Speaker 1: Hi, everybody, Happy Saturday. Chuck Here with the Stuff you
Speaker 1: should know. Select pick for the week from July twenty two,
Speaker 1: Sundas coland more interesting than you think. I think this
Speaker 1: was titled by Josh. If I remember correctly, that's a
Speaker 1: Josh Clark title all the way. Uh And if I
Speaker 1: am not mistaken, I did not know how to pronounce
Speaker 1: it back then. I think I pronounced that sauna all
Speaker 1: through the episode, and uh, I got a lot of
Speaker 1: email that it's actually Suna. So I wanted to write
Speaker 1: that ship here eight years later, going on nine years later,
Speaker 1: and do it the right way. So here we go
Speaker 1: with sound as more interesting than you think because they
Speaker 1: are Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuckers
Speaker 1: Chuck Chucky Bride of Chucky. He paused, as if you
Speaker 1: forgot who I was, I had a thing I have
Speaker 1: marble mouth unusual. Today, here we go, this podcast brought
Speaker 1: to you by a jolly rancher. Have you ever mixes
Speaker 1: with Ziema? No? But you know that Oakland Raiders former
Speaker 1: Oakland Raiders quarterback JaMarcus Russell just got busted with. They
Speaker 1: call it purple drank, and it's it's like it's codeine
Speaker 1: syrup and I think some sort of carbonet soda and
Speaker 1: jolly rancher. Wow, that's robot tripping, is what he's doing. Well,
Speaker 1: it came out of the Houston, Texas scene like ten
Speaker 1: years ago. Were drink. I never heard of it. That's
Speaker 1: how square I am. I haven't heard of it either,
Speaker 1: So don't feel bad. Okay. Plus, it's like that's what
Speaker 1: they do in Houston. Seriously, that what you want your
Speaker 1: town associated with. Yeah, we use codeine water. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: came up with purple drink. Wasn't he the QB for
Speaker 1: l s U? Yeah? Hey that guy, Well he's a bust.
Speaker 1: He's nothing. Now, well he's a big wash really. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He went to the NFL and got all fat and
Speaker 1: through interceptions and he was great for he was so Anyway,
Speaker 1: I 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: uh writer and uh stuff from the science Lab. He
Speaker 1: wrote 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 like, 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 e um. But he wrote an altogether pleasant article
Speaker 1: that I've read like many, many time times and every
Speaker 1: time you just love the way you wrote it. It's
Speaker 1: a 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, disrobed 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, Um Chuck. We were talking about
Speaker 1: the difference between a steam room and a sauna. Steam
Speaker 1: room is heated by moisture vapor, water vapor, uh and
Speaker 1: for that reason, the average steam room is going to
Speaker 1: be about a hundred and four degrees fahenth height, which
Speaker 1: is forty degrees 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 disturbing, yeah, which is what I do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then an 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 steam room is a hundred and four
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit average, you're talking a hundred and seventy six
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit. It's hot eighty degrees celsius in in your
Speaker 1: average sauna. And I do you like saunas and steam rooms?
Speaker 1: You do? I never really sat in the steam room,
Speaker 1: but I love saunas. Actually, growing up, there's a holiday
Speaker 1: in in Toledo that um my family had a pool
Speaker 1: membership too, and they had a sauna. Whoa, whoa. You
Speaker 1: could get a pool membership to a hotel in Toledo
Speaker 1: in the seventies, seventies and eighties. Yeah, yeah, I never
Speaker 1: heard of that. But I mean now that I look back,
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, that's really really weird. Probably a membership,
Speaker 1: your dad was probably yeah, we got a membership kids, right,
Speaker 1: I wonder actually had a room key as we had.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure we had a membership, but I don't remember.
Speaker 1: But they had a sauna for sure. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: I was introduced to the sauna like really early on.
