok Conan. He is the world championship, Um, well, the
Speaker 1: world record holder. Finish of course, finish. Yeah. In August
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, he sat in a sauna. That was
Speaker 1: he did to two hundred and thirty degrees parent height,
Speaker 1: which is undred and ten degrees celsius, for three minutes
Speaker 1: and forty six seconds. You can like warm food at
Speaker 1: that temperature. You can cook food. Oh yeah, at that temperature. Uh.
Speaker 1: That my friends of saunas. And again I think Chuck
Speaker 1: and I would both endorse you going over to the
Speaker 1: website how stuff works dot Com typing in saunas and
Speaker 1: just reading this really well written article by Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: in particular, enjoy it. Yeah, then informative. Uh. And since
Speaker 1: I said how stuff works dot Com, I'm largely abandoning
Speaker 1: the handy search bar thing. I think that's run its course. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the new the new signal for for um listener
Speaker 1: mail is how stuff works dot Com. Oh really? Yeah? Okay?
Speaker 1: Watch I would say it again because I wasn't ready.
Speaker 1: I was still in handy search bar mode. Okay. Uh,
Speaker 1: you want to just go over and read saunas at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com watch us see so you
Speaker 1: know I can say now it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: I can't control it. I used to be able to
Speaker 1: control a lot more when I said handy search barah.
Speaker 1: But oh look it just happened that chu chiming all
Speaker 1: over the I need to not say anything else. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's just read the listener mail. How about that, Josh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this, uh take that Colbet. Oh yeah, Colbert.
Speaker 1: I recently heard this from Scott in Connecticut. Is that
Speaker 1: what c T is? Yeah? Okay, I recently heard about
Speaker 1: your rivalry with Stephen Colbert's Keep a Team. Congratulations on
Speaker 1: your success. I'm a fan of both your podcast and
Speaker 1: his show, which is cool. But he has uh he
Speaker 1: says he wasn't gonna choose sides until late one night
Speaker 1: when this happened. I know, this is pretty amazing. It's
Speaker 1: slightly harrowing. I was up late and winding from a
Speaker 1: long day of working class. I was listening to some
Speaker 1: vintage s Y s K the Bhutan's Gross National National
Speaker 1: Happiness episode. After a little while, I noticed a strange smell,
Speaker 1: a little like overheated electronics. Yeah, ozone, Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a scary smell. I sniffed around my computer and noticed
Speaker 1: that it seemed to be stronger near the door to
Speaker 1: the rest of my apartment opened it and this visible
Speaker 1: wave of thick, acrid smoke and gas poured into my room.
Speaker 1: I ran to wake my housemates, opening as many windows
Speaker 1: as I could to vent out some of the gas.
Speaker 1: I'm a smart guy. Uh. It literally tasted like burning.
Speaker 1: Our eyes and throats were stinging, and we called the
Speaker 1: fire department. They arrived. They found our oil furnace had
Speaker 1: basically imploded. Um, those things are dangerous. What oil burnings? Yes,
Speaker 1: this I don't know where he isn't get a letter
Speaker 1: from the oil burning up board. Okay, remind me to
Speaker 1: tell you about high for your toast corn syrup letter.
Speaker 1: One day, the basement was loaded with carbon monoxide and
Speaker 1: other compounds you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley,
Speaker 1: and it had been leaking up into the rest of
Speaker 1: the apartment. Not for your podcast, I would have gone
Speaker 1: to bed earlier, never noticed that smell. This is why
Speaker 1: I mentioned Colbert, you may wonder. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: my roommate Caitlin, had been watching Colbert upstairs and she
Speaker 1: fell asleep. She was tripping z s when I woke
Speaker 1: her up and pulled her to safety. Where was Stephen
Speaker 1: Colbert in our time of need. He may have a
Speaker 1: space treadmill named after him and a high profile primetime
Speaker 1: TV show, but he's no substitute for s Y s
Speaker 1: K when it comes to riveting and informating, informative late
Speaker 1: night life saving. I thought I would add another game
Speaker 1: winning point for team s Y s K Scott in Connecticut.
Speaker 1: He's also no s y s K when it comes
Speaker 1: to raising donation loans for the developing world, because we
Speaker 1: beat the tar out of him on Kiva. Yeah, Kiva
Speaker 1: dot org slash team Slash stuff. You should know, Chuck,
Speaker 1: we indirectly save these people's lives. You realize we've saved
Speaker 1: it quite a few lives at this point, my friend,
Speaker 1: if only we've been there for the family at the
Speaker 1: end of storytelling. Yeah, I want to know if we've
Speaker 1: killed and oh god, so awesome. You're so hooked on
Speaker 1: us now. I love that guy. Todd Solins, if you're listening,
Speaker 1: I appreciate your work, buddy, Yeah I do too. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you are Todd Solins, we want to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on
Speaker 1: the bottom, and send it to Stuff podcast at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
Speaker 1: the how stuff works dot com home page.