Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: Have all the good ideas already been discovered?

Episode Date: November 23, 2019

It's no secret that human beings have an obsession with innovation -- but has our species already found every good idea? As Josh and Chuck break down the continuing search for the next great idea, they touch on everything from hand tools to cancer cures. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren in Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the

cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to HeyDude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, it's me, Josh, and for this week's S-Y-S-K Selects, I've chosen an episode from 2010.

Have all the good ideas been discovered? It's an interesting one and a strange way it ties into the planned obsolescence episode we released recently, even though it was recorded almost 10 years before. And I want to make a note. It's possible that the listener mail person who wrote in in this episode actually predicted the coming of the wildly popular site, Damn You AutoCorrect. Prove me wrong. At any rate, enjoy this episode.

Welcome to Step You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that makes this stuff you should know. That's right. Yes it is. Not other imitators. I wonder how many times I've said that. That makes this stuff you should know?

No, just the whole spiel, the whole opening. Hey, welcome to the podcast. Well you've said it about 270 something times, I think. Luckily we have them all saved and we could count. We do. I don't know if it's lucky though, Chuck. That's a lot of shows, dude. I'm gonna do something special for 300, that's like, that's a lot of shows.

It is. That makes me proud. Okay, well do you think maybe we could get some cake around here or something? A shrimp cocktail? Yeah. For the love of Pete? No, I'm allergic to shrimp now, remember? I know, but I still like to throw it out there.

Actually I ate a shrimp wonton the other day and nothing happened. Really? Or I ate a wonton with shrimp and nothing happened. So it was just like tiny little bits of shrimp in there? I don't know, either that or I'm getting stronger. Maybe so. Superhuman, you might say. Transhuman.

Speaking of human. Yes. Chuck, there is a recent study that came out in part from one of our universities here in the city, Emory, right down the street. Great school. There's been this problem that's been plaguing researchers for a really long time and that is at the beginning of the lower Paleolithic period, which is about 2.7 million years ago, we started using sharp rocks as bashing and cutting tools.

So we figured that out. You can take a rock, that's technology. That's not horse, that's technology. You can take this rock and you can use it to open a coconut or the head of someone who's wronged you. Using an implement to complete a task. Well specifically, sharp rocks. It took two million years, the end of the lower Paleolithic period, before we figured

out that we could actually attach handles to these things and turn them into axes. That's how long it took? Yes. Wow. And this is baffled scientists. Like how could it possibly have taken two million years to go from using your hand to attaching a stick? You know?

Sure. Well, they were dumb back then. A dumb is close to it. They literally were lacking the region of the brain needed, apparently, according to this new study. Basically we developed a region in the right hemisphere, specifically the supramarginal gyrus, which allowed us to go, hey, let's put a handle on this. Then after we did that, we moved out of Africa and started colonizing the rest of the world.

So they pinpointed the region of the brain that is specific to innovation? Specific to stone tool making. Okay. I thought you meant innovation in general? No. Like that's where your ideas come from? No. Give me a second.

I'll run. Shoot. Did I ruin it? It's okay. Okay. So we go from, can't figure out how to attach a handle to a sharp rock, two million years. We figure that out. We leave Africa and we start colonizing the rest of the world and all of a sudden things

start entering light speed, right? And it seems like over the last couple hundred years, especially since the industrial revolution, our ability to innovate, to grasp new ideas, to understand the world around us has just been hitting this hyper speed. And a lot of people wonder if we've reached a point where all the ideas, all the good ones at least, have already been discovered. We understand how everything works and there's really just figuring out how to dot the eyes and cross the T's, right?

Right. There was actually a guy who famously said in 1899, a guy named Charles Buell. I love this quote. He was the commissioner of the Patton's office. It's attributed to him, I should say. But he said something like, everything that can be invented has already been invented. And he said this in a memo basically saying like, you should go ahead and shut down the Patton office.

He clearly had never considered the snuggie or anything that's been invented since 1900. So here's what I'm going to say. I'm going to go ahead and give you my summation early on, is that I think people think at various times in history that they've plateaued and then I think things happen, people come along, innovators, and then they reach new heights and they go, oh, well, we didn't know that. Right. And there are new ideas.

