Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is also Know the science editor how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. And this is Robert Lamb, science writer and
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com. Today, Robert has prepared a
Speaker 1: real treat for us. Yeah, you know, we just upgraded
Speaker 1: the whole studio. Here, we're recording some pretty high tech digs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you look pretty sweet in those sad months. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel kind of loud in them. But but but this,
Speaker 1: this brings us, brings us to the question, do you
Speaker 1: ever worry about things being upgraded to the point where
Speaker 1: you'll be replaced by a robot? Um a little bit,
Speaker 1: I mean sure of an editor, So some of the
Speaker 1: job functionality I have could surely be performed could surely
Speaker 1: be performed by a robot. Yeah, definitely, I mean I
Speaker 1: can I think a little on those lines, Like a
Speaker 1: lot of my job is like getting information, reassembling it
Speaker 1: and throwing in a done joke, you know, and you
Speaker 1: could considerably program something to do to do just that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but a robot is never going to have your creativity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well there's the definitely a human factor. Now, one area
Speaker 1: where the robots have really made some inroads. Were just
Speaker 1: pouring some jobs. Yeah, warfare. And it's kind of like
Speaker 1: we talked in the Robots podcast or earlier, is that
Speaker 1: you know, we give a lot of crap jobs to robots.
Speaker 1: Indeed we do. And you know, you look, war is
Speaker 1: a pretty crap job. So that's why we have these
Speaker 1: u a v s flying around. All right. Yeah, Well
Speaker 1: today we're going to talk about two main ua vs
Speaker 1: going on the unmanned aerial vehicles, right, the Predator and
Speaker 1: the Reaper. Do you want to kick it off with
Speaker 1: the Predator today? Yeah? The Predators. The Predators are pretty
Speaker 1: awesome piece of machinery. Um, They've been around for a
Speaker 1: number of years. It's the m Q one Predator. It's
Speaker 1: a medium altitude, long endurance unmanned aircraft system. Uh. And
Speaker 1: if you've seen pictures of it, I mean, it just
Speaker 1: looks like a sleek airplane that doesn't need any room
Speaker 1: for a human pilot because the pilot um and crew
Speaker 1: are in a little a little studio if you will,
Speaker 1: um around. Yeah, and uh, the thing's loaded up with
Speaker 1: a bunch of high tech since sensing equipment, you know,
Speaker 1: and for red all that and Uh, it was you know,
Speaker 1: invented primarily to be used as a reconnaissance right, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so the predators out there and use right now. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've been using using it for for years. Um and
Speaker 1: I think currently we have we've we've created something like,
Speaker 1: uh like over a hundred I think counting the different
Speaker 1: predators and and then the the eventual offshoot, the Reaper,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to in a minute. So what kind
Speaker 1: of weapon where we're talking about. It looks like they
Speaker 1: become equipped with two leaser guided missiles, yeah, to to
Speaker 1: help fire missiles they can carry and and this is
Speaker 1: kind of be like they're out on you know, on
Speaker 1: some sort of reconnaissment, reconnaissance mission and then the encounter
Speaker 1: an enemy plane they can fire those off. In fact,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a YouTube video from just before the
Speaker 1: second I Rock War where um on a Rocky Meg
Speaker 1: encounters one of these predators. Right. I was interested in this.
Speaker 1: I mean, would an unmanned aerial vehicle be able to
Speaker 1: engage top gun, Yes, sort of engage like it. You know,
Speaker 1: it did some some defensive maneuvers, it fired off those
Speaker 1: hell fires, but the MiG shot it down and and
Speaker 1: at the time, like I saw like an old um,
Speaker 1: you know, newsreel of this and they were like, finally
Speaker 1: the the Iraqis, you know, have encountered a plane. They
Speaker 1: can outmaneuver an outgun, you know, which was you know,
Speaker 1: I guess there's a lot of chest bumping at you know,
Speaker 1: not chest bumping, chest stumping at that time, which maybe
Speaker 1: chess bumping or maybe chess bumping. It feels a little like,
Speaker 1: you know, since everything that's happened since then, it feels
Speaker 1: a little little tacky. But but but but yeah, that's
Speaker 1: an example of where you know, the predator wasn't able
Speaker 1: to hang with a human pilot and uh and and
Speaker 1: for that reason, like dog fighting is definitely one of
Speaker 1: those areas that that humans have a good hold on.
