Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Fireplaces Work

Episode Date: December 23, 2023

They are dirty, harmful to your health, bad for the environment and utterly charming. Wood-burning fireplaces have been with us for centuries and, despite their many drawbacks, are sticking around. Learn more than you thought possible about the fireplace, in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Maybe you've stayed at an Airbnb before and thought to yourself, this actually seems pretty doable. Maybe your place could be an Airbnb. It could be as simple as starting with a spare room, or your whole place when you're awake. You could be sitting at an Airbnb and not even know it. You might have set up a home office and now you're back at work. You could Airbnb it and make some extra money on the side. Maybe your kids heading off to college in the fall and you'll have an empty bedroom. You could air B and B it and make some extra cash while they're away.

Whether you could use a little extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbmb.ca forward slash host. Walter Isaacson set out to write about a world-changing genius in Elon Musk and found a man addicted to chaos and conspiracy. I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter, because he doesn't have a fingertip feel

for social, emotional networks. The book launched 1,000 hot takes. So I sat down with Isaacson to try to get past the noise. Well, I like the fact that people who say, I'm not as tough on Musk as I should be, or are always using anecdotes from my book to show why we should be tough on musk. Join me, Evan Ratliffe, for on musk with Walter Isaacson. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey guys, it's Josh and for this week's Select I've chosen our warm and cozy 2016 episode on fireplaces just in time for Christmas. I hope you have your wasole handy or some eggnog or a nice glass of water if that's what suits you and I'd like you to settle in with the cozy blanket and listen to this crackling episode of Stuff You Should Know. Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas! of stuff you should know. Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas! Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast.

I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerome with Jair's. Bryant and Jerome. The Jairs. So this is stuff you should know. Jerry got a piece of mail the other day that said Jerome. Oh yeah. Yeah. Did it have like real mail though, right Jerry? Yeah.

I don't know how that happened. Oh like mail mail, not like fan mail? Wow. Well Jerry just said confirmed. Weird. We've been doing a lot of this Jerry translating lately. Yeah It's really weird. That's bizarre. I mean I sold your address to a mailing list, but I've never been reimbursed for it so

How are you sir great? We are fresh off our live shows and Boston mass, right? Ma and Washington DC Boston, Matt's, right, and Washington, DC, and Big Thanks to everyone that came out. Those were a lot of fun. Yeah, for sure. And thanks to the brightest young things for having us to the Benson Ball with Tignotaro. Yeah, that was wonderful. We got to meet Tick.

She was just as nice and non-plussed as I would have hoped. Exactly. She didn't make a fuss. No. Nor should she. Wait. I mean that in a good way. Wait, isn't non-plus the opposite of what you think it means? I don't know. I think non-plus means like you're agitated. I mean, you're plused? Yeah. I'd learn things all the time on this show. Yeah, me too, a favorite part of my job. And most specifically, the most recent thing I've learned, Chuck, is that fire, the use

of fire, the technological application of fire, that's as far as I'm going, actually predates humanity, that it was Homo erectus, who was the first upright hominid who controlled fire and it was as long ago as a million years there's evidence of the use the controlled use of fire by humans as much as a million years ago. Yeah it's just here in this article that you found that in China there are harps of clay, silt and limestone from like a half a million years ago, and you know, signs like you said in Africa over a million years ago that people, and these are in caves, so essentially, indoor fireplace. Right, yeah, but, and if you are an anthropologist, you are familiar with the term hearth, but that's usually used to describe something that doesn't really resemble the hearth that we'll talk about today. Usually it's

just a shallow depression. Maybe it did have some limestone or some clay or something else to keep it from catching fire, but nothing like the fireplaces we know of today. The ones we see and say, there's a fireplace. They're actually about 700-ish years old. Yeah, and I think the history of the chimney isn't super clear, but by the 14th century, and of course Europe, when you had a little dough, you could then afford the nice chimney, or maybe just any chimney.

Well, actually, yeah, people started to afford chimneys quite a bit. There was a there especially in say Jolly Old London there was a lot of chimneys that sprung up. Yeah they weren't happy about it right? A lot of problems that arose as we'll see later on. Yeah but yeah the it's kind of interesting to see that the fireplace hasn't really changed much in like 700 years. And then you step back and you're like, no, actually that's kind of evident when you think about the fireplace

and how ridiculously inefficient it is. Yeah, it's kind of changed. I don't know, it depends what you, it depends on what your definition of changed. Hole in the wall with a hole above it that's tall and narrow and leads to the outside. Yeah, within that there have been a lot of changes there. Sure, sure, but the overall general design has been relatively unchanged for 700 years. It's like toilet paper.

Yeah, they're not as straight as they used to be. Ben Franklin was someone who did a lot of complaining in life. He did about when, you know, he was just kind of personally would look around the world and his everyday surroundings and say, what do people do it like this? That's stupid. I'm Ben Franklin. There's better ways. Listen to me. Right. Take a peek under my silken robe. Sure. He very famously wrote that on the back of the Declaration of Independence. But fireplaces used to get under his skin, apparently, because of the design. And we're going to talk about this.

The traditional fireplace is fairly wasteful. Oh, tremendously so. And it can even make your room colder. Yes. Which is counterintuitive. Yeah, it's like non-plussed. Yeah, I look that up by the way. So non-plussed, I'm correct, the non-pluss means you're agitated. Well, it means that you are surprised and confused to the point that you are unsure how to react.

So not necessarily agitated. Okay, gotcha. Just, but you're definitely not just like laid back. No, so Tignitar was not non-plus. She was not confused on how to react. She reacted the exact way, which is, hi. Nice to meet you. Hey, how's it going?

Yeah, she's just chill. Right. And very sweet. Yeah. I didn't expect like some big show, trust me. For many body that meets us. Well no. So I just want to put that out there.

I didn't want to sound like I was disappointed. She didn't like throw those snap crackers and start tath dancing. No, I got exactly what I wanted, which was a very nice lady who gave me a big hug in a photo. I think that's come across. Yeah. Yeah. I'm that's come across. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sensitive to that stuff.

Once I start opening my mouth, digging that hole. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Here's a little more rope. Anyway, let me give you a stat here. Wait, first, I think everyone wants to hear about how you felt when you met Tignotaro. I was super excited. Can you tell?

