Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
Speaker 1: who is with me as always but hasn't been with
Speaker 1: me as always. Mean, there was a dark, dark time
Speaker 1: in my life, Chuck. I call it the pre Chuck era.
Speaker 1: You're two kind. And there were, um several many podcasts
Speaker 1: that I released with other people. Um, I don't feel
Speaker 1: good about it, okay, but there it's out there. There's
Speaker 1: one that always stuck out to me that I was like,
Speaker 1: there's so much more information. You remember, like back in
Speaker 1: the day, we used to try to hit these things
Speaker 1: at like five minutes. Yeah, to say this is evolved
Speaker 1: is an understatement, right. Um. So there was one that
Speaker 1: I was like, five minutes is not an enough for this,
Speaker 1: Let's do something like thirty seven minutes instead. And um
Speaker 1: it was Murphy's Law. So I really this article a
Speaker 1: long time ago. It was like how Murphy's Law works.
Speaker 1: Like I was raised on these unnatural laws, like the
Speaker 1: Peter principle, which we've podcasted on Parkinson's Law, which is
Speaker 1: um work expands to fill the time allotted, and then
Speaker 1: Murphy's Law, which is, of course anything that can go
Speaker 1: wrong will go wrong. Right. So I was kind of
Speaker 1: always aware of this, and I pitched this idea like
Speaker 1: how Murphy's Law works, like right after I got here
Speaker 1: at how stuff works, and um, I got the assignment
Speaker 1: and started doing this research. I found out that there's
Speaker 1: this awesome backstory to this, which I know you know
Speaker 1: now and have for a while because we made a
Speaker 1: Toyota commercial based on part of it. You're telling me
Speaker 1: this now exactly exactly, So I guess what I'm saying
Speaker 1: is I wanted to redo how Murphy's Law works, a reboot,
Speaker 1: and let's do it. And no disrespect to previous podcasters,
Speaker 1: but this was just too short, you know, too short.
Speaker 1: You can't cover Murphy's on in five minutes. No you can't.
Speaker 1: So here's the expanded version, and we're not gonna like
Speaker 1: start rerunning things. Don't worry, there's plenty of topics out there.
Speaker 1: This one just really kind of I always wanted to
Speaker 1: redo this one was stuck in your crawl and no
Speaker 1: it's no, it's out it's not your crawl. Uh idiom, Josh,
Speaker 1: that's what we're talking about. Whatever can go wrong, we'll
Speaker 1: go wrong. And uh, you make a good point at
Speaker 1: the beginning of this is it's it's an idiom because
Speaker 1: we've made it an idiom, and uh, you don't notice
Speaker 1: and make remarks about when things go perfectly right, you
Speaker 1: might feel good and be like, hey, everything's coming up
Speaker 1: rosen today, or maybe that's an idiom. It's not an idiom.
Speaker 1: Actually it's a saying. But you never you don't say,
Speaker 1: you know, boy, I got in this lane of traffic
Speaker 1: and it's just speeding along, and I should make a
Speaker 1: saying about that. You can, but very rarely do you Like,
Speaker 1: we humans tend to focus more on the negative, you know,
Speaker 1: And that's what Murphy's law is. It's a focus on
Speaker 1: the negative. That's right. We look out for the bad
Speaker 1: in a way. And Murphy's law itself, Chuck, is not
Speaker 1: that old, to tell you the truth, And it wasn't Um.
