Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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. With me is Chuck Bryant
Speaker 1: with his beautiful juke brug. It's still beautiful. Yeah, So Chuck,
Speaker 1: how you doing? Uh? Well? So are you? I'm pretty good?
Speaker 1: I'm pretty good into everyone out there listening. If it
Speaker 1: sound like I'm talking a little fast, that is because
Speaker 1: Chuck literally has a stopwatch here to keep you from
Speaker 1: talking to what's in this podcast? I kid you not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in a cat of Mine tales. Yeah, we could very easily.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say we, I could very easily traps into
Speaker 1: I guess long windedness as a euphemism I should use yeah,
Speaker 1: Chuck says, yeah, he's his head um, and so to
Speaker 1: combat that, Chuck has the stopwatch. So, Chuck, let's talk
Speaker 1: about some innovations that we need and why look at
Speaker 1: you so proud? Uh? Yeah, Josh? You know there are
Speaker 1: the world is in trouble in some ways, and big
Speaker 1: innovations and big innovators come along and correct things and
Speaker 1: change all that and that's what we need, buddy, we
Speaker 1: can We've named three here, there are many more. Yeah, agreed,
Speaker 1: And what do you think about blogging? Yeah, and thank
Speaker 1: you for reminding me. I would like this is especially
Speaker 1: I would like to call out to the blog and
Speaker 1: get you folks on the Friday recap when this comes out,
Speaker 1: because we have only uh named three kind of pie
Speaker 1: in the sky innovations that could help the world, and
Speaker 1: there are many more. And I'd like to hear what
Speaker 1: people have to say to Chuck. So that's the call out.
Speaker 1: Nice Chuck, So you want to get started on this? Yes,
Speaker 1: you got your you got your stopwatch going? Yes, okay, alright,
Speaker 1: so Chuck, let's do teleportation. I wish we could, my goodness.
Speaker 1: So do I have you ever been on like a long,
Speaker 1: long road trip? Yeah? I like road trip. So so
Speaker 1: on the way right, on the way back, on the
Speaker 1: back is awful. Right. What if you could just drive
Speaker 1: to a place, say, you know, like a subway station,
Speaker 1: which is a good idea. Uh And instead of getting
Speaker 1: on a subway, you just go through some sort of
Speaker 1: teleportation portal, so at a teleportation station. Nice, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: should call it that. I think they will probably did
Speaker 1: you on this term spend around since oh wow, you
Speaker 1: did some extra extra research in Yes, an American writer
Speaker 1: and paranormal investigator named Charles Fort wrote it in his
Speaker 1: book Low for It's one of my heroes. You know
Speaker 1: that really yeah forty times. Well, he had a book
Speaker 1: called low within a post exclamation point at the end
Speaker 1: l O w or l O l okay, and apparently
Speaker 1: that's where he first used the word teleportation. Fantastic, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be awesome, and it's not exactly impossible, No,
Speaker 1: it's not. Thanks to the magic of quantum physics, we
Speaker 1: could conceivably teleport ourselves. Indeed, I guess the way that
Speaker 1: it's starting to look more and more is like we
Speaker 1: would be facts. Yeah, exactly. That's a good way to say.
Speaker 1: Instead of source, what what you're doing is you're recreating.
Speaker 1: You would be recreating every cell in your body and
Speaker 1: copying it, and that first edition would have to be destroyed. Though.
Speaker 1: This one of the keys, right, that is the key
Speaker 1: I didn't quite get to the bottom of y aside
Speaker 1: from you know, very rapidly overpopulating the earth. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I got the impression that as far as quantum mechanics goes,
Speaker 1: you would the original would have to be destroyed before
Speaker 1: transmission or as it was being scanned. And then basically
Speaker 1: it takes these particles and atoms and everything. It doesn't
Speaker 1: actually transport the atoms. This is this is the big distinction.
Speaker 1: Like all teleportation as far as science fiction goes, generally,
Speaker 1: UM has to do with actually physically moving the atoms
Speaker 1: through the air and then recreating them elsewhere. Uh. Much
Speaker 1: like images on television. Right, as you've seen Willy Wonka
Speaker 1: Chocolate factory, right, much like that. That's not the case.