Right. It almost displays a shameful lack of historic awareness to say we've reached the end of all of our good ideas. It's just silly. It's just asking to be made a fool of. Yeah. Or for people, maybe people do that on purpose to go the innovators and to say, oh yeah? Using reverse psychology.

Exactly. I didn't know that's how innovation works. Yeah. You might as well just give up. Reverse psychology drives innovation. That's a good one, Chuck. There are people though that say that technological, that real technological innovation has been stalled for quite a while.

Yes. Like after the 90s computer revolution, everything else since then has kind of been like packaging it in better looking cases and sleeker designs and it's all like design oriented. It is. Or marketing oriented. Marketing oriented. Sure. These guys, Cedric Leger and Eric Vierdo, who are both with Schema Business School, basically

say smartphones. Yes, they seem incredibly new and cutting edge, but really they're just the packaging of several already extant technologies into a really sharp looking handheld device. But that's still a new idea, I would argue. It is still a new idea, but I think what their point is is saying like before the late 90s and before the 80s, let's say with computers, but especially the tech boom of the telecom boom of the late 90s, like this stuff wasn't around. So it's not true innovation.

Right. It's kind of repurposing. Sure. And what you were saying, like the cosmetic changes to a computer, one of the reasons why they believe that this is going on is because we've come to a point in the computer revolution, I think Chuck, where you can still make tons of cash just by changing the casing of a CPU. Yeah.

There's like no money in innovation, basically, is what I got from this one article, is that innovation costs more than it's worth when you can just repackage what you've got in a sleeker design and people buy it up. Exactly. These two authors of this article predict that we're going to have two trends that will drive innovation, I guess, currently, right? Yes. That consolidation, we're basically like, especially with, I think they're talking just about computers.

Oh, are they? Yeah. Because they're saying the big hardware firms are going to all consolidate all of the smaller hardware firms to where they'll just basically be like the big three or five. And that will leave it to the software firms to compete and innovate. So we'll see more innovation in the software side rather than the hardware side. And they're also saying that the green boom is going to drive innovation. That makes sense.

Like coming up with sustainable packages or sustainable solutions. Yeah. Totally. That makes sense. One of the other things I pointed out, thought was interesting, was they said the tech, they call it the tech refresh cycle, is too small right now. So what's happening is they'll say, you like your CD, well, you're going to love the super audio CD.

Or Blu-ray. You like your DVD, you're going to love Blu-ray. But guess what's coming up after Blu-ray? It's going to be like super Blu-ray. Right. And it's happening so fast, people aren't abandoning their current systems. They're just like, you know what, I'm going to hold on because I don't want to be the guy stuck with the laser disc player in a couple of years.

So all of a sudden, the same thing happens. No one's buying it. So it's not worth this much money. Which means that nobody's putting any effort into it. And money into it. So innovation ceases. Right. And there's a guy named Edmund Phelps, who's a professor of political economy at Columbia

University. Right? Yeah. And he's basically kind of saying the same thing. He's saying that there's not enough money going toward innovation, but rather than the onus being put on, consumers not buying Blu-rays out of fear of looking like laser disc jerks. It's actually government and big business that's not pouring money into small innovators. Yeah.

He said that the innovation is the only thing not subsidized by the United States government, which he says is actually a tax in a way, because it's not being subsidized. Sort of a reach. You could definitely, yeah. I think a lot of these guys' points are a reach, but what he's suggesting is if the government isn't pouring money into big business so that they can pour money into, I guess, small venture firms, these people who are in their garages aren't going to take risks. They're not going to innovate.

There's no incentive. Right? I disagree with this. I dispute this. Because he's saying the people who do work in their garages and are the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in the 70s, that they were driven by this lust for money. Exactly. I think that's wrong.

I think that people innovate first and foremost to get this idea out of their head and burst into reality. Totally. I'm glad you said this, because I completely agreed, regardless of what you think of the Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg didn't invent Facebook to make gobs of money. He invented it to make real friends. Yeah. To innovate.