Speaker 1: It wasn't Murphy who originally coined this idea. There was
Speaker 1: a um. There was a something called Sod's law that's
Speaker 1: still around in Great Britain, which says, uh, basically the
Speaker 1: same thing, any bad thing that can happen to some
Speaker 1: poor sod which is short for sodomite, is it? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: no comment. And then there was a magician named Adam
Speaker 1: hole Shirk apparently in wrote something called on Getting out
Speaker 1: of Things, an essay on magic, which is not on
Speaker 1: the internet. Yeah I did too. Actually, um it said
Speaker 1: in a magic act, nine out of ten things that
Speaker 1: can go wrong usually will And I thought maybe Adam
Speaker 1: was just a bad magician when I read that. Really,
Speaker 1: so he he gets credit, like just about any origin
Speaker 1: story of Murphy's Law includes Adam hole Shirk, and it should.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't called Murphy's Law, no, um until a
Speaker 1: guy there actually was a guy named Murphy, and he
Speaker 1: actually did live not too long ago. He died in
Speaker 1: nineteen nine, I believe this article says, but it's eighty nine. Um,
Speaker 1: you're gonna go back and change that. And um, he
Speaker 1: was a captain in the Air Force, and he is
Speaker 1: attributed with not coining Murphy's Law depending on who you
Speaker 1: talk to, but spurring the idea of Murphy's law who
Speaker 1: were which was coined by somebody else? Right, So let's
Speaker 1: let's set the stage Chuck, it's ninety we're in California
Speaker 1: in my hand exactly. We're at um Edwards Air Force Space.
Speaker 1: We need to get into the way back machine here. Man,
Speaker 1: it's been a while. Okay, So as I said, Edwards
Speaker 1: Air Force Pace. It's very nice. Um, there's Chuck Yeager right,
Speaker 1: see look at him go and then over there on
Speaker 1: that that that railroad track is kind of in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere. Uh is the rocket sled the g
Speaker 1: whiz rocket sled. That's a Nego name. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about that. Okay, what is it? Well, this was part
Speaker 1: of the Project m X, and they were tests to
Speaker 1: determine how the body, the human body, reacted to G force. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a long standing idea that the human body could
Speaker 1: withstand eighteen g s and all airplanes were designed to
Speaker 1: uh withstand eighteen g's of force and nothing more, right,
Speaker 1: which means that, um, they were kind of hamstrung by
Speaker 1: this magical number. But no one knew exactly where that
Speaker 1: number came from. Her if it was true. What's screwy
Speaker 1: is that they had no way to find out except
Speaker 1: for these rockets led tests. That's right, using a real
Speaker 1: live human being, Because if you're going to test something,
Speaker 1: you can't throw a crash test dummy in there. You
Speaker 1: could in the ninety nine. Now, well, yeah, these days
Speaker 1: they have sensors and actually not to be pluggy, but
Speaker 1: Toyota came up with the thing that that measures the
Speaker 1: total human uh model for safety and it measures internal damage.
Speaker 1: So like it's very sophisticated now, but back then, if
Speaker 1: you want to find some of the stuff out, you
Speaker 1: had to put a human in there. Well, at first
Speaker 1: they used cadavers, then they used dummies like Sierra Sam
Speaker 1: and then on the g Wiz rocket tests they used
Speaker 1: um oscar eight ball, but there they didn't have sensors
Speaker 1: for it, so they had to use John Paul Stapp
Speaker 1: who volunteered, who was a really incredible renaissance man. He's
Speaker 1: a colonel. Yeah in the Air Force. He was a
Speaker 1: physician UM and he uh he flew around in a
Speaker 1: in an airplane without a canopy. Remember that I've heard that. Um.
Speaker 1: He also uh basically made it his life's work to
Speaker 1: get seatbelts made mandatory in automobiles. So he staged the
Speaker 1: first ever UM automobile crash tests, and he did it
Speaker 1: at the expense of the Air Force, and the Air
Speaker 1: Force was like, hey, whoa, what are you doing? What
Speaker 1: are you expensing these dust for? These are cars, we
Speaker 1: we fly planes. And he came up with statistics that
Speaker 1: showed that more Air Force pilots died from car rex
Speaker 1: and from plane rex and they said okay. And that
Speaker 1: was just the kind of guy. He was, real stand
Speaker 1: up dude, he was. So what he did was he
Speaker 1: jumped in the g with said, hey, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: I'm Colonel John Paul Staff. I do this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And it would go about two hundred miles an hour
Speaker 1: down a half mile track and then stop in less
Speaker 1: than a second. And what they're trying to test is
Speaker 1: say that one more time to go two hundred miles
Speaker 1: an hour and stop and lessen a second. Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: That's basically they're trying to test what might happen in
Speaker 1: a plane crash. So they were they were finding the
Speaker 1: force of gravity, how much a human coupe withstand? And
Speaker 1: remember eighteen was that magic number, And in very short
Speaker 1: order John Paul stap withstood eighteen ges and then twenty
Speaker 1: and then and I think he made it up to
Speaker 1: forty six point to six was the most he experienced.