Speaker 1: Those jobs aren't going to disappear anytime soon, except dog
Speaker 1: fighting has kind of disappeared, at least in our current
Speaker 1: military situation. The predator comes equipped with some pretty cool
Speaker 1: stuff like the weeper holes. Yeah, this was amazing. Um
Speaker 1: you've seen you've seen Iron Man, right, you know that
Speaker 1: scene where he goes up he's like shooting up into
Speaker 1: the area. He's all excited about it, and he starts
Speaker 1: freezing up, covering with ice and then plummets. Well it's
Speaker 1: like it's the same deal, you know, except without Robert
Speaker 1: Downey Jr. Right, Yeah, without without without him behind the
Speaker 1: wheel as it were. Um, yeah, And these are just
Speaker 1: the edges of the wings are titanium and they're dotted
Speaker 1: with the microscopic weeping holes. Needs allow an ethylene glycol
Speaker 1: a solution to seep out out of internal reservoirs and
Speaker 1: break down the ice it forms on the wings steering flight.
Speaker 1: So you think you would have thought of that, you know,
Speaker 1: and being a weapons designer, right right, right, So just
Speaker 1: to give you guys a scoop, it's not just one
Speaker 1: predator flying up. Typically, Um, you'll usually have a small
Speaker 1: army of four predators with the sensors, and then you're
Speaker 1: gonna have a ground control station that is where the
Speaker 1: pilots are sitting, and you're going to have sensor operators
Speaker 1: and you're also have a satellite link communication suite. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like there's like one pilot, two crew members operating
Speaker 1: stuff on the ground. There's a direct line of sight
Speaker 1: link between the two, and then there's a satellite up links.
Speaker 1: So it's it's not just like sending out a robot
Speaker 1: to do a guy's job. It's like a it's like
Speaker 1: a system, you know, with with plenty of guys still
Speaker 1: involved in the process. And the aircraft can stay up
Speaker 1: for roughly twenty four hours. And what they'll do is
Speaker 1: we'll swap out one and they'll put another one up
Speaker 1: so that they can have constant coverage. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: if like if they unveiled like some robot louder Milks here,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like one would do a you know,
Speaker 1: eight hour shift and then another one would take over
Speaker 1: right after that. You met, you bet, And uh, the
Speaker 1: Reaper is uh kind of like the younger batter brother
Speaker 1: of the Predator, Yeah, and the more heavily equipped one
Speaker 1: at that it's heavier. The predator can go like a
Speaker 1: hundred forty miles per hour, and the Reaper can go
Speaker 1: three hundred UM. While the Predator has just those two
Speaker 1: missiles um, the Reaper can hold like fourteen hellfire missiles
Speaker 1: that can carry you know, carry a lot a lot
Speaker 1: of heavier armaments. So it's uh, and it's it's basically
Speaker 1: picking up and making an offensive weapon out of the
Speaker 1: the reconnaissance technology, right It also comes equipped with some
Speaker 1: laser ranger finders that can locate and transmit our images
Speaker 1: of the targets. And the Reaper can also carry two bombs,
Speaker 1: which is as many as the most standard fighter jets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the Reapers, of course, there are currently in operation
Speaker 1: there out there doing their job in the Middle East. Right.
Speaker 1: I think it began flying missions back in October two seven.
Speaker 1: So tell me a little bit about Noel Sharky, Who've
Speaker 1: got to interview for the Discovery News article. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: no is a really cool dude. He is a professor
Speaker 1: of Artificial Intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield
Speaker 1: in the UK, and he's also the co founder of
Speaker 1: the International Committee for Robotics Arms Control, and he's just
Speaker 1: he's really a guru on all things um on robotics
Speaker 1: in general. But he's he's really made it his mission
Speaker 1: to to get out there and get information out about
Speaker 1: the current state of robotic weaponry and and sort of
Speaker 1: you know, where we're headed in the future and making
Speaker 1: sure that we're heading in the right direction. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's like I think he's been on The Daily Show,
Speaker 1: you know. He he's and he's one of these guys.
Speaker 1: He can just he can talk for hours on the
Speaker 1: second Yeah, yeah, he talked to me for like half
Speaker 1: an hour, maybe forty or five minutes, and it was
Speaker 1: all awesome. We could have kept going, but you know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have any place to put it. So Sharky
Speaker 1: was making the distinction between in loop systems, specifically men
Speaker 1: and loop systems, right and man on the loop systems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is really this is really cool and apparently these
Speaker 1: are these are industry terms for these, um, but the
Speaker 1: systems that we were talking about just now the Predator
Speaker 1: the Reaper with you know, with a command system on
Speaker 1: the ground with guys working, and that is a man
Speaker 1: in the loop system, all right. That means that someone
Speaker 1: controls the applications of lethal force. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: like other stuff will be will be automated, but but
Speaker 1: there'll be certain key things that a person is definitely
Speaker 1: taking care of. And likewise, it can operate on its own.