Speaker 1: In stead, what we would need to do is basically
Speaker 1: scan us what makes us us. All the information about
Speaker 1: where you know one of the cells in your liver
Speaker 1: is um, about where you know every your genetic makeup,
Speaker 1: everything for absolutely every part of you, including stuff we
Speaker 1: haven't nailed down yet, would have to be analyzed and
Speaker 1: then sent and then it could be recreated in the
Speaker 1: first one was destroyed. There's a big problem with this,
Speaker 1: well uh, namely, we're too complex of of beings to
Speaker 1: do that. Well. Sure, but also if you subscribe to
Speaker 1: any kind of Judeo Christian or any kind of religious idea,
Speaker 1: um uh, you would have a big problem because basically
Speaker 1: you've just been destroyed and all the information about you
Speaker 1: has been transferred. And if you believe the soul is
Speaker 1: some sort of if it's extant and an externality that's
Speaker 1: not part of your body, that it's it's something beyond that,
Speaker 1: can that be recreated? Yeah that's true. But let's say
Speaker 1: most people who are working on uh teleporting us don't
Speaker 1: subscribe to any ideas of the sult right, Okay, so
Speaker 1: let's just go with that assumption. Let's just say phy physiologically,
Speaker 1: what are some of the challenges. Well, they have actually
Speaker 1: teleported uh atoms and UH photons. Did you know that
Speaker 1: they've sent adams a distance of about half a meter
Speaker 1: and they sent some photons over tens of kilometers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty impressive, it is. And I know that there's one
Speaker 1: really smart guy out there, Charles Bennett, who was a
Speaker 1: really smart scientist. He uh he said that in principle
Speaker 1: that teleporting humans does not actually violate any fundamental laws
Speaker 1: of physics. No, they used to think it violated Heisenberg's
Speaker 1: uncertainty principle because we were talking about scanning and once
Speaker 1: you get down to the sub atomic quantum level, um
Speaker 1: you're you're you're dealing with quarks, little pieces of matter
Speaker 1: and um other non material stuff. Uh that when you
Speaker 1: analyze and when you observe them, when you measure them,
Speaker 1: the the more accurately you measure them, the more likely
Speaker 1: you are to disrupt their behavior until you can't get
Speaker 1: an accurate measurement anymore. They figured out a way around this, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: where you're talking about quantum entanglement. Yes, that is Uh.
Speaker 1: Einstein actually called that spooky action at a distance, except
Speaker 1: he said in German, it probably sounds cooler in German,
Speaker 1: although spooky is pretty cool. Basically, it's two separate particles
Speaker 1: behaving as if it's one particle, even though they're separated
Speaker 1: by a great distance. Right, Well, they were together at
Speaker 1: one point in time. They become entangled, like there's their superpositions,
Speaker 1: their states become entangled. And then yeah, after they're separated,
Speaker 1: the behavior of one is the same as the behavior
Speaker 1: of another, and they they can't they shouldn't be influencing
Speaker 1: one another anymore. Right, But Bennett's that that's not even necessary.
Speaker 1: If you were to figure out how to teleport an
Speaker 1: entire human, he said that quote, the teleported person would
Speaker 1: end up slightly different, but not in a biologically important way.
Speaker 1: So well, chuck um there there are some Think about
Speaker 1: what you just said, you're you're reproducing something that's not
Speaker 1: biologically different. Think about your mood, the mood d'ine right now,
Speaker 1: that's all a series of chemical reactions, So we have
Speaker 1: to analyze down to that level where else should come
Speaker 1: out on the other end, like maybe insane or very
Speaker 1: depressed or ready to kill. I mean, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of information that would have to be scanned to accurately
Speaker 1: reproduce you as you were before the scanning started. But
Speaker 1: let's say we can do that, right. What What are
Speaker 1: the benefits of teleportation? Why do we need this? And
Speaker 1: since this is all pine in the sky and pipe
Speaker 1: dream type of stuff, let's say we can teleport. That
Speaker 1: would save time? Yes, time is money. How would you
Speaker 1: love to not um commute to beam yourself to work
Speaker 1: every day? That would be crazy. Work days would be shorter.