Speaker 1: I think you're ever like the highest roller coaster would
Speaker 1: always go to that, but the roller coaster with the
Speaker 1: highest acceleration is like two point seven g's. This guy
Speaker 1: did forty six point to six and he suffered for
Speaker 1: it too. Yeah, big time, broken bones, concussions, broken blood
Speaker 1: vessels in its eyes. Yeah, he'd have white outs, which
Speaker 1: is when when he was going backwards, they'd turn him
Speaker 1: around sometimes so he wouldn't get the bugs in his
Speaker 1: face and he would have white outs, which is all
Speaker 1: the blood is pulling in the back of the head,
Speaker 1: so he has no blood in his eyes, which means
Speaker 1: you can't see or you get read out to where
Speaker 1: all the blood was pulling in the front of his
Speaker 1: face and he couldn't see because there was too much
Speaker 1: blood in his eyes. I wonder if they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's put him sideways, it happens, it would be like
Speaker 1: a pink out. Yeah, a one eye is read one
Speaker 1: is white. Yeah. So this is all going pretty well
Speaker 1: for step if you consider that a success. And then
Speaker 1: Murphy Captain Murphy shows up on the scene and says, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I've got these sensors that will give you
Speaker 1: a much more accurate read of the g force. So
Speaker 1: let's get my assistant. I don't know why he didn't
Speaker 1: do it himself. No, it was one of the This
Speaker 1: is Project MXE. It was one of the project's assistants. Murphy.
Speaker 1: Why didn't he do it is what I want to know.
Speaker 1: I don't know, because there's another saying if you want
Speaker 1: something done right, do it yourself. And I would have
Speaker 1: rubbed that in his face. They didn't, though, and and
Speaker 1: supposedly tell him about the sensors, well, that the sensors
Speaker 1: would give you a more accurate reading. And then the
Speaker 1: assistant evidently, uh, hook them up wrong. And there are
Speaker 1: there was one way to hook up each one of these,
Speaker 1: and he did the opposite way for two ways. Well,
Speaker 1: there's one correct way right to hook up the censor,
Speaker 1: and then he did it the wrong way on every
Speaker 1: single one of them. And then Murphy said out loud
Speaker 1: to somebody that if there are two ways of doing something,
Speaker 1: one of these will result in disaster. He's gonna do
Speaker 1: it that way, or he said something along the lines
Speaker 1: of if there's any way they can do it wrong,
Speaker 1: they will. Um. It depends on who you talk to.
Speaker 1: There were living witnesses in two thousand when this guy
Speaker 1: for Improbable Research, who who hosts the ig Nobel Awards
Speaker 1: UM wrote a pretty comprehensive article on it um and
Speaker 1: he interviewed these people and they said he roughly said that,
Speaker 1: or he said something like you said, but ultimately he
Speaker 1: was grumbling and it was loud enough, and he was
Speaker 1: saying it about these people that he just met, who
Speaker 1: had you know, incorrectly hooked up the sensors. Okay, well
Speaker 1: let's hook him right and do it again. It's not
Speaker 1: a big deal. So Murphy apparently, if you talk to
Speaker 1: the witnesses, was kind of thought of as a bit
Speaker 1: of a jerk. That's what I think, which is something
Speaker 1: his son still to this day disputes. He says that
Speaker 1: that is not in his father's character. His father was
Speaker 1: not a jerk, and he wouldn't have he wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been so rude or boorish. But most of the witnesses
Speaker 1: say he said something like that. That was the seed.
Speaker 1: How did the tree come about? The tree came about?
