Stuff You Should Know

Psst. You want to know how governments and corporations get the drop on one another? The frontline of intelligence is populated by spies. Learn about how spies get and transfer information (and why they do it) in this episode of Stuff You Should Know.

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Over the last 400 million years, the day has grown longer by two full hours thanks to a slowing of the rotation of the Earth on its axis. While it will be a very long time before it stops spinning altogether, it never hurts to plan. Listen to Chuck and Josh discuss what a still Earth would look like.

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You know the Beach Boys and you've seen those Hang Ten shirts with the little feet emblem, but there's a lot more to surfing than appears on pop culture's surface. From learning how to pop up on the board to the physics of how waves form and break to the Sport of Kings' Hawai'ian origin, learn all about surfing with Chuck and Josh.

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As is usual for SYSK, Josh and Chuck go over some, but not all, of the entries in this list of ten common myths about the brain. While it lives there in your noggin you don't really have much of a grasp on your brain and how it works. You think you do, but you don't.

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It was only since 1958 that the Jet Age began, and jet lag became a real condition. Also known as desynchronosis, jet lag can lead to all manner of ailments, from sleeplessness to irritability to diabetes and cancer. Learn about how the body's natural clock runs normally and what happens when it gets out of whack when we cross time zones quickly.

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It began with old-timey guys dropping dry ice on clouds. Since then weather modification was used to keep the 2008 opening ceremonies dry and flood the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but does it work? Learn about weather control plans, diabolical or otherwise.

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You use it every day to overcome your lower self (which wants you to eat cake until your vision blurs) in pursuit of the goals of your higher self (which wants you to not develop Type-II diabetes). Yet it was only in the 1990s that researchers began to understand what makes our willpower and how it behaves.

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We're not so far off from being able to power our cars using beer and banana peels, like Doc in Back to the Future. Rather than solving the energy crisis with Mr. Fusion, though, we'll be taking advantage of a technique that's been in use for hundreds of years: creating syngas through pyrolysis.

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Only 161,00 metric tons of gold has been mined in the entire history of the world. Considering about 85 percent of the precious mineral is recycled, there's a chance your jewelry may once have been part of an Incan headdress or Mycenaean face mask. Learn the ins and outs of this metal that humans have killed over for millennia.

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They get blown up, shot, drowned and thrown out of windows on the silver screen - and we don't even know their names. Stuntpeople are the unsung heroes of the movie industry. Learn the ins and outs of the stunt world and how one becomes a stunt person.

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