Stuff You Should Know is one of the most popular podcasts in the world, being downloaded millions of times each month. It was founded by Josh Clark and Charles W. “Chuck” Bryant, who first met while working as senior editors at HowStuffWorks.com. A number of other types of media, including TV shows and books, have been spun off by the podcast. Born March 15, 1971, Josh grew up in Georgia and studied history and anthropology at the University of Georgia.
As a child, he was an avid reader of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, as mentioned in many podcasts. He is also a fan of The Simpsons, Firefly, Dollywood, Quentin Tarantino, and Pavement. Bryant grew up in DeKalb County, Georgia but his family lived in “rural Mississippi since the dawn of time,”[42] as well as Tennessee. He is the author of six screenplays and once appeared on the cover of Guideposts magazine. As a self-described “crazy animal person,” he has multiple pets and plays the guitar in an “old man band,” called “El Cheapo”.
The podcast was launched on April 17, 2008, with Clark as the solo host. Bryant made his debut a month later on May 13, 2008. On October 26, 2017, Stuff You Should Know released its 1000th episode. Their 420th episode was on medical marijuana, although this was reportedly a coincidence. The End of the World with Josh Clark and Ryan Bryant is a 10-episode series that discusses what dangers lie in humanity’s future.
The podcast has been described as the “heart and soul of the operation” with the “well researched” episodes covering a variety of topics from “science, history, urban legends, and pop culture, with the occasional conspiracy theory thrown in for good measure”. There is one episode on animal detectives that they hope will never be published. Listener mail debuted on November 25, 2008, in the episode “How Albert Einstein’s Brain Worked”. The first time it was known as “Listener Mail” was on January 8, 2009, in an episode inspired by a listener’s email. During the Listener Mail portion of the podcast on April 11, 2013, a new jingle for the show was introduced. It was written and recorded by Rusty Matyas of Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada, a musician and fan.
Stuff You Should Know also has a YouTube channel, but stopped updating it regularly in 2017. In 2009, Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant began a “short-lived” webcast. A full-length podcast and TV show premiered on January 19, 2013, on the Science Channel. The shows were directed by L.C. Crowley with a theme song composed by The Henry Clay People.
The podcast was canceled after the first season “due to poor ratings”,[86] although each episode is made available for purchase on iTunes and Google Play. A Stuff You Should Know team had raised $150,000 by the middle of 2010 and more than $2.75 million by November 2014. In 2009 they challenged Stephen Colbert to see whose team could raise $100,000 first. On July 7, 2021, Hasbro released a special edition of Trivial Pursuit: The Stuff You Should Know Edition. The game is based on episodes from the podcast and contains categories of History, Pop Culture, Myths, Legends, & Conspiracies, Science & Tech, Humans, and SYSK Selects.
The first player gaining each one of the 6 category tokens wins. The podcast won the 2016 Webby Award for “People’s Voice” and was an Honoree for “Best Host” at the 2017 Webby Awards. After two months, their Facebook page had over 10,000 likes, and as of September 2015, it had more than 750,000. One reviewer said of it: “It is not fun to listen to”.
Random Citizen 