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June is Black Music Month and on the Drink Champs podcast we're speaking with the hottest names in the culture, like Swae Lee.
Do you realize how legendary you are?
I appreciate that.
I be seeing it, but I'm like, man, I still got like so much more to do.
Like Prince, he dropped like 30 albums.
We dropped like five right now.
That's the rate we got to be going.
Yeah, that's a good attitude.
No matter the era, Drink Champs brings you the biggest names and the most unfiltered conversations.
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Can superstars even exist the way they used to?
2016 was sort of that last era of monoculture where we still consumed things in community.
Everybody wanted to be Beyonce at that point.
I don't think we'll ever see another Rihanna.
What does it mean to be Black and eat in America?
You will never make me feel bad for being a Black girl, for being a Black American girl, ever.
From music to food to the conversations shaping Black culture.
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Hey there, it's Josh, and it's my turn, finally.
And I hope you're enjoying our Do in Science playlist so far.
Up next, we have our 2017 episode on elastics.
It's one of those episodes, like ballpoint pens or zippers, where the topic sounds super boring but it actually turns out to be super interesting.
And this episode, as a bonus, has a surprising amount of discussion on pirates for a show, on things that snap back when you pull them.
Enjoy feeling your brain enlarged.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.
Hey and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
There's Jerry.
This is Stuff You Should Know, the sick edition, the annual sick edition.
You aren't well, my friend.
No, and it really stinks too, Chuck, because I like to think that I take pretty good care of myself.
So to be able to be felled not once but twice in just a few months by some stupid bug?
It's irritating to me.
I know.
You get mad every time you get sick, though, just so you know.
I do.
Yeah.
I hadn't noticed that actually.
My wife is the same way.
Well, it's not fun.
I know, but she gets like kind of, yeah, you both get a little angry.
Like, why did this happen to me?
I get more pitiful like, oh, somebody help me.
Oh, I've got that going on too.
Listen to this.
So does that mean people have the next like eight episodes to look forward to this or –
No, no, man.
No way.
This is it.
This is it right here.
I think actually yesterday might have been the worst day.
Oh, well, good.
Yeah.
I mean, today was a close second, but we'll find out.
Yeah, it is bad.
I got to be a pro, man.
I got to get well.
The show must go on.
So today, Chuck, Charles, we're talking elastic.
Yeah.
Did you know much about this?
No, I thought this is actually super interesting, and it also contained two what we like to call dinner party factoids that people can bust out.
We need a jingle that says that so we can play it when it comes up.
Yeah, I mean, there's lots of cool stuff in here, and please don't correct us on Factoid.
Oh, yeah, man, that's so 2009, 10, 11 maybe.
Exactly.
But, yeah, two really cool facts in here that I think people can just keep in their hip pockets.
Okay.
Are you good?
So until we get a jingle made, I'll bet Noel will make one for us.
But until we do, maybe you should – you want to practice one?
Geez, what's a good dinner party jingle?
It should be like wine glasses and plates and forks and things clinking.
Right.
And then maybe like this Orwellian voice going, dinner party factoid.
Yeah, here we are eight years in, still evolving.
Yeah, it's a work in progress.
Okay, so we're talking elastic, Chuck.
Uh-huh.
I didn't know that much about it either.
And this article written by one William Harris.
Good one.
Yeah, it is.
It makes a pretty good point that it's just one of those things specifically say like a rubber band.
You just kind of think it's always been around.
And you know, you've always.
You just think.
Like you know, elastic waistbands have been around for eons.
It was basically the second thing discovered after fire is what I've always thought.
Yes.
Until today.
Since Adam first popped Eve's bra strap.
Right.
It's been around.
Yeah, you'd think.
That's actually not the case at all.
It's a...
Elastic itself.
And elastic, we should say, is basically any rubber, natural or synthetic thread woven with another kind of fabric, usually like say, cotton or nylon or whatever, that produces a stretchy fabric.
That's elastic, right?
Right?
Yeah, like I think a lot of people don't even realize if they took their underwear waistband.
Don't do this, because then you ruined it.
But maybe if you have an old pair, if you just kind of cut it, you would see these little elastic threads.
That's all it is.
Yeah, sure.
Little rubber bands.
Or you could go to like a thrift store or something, buy a pair, and then cut those.
If you're buying thrift store underwear, then I don't know.
I wouldn't recommend that.
Yeah.
I don't think they even sell it, actually.
They do.
Really?
Yep.
Used underwear.
Yes.
Wow.
So 10% skid free.
That's probably, that's gotta be one of the more difficult tasks.
It's like getting those things just prepared for resale.
You know?
Yeah.
I don't want to be unprepared for resale duty today.
Yeah.
Anyway, when you do, if you cut it open, if you look very closely, have you ever done this?
Have you ever seen like an elastic waistband come loose?
Sure.
If you look really closely, you can be like to the little threads that are sticking out.
Because some just hang limp and loose.
That's cotton.
Nobody cares about that.
But the ones that are just kind of still sticking out a little bit and you can throw them.
That's the rubber or natural or synthetic rubber that gives that elastic its stretchiness.
And again, this is a fairly recent invention, especially if you're talking about waistbands for underpants.
Yeah, and especially if you're talking about elastic that really kind of worked.
