WEBVTT - BrainStuff Classics: Could the Waterbed Make a Comeback? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.360 Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey 0:00:06.400 --> 0:00:09.000 brain Stuff. I'm Lauren vocal Bomb, and today's episode is 0:00:09.000 --> 0:00:12.040 a classic from our archives. This one is about the 0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:16.479 strange cultural phenomenon that is the water bed. My parents 0:00:16.480 --> 0:00:19.319 had one, our Labrador retriever, figured out how to pop 0:00:19.360 --> 0:00:21.680 holes in it and liked watching the water scored out, 0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:25.320 which was pretty much the end of that. But outside 0:00:25.320 --> 0:00:29.440 of my childhood home, water beds evolved, so could they 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:34.640 ever make a large scale comeback? Hey brain Stuff, Lauren 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:37.800 vocal bomb. Here. The water bed was born around half 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:42.080 a century ago as the counterculture solution to something pretty basic. 0:00:42.840 --> 0:00:45.800 We're talking a lack of sleep, of course, although the 0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:49.280 promise of sloshy love making was definitely a selling point 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:51.839 back in the day too, it was an almost immediate 0:00:52.120 --> 0:00:56.520 groovylicious success. By the late nineteen eighties, water beds accounted 0:00:56.560 --> 0:00:59.680 for somewhere around fift of the bedding market, or a 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:03.400 d two billion dollars a year, according to a contemporary 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:06.280 New York Times article, if you were cool back then, 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:09.479 or thought you were or wanted to be, or if 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:12.400 you valued a good night's sleep on gently rolling waves, 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:16.360 or dreamed of nights filled with wild surfing passion, You 0:01:16.440 --> 0:01:20.600 owned a waterbed or you wanted one, almost as quickly 0:01:20.640 --> 0:01:24.399 as the waterbed revolution began, though it crashed, the novelty 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:29.720 wore off, the revolution died, the era faded away. These days, 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:33.120 statistics for waterbed sales are hard to come by, but 0:01:33.280 --> 0:01:35.480 it's clear that things aren't like they were back in 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:38.360 the swinging seventies and eighties, and even into the nineties. 0:01:38.720 --> 0:01:42.039 The competition, mainly things like air mattresses and memory foam, 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:46.360 has grown. The number of waterbed manufacturers and sellers has shrunk. 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:49.480 Do you even know anyone who still owns a water bed? 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:53.600 Lynn Hardman does. He still sleeps on one every night. 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:56.840 He's also sold thousands of them over the past few decades. 0:01:57.320 --> 0:02:00.600 Hardman owns Southern Waterbeds and Phutons in at in Georgia 0:02:00.800 --> 0:02:02.720 and admits that business isn't like it was in the 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:06.280 nineteen seventies, a time when mattress stores didn't dot every 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:08.840 strip mall in every suburb, and mom and pop shops 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:11.800 didn't have to compete with the Internet. But there's still 0:02:11.800 --> 0:02:15.200 business out there. Hardman has operated his store for forty 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:18.000 three years, almost as long as water beds have been around, 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:21.200 and the water bed is still hanging on. He said, 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:24.080 it's like night and day. The water bed has really 0:02:24.120 --> 0:02:26.919 followed that Baby Boom generation from the counterculture of the 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:30.080 late nineteen fifties to where we are today. The early 0:02:30.120 --> 0:02:33.760 customers back then were younger, and today it's almost entirely 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:37.320 the opposite. The baby boomers are older, much wiser, and 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:41.840 in some cases buying that final bed. Waterbed manufacturers and 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:44.960 showrooms like Hardman's are easy enough to find if you're looking. 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:48.480 Most brands offer hard sided beds that, like the first ones, 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:51.200 rely on a major piece of wood furniture to hold 0:02:51.240 --> 0:02:55.080 the mattress in place. Newer soft sided water mattresses can 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:57.640 stand on their own, though they all need some kind 0:02:57.680 --> 0:02:59.680 of a solid base because of the weight of the 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:02.880 match riss. Depending on size, a water mattress can hold 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:05.240 up to two hundred gallons that's about seven hundred and 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:08.400 sixty liters of water, which is more than one thousand, 0:03:08.520 --> 0:03:12.359 six hundred pounds or about seven hundred and twenty five ms. 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:15.840 And the lure of water beds has of course always 0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:20.520 been that water aficionados swear by it's all around supportive properties. 