Speaker 1: Brought to you by the all New Toyota Corolla. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Speaker 1: Charles Bryant Chuckers. You might know him. An Sure, there's
Speaker 1: a w in there somewhere at sure for the Wayne. Yeah,
Speaker 1: named after Wayne coyn Right, No, we talked about that before. Yeah, John, Wayne,
Speaker 1: how are you doing. I'm great, man, Um, I am
Speaker 1: all over this NASA activity. Oh yeah, yeah, good because
Speaker 1: it seems like i'll we hear about NASA these days
Speaker 1: is how they're having to shut down uh space programs, Right,
Speaker 1: that's the other stuff is cool. Well, that's the impression
Speaker 1: I have is that they're kind of taking their um,
Speaker 1: their field of vision the mountain to outer space and
Speaker 1: turning it planet word towards Earth. Why not, That's where
Speaker 1: all the people are that are buying Big Max. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: if if space exploration is going private, you got the
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's and the Richard Branson's of the world saying
Speaker 1: we got this, NASA, you go do something else with
Speaker 1: all of your high tech remote sensing equipment, then it
Speaker 1: makes sense that NASA would say, Okay, we'll become the
Speaker 1: watchdog guardian of the planet. And that's what they've they've become. Plus, also,
Speaker 1: if you're the United States using NASA's remote sensing equipment
Speaker 1: on Earth, is a dynamite cover for intelligence gathering? Well yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you have all sorts of satellites carrying out
Speaker 1: different functions, but really all of them are taking pictures
Speaker 1: of the Earth, highly detailed ones too. You want to
Speaker 1: know about Russian troops formation as NASA yet of volcano? Sure?
Speaker 1: If you want to know what kind of sand way? Uh,
Speaker 1: Julian Assange had today, asked NASA, Well, that's NASA. Everyone
Speaker 1: knows that what Juna fish is, That what his thing is.
Speaker 1: Sure every day, that's how he keeps his white main white.
Speaker 1: Him and Michio Kaku. Yeah, the white mullet. Actually it's
Speaker 1: not so mellody. It's just more of a main main
Speaker 1: for sure. Both of them have a main, a big
Speaker 1: helmet of hair. So chuck um. But I guess the
Speaker 1: question we've posed today I feel like we need to
Speaker 1: answer is can NASA predict natural disasters? I think we
Speaker 1: can go ahead and answer and say not yet. Right,
Speaker 1: But now that again, they've kind of mothballed space exploration
Speaker 1: to an extent. I mean we're still hitting Mars. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not. They're not mothballing it, but they're they're they've
Speaker 1: reached the point where they're like, Okay, we've got all
Speaker 1: this really good equipment, let's start monitoring Earth a little
Speaker 1: more because there's a lot of questions we have. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: they've reached this point where since the beginning of twenty
Speaker 1: one century, they've started conducting missions. They have planned ones
Speaker 1: that are just being started now, some that are coming
Speaker 1: in the next couple of years, and from all this
Speaker 1: data they'll be able to analyze it and start to
Speaker 1: be able to predict natural disasters. So they have this
Speaker 1: whole like toolbox. I guess if you wanted to go
Speaker 1: into like corporate buzz speak of of programs and missions
Speaker 1: that they're carrying out that will help them predict natural
Speaker 1: disasters pretty soon. That's right, not the low hanging fruit, right,
Speaker 1: they're just trying to reach out and play together with
Speaker 1: the Earth in the same in the same space, in
Speaker 1: the same space. Maybe Java storm boy at the corporate talk, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we shunned that at all costs here, Um, all right,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about this. We talked about remote sensing.