Speaker 1: Because uh, stab was apparently a pretty gregarious guy. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if he's taking part in these tests with a plum,
Speaker 1: then he's gonna probably be a pretty fun guy to
Speaker 1: be around. Well, he had he had two books Chuck
Speaker 1: of um idioms. One was it was called STAPs Almanac,
Speaker 1: the other was four Year Moments of Inertia. And he
Speaker 1: had already come up with his own little saying Stepp's
Speaker 1: ironical paradox, which is the universal aptitude for an aptitude
Speaker 1: makes any human accomplishment an incredible miracle. So he was
Speaker 1: already generally on the lookout for new bits of wisdom.
Speaker 1: He's stealing these things from people, basically, and he stole
Speaker 1: it from Murphy Fee and at a press conference the
Speaker 1: next day said and this is where you know it
Speaker 1: took off obviously, because the press conference he said that, hey, uh,
Speaker 1: we we have a good safety record because we are
Speaker 1: aware of Murphy's law, which is whatever can go wrong
Speaker 1: will go wrong. And they all got a big laugh.
Speaker 1: That's brilliant, and they all ranted the pay phones and
Speaker 1: called it in. Yeah, it makes it into like some
Speaker 1: aerospace publications, and then it disseminates out. It's just like
Speaker 1: just a perfect gem, perfectly encapsulated. Whatever can go wrong
Speaker 1: will go wrong. It's just say universal truth in unnatural law, right,
Speaker 1: and um it kind of gave a kickstart to this
Speaker 1: whole There's a trend in the fifties of people being
Speaker 1: pithy like like, um because Peter and Principle. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: actually I found out, Um, Lawrence Peter, who who came
Speaker 1: up with the Peter principal and um Captain Murphy became
Speaker 1: lifelong friends. Wasn't that special in it? Um. But it
Speaker 1: gave rise to all these other ideas, these unnatural laws.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a trend. Like I said, in
Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties, I think people wanted to put
Speaker 1: their name on something. Right, So I selected a few
Speaker 1: out of there's lists on the internet that are just
Speaker 1: you can scroll for hours now at the bottom of
Speaker 1: these things, right, but um, you want to read some
Speaker 1: of these Uh. It tours observation. The other line moves faster,
Speaker 1: which makes sense. Boobs law. You will always find something
Speaker 1: in the last place you look. What's another good one here?
Speaker 1: Franklin's rule, blessed is he who expects nothing, for he
Speaker 1: will not be disappointed. Lincoln's law, those who can do
Speaker 1: do those who cannot teach, which just mean. It is mean,
Speaker 1: especially to teachers. It's so disrespectful. Uh. And then Patton
Speaker 1: General Georgia's Patton had a law that a good plan
Speaker 1: to day is better than a perfect plan tomorrow, because
Speaker 1: by then Charlie's killed you Right, he wasn't Vietnam, No,
Speaker 1: but oh you just meant a guy named Charlie. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so yeah. People obviously like naming things after themselves
Speaker 1: and coming up with pithy little sayings that people like
Speaker 1: to say. Right, But there's there and there's two ways
Speaker 1: that Murphy's law can be um categorized. It can be
Speaker 1: categorized in the realm of pithy sayings from the fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties, like the Peter principle, which, as you remember,
Speaker 1: it did make sense it had it had some gravity
Speaker 1: to it Peter. Or you can look at Murphy's law
Speaker 1: and the coining of it in by John Paul stat
Speaker 1: as the formulation of the basis for all engineering thought
Speaker 1: that came after that point, which was the creation of
Speaker 1: fail safe, the creation of redundant systems, and the idea
Speaker 1: that you should plan for everything going wrong so that
Speaker 1: if it does go wrong, it's covered and the system
Speaker 1: doesn't want it won't break down. Sure, it gave a
Speaker 1: saying to that practice. It was already in practice, but
Speaker 1: people didn't start building fail says because of Murphy's Law.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, I don't know, man, well, seatbelts,
Speaker 1: that's a fail safe. Uh. And that is not just
Speaker 1: from Murphy's Law. That was from staff himself when you're
Speaker 1: pushing this legislation. So let's talk about like the principles
Speaker 1: going on behind Murphy's law. Fatalism, it's pretty much it.
