Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, there's Jerry over there,
Speaker 1: and this is stuff you should know. I have let
Speaker 1: me more to comment other than that. All right, how
Speaker 1: are you chucking? Good? I'm great good, I'm glad. What
Speaker 1: are you drinking? I'm drinking Perry. It's French, fancy fancy.
Speaker 1: I'm drinking just regular old dumb American water. What is
Speaker 1: that tap water? Don't drink that well, I mean it's water,
Speaker 1: it's not out of the tap. I have a death
Speaker 1: wish on my hands. Right, you know what I love?
Speaker 1: If you're going fizzy drinks, best fizzy drink of all time,
Speaker 1: I would say Sam Pellegrino. Um, well, any Sam peret
Speaker 1: flavored kind Topechico. Oh yeah, it's good. Jerry's nodding with emphasis.
Speaker 1: I've had one before. Yeah, the Topachico. I just like
Speaker 1: the plane. It is the fizziest of fizz, is it.
Speaker 1: And uh, here's a little drink for you. Tequila and
Speaker 1: Topechico and about a half a lime. That's it. Low calorie, clean, simple, refreshing, simple, meager, delicious, meager, disgusting.
Speaker 1: It's like what a what a quaker? Or uh, what
Speaker 1: a Quaker would drink? Or um? Yeah? Righte tequila? Who
Speaker 1: am I thinking of? I have no idea what you're
Speaker 1: talking about? Now? Who goes on rum Springer? Oh? Amish?
Speaker 1: The Amish. It's what the Amish would drink, very plain, straightforward,
Speaker 1: boozy drink. Oh. I think when the Amish, uh going
Speaker 1: rum spring and they probably go straight for the hard stuff,
Speaker 1: straight for the Harvey wallbangers. Well, I think they just
Speaker 1: they say, we don't need that topachico, just pour that tequila?
Speaker 1: Got you into my stomach quickly? Man? Uh So today,
Speaker 1: of course we're talking about Faraday cages, Chuck. Have you
Speaker 1: ever been in a car that was struck by lightning? Uh? No?
Speaker 1: Have you know? I would talk about it every day.
Speaker 1: But you know what, if you were you'd probably walk
Speaker 1: around saying everything was cool because the tires are grounded. Man,
Speaker 1: not not me. I wouldn't have said that. You would
Speaker 1: have said that yesterday today, I would have said it before.
Speaker 1: That's not true though. It's it's not the tires right,
Speaker 1: No tires are made of rubber too or something like it,
Speaker 1: and which is an insulator. It doesn't conduct electricity very well.
Speaker 1: But if a bolt of lightning hit your car, those
Speaker 1: tires are not nearly insulated enough to protect you. It's
Speaker 1: actually because your car is essentially what's called a Faraday cage,
Speaker 1: which is why it jibes with the topic today. That's right, Uh,
Speaker 1: name for Michael Faraday, the nineteenth century scientist. I don't
Speaker 1: even dude. Yeah that I mean, this guy was just
Speaker 1: a mazing He deserves his own episode, for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a big, I'm a big. I was trying to
Speaker 1: think of a funny name for a fair day fair,
Speaker 1: like a fair day fair Dan, fair daddy. Oh that's
Speaker 1: a good one. Fair Daddy, Fair daddy. But that implies
Speaker 1: that you have kids. But you can be a fair daddy,
Speaker 1: can be whatever, Sure it can be. Daddy did all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff. That's right, we have the stuff you
Speaker 1: should know. Army, you're the fare daddy of the stuff
Speaker 1: you should know. Army movie crushes, the movie crushers, And
Speaker 1: I just learned today what you know. Dak Shepherd has
Speaker 1: armchair expert. You know what his people are called arm
Speaker 1: cherry in close? Is it really arm cherries C H
Speaker 1: E R R I E s. Yeah, yeah, like Cherry,
Speaker 1: you got the murder Hinos with my favorite murder. What
Speaker 1: else I think this? American life fans are called middle
Speaker 1: aged liberals. Very nice and that's all. No one else
Speaker 1: says a nickname. No, that's it. Um. I'm sure someone
Speaker 1: else has a nickname. But Faraday in the Fara Daddies,
Speaker 1: which is us and no one else developed something called
Speaker 1: a fair day cage on the heels of the work
Speaker 1: of someone named Ben Franklin. Should we say what a
Speaker 1: fair day cage is first? Or story? I think a
Speaker 1: little bit? Yeah, alright, well, fair day cage can be
Speaker 1: any conductor of electricity that's important that surrounds something that
Speaker 1: you would like to protect from electro an electrical charge, right,
Speaker 1: or it turns out also electromagnetic radiation, which is not
Speaker 1: the same thing. No, they're based on the same stuff.
Speaker 1: But electricity is a current of electrons moving through an object. Uh.
Speaker 1: An electromagnetic radiation or type of it is just energy
Speaker 1: flowing through there. Like, he doesn't need a conductor. That's
Speaker 1: really the big differentiator between the two. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: it can be chain link, it can be wired mesh,
Speaker 1: like you said, it can be your car, can be
Speaker 1: solid metal. We'll talk about planes later on planes technically,
Speaker 1: or a kind of fair day cage, thank goodness, and yeah,
Speaker 1: and it basically is there to protect what's inside and
Speaker 1: has a range of applications. Now that has kind of
Speaker 1: grown over the years. And the thing about a Faraday
Speaker 1: cages that it's really weird. It's based on observations like
Speaker 1: you said, by Ben Franklin and then really investigated by Faraday,
Speaker 1: which we'll get into in a second. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: quite make sense because if you happen to come along
Speaker 1: and there's a down power line and it's laying on
Speaker 1: an aluminum fence post like the Ice Storm movie? Does
Speaker 1: that happen in that movie? Oh, I gotta see that.