There were two sort of dives into making elastic in...
One quite a long time ago and then one more recently that obviously worked much better.
And basically the reason it worked much more better more recently is better techniques to making rubber and then better techniques changing that rubber into something that you could actually use, like in a waistband.
Right, exactly.
But we've known about rubber for a very long time since well, I should say, those of us in the West have known about it for a very long time.
Those indigenous peoples of the Amazon have known about it even longer.
But I interrupted.
You were talking about waistbands.
Oh, okay.
So, yeah, so with underwear waistbands in particular, right?
Yes.
Apparently, humans have felt shame for thousands of years, because the oldest pair of underwear identifiable underwear are 7000 years old.
And you bought them at Goodwill last week.
Yep.
So this underwear originally well, even before that, I should say there was something called breechcloth and that was just basically strips of leather that just kind of hung down and covered your junk, maybe kept the gnats out, that kind of thing, right.
Or kept them in.
Yeah, if that was your thing.
Sure.
You'd probably catch some.
Yeah.
And those are even older than the first underwear, which would be considered a loincloth.
Yeah, of course.
Which is basically... And there are loincloths that are at least 5,000 years or 7,000 years old.
And they are...
Basically a linen diaper that is folded in a certain way, worn by grown-ups, including very famously most recently, Gandhi used to wear a loincloth everywhere.
It was called a dhati, but it's a loincloth, no matter what you call it.
That's right.
So those stuck around for quite a while in the West.
And it wasn't until basically the Middle Ages that someone said, we can do better than this.
Yeah, and they brought around these things that were much longer than a loincloth.
Most of them kind of, for my research, these braids, B-R-A-I-E-S, went below the knee even.
Yeah, they were like a cross between a loincloth and jams.
Yeah, sort of.
It says here that they were laced to the waist and legs, but there may be lace under the waist, but they're also generally kind of rolled over many times at the waist.
Right.
I think to probably tighten it up a bit.
Yeah, and everyone said, great, this will work.
Yeah, for a while.
I'm happy with this.
And, you know, then it went a different way.
We should do an entire episode just on corsets.
I know there's a good article on the site on it.
But after braids, what's called the union suit was invented.
Well, dinner party fact.
Okay, there you go.
That was good.
I never knew.
I thought it was called a union suit because it had something somewhere along the line to do with unions.
But no, in fact the word union suit.
Now we know them as long johns, even though long johns are generally two-piece.
Uh, the one piece union suit is called that because it is one piece.
It is the union of a top and a bottom undergarment.
Yep.
That's right.
It's a one piece long John with a flap in the bottom.
Uh, they usually button all the way up front from the groin up to the neck.
Do you have any of these?
I'm wearing a couple pair right now, obviously.
You just can't see them because they're under my clothes.
Do you really have some?
No, I have long johns.
I've got these one called silkies that work really well.
Oh, yeah.
But I don't have a union suit, no.
Do you?
No, I don't anymore.
My brother still, Scott, swears by the Union suit.
I think he has the classic red.
And then, of course, they famously have, like you said, it's either called an access hatch.
I've also seen them called a drop seat or a fireman's flap.
Yeah, I saw that too.
I can see that.
Yeah, where you can unbutton your, you know, because generally you're wearing this out in the cold so you don't want to strip down to the naked if you want to go pee-pee or poo-poo.
Right.
So you just open the old access hatch and there you have it.
Yeah.
Now, see, that to me makes sense in the 19th century when the Union suit was invented.
Today, though, it's like I guess Scott just likes to add a little panic to it when he has to tinkle.
Like having to get that flap open?
I think he's just a classicist.
Not classicist.
Who's someone who's into the classic things?
Classicist.
Oh, okay.
That sounds like he doesn't like poor people.
That's a classist.
Oh, okay.
That extra makes a big difference.
Okay, he's a classicist then.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, so you should tell him this.
Here's another little sub-dinner party factoid.
Okay.
Union suits were originally invented for women, from what I understand.
All right.
And they were invented in response to the corset craze, because apparently corsets were so out of hand.
It was basically like, remember our foot binding episode?
Oh, yeah.
So that's basically what women in Europe and the United States and the Western countries were doing with corsets.
They were engaging in...
What amounted to foot binding but with their waists.
Right.
They were literally deforming themselves.
Right.
Using corsets.
And there was a reformation movement against the corset and against that look.
And what it spawned ultimately was the Union suit, which were so great that men were like.
These are ours now.
Right.
Yeah, we should do one, of course.
I assume that they did this because men were like, no, more of an hourglass.
Yeah, and I think that's where the Reformation came out of, like, just shut up, men.
Right.
Like, we're disfigured now thanks to you, you idiots.
Well, I hate to pack another dinner party fact right next to the other one, but that's kind of where we are.
So my second factoid that you should bring up next time you're among friends, or next time you see an injured friend, perhaps is, if they're using an ACE bandage, ask them what it stands for, and they'll say uh, what do you mean?
But it in fact is an acronym, correct?
Yes, it is.
And what does it stand for?
All cotton elastic.
Ace bandage.
All cotton elastic bandage.
I never knew that until today.
And it's been around since 1918, apparently.
Yeah.
That the 3M company introduced it.
Amazing.
And so okay, you've got an ace bandage, which is essentially an elastic waistband used to keep Shaq's elbow in place, right.
