Short Stuff: Korean Fan Death

# Summary

This episode of Stuff You Should Know dives into fan death, a widespread belief in Korea that sleeping with an electric fan on in your room can actually kill you—a superstition so ingrained that fan manufacturers put warnings on their products and the government has issued official warnings about it. Josh and Chuck explore the bizarre origins of this belief, which mysteriously appeared in the 1970s after fans had been safely used in Korea since 1900, and walk through the various wild theories Koreans have proposed to explain how fans supposedly cause death, from dehydration to oxygen mutation to hypothermia. They also examine the scientific evidence (or lack thereof) and why this uniquely Korean phenomenon doesn't exist anywhere else in the world, suggesting it's pure folklore that's managed to maintain an iron grip on the culture for decades.