That's my point that you made, is that these people in the garage, the true innovators, they don't care if they have two pennies to rub together. They're still going to be trying to innovate and make a name for themselves and come up with something awesome. Right. Now, there are people out there who are trying to innovate for the riches. Snuggy. I'm sure the guy who invented the snuggy wasn't in his garage and just wanted to think...

I got to get this out or else I'm never going to sleep again. Yeah. That's the people that are looking for the next get rich quick thing. I think you can also make a point that when you introduce money to innovation, it leads to actual stagnation, because when you introduce money, there's now something to lose and people are less willing to take risks. Risk is one of the driving... The willingness to take risk is one of the driving forces of innovation.

Yeah. Hey everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren in Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing

on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Phelps had a good idea, and this will never happen of course because it's a good idea, to create the first national bank of innovation. All capitalized. Not all caps, but each word is capitalized. He should do it all in all caps with exclamation points.

But basically it would be a bank that you could go and partner as a startup company and partner with his bank for financing and I would guess some sort of low interest loans to spur innovation. Right. That was a great idea. So it is a good idea, and this does happen in the real world, and the government does pour money into innovation. He's not exactly correct in that sense, and I also kind of resented that he placed big

business in between people in their garage innovating and government subsidies, that we have to have big business. Give them the money, and they'll skim a little off the top and give it to this guy in the garage. He's drawing broad strokes here for sure. There are government programs, and we'll talk about one from the National Institutes of Health where the government says, hey, you have a really good idea, Mr. or Ms. Research Scientist, and we're going to give you enough money to survive for three years.

Yeah, because the deal is you can always get grants if you put together a nice package, but this program with the NIH, what's it called? The New Innovator Award, Director's New Innovator Award. This is intended for people who have such a good idea, but it's so new that they don't have the data to write a grant where people would say, looks like you're on to something here. You're throwing money at stuff that's like, you're the dude in the garage, and we believe in this idea, go see what you can find out.

We're keeping big business out of the way, but now the NIH owns you for the rest of your career. Yeah, probably so, huh? Yeah. Let's talk about, there's three people at UCLA that got these grants recently, and they're up to some interesting, one could say, innovative stuff. They have some good ideas. Hugely innovative.

How to approach problems like the Professor Dino DeCarlo, all these, I think these people are younger than us, by the way. Oh, I'm sure they are. Dino DeCarlo is working on ways to basically apply heat or pressure or chemicals to very specific sites in cells using nanoparticles and magnets, which is tough. Sounds like a winning idea to me. It is. Basically, one of the big problems we have with getting cells, engineering cells to do

specific things like, I don't know, attack other cells for fun. Tell me that wouldn't be a big Christmas gift this year if you could make cells fight with one another under a microscope. Then you have to basically try to engineer the cell time after time after time, and basically program it to do what you want it to do. What DeCarlo is coming up with is a way to use very tiny magnets and even tinier nanoparticles that can, basically, my brain is so small. When you move the magnet with a joystick, it attracts the nanoparticles in a certain

direction or whatever, and you can have the nanoparticles apply heat or pressure or a specific chemical to a specific site on a cell and direct it to go attack another cell for your pleasure. That's awesome. Your amusement. 1.5 mil goes to DeCarlo. For a good reason. For a good reason.

One of the other winners was Hu Huan, and you came up with, basically, I'm going to break this down easy, instead of saying, let me come up with a cure for cancer, Hu Huan said, let me come up with a way to detect cancer so early, like way earlier than we've ever detected it before, that we can stop it in his track, essentially curing cancer. And he's doing this, actually, I don't know, is he? I think he's a she. She's doing this through nanomaterial called graphene, that is just one atom thick. Yes, graphene is like this super, clearly not of this world material.

It's literally a carbon atom thick, that's it. So it ends up being a biological sensor to tell you when cells aren't doing the things it should be doing. So did you know a gram of this stuff is flattened, covers a football field, a gram, it's ultralight. That is thin, my friend. It's one atom thin. So 1.5 mil to Hu Huan. Right.

Well, did you explain how? Oh no. Do you want to? Let me try my hand at this. Basically what you do is you put a graphene conductor, a transistor in a cell, and when these biological markers, say histones or something like that, start to accumulate, they're attracted to the graphene, and these, by the way, these biological markers we found are correlated with the growth of cancer, the origin of cancer.