Speaker 1: Then you've never seen the Ice Storm one of the
Speaker 1: great movies. I know, I know, But then I go
Speaker 1: through periods where I'm like, I just I want something
Speaker 1: like dumb and thoughtless. Well, that's not the storm, right,
Speaker 1: And you also have to wait till the winter. You
Speaker 1: can't like I see, you can't PLoP down on the
Speaker 1: summertime in your backyard. Now I know that's true to
Speaker 1: be weird, I'm trying to think I saw something just
Speaker 1: the other day that was worth watching. Oh man, man,
Speaker 1: this is podcast gold right here. I'll try to think
Speaker 1: of it, and I'll keep I'll keep this little region
Speaker 1: of my brain right here going trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what movie I just saw sometimes and then the rest
Speaker 1: over here it's gonna is gonna focus on Faraday cages.
Speaker 1: I can't do that minds like Hummer Simpson. My thought
Speaker 1: bubble just says it, dontut Oh this is this part here, Okay,
Speaker 1: So but hold on. So um, so what were we
Speaker 1: talking about that before that we were talking about movies?
Speaker 1: Were uh, yes, So a Faraday cage is weird, and
Speaker 1: that if you normally go up to a conductor that
Speaker 1: has an electrical current running through it and you touch it,
Speaker 1: it's going to knock you out of your shoes, like
Speaker 1: the kid in Stand By Me. Basically that was a
Speaker 1: train the metaphor works or the kidney ice storm. Well,
Speaker 1: now I don't have to see the ice storm. There's
Speaker 1: a lot more than happens. So, um, a Faraday cage
Speaker 1: is special in that it actually protects you from doing that,
Speaker 1: but it uses conductors. It's not some special insulator. It
Speaker 1: actually uses the very thing that should electrocute you to
Speaker 1: prevent you from being electrocuted. It's yeah, the cage itself
Speaker 1: is a hollow conductor, and that charge stays on the exterior.
Speaker 1: It's like, here, let me take that electrical load for you.
Speaker 1: Whatever is inside of me. That was it? See, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I think that's actually the level of Ben Franklin's
Speaker 1: understanding of it from what I gather Ben Franklin, he was,
Speaker 1: he was on the case. He was he was sniffing
Speaker 1: all over, he was, he sniffed off the case. Uh.
Speaker 1: In seventeen fifty five he started doing a lot of
Speaker 1: these electrical experiments. Obviously everyone knows about the kite. Uh.
Speaker 1: One that has to do with the fair day cages.
Speaker 1: He electrified ran a current through a pint can, a
Speaker 1: silver pint can. Yeah, he was always drinking pines. Sure.
Speaker 1: And then uh, he lowered a cork which obviously has
Speaker 1: no charge, like a little cork ball attached to silk,
Speaker 1: a silk string which has no you know, can't run
Speaker 1: a current through that either, and he lowered it down
Speaker 1: into that pint glass and it just sat there. It
Speaker 1: was like, what what do you want? Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: it's dumb. It was a teenage corkball. It wasn't It
Speaker 1: was very much a teenage cork ball, and it didn't
Speaker 1: do anything. But he pulled that cork ball out and
Speaker 1: then dangled it beside that charge scan and it went Hotcha, Mama,
Speaker 1: let me get a piece of that can Hama blessed
Speaker 1: tax So it like latched on the outside of it. Right,
Speaker 1: I just demonstrated everybody's white. Chuck laughed, and Ben Franklin
Speaker 1: was like, I have no idea what's going on here.
Speaker 1: I've only just preliminarily started experimenting with electricity. This is weird.
Speaker 1: And he wrote to a friend he said, I I
Speaker 1: can't explain this. Maybe someday you'll be able to investigate it.
Speaker 1: If you do, let me know what the deal is. Um.
Speaker 1: But he was the at least on paper, the first
Speaker 1: person to really kind of notice this. It took Michael
Speaker 1: Faraday a few decades later, probably about forty maybe even
Speaker 1: fifty years later, to say, I really want to know
Speaker 1: what's going on here, so he investigated it himself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you really think about what Franklin did,
Speaker 1: ninety nine people out of a hundred back then would
Speaker 1: have been like, who cares, what are you doing that
Speaker 1: stupid cork ball? Like what is this matter? Like you're
Speaker 1: hanging inside there. It doesn't do anything hanging on the
Speaker 1: outside and it moves a little bit. But Franklin knew,
Speaker 1: He's like this is important, Like this is this will
Speaker 1: have an application? Right, So like that there in lies
Speaker 1: the brilliance I think, and the beauty you have Ben Franklin,
Speaker 1: that and his hair do. Of course, So Michael Faraday,
Speaker 1: when he investigated it, um, he recreated the same experiment
Speaker 1: very famously. UM a couple of ways. One he lined
Speaker 1: as a room. He built a room basically and then
Speaker 1: lined it with um foil and then applied a charge
Speaker 1: to the outside and put a small child in there. Well,
Speaker 1: he put himself in there, and he hung out basically.
