Nashville, Tenn. – “If you want to know, then you’re in luck/just listen up to Josh and Chuck,” sings a barbershop quartet commercial break bumper most likely stuck in your head after a morning shower, if you’re a fan. If you don’t know, though, then you’re still in luck because one of the most scattered in choice of topics, yet consistently beneficial research podcasts ever to podcast, Stuff You Should Know, will be at Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center, September 6, 2023, and Josh and Chuck are the type of guys who give you the benefit of the doubt you’ve had a shower today.

Hosted by this duo of down-to-earth, well-read, All-American research writers with the civic excellence to understandably and freely share mind blowing, life enhancing stretches of worldly knowledge on a consistent, quad-weekly basis, Josh Clark and Charles W. “Chuck” Bryant tell you about things like (picking a random season out of 16 seasons….), 2018’s “What’s the deal with Accents?,” “The Baffling Case of the Body on Somerton Beach,” “How Giraffes Work,” and these guys are biiiiig fans of The Simpsons, so there’s a two-parter, “Episode 999: The Simpsons Spectacular Part 1,” and “Episode 1,000: The Simpsons Spectacular Part 2,” where they’re hilariously giddy, nerding out about Matt Groening and company’s world. It’s great. They’ve been in the writer’s room and everything, and they’ll tell you all about it.

-Actually, if you do know this podcast, it’s understandable rattling off those episodes is kind of exciting.

Hold on… 2012’s “Pickpockets: Artists or Crooks,” and “10 Big Cases of Revenge” (I forgot “How Zero Works” is in that season, too!); 2008’s “Can People Really Get Hysterical Strength” (Yes, humans can do that stuff but we have an evolutionarily-evolved governor in our brains to protect us. Apes don’t. That’s why they can rip us apart with the strength of 30 men and we shouldn’t have them as pets.  When ours “unlocks” in high stress, or in a “protecting rage,” for example, either that car will lift or the bone in your arm will snap.  That’s just how that works throughout the world, according to Stuff You Should Know’s peer written and reviewed HowStuffWorks.com articles and their extensively referenced source lists accompanying every episode on their website, or attributed in the episode).

Recently, on July 20, 2023, there was “Magic Eye Illusions,” if anyone remembers the stereogram explosion in the 90’s.  To spoil that one, scientists dating back to the 50’s and further (like, 2^nd century, Roman astronomer, Ptolemy) have spent generations figuring out focus and depth perception of “two eyeballs that are spaced about 60-something millimeters apart. […] How in the world do we do that and come up solid focus on things?,” as they ask. 

It’s called stereopsis when our brain combines the two images. Binocular vision.

Somebody along the way figured out that stereopsis, combined with the human brain basically being an organizational, sense-making machine, when you look at a stereogram that’s designed to form a “three-dimensional picture” out of what looks like a digitized Jackson Pollack painting of random, tiny colored blotches, the brain subconsciously recognizes a pattern designers hide in the tiny blotches, just slightly off from one another in color, if not exactly matching, to reveal that pattern at a particular point in stereopsis  when the brain does it’s thing and recognizes it (why beginners are instructed move the pic slowly away from your nose until you catch it. To find that point).

The combination of both those human processes, stereopsis and your brain being an organization organ, catches your eyes focusing for depth perception at a particular, irregular feeling point in stereopsis when your brain finds the only thing it can organize out of such chaos. That’s wild and makes a man feel kind of punked on a deeply physiological level, but It’s awesome.  Mwahaha.

Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant break things down as naturally and warmly as anyone trying to teach something to a kid they’d just learned themselves, but more like, hey, kid, “This is How Miranda Rights Works,” then introducing so much history, science, and uses on/of any given subject. They make you laugh, wonder, talk about it with your friends and family, then seek more. Their friendship is solid, too, if people being good people together and like one another is something needed in your atmosphere, too.

In Podcast land (their studios are in Atlanta with producers Jeri “Jerome” Rowland, and guest producers Matt and Noel), Stuff You Should Know episodes air on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays with two full episodes (about an hour, each) on Tuesdays and Thursdays; a 10-15 minute, “Short Stuff” episode on Wednesdays; and then an “SYSK Select,” featuring a past episode on Saturdays. 

It’s a beautifully accessible continuing education for those who want to do so without any hassle, too, and they’ve been classy around the block a couple times when it comes to showing up at your local awesome theatre to take stage. This is just the first time they’ve come to Nashville.

When they tour, it’s usually ten or twenty dates a year broken into three or four regional visits at a time, as they can plan, performing in a lot of cool, smaller theatres across America that accompany intimate audiences, but nicely translates even at The Harris Theatre in Chicago level.

In these live show scenarios, Josh and Chuck usually show up at your local awesome theatre to take the stage and talk about one of their seemingly random topic they’ve extensively researched and produce a full, hour-long episode right there.  There’s a small chance Jeri would be there (you wouldn’t know, anyway), but a fat chance for Matt and Noel. They seem to go AWOL.

Time-wise, the live episodes are in front of a live audience who wouldn’t be there unless they’d love to be.  Bonuses, a Q&A after and a possibility they walk in the front door past the crowd lined up before the show.  It’s a pretty laid-back, couple hour outing to the Symphony Center, if you’re just wanting to chill out with no pressure to do much and watch a couple of guys who know stuff be cool in front of you.  It’s Stuff You Should Know, man. Hosted by Josh and Chuck.

“You can tweet to us at @SYSKPodcast. You can join us on Facebook.com/stuffyoushouldknow. You can send us an email at stuffpodcast@howstuffworks.com and as always, hang out with us on our on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com,” says Josh (since Chuck said “Search Bar”). They have a couple of past, solo podcast ventures of the past that are worthwhile if movies and/or macro-existential thought are your thing, Movie Crush w/ Chuck Bryant, and The End of The World with Josh Clark, found on Apple Podcasts.

Ticket and show information for Stuff You Should Know Podcast at Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville, TN, September 9, 2023 (show starts at 7:30pm), can be found at nashvillesymphony.org, as well as stuffyoushouldknow.com.

Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.  For more podcasts from iHeart radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.