Yeah, that's where they're starting. And when some of these markers are attracted to the graphene, they create an electrical charge that we can sense. And the graphene is so thin, but so highly conductive, that with just a couple of these molecules attaching to the graphene, we would be able to detect it and be like, whoop, whoop, whoop. Right? Yeah.

We'd be like, oh crap, you have cancer. And we cure it right then. Wow. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. And it's a good way to approach a cure for cancer if you ask me. Yeah.

I think so too. And the last winner this year was Jin Hyeong Lee, and Jin is trying to debug the brain circuit using, you know, we have the Wonder Machine, which is our favorite thing in the world, the fMRI, which measures blood and oxygen levels in the brain. So it tells you these areas light up, they're called bold signals, blood and oxygen level dependent. They light up to correspond to certain brain activity. Right.

And we've talked about this before. Oh yeah. That there's more oxygen that's going to that part of the brain. So we've assumed, this is the basis of the fMRI, if it has more oxygen being delivered to it, that must mean that that region of the brain is active when you show somebody a picture of, you know, their kid like being carried away into a van. Right. That, you know, that's the fear region right there.

That doesn't really say anything though. And it doesn't necessarily implicate, well, it's not, it's showing, oh okay, well there's more oxygen in this region. Right. Right. What this is, what Jin Hyun Lee is looking at is how, or what specifically on the neuronal level is being activated. Right.

Right. And he's using optogenetics. Right. So it's going to be called the OFMRI and that's beyond even what we thought was the Wonder Machine. So this is the super-duper Wonder Machine. Right. So he's using light to allow genetically specified neurons to be activated.

Right. You know, one of our listeners at EMRI has been harping on us doing one on optogenetics for a while. Oh, really? We should get this person in here. This is probably as close as we're ever going to come to optogenetics. Well, it's a great idea though, obviously, because Jin Hyun Lee won one of the Innovator Awards as well.

Yes. And they give these out every year. So they clearly believe that we're not out of good ideas. No. Excellent point, Chuck. The NIH. No. And we're not out of good ideas.

So yes, Chuck, you picked those out. You found those guys. All right. Well, I didn't personally find them. You're like, these guys should get the... The NIH found them. There are very good ideas out there, right? Oh, yeah.

But there is a debate that's raging in science about whether these ideas, like optogenetics or using graphene or nanoparticles to cure tech cancer, are these variations on a theme? Are they applying cosmetic changes to a computer rather than really creating new parts to it? Right? And basically, the question is, are there any more major discoveries for us to make? Or are these really just basically... Variations. Remember, I've always said, we have the pieces on the table, now we just have to put them

together? Yeah. Is that the point that we're at? Right. Well, you said we were. I did. And then we started researching this. And I'm like, I wonder.

Right. I think I still do believe that. Sure. And within that, though, there's so much that it's, to me, a little bit like splitting hairs. Well, but you're absolutely right, especially when you throw in the word discovered, right? Yeah. Discovery indicates something that's already out there.

We just figure it out or stumble upon it. Sure. And an idea necessarily kind of leads... Or an invention. Yeah. It leads to an invention. Something we've created like technology. Hey friends, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place

be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba, who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home, now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips?

Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Let's talk about discovery, right? We have a lot of problems that are still facing us and how we understand the universe, like human consciousness. How do brain cells create our understanding of the world, like what we see as reality? How is that possible? And can we figure everything out? Well, that's the big question.

Like I said, there's a lot of debate about whether or not we'll ever be able to figure everything out, or if the human brain just simply isn't programmed to understand the world fully. There's a guy who's a physicist, his name is Russell Standard, and he's written this book called The End of Discovery, and basically he says that we're in, quote, a transient age of human development, where we're past the point where we figured out you can put a handle on a rock and make it an axe, but we're right before the point where we can no longer make discoveries, not because we've understood everything or figured everything

out, but because we've reached the limits of what is knowable for the human brain. But even that, look at that part of the right hemisphere that developed and allowed us to put the axe handle on. Who's to say that our brain won't reach that point where we can't know anything any longer or we can't know everything, and then we evolve even further, and now all of a sudden we're even better at understanding our world. But will we end up eventually coming to a point where humans understand everything and there is no more discovery to make?

