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Stuff You Should Know

How did language evolve? What makes us happy? Each week Josh and Chuck explore everything from matadors to moonshine. Join the guys as they look into big and small questions alike -- seriously, it's all the Stuff You Should Know.

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Latest Episodes

  • How Bitcoin Works

    Released 06.17.13

    In 2008 Bitcoin, the world's first decentralized, anarchistic all-digital currency, was introduced to the world.

  • Capgras Syndrome: You Are Not Who You Think You Are

    Released 06.11.13

    There is an extremely rare condition where the sufferer is convinvced that everyone around him is an impostor posing as their friends and family.

  • How Drag Queens Work

    Released 06.11.13

    You can trace the origin of men dressing as women in public back to classic Greek theater, but modern drag queens own their real inception to vaudville.

  • How do trees affect the weather?

    Released 06.06.13

    Sure, you know that trees have an impact on climate change: to wit, fewer trees mean more atmospheric CO2.

  • What happened to the lost colony at Roanoke?

    Released 06.04.13

    Before Jamestown became the first successful English colony in the New World, an entire group of settlers vanished.

  • How Coffins Work

    Released 05.28.13

    Sure, you've probably laid in one at the store or a funeral home, but how much do you know about receptacles used to bury the dead?

  • How Police Chases Work

    Released 05.28.13

    Entire TV shows are dedicated to them and Americans love to watch a live one, but police chases aren’t as routine as they seem.

  • How PTSD Works

    Released 05.23.13

    With Post-traumatic Stress Disorder the sufferer relives, over and over again, the worst moment of his life.

  • How Cicadas Work

    Released 05.21.13

    Cicadas are crawling out from underground, where they have been hiding in the darkness for almost two decades.

  • How Aerosol Cans Work

    Released 05.16.13

    In the 87 years since they were invented aerosol cans have protected soldiers, temporarily fixed flat tires, killed a boy who used too much deodorant and had their contents banned by most countries for wrecking the ozone layer.

  • How Electroconvulsive Therapy Works

    Released 05.14.13

    With the exception of lobotomies, no other psychological treatment has a worse reputation. But thanks to some thoughtful tweaks, ECT has lately emerged from the dark ages and toward the respectable forefront of treatment for major depression.

  • How Foot Binding Worked

    Released 05.09.13

    Once in a while, all the necessary factors converge to produce a peculiar nationalized sexual fetish.

  • How Fair Trade Works

    Released 05.07.13

    The West has gotten rich off the backs of underpaid labor living elsewhere; people who are dedicated to Fair Trade feel it’s time people at a disadvantage should stop being exploited.

  • How Dungeons and Dragons Works

    Released 05.02.13

    Despite what you’ve heard, Dungeons and Dragons isn’t just for geeks, it isn’t satanic and it’s actually a great way to exercise your imagination.

  • Is there such a thing as a truth serum?

    Released 04.30.13

    Ever since people have had secrets, other people have been looking for ways to get it out of them. Law enforcement and chemistry alike have searched for a drug that can remove the ability to lie.

  • What makes us yawn?

    Released 04.25.13

    What is it that makes us suddenly draw in a deep breath through a wide-open mouth? researchers really don’t know.

  • How Magnets Work

    Released 04.23.13

    Whether you're sticking them to the fridge or using them to transpose sound to tape, magnets are surprisingly interesting.

  • Uses of the Insanity Defense

    Released 04.18.13

    The idea that a person who can’t understand the crime they’ve committed should be inculpable is a longstanding pillar of Western criminal law.

  • How Marriage Works

    Released 04.16.13

    You can tell a lot about a culture through marriage statistics: what age people get married, how many divorce, who is excluded from legal marriage.

  • Do men and women have different brains?

    Released 04.11.13

    It’s a touchy subject – if you find gender-based differences between brains, does that mean there are differences in intellect?

  • What’s the deal with duckbill platypuses?