Speaker 1: I saw for a couple of days in this Faraday
Speaker 1: cage with an electrical current being applied to the outside
Speaker 1: of it. He had a that was good for the
Speaker 1: time because you, I mean, I made that joke. But
Speaker 1: usually at the time it's like, how about that kitten, right,
Speaker 1: you have no right that cute bunny, Let me just
Speaker 1: exploit you. Um. So yeah, So he actually did it himself.
Speaker 1: He remember we did that episode of famous scientists who
Speaker 1: were their own guinea pigs. He could have qualified in
Speaker 1: that respect for sure. But he demonstrated, Okay, there's no
Speaker 1: charge in here. I'm fine, uh this this there's something
Speaker 1: going on where this conductor itself is preventing the charge
Speaker 1: from coming in here. That was the first one. Then
Speaker 1: they follow it up again with an ice pail um,
Speaker 1: which is exactly what it sounds like. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a bucket. And he's very famous for his ice pail experiment,
Speaker 1: basically recreated Franklin's thing. And he said, I think I
Speaker 1: can explain this now. It wasn't full of ice though,
Speaker 1: just to be clear. And actually there's still Faraday ice
Speaker 1: pails today and they're made of wire mesh. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta check them out. So is that what you
Speaker 1: told your Yeah, don't work. They work for like, don't work.
Speaker 1: It'll work too good. So I say we take a
Speaker 1: break and then come back and try to explain what
Speaker 1: Faraday figured out. That sounds great, Okay, sucks. I don't
Speaker 1: know that, you know it stuck in this. It's a
Speaker 1: great name. That's the name of that. It's a great name.
Speaker 1: So Michael Faraday was a brilliant man chuck in that
Speaker 1: he he took Franklin's findings and said, here's what's going on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you listen to our March twentie episode How
Speaker 1: Electricity Works one, you'll you'll it was pretty intense. I
Speaker 1: really listened to a lot of it. We got into
Speaker 1: the weeds because that's a tough one. It is. I mean, electricity.
Speaker 1: It's not like a slouchy subject, you know, but this
Speaker 1: is a Josh written simplified overview that is so much
Speaker 1: better than that episode. I think, thanks man. And it
Speaker 1: goes a little something like this. Alright, man, electricity. You've
Speaker 1: got metal objects, and let's say it's a let's say
Speaker 1: it's that tin can or whatever it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: cocaine the pine can. We'll go stick with the pine
Speaker 1: Cann't know why I changed the coke can because we're
Speaker 1: in the South, okay, we're from We're in Atlanta. But
Speaker 1: all right, it's a pint can. They don't make cocin pints,
Speaker 1: or they should, or at least the cans. What's your
Speaker 1: favorite beer? I mean, I like tropically these days, it
Speaker 1: comes can right, Okay, there you go. All right, So
Speaker 1: I got a tall boy of tropically changed my mind,
Speaker 1: changed my mind. We got younger listeners that listen, so,
Speaker 1: but I also don't want to necessarily push coke on them.
Speaker 1: How about, um, does does the it's a white cloth can?
Speaker 1: Does um the topo Chico come in a can? Let's
Speaker 1: say it does? Okay, I always have mine in a bottle,
Speaker 1: but let's say it comes in a can, all right,
Speaker 1: just for the sake of moving on. Alright, So you
Speaker 1: got that topo cheeko can. And it is a conductor
Speaker 1: of electricity, which basically means that you know, these things
Speaker 1: have electrons and protons in them, and they can be
Speaker 1: both positively and negatively charged. If it was always uh electric,
Speaker 1: you would you'd go to pick up that topa Chico
Speaker 1: and just get shocked, right it. But it's not. Itself
Speaker 1: doesn't carry a charge, and an electrical charges the force.
Speaker 1: That's the force of electricity. Um. When it's on the move,
Speaker 1: that's a current, and a conductor allows electricity to move
Speaker 1: through it. That's right, like those car tires right right now,
Speaker 1: that's the uh and the it can be positive or negative.
Speaker 1: It really just depends on the count of how many
Speaker 1: electrons to how many protons. Has an equal number, it's
Speaker 1: going to be neutral, obviously, it's has more protons, it's
Speaker 1: gonna have a positive charge more electrons, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: negatively charged. And then if you're a conductor like that can,
Speaker 1: there are lots of loose electrons flying around inside that.
Speaker 1: They're free to move about and do their business. Right,
Speaker 1: So one way to look at an electrical current as
Speaker 1: it goes from one thing through the next thing that
Speaker 1: it's applied to, and it does that by exciting those
Speaker 1: free electrons that are able to move. They start moving
Speaker 1: and they basically carry the electrical charge through that that
Speaker 1: the current through the conductor. But under normal circumstances, you
Speaker 1: just got all the positively charged stuff of the negatively
Speaker 1: charged stuff hanging out not doing anything. And so that's why,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, you can pick up that that topo
Speaker 1: Chico can and it's not going to electric It's just
Speaker 1: a conductor. Right. But let's say that I was a
Speaker 1: superhero with electricity. I was electron Man, and my hand
Speaker 1: like carried a charge. What are the current The fans
Speaker 1: of electron Man would be the electron e X electronic
Speaker 1: x uh. And let's say I reach for that topo
Speaker 1: Chico Can with my my electrically charged end. Then you're
Speaker 1: in business because what happens then is you're gonna have
Speaker 1: an opposite thing going on. All of those particles will separate,
Speaker 1: those electrons in those protons that are normally just com
Speaker 1: mingling out. Normally they're all fine under normal circumstances, but
Speaker 1: all of a sudden they separate, and all of the
Speaker 1: charge coming towards me would be the opposite, which would
Speaker 1: be protons. So if you're it depends are you you
Speaker 1: as as oh you're electron man, Yes, you would be
Speaker 1: negatively charged for sure, Yeah, there or also just be
Speaker 1: a total misnown that's right. So the protons are going
Speaker 1: to be attracted to the electrons in this case, or
Speaker 1: holes I saw. Electron holes is another thing that that
Speaker 1: starts flowing toward a negative charge. I've never heard of
Speaker 1: them before. I hadn't either, And this is called electrostatic induction.
