Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, Chuck Bryant, Chuck, Chuck. That's going.
Speaker 1: You can just call me Nikola really okay? How about
Speaker 1: your Chuck? Yes, all right, Chuck? Good God, I'm good.
Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm I'm much better than how you asked
Speaker 1: me twenty nights ago when I'm recorded, Yes podcast, No,
Speaker 1: that was that was two days three two days from
Speaker 1: now right. Yeah, it's magic. It is magic. We'll have
Speaker 1: to reveal our secret one day like some sort of
Speaker 1: we could dress up like Siegfried and Roy I get
Speaker 1: there and tell everybody. Yeah, okay, I owe it to Jerry.
Speaker 1: Jerry is always just the white Tiger. Yeah, yeah, nice
Speaker 1: and Jerry. Chuck. I have a trivia question for you, beautiful, Okay,
Speaker 1: hit me. Why are the Los Angeles Dodgers named the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Dodgers? Okay, Chuck, I know the answer. Do
Speaker 1: you want me to say? What do you want to say?
Speaker 1: I want you to say. I just asked you a
Speaker 1: question because when they were in Brooklyn the original spot.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of train trolley cars in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: at the time that had really dangerous electrical wiring that
Speaker 1: operated them, and people would dodge these electrical lines and
Speaker 1: these train cars, and so they called them the Brooklyn
Speaker 1: Trolley Dodgers initially, and then that shortened to the Brooklyn Dodgers,
Speaker 1: and then they o' mount the O'Malley family broke the
Speaker 1: hearts of Brooklyn and moved them too. L A, I
Speaker 1: can't believe that still, I know who does that? H
Speaker 1: Did you see a documentary HBO about the Brooklyn Dodgers
Speaker 1: so good? No, it was it. Yeah, I mean there
Speaker 1: are people in Brooklyn today that have not watched the
Speaker 1: baseball game since the Brooklyn Dodgers moved their their hearts
Speaker 1: were broken so badly. Yeah wow, and uh wow, rip
Speaker 1: the heart out of Brooklyn. But actually it wasn't. People
Speaker 1: might right in and there's been some follow up and
Speaker 1: O'Malley really tried as hardest to keep the team there,
Speaker 1: and there were some politics involved that greedy Sandy kofax Y. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but off topic a little bit, but not really not really,
Speaker 1: because you can make a case that it was um
Speaker 1: Thomas Alva Edison, who gave the Brooklyn Dodgers their name.
Speaker 1: Bring it Home, Baby, Okay, I will so. By the
Speaker 1: time the Dodgers were formed in the eighteen eighties, right, um,
Speaker 1: Edison had basically lit up parts of New York with
Speaker 1: his incandescent light bulb. Big, big innovation. It was huge, man.
Speaker 1: I mean imagine going from like gaslight to electricity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I bet it blew people's minds back then.
Speaker 1: I imagine so, especially when they touched one of those
Speaker 1: trolley lines. Sure so, okay. Edison was a visionary, a genius,
Speaker 1: one can make the case um, and an innovator, and
Speaker 1: he came up with what we know of as the
Speaker 1: modern harnessing of electricity, which I should probably point out
Speaker 1: electricity is not energy, it's an energy carrier. Direct current
Speaker 1: is what he was his big thing, right. Direct current
Speaker 1: is basically it is, well not basically, it's where electricity.
Speaker 1: The electric charge is constant. It never changes. So if
Speaker 1: you look directional, it is, and if you look at
Speaker 1: it it's like a line. It's just a straight line.
Speaker 1: And Edison was pretty happy with his direct current inventions.
Speaker 1: The problem is is that you lose a lot of
Speaker 1: it to waste heat over long distances. Yeah. Well basically
Speaker 1: you can't really transport it over super long distances they
Speaker 1: found out, right, Okay, So that was kind of the
Speaker 1: drawback to it. Other than that it was enormous. He
Speaker 1: lit up New York and arguably created um what we
Speaker 1: know of today is light. Right, But there was another
Speaker 1: way of looking at things, and that is the alternating current.
Speaker 1: So Edison was super, super super married to direct current.