Shaquille O'Neal?
Yeah.
All right.
What year do you think this is?
What's crazy is this is 1918 that 3M introduced the Ace.
And it took until the 40s before somebody thought why don't we just like attach, like underpants, a loincloth?
Yeah. to that and you just pull it up snap it in place and be like oh baby Modal.
I guess because, I mean, the only thing I can think of is because they were tying them, and they just figured, well, that works pretty well for now.
But yeah, I agree.
I mean, that's what William Harris says.
He says it was basically a sort of fashion inertia.
Everything was fine.
You could use buttons or ties or something like that and keep it in place, so who cares?
Yeah.
But it's just so much easier to pull up your underpants, snap them in place, and go, oh, baby.
That's right.
But regardless of what you're talking about here, these fabrics, including elastic, are made with a loom.
And if you've ever seen a loom at work or a – At work?
Yeah.
It's amazing to watch.
When you come into work, you're like, what the hell is this loom doing here?
Well, not at your job, but, you know.
I know what you mean.
Sure.
I was just being wise.
If you've ever seen a loom doing its thing, it's pretty impressive.
And what – I mean, it's really not that complicated either.
Basically all it's doing – is allowing these lengthwise threads to be interlaced with widthwise threads.
The warp and the weft.
Yeah, which is not a bad band name, by the way.
No, it's not, especially like proto-folk.
Yeah, well, that's exactly what it would be.
There would be at least three guys wearing vests in that band.
For sure.
That may have been woven with a loom.
Yeah, right.
You know?
And maybe pocket watches with the chains.
Oh, totally.
Yeah.
But that's all a loom does.
It goes, you know, it allows this interlacing to take place, and that's what's happening with elastic.
It just takes the place of the yarn and it's Well part of the yarn, half of the yarn or a portion of the yarn.
Right.
Well yeah, because in the case of a waistband, you're obviously introducing other fabrics as well, like cotton probably, or something else.
Yeah, and that's the case with any elastic.
Elastic is again.
It's a type of fiber woven together with some sort of rubber to create this new structure.
Stretchy, resilient fabric.
Elastic.
You want to take a nose blow break?
I'm dying here.
Thank you, Charles.
Hey, I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb.
Together, we're gonna have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people.
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It seemed very crazy, but I felt so desperate that I felt it was the quickest, easiest way out.
Did you allow yourself to think about how it could go wrong and what that might look like?
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June is Black Music Month and on the Drink Champs podcast we're speaking with the hottest names in the culture, like Swae Lee.
Do you realize how legendary you are?
I appreciate that.
I be seeing it, but I'm like, man, I still got like so much more to do.
Like Prince, he dropped like 30 albums.
We dropped like five right now.
That's the rate we got to be going.
Yep, that's a good attitude.
You'll also hear stories from industry legends and hip-hop pioneers like Fab Five Freddy.
I directed one of Nas' early videos.
Which one?
One Love.
Wow.
I literally filmed in his apartment in Queensbridge.
His moms were still up in that apartment.
Nas was just beginning to take off.
His pops used to live near me in Harlem.
His dad introduced him to a whole lot of, you know, conscious stuff, and he made a young prodigy.
No matter the era, Drink Champs brings you the biggest names and the most unfiltered conversations.
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Stop, you should.
Alright, we're back.
You good?
Yeah, I should say also, like, I keep hammering home what the definition of elastic is.
Now, we're talking about elastic waistbands, and that's what you think of typically.
But again, any fabric with fiber of one type and rubber woven together is elastic and that has tons and tons of uses.
Oh, sure.
Like bungee cords are elastic, right?
Yeah.
You know, everything else that's like that is like elastic.
Well, you know, in your socks, a lot of times they'll be – I mean, there's elastic –
And we'll get to spandex later, but that stuff is in many, many, many garments that you wear today.
You may not even realize that you have this stuff in your clothing.
Right.
Everything from the neck of your shirt, perhaps, to maybe the tongue of your shoes sometimes.
Yeah.
These fancy shoes will have elastic in them.
Those jeans that you wear to Thanksgiving dinner, they have an elastic waist.
Oh, I know what jeans you're talking about.
I don't wear those.
They're pleated jeans, which is just weird looking.
I just wear button flies.
Oh, yeah.
So you just go pop.
Yep.
Pop a couple out, and you're all set.
That's right.
You can stuff a lot of extra bits in there.
All right.
So let's – should we get in the Wayback Machine a bit and go back to the 18th and – I guess, the 19th and 18th centuries?
Huh.
Yep.
All right, we're pirates.
Oh, man, I'm glad you brought that up.
I read this really interesting article.
I found it, I think, on Longform, but it's from the National Endowment for the Humanities magazine website.
And this guy wrote an article about how... just thoroughly we misunderstand pirates.
Oh, really?
And how our conception of pirates took place basically in one decade between 17, I think, 26 and 36.
Uh-huh.
And everything we think of as pirates is crammed into that 10 years.
Everything before and after is totally different from our conception of pirates, and that they were actually – very frequently they were just sailors who would go attack like a vessel in the Indian Ocean for one big haul and then flee to the colonies and buy a bunch of pigs and set up a farm and – live as like upstanding citizens from that point on.
