This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Hey, and welcome to the short stuff, Josh, Chuck.

Cherry sitting in for Dave.

So this is Short Stuff.

Chuck, I have a question for you.

Are you cracking your knuckles right now?

I am. Did you hear that?

Yeah. That wasn't like a foldy effect?

No, I was cracking my knuckles. I'm a knuckle cracker. I don't do it. I did it a lot when I was a kid.

But I still do it some.

This is what my knuckles sound like when I crack them.

Okay. some. This is what my knuckles sound like when I crack them. That's it.

Yeah, I can't do it again because I have to wait 20 to 30 minutes for the air bubbles to come back and cavitate once more.

Yeah, well, we'll tell everybody what's going on here. I know there was a lot of, you know, when you were young, everyone was like, it'll give you arthritis, and it's your bones grinding together, and that's what cracking your knuckles is, and that can't be good for you. Yes. If your bones ground together, you would not be able to think of anything else, but your bones grinding together because you would be in so much pain that you would know your bones are grinding together. That's not what cracking your knuckles is. It turns out instead it has everything to do with the space and the area around where your bones come together, your bones don't actually come together.

That's right. Where there's a joint, that is where two bones meet, but they're separate,

and they're held together by ligaments and connective tissues and all that stuff. But there's also

some very other key ingredient in there. It's called synovial fluid. It's a thick, clear

liquid that kind of encases that area, right? Yeah. It's thick. It tastes just like orange crush,

surprisingly. And when you, when you pop your knuckle, what you're doing is stretching or bending

the ligaments and connective tissues and the synovial fluid there too, right?

So when you do that, that capsule is what it's called, the connective tissue capsule that includes the synovial fluid.

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