Speaker 1: That means you could save energy at at the workplace.
Speaker 1: I know I get a lot more work though when
Speaker 1: a telecommute. Yeah, and teleporting, imagine that you could save
Speaker 1: on you were talking about transportation of goods and jets
Speaker 1: and big barges. Maybe if you could teleport your goods
Speaker 1: then you wouldn't have to you know, fly things halfway
Speaker 1: around the world. Yeah, that might be a good thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of benefits to teleportation. What
Speaker 1: else you got, that's all? You don't have some Brady
Speaker 1: bunch as any uh plotline that you can dream up here? No, no,
Speaker 1: because the original is destroyed. That's where all the comedy lives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, yeah, when there's duplicity or multiplicity, except there
Speaker 1: wasn't that much comedy there. Yeah, Michael Keaton Wolf. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Chuck, um, pressure, stop watch, let's clear it out again.
Speaker 1: Let's clear it out. So, I mean, trust me, folks,
Speaker 1: we could do an hour on teleportation. But we could,
Speaker 1: but we just stopped making sense after a little while.
Speaker 1: Next because you couldn't understand us, but because we're dumb.
Speaker 1: So what's the number two? Josh ready? Yes, okay? Number
Speaker 1: two is a universal language? Chuck, consider this, how much conflict, war,
Speaker 1: misunderstanding and just general strife, nationalism, isolationism, fascism, all of
Speaker 1: this stuff, How much of it is the result of
Speaker 1: this unphysical border we call language. Right, They say that
Speaker 1: the Devil's greatest creation was language. Really yeah, miscommunication, absolutely, dude.
Speaker 1: And you know what, you're right, if there was an
Speaker 1: international language, if everyone spoke the same language, I don't
Speaker 1: think it would make us some big you know, it
Speaker 1: would make us all the same. So lay thot years
Speaker 1: a rest folks. No, most of the people I've I've
Speaker 1: read who are talking and thinking about universal language is
Speaker 1: saying like, this is not meant to supplant native languages.
Speaker 1: It's just you know, if you're at home, you're let's
Speaker 1: say you're in America, you're speaking English like Chuck and
Speaker 1: I speak English to one another. But if we went
Speaker 1: to give a seminar on podcasting in Norway, we would
Speaker 1: use the international language. Interesting you bring up Norway because
Speaker 1: some folks say that Norwegian might be a good start. Well,
Speaker 1: they used to, and they used to think that nineteen eleven.
Speaker 1: At least that's true. Yeah, go ahead. Some people have
Speaker 1: thought about this over the years and they think that, uh,
Speaker 1: you should probably create a new language with another language
Speaker 1: is a basis. But it probably shouldn't be one of
Speaker 1: the big boys either, because it would give that that
Speaker 1: nation too much of a leg up. Oh yeah, you
Speaker 1: said from now on English is the universal language. Everyone
Speaker 1: who speaks English should be like, damn straight, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd have to create your own language if you want
Speaker 1: a universal language. And I know you're dying to talk
Speaker 1: about Esperanto, Chuck. I had only vaguely heard of Esperanto
Speaker 1: before and didn't really know the nuts and bolts of it.
Speaker 1: But um, actually Ben Bolan, the creator of one of
Speaker 1: our soon to be released podcasts, a conspiracy podcast called
Speaker 1: Stuff They Don't Want You To Know It. Yeah, looking
Speaker 1: forward to it. Um, he was telling me about Esperanto
Speaker 1: and basically, in the nineteenth century, a guy named L. L.