Speaker 1: He just saw it. I think I read a quote
Speaker 1: of a river flowing gently to the sea. That's how
Speaker 1: we characterized direct current. That will kill you if you
Speaker 1: touch it, yeah, big time. Uh. And alternating current is
Speaker 1: if you instead of that straight line of a charge
Speaker 1: um or flow of electricity from one pole to the other,
Speaker 1: I think negative, depositive, all always. Alternating current looks like
Speaker 1: a sign wave, right, So it has a wavelength and
Speaker 1: it actually goes back and forth from one pole to another,
Speaker 1: which is why it's called alternating. And these days it
Speaker 1: does so at about sixty cycles per second, so it
Speaker 1: changes direction sixty times in a second, and it's very
Speaker 1: steady and reliable. And actually in those days too, I
Speaker 1: think it's the same yeah, which is one of the
Speaker 1: cool things. Right. So here's the thing we're talking about
Speaker 1: electricity here. I think a lot of people overlook is
Speaker 1: that Edison was also quite a showman and great businessman,
Speaker 1: very very much so, as much as much of a
Speaker 1: great businessman as a genius, right, But he was also
Speaker 1: very stubborn, and he didn't he didn't he didn't think
Speaker 1: there was any way to improve or any need to
Speaker 1: improve upon direct current. There's another guy whose name people
Speaker 1: might be familiar with. His name is Nicola Tesla. Not
Speaker 1: a great businessman, in fact, a very poor businessman. Evidently
Speaker 1: he was. Actually he spent some time after he became
Speaker 1: a great inventor digging ditches just to try to make
Speaker 1: ends meet. Apparently he didn't. He did file for a
Speaker 1: lot of patents, but apparently he didn't do that nearly
Speaker 1: enough because a lot of his stuff was kind of
Speaker 1: stolen and kind of you know, nicked from. So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: we've got Edison on one side with d C, and
Speaker 1: we have Tesla on the other side with a C.
Speaker 1: That sounds like, you know, a couple of a couple
Speaker 1: of nerds going at it, but really these two guys
Speaker 1: engaged in this very very public rumble and based gleet
Speaker 1: stake was the infrastructure of the United States and the
Speaker 1: in the world exactly, this huge, huge, massive um competition. Sure,
Speaker 1: that just took place, and there was some crazy stuff
Speaker 1: that went that that came out of it, Lots of electrocutions,
Speaker 1: lots of nefariousness, And we're not going to tell you
Speaker 1: who won yet because a lot of people don't necessarily
Speaker 1: know what kind of electricity we use more than the
Speaker 1: other d C or a C. So we're just gonna
Speaker 1: pay this out. Baby. This is just interesting. So yeah,
Speaker 1: Nicola Tesla he was Austrian born and uh he arrived
Speaker 1: in the United States in four when he was just
Speaker 1: a young lad of twenty eight and a merror. Three
Speaker 1: years later, after being in the United States, he filed
Speaker 1: for a series of patents that basically outlined what you
Speaker 1: would need to make the alternating current work. So he
Speaker 1: made pretty quick work when he came over here to
Speaker 1: the States, right he did. Did you ever see the
Speaker 1: Prestige movie? I've heard David Bowie played Tesla in that movie? Nice? Yeah,
Speaker 1: very cool. Did he do a good job like Labyrinth
Speaker 1: quality job? Oh? Better? I thought so? All right, but um,
Speaker 1: just a little sidebar if you're interested in that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Um. But yeah, you know, after reading this
Speaker 1: and then finding out that Tesla actually may have sort
Speaker 1: of invented the radio, even though Marconi gets credit for that,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that Tesla did. He's sort
Speaker 1: of the unsung inventor when you kind of look at
Speaker 1: all these little things. Yeah, and again, like you made
Speaker 1: the point, I think you have to be a really
Speaker 1: good self promoter time as much an innovator, Especially if
Speaker 1: you are an innovator, you need to be a self promoter.
Speaker 1: You get lost out in the in the annals of history,
Speaker 1: especially back then. Right, So, Chuck, let's talk about this.