Speaker 1: When you separate out the positive from negative charge and
Speaker 1: a conductor. That's right, and they're on the opposite sides
Speaker 1: of that topo Chico Can. As soon as my hand
Speaker 1: touches that thing exactly. Okay, so that makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense. That's basically what Ben Franklin was observing, and
Speaker 1: he couldn't quite figure it out. And this is what
Speaker 1: Michael Faraday recreated and was able to explain that when
Speaker 1: you take a charged and electrically charged external object and
Speaker 1: apply it to a conductor, the opposite of whatever that
Speaker 1: charges is going to go toward it. The particles that
Speaker 1: are the same charge, you're going to move away from it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're repelled by it. And you have a good point
Speaker 1: in here. We talk We used to talk a lot
Speaker 1: about homeostasis, and that's kind of what's going on here,
Speaker 1: is that those negative electrons I want to cancel out
Speaker 1: that charge coming at them with my electrified hand and
Speaker 1: just get back to neutral. They want to hang out
Speaker 1: with the protons again exactly, So they're trying to offset
Speaker 1: that positive charge with their own their own charge. But um,
Speaker 1: so that the negative electrons and the positive holes I
Speaker 1: guess create an electrical field on the outside, but it
Speaker 1: keeps that electrical charge to the outside. This is what
Speaker 1: Faraday found. It stays outside. On the inside, there is
Speaker 1: no electrical charge. What doesn't quite make sense until you
Speaker 1: start to dig into it a little more. And it
Speaker 1: has to do with that electrostatic conduction where the positively
Speaker 1: charged stuff moves to the inside, the negative stuff moves
Speaker 1: to the outside, and because the inside is positively charged
Speaker 1: and the positive charge is also on the outside, they
Speaker 1: cancel one another out, so there is no charge on
Speaker 1: the inside, right, And that's why Ben Franklin's corkball just
Speaker 1: sat there, didn't do anything when you put it down
Speaker 1: in there. And that's why I mean, I guess, Topo Chico,
Speaker 1: it's a bad example because I would have a liquid
Speaker 1: in there. Well, we drank it already, all right, we
Speaker 1: drank it all Yeah, we opened up that can. It's
Speaker 1: a giant Topo Chico can that we are standing in
Speaker 1: totally unharmed because the electrostatic current is kept outside. Because
Speaker 1: here's there are a couple of things that far Day
Speaker 1: figured out that a conductor does in this sense that
Speaker 1: creates what we understand is a Faraday cage, and that
Speaker 1: it keeps a charge from developing on the inside. Um
Speaker 1: because it distributes the electric electrostatic charge just to the outside.
Speaker 1: It keeps it outside, and so it acts as a shield.
Speaker 1: It actually shields a charge from coming inside. So when
Speaker 1: you're inside a Faraday cage, whether it's a giant topo
Speaker 1: Chico cane, or your car or an airplane, you're actually
Speaker 1: protected from being shocked or electrocuted by the electrical field
Speaker 1: that is distributed strictly to the outside of the conductor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's this shield that that's where the application of
Speaker 1: this really comes into play. Otherwise it would just be
Speaker 1: kind of a fun experiment. But then humans are like, wait,
Speaker 1: this is actually pretty important because we can use this stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: how effective that shield is h is really dependent on
Speaker 1: what kind of Faraday cage you have. It can be
Speaker 1: depends on the metal that you're using, and how conductive
Speaker 1: it is, depends on the size of Like if it's
Speaker 1: a mesh, it depends on how big the holes are.
Speaker 1: If it's like your old plaster and laugh walls in
Speaker 1: your house, you might realize that you don't get as
Speaker 1: good as an Internet signal in one room of your
Speaker 1: home that might still have that plaster and laugh. Yes,
Speaker 1: Because so there's a second thing that Faraday cages do
Speaker 1: their magic. I said, they're really weird. It doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense, but this is just what they figured out happens.
Speaker 1: The second thing that it does is remember I said
Speaker 1: that electro magnetic waves like radio waves, gamma waves, X rays, microwaves, Yeah, microwaves, UM,
Speaker 1: those are a there. They're basically from the same family
Speaker 1: as an electrical current UM. And so the Faraday cage
Speaker 1: actually prevents their intrusion as well. So the second thing
Speaker 1: it does is prevent these kind of waves from coming in. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it all depends on what it's made from. And
Speaker 1: you know what the size and shape of the Faraday cages,
Speaker 1: right or getting out in the case of a microwave.
Speaker 1: If you look at that door of your microwave and
Speaker 1: you see a little grid pattern, that's a fair Day cage.
Speaker 1: I say we take another break and then come back
Speaker 1: and talk about some real life applications in addition to
Speaker 1: microwaves of fair Day cages. What do you think, let's
Speaker 1: do it stuck, stuck, stuck. I don't know that you
Speaker 1: know it stuck in this stuck. That's a great name.
Speaker 1: That's the name of it. It's a great name. All right.