Speaker 1: It was like just a normal thing. So when you
Speaker 1: were a little kid, you enjoyed it because it seems
Speaker 1: like such an old person thing or an adult thing
Speaker 1: to do here in the West. If you go to Finland, baby,
Speaker 1: they are all about the saunas. I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: their national pastime, right actually, um in their national epic, chuck,
Speaker 1: it's called the love Valla. This a little side side note.
Speaker 1: It's their national epic, very very old. Uh. It mentioned
Speaker 1: saunas frequently. Well, of course, okay um, there's about one
Speaker 1: point six million saunas in Finland and uh. The first
Speaker 1: 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? I 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 sch fitz? Uh? No? But
Speaker 1: he 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 disturbingly Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're seeing 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. It's in and by coke.
Speaker 1: Of course, I'm using the Southern colloquialism for coke, which
Speaker 1: means any kind of soda popu c 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 Finnish prison saunas though, we should uh that this
Speaker 1: sort of remarkable to me because we'll find out, as
Speaker 1: we said, that a lot of about being in sauna
Speaker 1: is being completely naked, especially if you're finished. Americans a
Speaker 1: little more shy, but we'll get to that in a minute.
Speaker 1: But I imagine a finished prison sna is a pretty
Speaker 1: happening place to be on a Friday night, wouldn't you think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the saunas have something of a reputation, especially in
Speaker 1: the seventies. Um they developed the reputation for being a
Speaker 1: swinging gay hangout, right, and that is nothing new actually,
Speaker 1: um saunas, which we'll talk about later, the history of them.
Speaker 1: But they were um kind of eradicated thanks to the
Speaker 1: Protestant Reformation because they had started they had started to
Speaker 1: get pretty frisky. Yeah. Yeah, it's a big party in there. Uh.
Speaker 1: And not just gay either, well, no, all sorts of stuff, prostitution, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's on as we're all they were missing was a
Speaker 1: disco ball in uh Andy Warhol and it could have
Speaker 1: been a studio. Uh So let's get but let's crawl
Speaker 1: back inside the sauna for a minute. Okay, you know
Speaker 1: all the spruce cedar. Would that looks so nice and
Speaker 1: feel so good on your bottom? Yes? I always thought
Speaker 1: that was just like I mean, I knew obviously they
Speaker 1: weren't gonna put stainless steel in there, but I never
Speaker 1: really figured out it's would. But I never gave it
Speaker 1: two thoughts. Right, you would think that it was just
Speaker 1: a traditional and it is traditional. But at the same time, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's never been updated in that respect because if you
Speaker 1: did put in stainless steel, you would leave many, many
Speaker 1: layers of skin in the sauna from your bottom every
Speaker 1: time you sat down with plastic um, you'd just be
Speaker 1: in big trouble. So would absorbs heat, and it remains
Speaker 1: relatively cool at high temperatures, which is why I mean
Speaker 1: it's still warm. Your tookis is hot, but it's not
Speaker 1: like you're not hurting yourself. Yeah, And Robert also pointed
Speaker 1: out that it's absorbs steam and stores heat and releases
Speaker 1: like that. Fine, seed or smell, right, which is why
Speaker 1: the youth seedar and spruce because they have natural a
Speaker 1: a matic's trapped within more than others. Right. I love
Speaker 1: cedar except pine. But I don't know if you'd want
Speaker 1: to just 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, Chuck. Let's talk about the original finished sauna,
Speaker 1: the savusana. Yeah. Nice, it looks sort of like the
Speaker 1: 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: smoking there. Yeah, it's black soot on the walls and
Speaker 1: 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: gen really relegated to sauna purists. According to Mr R
Speaker 1: L A M. Yeah, but I get the idea that
Speaker 1: you're supposed to let the smoke clear out as much
Speaker 1: as possible, is that right? Yeah? Like, but how how
Speaker 1: do you do that well? Because you're just letting all
Speaker 1: the heat out you know, yeah that he said it
Speaker 1: seeps through uh the cs in the roof. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: stick to me. And I mean, if you're setting hot
Speaker 1: enough as a c o A, I would say, please
Speaker 1: do not try to build your own savo sana because
Speaker 1: you will likely die of That's what I'm saying. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't understand how people survive the saunas, right, so, um,
Speaker 1: they're generally left to sauna purists and the rest of
Speaker 1: us just use regular saunas. It's just called the sauna.