Speaker 1: She said that he came to the States from Austria
Speaker 1: at the age of twenty eight and filed some really
Speaker 1: important patents early on. Uh and they were for his
Speaker 1: alternating current system. Right. Here's the huge advantage of alternating current.
Speaker 1: We were talking about how d C is a constant,
Speaker 1: steady output of electricity. Uh. An alternating current is all
Speaker 1: over the place, but it's still it's also a steady
Speaker 1: output of power. The thing is is because the because
Speaker 1: DC doesn't alternate, UH, it loses a lot of energy
Speaker 1: to heat and so it's not good for transporting it
Speaker 1: long distances. Right, So Tesla came up with these, uh,
Speaker 1: these patents for the generation of an alternating current and
Speaker 1: a transformer. Right, you've heard of these and you probably
Speaker 1: don't know what they are. Well, here this is the
Speaker 1: key to alternating current. Absolutely. What what you do is
Speaker 1: you generate this electricity and you run it through a
Speaker 1: transformer and with very little power loss. Right, you can
Speaker 1: step it up to a tremendous voltage. We'll step it
Speaker 1: down in this case. Well, no, you step it up
Speaker 1: first for a long distance travel, so you're using you're
Speaker 1: using less power to generate it, right, But then you
Speaker 1: run it through this transformer and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: say a thousand volts goes to like five hundred thousand volts.
Speaker 1: So you can shoot that thing amazingly long distances, uh,
Speaker 1: without losing very much of the electricity involved in it.
Speaker 1: And then when it gets to say a neighborhood, after
Speaker 1: passing through you know, the desert or nowhere very dangerously,
Speaker 1: when it gets to a neighborhood, it goes through another
Speaker 1: transformer and then it gets stepped down. That's what I
Speaker 1: was thinking about. And so since you've lost very little
Speaker 1: and it's being stepped down easily without much powerless to
Speaker 1: this transformer, you can supply tons of homes with a
Speaker 1: single line like a d volts I think is what
Speaker 1: you end up using out of let's say a million volts.
Speaker 1: It's on the line right sure, And it can also
Speaker 1: be when it's stepped up voltage wise, it can be
Speaker 1: stepped down or it is inevitably stepped down in amplitude,
Speaker 1: which means that it requires less of a physically smaller
Speaker 1: line of copper, which also says on costs because you know,
Speaker 1: you remember when the economic fallout was going on and
Speaker 1: people are steeling copper out of other people's cars and
Speaker 1: air conditioners because it was valuable. It's expensive stuff, especially
Speaker 1: if you're talking about creating the infrastructure of an entire country.
Speaker 1: So Tesla comes up with these patents and uh, pretty
Speaker 1: much right then, and there changes everything again except for
Speaker 1: the self promotion part, right right, he did, But he
Speaker 1: did his best work when he was able to hook
Speaker 1: up with people that were very good businessman. Who did
Speaker 1: you back him? Who did he hook up with? That
Speaker 1: really changed everything? So Josh, you're talking about George Westinghouse yes,
Speaker 1: And I know you've heard of the Westinghouse company, which
Speaker 1: is probably means he did a pretty good job if
Speaker 1: you still know that name. Uh. He had an electric company,
Speaker 1: George did, and it was struggling to work out some
Speaker 1: details of a successful A C system, And then he
Speaker 1: heard about this famous lecture that Tesla gave in so
Speaker 1: he said, you know, we should get this guy. And
Speaker 1: Tesla had a couple of financial backers named Peck and Brown,
Speaker 1: so they approached Westinghouse about commercializing Tesla's work. And at
Speaker 1: the time he said, all right, sounds like a great idea.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you guys rand and cash and another
Speaker 1: fifty thousand in notes, and some royalties for the electricity
Speaker 1: that we create, right well, two and fifty cents for
Speaker 1: every horsepower that was sold through his invention by Westinghouse. Well,
Speaker 1: I have a little modern conversion for you. Let's hear
Speaker 1: that seventy five dollars back then would be one point
Speaker 1: eight million dollars today. Holy count. And that's not even
Speaker 1: counting the royalties. So this is a lot of dough,
Speaker 1: it is. So thankfully, with Peck and Brown's help hooked
Speaker 1: him up with Westinghouse. Now Tesla has a viable situation
Speaker 1: going on here, and you can actually compete with Edison,
Speaker 1: his nemesis. He worked for Edison. He did that was awesome.