Speaker 1: You got your favor Day cage, your fair Day shield,
Speaker 1: your RF cage, radio frequency all these are just different
Speaker 1: names for the same thing. Your e m F cage
Speaker 1: Electromotive force cage, your KLF cage, Sure, kmf DM cage.
Speaker 1: Uh what was k What was the first one? He said,
Speaker 1: KLF K Yeah what was that? Was that a group,
Speaker 1: the KLF. Yeah, but they had like one song they
Speaker 1: had were one hit wonder. Basically, I think they were
Speaker 1: the ones that set a million pounds on fire. I
Speaker 1: bet they regret that they did. They actually held a
Speaker 1: very um unsuccessful Kickstarter they that million pounds back years later.
Speaker 1: I was about to make a joke and say kickstarter,
Speaker 1: but they really did, Yes, they did. Um, maybe they'll
Speaker 1: write us. I think it was KALF km DM, I
Speaker 1: can't remember. It might have been KMFDM. Who was it
Speaker 1: that we thought was writing us at one point? But
Speaker 1: it was a fake Louis Bega. Yeah they got as
Speaker 1: good now? Am I okay to talk about that? The
Speaker 1: Loue Bega incident. It's a good band name. Jerry's over here,
Speaker 1: laugh is he remembers up bigger for the Loue Bega
Speaker 1: ins Like, he even uses his picture on his Twitter handle.
Speaker 1: We're like, oh, well that checks, yeah, yeah, that's it's
Speaker 1: loup Vega. He's verified the Mama number five guy. Um oh,
Speaker 1: he wasn't even verified. That was the dopes. Such dopes.
Speaker 1: So we have been talking a lot about the fair
Speaker 1: day cage and what they can be used for. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that can be used for is like,
Speaker 1: let's say you're in a lab, in a science lab
Speaker 1: and you want to conduct an experiment and a truly
Speaker 1: neutral setting with no electromagnetic field at all, because nothing
Speaker 1: going on. We said, these are energy waves that are
Speaker 1: just flowing through the air. Just because you can't see him,
Speaker 1: doesn't mean they're not there. But yeah, so it can
Speaker 1: affect a lot of experiment. So you might want to
Speaker 1: have a fair day cage built for your science lab.
Speaker 1: That's a big one. If you are at a university
Speaker 1: that's more than a two bit university, they're probably going
Speaker 1: to have Faraday cages here there around some of their
Speaker 1: labs for sure. Yeah, of course, you want to go
Speaker 1: to a hospital and uh, look for a fair day cage.
Speaker 1: Go take me to the m r I lab and
Speaker 1: they'll say, yes, sir, click their heels together and take
Speaker 1: you to see a fair day cage. Because um, that
Speaker 1: either the m r I machine or possibly the room
Speaker 1: that the m r I machine is in. Maybe even
Speaker 1: both are outfitted with Faraday cages because for the same
Speaker 1: reason as when you're protecting your lab, you don't want
Speaker 1: the the electromagnetic radiation interfering with the data that the
Speaker 1: m r I is taking in and screwing up the picture.
Speaker 1: And they'd be like, good lord, this guy's gotta tumor
Speaker 1: in the size of a watermelon on its side. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: we forgot to build this in a fair day cage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not to protect. It's not like an X ray.
Speaker 1: It's not to protect m r I juice from spreading
Speaker 1: through the hospital. I don't know. I think it's to
Speaker 1: protect the day. That definitely is, But I wonder if
Speaker 1: it's two fold or do But then you'd have to
Speaker 1: have two fair Day cages working in opposite directions, and
Speaker 1: then the universe might fold in on its off in
Speaker 1: that situe. It's true I mentioned airplanes earlier as a teaser.
Speaker 1: Cars don't get struck by lightning a lot, but you'll
Speaker 1: be very scared to know that airplanes do get struck
Speaker 1: by lightning quite a bit. I don't think I've been
Speaker 1: in a plane that was struck by lightning, but I've
Speaker 1: been in situations where it's possible. But this is probably
Speaker 1: a really dumb question, like would it make a big
Speaker 1: thunder boom right then? I don't know. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's a dumb question. That's a great question, because I
Speaker 1: would say then you would probably know if the whole
Speaker 1: plane just went kaboom. The other way that you can
Speaker 1: tell is if you end up in an alternate universe
Speaker 1: that the Langoliers are eating. That's the other way to
Speaker 1: know your plane was struck by lightning. But the airplane
Speaker 1: is fine, all the equipment, all the people inside are fine.
Speaker 1: With Balki, no less. Did you ever see that? No? Okay,
Speaker 1: it was pretty bad. What was it? It was a
Speaker 1: Stephen King made for TV movie starring Balki. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it was bad. What was it called? The Langoliers? All right,
Speaker 1: I mean just bad. I was just because you're saying
Speaker 1: funny words. Okay, that's good enough for me. As long
Speaker 1: as I'm getting laughs out of you, that's all I
Speaker 1: care about. Uh So, Yeah, that plane is a Faraday cage.
Speaker 1: Um buildings can probably not purposely be built as a
Speaker 1: fair day cage, but they can act as that. Well,
Speaker 1: it's like that that laugh, um the wire mesh laugh
Speaker 1: that that you apply the past plaster two you're talking
Speaker 1: about also with um poured concrete, reinforced concrete. Right, the
Speaker 1: rebar in there, if you, you know, build a large
Speaker 1: enough structure, the rebar can accidentally act as a Faraday cage.
Speaker 1: And we said, depending on what electromagnetic radiation you're trying
Speaker 1: to keep out, you actually want to a tune that attenuate.