How was she? So, here's a little stat for you. The National Association of Home Builders did a survey. And I guess this is recent. It doesn't name the year, but it sounds recent. People still want their fireplaces to the tune of 77% of home buyers say, and that's, I guess, in the US. Yeah, like even in, I mean, that's accounting for the hot places as well.

Sure. You know, so I would imagine in the cold places, it's probably more like 100%. Yeah, well, remember, I don't remember what episode it was, but we talked about how in New York, it's very gosh these days to have a fireplace that you use, because it's so wasteful. Not as gosh mean what I think it means, now doubting everything. It means super lay back and non-plust.

Oh, so like New Yorkers like, oh, you have a fireplace? Yes. How not green. Right. Which I mean, they're correct. There's a lot of ungreenness associated with fireplace. Brownness. Sure You know, especially as far as like air pollution goes air quality. Yeah, there's a lot of problems sure

There's a lot of problems that come out of it like for example I guess if we're gonna talk about this for a second if you are a kid and you have I don't know If you are a kid and you have, I don't know, respiratory diseases, you're far likely to be living in a house where your folks burn wood. So if you're a kid or an elderly person, respiratory distress can be brought on because smoke's going to get in the room no matter how great the fireplace is. Right. Or if you're, let's say if you already have asthma or something, you're not doing yourself any favors. Right.

By letting that smoke in the particles, particulate matter creep in there. Yeah, and also, I mean, like, house fires, there's like 25,000 house fires in the United States every year that result in like 10 people's deaths. Yeah, from directly from fireplaces. Yeah, yeah, but no matter who you talk to for the most part, the people say, still worth it.

Yeah, I'm gonna die of like black lung, and my house may burn down before I get a chance to, but I really love fires in the winter, and I'm willing to take that risk. So you know my deal, or do you? I don't know. We live in a house that was built in 1935. Oh yeah, yeah.

And we're renovating it still forever. Yes. And we have the fire place that is not used. I know. And it's not able to be used. I know. Unless we pay like some pretty good dough to get it retrofitted and the chimney worked on.

And I for years have been leaving just little sticky notes and I'll write it and crayon on the bathroom wall and just little things like, hey, M, how about that fireplace? And she says quit writing on the walls. Right. We're not getting a fireplace just yet. But maybe. It's been there for like 10 years. When does our life, when do we start living our life?

It's my question. With a fireplace. Have you considered trading something she wants for the fireplace? It doesn't work like that. No. No. Have you considered begging? I didn't work either.

Oh wow. I don't know what to tell you. Well, I mean, you know, I do. I wait't work either. Oh wow. I don't know what to tell you. Well, I mean, you know what I do. I wait until she goes out of town and I... And they just do it yourself. Yeah, but do it in a terrible way. So that somebody's a professional,

that's a coming in and go behind you. Yeah, and then they have no choice. You're like, I gotta get the fireplace guy in here now. There's a giant hole in the wall. It's long story short though. We still don't have a fireplace, and I'm still despite all the negatives and I try to lead a green life but I just I want that wood burning thing.

I don't want. We'll talk about the substitutes but and that's great if you're into that because they are better in many many ways. Sure. But I just love that wood crackle and the smell. Yeah. I want that particular matter. Yeah. my lungs. You and 77% of US homeowners. Yeah. So yeah, most people do say I'm willing to look past the problems for a wood burning fireplace. But like you say, there are, there's alternatives. That's right. But we're going to talk about all of it here. Should we talk about the parts? Yeah, let's talk about this is this is when I say like there is very little change to the design over 700 years ago. It's true man.

Yeah, I didn't realize some of these parts existed. So I did learn quite a bit in this. I thought it was pretty much the fire box and the flu that ran up the chimney. And that's it. But there's more to it than that. Well, yeah, these I think these are the improvements that came over time. blue that ran up the chimney. Sure. And that's it. Right. But there's more to it than that. Well, yeah, I think these are the improvements that came over time.

So you do have that heart that you mentioned that's going to be built out of something fireproof. You don't want to wood the hearth. It's going to be bad. It's probably rock or brick and that's where you... Paper mishay. Yeah. That's where you sit and drink your bourbon while you warm your back. It's like an apron on the floor that extends out from the fireplace.

Yeah, and it can be even with the floor, as is the case now, or the one I grew up with, I grew up with one of those MAC Daddy huge rock-stone fireplaces. Those ones are like, and you can sit on the thing. They're the best. They are the best, but they're also like just kid killers they look like, you know? Well, not if you don't climb in it. Oh, okay. Which I never did. Yeah, that is pretty nice.

What else you got? Well, so you know, like the heart extends out, but if you look, usually up the walls along either side of the hole in the wall and then above it, above it, that's called the surround. It's usually made of something either that's the same as the hearth. Same material as the hearth or some other fireproof thing like tile or brick or stone. Right. And that's just to basically prevent that fire from leaking out of the fire box and setting

the house on fire. Right. So straw, no good, no, as a material. You have your fire box, that is just what you think it is. That's the square, typically, although they're shaped a little differently now. That's the square that holds your fire. Right. And it's where the smoke starts to collect. Yes. What you're saidening the stuff up to behind the firebox is actually called the smoke chamber. And there's a transition area in between the firebox, which is where you actually have the fire, and the smoke chamber, which is above and slightly behind it. And it's called the throat. It's the opening that connects those two things. Yeah.

And the smoke chamber, smoke box, I think I've been calling it, it actually connects the fire box to the flu. And it's got some pretty cool stuff going on. This is like where some improvements were made to the design. Yeah, and the flu is surrounded by the chimney also, again, not straw. Right. It's going to, again, not straw. Right. It's going to be brick, almost always. In the back rear of the smoke chamber, there's a smoke shelf.

Yeah, it's concave. Yeah, because if you look at a fireplace, you just think it just goes straight back and up, right? Well, some of the old designs did. Well, they were stupid. Yeah, that's how it's changed them. Right, so if you go, if you look at the back of the fireplace, did. Well, they were stupid. Yeah, that's how it's changed some. Right, so if you go, if you look at the back of the fireplace,

if you could stick your head up into the fire box, you don't wanna do that. When there's no fire, you don't wanna do it period. You'll see that there's actually a shelf there. And it's angled forward too in front of that. Like I said, it used to be just sort of a cube and it went straight up. Now it's sort of zig-zags back and forth a little bit on its way to the flu.