Speaker 1: That is UM basically detecting energy reflecting from something UM
Speaker 1: when it's pointed out in space, like when you're looking
Speaker 1: for new planets, it's pointed out in space. When you
Speaker 1: pointed on Earth, it's a heck of a lot closer, right,
Speaker 1: And to get more detail. And they're they're using different
Speaker 1: kinds of UM detectors. They're detecting different kinds of energy
Speaker 1: I should say, like microwave, radiation, X rays. It's not
Speaker 1: just like using your peepers. That information can be translated
Speaker 1: into something we use our peepers to look at, but
Speaker 1: for they can use this equipment to sense all sorts
Speaker 1: of different stuff. Yeah. And like you said, it's UM.
Speaker 1: It's like mounted on aircraft or it's part of a
Speaker 1: satellite or is a satellite and um, yeah, it's all up.
Speaker 1: They're looking back at you right now, yes, the wave. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or it's looking at the Earth where we're just the
Speaker 1: insignificant tiny specs crawling around on the Earth. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: this is this is a kind of a big deal.
Speaker 1: You know, it makes sense, it's sensible what they're doing.
Speaker 1: It's a smart thing. To do with NASA's department, but
Speaker 1: it also really is, um, we're at the threshold of
Speaker 1: like a really big change in our understanding of our planet,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I think there's kind of a lot
Speaker 1: of assumptions that people make about our understanding of the
Speaker 1: planet that are just totally incorrect. Like, for example, I
Speaker 1: would have guessed that meteorologists and climatologists knew how tropical
Speaker 1: storms form. They do not, uh, And from using things
Speaker 1: like well, there's actually a project that was carried out
Speaker 1: in the summer of two thousand ten UM that was
Speaker 1: dedicated to studying this is called grip genesis and rapid
Speaker 1: intensification processes. And for a couple of a couple of months,
Speaker 1: some NASA scientists flew around on a Gulf Stream jet
Speaker 1: and took really precise measurements of what they believed were
Speaker 1: the beginnings of tropical storms to see how they form exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the goal with pretty much everything that we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about today is early detection. Because you can't
Speaker 1: stop a hurricane, you can't stop a volcano or an earthquake.
Speaker 1: But like the old saying, that's right, but if you
Speaker 1: know it's coming, then you can get people out of
Speaker 1: the way. You can thwart some of them to some degree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like anybody can point to a hurricane be like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a hurricane. By then it's a little too late.
Speaker 1: If you can point to the very beginnings the cradle
Speaker 1: of the hurricane, the formation of a tropical storm. Now
Speaker 1: you're talking about time that you have to warn people,
Speaker 1: like you, guys need to get out of here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there is one really cool program they've had going
Speaker 1: since two thousand two called GRACE. There's gonna be a
Speaker 1: lot of acronyms today, by the way, the UM the
Speaker 1: Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, this is my favorite one.
Speaker 1: It's it's really cool basically what they're doing. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's step back a minute. Let's talk about Newton. Okay,
Speaker 1: gravity depends on the mass of an object. In the
Speaker 1: case of polar ice caps, the mass is changing. So
Speaker 1: if the mass is changing, the gravity is changing. Right.