Speaker 1: I guess the size of the mesh or the grid pattern,
Speaker 1: whatever the chain link fence, it'll keep some stuff out
Speaker 1: depending on the size of the hole being based on
Speaker 1: the wavelength of the wave. If the wavelength is bigger
Speaker 1: than the whole, it can actually be kept out. If
Speaker 1: the wave link is smaller than the whole, then it's
Speaker 1: going to pass through fairly easily. And even if you do, um,
Speaker 1: make it just right, it's still probably not going to
Speaker 1: be a perfect Fairday cage, as evidenced in the case
Speaker 1: of a microwave. Right. Yeah, Like if you put your phone,
Speaker 1: your cell phone in a microwave and shut the door,
Speaker 1: don't turn it on, no, but if you just put
Speaker 1: it in there and called it, it would probably bring Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably even though your phone operates on microwaves. Um, but
Speaker 1: you your microwave just isn't perfect. And I've seen everywhere
Speaker 1: where this explained follows up with don't worry, You're not
Speaker 1: going to be affected by the microwave radiation. Um, Like,
Speaker 1: there's like certain standards for leakage that have to be
Speaker 1: met in the developed world if you're selling a microwave
Speaker 1: or buying a microwave. So I still don't stand in
Speaker 1: front of a microwave. You probably shouldn't, you know, just
Speaker 1: in case. But then now, Chuck, we've kind of traps
Speaker 1: into the territory where Faraday cage is have really kind
Speaker 1: of made a big appearance in the consumer market, which
Speaker 1: is things like protecting from uh e m F allergies.
Speaker 1: Oh right, Like, um, better call Saul's brother on the show. Well,
Speaker 1: Michael McKeon is a character. He plays a character. He plays, Um,
Speaker 1: Saul's brother and Um, he has a allergy to electromagnetic
Speaker 1: radiation allergy or is it in his head? Well, I
Speaker 1: mean they explore it like it's in his head, but
Speaker 1: they also explore it like it's you know, from his viewpoint,
Speaker 1: it's happen, it's real, and it's basically the no cebo
Speaker 1: effect is how I've seen it explain. But there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people out there, and you'll see in
Speaker 1: this show where he's wearing like um, a solar blanket,
Speaker 1: like a metallic blanket that he believes is is um
Speaker 1: you know, blocking electromagnetic radiation, everything from visible light to
Speaker 1: radio waves, to gamma rays to X rays, all of
Speaker 1: this energy flying through there. Some people believe that it
Speaker 1: has a pernicious effect on your health. For everything I've
Speaker 1: seen scientific wise says that is not the case. But
Speaker 1: there's still obviously there's people who are like, no, there's
Speaker 1: this one study once that found this and it says
Speaker 1: that your cells are not happy when they're exposed radio ways,
Speaker 1: which is why I were a foil line suit whenever
Speaker 1: I leave the house kind of thing. And it's a
Speaker 1: real it's sad. It's very sad, especially if it's not true.
Speaker 1: It's just as sad if it is correct. These people
Speaker 1: are suffering and nobody can help them, right, you know,
Speaker 1: just like with the ham or Morgellons who said it
Speaker 1: was it Fauci? Oh man? Was it that rat? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like I didn't know anything. Uh, should we leave that
Speaker 1: in here? It's a joke. We'll find out. Okay, we'll see,
Speaker 1: we'll test our own temperature. And the uh they do
Speaker 1: power utility line line lines workers. Sometimes they'll have these
Speaker 1: special suits and if you have an E. M f
Speaker 1: UM allergy, you probably want to get your hand. That's right. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, that's how one of my granddad's died. I
Speaker 1: think I've told that story before. He was a power
Speaker 1: lineman lineman, uh not which a tall Tennessee man. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. Yeah, he got zapped in the top
Speaker 1: of a telephone polling and knocked him out to the
Speaker 1: ground and it didn't immediately kill him. It is essentially
Speaker 1: what killed him. Yeah, how long did he linger? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean I was he died when I
Speaker 1: was like five ish silently remember meeting him like once,
Speaker 1: and he was you know, he had a hospital bed
Speaker 1: in his house and my grandmother was a nurse, so
Speaker 1: she basically just kind of cared for him for the
Speaker 1: rest of his life. Oh so this wasn't like a
Speaker 1: couple of days later like he know, he lived for
Speaker 1: years after with like brain damage and uh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: wonder how much of it was from hitting his head
Speaker 1: and how much of it was from the juice. Well,
Speaker 1: I think most of it was from the fall, but
Speaker 1: if technically that's what caused the fall, so I was Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wasn't a very good guy. I'm not saying he
Speaker 1: deserve that. He didn't deserve that, but yeah, he wasn't
Speaker 1: a good person. I got you so feel bad ish, No,
Speaker 1: you don't want bad things to happen to anyone or
Speaker 1: maybe Hilter, Yeah, did Hilter do these paintings all time?