I say no because he points out in here, and this is, I think, very valid, from the Midnight Century, the 19th century, I'm sorry, they said that a lot of people in science said, you know, we've kind of debunked religion and philosophy and all these things with scientific discovery, but he points out, and I agree that even if you figure out all the problems of science, which will never happen, there's still human life and consciousness in the subjectivity of what goes on inside a person's head. You're never going to solve, that's not solvable. Right.

That's what I argue. That's subjectivism. Yeah. I think I believe in that. Well, the whole, I guess, I agree with you. There's this aspect of the universe that Kant called the Nuamanon, Nuamanon, that was specifically tailored for my thick tongue. It's good.

But basically the Nuamanon is the thing itself, where it's just the objective universe, and we don't interact with that. Everything we know and understand is subjective, and this is where subjectivism is based that basically we can never fully know anything, and we certainly won't ever know everything because one thing that will always be elusive is what you see. My reality is different than your reality. Exactly. And there's an extreme version of it called solipsism.

Right? Yes. And solipsism is this extreme version of subjectivism that basically says everything is so subjective that I can't fully verify that you exist. The only thing I know that exists is my reality, but all of you may be made up. I may be totally, completely out of my mind and actually in a padded cell right now, and none of you are really real. Well that sort of touches on the whole quantum mechanics thing.

Right. Don't you think? Please. Well, I mean I don't have a whole lot to say about it because we've covered it, but it definitely is along the same line, so you think? Well yeah, there's an interpretation of quantum mechanics that basically says everything we know about the universe we know through observation. And once you observe it, it changes.

That's part of it. And when we observe, we gain information, right? But we can't observe everything at once, so all we know exists in our reality for sure is what we're observing. Right. So everything else, like what's going on out there in the office right now, doesn't exist because we're not there to observe it. Yeah.

Mind-blowing once again. It is mind-blowing, but it also, we say all this not just to, you know, rock out to Floyd, but because this is what science is up against, this isn't just gibberish, this isn't just philosophical gibberish, as much as science would like it to be. There is a true problem with the fact that subjectivity, not objectivity, is how we interact with our universe, even though science is supposed to be based exclusively on objectivity. Right. Right.

Well, Stephen Hawking, you might have heard of him. And another dude named Leonard Lodenow? Is that how I'm going to pronounce that? Sure. There's a silent M in there somewhere. They have a new book called A Grand Design, and they are now saying that, I think scientists used to say, we're going to find the theory of everything. Now they're saying, you know what, we're probably not going to find the theory of everything,

but it's probably going to be more like what they call, quote, a family of interconnected theories, which describe your reality under very specific conditions. And this is kind of huge for Stephen Hawking, because he's long been a big supporter of the theory of everything, which takes the standard model of physics, includes gravity, which has always been elusive, and then marries it with quantum mechanics to explain everything. That's the theory of everything. It's one theory that explains everything, right? Like that surfer guy?

Exactly. Yeah. Garrett, Lisey, I think is the name of it. That was a long time ago. It was. And you know, it's going to be years before he's shown to be correct or incorrect, but Hawking's saying, it's probably not going to be the case. He's going to, there's too many different variables that don't fit together.

Right. But the thing that really scares a physicist that will scare any physicist is this. Sports. Are those models that we've come up with? Are they how the universe actually works, or how we look at the universe and see how it works? You see what I'm saying? There's that subjectivism again.

It can't be whipped. Well, and all the things that we've said over the years that we have formed to be true, are those even true? Or are the conclusions we're reaching just based on years of thought compiled that may not have been true to begin with? Right. I see what you mean. Like we arrive at reality by consensus.

Yeah. But is that consensus? Was that even accurate along the way? Not necessarily. It's been shown time and time again that it hasn't been accurate through these, the five revolutions as V.M. Ramashandran puts them. Copernicus? Copernicus was the first one who said that Earth is not the center of the universe.