Speaker 1: He he went and worked for Edison. And there's a
Speaker 1: there's legend that he went to Edison and said, look,
Speaker 1: I've got this alternating current ideas together and Edison did
Speaker 1: not want to hear it. Yeah, he was very, like
Speaker 1: you said, very stubborn. He was like, no DC, buddy,
Speaker 1: go make the DC better, which he you know, he
Speaker 1: worked on that, right. So actually, yeah, the the apparently
Speaker 1: Tesla eventually got um so tired of Edison and his
Speaker 1: um mule headedness. Uh that he just said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm going off on my own. And I think that's
Speaker 1: when he started digging ditches, right, That's when he struggled
Speaker 1: before he eventually hooked up with Peck and Brown to
Speaker 1: give him some backing. Right, So that brings us back
Speaker 1: up to the current time. Well not current is in now,
Speaker 1: but current back then and uh, they he battled. You know,
Speaker 1: Tesla sounds kind of a little stubborn guy too. Exeused
Speaker 1: to battle with the Westinghouse guys on the best way
Speaker 1: to do this and eventually they settled on what we
Speaker 1: said before, which is a three phase sixty cycle current
Speaker 1: that we still used today. And you talked about that
Speaker 1: lecture that attracted um, some adherence to TESLA, including Westinghouse, right, Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: well it's he started to get more and more publicity
Speaker 1: just because he had such a good idea despite his
Speaker 1: terrible self promotion, right and showmanship was lot of that involved.
Speaker 1: He his idea was so good and it was just
Speaker 1: so clearly superior to d C in the minds of
Speaker 1: some people that um, he couldn't help but get publicity.
Speaker 1: So as this started to develop, Uh, Edison engaged in
Speaker 1: an all out public war. Well, he got a little nervous,
Speaker 1: which is why he engaged in the war. In when
Speaker 1: this thing was kind of picking up steam and they
Speaker 1: were getting the sixty cycle thing worked out, That's when
Speaker 1: Edison was like, So, what Edison decided to do was
Speaker 1: to proved everybody the alternating current is just dangerous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was his main focus, and he did sope by
Speaker 1: performing publicly executions on dogs, horses, and eventually he crescendoed
Speaker 1: by electrocuting to death an elephant named Topsy in public.
Speaker 1: He did that's pretty funny. There's nothing funnier than publicly
Speaker 1: electrocuting an elephant. Right, but um it gets it turns
Speaker 1: a little grim. All right? Have you heard of William Kemmler? Well,
Speaker 1: I thought it was already Graham. But did you you
Speaker 1: got it tough enough, Nancy um Way. William Kemler was
Speaker 1: a convicted acts murderer. I looked him up, actually as
Speaker 1: a convicted hatchet murderer, um who killed his girlfriend and
Speaker 1: then very calmly went next door and said, I just
Speaker 1: killed my girlfriend. But a boom about it being not
Speaker 1: much of a trial. Later he was sentenced to death.
Speaker 1: The thing about Kemmler was he was a going to
Speaker 1: be the first person in New York and, as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, the first person in the United
Speaker 1: States who would be electrocuted to death rather than hung.
Speaker 1: This is news to me. They I did some extra research.
Speaker 1: I heard electrocution. I'm like, oh, I gotta look more
Speaker 1: into this. Um. So Kemmler is going to be the
Speaker 1: first person in the electric chair, and he has on
Speaker 1: August six, ninety has this date with destiny and um
Speaker 1: Tesla's invention. Apparently they hadn't decided which way to go.