Some of them were, like, lieutenant governors.
It was a really interesting article that I recommend tremendously, obviously.
Did we not cover that in our Pirates episode 18 years ago?
No, we wouldn't have known that.
This is a brand-new article.
Oh, okay.
I'm sure we just totally fell for everything.
Right.
And apparently that's not our fault.
This guy's article and idea is pretty new.
It's just one of these things that historically everyone kind of bought in on.
Interesting.
Yep.
Send me that, will you?
You got it.
All right, so we're talking pirates here.
Not just pirates, but sailors explorers, basically anyone who got on a ship in the 1700s and 1800s, early 1800s, and went exploring.
Yeah.
And they you know what they did was they would go off and find things that they didn't have in their home country.
Say, oh, my God, what is this?
Let me bring it back.
Yeah.
Cinnamon.
Remember our cinnamon episode?
Yeah, absolutely.
That's a great example.
But one of the things they found in Central and South America was what the French called kauchuk.
Nice.
And it's an Indian term meaning weeping wood.
And it's basically what they're talking about.
Now, is it an actual rubber tree?
Yep.
Havia brazilianesis.
The rubber tree, which literally oozes milky latex.
Yeah.
Naturally.
Yeah, and the earliest sailors that encountered the indigenous natives of the Amazon were like what's that stuff?
You're putting on your outerwear and it's keeping the rain out.
What's that weird... flexible bottle you're using.
And they explained it to him and those guys said, awesome.
You know who will love this?
My fellow Europeans.
So they took it back with them.
And then they said and what are those awesome drugs that you give us in liquid form every night after dinner?
They said, oh, yeah, Husker.
Yeah.
And they went, we'll take some of that home, too.
Yeah.
Can we get a to-go bag of that stuff?
So yeah, they were already using the stuff because they found out when it was dried out.
Basically, you could use it for a lot of things.
Like you said, bottles, shoes, just like this, you know, flexible rubbery material.
Yeah, right?
So everything's hunky-dory.
This is a brand new thing.
Europe's starting to go crazy for it.
But what they figured out pretty quickly was that you...
You couldn't do a lot with it, right?
As we'll find out later, rubber has an unusual natural chemistry.
And it just so happens that in the normal range of temperatures outside of the tropics it can tend to fall apart pretty easily.
It has a narrow range of temperatures that allow its usefulness, right?
So once you take it up to above the equator, to say like Europe or the United States or whatever, And they did.
They thought it was great.
They thought it was terrific.
People went crazy for it.
Joseph Priestley actually came up with a dinner party factoid that I'm sure you'd love to share.
Ooh, which one?
Oh, you didn't?
This wasn't one of them?
No, I blew mine on the two.
Joseph Priestley, who was a very famous chemist.
Jason Priestley's chemist, Triple great uncle, we'll say.
I think we made that same joke in the anesthesia episode.
I'll bet we did.
Because, yeah, that's where he popped up.
That's right.
Thanks for that.
Oh, and the nitrous oxide one, too.
Yeah, yeah.
So he got his hands on some of this because everybody's like, he's the only chemist alive right now.
Give it to him.
And he's like, you know what?
This is amazing.
I'm writing in pencil and then I'm rubbing this latex, this kahachuk, and it's rubbing out the pencil marks.
And that gave rise to the term rubber paint.
Oh, that's how the name came around?
Yeah.
From rubbing?
From rubbing out pencil marks.
Erasing.
Rubber.
Interesting.
Because remember, the British loved to change everything with an er on the end.
Like soccer is actually shortened association.
Football, like a soccer, became soccer.
Right.
There you go.
Yeah.
Rubber.
That's pretty interesting.
I don't know how I skirted past that one.
I love that one.
So it became a big deal and everyone that had a little money to invest thought hey, we can make a lot of dough with this stuff.
We can transform that into something useful, like let's say in a garment.
But, like you said, they had this problem.
That was a very narrow range of temperatures where they could find it useful.
So a couple of dudes started working on it.
We've talked about Mr. Charles Goodyear before.
What did we talk about him in?
I don't know.
But I mean, definitely the Goodyear blimps episode.
But it seems like...
Do we not do one in vulcanization?
I don't remember.
I was looking up rubber or something, because some of the stuff in the extra source that I sent you was kind of like.
I feel like we've talked about this before.
Yeah.
We haven't done this entire episode, have we?
No, definitely not.
Okay.
If so, then I really am just totally out of my mind.
So Goodyear was one.
He was working in the U.S.
And then another guy named Thomas Hancock, an English inventor partnered with a dude named Charles McIntosh.
And they started making raincoats, basically.
Yeah, the McIntosh.
The classic McIntosh.
Yeah, and so Thomas Hancock was already pretty well situated to.
He was already working on it, right?
Yeah.
But Charles Goodyear had that breakthrough first.
And it was actually a really big deal that he had this breakthrough.
Because in the early 1830s Charles Goodyear basically became obsessed with cracking the rubber coat.
He just knew it could be used to be made into something useful, right?
Yeah.
And he became so personally committed to it, all of his investors went away.
He went into debtor's prison so regularly he referred to it as his hotel.
Yeah.
Six of his 12 children didn't make it to adulthood.
They were just that poor.
Oh, man.