Darwinism? Very good, Chuck. Darwin says like, hey, we're actually just a bunch of apes. DNA? Freud? Yeah, before DNA. Freud's saying like, we actually are driven by desires that we can't control and aren't really aware of.

DNA. DNA. Which is saying, I think James Watson who found DNA along with Francis Crick said, quote, there are only molecules. Everything else is sociology. I love that quote man. It's one of my favorites. And then the fifth revolution, the neuroscience revolution that we're all, everything, all

of our understanding and movements and experiences are nothing but neuronal transmissions, electrochemical impulses, right? So there's not even sociology. That even is just based on firing neurons. Right. That's where we're at right now. That's why I say, I think we have everything on the table. We just haven't put it together, but it's entirely possible, historically speaking, to say, well,

we thought that before, and we didn't, and what revolution is next? Will the next revolution get us over the wall of subjectivism, or will that be the wall that we always run into? This is a good one. It was. I was worried about this one. It came out pretty good, didn't it? I think so.

Yeah. Don't you like it when we have like pat ourselves in the back at the end of the show? I think this one deserves it, man. Well, so... We go from blue rays to neurons and... At the end of the day, Josh and Chuck say, we are not out of new ideas. Can I speak for you? Go ahead.

We are not out of new ideas. And just when you think you're out of new ideas, just when you think you've plateaued, comes a few wang along to say, no, no, no, no. There are new ideas. And here's one. Yeah. Now give me the cash. Exactly.

If you want to learn more about innovation and new ideas, we have tons of stuff all over the site. Just type in innovation. Type in discovery, I'm sure that'll bring up a ton of stuff. And type in neurons, that'll bring up some pretty cool stuff, too. Agreed. You can type all those words into the handysearchbar at howstuffworks.com, which means it's time for listener mail.

Yes, Josh, I'm going to follow this very heady podcast with the opposite, an email form. Okay. This is from our 13-year-old fan, Peyton, in California. Well, hello. I'm sending this from my eye touch while laying in bed. I'm supposed to be asleep, so, shh. Anyway, I just started listening to your podcast after my friend Claire, yes, that's the Claire from California, whose email you read on the air, who thinks Jerry looks like Tina Fey.

Claire is Peyton's friend. Okay. So she said, oh, you got on the air, so I'm going to start listening, too. Actually, I'm saying Peyton is a girl, Peyton may be a boy, you never know. I don't see him boy. Oh, really? Yeah. It's androgynous, right?

Yeah. Ambivalent, at least. Claire posted on her Facebook page that I said, listen to the most recent podcast because you guys read her letter or something. I thought it was so cool. Claire and I are really good friends. Anyways, I love this podcast. Gosh, I feel so boring because I keep saying podcast.

Is there like another word for that? Jerry laughed at that. Anyways, I definitely, and she does that thing like the kids do now where they put like eight S's at the end of a word. Have you seen that? Yeah. I don't get that. I don't either.

We're getting old. I guess so. I most definitely enjoyed the podcast on the octopi and stuff. Yes. Octopi. I thought it was informational and funny, by the way, this email doesn't make any sense. It's because my eye touch is dumb and auto-corrects words that I've already spelled right. Erg, moving on.

Your iPhone does that, too. And mine does that. What is an email written with one of those pens that has like four different color ink that you can select from? That's what it feels like. But the reason I brought that up is I have an idea to start a website called myi-i-i-phone-spelled-what.com. Because you ever look at some of them, you send and you're like, can you please make sure you take the sofa out of the oven when you get home?

When you meant to say sturgeon. Let's say. Sturgeon is sofa. Well, probably not. Well, it could go to surgeon. Okay, take the surgeon out of the oven. Which is, I think so much better. I wish we would have planned this.

It's okay, buddy. Anyway, it can make for a lot of fun. So that's my new idea. Okay. And that's lots of love from Peyton, age 13 in Cali. Thanks a lot, Peyton, age 13 in Cali. Boy or girl, we're not exactly sure, but either way, we appreciate you taking the time to write in.

And if you have a movie that Chuck and I have not seen, you assume we haven't seen that you think we should see. Best movie, best overlooked movie of all time. We're always looking for good suggestions. Give it up in an email and send it to stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.