That's right. So the whole point of that shelf in the zigzag is so that when rain comes in, it doesn't get into the fire. Yeah. It's almost basically a protective overhang. And it also keeps particulates like soot and stuff from falling into the firebox too. Correct. That smoke shelf underneath it, you're going to have the damper.

And that is that covering that's movable. And that separates the firebox from the place above it. And that keeps, when you don't have your fire, that's when you close. We used to say close the flu. And we didn't use the word damper in my house. Yeah. I don't know why.

But that's technically what it is. It's the damper. And you get your, there are different mechanisms. But ours had a little, a little, eyelid circle thing that you would stick, we used our fire poker. And we would just unhook it and then close the damper. And that when your fire's not burning,

you wanna keep that thing open when it's burning obviously. Well, yeah. You're gonna find out really quickly if it's closed. It's like an epiglottis for the fireplace. Sure. You know, now it's got a throat, why not? Sure. What else we have?

Sometimes there's a chimney damper at the very top of the flu. Yeah, I didn't heard of it. Close to, it's unnecessary. Oh, you think? Sure. But then, uh, at the very top of the chimney, there's something called Spark Arrester, which is usually like some sort of mesh great that will allow like gas and air out, but we'll keep, um, little embers and stuff from going out onto your roof and setting your house on fire.

Yeah, especially like paper tends to float up and out. The chimney cap can serve the same purpose and that a lot of times is one and the same. Like the chimney cap and the spark arrest are all one piece a lot of times. Right. Is that it? I haven't heard of this ash dump.

That sounds pretty neat though. Sure. It's basically, I haven't heard of this ash dump. That sounds pretty neat though. Sure. It's basically, I guess a hatch in the floor, where you can just sweep the ashes, I guess that sounds like in the olden days. Right. When your house was built on, you know, to bricks, and it would just drop into a bucket below

as would your poop. Sure. There were different buckets under your house. Right. The collected things. Do you want to make sure you knew which bucket you're grabbing at any given time. That's right. You didn't want to surprise. And then finally, got your little door.

It's either, you know, glass or metal or it might just be a screen. We never had in mind growing up, we never had the glass door seen. Sure. Just the screen. We had one of those in my high school house. And it was a, we had a gas fireplace. Yeah. It was fine. Sure. Sure, just the screen. We had one of those in my high school house. It was a, we had a gas fireplace. Yeah, it was fine.

Sure, but I was like, this is not wood. All right, well let's take a break and we'll talk about wood after this. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ When Walter Isaacson set out to write his biography of Elon Musk, he believed he was taking on a world-changing figure. That night he was deciding whether or not to allow Starlink to be enabled to allow a sneak attack on Crimea. What he got was a subject who also sowed chaos and conspiracy.

I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social emotional networks. And when I sat down with Isaacson five weeks ago, he told me how he captured it all. They had Kansas spray paint and they're just putting big axes on machines and it's almost like kids playing on the playground. Just choose them up left, right, and center. And then like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he doesn't even remember it, getting the bars, done and excused being a total ****. But I want the reader to see it in action. My name is Evan Ratliffe,

and this is On Musk with Walter Isaacson. Join us in this four-part series as Isaacson breaks down how he captured a vivid portrait of a polarizing genius. Listen to On Musk on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Cheryl McCollum, host of the Col. K's podcast, Zone 7. Join us every Wednesday to hear cases like the Long Island Serial Killer. Here, Carrie Rossin, daughter of the notorious Serial Killer BTK,

weigh in on the accused Long Island Serial Killer's children. You show like genuine interest and you can't fake it. But these guys can see like right through to your soul. So you have to be like walled off, prepared. And you if you don't know your

stuff, they're going to just call you out and they're going to be like, no, I'm talking to somebody else. I'm not talking to you. Here great insight from one of New York City's finest detective Joe Jackalone, a Col. K. Secksburg.

You know, as well as I do, cops weren't even aware of it back then. So they're going to have some difficulty putting those cases together, unless, of course, he confesses. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Eastern is State Farm Park in I Heartland in Fortnite, available all weekend long. Afterwards, stick around and check out all the exciting things State Farm has to offer.

Say hi to Jake from State Farm on the big screen and try to be Jake's core at the parkour minigame. Visit iHeartRadio.com slash iHeartland to start playing today. So we're back Chuck and we're going to talk about this would not be an apt episode if we didn't talk about basically the physics of how a fireplace works. Because there are some physics involved. Pretty impressive ones if you ask me. Yeah, I love this article said, uh, lighting a fire inside your living room and it kind of hits home like how kind of crazy that is. Right. And so there are two challenges. One, not setting your house on fire. Two, keep the smoke from entering the room. Yeah. But yeah, never really thought about it.

And everything we just talked about basically was to prevent the first part, catching your house on fire, the surround, the hearth, all that stuff. But then if you get a little more into the guts of the fireplace, that's to keep the smoke from filling up in the room. And when you look around your house, you will find that there's a lot of different places for air to get in and that's actually quite necessary for a fireplace It's quite necessary for living and breathing sure for breathing and it's important for that too But to keep a fire going and to keep the smoke from going filling up your living room Which again, you'll find out very quickly if you don't have your damper open, which I have before.

Sure. If you have air coming into your house, then you can keep the air, the smoke, from the fire, going up the way it's supposed to. Right. And that happens simply because heat tends to rise. Yeah, you know, one of the places I get a nice flow of air in my house is from closed windows. Oh, yeah, you got thin windows. Yeah, we have it.

We've only redone a few of the windows. That's on my, like, must do list is to get all the windows replaced. Yeah. But it ain't cheap. No. But you're going to earn that money back, you know, over time, with the efficiencies. But yeah, I have those old windows like, it can be fully shut and you can stand and your hair will blow.

Right. And I'm like, where's this coming from? It's going through the glass. Yeah. It feels like it's defying the laws of physics. It's freezing near my way. Yes. I remember you and I had a house like that, and it was, I mean, the wavy, vaguely wavy kind

of windows. Yeah, those were thin It's got a neat though to think that in 2016. I'm living like a settler basically. Yeah in parts of my tuning your own butter so Yeah, you want to talk about the different kinds of heat Yeah, so you've got conduction, convection, and radiation, and fireplaces use convection and radiation, but not conduction. Hopefully not conduction. No, conduction means your house is catching fire.