Speaker 1: Fatalism is the idea that we are just walking around
Speaker 1: subject to whatever fate, you know, whatever happens to us,
Speaker 1: whatever fate dictates. Like, if you're in a line of traffic, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you it seems like all other lines are going
Speaker 1: except for yours, right. This is explainable. It's explicable, Like
Speaker 1: you're not paying attention to the other lines of traffic
Speaker 1: when your line is going because you're paying attention to
Speaker 1: not hit the person in front of you. When you're
Speaker 1: just sitting there, all you notice is that the other
Speaker 1: lanes are going. But if you could really statistically explain,
Speaker 1: you know, how often the lanes of traffic are moving,
Speaker 1: it's probably fairly even. Probably, so I always kind of well,
Speaker 1: actually have I go in the lane that I think
Speaker 1: is going to be moving. But because we're fatalistic, we
Speaker 1: we It's like, why why does the universe hate me?
Speaker 1: I'm totally powerless to make traffic move right? And then
Speaker 1: free will was not well, not the opposite. But that's
Speaker 1: the other idea, is that, uh, we have free will
Speaker 1: for all of our choices and all of our consequences
Speaker 1: are due to things that we have made happen, right,
Speaker 1: and the the attendant with free will is the risk
Speaker 1: of failure. So when we have a fifty chance of
Speaker 1: getting something right, well, we're gonna get it wrong or
Speaker 1: we're gonna notice mostly when we get it wrong, because
Speaker 1: then we have to do it again, and it's just
Speaker 1: so much trouble to try to put the plug in
Speaker 1: the right way. Yeah right, the three pong failsafe plug
Speaker 1: you yeah, okay, but other prongs electrical sockets. If you
Speaker 1: look at them, one's bigger than the other, that's fail safe.
Speaker 1: After Murphy's Law changed everything another for that, it was
Speaker 1: just death ville for everything there was well yeah, well there,
Speaker 1: let me put it to you this way. There was
Speaker 1: something like um, twenty five million licensed motorists in the
Speaker 1: US and like forty three thousand deaths on the highways
Speaker 1: in like nineteen sixty, I think something like that. In
Speaker 1: two thousand there was seventy five million licensed motorists and
Speaker 1: about as many deaths. So yeah, when before Murphy came
Speaker 1: along and there were no fail safe and one had
Speaker 1: any idea what they were doing, I'll dispute that. But
Speaker 1: did ever show you the video of the the car
Speaker 1: crashes like the old what blood on the asshole? The uh?
Speaker 1: They did this? High speed car crashes with an old
Speaker 1: like you know when you see those old tanks like
Speaker 1: oh man, back then were in Paula or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like those big old tanks. Those were like they were
Speaker 1: tanks because their tanks and they I bet you were
Speaker 1: safe in those seat belts. But they compared the crash
Speaker 1: to a modern car and the old car, man just
Speaker 1: I mean squashed and crumbled like a tin can. Really,
Speaker 1: oh dude, yeah, because cows cows. Cars are just engineered
Speaker 1: these days, as our cows couple zones and things like yeah, man,
Speaker 1: and it's it might be made of plastic, but it's
Speaker 1: amazing when you watch this thing. Back then, they were
Speaker 1: huge and made of metal, but at enough impact that
Speaker 1: metal just becomes nothing it's pretty interesting. Speaking of cows
Speaker 1: being engineered. You remember that cow um on Millage in
Speaker 1: Athens that had the porthole in it so they could
Speaker 1: like open it up and reach inside and I think
Speaker 1: fertilize it or they were doing something. I never saw that,
Speaker 1: but that cow. It was crazy. Murphy's law happened to
Speaker 1: that cow. I wrote about that. They they have those
Speaker 1: little portals into their stomachs so they can study things
Speaker 1: like that's like right there on the side. And then also, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I want to point out Rodyard Kipling, right, he provides
Speaker 1: us a good example of the whole y me attitude
Speaker 1: of humanity, and then the mathematical explanation of why you
Speaker 1: pal you're Kipling once lamented that no matter how you
Speaker 1: drop it, the the bread that you dropped out of
Speaker 1: your hand onto the floor always falls butter side down,
Speaker 1: which means you can't treat it any longer, and it
Speaker 1: gives you the vapors so um. If you think about it,
Speaker 1: a buttered piece of bread is heavier on one side
Speaker 1: than the other, so thanks to the force of gravity
Speaker 1: on the way down, the bread is going to flip
Speaker 1: over that. But it's yes, but it's heavier as we
Speaker 1: proved this, give me some bread. Well, I just don't.