Speaker 1: Should it be decent, he should be a C. And
Speaker 1: this guy who also used to publicly electrocute animals on
Speaker 1: behalf of Edison, managed to finagle a used old Westinghouse
Speaker 1: a C generator uh to be used to get rid
Speaker 1: of Kembler. And the execution was very public and it
Speaker 1: was very horrible. Apparently there were twenty five witnesses. Most
Speaker 1: of them vomited. At least one fainted. I think one
Speaker 1: of the physicians that were attending that was attending to
Speaker 1: the guy ran out of the room couldn't watch. They
Speaker 1: put two thousand volts of juice to the guy for
Speaker 1: I think like ten twelve seconds. He just turned totally rigid,
Speaker 1: apparently punctured his finger with his fingernails. It was bad, right,
Speaker 1: And then they stopped and the doctors went over and
Speaker 1: looked at him, and he started breathing again, and they
Speaker 1: shouted to throw the juice back on, and they had
Speaker 1: to kill this guy because he was obviously in excruciating pain.
Speaker 1: So he did it again, and they left it on
Speaker 1: for a minute, and apparently the generator didn't stop generating
Speaker 1: more and more voltage, so they have no idea how
Speaker 1: much they passed through this guy apparently sweat came out
Speaker 1: of his pores or um, blood came out of his
Speaker 1: pores like sweat. Uh. He started to burn and then finally,
Speaker 1: after a minute they turned it off. The long shot
Speaker 1: of this is that it came out that this was
Speaker 1: an a c generator I'll be an old beat up
Speaker 1: one that shouldn't have been used in the first place.
Speaker 1: And William Kemmler was a an actual casualty, very brutal
Speaker 1: casualty in the war between Edison and um Tesla. Well,
Speaker 1: he should have thought about that before he took the
Speaker 1: hatchet to the co frience. You know, I'll bet he
Speaker 1: would have thought twice had he known what his fate
Speaker 1: was going to be. This would have had the opposite
Speaker 1: effect on me. Edison was saying, look how dangerous this is.
Speaker 1: If I would have seen that, I always said, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's the electricity that I want supplying power to my house,
Speaker 1: the kind that makes blood come out of your ports. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean, if you can do that, I can
Speaker 1: probably you know, light up your room. Right. Well, it's
Speaker 1: certainly lit up William Kemmler. So during the public war,
Speaker 1: a very public war. Now Edison is uh is sweating
Speaker 1: it and then in uh Westinghouse won the bid to
Speaker 1: light up the Chicago World's Fair, which was the Colombian Exposition,
Speaker 1: a big, big deal and a big blow to Edison.
Speaker 1: He did, and you know how we how we won
Speaker 1: the bid. He under key undercut g E had put
Speaker 1: in a bid for a million dollars, which if seventy
Speaker 1: five thousand was one point eight million, imagine how much
Speaker 1: a million dollars was back then. That was ge s
Speaker 1: bid And by this time ge he G had assumed
Speaker 1: um Edison's company, Edison General Electric I think is what
Speaker 1: it was called, so he was with G. Now they
Speaker 1: put in a million dollar bid. Most of it was
Speaker 1: to cover the copper wire because remember to get copper
Speaker 1: to get electricity over long distances using d C, the
Speaker 1: copper wire has to be big. You have to keep
Speaker 1: the amps up to keep the voltage up, so you
Speaker 1: lose less up the far end. Right. So just by
Speaker 1: using less copper that alone, Um Wessing else was able
Speaker 1: to put in a bit of half a million, undercut
Speaker 1: him by half. So they got the rights of the
Speaker 1: Colombian Exposition, which was big. This was the turning point
Speaker 1: right here, Yeah, I mean the rest literally, as they say,
Speaker 1: is history because that uh, you know, Grover Cleveland flipped
Speaker 1: the switch and a hundred thousand lightbulbs lit up, and
Speaker 1: everyone said, boy, a C might be the way to
Speaker 1: go here. That was it. Yeah, it was cheaper, it worked,
Speaker 1: and also apparently all over the fair were Tesla's inventions
Speaker 1: on display. So I think twenty seven million people visited
Speaker 1: the Chicago World's Fair that year, and every single one
Speaker 1: of them got to witness alternating current, which ultimately won.