Speaker 1: Zamenhoff came up with this idea that we need a
Speaker 1: universal language that would promote tolerance and quality, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing, avoid war again specifically, I think he said
Speaker 1: that was one of his aims. And yeah, he was
Speaker 1: definitely a pacifist. You know. He also tried to come
Speaker 1: up with a um uh, neutral religion that's all that
Speaker 1: called Hamaronism. Maybe that's why I didn't take something all
Speaker 1: right now, I guess. But he was twenty seven, he
Speaker 1: was at the tender age of twenty seven, and he
Speaker 1: created a universal language. He did and basically it sounds
Speaker 1: a lot like it's a romance language kind of it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a broken romance language. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: independent in and of itself. So while he did borrow
Speaker 1: from others, they say it's they don't describe it as
Speaker 1: a as a mix, like a potpourri of other languages
Speaker 1: just mixed together right now. They it's structurally similar to
Speaker 1: um non European languages than European ones. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: very much phonetic, and it's it's spelled the way it
Speaker 1: sounds supposed to be pretty easy, very easy. There's the
Speaker 1: sixteen rules of Grammar and pronunciation to it, and that's it.
Speaker 1: Because I mean, you think about English, you know you've
Speaker 1: got like good, better, best, Where the hell did better
Speaker 1: and best come from? We started out with good, you know,
Speaker 1: like where does that come from? And apparently English is
Speaker 1: one of the most difficult languages to learn that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say so, because of all the little problems
Speaker 1: like that. So I think what Zomanoff was on the
Speaker 1: trail of it. I think anybody has created a universal
Speaker 1: language is to get away with all the get get
Speaker 1: rid of all the all the foibles, the weird things
Speaker 1: that make a dialect or language, so unique inconsistencies. One
Speaker 1: of the other problems is is that's actually a structural approach.
Speaker 1: There's also a symbolic approach. Yeah, I like that one.
Speaker 1: The symbolic approach is like we call mother mother for
Speaker 1: no good reason. It's a symbolic word, you know, it's
Speaker 1: not like the word cuckoo, where you know, cuckoo is
Speaker 1: the sound that a cuckoo bird makes. That's very structural.
Speaker 1: But this, this symbolic words probably have even more difficulties
Speaker 1: than a universal language um that was built structurally. Because
Speaker 1: what a language is is it's a world view of
Speaker 1: a culture the people who share that language. Right, So
Speaker 1: how do you get the entire world to agree on
Speaker 1: you know, the meaning of mother, right? Well? Mother is
Speaker 1: probably an easy one. But let's say the meaning of happiness.
Speaker 1: Let's pick on happiness, right, Well, you can't. That's the problem,
Speaker 1: and that's probably why there never will be a universal language.
Speaker 1: That's not necessarily true. Also, I think that most I
Speaker 1: think every single language universal language attempt and there's been some.
Speaker 1: Did you read about idiom neutral Russian one that sounded
Speaker 1: like it got pretty close? Wow, what do you mean
Speaker 1: by clothes? Solo than Esperanto. Two million people speak Esperanto today,
Speaker 1: That is true. Have you been on a learning It's
Speaker 1: a website for dedicated to teaching Esperanto. It's got the
Speaker 1: tutorials and everything in there, so if you want to
Speaker 1: learn Esperanto. And Chuck is right, there is actually a
Speaker 1: thriving little community of Esperanto speakers. And there's also two
Speaker 1: movies that have been shot entirely in Esperanto. We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about one. What I was feeling. Johnny Depp did
Speaker 1: one of him? No? No, no, uh, Bill Shatner, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. There is a nineteen movie called Incubus, and
Speaker 1: the whole thing is filmed entirely in Esperanto. William Shatner
Speaker 1: speaks Esperanto, or at least he spoke the lines from
Speaker 1: that movie. Yeah. No, it rang a bell that I
Speaker 1: heard he was he learned it. Yeah, he knows esperanto.
Speaker 1: You know, worked with sat Did he speak Esperanto? TI like,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that explains so much. I just thought
Speaker 1: he was having a stroke. He's a nice guy though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a little puffy, sure, but it was for a
Speaker 1: TV commercial. He was he was into it. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like he really gave it his bringing, every bring, everything
Speaker 1: he did. I was impressed because sometimes commercial actors are
Speaker 1: kind of like, go through the motions, we'll chuck, let's
Speaker 1: talk about it. What's the uh what? What's What are
Speaker 1: the benefits of universal language besides war avoidance or anything
Speaker 1: like that. I would say economically, it would be easier
Speaker 1: to communicate and negotiate contracts and uh broker deals and
Speaker 1: trade and stuff like that with you. Oh, definitely, And
Speaker 1: I think we need it. We're becoming more and more globalized.
