This is an iHeart podcast, guaranteed human.
Hey guys, it's us, the Jonas Brothers.
I'm Joe.
I'm Kevin.
And I'm Nick.
And guess what?
We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas.
We invented a podcast?
Well, we didn't invent it.
We just contributed to it.
We're the first people to do podcasts.
We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions.
Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it, but, you know.
Tired and sick.
Tired and sick.
Listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Just listen.
We don't care where you hear it.
Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy.
Not quite.
On Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends.
Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.
This week my guests SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter.
Where does your group perform?
We do some retirement homes.
Those people are starving for banter.
Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff.
Josh, Chuck, Jerry sitting in for Dave.
So this is Short Stuff.
Chuck, I have a question for you.
Are you cracking your knuckles right now?
I am.
Did you hear that?
Yeah.
That wasn't like a Foley effect?
No, I was cracking my knuckles.
I'm a knuckle cracker.
I don't do it.
I did it a lot when I was a kid.
But I still do it some.
This is what my knuckles sound like when I crack them.
That's it.
Yeah, I can't do it again because I have to wait 20 to 30 minutes for the air bubbles to come back and cavitate once more.
Yeah, well, tell everybody what's going on here.
I know there was a lot of.
You know, when you're young, everyone was like it'll give you arthritis and it's your bones grinding together and that's what cracking your knuckles is and that can't be good for you.
Yes.
If your bones ground together, you would not be able to think of anything else but your bones grinding together, because you would be in so much pain that you would know your bones are grinding together.
That's not what cracking your knuckles is.
It turns out instead, it has everything to do with the space in the area around where your bones come together.
Your bones don't actually come together.
That's right.
Where there's a joint, that is where two bones meet, but they're separate.
And they're held together by ligaments and connective tissues and all that stuff.
But there's also a very other key ingredient in there.
It's called synovial fluid.
It's a thick, clear liquid that kind of encases that area, right?
Yeah, it's thick.
It tastes just like orange crush, surprisingly.
And when you pop your knuckle, what you're doing is stretching or bending the ligaments and connective tissues and the synovial fluid there too, right?
So when you do that, that capsule is what it's called the connective tissue capsule.
That includes the synovial fluid.
It gets stretched, which increases its volume.
And then suddenly the pressure inside the capsule in that synovial fluid, it goes down.
It decreases in pressure, which means that all these gases that used to just be part of the solution now are part of the problem.
I mean, now turn into bubbles.
That's right.
So they form those bubbles and if you stretch that joint far enough, like trying to crack your knuckles, the pressure in the capsule goes so low that it just pops those bubbles, and that's the popping sound that we're hearing.
There you go.
Not your bones rubbing together.
OK, I want you to go to recess and tell your friends that is not your bones rubbing together.
Yeah.
And then the cavitation you mentioned earlier.
I think before we break we should just clear that up.
You said 20 to 30 minutes.
That is how long it takes for that gas to re-dissolve into that joint fluid and cavitation is possible again.
Yeah.
Go watch me cavitate my knuckles.
Yeah, exactly.
Oh, I just did one again.
Okay, I say we take a little break and come back and talk about how we know that cracking your knuckles doesn't give you arthritis.
All right, we'll be right back.
Stuff you should know.
Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what?
We have some big news.
What's the news, Nate?
Huge news.
We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas.
We invented a podcast?
Well, we didn't invent it.
We just contributed to it.
We're the first people to do podcasts.
Yeah, a pretty wide range of podcasts around there.
But this one's extra special.
So how did we actually come up with the name Hey Jonas, guys?
I honestly don't remember.
I think it was on a call about what we should call it.
We were thinking of originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers.
This is how you guys remember it going down?
Yes.
I have a very different memory of this.
We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast where people could call in and say, Hey, Jonas.
And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast.
But thanks for remembering that, guys.
Listen to Hey, Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Just listen.
We don't care where you hear it.
Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy.
Not quite.
On Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends.
Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.
This week my guests SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter.
Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Chuck, I know we've talked about this guy before, Dr. Donald Unger.
I think we did a video about him.
Yeah.
But he, you know what?
I'll bet we talked about him in the Ignoble Prize episode because he won an Ignoble for this.
But essentially he conducted an experiment for 60 years because he wanted to prove his mother wrong.
And he only cracked the knuckles on, I think, his left hand.
Never cracked them on his right hand.
That's crazy.
And then after 60 years, he finally said, okay, it's time.
And he x-rayed his hands.
Yeah.
If he didn't have the compulsion to crack his knuckles, I could see how this happened.
But if you are a knuckle cracker, you feel compelled to do it.
So I can't imagine what it would have taken to not crack the knuckles on one hand for that many years.
It must have been really tough.