Speaker 1: I just wanted has proven and not. I think it's interesting.
Speaker 1: But we'll think about this. I just wonder how much
Speaker 1: butter would it literally take to cause it to flip over.
Speaker 1: There's a certain amount, And I think also this is
Speaker 1: going to happen more frequently with um plain untoasted bread
Speaker 1: and butter rather than like toast with butter melted in it,
Speaker 1: which may be distributed evenly throughout the bread. But the
Speaker 1: point is is, yes, it's going to flip over, but
Speaker 1: it's not going to flip back over because the heavier
Speaker 1: side is now being dragged towards the earth. But if
Speaker 1: it does fall butter side up, then that's just good luck.
Speaker 1: That's fate. Okay. So again there's there's a certain amount
Speaker 1: of I guess math or science to Murphy's law. There
Speaker 1: can be if you really want to look for it.
Speaker 1: And your name's Joel Pell right, Yeah, he's he's another
Speaker 1: fun killer, like the laughter guys. I know math people
Speaker 1: will take issue with that, but I take issue with
Speaker 1: everything having to be stated as a math formula. Well,
Speaker 1: this guy, he begs to differ. He does he's a
Speaker 1: biological engineer at the University of British Columbia, and I
Speaker 1: think in two thousand five he came up with Murphy's equation,
Speaker 1: which basically he figured out how to quantify the probability
Speaker 1: that things will go wrong when they can go wrong.
Speaker 1: Right A, you're gonna read it. It's pretty impossible to
Speaker 1: read out loud. Yeah, I don't. I don't think I can,
Speaker 1: because what's the opposite of to the something power when
Speaker 1: it's like down below into the right rather than up
Speaker 1: into the idea. Well, basically he figured out that the
Speaker 1: importance of the event I times the complexity of the
Speaker 1: system involved CE times the urgency of the need for
Speaker 1: the system of work you plus the frequency the system
Speaker 1: is used equals p the probability that the Murphy's law
Speaker 1: will kick in. And one is definite. I think ten
Speaker 1: is it's not going to happen, and somewhere in between
Speaker 1: is it might happen, it might not. So what he
Speaker 1: did was he basically plugged in the um the possibility
Speaker 1: of his clutch going out in a rainstorm sixty miles
Speaker 1: a hundred kilometers from his house UM, and he came
Speaker 1: up with an answer of one, which means that his
Speaker 1: clutch was definitely going to go out. And he further
Speaker 1: demonstrated that what now that he's stranded out in the
Speaker 1: rainstorm and he needs to get somewhere by foot, he
Speaker 1: needs his flashlight to work. Um, what's the what's the
Speaker 1: probability that Murphy's law will happen and the flashlight will
Speaker 1: be out? He plugged it in and came up with
Speaker 1: the one again. So he very facetiously proved that Murphy's
Speaker 1: Law is real and his equation worked. I hope this
Speaker 1: guy got stuck in a rainstorm a flashlight, That's what
Speaker 1: I hope. Poor Joel pell I had to um correspond
Speaker 1: with him for this. Yeah, I did get permission to
Speaker 1: use his equation and he said, sure, here's a cool dude.