    Released 04.09.13

    It's pretty much impossible to describe duckbill platypuses without using the word “hodgepodge”. These mammals share features with birds, reptiles and even sharks.

  • How Grief Works

    Released 04.04.13

    Since 1969, the five stages of grief have become pretty well known. But later researchers are finding that grief is rarely cut and dried, and may not be as widely experienced as we thought.

  • How the Panama Canal Works

    Released 04.02.13

    The Panama Canal is one of the greatest engineering feats ever undertaken. First conceived of in the 1580s and completed in 1914, the canal's fascinating history includes a stint where it was considered U.S.

  • How No-fly Zones Work

    Released 03.28.13

    They have become such a ubiquitous tool for international interventions that it seems like no-fly zones have been around forever.

  • What was the most peaceful time in history?

    Released 03.26.13

    There's a lot of debate about whether pre-agricultural humans existed in a more harmonious state than we do today.

  • Gesundeit! How Allergies Work

    Released 03.21.13

    About 30-40 percent of humans suffer from some sort of allergy. The big joke, though, is that every sufferer is the victim of mistaken identity.

  • How Apartheid Worked

    Released 03.19.13

    After WWII, the government of South Africa turned inward to focus its attention on domination of the white minority over the non-white majority.

  • How the U.S. Postal Service Works

    Released 03.14.13

    The USPS is currently teetering on the edge of going under and there are a lot of plans to save it, from cutting service to creating federally-protected email addresses.

  • How Police Sketches Work

    Released 03.12.13

    Creating composite drawings of suspected criminals from eyewitness accounts has been around since a Frenchman introduced it in the 19th century.

  • TV Bonus: What will happen when we reach the singularity?

    Released 03.09.13

    Futurists have unnervingly predicted an impending moment in human history: the Singularity, when a superhuman artificial intelligence is created.

  • TV Bonus: Do zombies really exist?

    Released 03.09.13

    In movies and stories, zombies are undead menaces that lurch around mindlessly, in search of flesh -- and braaaaaains!

  • TV Bonus: Can we build an elevator to space?

    Released 03.09.13

    With the end of the shuttle program and an International Space Station still in need of supplies, the aerospace industry is working the kinks of out of a century-old idea to build a service elevator from Earth to outer space.

  • TV Bonus: How Sleepwalking Works

    Released 03.09.13

    Sleep behaviors are pretty fascinating. Some people snore, some grind their teeth -- and some take a little stroll, or perhaps a drive.

  • Do people really run off to join the French Foreign Legion?

    Released 03.07.13

    Anyone who knows anything about Jean-Claude Van Damme knows he played a French legionnaire in the movies.

  • What makes a one-hit wonder?

    Released 03.05.13

    The term “one-hit wonder” gets thrown around a lot, but Chuck Bryant went to the trouble to really define what makes a one-hit wonder in the article this episode is based on.

  • How the Papacy Works

    Released 02.28.13

    In February 2013, Pope Benedict said he would become the first pope to retire in 600 years. Check out this episode of Stuff You Should Know to find out just what the pope does and the process of choosing a new one.

  • How CPR Works

    Released 02.26.13

    You have a golden opportunity to make yourself into a worthwhile human being by learning how to perform CPR.

  • TV Bonus: Stuff You Should Know, Live at Comic-Con

    Released 02.23.13

    How does time travel work? Could it ever cross the line from science fiction into science fact? Join Josh and Chuck -- along with a live audience at the 2012 Comic-Con -- as they explore the ins and outs of time travel.

  • TV Bonus: How Spies Work

    Released 02.23.13

    Psst. You want to know how governments and corporations get the drop on one another? The frontline of intelligence is populated by spies.

  • What would happen if the world stopped spinning?

    Released 02.21.13

    Over 400 million years, the day has grown two hours longer thanks to Earth's slowing axial rotation. While it will be a long time before it stops spinning, it never hurts to plan.

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