Speaker 1: And this is the very recognizable sauna with spruce or
Speaker 1: cedar would um and a stove. Most of the time,
Speaker 1: these stove called kiowas, are electric these days, although you
Speaker 1: can have a wood burning kiowa kiowas ki u a
Speaker 1: s um that has a chimney, right, so you have
Speaker 1: gas to the main feature isn't that it's wood heated
Speaker 1: for a sava sauna. It's that there's no chimney and
Speaker 1: you're inhaling. Yeah, and well we should point out to
Speaker 1: like whether it's wood or gas or electric or whatever,
Speaker 1: it's not that's not providing the heat. You're heating rocks, right,
Speaker 1: and then the rocks transfer the heat to the surrounding environment.
Speaker 1: And if you want to jack the temperature a little bit.
Speaker 1: Remember we talked about a steam room, uh huh, that
Speaker 1: it's heated by water vapor. You can actually use the
Speaker 1: same thing for a sauna. You take a little water
Speaker 1: too later from a bucket, splash it on the rocks,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you have. With the Finns
Speaker 1: call loyally, there's an m lout in there. I know,
Speaker 1: and I don't. I'm not big on Finnish pronunciation. I
Speaker 1: know how to say semohaya, and I'm not even sure
Speaker 1: I'm saying that right. I'm gonna go with literally literally
Speaker 1: literally convening, but Swedish. I'm sorry, I just said something
Speaker 1: in Swedish. So since we were talking about the rocks,
Speaker 1: so we should say that the rocks, it's very important.
Speaker 1: You can't just throw granite in there, because grantit will
Speaker 1: probably explode in your face. I think it's that hot.
Speaker 1: But water on real danger rocks are not good. No,
Speaker 1: you need unweathered quarry rock, and he listed a few.
Speaker 1: Hornblender is my favorite. The one they like the most is, uh,
Speaker 1: what is it? Podote? Peridotite, peridotite, because there's an there's
Speaker 1: a there's a semi precious mineral called parado So I
Speaker 1: imagine this is where it comes from. Paradotite 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 the sauna. They have a name
Speaker 1: for the stove kiowas. They have a name for the steam,
Speaker 1: which is yeah, they don't have a name for the rock.
Speaker 1: It's called the pile of rocks. Yet the water on
Speaker 1: the pil 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 infrared sauna 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, infrared
Speaker 1: means redder than red on the on the spectrum of light, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's radiation, sure exists radiation. That's basically what's going on,
Speaker 1: is you're being bathed in infrared radiation. Yeah, so it
Speaker 1: heats you up. I'm a semi purist, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I would just like a regular sauna, not
Speaker 1: a savasana stove a key us exactly, kind of like
Speaker 1: they have at the gym, yeah, or at the holiday
Speaker 1: and without the old naked men. Well that is the
Speaker 1: thing about um Sawna's that you're going to run into,
Speaker 1: Chuck is naked men and naked women even depending on
Speaker 1: where why not, Yeah, that's um. Robert made sure to
Speaker 1: point 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 punk. 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. 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 ourselves are naked bodies.
Speaker 1: This is a steamy episode. You should know, well, we
Speaker 1: are 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, um,
Speaker 1: so the places where the songs have been around the
Speaker 1: most are more likely to have mixed sex. Places where
Speaker 1: it went away for a while and came back would
Speaker 1: have 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 Banya's 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? Naked? A couple of guys?