Speaker 1: We're interacting with one another more and more. You basically
Speaker 1: can't be an isolated country anymonger if you want to
Speaker 1: stay afloat, it would save time. Plus, also, think about science,
Speaker 1: I mean, why does science use Latin. It's an agreed
Speaker 1: upon universal language. What if there was an uh, there
Speaker 1: was a real universal language that scientists could more easily
Speaker 1: communicate their ideas with one another their findings. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I saw that um in one of the articles
Speaker 1: we read for this. Some some of the old school
Speaker 1: Russian scientists used to not like to have to publish
Speaker 1: in German, which I think at the time was what
Speaker 1: most German and French and German and French, and then
Speaker 1: a lot of ts for you Russian. Yeah, and a
Speaker 1: lot of students either um today have to read these
Speaker 1: things in a translated form that may not be quite
Speaker 1: accurate or you know, not read it at all. And
Speaker 1: time check you one to go into number three? Yes,
Speaker 1: to clear out your your stopwatch there. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: you're ready and go go. This one is Chuck's favorite one.
Speaker 1: He picked this one. Are we ready? Yeah? Okay, Chuck
Speaker 1: picked this one. I think it's a good idea to Chuck.
Speaker 1: What is the third innovation that we need right now?
Speaker 1: Innovator is what we need? We need Chuck, just spun it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we need a human, we need another Einstein, we need
Speaker 1: another Newton, we need another Tesla to come along, just
Speaker 1: not another Edison. Yeah, and Josh, some people might say,
Speaker 1: when it comes to innovators, you're probably thinking in the
Speaker 1: world of science, which is appropriate, and uh, a renaissance
Speaker 1: scientist maybe where you need to to start your search. Sure, Chuck,
Speaker 1: we found this article about renaissance scientists and how actually
Speaker 1: in the United States and the higher educational system that
Speaker 1: the cards are stacked against any of these people actually
Speaker 1: being produced that very much that we have to just
Speaker 1: basically hope that one comes along, and if it does,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a total fluke, you know, because the
Speaker 1: idea is that in order to be a true innovator, Uh,
Speaker 1: then you have to be a whole brain scientist, definitely.
Speaker 1: And the graduate system that we have today, they said,
Speaker 1: the undergraduate system does a pretty good job of it. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just think about all the different kinds of classes,
Speaker 1: the core classes, and then you know, I took biology
Speaker 1: for no good reason. Statistics I hated stats. Oh it's awful. Uh.
Speaker 1: But the whole brain thinkers are the ones that have
Speaker 1: the more well rounded approach. So not only are they
Speaker 1: are they a brilliant a physics mind, but they can
Speaker 1: understand the human side of maybe how to apply that,
Speaker 1: and that's what's missing a lot of times. Right. So
Speaker 1: Mills and no Tino, I think wrote this this, this
Speaker 1: opinion piece we found in Forbes. Um that basically you're saying, like, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: undergrad we have it. It's great. Same generally with high school,
Speaker 1: middle school, grade school, UM, kids are exp oose to
Speaker 1: all these different fields of study. The problem is it's
Speaker 1: geared generally towards funneling them one way or another. And
Speaker 1: this becomes most evident when you get to grad school
Speaker 1: big time, where if you're a doctoral student and you
Speaker 1: need money, you better come up with a a an
Speaker 1: incredibly specific, unique and specific idea or field of research
Speaker 1: that you're going to go into. It's all geared towards that.
Speaker 1: And like you said that, as you as you go
Speaker 1: forward an education, the path gets narrower and narrower until
Speaker 1: you're literally, yeah to where you may be researching one
Speaker 1: thing for your career and maybe you'll come up with innovation, innovation,
Speaker 1: that way to change the world. But my money is
Speaker 1: on a whole brain thinker. Well, yeah, or at least
Speaker 1: somebody who can take all these various fields of research
Speaker 1: or all this various research data and put it all together,
Speaker 1: because research is just research until you apply it. So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: is there anybody on the horizon? Is there anybody we
Speaker 1: should be keeping an eye on? May who? There's a few?