They had to sell their dinnerware, so he made plates for them out of rubber.
It was really, really rough.
So the idea that he had this breakthrough was just enormously rewarding for him, right?
Unfortunately...
As he was shopping this stuff around, this vulcanization process or the vulcanized rubber, some of it fell into the hands of Thomas Hancock and he reverse engineered it.
Yeah, and what he basically discovered was, if you slow-cooked latex with sulfur, It could basically transform rubber into a very durable material that it was hardy under all kinds of temperature ranges.
It would always snap back.
Yep.
Well, not always and forever, which we'll get to later, too.
As you know, that waistband will sometimes leave you disappointed eventually.
That's why you end up buying new underwear.
Well, one of a couple of reasons you buy new underwear.
Or take it to the thrift store.
Yeah, exactly.
But, yeah, that is what vulcanization is.
And Hancock and McIntosh, what they were doing, they didn't crack that code first, but they –
They developed something called the masticator.
Basically, they had been making elastic threads by slicing it from rubber bottles and raw rubber.
But there was just so much waste, they developed this machine called a masticator, and it would basically chew up this rubber and make it into, meld it together and make it into a big single sheet of material, which was really helpful.
But they still had that temperature problem until Goodyear hit it.
Right.
And again, they reverse engineered Goodyear's process, went and filed a patent on vulcanization.
Did they rip him off like fully?
Yes.
Wow.
Fully.
And apparently it was one of those ones, like the phone, where Goodyear went to go file a patent and found out that someone else had that Hancock had just a few weeks earlier.
So he took him to court.
In order to settle, Hancock offered Goodyear 50% of the patent to drop the lawsuit.
And Goodyear said no.
And he lost the case.
And he died broke.
Oh, man.
But he was able to...
He was able to generate enough royalties so that his kids were able to live the good life, thanks to him.
But he got ripped off for sure.
And one other thing about Charles Goodyear, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.
He had nothing to do with it.
They named it after him in honor of him.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, I thought that was pretty cool.
You don't watch the TV show Shark Tank, do you?
I do not.
I think I've asked you that before.
You know the whole concept, right, is these people pitch their businesses to them?
Yeah, well, surrounded by sharks swimming.
Well, yeah, that's it.
No, they pitch them to the Sharks, and they either invest or they don't.
Everyone kind of knows the show but you, I guess.
But I'm always at home just yelling at these people when they'll offer up like 20% of their company.
And then they'll get offered an investment from a shark and say, but they want like 40%.
And some of these people turn around and walk away, which on one hand I kind of respect that they don't want to give away that much of their company.
But I'm always just thinking, wouldn't you rather own 60%?
Of a $20 million company than 80% of a $3 million company?
Yeah.
Like sometimes I think pride gets in the way with these people.
Sure, yeah.
And they don't think about just how big these people can make their company.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Who's that company though, that turned down a billion dollars from either Google or Facebook and just kept at it, and now it's – MySpace?
No.
No.
I can't.
It's one of like the big social media brands that you know of, that now is just worth gobs more money.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, there is no recipe.
Like sometimes it is better to hold on to more of your own company because if it gets big then you own that much more of it.
But that's right.
I'm always kind of like man, take the money now and run as steve miller suggested.
Did you know steve miller's a scientologist?
Is he really Yeah?
Boy, he went off on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year.
Why?
Did they not vote for nominating him?
No, no, no.
He got inducted and basically trashed them on his way in and out the door.
Why?
Oh, you'll just have to read it.
It's kind of too long to get into, but they were none too happy, I think.
He came across as just a really crabby old guy.
Oh, he didn't have, like, a point or anything?
No, he had points, but, yeah.
You'll just have to check it out.
I will.
We're already getting sidetracked here.
Oh, we've been sidetracked, baby.
So when – regardless of who came up with it, even though it was Charles Goodyear once vulcanization was introduced to the world all of a sudden –
All of these dreams of what you could do with a flexible, durable material that could withstand tremendous pressure and force, and heat, and cold too, which was a big one.
All of a sudden, the whole world just opened up.
And what was interesting Chuck, was because it also dovetailed with the Industrial Revolution.
Brazil, which was the rubber tree capital at the time, went from just being like this kind of old world colony of to basically being one of the most important countries on the planet, like virtually within a year or so.
Yeah, and that was true, geez, for a long time until about the mid-
To late, about 1876, when these British businessmen said I'm going to sneak these rubber tree seeds out, take them back to England and we're going to see if these things grow in Southeast Asia, where we have a lot of British colonies.
And it turns out it did.
And just about 35 years later, the center of the global rubber market shifted to Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka.
The British are thieves in this one.
So they kind of totally ripped that off.
Yeah.
And Southeast Asia was the dominating rubber capital of the world.
Which was way better for the Brits and the Americans because we're friends with the Brits because that meant that these were British colonies, which meant that the access to this rubber was basically unfettered.
Yeah.
There were no trade deals.
You didn't have to whine and dine a prince or a king or anything like that.
You could just be like, we need more rubber, please.
Yeah.
Which is, I think, how they would order it.
Probably so.
So everything's going hunky-dory, at least as far as the British and Americans are concerned.
The rubber supply is being fulfilled, thanks to Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka.
And it came at no too soon a time too, because the automobile was introduced around this time, the mass produced automobile, we should say.