That means you're literally touching something hot. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. But convection, of course, is when that hot air circulating to cooler areas of your home in this case. And the radiation is just literally feeling that flame warmth. Yeah, it's a, in the case of the fireplace, it's infrared and visible light electromagnetic radiation, basically.

There is actually some radio waves and some microwaves produced by a fire, which is kind of cool. But for the most part, you're feeling infrared radiation and you're seeing visible light radiation, right? Yes. So when you're warming yourself by a fire, you're being radiated.

Thermal radiation is being emitted from the fireplace. But there's also convection. Yeah, big time. And yeah, big times, right. Convection actually makes up most of the way that heat is moved through a fire. Yeah. And because you want to keep the smoke out of your house, you're also actually keeping those convection currents from going into your house as well.

Meaning, as Ben Franklin pointed out, because because remember he was a huge complainer, that most of the heat from a fire is just purposefully being funneled out of the house up through the flu in the chimney. I think it drove him nuts a little bit, looking through some of these quotes. Yeah, because he really spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make fire place better. He got to understand, though, too,

like when he was alive, these weren't just for like charm. No, no. They were to like stay alive. Yeah. And the idea that you were wasting all this fuel, I think probably part of it also was the inefficiency, probably drove him nuts. Well, yeah, I mean, he's dead right. Like, you've got so much heat just going right up the chimney. And not only that, when you get that draft, because the fire needs the oxygen. Right. So that's another reason it's pulling this air in, but it's also pulling in, you've got your thermostat on and your heat going. Sure.

It's pulling some of that warmer air in and up and out as well. Right, and even air that it's warming through convection, that's being irradiated out of the fireplace. Yeah. It's being sucked in. And as a result, again, that when that air is sucked into the fire and is pushed up the flu through the chimney, it's got to be replaced.

It's creating what's called a negative pressurization, right? Yes. And that means that air wants to come in and replace the air that's being sucked out and up the chimney. So cold air from outside is being drawn in, which is how like you said before. Four. Sure. But the fire can actually make your house even colder, because it's pushing the warm air

out through the fireplace and sucking in cold air from the outside. Yeah. And it's not, it says here, here's a stat that said that a traditional fireplace can draw four to ten times as much air from the room that it needs to actually burn that fire. Yeah, something like 500 cubic liters of air a minute. Yeah, so compare that to like the smart fireplace, aka the wood burning stove. aka the TV with the wood burning stove, aka the TV with the fire burning on it, right?

I love a wood burning stove, man, those are great. Do you, I've never really been into this. Yeah, I've got no problems with them. It's not a, it doesn't, it's not good for every home. Aren't they incredibly dangerous? Like they get super hot, right? They're really hot. So like, if you fell onto one or something,

you'd be in big trouble, right? Yeah, you don't put the skateboard next to it. Okay. Or the banana peel. Okay. Step one. But, and you know, you're not going to have like a super modern house with a wood burning stove.

Like, it's a little more charming in your cabin or something. Actually, I was looking through, I think, a popular mechanics or something. I had different types of stove, so it's stove's. And there are some that are kind of mod. Oh, well, that's cool. Yeah. So, they're trying to bring it into the future? Yes.

Well, they're remarkably efficient. How much did you say, 500 cubic liters, I believe, air a minute is sucked into a fireplace, an average fireplace, and only 20 for a wood burning stove. Yeah, that's pretty efficient. So they're super hot. You can cook on and too. You can boil your water and do all sorts of things. Sure.

You know? Just don't touch it. No. I think the Randazos had one in their place in Connecticut. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and I think it supposedly works super well Sure, like it'll it'll heat a room and then some yeah, you know Well, and the reason why is because it's it's like a contained fireplace, but it's not just wide open It's out in the open. Yeah, yeah, but I shut the door to it. Right, you shut the door to it so you're saving the warmer around it from being sucked in. Correct.

And then it's also removed from the interior of the wall so that it can heat on all sides. That's right out there so you can fall on it. Sure. And then the flu itself can go up and then out of the room so that the hot gas that's being carried out can heat the air in the room around it. So you've got that stovepipe. Yeah, you've got a lot of a lot of different ways the air is being warmed in your house by a wood stove. Yeah, I'm gonna look into these new ones. There's new ones. There's also like like, there's some famous ones, they're like mid-century design that are supermod, Swedish ones.

And then there's like, there's ones that look kind of like the traditional ones, but they're newly built and like, they're improved designs. Remember the old 70s fireplaces that were like orange metal that would sit out in the room. That's the sweetest one I'm talking about. Oh, really?

It's based on that old 70s look. No, that's the one I'm talking about is the 70s one. Oh, okay. There's newer ones too. Gotcha. But the iconic orange one, yeah, that's just. Yeah, like my friend, one friend in high school, Chris, Bootin, had the most 70s house.

That's right. Dude, it was wonderful. Like it was the orange fireplace, like built in a terrarium set. That's ideal. With plants and rocks and things, I think there might have been a little fake waterfall. Was there a macroom, eh?

Oh, I'm sure that was macroom-y at some point. But it was just, it had one of those sunken living rooms. Oh, I like those. You know? Yeah. And looking back now, like, it's a super cool, like, mod house, like people now would be like, oh my god, it's preserved in time.

It's the greatest thing ever. Right. Like his, what hit you to water bed, of course. But one of his walls, his entire wall was like a blown up photograph of like a Hawaiian sunset. Oh, we had a couple of those in our house not not a Hawaiian sunset, but we had like a forest with a Waterfall going through it and then in our kitchen a forest mural. Yeah, no water. That's very ice storm Yeah, I've not seen that movie, but I can imagine. Because I was 70s, right?

70s? Yeah, I mean, like, keep parties are happening and people are drinking eggnog around the orange lacquer to fireplace. It's a wonderful time. But let's say you have just the regular, regular old fireplace to start. Yeah. Traditionally, you want to, you want to, you come across it,. You say what the heck is this thing? What do I do? Well, the first thing you do is you log on to the internet and go to

house to forks and look up how to operate a fireplace because house to forks as you covered, man. Yeah, I mean, the only thing I could say this would probably be good for is if you've never literally never started a fire. But it seems like common knowledge to me. Yeah, there's some details in there that, I don't know, like hardwoods, right? You don't wanna burn pine or any softwood. Okay. You want your hardwoods like hickory ash oak.