Speaker 1: So when when the polar ice caps melt and turn
Speaker 1: to water and then flow towards the equator, um they
Speaker 1: are often so big that they left it in depression
Speaker 1: on the Earth's surface. Once they're gone, that depression could
Speaker 1: be filled in the mantle can fill back in in
Speaker 1: the area, changing the mass in that particular part of
Speaker 1: Earth and hence changing the gravity. Right, Yeah, it's one
Speaker 1: estimate has between two thousand and ten and two thousand
Speaker 1: and eleven UM, the Greenland ice Shield lost two hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty four giga tons of mats. So not only
Speaker 1: is that going to change the land formation in the mass,
Speaker 1: it's gonna make the sea level rise at a rate
Speaker 1: of about point seven millimeters a year. That's going to
Speaker 1: change the makeup of the Earth. Um. And so they
Speaker 1: have a couple of buddies, Tom and Jerry that are
Speaker 1: in orbit satellites, twin satellites about a hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: six miles apart from each other. Do you know why
Speaker 1: they're called Tom and Jerry because they're chasing each other
Speaker 1: and then only they're on the same orbit exactly a
Speaker 1: polar orbit. Yeah, it's very cute. So they're constantly going
Speaker 1: from the North pole to the South Pole um as
Speaker 1: the Earth spins below them, right, that's right. And um
Speaker 1: they're taking they're they're taking measurements, two different types of measurements,
Speaker 1: but they're precisely separated from one another, and they're on
Speaker 1: precisely the same orbit, so they can. Really what they
Speaker 1: produce every thirty days is a full map of the
Speaker 1: gravitational field of Earth. Yeah, and they've Nanasa. They always
Speaker 1: work with other people, it seems like, which is a
Speaker 1: good thing to work with people around the world. But
Speaker 1: they worked with a company in Germany to develop UM
Speaker 1: an ultra precise distance measuring system that basically can measure
Speaker 1: within the precision what they say is one tenth of
Speaker 1: the width of a hair. That's pretty precise. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: basically these things are flying U and between the two
Speaker 1: they're measuring the distances and discrepancies between these two identical
Speaker 1: twin satellites, and that's information is being relaid back analyze. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the upside of this is number one, the Earth
Speaker 1: is not a perfect sphere. We know that. I can't
Speaker 1: remember what we talked about that in oh maps. Yeah potato. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the the the gravitational field is not perfectly round either.
Speaker 1: It's lower in some places, higher in other places. The
Speaker 1: force of gravity um. So yeah, it's formed what was
Speaker 1: coined the Potsdam gravity potato. And if you look it
Speaker 1: up now there's some pretty cool UM artists rendering of
Speaker 1: what the Earth's magnetic field looks like and as a
Speaker 1: three dimensional model. Yeah, it's very cool. Um, so check
Speaker 1: that out. And that's been updated dramatically in the last
Speaker 1: couple of years thanks to this GRACE project. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the ultimate goal basically is to measure this gravitational field
Speaker 1: over time see how it's changing with kind of accuracy
Speaker 1: we've never had before, which will in turn inform us
Speaker 1: on climate related uh drunk right, I mean and and
Speaker 1: is it just a correlation between mean, like ice caps
Speaker 1: melting in a change in a gravitational field, or does
Speaker 1: that ice cap melting trigger that change in the gravitational field,
Speaker 1: which in turn has some other effects. So, um, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of I think understanding we can gain from
Speaker 1: knowing what the gravitational field is changing, how it's changing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you like using your GPS to get somewhere, Well,
Speaker 1: then this kind of information can go on to help
Speaker 1: GPS because basically it's just gonna improve the trajectories of
Speaker 1: these UH satellites and everything is just more specific. It's
Speaker 1: like a hundred times um more detailed than they've ever
Speaker 1: had before. So that's gonna help everything out from detecting
Speaker 1: climate change or temperature and in like potential hurricanes and
Speaker 1: stuff too, like getting you to McDonald's, right, you know,
Speaker 1: which is pretty important by the way, chuck. Um uh,
Speaker 1: the tropical storms. You want to how they think they form? Now? Um, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you. So. The speed of waves on
Speaker 1: an ocean, um, if it matches the speed of the
Speaker 1: movement of some air above it, and an umbilical cord
Speaker 1: of warm, humid air can get into this little pillow sandwich.
Speaker 1: It forms this protective pouch and from there a convection
Speaker 1: current can start and form into a tropical storm, which
Speaker 1: can then form into a hurricane. That's what they learned
Speaker 1: from the GRIP program. Man, it seems like they would
Speaker 1: have known this stuff before then, you think, so, you know,
Speaker 1: but we're talking like two when they're I don't even
Speaker 1: think it's been proven. I think that that's what they
Speaker 1: think based on the data from the two thousand ten experiments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: aren't they still analyzing that stuff? Alright? I imagine like
Speaker 1: that's got to be a pretty good field to get
Speaker 1: into now and in the next like five ten years,
Speaker 1: analyzing NASA data. Yeah, and just anything to do with
Speaker 1: the climate probably anything, Yeah, things that's changing. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be gangbusters. There's a lot of money in the weather. Um.