And those needed for good tires made of rubber.
Yeah.
And then, uh, world war two really, really increased the need for rubber.
Um, I think here it says that in total the Pentagon said that they needed 32 pounds of rubber for every single ground troop in one way or another.
Right.
That's amazing.
Yeah, and that's why it was such a big deal that the Japanese invaded the Pacific, because the Pacific Theater featured those countries that were the rubber-producing capital of the world that had been under British control.
And now all of a sudden our rubber supply was either cut off or in danger.
So the United States, led by FDR, said hey, four biggest rubber companies, we're going to get together and we need to come up with a synthetic rubber toot suite.
Right.
So let's get on it.
We're all going to split the patent evenly and let's get to work.
And in 18 months, they had come up with a synthetic rubber.
Amazing.
And we'll get to synthetics a bit more in a minute.
But jumping back to the mid-1800s, the story of the rubber band is pretty interesting.
These two chaps, Stephen Perry and Thomas Barnabas Daft – great name –, TBD actually – invented the rubber band, what we know as the rubber band, because they started slicing these.
They had a rubber tube and started slicing these narrow rings from a vulcanized rubber tube and they were like here you go.
It's called a rubber band.
You can put it around your asparagus.
Yeah.
And everyone was super psyched.
Except people who ate asparagus.
That was a good one, man.
And today they still kind of do it in the same way rubber band wise.
They create this.
They mix this latex together with all these chemicals.
It depends on, you know, what kind of rubber band you're making.
And they get this raw rubber compound into a long hollow tube, slip it over a round pipe called the mandrel, expose that to high heat and pressure to vulcanize it.
It cures it, and then they slice that up into rubber bands.
Yep.
Pretty neat.
It is pretty neat.
You want to take a break and then talk some more about how it's made?
Yeah, right after this.
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All right, so we've been talking about rubber in its most natural form and how they transform that into usable rubber is pretty remarkable, but
Immediately after World War II, like we were talking about, this creation of synthetic rubber was probably the second biggest invention of all time.
Well, maybe not of all time.
It was up there, though.
Yeah, but when it comes to stretchy things, for sure.
Yeah, and apparently the World War II research and development produced not just one but three different types of easily manufactured synthetic rubbers.
Yeah.
One was a butadiene rubber.
Another was a styrene butadiene rubber.
And that was the one that the government went with for World War II.
And it was actually ripped off from the Germans which they had come up with something similar previously.
And then there's an ethylene propylene monomer.
And all three of those make up most of today's synthetic rubbers.
Yeah, and they found that this stuff worked really, really well, just as good as natural rubber.
It had all that flex resistance.
It didn't deteriorate, but eventually it would.
Again, I keep teasing like we're going to get to that which we will, but they found it was really well-suited to replace rubber.
Well, in most applications like an industrial application, like a tire or a fan belt or something like that
But it didn't have that resilience that natural rubber has.
So there was an issue still.
There was a kink that needed to be worked out.
Well, yeah, as far as using it in textiles, for sure.
Exactly.
And they actually overcame it in 1959.
By they I mean DuPont Corporation, who employed two chemists that got to work trying to crack this code, the final code of synthetic rubber how to make it flexible and resilient, right.
That's right.
And they started by using a polymer, a polyurethane, right?
So...
Well, we'll talk about polymers in a little bit.
But basically they took a polymer, a urethane-based polymer, and watered it down and forced it through a plate with tiny little holes in it.
And what came on the outside were these tiny little threads.
Yep.
And those tiny little threads were a magical creation known as spandex.
The trade name of which originally is Lycra.
Yeah, it's amazing.
And Spandex, they found, had a lot of great applications.
Namely, it could accept dyes, so it wasn't just this sort of dull white color.
You could make it any color you wanted to.
And you could wash it.
It didn't absorb a lot of moisture, and it remained really stable.
When it was washed and dried at kind of normal, moderate temperatures.
So hey, you can make this, weave it into clothing, throw it in the washer, dye it whatever color you want, and you're good to go.
And most importantly, Chuck, it would snap back.
It would retain its original shape.
That's right.
After being stretched.
So, yeah, spandex changed everything.
I didn't realize it was from the 50s.
I didn't either.
And William Harris makes a pretty good point.
He says that spandex might be considered the modern elastic.
It's basically the base of anything stretchy that you use today.
Yeah, and it said here, we said it's in all kinds of stuff.
They said it's in about 80% of all clothing bought by Americans.
So even if you don't think spandex is in something, it may have a little spandex in there.
It's in 80% of all clothing bought by Americans, 100% of all spandex pants bought by Americans.
Think about that stat for a little while.
Yeah, that's amazing.
Yeah, including jeggings, he points out.
He calls them pajama jeans, but I've always called them jeggings.
Oh, is that the same thing?
I believe so, yeah.
Interesting.
I hope so.
Emily, when we put them on her daughter, she calls them jazzy pants.
Oh, yeah, that's a good one, too.
But that's, I think, usually due to the pattern more than the snapback.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
So we can sit here and procrastinate for several more minutes if you want, but ultimately we're going to end up on the chemistry part, you realize?
Yes, and because I don't understand chemistry at all, take it away.
We'll get you for this, Chuck.
I'll throw in some words here and there.