Yeah. You kinda stuff. And you want it seasoned. That's the key. Yeah, you can't go cut down a tree in your yard and chop it up and burn it the next week. That's not going to work. Because it will smoke and you'll see literally, I mean, when I go camping, we get rooked all the time on firewood purchases.

Oh, yeah. And we sit down for the evening, throw the wood on there, and you just start hearing the sizzle. Yeah. And you see the water just literally boiling out of it. Right. And we're just like, oh man. Well, okay. That roadside guy I'm gonna go back.

Here's how you tell him. You gotta test it right there in front of the guy and watch him squirm. Take two logs, and you knock them together. And what you're looking for is a hollow sound, no thud. Hollow sound. Then youud, hollow sound. Then you know, it's seasoned. Yeah, but he would go like, city boy, this is North Georgia,

lob-lolley pine, you don't know what you're talking about. You'd say, well, pine's a soft food, I want hardwoods. Where's the hardwoods? I went to college, you'd off my property, and leave the boiled peanuts. You'd say, I'm going gonna take half of the boiled peanuts for my time. Yeah, I feel like we always get wet wood, but at least six months you want that wood drying out.

They say a full year, what you're looking for is 20% moisture level by the time you're burning it. All right, you could also put in a moisture level, temperature, or moisture indicator in the end. Yeah, there you go. Did you buy the big city? But you're right. You look at the end of the wood too and you'll see that it's cracked and split.

It's usually dark like gray. It just looks aged. But the dead giveaways, the hollow thud sound. Yeah, I didn't know that, so I'm going to try that. The hollow thud or the hollow sound, not the hollow thud sound. Yeah, I'm gonna, I didn't know that. So I'm gonna try that. The hollow thud, or the, I'm sorry, the hollow sound, not the thud. Right. Yeah.

That's what you're looking for. So you take your fire, or you take your wood, you put it on your fire grate, although, so this is a component of the fireplace. It's not an actual like part of it. Right. The fire grate is like this iron stand. It's a grate.

It's really no other way to describe it. Although some fire-efficient auto suggests that you should use what are called andirons. Yeah, I like greats. Which are, well, an andiron is basically a great missing the great part in the middle. It's basically these two stands, a pair of stands that go in the fireplace and it holds the logs aloft. Yes, right. So they burn through. The great does the same thing, except it keeps burning like embers on the great a little more. The reason why people are like and irons are great is because however you have it, a great or an an iron, you want to keep a bed of embers going.

Because that is going to eventually become hot enough that you could throw anything on there and it'll start to catch fire. Yeah. So when you take your split logs, you put them on your grate or your anions, put a little kindling beneath them, which is like thinner wood that'll catch fire easily. Yeah.

Light it on fire. Oh, I forgot first you want to pour about a half a liter of caracene on this. No, make sure that it starts. You do not. Oh, did I misspeak? That is just a joke, kids. You don't ever want to use any sort of lighter fluid for salt or anything like that to

start a indoor fire. Kids, you should not be starting a fire in the first place. So stop right now. Yes. This is for grownups. That's right. But you do want to use something like, I don't know, a newspaper, just a piece of paper to light the kindling, but no, you don't want to use any sort of accelerant.

Well, people are getting these papers anymore, so you can just light your kindle or your iPad, throw that in there instead. It'll, it'll start. But that kindling is going to catch, and if your wood is seasoned, it'll catch too, and then all of a sudden you got a fire. Yeah, you may want to adjust that damper a little bit just to keep your air flowed, how you want it. Right.

And again, when you have a fire going, one of the two main things you're trying to do, in addition to not burn down your house, is to keep the smoke from coming back in the room. And sometimes that's easier said than done because every house has something called a neutral pressure plane. Okay? So above the neutral pressure plane the air is pressurized. So it wants to push air out and below it air is the the pressure inside the house is lower so air wants to be sucked in.

So as long as your fireplace, your chimney, is above that neutral pressure plane, you're gonna be okay, the air's gonna wanna go in. If it so happens that the air around your fireplace is a higher pressure, then the air is actually going to be pushed down the chimney into the fire box and out into the room Which is no good, but you can solve it pretty easily by just opening a window and allowing air to come in or go out

Depending or have a 90-year-old windows right where you don't have to worry about it at all because the air just flows through freely So if you want to you know, we're talking about how inefficient they are. If you want to improve that efficiency, there are a couple of cool things you can do. One is called a tubular grate, and that is exactly what you think. It is instead of just a great,

made of solid iron at the bottom, it is a bit of a cage. It looks like sort of like the motorcycle exhaust pipes and things. Yeah. So, you know, it's just their tubular, so it's going to draw in the cool air in the bottom of the tubes, and then it's going to rise and then loop back around and shoot out the top of the tubes into your room. Yeah. Which should work in theory.

But remember, if fireplaces are working properly it's sucking air from the room in to the fire to fuel it and then shooting it out the chimney So this air that's being warmed could be sucked right back into the fire. That's right But if you have it so that the The tubular grate is enclosed by some doors But the ends of the grate can go out into the room. Bam, you're set. Oh, is that a thing? Yeah, I haven't seen that. There's another thing called a... Well, this is what

when Emily's parents have moved to Georgia now, but when they lived in Ohio, they had one of these recirculators that was a fan, basically, you would turn on a switch, and it would literally blow heat from underneath the grate back out into the room. And it worked really well, but it always seemed to blow a little stink out with it. Stink? You know, fire stink. Oh, okay. Yeah. I mean, you couldn't see smoke pouring out of it or anything.

Right. But it was still affecting your respiratory? Well, I mean, it didn't affect me so much, but I could tell what it was happening. Like, every recirculator I've ever seen or been around has kind of had the same deal to me. Yeah. Whether it's gas, only or whatever. It always just seems to have this, but you know, I'm very sensitive to odors. Anyway, so maybe that's something to do with that on and off. Maybe. I'm a super smeller. Are you a super smeller? What do you smell right now? I smell a no like three, three rooms over. Wow. You are a super smeller. Because we are hermetically sealed in here.

Not true. Then those glass doors, you talked about, it's another way to increase efficiency, but you're also going to literally just cut down on the heat that gets into the room as much as 50%. Yeah, there's not a lot that you can do to have a dramatic impact on the efficiency of the fire. For the most part, it's going to lose more heat than it puts out. You just want to hope that you can warm the room you're in at the fire enough so that you don't mind. Yeah. Or if you're just after the aesthetic then.