Speaker 1: It was, Yeah, if you have a 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 bathhouse and fights these guys. I can't imagine anything
Speaker 1: 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. This,
Speaker 1: this idea of any excretion is good has been around
Speaker 1: for a very long time. And don't forget what we
Speaker 1: used to use leeches to suck our blood. Um. We
Speaker 1: used to believe that um pooping as much as we
Speaker 1: could was a good idea, UM, which I kind of
Speaker 1: still clean to that one. I do too good. I'm
Speaker 1: a 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 differ from aple kringle. 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 fahrenheight tank,
Speaker 1: which is chili. You have to have a wet suit
Speaker 1: for that. And Chuck is still sweating again with the
Speaker 1: swimming and sweating. Uh so, he claims that in a
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes sauna, the average person sweats about four cups
Speaker 1: about a leader of sweat, which is way more for
Speaker 1: me in fifteen minutes. Right, Yeah, I sweat about a
Speaker 1: 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, right, um.
Speaker 1: And the researchers have found that in heavy sweat, about
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: or pooh right uh. And this is it has no
Speaker 1: The concentration of a toxin in the blood stream appears
Speaker 1: to have no bearing on how much is released through
Speaker 1: the sweat. It's almost like our sweat glands are set
Speaker 1: up to just do one percent. But people who use
Speaker 1: saunas say, man, one percent of a concentration of mercury,
Speaker 1: that's 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 exactly. Um. Another benefit of a good sauna sweat
Speaker 1: or a good sweat period is this really good for
Speaker 1: your skis in it opens your porrors keeps them nice,
Speaker 1: impliant and the Uh. There's a study by the Journal
Speaker 1: of Dermatology that said, you know, a regular sweat from
Speaker 1: a sana has a proactive effect on your skin and
Speaker 1: like helps out with x amoun and all kinds of
Speaker 1: dry skin conditions. And also um Land points out that
Speaker 1: we have long associated like bathing rituals with kind of
Speaker 1: um clearing away the like a spiritual the psychic funk.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, not just bottom funk, but head funk. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And anybody who's felt poorly uh, and it's taking a
Speaker 1: shower can attest to that. You just feel better somehow
Speaker 1: after a shower. And there's nothing worse than the feeling
Speaker 1: of taking a shower, stepping out and still feeling bad
Speaker 1: because you know it's going to be another twenty four
Speaker 1: hours before 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 great sweat or
Speaker 1: good steam, good fits, good fits, does a body good. Um.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the Russian banya, the saunas there the bathhouse.
Speaker 1: They also would beat themselves. I think they probably still do.
Speaker 1: You would flog your skin with what's called the venic
Speaker 1: and it's a bundle of leafy branches like oak and
Speaker 1: maple and birch branches, right, And by doing that, they're
Speaker 1: they're stimulating circulation. Yeah, because the skin is like, what's
Speaker 1: gonna quit that? Send some blood there, find out what's
Speaker 1: going on, right, let me know what's going on after
Speaker 1: you get there. See, and um, that's what that's what
Speaker 1: the skin is doing, right. Uh. And it also um
Speaker 1: produces a mild euphoric effect apparently yea. It releases the
Speaker 1: plant oils, which is also a good thing. And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, it stimulates the production of opiate endorphins. And
Speaker 1: it's like a mild narcotic effect crazy, which I love
Speaker 1: that that those three words together. Mild narcotic effect. That's great.
Speaker 1: It's almost like cellar door. Mild narcotic effect. That's better
Speaker 1: than massive narcotic effect. Right. Then you're in trouble. Then
Speaker 1: that shower doesn't work. Um chuck. Also, saunas produce a
Speaker 1: mock fever. Yeah. I thought that was kind of cool.
Speaker 1: So your internal body temperature can raise as much as
Speaker 1: five point four degrease fahrenheight Right, and uh, the temperature
Speaker 1: at your skin can increase by as much as eighteen
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheighth. That's a lot. That is a serious amount.
Speaker 1: And by doing that, your body is like, Okay, I'm sick.
Speaker 1: I need to jack my immune system up. So white
Speaker 1: blood cell count or white blood cell production is increased. Um.
