Stuff You Should Know

Is retirement bad for your health? Well it certainly can be if you don't take steps to prevent it. Listen in to learn more about the "retirement curse."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The history of golf is a bit muddled, but once it was truly born in Scotland, it started the beginning of lifelong obsessions for people dumb enough to pick up a club and give it a try. Learn all about the early history of the most frustrating game ever invented.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s time to get jazzed up for some Earth science of the waterlogged variety. Join Chuck and Josh in this classic episode as they tour some of the most interesting ecosystems on the planet and learn why we need to stop destroying them post haste.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

3 Putt Bogey is a golf podcast hosted by Chuck Bryant and Adam Pranica, two mid handicappers who are just good enough to know exactly how bad they still are. The name says it all: one great shot, followed immediately by the kind of self-inflicted disaster only a mid-handicap golfer can produce. That's the whole sport, really, and this show lives in that gap. Every week, Chuck and Adam break down their most recent rounds, dig through the bag, and try to actually get better — which is harder than it sounds when social media serves up an endless, contradictory firehose of tips, drills, and gear you're told you absolutely need. They'll talk about what's actually working, what's total crap, and what happened when they tried it on the course anyway. Expect gear talk, course recaps, golf movies and video games, rules debates, questionable gambling picks, and a healthy amount of self-inflicted misery, all in service of two guys trying to shave a few strokes off their game and laugh about it along the way.See om

In today's episode, we detail the life and times of ettiquette queen Emily Post.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mabon is often called the Pagan Thanksgiving  but though it seems like it’s as ancient as Halloween, it’s actually only around 50 years old. But, pagan or not, it’s a great chance to really feel the fall and thank Mother Earth.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

No you’re no dreaming – go ahead, pinch yourself – we’ve finally made an episode on dreams! We’ve done episodes on lucid dreaming, night terrors, sleepwalking, sleep paralysis – basically everything but dreams themselves. Well, at long last here it is!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The advent of nuclear weapons and the Cold War kicked off a craze in the US for building rec rooms with foot-thick reinforced walls and outfitted with survival rations and board games. Would they work? Probably not. Find out (but not really) in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Throughout the history of the world, there have been many cases of what is known as collective hysteria - groups of people, usually young women, who all exhibit the same physical symptoms of non-existent conditions. Is it psychosomatic? Is it group think?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Seeing your near twin is probably pretty weird. But could there be a genetic commonality as well? You bet  there could!  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When the Mary Celeste was discovered floating and abandoned in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean one day in 1872, the legend of the ghost ship was born. Why did the Mary Celeste’s crew disappear? Was it pirates? Mutiny? UFOs? Well, probably not that last one.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Philadelphia Experiment is a bad movie from the 1980s, and also the conspiracy theory that refuses to die, despite virtually zero evidence of its occurrence. Learn all about this strange non-event in today's show.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dragons are like mermaids in that they're not real. And that's about where the comparison ends. Learn all about dragons today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Hotel Cecil in downtown Los Angeles has had no less than 16 unnatural deaths, from suicides to murders and everything in between. Listen in to the history of this decidedly creepy hotel. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1987, a very strange broadcast intrusion occurred in the city of Chicago. For just a couple of minutes, the odd TV character Max Headroom appeared onscreen in the middle of an episode of Dr. Who. He spoke in garbled tones, brandished a marital aid, and was spanked on the rear with a fly swatter by a person dressed in Annie Oakley garb. If this sounds weird, it is. It's the Max Headroom Incident.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1960 physicist Freeman Dyson suggested that in the hunt for alien life, we should search for evidence of massive engineering projects that encapsulate stars with solar arrays to harness their energy. Could we humans ever make one ourselves?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The famous blue people of Kentucky are no longer blue. But why were they like that in the first place?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mermaids aren't real. That much we know. But the history and lore of these magical and sometimes menacing creatures of the sea is pretty interesting stuff. Learn all about these half women/half fish today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

David Hahn was a kid who was really into science. So much that he built a nuclear reactor in his mother's potting shed. And it worked. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cancer is a terrible word in any language for at least two reasons: It’s incredibly difficult to get rid of once it grows in the body, and there’s a very good chance that you or someone close to you will be diagnosed with it. But hope is growing.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.