Speaker 1: All right, so that's tropical storms and hurricanes. We didn't
Speaker 1: talk about the GPM project. Um. Yeah, that they're working
Speaker 1: with UM. NASA's working with Japan and they're NASA, which
Speaker 1: is called the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency or JACKSON, and
Speaker 1: that is a Global Precipitation measurement and they are using
Speaker 1: satellites to observe all kinds of participation precipitation patterns all
Speaker 1: over the world. And basically, like before, we can only
Speaker 1: place these things in certain spots that were easier to
Speaker 1: get to, and you can't place them out of the ocean,
Speaker 1: and you can't place them in the andies because it's
Speaker 1: too rocky. This allows us to study the entire globe
Speaker 1: for the first time. So they're following they're basically tracking
Speaker 1: the movement of water around the planet on like a daily, seasonal,
Speaker 1: a yearly basis um. And what they hope to be
Speaker 1: able to gain from this it's a predict when floods happened,
Speaker 1: because apparently a major flood happens every day around the Earth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times those floods lead to landslides.
Speaker 1: We saw firsthand in Guatemala what happens when a landslide
Speaker 1: comes down. Remember, oh, yeah, we were standing there and
Speaker 1: they said, this is literally twelve feet higher than it was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were standing on the remains of a village that
Speaker 1: got caught in the middle of the night and they're like,
Speaker 1: there are people down there still. Yeah, you could still
Speaker 1: see the swath that have been cut through the jungle
Speaker 1: on the mountain side. Right. So they're hoping, okay, well,
Speaker 1: if we can figure out when a flood's coming, we
Speaker 1: can predict landslides in turns, So by tracking global precipitation,
Speaker 1: that's what they're hoping to be able to do with that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They're also using uh L I d a R at
Speaker 1: the light R Surface topography system. This is my second
Speaker 1: favorite one, the list one UM, and they're hopefully going
Speaker 1: to be able to attract things like volcanoes, earthquakes, landslide
Speaker 1: us and erosion. But not wildfires. No, not wildfires. That's
Speaker 1: crazy talk. That is crazy talk. But it's the same
Speaker 1: thing as with tracking precipitation. As of two years ago,
Speaker 1: we had to physically put some sensor somewhere and there
Speaker 1: are places we just couldn't get to, and now that
Speaker 1: we have satellites, we can track that stuff. Same goes
Speaker 1: with this, like we used to have to be able
Speaker 1: to find a fault line, put sensors there and then
Speaker 1: monitor that um with with the list program. With leader UM,
Speaker 1: they're using lasers to monitor fault lines and find new
Speaker 1: ones that we didn't know were there before, track their movement,
Speaker 1: and then use those to predict earthquakes and then similarly
Speaker 1: predict volcanoes. So listen to this. Okay. The resolution now
Speaker 1: they have is five meter horizontal resolution with a precision
Speaker 1: of four inches. Previously, the best data we could get
Speaker 1: was thirty meter resolution with a thirty to foot precision,
Speaker 1: So went from thirty two to four inches. That's pretty good.
Speaker 1: They'd be like, give it take thirty two ft. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now let's give it take four inches with thanks to lasers,
Speaker 1: so they could possibly detect volcanic activity before it happens. Right,
Speaker 1: And the way that they're doing that, you would think, well,
Speaker 1: they're using thermal cameras. You'd be wrong. What they're doing
Speaker 1: is looking for land deformation. Apparently before a volcano goes off,
Speaker 1: that land around it literally deforms, it swells due to pressure.
Speaker 1: And since we are tracking topography now using this UM
Speaker 1: this program, we can say, oh, well that that crater
Speaker 1: wasn't three times larger than it is now like a
Speaker 1: week ago, maybe a volcan is about to go off. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's not just volcanoes and natural disasters. They can
Speaker 1: also monitor erosion and top soil loss, basically anything on
Speaker 1: the Earth that's interesting they can like really accurately closely monitor.