Speaker 1: And even without the World's Fair, I mean that really
Speaker 1: punctuated it. But just because it was efficient and economical,
Speaker 1: I mean, do you know how much you pay for
Speaker 1: a kilowatt hour of electricity? Now? Not much, No, it's
Speaker 1: like ten cents tops uh and there's no telling how
Speaker 1: much it would be with DC uh plus. Also I
Speaker 1: was thinking about this, it's you could make the argument
Speaker 1: that uh, Tesla has saved tons of lives from electrical
Speaker 1: accidents that never took place, because if you have DC,
Speaker 1: you're not using transformers, you're not stepping it up or down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of heat and you can't just send
Speaker 1: five thousand volts into your electrical outlet, you know how
Speaker 1: many people die. If we've just gone with d C,
Speaker 1: it would have never happened. Maybe maybe not, would have
Speaker 1: never happened. So a few years after that, Westinghouse built
Speaker 1: a hydro electric plant at Niagara Falls, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, buffalo had power. And then that when in
Speaker 1: New York, New York City were just showing off by
Speaker 1: this time, Yeah, and then dude, it was all over.
Speaker 1: But don't don't feel too bad for Edison, because we
Speaker 1: still use d C. We use both. We use DC
Speaker 1: in car batteries and uh, locomotives, some types of motors
Speaker 1: use d C, so it's not I would call those
Speaker 1: consolation prizes. Yeah, sort of the booby prize. And you
Speaker 1: put a C in DC together and you have one
Speaker 1: of the best rock bands in history. So, Chuck Um,
Speaker 1: you want to talk a little more about Tesla. Did
Speaker 1: you know that he also had a vision He never
Speaker 1: managed to do it, but he had a vision of
Speaker 1: um wireless. Yeah, the wireless that we enjoyed now he
Speaker 1: was thinking about in like eighteen ninety. Yeah, Josh, he
Speaker 1: he met with JP Morgan, who was, as you know,
Speaker 1: one of the most powerful men on earth at the time,
Speaker 1: and uh, he said basically envision a world system of
Speaker 1: wireless communications to relate telephone messages across the ocean. Not
Speaker 1: just telephone, I think music as well, broadcast news, music
Speaker 1: and stock market reports and private messages, exactly what we're
Speaker 1: doing now. Tesla, Yeah, he was where it's at. Sure,
Speaker 1: he he basically just didn't have enough money. I think
Speaker 1: he he probably could have done it had he had
Speaker 1: enough money. He was working on a tower, and uh,
Speaker 1: it was very clear that he needed a lot more
Speaker 1: than the hundred and fifty thousand. Morgan kicked him, and
Speaker 1: Morgan kind of lost interest. And it was Marconi actually
Speaker 1: who put the nail in that wireless coffin, because he
Speaker 1: came up with the telegraph. It's like telegraph and the radio,
Speaker 1: which we already said. Tesla kind of did a lot
Speaker 1: of work on the radio too. Yeah, Apparently Tesla pointed
Speaker 1: out that um marc Coni used no less than fifteen
Speaker 1: um Tesla patents to create that wireless transmission of the
Speaker 1: s that made him so famous. Right. My impression of
Speaker 1: Tesla is, uh that he was just this uber genius
Speaker 1: who was so much into his own genius work that
Speaker 1: he didn't understand that it required self promotion and business
Speaker 1: savvy and showmanship. And he didn't care about that stuff.
Speaker 1: So that's why he died alone in New York, said stuff, Chuck.
Speaker 1: It is not quite as sad as the fate of
Speaker 1: Topsy the Elephant or William Kemmler, but still very sad.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that was our awkward walk through the life
Speaker 1: of Nikola Tesla. Did we ever say, um, well, yeah
Speaker 1: he went out. Well I guess we implied it. But
Speaker 1: yet today, even still the power stations that generate power
Speaker 1: do them on the sixty cycle process. But everyone, if
Speaker 1: you ask your comment person on the street who invented electricity,
Speaker 1: they would say, oh, Edison. And did you also know
Speaker 1: that the light bulbs, the incandescent light bulbs that he created,
Speaker 1: were inefficient? I know, I know what a heck? Al right,
Speaker 1: so that's a Tesla and Edison can rock? We have
Speaker 1: speaking of rock, the band Tesla rock. If we really
Speaker 1: didn't want to go there, remember them? Yeah they didn't rose? Okay,
Speaker 1: so Chuck, we just did that. Do you think it's
Speaker 1: time for a listener mail? Please? God, yea, please, indeed,
Speaker 1: thank you, So Josh, I'm just gonna call this dreamy
Speaker 1: listener mail and it's another dream. And uh, just let
Speaker 1: me tell folks, I'm not getting into this. Please don't
Speaker 1: start sending me all your dreams, and certainly don't send
Speaker 1: him in haikou form. But this is this is a
Speaker 1: good one. This is sent to us from Ruth from England.