So I don't really know chemistry either, but I know both of us crammed on this.
Yeah.
So forgive us, all you chemists out there, if we get something wrong, let us know.
But from what we understand... It's magic.
Yeah.
There you go.
The end.
So rubber, whether it's natural or synthetic, is a polymer.
Yes.
Right?
And it's a specific kind of polymer called an elastomer.
It's an elastic polymer.
It has stretchiness and resilience.
It's flexible.
That's right.
And any kind of polymer is basically, if you look at the molecular structure of it, it's made up of these long repeating chains of the same unit over and over again.
And the units are called monomers.
And depending on what the monomer is...
That leads to different kinds of polymers.
And with elastomers in particular.
If you look at some polymers, the structure is bulky and big and compact and it's rigid and heavy and not flexible at all.
Still, other kind of polymers, say like a plastic or a resin, are crystalline in structure.
They fit so well together.
They're also rigid and not very flexible either.
Then you have elastomers, which are a kind of polymer.
Because of their molecular structure, they are super flexible, super stretchy and they snap back into place.
Yeah, and normally they're.
I mean they liken it to this article like a coiled, like a big mass of snakes.
Yeah.
But they have this really neat quality, these elastomers.
When you apply force to it, the molecules actually straighten out in the direction that you're pulling it, and that's sort of the snapback you're talking about.
But as soon as you release it, it goes back to that coiled up arrangement.
Right.
When you pull it, when you apply force, they line up basically like those snakes, head to tail in one single long line.
That's a scary snake.
Yeah.
And then when you release it, it goes back into its original form of that coiled mass, right?
Right.
Perfect.
Okay.
One of the reasons why any kind of rubber, natural or synthetic, is flexible, a flexible polymer, is because its glass transition temperature is actually pretty low.
Yeah, this is where I kind of just got foggy.
So this is – it's as simple as this, Chuck.
A glass transition temperature, it's not a melting point.
A melting point is where the substance actually basically just turns into a liquid state, a disordered liquid state.
The glass transition temperature doesn't affect – the molecular makeup of the substance.
Instead, it basically applies this property, flexibility or rigidity.
It's as simple as that, right?
And so anything that has a low glass transition temperature relative to what we have as normal temperatures outside in the world or in our homes or whatever, is going to be flexible and floppy.
Anything with a high glass transition temperature is going to be rigid and hard and not flexible.
So just suffice to say anything.
Rubber, whether it's natural or synthetic, has a low glass transition temperature, so it's flexible under normal temperatures.
Okay.
But even if you took a piece of rubber natural rubber and you applied the temperature of negative 70 degrees Celsius or negative 94 degrees Fahrenheit, it would crystallize.
It's below the glass transition temperature, so it would just basically turn rigid and crystallize and ultimately would break apart.
And that was part of the problem with those early pre-vulcanized rubbers.
They would fall apart because the glass transition temperature is not like an exact moment temperature where the thing converts from flexible to rigid.
It's the median of a large thermal window where it starts to get crystalline and rigid and then is completely crystalline and rigid on the other end.
So of course you would think you know, if you get down to say, 20 degrees, like it would in Boston or New York in the 19th century, and you're walking around with rubber-soled shoes, they're going to crystallize and break off.
Right.
That's what's going on.
It all has to do with the glass transition temperature.
Okay, so during vulcanization they heat that up with sulfur and that makes those polymer chains link together with sulfur atoms.
I guess that's almost like a glue?
Yeah, it's like a molecular glue from what I understand, yeah.
Okay, that makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, so even when you apply intense heat or extreme cold, it will maintain its molecular shape.
Yeah, but here's the thing.
I've been talking about why your elastic band doesn't last forever and why your socks will eventually be around your ankles.
This elastic eventually will lose that snapback due to oxidization.
Oxidization?
Oxidation.
I like oxidization.
Uh, natural rubber, this oxygen, and in particular ozone, is going to start breaking those bonds within just days.
So it happens pretty quickly.
And that's why we heat and treat rubber like we do.
But even still over time.
That ozone and combine that with light UV radiation, it's another culprit.
That's what's going to cause that to eventually break down over time.
That would make sense because with vulcanization, what you're doing is adding sulfur to the polymer.
Yeah.
And if it would, it would make sense then that either UV radiation or something else could break those bonds between the sulfur and the other, the other ingredients, and then they would be replaced by oxygen.
So oxidation would take place.
Right.
Yeah, so it's pretty much ozone, UV radiation, and then cold actually does make a difference.
It's not going to hold up quite as well in cold weather.
Like if you take a pair of underwear out and, like you know, negative 20 degrees in Minnesota and you start really stretching it out a lot, it's going to lose its elasticity really fast.
Oh, yeah.
Anybody from Minnesota can tell you that.
Yeah.
I mean, they may have to buy more underwear than, like, Hawaii.
I have no idea.
They all wear union suits up there.
Yeah, that's true.
So you want to finish with Pat Benatar?
Oh, man.
Let's bring her out.
Okay.
Come on, Pat.
She's going to do an acoustic set.
Man, how great would that be?
So we did a little digging and we were trying to figure out who basically started the 80s spandex rocker trend.
Yeah.
Rocker spandex trend.
She was the first thing that came to my mind.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
I just didn't know exactly how.