0:03:20.800 --> 0:03:23.600 Hardman talks about being enveloped in a water mattress, rather 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:27.000 than lying on top of a standard one. Most water 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:30.240 mattresses now come with baffles too that control how waveless 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:33.280 they are for those turned off by that too sloshy feeling. 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:36.160 Most have heaters that can regulate the temperature of the 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:39.320 water anywhere from seventy to a hundred degrees fahrenheit about 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:43.320 one to thirty eight degrees celsius. The newest mattresses are 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:46.560 split into dual zones too, so one person can enjoy 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:50.040 a different firmness, temperature, and wave control than his or 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:53.520 her sleeping partner. The waterbed of the twenty one century 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:56.520 clearly is not the fur covered playground that you have 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:59.000 never put on his private jet and flew around on 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:02.440 in the nine It was round and had a Tasmanian 0:04:02.480 --> 0:04:06.840 possum bedspread. The man credited with inventing and patenting the 0:04:06.840 --> 0:04:10.640 water bed is septagenarian Charlie Hall. He's come up with 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:12.640 a new one that he's marketing through a string of 0:04:12.640 --> 0:04:16.080 furniture stores in Florida. Here's a quote from the kitsapp 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:20.240 Son in Bainbridge, Washington. Gone is the wooden frame that 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:22.200 made the older beds so hard to get out of, 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:25.479 exchanged for a foam caller that surrounds the water bladder 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:28.000 expandex covers the top of the mattress to give a 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:31.640 floating said station. A fiber insert quells waves and keeps 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:34.760 the water bladder still. An updated temperature system keeps the 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:38.920 water feeling just right. The innovations Hall is hoping will 0:04:38.920 --> 0:04:41.960 spur nostalgia in some and interest a new generation of 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:44.600 buyers in a piece of bedroom furniture that they may 0:04:44.640 --> 0:04:48.320 know little about. Hooking that new generation of kids maybe 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:52.039 the biggest challenge in the water beds potential comeback. Hardman 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:54.800 occasionally sees some young people in his store now, but 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:58.320 they're accompanied by parents or grandparents who dragged the kids 0:04:58.320 --> 0:05:00.320 along to show them a relic from the path, a 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:04.120 novelty item. This would all seem rather quaint if sleep 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:07.800 wasn't such a deadly serious topic. Research over the past 0:05:07.839 --> 0:05:10.440 few years has shown just how critical a good night's 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:13.760 sleep is. A continued lack of sufficient sleep has been 0:05:13.839 --> 0:05:19.400 strongly associated with, among other health problems, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:23.800 and a decreased life expectancy, and the National Sleep Foundation's 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:27.560 annual poll shows that only ten percent of Americans prioritize 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:31.920 sleep over other things in their lives, like work, working out, hobbies, 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:35.960 or their social life. Most people sixty, the poll found 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:38.440 say they don't even consider ahead of time how much 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:42.359 sleep they may need in planning out their days. Hardman 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:45.000 has a potential answer to that problem. Sitting in his store, 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:47.760 just as it has been for the past forty three years, 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:51.520 he said, there's just something about that semi witless state 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:54.240 that you can only get laying on a waterbed. There's 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:57.719 something about it that's so soothing and relaxing. We had 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:00.479 pause it that some rigorous scientific research is in order, 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:03.239 though it sounds like plenty of people are still running 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:11.719 their own small time experiments. Today's episode is based on 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:14.120 the article could waterbeds ever make a comeback? On how 0:06:14.160 --> 0:06:17.080 Stuff Works dot Com? Written by John Donovan. Bring Stuff 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:18.920 is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with how 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:21.160 stuff Work dot Com, and it is produced by Tyler Clay. 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:24.240 Four more podcasts from my Heart Radio visit the heart 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:26.840 Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your 0:06:26.839 --> 0:06:27.560 favorite shows.