Speaker 1: The lymph nodes, which are another internal waste system, a
Speaker 1: very important one, um, are flushed. Uh, and you start
Speaker 1: to sweat even for even further. Yeah, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: increase your blood pressure and increases your blood circulation circulation,
Speaker 1: but not your blood pressure. No, but if you do
Speaker 1: have high blood pressure, we should say saunas are not
Speaker 1: recommended for you. Well, we should just go ahead and say,
Speaker 1: who all, it's not recommended for kids and old people.
Speaker 1: It's not recommended pregnant ladies. Um, but it is good. Um,
Speaker 1: Like those people shouldn't get in, but women definitely might
Speaker 1: want to get in because it apparently alleviates menstrual cramps
Speaker 1: really well. Right, but if you're pregnant again, you want
Speaker 1: to stay away from the sauna if you're pregnant, right,
Speaker 1: very very astute point. Suck. Thank you. Um. Lastly about
Speaker 1: physiology and saunaing. Um, what you want to do is
Speaker 1: keep yourself very hydrated, because the irony is while you're
Speaker 1: excreting that one percent the go to excrese excreting organs.
Speaker 1: The kidneys need water to excrete the other And if
Speaker 1: you're sweating all of it out, things get backed up,
Speaker 1: toxic levels, raising your body and you can do some
Speaker 1: real damage to yourself. So every time you go into
Speaker 1: the sauna, you want to take a jug of water
Speaker 1: with you with at least a leader. Right. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would say if you have gout, the sauna is probably
Speaker 1: a good place to go. You think, so, oh, because
Speaker 1: you're a acid builds up, Yeah, it's your all. This
Speaker 1: is a build up. If you're a acid and you're well,
Speaker 1: your is your ac acid. So if you have gout,
Speaker 1: get thee to a sauna. Okay. Um. And there was
Speaker 1: one other cool thing about the physical Oh the reason
Speaker 1: they one reason they recommend heart patients not getting saunas
Speaker 1: is because one of the traditions is to jump from
Speaker 1: the sauna, either into a snow bank or into a
Speaker 1: cool pool water in Finland, Yeah, and shock your body.
Speaker 1: And the old urban legend that you heard when your
Speaker 1: kids about going from the hot tub to the pool
Speaker 1: and you'll you'll drown because your pores are open. That's
Speaker 1: so not true. Actually, it's big in Turkey too. There's
Speaker 1: the Turkish bath, which is like a hot tub and
Speaker 1: then a cool tub, right, and you go from one
Speaker 1: to the other. I did not know that as far
Speaker 1: as or No, that's what I've always heard it. I
Speaker 1: had no idea. Um, Chuck, I think it's high time
Speaker 1: we talked about the history of the sauna. And saunas
Speaker 1: are very very old. Yeah, Neolithic tribes. I love how
Speaker 1: he tied culture and humans, like culture springing up around
Speaker 1: human physiological needs and bathing. He said was like the
Speaker 1: first people that bathe and hot springs lead to saunas.
Speaker 1: They're like, wow, this is fantastic. I really like this. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: And I think in France and Spain especially, a lot
Speaker 1: of the Neolithic settlements are located very close to hot springs,
Speaker 1: and not by accident either, right. No, um, as people
Speaker 1: were remained nomadic. Apparently we started creating collapsible, portable saunas
Speaker 1: that resemble like sweat lodges in Native America. UM. And
Speaker 1: 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 Savoy saunas, which remember date back
Speaker 1: at least to the twelfth century, right, probably a lot
Speaker 1: further than that. Apparently, as Finland settled by modern fins Um,
Speaker 1: the the sauna was pretty much brought with them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And through the Middle Ages it was like the common people.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just for the rich or anything. The common
Speaker 1: like whole villages would would sauna together, sweat it out together, men,
Speaker 1: women and children, and at the local bathhouse they would
Speaker 1: actually feast inside the sauna. Yes, is really gross. It is.