Speaker 1: Great man? The government they're also obviously going to protect
Speaker 1: sensitive equipment. Uh, they're going to build special rooms. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: because here's the thing. If you are afraid of electromagnetic
Speaker 1: radiation going through you and you're trying to keep it out,
Speaker 1: you can also keep electromagnetic radiation from escaping. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: if you want to tell sensitive secret ers and sensitive documents,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a special room in the White House
Speaker 1: or the Pentagon that is tricked out to to shield, uh,
Speaker 1: to keep anyone from listening in. Basically, it has essentially
Speaker 1: a reverse Faraday cage keeps the electromagnetic radiation from leaking out,
Speaker 1: which sounds like who cares if electromagnetic radiation leaks out
Speaker 1: from a computer? Screen or um, you know, the an
Speaker 1: ethernet cable or something like that. It turns out you
Speaker 1: can actually tell you can gain information from capturing this
Speaker 1: leakage and converting it into data. Yeah, what was the
Speaker 1: guy with the I mean, this is a little scary
Speaker 1: considering what's going on in this country right now. But
Speaker 1: was it in Holland? It is I'm not really scared
Speaker 1: by this. I think it kind of goes to show
Speaker 1: just how yeah, far fetched, it's excellent, Chuck far fetched.
Speaker 1: The guy named rock gun Grip, who is a Dutch
Speaker 1: computer expert. That's how you say Dutch names, by the way, Um, like,
Speaker 1: you have no idea what you're talking about. Uh, he uh,
Speaker 1: figured out that you can electronically eaves drop or electromagnetically
Speaker 1: eaves drop on the voting machines that they were using
Speaker 1: in the Netherlands. Um. And he showed that he could
Speaker 1: gather the refresh rate, or he could determine that the
Speaker 1: refresh rate on the computer screen slowed down when a
Speaker 1: name that had an accent or a special character was
Speaker 1: being displayed, and he was able to take this leakage
Speaker 1: from like or something like that from these voting machines
Speaker 1: converted into a sound. And when somebody from the Christian
Speaker 1: Democrat is Appeal party and the e has an accent
Speaker 1: over it was voted for, the tone actually changed. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: So he could say they got one vote or something
Speaker 1: like that, but not manipulate that vote. No, but I
Speaker 1: could see in this country that story being dug up
Speaker 1: and used, you know, right by dummies for sure. But
Speaker 1: the point is that this guy can do something like that.
Speaker 1: You can bet that like a very well to do
Speaker 1: state that wanted to electromagnetically eaves job could probably glean
Speaker 1: some pretty import and stuff. So, yes, you probably do
Speaker 1: want to put your most sensitive conversations government state secrets
Speaker 1: in a Faraday cage enclosed room. But the average person's
Speaker 1: vote is not going to be you know, in jeopardy
Speaker 1: by rope going grip. You know, I read about this
Speaker 1: guy from Holland or the Netherlands or someplace like that.
Speaker 1: Who's that Alec Baldwin. Yeah it was Alec Baldwin. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you who else might have Some Faraday cages are
Speaker 1: like preppers, survivalists, They probably have Faraday cage or two.
Speaker 1: They may be homemade hate rope gone grip. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't stand that guy. No, but that's they worry that
Speaker 1: um of electromagnetic pulses, which we talked a lot about
Speaker 1: in the space Weather episode. You remember we I mean
Speaker 1: we said like, if if one of these things didn't
Speaker 1: happen from space weather or from a bad actor um
Speaker 1: one of the others, uh, you can really lose all
Speaker 1: of your electronics, which is another reason people build fair
Speaker 1: day cages, not just keep out or keep their their
Speaker 1: their own electronics from leaking information, from keeping electronic um
Speaker 1: uh noise from coming in and disrupting their own stuff.
Speaker 1: If a big one hit, it could just blow your
Speaker 1: circuits right out the human body. Your electronics they're designed
Speaker 1: to use and run on electricity, but only a certain amount.
Speaker 1: When you overload that amount that the system tends to fail.
Speaker 1: And that's why survivalists and preppers believe in things like
Speaker 1: Faraday cages to protect their equipment. Right. The problem is
Speaker 1: when you take it out and use it, if space
Speaker 1: weather actually happened, right, then your fair day cage is
Speaker 1: useless because you're outside of it. Yeah, and I guess
Speaker 1: if you're really uh, sort of paranoid and have a
Speaker 1: lot of money, you can have your home. There's this
Speaker 1: place called Holland Shielding that makes a wallpaper with copper
Speaker 1: woven into it to prevent someone from eavesdropping on you.
Speaker 1: I also saw there's something called mew metal and it's
Speaker 1: like an iron nickel alloy that works really well for
Speaker 1: that too. I gotta coming over next week. That's awesome
Speaker 1: and put that all over my house. Are you prepping
Speaker 1: these days? I'm prepping for a nap than fluffing that pillow? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What else? A little warm milk. I've been able to
Speaker 1: nap a little bit these days. It's good. I still can't.
Speaker 1: I still can't. Nope. Do you try every once in
Speaker 1: a great while? And now, can you mean nap? Noah,
Speaker 1: we're not nappers. Yeah, I I enjoy a nap. Have
Speaker 1: kind of embraced the the true siesta. Like you know,
Speaker 1: I get up really early, I stay up really late.
Speaker 1: I don't get a lot of sleep at night, but
Speaker 1: I'll try and get a thirty minute nap in at
Speaker 1: some point and it's working pretty well. What do you
Speaker 1: do at night? I mean, that's my time. When you
Speaker 1: got a little kid, that's like once they go to bed,
Speaker 1: You're like, that's your time? How late, you stay up,
Speaker 1: and Ry he's nodding, Uh, you know, I'll stay up.
Speaker 1: I mean it depends. I'll go through phases where I'm
Speaker 1: in bed at ten thirty, but usually I'm a midnight man.