Yeah, sure.
That's my guess.
So, yeah, he did this over his lifetime.
He x-rayed himself on the reg and eventually decades later came to the conclusion that he doesn't have any arthritic difference in his hands.
Case closed.
He had NAD, no arthritic difference.
That's right.
That's not to say though, that even if you don't get arthritis from cracking your knuckles, it's another thing you can tell your friends at recess.
Do they even have recess anymore?
I guess maybe it's hour-long screen time.
No, they have recess.
Okay, great.
There is damage that you can do from cracking your knuckles habitually.
There's a guy named Raymond Broder and he examined 300 people who cracked their knuckles to look at what their joints looked like.
And compared to the control group, no difference with arthritis again.
But there was other damage like soft tissue damage to the ligaments and the synovial fluid capsule.
And that they had a decrease in grip strength.
So if you crack your knuckles a lot like, don't even think about holding a glass of water with just one hand.
Yeah, which, you know, as you age, grip strength is important.
So it's definitely not a harmless thing.
There are some other possible side effects, something called ligament laxity, which is basically looseness.
So over time, if you're just doing this a lot, that's what leads to the reduced grip strength and sometimes sort of overall hand function.
Yeah.
I think in rare cases, if you have a really weird method or forceful method or you're a little too aggressive with it, you can get some soft tissue swelling around the knuckles and the joint.
Yeah, and you can just straight up injure yourself.
You can dislocate a joint.
You can injure your tendons.
And even if you don't straight up injure yourself, just habitually cracking your knuckles over time, the stretching of the ligaments can, like you said, the grip strengthening is a big deal just even without cracking your knuckles.
So it also happens in pitchers too, major league pitchers.
Imagine minor league pitchers, too.
But over the years, just throwing over and, over and over again, they're stretching those ligaments suddenly violently basically, which is kind of what you're doing when you crack your knuckles.
They're just doing it with different ligaments.
But that is why Oral Hershiser's right arm just dangles uselessly at his side, because it's been ruined.
He ruined it pitching.
Yeah, I mean, I know you're kind of kidding, but sad but true.
Like especially these days, there's been more and more instances of Tommy John surgery being required because pitchers are throwing harder and harder.
And if you're not able to get it near 100 miles an hour these days, you're not going to have much of a chance.
So.
It's a real problem in baseball.
That was a real bring down from my joke.
Yeah.
I just love that you love saying Earl Hershiser.
Sure.
Who else would you make us say?
Boy, he was great.
Yeah.
There was a study in 1990 that confirmed the grip strength thing.
I think they studied 74 people who regularly cracked their knuckles, and their average grip strength was definitely lower.
And they had more instances of hand swelling there. than the 226 people who did not crack.
And another interesting thing is they found that in another study that if you're a habitual knuckle cracker, you are more likely to be a manual laborer, more likely to bite your nails as I do smoke cigarettes, which I don't, and drink alcohol, which I do.
Yeah.
So you're, you know, three for five?
Yeah.
Well, I don't manual labor, so we shouldn't count that one.
So there is some benefits to actually cracking your knuckles, though, too.
We're not just hating on cracking your knuckles.
There's something called the Golgi tendon organs, not the Golgi apparatus.
That's a different episode altogether.
The Golgi tendon organs sense muscle tension.
And when you crack your knuckles, you're actually relieving some muscle tension.
So the muscles around the joints, when you crack them, get relaxed.
So you can feel like, you know, your hands feel pretty mellow after cracking your knuckles.
I saw it described as yoga for your knuckles.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah, I thought so too.
Is that like getting your back cracked or something?
Basically, yeah, but for your knuckles.
Yeah, we found one more thing, you know, like I'm at the age where...
You know, if I kneel down to get something, you're going to hear a snap, crackle and a pop, maybe coming from some part of my body.
Do you make an involuntary sound, too, when you're getting up?
I do.
Oh, yeah, like, oh, God, here we go, or something like that.
Yeah, like you can't not do it.
Yeah, for sure.
And when I walk downstairs, my right— ankle on every step just goes pop, pop, pop.
So those things happen.
I don't think anyone knows exactly where that comes from.
There's speculation.
It could be just like You know.
If it's your knee, it may be your kneecap rubbing on the bones or something like that, or maybe a tendon sliding over a bumpy surface or something like that.
So I don't think it's anything to be alarmed about.
It is alarming, though, for sure.
Yeah, because it comes with age.
So every new pain and sound is like, oh, that didn't happen a few years ago.
Exactly.
I should go sit down for a while.
Right.
You got anything else for short stuff, Guy?
I got nothing else.
I can't crack my knuckles.
So, oh, wait, there went one.
Recavitated.
So what does that mean?
I think that means short stuff is out.
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