Yeah. Good for you. You and I lived in a place where we had a fireplace for a couple of years. We were hooked on it. Yeah, hooked on it. It was burning again. Yeah, oh yeah. And we could get that room like hot. Yeah, yeah.

You know, toasty. If you keep the fire going long enough, that's the key. Yeah, you just have to waste more than you can imagine. All right, well, we'll take another little quickie break here and we'll come back and talk about some more options and a very depressing history of child labor. When Walter Isaacson set out to write his biography of Elon Musk, he believed he was taking on a world-changing figure.

That night he was deciding whether or not to allow Starlink to be enabled to allow a sneak attack on Crimea. What he got was a subject who also sowed chaos and conspiracy. I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social, emotional networks. And when I sat down with Isaacson five weeks ago, he told me how he captured it all. They had Kansas spray paint and they're just putting big axes on machines and it's almost like kids playing on the playground, just choose them up left, right, and center. And then like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he doesn't even remember it, getting the bars, done an excuse, being a total f***.

But I want the reader to see it in action. My name is Evan Ratliffe, and this is On Musk with Walter Isaacson. Join us in this four-part series as Isaacson breaks down how he captured a vivid portrait of a polarizing genius. Listen to On Musk on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Cheryl McCollum, host of the Colk case podcast zone seven. Join us every Wednesday to hear cases like the Long Island Serial Killer. Here, Carrie Rossin, daughter of the notorious Serial Killer BTK, weigh in on the accused Long Island Serial Killer's children. You show like genuine interest and you can't fake it. Look, these guys can see like right through to your soul. So you have to be like walled off, prepared.

And you if you don't know your stuff, they're going to just call you out and they're going to be like, nope, I'm talking to somebody else. I'm not talking to you. Here great insight from one of New York City's finest detective Joe Jackalone, a Col. K. Sexburg.

You know, as well as I do, cops weren't even aware of it back then. So they're going to have some difficulty putting those cases together unless, of course, he confesses. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Get ready because Aaron and Carissa from Calm Down have got something special coming up at State Farm Park or wherever you get your podcast. all weekend long afterwards stick around and check out all the exciting things State Farm has to offer. Say hi to Jake from State Farm on the big screen and try to be Jake's core at the parkour minigame. Visit iHeartRadio.com slash iHeartland to start playing today. All right, Josh, we've been talking about wood a lot because it's clearly the superior fireplace seriously. But you can get the old gas fake log fireplace these days. My mom made the switch. Fake logs look pretty good these days.

So wait a minute, wait a minute. She had a wood burning fireplace and had a gas insert put in? Yes, wow, okay. So because she had a, like I had growing up to the gas starter. So you would light the gas, throw the wood on, get it going, turn the gas off. Gotcha.

So she just retrofitted it. Actually, I did it, my brother, into full gas with the fake logs. Nice. That they look good these days, you know? You can arrange them in yourself in a way that looks aesthetically pleasing. Right, they don't come in that mound

that shape to look like three logs laying on top of each other. No, it's come a long way, I'll say that. Don't they have beds of embers now too? Yeah, they do. They kind of catch the little flickery glow. Yep. What is it? They've come a long way with trying to simulate that look.

Peca, peca, peca. I don't know what that is. It's like the Japanese word for that, like the little tinkling glow. Tinkling glow. I'm saying it wrong, but It's a throwback. I said it wrong on some other episode years back. Oh, you don't want putty-perty? No Puda-puda-puda-puda. Yeah, but that's something different Yeah, well to go back and find it. Maybe we'll just edit this whole part out So the gas logs

Covering the gas vent you going to burn that fire behind glass. It's going to give off radiant and convicted heat. You're probably going to have a air, not recycler what I call it, air exchanger there working as well. Yeah, and one of the reasons it's so much more efficient is because it doesn't require any air from inside your room. Yeah. It draws air through a pipe from the outdoors because it requires much less, right? Yeah. So it's not going to take any of that warmed air that it's warming for itself to burn.

It's just going to say, you keep it. I'm gas. I'm super efficient. I love you in ways that wood could never imagine. Yeah, that's true. Wood is dirty and bumbling. Why do you love wood so much more than me? I'm gas.

So, if you're getting a new house, you're probably gonna have a gas fireplace. If you're getting a new house, you're probably going to have a gas fireplace. If you're getting a fireplace added to a home, it's probably going to be a gas fireplace. Sure. That's the direction they're steering you these days. Yeah, oh yeah. I would guess you. Because gas.

I would guess you're going to pay significantly more for a wood burning fireplace to be built into your new house than a gas one. You think? Yeah, probably just because I'll bet there's relatively few, especially down below the Mason Dixon line, relatively few builders who know how to put in a wood burning fireplace. Yeah, you got to find a builder from 1973.

Basically. Yeah. And he's going to want to give you one of those orange modern jobs. Yeah. You're like, yes, it's cool, but no, I want like the real thing. Yeah. He's like, guess is cool, but no, I want like the real thing. Yeah, he's like, this is real. So they're very efficient to these gas fireplaces.

Sure. The gas burns cleanly. They even have them that are vent free. But people also say, you know what, if your house is not like chucks and it is actually pretty tight, it's sealed to call it and sealed up, then they can actually deplete oxygen or moisture can build up. So the jury's still out somewhat on these gas fireplaces. I say the jury is in. Oh yeah. And I'm the jury and I say event-free fireplace is a stupid idea. It's pumping carbon dioxide into your house.

Yeah. That's not a, that's never good. You would think. Yeah. You can get an ethanol fireplace. This one seems like, okay, you've seen them before, right? Like if you go to a Marriott courtyard or something like that, they'll have like the chair situated around a table

with the fireplace in the middle of the table. Uh-huh. It's nuts. Yeah, it's just burning ethanol. The flame is actually cold. It's basically like, yeah, right. It's basically like a sterno fireplace. Yeah. You know, you want to light your fondue pot or something like that from beneath. Yeah. It's the same thing, I think, virtually. Uh, and then you can get can get the woe unto you

if you opt for the electric fireplace. Well, there's some now where you can get an entertainment center with a TV and then beneath it, a fake electric fireplace. Yeah, it's cool. So an electric fireplace has no fire. It is a heater and it, you know, it simulates the look of a fire if you're four years old and squinting, if you're squinty four year old. But, you know, we don't want to yuck someone's

yum, so if that's your bag, then more power to you. It's just not for me. I have to take issue though with this article, it says that it's emission-free. It's emission-free on the user end. Right, still electricity, which means it's producing emissions at the coal fire power plant that's producing that electricity. Yeah, that is very much. So don't be fooled if you're like,

oh, it's emission-free. No, no, we're gonna yuck that, yum. Safety wise, you gotta watch out for those sparks if you got carpet around or hardwoods I reckon. Yeah. Keep your bag of oily rags away from the fireplace. Yeah. Don't put, you might want a fire extinguisher, but don't put it in the fireplace.