Speaker 1: It's what I like to call. And then on the
Speaker 1: weekends that stretches into like one am. What time do
Speaker 1: you get up? I usually get up around six thirty
Speaker 1: or seven. Ye wake up six thirty or seven. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm about a six hour a night guy. Maybe a
Speaker 1: thirty minutes you need. Yeah, I think we talked about it.
Speaker 1: You're getting up early these days. I get crazy emails
Speaker 1: from you, and so early in all cats. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: I actually try very hard to be cognizant of what
Speaker 1: I'm emailing you early in the morning because I know
Speaker 1: it might be some of the first stuff you see,
Speaker 1: and I don't want it to be like, hey, we
Speaker 1: gotta do this, this guy is falling. I've been good
Speaker 1: about the not opening my email though till to work
Speaker 1: hours and then shutting it down. You know. That's Jerry
Speaker 1: had to talk with me once where she's like, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you should email people on the weekends
Speaker 1: in the evenings or whatever. I'm like, what do you mean?
Speaker 1: And then I stopped and thought, I was like totally.
Speaker 1: So I've adopted that as well as best Like what
Speaker 1: you do? You just make a note email dumb, dumb
Speaker 1: at nine am on Monday. Sure, so I use the
Speaker 1: drafts folder. Now, okay, I just don't send it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or do that? Don't even make a note. I don't
Speaker 1: even need to know. This is like an extra superfluous step.
Speaker 1: I write the email, I just don't send it. I
Speaker 1: leave it in the draft. That is very smart. So
Speaker 1: you want to wrap this up, yeah, let's wrap it up. Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about fairy day cage,
Speaker 1: just go check your car out. Uh And since I
Speaker 1: said that, it's tempt the listener, ma'am. Oh wait, wait,
Speaker 1: there's one other thing, Chuck. If you are have a
Speaker 1: car and it's a convertible, look out, it doesn't have
Speaker 1: a fairy day cage. You're very susceptible to lightning, which
Speaker 1: is another explanation for why your tires don't actually save you.
Speaker 1: Because if you're in a convertible car, it's not a
Speaker 1: fair day cage. So your toast all right, no listener mail,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this the next email in my inbox,
Speaker 1: And this is actually good because rarely do we read
Speaker 1: uh suggestions for episodes on the air, But this is
Speaker 1: a good one, and I think we're gonna want to
Speaker 1: do this because it also ties in with today's episode. Okay,
Speaker 1: today's special. Hey guys riding in with the topic proposition.
Speaker 1: I think it would fit perfectly to what you're doing. Eels.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a great idea, electrical eels. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I ever would have thought about that, I probably wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Let me see who this is. This is um Michael
Speaker 1: Michael from Poland. Michael says that it no, no, no.
Speaker 1: Michael goes on to say they're just incredible creatures. And
Speaker 1: it was mind blowing to me when I discovered that
Speaker 1: we still do not know much about them. Have you
Speaker 1: ever eaten meal like sushi? Of course? Yeah, I buy
Speaker 1: that at the Japanese market and cook it at home.
Speaker 1: Oh you do yourself, huh, you just bake it in
Speaker 1: the oven. Still delicious. There's not much to look at
Speaker 1: the foyer. They taste good. Uh. Freud, before going into psychoanalysis,
Speaker 1: studied eels trying to find their reproductive system, a feat
Speaker 1: not yet achieve. For thousands of years, all European eels
Speaker 1: come from one place, the Sargasso Sea. Eels travel thousands
Speaker 1: of miles after their born. I just wouldn't I didn't
Speaker 1: want to read the parenthetical. Eels travel thousands of miles
Speaker 1: after they were born to the lakes wells in Europe
Speaker 1: and then come back when they feel they're ready to
Speaker 1: undergo metamorphosis and reproduce. Let me see what else. For
Speaker 1: many years people thought they were observing different species of eels,
Speaker 1: but in fact they were the same eels at just
Speaker 1: different stages of their life. But so we basically did
Speaker 1: a mini episode on eels with special guests Michael sort of.
Speaker 1: Michael also sens a New Yorker article a book called
Speaker 1: the Book of Eels, says, ps, I love what you're
Speaker 1: doing and how you're making interesting topics approachable with your
Speaker 1: great and easy going attitude. Keep it up. All the
Speaker 1: best from Poland. I hope I can see live one day.
Speaker 1: And that's from Macao. I would definitely go to Poland
Speaker 1: for a show. I would too, Yeah, cool, I've never
Speaker 1: been to Poland. I have anything, let's do it close
Speaker 1: as I've been is Hungary. Yeah, same here you've been hungry? Sure? Great?
Speaker 1: Which side did you stay on? We stayed on the
Speaker 1: pest side, but we you know, went back and forth.
Speaker 1: We also went to that um, that Turkish bath that
Speaker 1: the beginning of Red Heat was filmed in. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: really awesome. I don't remember which side I stayed on,
Speaker 1: to be honest, it was so many years ago, so
Speaker 1: the left or the right? I remember? You don't remember now,
Speaker 1: I don't. I mean, this was thirty years ago. Okay,
Speaker 1: the twenty seven years ago. This was two fifteen, I
Speaker 1: think from me, I was drunk on bulls blood wine.
Speaker 1: I remember that you're talking about. Yeah, it's very cheap. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Either you told me about that before or else I
Speaker 1: saw it myself. I don't think I tried it. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, Michael, Michael um And that was a
Speaker 1: great idea in an EELS episode will be forthcoming one day.
Speaker 1: If you want to suggest a really great topic, we
Speaker 1: love that kind of thing. You can wrap it up
Speaker 1: and send it off to us at stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.