Speaker 1: And Ruth was backpacking around the United States in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight. Oh I know where Ruth changed close and
Speaker 1: she said, can grats on your country, by the way,
Speaker 1: which was kind of funny. We're very proud of it.
Speaker 1: We're going to take your country as well. And she
Speaker 1: actually came through Atlanta with her friends and she this
Speaker 1: is kind of funny. She mistakenly thought they were going
Speaker 1: to Atlantic City. And so if you happen to see
Speaker 1: three very confused English girls in mid September carrying backpacks
Speaker 1: looking for casinos, that was us. They ended up at
Speaker 1: the video poker machines in the Big h G. Right,
Speaker 1: we should introduce Ruth to the Internet, where she could
Speaker 1: have found out that she was about a thousand miles
Speaker 1: off course. So Ruth writes in and says, uh, she
Speaker 1: had this dream when she was in her mid twenties,
Speaker 1: and here it is. Um I was a woman in
Speaker 1: my mid twenties with a very maternal and passive attitude
Speaker 1: on the holiday on some kind of island resort as
Speaker 1: a dream war on the atmosphere, and this resort began
Speaker 1: to change. The reps became increasingly belligerent and some of
Speaker 1: the holiday goers became edgy. Then followed a very detailed
Speaker 1: and structured experience of the island becoming a prison state.
Speaker 1: Apparent to my mind is a microcosm of an apoca
Speaker 1: liptic world. She became involved in a secret resistance movement
Speaker 1: led by a group of African Americans and they were
Speaker 1: There were many interpersonal stories which I won't bore you
Speaker 1: with now, so she wrote it down in her travel diary.
Speaker 1: This is where it gets interested. She wrote it down
Speaker 1: in her diary and she told about you know, told
Speaker 1: this to a lot of different people because it's such
Speaker 1: a cool dream over the years, and when she returned
Speaker 1: to England, I guess over her travels. She returned to England,
Speaker 1: she picked up a newspaper, flipped to the art section
Speaker 1: and there was a Books of the Past column space
Speaker 1: devoted to rediscovering books that have gone out of publication,
Speaker 1: and there was an exact synopsis of her dream, So
Speaker 1: she jumped about a book she'd read before. Now she
Speaker 1: had never read it. She uh, this was the book
Speaker 1: was written by an Australian woman eighty years ago, was
Speaker 1: out of publication for decades. It was not even popular
Speaker 1: at a time, and she had never read it. So
Speaker 1: she dreamt about an eighty year old, unpopular novel she
Speaker 1: had never read. Pretty cool. It was pretty cool. So
Speaker 1: that is from Ruth. She says. You don't have to
Speaker 1: read this out, but it's a little late for that, Ruth.
Speaker 1: We did anyway. And what you're talking about with her
Speaker 1: changing clothes, she says that when she went to the
Speaker 1: Atlanta aquarium, she said, please say thank you to the
Speaker 1: troop of schoolgirls who had to see us wash, brush
Speaker 1: our teeth and change our clothes in the bathroom and
Speaker 1: the aquariums. So Ruth thinks that Atlanta's Atlantic City, Chuck
Speaker 1: and I founded America, and that we know the girl
Speaker 1: scouts that saw her change in the bathroom, right, And
Speaker 1: I like yeah, And that guess she's possessed by the
Speaker 1: some eighty year old off demon of an eighty year
Speaker 1: old listroain rights. Ruth, hats off to you if you're
Speaker 1: ever in town again. Look us up, we'll go out
Speaker 1: and get a plank together. You're buying Ruth If you
Speaker 1: want to buy Chucking Me a pint. Yeah, you can
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