Speaker 1: They would get married, um, and they would get they
Speaker 1: would have babies on. Yes, prostitution what what they called
Speaker 1: the stews was the nickname they had. Yes. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: not a stew. You want to eat with crackers? Um
Speaker 1: maybe afterwards yeah, perhaps. So this this association, like we said,
Speaker 1: with saunas and places where you could find a prostitute
Speaker 1: and have sex with said prostitute. Um. And just kind
Speaker 1: of that Roman Diane ice in or giastic um kind
Speaker 1: of vibe going on in the saunas was one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why they were eradicated by Europe because in
Speaker 1: the early sixteenth century Europe got a little old tents. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Protestant Reformation just ruined everything. Yeah, they're kind of like,
Speaker 1: you can't do that you put a put a hat
Speaker 1: with a buckle on right now. Yeah, you can't do
Speaker 1: that either or that or that or that right, get
Speaker 1: out to start crying right now, let me teach you
Speaker 1: what guilt is all about. Right. And then that lasted
Speaker 1: for about five hundred years, and then finally in the
Speaker 1: late twentieth century, thanks to the nineteen sixties, people began
Speaker 1: to loosen up again and get climbed back into the sauna, right,
Speaker 1: and the sauna immediately became associated with sex again, like
Speaker 1: the gay bath houses that we were talking about. Have
Speaker 1: you ever seen in the band played on? Uh No,
Speaker 1: but my brother worked on that. I think we talked
Speaker 1: about that, um and I think you said that your
Speaker 1: brother worked on it too. But Phil Collins plays a
Speaker 1: bath house owner, and I think it's Richard gear who's
Speaker 1: like trying to track patient zero, is trying to convince
Speaker 1: him to like shut down the bath house because there's
Speaker 1: like this epidemic that no one's paying attention to. That.
Speaker 1: Back then they called gay cancer, which is now called
Speaker 1: HIV or AIDS. They called the gay cancer they did
Speaker 1: originally crazy Yeah, um, and so the bath houses featured prominently,
Speaker 1: and sauna's featured prominently in the bath houses. Phil Collins,
Speaker 1: Phil Collins SUSU studio was Yeah, he did a good
Speaker 1: job the bath house. I think we talked about what
Speaker 1: a good job Phil Collins did too. Dude, that was
Speaker 1: a long time ago. So if that's the case, then people,
Speaker 1: you know, that's like a two year old podcast. So
Speaker 1: 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 synaesthesia. That would be a great one.
Speaker 1: As watched Wyble sk as good should know. As watch
Speaker 1: sk as Good should know. So Chuck, the saunas make
Speaker 1: their comeback. Now you can find him at holiday inns
Speaker 1: around the world. Actually it's not true. I've never seen
Speaker 1: a sauna at a Aliday And since they had my
Speaker 1: last really crappy job, they had um a gem in
Speaker 1: the building, which was one cool part because you could
Speaker 1: go down like during lunch and work out and they
Speaker 1: had a sauna in there, and I would work out
Speaker 1: and then I could theoretically I did for a time,
Speaker 1: and I would go sit in the sauna and it's
Speaker 1: just the best man, just sitting there, just like there's something.
Speaker 1: I see why the intercourse happened, because there's something very
Speaker 1: primal about just sitting there naked and just sweating and
Speaker 1: sweating and sweating. But I never had a desire to
Speaker 1: like eat food or meet anyone special. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying? Is that clear? Yeah? I got it. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got hint hint um. For those of you can't see,
Speaker 1: I just winked that, chuck um. Uh so chuck. Let's
Speaker 1: say that you have been inspired to go out to
Speaker 1: take a sauna from listening to this, because there's actually
Speaker 1: something called sauna etiquette that you need to know about.