Speaker 1: Yeah really Yeah? All right, So, Chuck, we talked about
Speaker 1: like prongs being designed with fail safe seat belts are
Speaker 1: a fail safe diesel pump nozzles there. They are designed
Speaker 1: at a wider diameter than regular gas pumps, so you
Speaker 1: can't fit it in your gas tank. Did you know that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That wasn't always a case, because I put diesel in
Speaker 1: a in a truck one time when I shouldn't have.
Speaker 1: And when did it start? After Murphy's law became widespread
Speaker 1: started in the mid nineties, I think, or that's the
Speaker 1: last time I screwed up like that? What you got? Uh?
Speaker 1: I got nothing else? Thank God for fail Safe. So
Speaker 1: thank god for John Paul Staff and Captain Edward A. Murphy, Jr.
Speaker 1: I have a Chuck's key law. I got my two
Speaker 1: house keys. I have a outer security like a clear
Speaker 1: door and then my regular door. Two different keys that
Speaker 1: look the same. On my dog Leach will almost a
Speaker 1: hundred percent of the time I used the wrong key.
Speaker 1: I'll bet if you paying attention to it, you use
Speaker 1: the wrong you about fifty percent at the time. That's
Speaker 1: Murphy's law. Well, then something's up. I also have my
Speaker 1: directional thing. I have a port into direction almost dude,
Speaker 1: it's awful. I didn't know that almost a hundred percent
Speaker 1: of the time I will go the wrong way if
Speaker 1: faced with a choice, should I go this way or
Speaker 1: that way? And if I try to trick myself and
Speaker 1: go I want to go right, then I'm gonna go left.
Speaker 1: It was right nice. That's Murphy's law too. I know
Speaker 1: then it ruins my life. But you can't just hijack
Speaker 1: Murphy's law and slape your name on it. Those are
Speaker 1: Chuck's that's chuck ski law and Chuck's law of direction. Right,
Speaker 1: that's Murphy's law. All right. If you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about Murphy's law and read my article on it.
Speaker 1: It was one of the first articles I wrote it.
Speaker 1: I like it. Um, you can type in Murphy's Law
Speaker 1: in the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to this one twice. Yeah, thanks
Speaker 1: for doing it with me. Now, well it was it
Speaker 1: was Do we were due for this one? Yeah? Um,
Speaker 1: I think I said hand these first part, didn't I?
Speaker 1: I think so? All right, Well that since it's time
Speaker 1: for what we're gonna wind up the old Facebook asked
Speaker 1: Jock and Chush questions and people did so you always
Speaker 1: get like a hundred of him in a couple of minutes.
Speaker 1: I have to shut it down. Yeah, people want to know,
Speaker 1: all right, So let's just run through some of these. Josh,
Speaker 1: you got one, go ahead, all right? Who's your favorite
Speaker 1: Simpsons character who was not a Simpson? Well? Cheers? And
Speaker 1: I even saw this one yesterday and I didn't it's
Speaker 1: so hard. I like Lionel huts a lot. He was good. Um,
Speaker 1: I like uh, I like the whole Flanders family. I
Speaker 1: think Ned's a great complex character, like the one where
Speaker 1: he has the nervous breakdown. Yeah, and it turns out
Speaker 1: he was part of a spanking protocol research study. I
Speaker 1: like it when he's occasionally ripped. Yes, well he is
Speaker 1: all the time because sometimes he's wearing a shirt. Well,
Speaker 1: clearly different when like when when he's in the ski
Speaker 1: suit than when he's in his sweater. Yeah, that's most hilarious.
Speaker 1: Stupid sexy Flanders. What about yours? I'm gonna go with
Speaker 1: a cop out. I'm gonna go with a pair with
Speaker 1: Ralphin and Chief Wigham. Yeah, they're good, pretty good. Or
Speaker 1: Smithers and Flanders. I mean that's those two that are
Speaker 1: hard to beat as a as a duo. I mean
Speaker 1: you can't leave out Seymour Skinner yeah boo yeah, or Barney.