Speaker 1: It can be programmed, Sharky says, to react to the GPS,
Speaker 1: so it can go about on its own. It can
Speaker 1: navigate itself. Um, but a pilot is still going to
Speaker 1: step into control the heightened Yeah, and there's still there.
Speaker 1: They're guys, you know, they're manning the thing on the ground, right,
Speaker 1: So a man in the loop is really a hybrid
Speaker 1: between you know, channa, So a man on the loop
Speaker 1: system is really a hybrid. Then huh, but the the
Speaker 1: next step and we're not there yet, but but like
Speaker 1: the next step in the evolution of this would be
Speaker 1: a man on the loop and uh. In this you'd
Speaker 1: have a swarm of playing And when we say swarm,
Speaker 1: don't think of like bees exactly. Swarm. It's like a
Speaker 1: robotics term for, you know, a bunch of robots that
Speaker 1: are operating in chorus with one another. So in this system,
Speaker 1: there would be multiple planes and a you know, in
Speaker 1: a full computerized system, but instead of having like one
Speaker 1: crew on the ground for each plane, they'd be like
Speaker 1: one crew for numerous planes. Um, you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like imagine like a really rowdy kid at the beach, right,
Speaker 1: and you have a parent like over his shoulder at
Speaker 1: all times, making sure that he's not like eating sand
Speaker 1: or you know, punching crabs or whatever, you know, bad
Speaker 1: stuff kids do them. Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with the scenario.
Speaker 1: So so that's that's that's man in the loop. Man
Speaker 1: on the loop is like, you have a bunch of
Speaker 1: kids that are reasonably well behaved, and somebody's just keeping
Speaker 1: an eye on them, you know, Right, you get a
Speaker 1: chance to sneak a peek at your summer reading your
Speaker 1: trashy novel while the kids are swimming, you know, in
Speaker 1: the ocean and jumping the waves, but occasionally step in
Speaker 1: make sure they're right closen up to the beach. So
Speaker 1: the next logical step in all this is just letting
Speaker 1: the kids go to the beach by themselves, right and
Speaker 1: and well, and you're gonna have a party. We'll see
Speaker 1: you're concerned. And that's that's the key, because maybe the
Speaker 1: kids aren't ready to go to the beach by themselves,
Speaker 1: and likewise, neither is the technology. Yeah yeah, Likewise, do
Speaker 1: we have the technology to send out robots on their
Speaker 1: own to wage war or even wage reconnaissance? Um? And uh?
Speaker 1: And should we even if we do have that technology.
Speaker 1: I think you always need the red button. I think
Speaker 1: you always need the executive pilot who's going to be
Speaker 1: able to cancel the attack at any moment. I think
Speaker 1: it's a predominant thinking on the matter. Yeah, So let's
Speaker 1: talk about the advantages of some of these unmanned aerial vehicles. Um,
Speaker 1: you found a pretty good article on this from Christian
Speaker 1: Science Monitor writer Gregory M. Lamb new Relation. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: did a good job of running through the panages. Right.
Speaker 1: So obviously one of the things is that we're going
Speaker 1: to be able to protect our own soldiers, our own
Speaker 1: human soldiers. We're not going to have to put them
Speaker 1: in interest missions, you know, whether it's crawling through caves
Speaker 1: or uh street distrect urban combat, and ultimately we may
Speaker 1: reduce casualties. Although I do think that there is still
Speaker 1: a place for um, you know, infantry man in in
Speaker 1: in combat. I don't I don't see robots entirely replacing that,
Speaker 1: do you not? The current state of infantry now, And
Speaker 1: that's the really interesting part. If we were introducing robots
Speaker 1: into like the infantry of a hundred years ago, like
Speaker 1: back when you had you know, clearly drawn lines, you know,
Speaker 1: on the battlefield, and you had guys in uniform that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, you had a much you know, as
Speaker 1: much clearer and far more distinct, and you could conceivably
Speaker 1: like send in a robot to do things like all right,
Speaker 1: anybody in this uniform will be shot or anybody in
Speaker 1: this area will be carpet bombed. Um. But but modern warfare,
Speaker 1: I mean it's kind of the point where you just
Speaker 1: don't have as much um, you know, black and white.