Speaker 1: First of all, if you're in a country and they
Speaker 1: speak German and you decided to go to a sauna,
Speaker 1: there will be a person in there now the sauna maister,
Speaker 1: the son of master is in charge for basically running
Speaker 1: a very strict ten minute session. Your entire job is
Speaker 1: to go in there and sit down and shut up right. Uh,
Speaker 1: basically follow the son of myster's lead. You're not allowed
Speaker 1: to leave once the ten minutes has started, you're not
Speaker 1: allowed to come in once the ten minutes and definitely
Speaker 1: never ever put your hands on that later. No, that's
Speaker 1: the son of master's job. Do not wet the rocks
Speaker 1: if you have a son of myster. No, that's that's
Speaker 1: the song. And I got the impression. I was looking around,
Speaker 1: I couldn't find anything that wasn't in German and that
Speaker 1: I could translate. Um, but I get the impression that
Speaker 1: the son of mister is actually a paid professional. Well
Speaker 1: I hope so, because if someone's just doing that for kicks,
Speaker 1: then no, you know, there's like jerks out there. They're like,
Speaker 1: I'm just so on a monster, but come here all
Speaker 1: the time. It's like no one the son of myster.
Speaker 1: It just goes on like that for a long time.
Speaker 1: And then they wrist wrestle and yeah they like wrestle.
Speaker 1: Yeah with that with just towels on. God, how about
Speaker 1: those guys that walk around the gym with the towel
Speaker 1: over their shoulder but naked? I know? And why are
Speaker 1: they always like seventy I know? And they pretend like, hey,
Speaker 1: everybody else is subject to the Protestant Reformation. I'm free.
Speaker 1: It's like put a towel on, hippie. I don't even
Speaker 1: like I'm this close to being a never nude myself,
Speaker 1: are you? I don't you have them? Yeah, shower with
Speaker 1: denom jeans now, But I mean, I mean that I'm
Speaker 1: not into that. Put some clothes on. Protestant Reformation. No
Speaker 1: one can escape it. Yeah, no one escapes the Protestant
Speaker 1: Reformation myself. So lastly, with sauna etiquette, basically the whole
Speaker 1: thing comes down to putting the ladle on. If you're
Speaker 1: alone in the sauna, feel free to add some loyally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do whatever you want. Somebody in there. It's probably one
Speaker 1: of those things where you want to be quiet and
Speaker 1: then just say, hey, do you mind if I put
Speaker 1: some water on the rocks. It's supposed to be a
Speaker 1: pretty quiet environment. Don't go in there like some chowder
Speaker 1: head with your cell phone, right and um, when you
Speaker 1: go in and out, you want to come in out
Speaker 1: as fast as possible because that open door changes the
Speaker 1: temperature very quickly. Right, and just be considered, don't be
Speaker 1: a jerky. I saw him. That just reminded me. I
Speaker 1: saw the War of the Roses again the end the
Speaker 1: night for like the fiftieth time, and remember Kathleen Turner
Speaker 1: locks Michael Douglas and the sauna. And then the next
Speaker 1: shot after he like some like falls out of the sauna,
Speaker 1: is him drinking gatorade in the office. The next day,
Speaker 1: He's got like a gallon of Gatorade's good, didn't Danny
Speaker 1: de Vito directly? Man, That's one of my favorite movies.
Speaker 1: Has a brilliant mid. 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 ten degrees celsius for three minutes and forty
Speaker 1: six seconds. You can like warm food at that temperature,
Speaker 1: you can cook food at that temperature. Uh. That my
Speaker 1: friends of saunas, and again I think, Chuck, that both
Speaker 1: endorse you. Going over to the website how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com typing in saunas and just reading this really
Speaker 1: well written article by Robert Lamb I think you'll enjoy it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then informative. Uh and since I said how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com, I'm largely abandoning the handy search bar thing.