Speaker 1: I know some people might say the first answer that
Speaker 1: comes to my via Stephen Hawking, but did a little research.
Speaker 1: And while Hawking is no slouch, there are some in
Speaker 1: the physics community that think Hawking gets a lot of
Speaker 1: attention because he's generated a lot of attention through his
Speaker 1: books and uh maybe through his disability has garnered a
Speaker 1: lot of attention. So certainly not to knock anything he's done,
Speaker 1: but within the physics community, I don't know if he's
Speaker 1: as high on the list of some of these other
Speaker 1: guys and gals. Guys and gals, I love that there's
Speaker 1: so much smarter than I. I'm calling him guys and gals,
Speaker 1: these dudes and chicks. Ed Whitton is one of them. Okay,
Speaker 1: you ever heard of Ed? I He is a physicist,
Speaker 1: specifically a mathematical physicist, and studies at Princeton. He's gotten
Speaker 1: the MacArthur Genius Grant. He's won the Fields Medal, which
Speaker 1: is the highest uh medal or honor you can get
Speaker 1: in math. So he's he's he's been called the next
Speaker 1: Isaac Newton. But he works with theory, which I know
Speaker 1: you're you're not a big fan of. I have one
Speaker 1: word about string theory? What's that? Boo boo? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: he's up there. And then there's a guy, a dude
Speaker 1: named Murray gell Man. Have you heard of him? Tell
Speaker 1: us about him? Okay? Uh MGM is I like to
Speaker 1: call him. He's a prominent scientist and once again he
Speaker 1: won the Nobel Prize in Physics in nineteen nine for
Speaker 1: his work with the theory of elementary particles. And he
Speaker 1: is the one that came up with cork the quirk.
Speaker 1: So he's no slouch. No, he's not a slouch. I mean,
Speaker 1: to predict the existence of a theoretical particle and then
Speaker 1: have it confirmed. Not a pretty smart guy. And then
Speaker 1: you know, some people might say folks like Bill Gates,
Speaker 1: who uh, he's not a physicist or a mathematician. But
Speaker 1: he has a high emotional intellect, a very high emotional
Speaker 1: intact and ellect, and a lot of money and a
Speaker 1: true visionary and a guy that likes to spread his
Speaker 1: money around to good causes nowadays. So I don't know
Speaker 1: what got into him, or if he was always this
Speaker 1: way and he was just really focused on Microsoft, but
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, I like this repackaged Bill Gates. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's very generous guy. Apparently more than half his fortune
Speaker 1: he's invested outside of Microsoft. It's fantastic. So if you're
Speaker 1: talking about an innovator, I mean, you can only really
Speaker 1: do good if you're if you're trying to help your
Speaker 1: fellow man, right, well, yeah, or if it's a happy
Speaker 1: byproduct of your evil deeds like Oppenheimer. No, that's the
Speaker 1: reverse of that. So, Chuck, there's three innovations. You said
Speaker 1: we could do a lot more. I'm kind of glad
Speaker 1: we did. But uh, I am interested as well. Thank
Speaker 1: you for turning off the stop by. I too am
Speaker 1: interested to see what our listeners who go through to
Speaker 1: the blogs think too. There's certainly some uh. I mean,
Speaker 1: we were talking if we were just on pipe dream time,
Speaker 1: like a food pill where you could just drop some
Speaker 1: water on it would create a meal. Sadly, that was
Speaker 1: one that we considered talking about, right, and he said
Speaker 1: it's called the vitamin, and I felt kind of stupid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know we're not talking about which jetson type
Speaker 1: of stuff. I mean real attainable things like teleportation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's right there, right there. It's facing people so who
Speaker 1: all speak the same language Esperanto and Chuck, I guess
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mail, right. Indeed, Yes, Josh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna call this a walk around the world listener, Marail,
Speaker 1: I have three quickies from different parts of the world,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna read them right now. Okay, you don't
Speaker 1: actually have to walk though, right, you're gonna first one
Speaker 1: is from Australia. Get a. My name is Nicola and
Speaker 1: I'm a student from Melbourne. I am finally seeing you
Speaker 1: an email after months of NonStop listening. I just want
Speaker 1: to say thank you for putting metric conversions in your
Speaker 1: more recent shows. I've been confused by your measuring method.