Speaker 1: It's nuanced, right, I mean, you may have an area
Speaker 1: like you all right, you can identify as like a
Speaker 1: kill box where you know there's there's the enemy is
Speaker 1: dense enough in this area that you can just unleash
Speaker 1: full force on it. But aside from that, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you have you know, you have street to
Speaker 1: street warfare and heavily populated areas. I mean basically, the
Speaker 1: whole situation in Iraq and Afghanistan is just not suitable
Speaker 1: for at least you know, certainly on the ground for
Speaker 1: a for a robotic warfare. And according to some, the
Speaker 1: the neither is the the aerial scene. Right. Well, so
Speaker 1: you could take this as an advantage or disadvantage. Um.
Speaker 1: Some see civilian casualties being reduced with robotic warfare, especially
Speaker 1: these unmanned aerial vehicles. But it all relies on human
Speaker 1: information or misinformation, is the case, may be, right, right,
Speaker 1: And that also assumes that you could introduce sufficient ethical programming.
Speaker 1: According to Gregory Lamb. Yeah, there's a there's a UM
Speaker 1: there's a project to Georgia Tech actually that was looking
Speaker 1: into that and Ethical governor for robots. And this is
Speaker 1: a key area UM something called the principle of distinction
Speaker 1: UM and this is and this is something that the
Speaker 1: International Committee for Robotics Arms Controller or or BIG I'm
Speaker 1: talking about UM and and this is this is an
Speaker 1: example that sharky uh put put forth. All Right, imagine
Speaker 1: that you have in any war, you're gonna have people
Speaker 1: that are immune to armed force. All right, You're gonna
Speaker 1: have like, you know, wounded soldiers shouldn't be you know,
Speaker 1: executed in the street. People should be able to surrender,
Speaker 1: health workers should be able to get through. Civilians should
Speaker 1: you know, not be harmed. Clergyman clergyman, yeah, yeah, et cetera.
Speaker 1: All these people. So you're gonna have to have you
Speaker 1: canna have a robot that's going to distinguish between all
Speaker 1: these people. I mean that's pretty complicated. I Mean, we
Speaker 1: have some some pretty high tech sensing equipment, but but
Speaker 1: nothing that really replicates, you know the ability of you know,
Speaker 1: if a human to take all that data and make
Speaker 1: a judgment, right, the ability to interpret our definitely, Like well,
Speaker 1: you like back to Sharky's example, It's like, say you
Speaker 1: had a funeral procession, right, and if you you had
Speaker 1: a robot that was designed to identify a funeral procession
Speaker 1: and say, all right, I'm not going to attack those
Speaker 1: guys because that's that's a few Well, then what would
Speaker 1: happen the next day, right, You'd have you'd have enemy
Speaker 1: you know, combatants UM generally marched into the street. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so yeah, it's like robots are not in
Speaker 1: a position to make those kind of of choices. Now
Speaker 1: the people are working on the Ethical Governor program. Their
Speaker 1: argument was that, well, in some situations you could you
Speaker 1: could create a program like not for like street to street,
Speaker 1: you know, house to house warfare kind of a situation
Speaker 1: where there's just too many factors. But if you had
Speaker 1: say like if you had to say a reconnaissance robot
Speaker 1: and you had a designed to respond to to UM force,
Speaker 1: you know, even you could conceivably have it programmed to
Speaker 1: where it could make the right decision. But but it's
Speaker 1: still very this is a huge topic of discussion, right,
Speaker 1: and it's not there, right, Yeah, the technologies yet not
Speaker 1: there yet. So another advantage of using a robot might
Speaker 1: be that they act as a force multiplier. So, um,
Speaker 1: that is that you could extend your manpower farther. You
Speaker 1: could have one soldier, one human fighter who was commanding
Speaker 1: a squad of robots that were working semi autonomously on
Speaker 1: the loop. Right right, right right, Okay, so you could
Speaker 1: have much smaller army that is augmented with mechanical soldiers. Okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then of course, um, robots can make faster decisions
Speaker 1: than a slow humans and that's an important advantage on
Speaker 1: the modern battlefield where everything happens really fast. It's hard
Speaker 1: to process all that information and you know, things like
Speaker 1: shocks set in or their injuries and and a robot
Speaker 1: it's just going to make that split second decision. Whether
Speaker 1: or not it's the right one is open for discussion,
Speaker 1: but it can make that. It does have that split
Speaker 1: second capability. Yeah, and you know to that point, they're
Speaker 1: not affected by emotion. They're not gonna get it angry
Speaker 1: or vengeful or hungry or fatigued, tired, any of that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And uh, and Sharky just guts that and he said
Speaker 1: that I think his words were a quote, and neither
Speaker 1: does my refrigerator. But that doesn't mean I'm going to
Speaker 1: give it a weapon until it to go kill people. Um.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting perspective along these lines. Two of the
Speaker 1: other big disadvantages are how easy robotic weaponry can conceive
Speaker 1: if we make it make killing. You know, it's if
Speaker 1: you're you know, you're in a little studio or a
Speaker 1: little control room and you're navigating a robot you know,
Speaker 1: on the other you know, miles and miles away, you know,
Speaker 1: to blow up an apartment or something. You're you're you
Speaker 1: know that that we have that disconnect from the violence,
Speaker 1: you know, and what does that do to us? Uh?