Speaker 1: Now and this said two thousand sixteen, is it already underway? Um? No,
Speaker 1: it's two thousand thirteen. Chuck. Now that says it was
Speaker 1: gonna launch in two thousand sixteen, but it's already Is
Speaker 1: it already going Okay? I think it's launching in two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen. Okay, so this is just the plan, you're right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know they have a lot of like this just started,
Speaker 1: like the UM I think it might have been the
Speaker 1: Grace Program started in two thousand two and it's been
Speaker 1: going on. It is the Grace Program, the one with
Speaker 1: Tom and Jerry. Right, Yeah, that was right, and it
Speaker 1: had its tenth anniversary in two thousand twelve. I think
Speaker 1: that might have been the first project like this and
Speaker 1: now NASA's throwing like everything into this stuff, and we're
Speaker 1: just at the at the forefront, at the very beginning
Speaker 1: of this kind of thing. This is a very timely episode. Frankly,
Speaker 1: it's actually um they have. In fact, I think these
Speaker 1: new probes are even newer than the List program, right
Speaker 1: that NASA is proposing to launch, the one we were
Speaker 1: just talking about with the volcano deformation. Yeah, yeah, um
Speaker 1: this is a pair of satellites that monitor little bitty
Speaker 1: changes in the surface. And um, I guess it's a
Speaker 1: funding thing because I don't think these two are even uh,
Speaker 1: I think they're still just like in the proposition phase.
Speaker 1: So I guess we should say, like then they will
Speaker 1: be doing this, this is coming yeah, and like this
Speaker 1: particular project. Yeah, and the precipitation when his launches in
Speaker 1: February of next year. So it sounds as though these
Speaker 1: things are already happening. But I think it's just like
Speaker 1: this is how it's gonna work. It sounds as though
Speaker 1: they're already happening because of us. The tents were using
Speaker 1: that's right, we're using present, we should be using future perfect.
Speaker 1: One of the problems with the satellites, though, is um
Speaker 1: and with lasers, is clouds right? Because clouds get in
Speaker 1: the way. It's got to be a clear day to
Speaker 1: use most of this stuff. Hold on, I know you
Speaker 1: love talking about clouds. I do too. But before we
Speaker 1: go any further, what do you think about a message break?
Speaker 1: That's great? Okay, So back to clouds. They caused trouble
Speaker 1: with lasers and with satellites. Yeah, so that you gotta
Speaker 1: count on clear days. So it's not like these things
Speaker 1: are humming seven. Weren't you surprised finding out that clouds
Speaker 1: are still an impediment to lasers? No, I would have thought, like,
Speaker 1: I mean, the projects we're talking about, so like, gee, whiz,
Speaker 1: that can't cloud I thought that. It just seemed kind
Speaker 1: of like, well, what are you guys gonna do about that?
Speaker 1: Because that's a pretty big obstacle. Yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe they could have an anti seating program, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: to disperse clouds. Nice. Um, so, chuck, NASA doesn't need
Speaker 1: to turn its back fully on space, like we said,
Speaker 1: it's still carrying out the Mars mission. Um, what was
Speaker 1: after that? Are they going to Saturn? I don't know,
Speaker 1: Saturn Uranus? Maybe they're they're exploring some moon I can't remember,
Speaker 1: remember it's what They haven't turned their back on space,
Speaker 1: and they don't need to because there's a huge threat
Speaker 1: from space bearing down on us constantly. That's right near
Speaker 1: Earth objects, which I feel like we should do a
Speaker 1: podcast just on near Earth objects. If you want to
Speaker 1: get here then some medium, go watch the movie Armageddon done.