Speaker 1: We can keep doing this for hours. Actually, I like
Speaker 1: mo are you a mo fame? Yeah? Huge mo fame? Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, we could do this for hours. Go ahead, Uh, Chuck,
Speaker 1: do you have a job outside of the podcast? Um?
Speaker 1: I do. I'm the chef and housekeeper. At my home.
Speaker 1: I think I mean here. Oh no, do you not
Speaker 1: since when? Oh? Well yeah, sure we write stuff? Yeah
Speaker 1: right now, blog right quizzes? Do? Uh? We we manage Facebook?
Speaker 1: Can Twitter? We managed the stuff? You should know? Brandon? Uh,
Speaker 1: what do you want written on your tombstone? I don't
Speaker 1: you go ahead? How about died tragically rescuing his family
Speaker 1: from the wreckage of a destroyed sinking battleship. That is suspicion.
Speaker 1: You're gonna say that. Yeah, that's a good one. Um.
Speaker 1: Oh that was Kelly Cronly. I'm sorry, and Drew Clinkole
Speaker 1: asked about The Simpsons. Thanks Drew and Kelly on my tombstone.
Speaker 1: I want to say what? Uh this is from trash
Speaker 1: Goblin Toby? Is this from Twitter? I guess it is.
Speaker 1: Have you seen Hodgeman's mustache in real life? And is
Speaker 1: it as scary as I have heard it is? We've
Speaker 1: both seen Hodgman's mustache in real life. It accidentally brushed
Speaker 1: my shoulder. I was like, like, how did that happen? Uh?
Speaker 1: It is not scary. I think John wears it well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's not an ironic mustache. He's grown his hair
Speaker 1: out a little bit. He turned off hippie, hasn't it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of fun. He's like, I like it. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's see it. Could it be? This is from How
Speaker 1: Awesome is Joe? A k A Joe on Twitter? Okay,
Speaker 1: could it actually be possible for human to be raised
Speaker 1: by apes? Like Tarzan? I would say the answer is
Speaker 1: undeniably yes. Yeah, And I'm gonna wind it up for
Speaker 1: my last one with um something. People ask a lot
Speaker 1: what does c O A mean? And that it's from
Speaker 1: Joseph Gubbles, do not explain it. That's a trick. He's
Speaker 1: been trying to figure it out forever and if he
Speaker 1: can't do it on his own, he has to figure
Speaker 1: it out on his own, Chuck, or else he's never
Speaker 1: gonna learn. All right. Uh sorry Joseph, but that was
Speaker 1: a SmackDown. Um, what's our favorite episode? Chuck? Of what
Speaker 1: of stuff? You should know? I thought were on the
Speaker 1: Simpson Oh man, I get asked this a lot I have.
Speaker 1: It's always different today. I'm gonna go with um Lobotomyes,
Speaker 1: it's a good one. Nothing, none of them. It's there's
Speaker 1: just so many. I know, it's hard to choose. Like
Speaker 1: I'll look through occasionally in spot ones they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: how's it going. I don't think that because we're always
Speaker 1: assets and always say the same like five things like
Speaker 1: who lobotomy's body, farms, cannibalism, you know what. Um, I've
Speaker 1: recently listened to what is the FDA regular herbs. I
Speaker 1: think I was telling you good and that is worth
Speaker 1: listening to again. All Right, some people you know are
Speaker 1: making their way through again. They've already made it through,
Speaker 1: and they've made it through. They're making it through again
Speaker 1: the whole catalog. I'm looking at you. OMG, Chris, there's
Speaker 1: a name for people like that, Josh Massacus. Super fans,
Speaker 1: same thing. Yes, if you are a super family want
Speaker 1: to hear from you always. We're pretty friendly guys, so
Speaker 1: we'll say hi back usually. UM. If we don't, don't
Speaker 1: take it personally, keep saying high a lot of them. Twitter. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's s y s K Podcast is our Twitter handle.
Speaker 1: We're on Facebook at facebook dot com slash stuff You
Speaker 1: should know um and you can send us email like
Speaker 1: you just mentioned to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Speaker 1: Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as
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