Speaker 1: I think that's run its course. Really. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: new the new signal for for UM listener mail is
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com? Oh really? Yeah? Okay, watch
Speaker 1: I'll say it again. Because I wasn't ready. I was
Speaker 1: still in handy search bar mode. Okay. Uh, you want
Speaker 1: to just go over and read saunas at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com? Watch this? See so you know I
Speaker 1: can say now it's time for listener mail. I can't
Speaker 1: control it. I used to be able to control a
Speaker 1: lot more when I said handy search bar. But oh
Speaker 1: look it just happened. That chuck chiming all over the
Speaker 1: I need to not say anything else. Okay, let's just
Speaker 1: read the listener mail. How about that, Josh, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this. Uh take that Colbart? Oh yeah, Colbert. I
Speaker 1: recently heard this from Scott in Connecticut? Is that what
Speaker 1: c T is? Yeah? Okay, I recently heard about your
Speaker 1: rivalry with Stephen Colbert's Kiba team. Congratulations on your success.
Speaker 1: I'm a fan of both your podcast and his show.
Speaker 1: Which is cool, but he has uh. He says he
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna choose sides until late one night when this happened.
Speaker 1: I know this is pretty amazing because slightly harrowing. I
Speaker 1: was up late on winding from a long day of
Speaker 1: working class. I was listening to some vintage s Y
Speaker 1: s K the Bhutan's Gross National National Happiness episode. After
Speaker 1: a little while, I noticed a strange smell, a little
Speaker 1: like overheated electronics. Yeah, ozone, Yeah, this is scary smell.
Speaker 1: I sniffed around my computer. I noticed that it seemed
Speaker 1: to be stronger near the door to the rest of
Speaker 1: my apartment. Opened it and this visible wave of thick,
Speaker 1: acrid smoke and gas poured it into my room. I
Speaker 1: ran awake my housemates, opening a many windows as I
Speaker 1: could to vent out some of the gas. Don't like
Speaker 1: a smart guy. Uh. It literally tasted like burning. Our
Speaker 1: eyes and throats were stinging, and we called the fire department.
Speaker 1: They arrived. They found our oil furnace had basically imploded. Um,
Speaker 1: those things are dangerous. What oil burnings? Yes, this I
Speaker 1: don't know where He isn't going to get a letter
Speaker 1: from the oil burning board. Remind me to tell you
Speaker 1: about high for your toast corn syrup letter. One day,
Speaker 1: the basement was loaded with carbon monoxide and other compounds
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley, and
Speaker 1: it had been leaking up into the rest of the apartment.
Speaker 1: Not for your podcast, I would have gone to bed earlier,
Speaker 1: never noticed that smell. This is why I mentioned Colbert,
Speaker 1: you may wonder. As it turns out, my roommate Caitlin,
Speaker 1: had been watching Colbert upstairs and she fell asleep. She
Speaker 1: was tripping z's when I woke her up and pulled
Speaker 1: her to safety. Where was Stephen Colbert in our time
Speaker 1: of need? He may have a space treadmill named after
Speaker 1: him and a high profile primetime TV show, but he's
Speaker 1: no substitute for y s K when it comes to
Speaker 1: riveting and informating, informative late night life saving. I thought
Speaker 1: I would add another game winning point for Team s
Speaker 1: Y s K. Yeah, Scott in Connecticut. He's also no
Speaker 1: s y s K when it comes to raising donation
Speaker 1: loans for the developing world. Because we beat the tar
Speaker 1: out of him on Kiva Keva dot org Slash team
Speaker 1: slash stuff. You should know, Chuck, we indirectly save these
Speaker 1: people's lives. You realize we've saved quite a few lives
Speaker 1: at this point, my friend, if only we've been there
Speaker 1: for the family at the end of storytelling, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to know if we've killed and oh god, so awesome.
Speaker 1: You're so hooked on Todd Solins right now, I have
Speaker 1: that guy, Todd Solins. If you're listening, I appreciate your work, buddy,
Speaker 1: Yeah I do too. Yeah. Uh, if you are Todd Solins,
Speaker 1: we want to hear from you. Send us an email,
Speaker 1: wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send
Speaker 1: it to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Better For more on this and thousands of other topics,
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