Speaker 1: Although that is deep impact in armagedding. We're both um,
Speaker 1: while fanciful, not too far off, and that there are
Speaker 1: objects that come near the Earth and we think if
Speaker 1: we can detect them soon enough, that there is existing
Speaker 1: technology now that can throw these things off course. Right,
Speaker 1: and Earth is constantly being bombarded every day about a
Speaker 1: hundred hundred tons of material like rain down on the Earth.
Speaker 1: We're talking little particles, things that break up in the atmosphere, um,
Speaker 1: mostly like comment dust and stuff. Right, Um, But there
Speaker 1: are uh NASA estimates about a thousand objects that could
Speaker 1: collide with Earth that are kilometer or more in diameter.
Speaker 1: It's point six two miles in diameter, and that if
Speaker 1: any one of these impacted Earth, which they do about
Speaker 1: every ten thousand years, it would be what's called a
Speaker 1: global catastrophe. Actually, good news, buddy, that is every several
Speaker 1: hundred thousand years, So what comes down every ten years?
Speaker 1: About every ten thousand years, asteroids um larger than about
Speaker 1: a hundred meters could hit the Earth and that would
Speaker 1: just be like a local disaster. So it would be
Speaker 1: like a one the size of a football field. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that I mean, that's not great if you're near it,
Speaker 1: but it's not like a what they would call a
Speaker 1: global disaster, like the end of the world type scenario.
Speaker 1: And that's one that's like a kilometer in diameter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it says every several hundred thousand years or so.
Speaker 1: I feel like, yeah, what are the chances that that's
Speaker 1: going to happen the next like forty years? I don't know,
Speaker 1: aren't we like on a when was the last one?
Speaker 1: It was about a quarter of a million years ago,
Speaker 1: wasn't it. I don't know. Was it the one that
Speaker 1: formed the chit club creator? I don't think I've pronounced
Speaker 1: that correctly, but you know what I'm talking about people
Speaker 1: who are familiar with that or they do. But the
Speaker 1: point is we need a lead time on the stuff.
Speaker 1: Chee Club, the Chicken Club. It's a there's an X
Speaker 1: in there, but it's a. It's it's in Mesoamerica. So
Speaker 1: the X is like a hawk. Oh, it's pronounced cutulu. No,
Speaker 1: it was close oak, it's like that. But there's a
Speaker 1: chi and I believe a club afterwards. So I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna say, chee club creator. But I think that was
Speaker 1: longer ago than a hundred thousand years ago, that extinction event. Yes, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: the good news is if we have a little bit
Speaker 1: of lead time, like a few years, supposedly there are
Speaker 1: things that we can do to knock these asteroids off course,
Speaker 1: like what one is. Using nuclear fission weapons, you set
Speaker 1: it off and the trick is you don't want to
Speaker 1: blow this thing up, no, because then you might have
Speaker 1: a lot of problems. Yeah, that's even worse. But um,
Speaker 1: it would just set it off course. And even if
Speaker 1: you set something off course by a few millimeters over
Speaker 1: the course of years, that could be enough. So it's
Speaker 1: not like they're looking to knock at miles away or anything,
Speaker 1: although in the movies that's how they do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the movies that's how they did do it. I think,
Speaker 1: of course, we may mind them, which we talked about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: asteroid mining, um and tracking these things has actually become
Speaker 1: something of a crowdsource thing. There's NASA has this um
Speaker 1: All Sky Fireball Network that sounds so not real, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it is. It's a real program they have where
Speaker 1: they have cameras that are connected to the Internet that
Speaker 1: are constantly filming the night sky. Most of them are
Speaker 1: along the Eastern Seaboard. We got one here in Georgia, yeah,
Speaker 1: and Alabama, HASM, Tennessee. Um. They're they're grouped in clusters. Um.
Speaker 1: And actually, if you want to propose your location as
Speaker 1: a place to host one of these cameras, typically they're
Speaker 1: like on schools or things like that, Yeah, you can.