Speaker 1: Imperial is it called? Also, I must confess I love
Speaker 1: how you guys say Australia, especially how you pronounce it.
Speaker 1: Would you say it again on the air for me, Chuck, Australia, Australia,
Speaker 1: thanks a million. And that is from I won't say
Speaker 1: your biggest fan, because that's what everyone says. I will
Speaker 1: call myself a committed fanatic. Actually that sounds It's way
Speaker 1: better than slightly creepy if you asked me Nicola. So Nicola.
Speaker 1: This one is from Luca and Serbia. Luca says, I'm
Speaker 1: writing about Nicola Tesla. He said that he was Austrian.
Speaker 1: That is not true. He was an ethnic Serb. Wait
Speaker 1: a minute. Our last one was our last listener was
Speaker 1: Nicola from Australia, and now Luca from Serbia. Is writing
Speaker 1: about Nicola Tesla. How about that this is crazy? It's crazy,
Speaker 1: so he says that is not true. He was an
Speaker 1: ethnic Serb who was born in today's Croatia, which was
Speaker 1: part of Austria, so he's not what you would consider
Speaker 1: today Austrian. He's although I'm sure Luca just said he
Speaker 1: was born in Austria, so Croatians like to say he
Speaker 1: was Croatian. But he's a Serb because his father was
Speaker 1: an Orthodox priest and Croatians are Catholics. So that is
Speaker 1: from Luca. And then my final favorite from China. Remember
Speaker 1: al Jane, Uh, this is great. I'm just gonna read
Speaker 1: it as it stands here, and we should go ahead
Speaker 1: and tell y'all we're not making fun. I love broken English.
Speaker 1: I think it's adorable and when people make the effort
Speaker 1: it really you know, gives me a good feeling. There
Speaker 1: you go, Chuck, Well, I'm a loyal fan of stuff.
Speaker 1: You should know. You guys always make me laugh and
Speaker 1: when there have some weird words that I don't know,
Speaker 1: I will hear it repeatedly. So I am a hard
Speaker 1: working fan of your program. I got an interesting topic.
Speaker 1: I think why you guys don't talk about the Internet
Speaker 1: censorship and how to skip it because in my country, China,
Speaker 1: people can't access the YouTube and interestingly, I even can't
Speaker 1: access your blog, so we're banned in China. I know
Speaker 1: I blogged about it. Uh, this is the American Life
Speaker 1: podcast may be also illegal because I can't download it.
Speaker 1: There has a defense system named great Wall. Wish you
Speaker 1: can see it and read it in your program. But
Speaker 1: don't mock me. It's what he says, and I think
Speaker 1: he means there is I'm you know, apologies for the
Speaker 1: broken English or emen don't market one of those. So
Speaker 1: that is from Yao Jian and we appreciate you all listening.
Speaker 1: And yes, yeah, and thank you for the information. Because
Speaker 1: I actually did blog about Tianamen Square the anniversary the
Speaker 1: twenties anniversaries happened. I couldn't remember which listener told us
Speaker 1: that we were banned there, but yeah, I gotta tell
Speaker 1: you that's the point of pride for maybe. Yeah, that's awesome,
Speaker 1: and we love folks writing in and given their best
Speaker 1: attempt at speaking are weird language. Yeah, Chica, thanks to
Speaker 1: all of you. And I just think it's cool that
Speaker 1: there's people on the other side of the world that
Speaker 1: think we're interesting. Yeah, weird. Yeah, Well, if you want
Speaker 1: to tell us that we're interesting, or correct us about
Speaker 1: where some guy was born or whatever for Marcus, sure,
Speaker 1: you can send an email to stuff podcast how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics at how stuff works dot com. Want more
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