Right. It's self. Carbon monoxide invent investing in a carbon monoxide detector is worthwhile. It doesn't have to be like a smart carbon monoxide detector, although get one of those if you want. I'm just saying if you're using a wood burning fireplace, at the very least, get yourself a cheap but decent carbon monoxide detector. Get a smoke detector is not quite enough.

Yeah, I think I think you have to have those now. Isn't that the new code? I don't know. I haven't read the zoning codes in a while. Building codes. You should take a look. This is one of those kind of once a year things. If you know what you're doing, you can at least

get a flashlight and kind of look everything over. See if there's anything obvious. Like if your fluke cap is no longer on your chimney. Hurricane hit. Yeah, if they're big cracks or anything. See if there's anything obvious like if your flu cap is no longer on your chimney hurricane hit Yeah, if they're big cracks or anything what so what's wrong with yours cracks like your house with cutoff fire All I know is the guy did a lot of like Maybe he just wasn't feeling it that day. No, he didn't put on a good show He he came over because he isn't put on a good show. He came over because he is in,

their specialty is old houses and old fireplaces. So I thought this guy's gonna be like, oh great, this is what I do. He acted like he didn't wanna do the job. Right, but that's a lot of work, man. You were gonna have to fix your chimney on the inside and it's cracked here and he got this and you got that. I was like, yeah, that's what you advertise.

It's a fixed old situation. Right. You should bring somebody else out. Yeah, I didn't like that guy. Yeah. You can bring out someone with some little moxie. But you do, even if you think that your fireplace is doing great, it pays to pay somebody to come out and look at it inside. Like, is it too much to ask for a little energy from your fireplace guy?

A little wild factor, maybe. Yes, you're correct. You do need a pro every now and then to come out. They're called chimney sweeps. Yeah. And a Creosote is something if you look up Creosote, C-R-E-O-S-O-T-E online, it sort of looks like black lava built up on the inside of your chimney. Right, and it itself could catch fire. Yeah. And you have a chimney fire, in which case, and it sounds a little counter intuitive, like, well, there's fire going through it all the time. Fire going through it is much different from fire,

like your chimney being on fire itself. Yeah, that's no good. And if your chimney's on fire, your house can catch fire fairly easy, especially if you have cracks in there, because it goes, and all of a sudden, some pressure treated two by four is like, oh, you don't want to burn that pressure treated two by four,

by the way, it's wood. Yeah. you don't want to burn that pressure treated to by 4, by the way, it's wood. I don't think we mentioned that. One thing you can burn, though, which I wouldn't use, but it's called a chimney sweep log or a creosote log. And it's just a special log. It's sort of like a duraflame, it's a prefab log. Right. It's a special log. It's sort of like a duriflaim. It's a prefab log. It's a chemical log.

But it's supposed to break down that creosote. Yeah. I just, I don't know, something about that made me, my radar went off like, I don't know if that's the best way to do things. Yeah. Don't have any proof. But I hear chemical log that knocks that creosote loose.

And it just didn't sound like the smart approach. Well, even the Chimney Safety Institute of America says, like, yeah, this thing's kind of work, but you want like actual scrubbing of the interior of your chimney. Yes. Which is what chimney sweeps did. Yeah. And man, if you want, if you want moxie in your chimney sweep, you go to somebody's

parents and say, I want to buy your four-year-old boy and make him my chimney sweep slave. Yeah, I mean, earlier we teased and promised the child labor horror show. And that's pretty much what things were like in Jolly Old England after 1666 after 1666 Second September To the fifth September technically. Yeah, the great fire of London changed a lot of things and one of them was Chimney's were a little bit narrow and they had a lot more rules as far as how clean you had to keep them and so like you said what you would do is you Can't put an adult up there you would, you can't put an adult up there. No, not really. But you can't put a five-year-old boy. Or four, I think, as the youngest I saw them doing. Yeah, so you would literally buy

child from a poor person. Right. Stick this boy up in there. They were your, quote, unquote, apprentice, which basically was child slave. Unpaid child labor. Zero dollars. Right. And actually chimney sweeping at the time. So after the great fire of London in 1666, I believe it was mandated by the Queen or Parliament or somebody that everybody needed their chimneys like kept up with.

So chimney sweeps became a thing. But they actually swept chimneys free. It was a free service. The way that chimney sweeps made their money was from the soot that they gathered. They would sell it as fertilizer. Oh, I thought you were going to say sponsorships. Like they would show up right there. Chevy Tahoe, Dr. Ketter, or something. There's like nothing gets your chimney clean like son of a gun by STP. So they would stick these kids in there sometimes they would literally light a fire under their butt to make them work faster Yeah, the kids would shimmy and distort their body to shimmy in this little 18 inch wide chimney and

Chip loose this Creasote creasote and soot that would then because they're working above their head it would follow all over them They would take a bath Once a week maybe once every month maybe once every two or three months depending on who you're asking. Yeah, so these children are literally Not I mean if they survived this experience at all, they're not gonna live past middle age. Right. So what you just described was a good day. Yeah.

There were all sorts of other horrible maladies that could come about, reformation of their skeletons, because these kids are like four, five, six, eight, 10, 12 years old. They're trying to grow. They're still developing, but they're spending hours upon hours every day in these cramped chimneys.