I would have guessed it went back beyond Pat Benatar.
And then I found out that Pat Benatar has been a musician for much longer than I realized.
Right.
But apparently the whole thing happened on Halloween of 1977.
Awesome.
And by this time Pat Benatar was already like a pretty regular fixture on the New York City club circuit.
Yeah.
And so she dressed up as a character from Catwoman of the Moon.
Have you seen that movie?
No.
I haven't either.
But apparently Catwoman on the Moon is a cult classic sci-fi movie.
Okay.
And I guess they wear a lot of spandex.
So she dressed up in a spandex getup.
And decided to play a show that night at Catch a Rising Star, which is basically her house club.
You ever been there?
No.
I haven't either.
Is it still around?
I don't know.
Is it?
I think I know of it from like Comedy Central in the 90s.
Yeah, I think that was the name of a show.
But I think it was from that club.
Oh, was it filmed there?
Yeah, I think so.
Oh, okay.
Could be wrong.
But anyway, she was used to playing shows there.
But she played the show in this getup, the spandex getup, and noticed that the crowd was like into it a lot more than usual.
And they said, wowee, wow, what's she wearing?
Pretty much.
It was about as simple as that.
She was like, okay, let me try this.
I want to do a little experiment.
And I'm going to do this again, but not on Halloween.
I'm going to dress up again.
And do the same show.
And she did and got another response, like way better than usual response.
So she's like, that's it.
I'm doing spandex from now on.
Wow.
And that was that.
1977, Pat Benatar starts the 80s spandex rocker trend.
I would count that as the fourth dinner party factoid.
Yeah, I would say so too.
And if you want a fifth Catch, a Rising Star is a chain of comedy clubs and was also a TV series in Canada.
Ta-da.
You got anything else?
No.
Well, that's it for Elastic, everybody.
If you want to know more about it, type that word into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com.
And who knows what amazing things will come up.
That's right.
And since I said search bar, it's time for Listener Man.
Yeah, I'm going to call this short but kind of funny.
Hey guys, quick and trivial email from a fan in Pittsburgh.
I too appreciated in your the episode on body snatching live episode on grave robbing.
I too appreciated how cool Charlie Chaplin's Body robber's partner's name was Gancho Ganev.
And I tell you, we did that joke a few times and you and I never ceased to not crack up at the words Gancho Ganev.
It's true.
It's still happening.
Being Jewish, I thought a little Hebrew Yiddish languages were involved.
And Ganev, in fact, does mean thief.
Oh, really?
And then he stretches it a bit.
Then he says, gancho, for that matter, seems to be Spanish for hook-like dance moves.
And he said Charlie Chaplin was a dancer.
He said so.
Maybe that's a stretch on the second part, but it seems as though Gancho Ganev was born to steal Charlie Chaplin's body.
Wow.
I'll give you props on the Ganev part at least.
And that is from BD Wahlberg.
And he said, P.S., you might remember me from Pittsburgh at your live show.
I asked a question in the Q&A about how you find new ways to rip on the post office.
And I still remember I gave my Trader Joe's bag to somebody in the audience.
And that was BD.
I still have Chuck's Trader Joe's bag hanging in my kitchen.
Nice, man.
Well, thanks a lot, BD.
We appreciate it.
It would have been even more ironic had he been referencing the D.B.
Cooper episode.
Oh, did you hear about the new info?
I did, and it actually makes a lot of sense to me.
Yeah, so for anyone that hasn't seen, they found some actual new science.
That seems to indicate they found these four elements in the tie that DB.
Cooper wore, and apparently these elements are very specific to work being done by the Boeing company.
So it gives a lot of credence to the theory that he was a Boeing employee.
And even more specifically, because it was on his tie.
If he were working the actual machines that were manufacturing this thing, he would have been wearing coveralls or something, not a tie.
So it indicates that if he worked for Boeing, he would have been an engineer or a manager.
Yeah. who would have been wearing a tie on the floor while he was out there.
I think this is the biggest lead they've ever had.
I think so, too.
Pretty amazing.
Yeah.
You know who's excited about it?
Secret.
Oh, yeah.
Boy.
If you want to know what we're talking about, we did a D.B.
Cooper episode, and this popped in.
That's right.
Popped up.
It's a live episode that we hope will be... available to you soon.
What else?
Oh, and actually, wow.
Boy, this is exciting.
We just got literally an email reply from BD because I said we were going to be reading this and I think this bears mentioning.
What a day maker, guys.
If you use a pronoun for me, I go by they and them rather than he or she.
I know who you're talking about.
Because I am a non-binary listener.
What up?
What up, BD?
Thank you.
It's good to hear from you.
And I'd love to surprise my BFF, Carlisle, with a great big audio high five.
Well, I think that just happened.
Wow.
All right.
This is like real-time correction slash back and forth with BD.
Let's just see what happens.
Email Obama real quick.
We'll sit here.
Let's see what happens next.
We're just going to take this ride.
All right.
Well, thank you, BD.
Yeah.
Thanks a lot, BD.
Good to hear from you.
All right.
Well, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us.
I'm at Josh underscore Clark.
You can also hit me up at the official SYSK podcast handle.
You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant and at Stuff You Should Know.
You can send us both an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com.
And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com.
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