Speaker 1: You can submit an application and if there's there's really
Speaker 1: just like four criteria. It's like there can't be a
Speaker 1: lot of light pollution or a light nearby, and that
Speaker 1: rules me out. You have to be able to um,
Speaker 1: you have to be connected to the internet, like a
Speaker 1: couple of a couple of other things. Um. But it's
Speaker 1: it's like you can get a camera set up and
Speaker 1: be part of the All Sky Fireball Network. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I think the plan is to eventually have fifteen of
Speaker 1: these in place, and um, I guess tracking fireballs, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which were good, good things to keep TAM's on for sure,
Speaker 1: you got anything else? No, that's all the news about NASA.
Speaker 1: I wish NASA would sponsor US man, that'd be awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: talk talk about someone we could stump for NASA. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: let's let's do it. NASA. What's your problem? You guys
Speaker 1: have deep pockets? Yeah? Uh, let's see. If you want
Speaker 1: to know more about NASA, you can type that word
Speaker 1: into the handy search bar how stuff works. That comment
Speaker 1: will bring up a bunch of articles we love NASA here,
Speaker 1: how stuff works and stuff you should know. Um, and
Speaker 1: since I said handy search bar, Chuck, it's time for
Speaker 1: listener mail. Straight to listener mail. Yeah. Oh do you
Speaker 1: hear that chime? Man, it's like two thousand nine? All right,
Speaker 1: dear guys and Jerry. It just got home from another
Speaker 1: eight hour car trip with my hobby, during which we
Speaker 1: binge listened to the stuff you should know. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: has been our car trip ritual for about a year now.
Speaker 1: We actually moved to Atlanta, Kenna saw last August, and
Speaker 1: we make pretty frequent trips to our hometown of St. Louis.
Speaker 1: That's a long car trip, Yeah, it sure is. I
Speaker 1: wonder if they know that you can fly there really quickly. Um.
Speaker 1: He introduced me to the Podcas asked on her first
Speaker 1: trip down here, and I have to admit I didn't
Speaker 1: have much hope. I'm a ballet teacher who loves arts
Speaker 1: and fiction in long hours with Netflix, and he is
Speaker 1: a self tart programmer who loves biographies and doing math
Speaker 1: for fun in its free time. So when he told
Speaker 1: me what the show was, I was thinking, great, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna feel dumb and bored. But we gave it a try. Anyway.
Speaker 1: I also have to admit, and this one is kind
Speaker 1: of funny. After listening to one or two episodes, I
Speaker 1: told him I didn't like it. He not understanding how
Speaker 1: that was possible, ask me why not, and I said, dude,
Speaker 1: it's so condescending that the way they ask each other
Speaker 1: questions and converse as if they don't already know what
Speaker 1: the other person is gonna say, as if he sniffed
Speaker 1: me off the case right away. She says, So she's
Speaker 1: a true fan by saying, I don't think that's fake.
Speaker 1: I think they're really right. Don't write out a full
Speaker 1: script ahead of time, I believe it or not. He's right,
Speaker 1: believe or not. That changed everything, which might seem silly,
Speaker 1: but I bet you listened to a past episode and
Speaker 1: imagine it was totally scripted and rehearse she'd see what
Speaker 1: I mean now, I recommended everyone. I can't even conceive
Speaker 1: of how we would be able to generate the level
Speaker 1: of clumsiness that we rise to every episode. You couldn't
Speaker 1: write that. Yeah, So thanks guys for putting out a
Speaker 1: very entertaining program for people of all ages to enjoy,
Speaker 1: and for being less sad than this American life, which
Speaker 1: we also love, but sometimes we just don't have enough
Speaker 1: tissue and emotional resolve to listen to it. That is
Speaker 1: from Amber and Ben Studive Baker. Thanks to you guys.
Speaker 1: Thanks Amber and Ben. Hey there, if you're on one
Speaker 1: of your road trips, drive safe and drive safe to
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Speaker 1: hope it's a nice time, agreed. Uh. If you want
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