So their bones, especially the bones in their ankles and knees tended to grow in a deformed way. Unbelievable. There's something the first industrial-linked cancer ever identified is called Chimney Sweeps Cancer. Other people call it Scrodo, carcinoma, where the scrottle was irritated by soot, and it would produce warts, and these warts, if they went untreated, would turn into a carcinoma, which eventually, if it wasn't cut out, the tumor would grow into the testes and then into the abdomen, and it was

a very, very painful way to die. Kids like 12 years of age were dying of... Cancer. ...grotal cancer from this. Yeah, you get up pre-dawn. You work till the nighttime hours, 364 days a year. The one day that these kids would get off was Mayday, International Labor Day. They would sleep then, you know, we said they collected that ash and so it installed it.

They would store all the stuff in sacks and the kids would then sleep in those rooms, still ingesting all the stuff in the air. And quite often they would literally get stuck and die in these chimneys. Here's the part where I started to hyperventilate just thinking about this. Oh, from claustrophobia. Yeah. There's like this thing called positional esphyxia. Yeah.

There's actually a pretty interesting vicaridic called, called like a brief history of people getting stuck in chimneys. Uh-huh. And they actually illustrate how positional esphyxia happens using the Grinch. Yeah. As he's going down the chimney, his feet start to get above his head and all of a sudden he's stuck. You can't get out of that position. This would happen to real live English boys in American too apparently, who would get

stuck in the chimneys that they were cleaning out and would die there because they would asphyxiate. Their abdomen couldn't take in breaths any longer, right? It happened a lot. And actually, finally, it happened enough times that parliaments started to get involved. They first got involved in 1788 with the Chimney Sweeps Act. And they said, you know what? This is crazy. You guys are buying four-year-old kids.

You can't do that. Chimney Sweeps can be no younger than eight. Yeah. That was their first stab at reform, right? Yeah, and obviously this is child labor was a lot different back then as far as how we thought about when kids should work. Right. Or the idea of childhood hadn't even come about yet.

Yeah, but even so, even for a time where it was believed that children should put forth an effort and work, like four and five yearyear-old kids, it's just ridiculous. Sure, right? They also added though that if you are a master of a chimney sweep, you have to make sure that they are allowed to go to church on Sundays. That was the other part of the 1788 Act, right? Yeah. Then in the 1840 Act, they up the age to 21, which was significant, but apparently it wasn't really

enforced until 1875. When this one kid died, and he was basically the straw that broke the camel's back for the public. Yeah, his name was George Brewster, and he worked for a gentleman by the name of William Wire, and I say, gentlemen, what I mean is a scumbag. And he was cleaning a hospital chimney full-borne hospital and he got stuck

and the great efforts were made to rescue him actually pulled down a wall to try and get to him he died and wire is actually found guilty of manslaughter and his death was really big awareness uh... jolt for everybody and it became part of the campaign and um... that was pretty much the end of using kids. You know, he was apparently the last child to die in a chimney in England.

In England, I guess in the US, they kept using them for a while. So shameful. Really? Yes. Now, if you see a chimney sweep tell a four-year-old to go up in the chimney, you called police because that is illegal these days. No better where you live. Yeah. Okay. Let's all agree to that. You got anything else? No.

Fireplaces. Just in time for the fall. Well, yeah, it's November here in Atlanta and in the mid-80s. Right. Right. Get that fireplace going. That's right. If you want to know more about fireplaces, including how to lighten fire, you can go find that up by typing fireplace in the search bar at House of Forks and since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this grammar police. Hey guys, regular listener for quite some time. I finally become angered or inspired enough to write in about something. I used the sandwich technique proposed by Chuck Rees only by the way, and I was listening

to an older episode, does the body replace itself, and you guys were talking about emails from the grammar police. A grammar only has strict rules to those who decided that it needed strict rules. As a society, we have a rather dramatic ebb and flow of grammar rules. There's no one entity to decide upon the rules. And therefore, there's no real, right or wrong. You can almost consider it like a fashion in a way.

We can all generally agree that double negatives are wrong, much like we can all agree that socks and sandals are wrong. And yet, some will still use them or wear them without a problem. As long as we can understand each other and the quote incorrect and quote grammar, does not take away from the meaning of your words than it should not matter. There are different times in which proper grammar is necessary and scrutinized, and then there are times when it frankly does not matter. There is a huge debate in the grammar world, the few but mighty, she points out,

about whether we should be prescriptivist or descriptivists when it comes to the rules of grammar. It's a constantly evolving topic, and arguably grammar is a constantly evolving entity. Just thought I'd share my thoughts and hopes that you wouldn't get down on yourselves from the grammar police. And yes, feel free to pick apart my email for grammar errors.

Nice. Happy face. That is from Colleen Zaker, an English teacher and grammar enthusiast. Thanks a lot, Colleen. We appreciate that big time. We always love to hear support from people who are like, don't listen to the haters. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to get in touch with us like Colleen did, is it Colleen?

Sure. Who cares? Actually, I don't know. Because either way, whatever. Yeah, she said you can call me whatever. Sure. If you want to get in touch with us like cauliflower did, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.house.tofirst.com and as always join us over at home on the web stuffyoushadknow.com. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts of my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Walter Isaacson set out to write about a world-changing genius in Elon Musk and found

a man addicted to chaos and conspiracy. I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social, emotional, networks. The book launched a thousand hot takes, so I sat down with Isaacson to try to get past the noise. I like the fact that people who say, I'm not as tough on musk as I should be, are always using anecdotes from my book

to show why we should be tough on musk. Join me, Evan Ratliffe, for on musk with Walter Isaacson. Listen on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Cheryl McCollum, host of the Colkays Podcast Zone 7. Join us every Wednesday to hear cases like the Long Island Serial Killer. You show like genuine interest and you can't fake it. These guys can see like right through to your soul. So you have to be like prepared.

If you don't know your stuff, they're going to just call you out. Listen to zone seven with Cheryl McCollum on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcast. Or wherever you get your podcast. Get ready because Aaron and Karrissa from Calm Down have got something special coming up at State Farm Park in I Heartland,

a reading of Twisted Night Before Christmas. They'll infuse it with stories and memories tying into the holiday spirit. Don't miss this special event, starting Thursday, December 7th at 7pm Eastern at State Farm Park in I Heartland in Fortnite, available all weekend long. Afterwards, stick around and check out all the exciting things State Farm has to offer. Say hi to Jake from State Farm on the Big Screen and try to be Jake Skour at the park core minigame. Visit iHartRadio.com slash I Heartland to start playing today.

screen and try to be Jake's core at the parkour minigame. Visit iHeartRadio.com slash iHeartland to start playing today.