Speaker 1: And similarly, if you if you were waging war and
Speaker 1: you're sending out robot soldiers, robot soldiers that you know,
Speaker 1: they get blown up, they crash, and and a large
Speaker 1: number of the predators, for instance, have either been blown
Speaker 1: up by the enemy or they've crashed. We even had
Speaker 1: to shoot one down, I believe, um and because because
Speaker 1: we've lost control with it and we had to had
Speaker 1: to take it out. So if you're sending out these
Speaker 1: robots soldiers and and they're just you know, they're crashing
Speaker 1: or they're blowing up and they're doing their job whatever.
Speaker 1: You're not getting body bags coming up, right, You're not
Speaker 1: getting you know, images on the on the nightly news
Speaker 1: of of grieving mothers, etcetera. And so therefore it makes
Speaker 1: it easier politically to wage war because where's the outcry.
Speaker 1: You know, nobody's you know, writing folk songs about the
Speaker 1: poor robots that are that are dying. Right, I think
Speaker 1: you can make the argument that presently we're disconnected from
Speaker 1: wars going on all around us. Um, you know, at
Speaker 1: least if you don't have a husband or a wife
Speaker 1: or a brother, you know, some family members serving in
Speaker 1: one of the wars, then then I think you might
Speaker 1: be disconnected. Although at this point we've we've been bombarded
Speaker 1: with so many images, you know, whether it's on the
Speaker 1: news or reading a story in the newspaper. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's true anymore because the war has
Speaker 1: gone on so long, But at least initially at the outset,
Speaker 1: I think that, yeah, currently people can be pretty disconnected
Speaker 1: from a new war. Yes, what do you think? I think? So?
Speaker 1: I mean the you know, the same technology of course,
Speaker 1: also allows us to see images, you know, immediately of
Speaker 1: what you know, what's happening on the battlefield or you know,
Speaker 1: in the streets of Flusha or what have you. So,
Speaker 1: so you have the same technology that can bring us
Speaker 1: closer can also distances someone. So how effective are the
Speaker 1: predator in the reaper? Have you found any stats on
Speaker 1: what they're doing to the state of warfare? You know,
Speaker 1: how many targets they are talking, Well, they've they've been
Speaker 1: pretty pretty successful. I mean, that's why it's such a
Speaker 1: growth industry. I mean, you have you know, it's one
Speaker 1: of the the ua V s are one of the
Speaker 1: more sought after areas in the U S military and
Speaker 1: various other militaries around the world are are involved in
Speaker 1: in other ua V projects, And there's a lot of
Speaker 1: effort to get the ground based stuff rolling um literally
Speaker 1: um at a at a much and a much great
Speaker 1: greater pace too because this you know, it's lags significantly.
Speaker 1: I mean you have you know, like you know, bomb
Speaker 1: disposal bots and those have been really used well, but
Speaker 1: you don't really see robotic like weaponized ground vehicles yet,
Speaker 1: um none, not that, not any that are actually really
Speaker 1: working there. You know a lot of them in you know,
Speaker 1: test phases, etcetera. So just going back to the U.
Speaker 1: A V. Specifically, I was reading a article about drones
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic and one of the military men interviewed
Speaker 1: was comparing drones as a strategy. That's a lot like
Speaker 1: attacking a hype of bees with a single bee and
Speaker 1: taking out one b at a time. Do you think
Speaker 1: that's a Do you think that's an opt to analogy? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a I mean the aim of it
Speaker 1: is to be, you know, like a strategic kind of
Speaker 1: warfare thing. You know, this one we call these a
Speaker 1: decapitation strikes, you know, because here you're taking out supposedly
Speaker 1: the head of something. You know, you're be at a
Speaker 1: you know, a military leader, you know, taking a nap
Speaker 1: on his rooftop or you know, or an arm some
Speaker 1: sort of armament, et cetera, cash of weapons. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that's the real take on is that we we
Speaker 1: have to to keep our eyes on where this technology
Speaker 1: is now and it's going. And that's that's what the
Speaker 1: International Committee for Robotics arm of Control is really into.
Speaker 1: Um not as much saying we shouldn't have robotic you know, soldiers,
Speaker 1: or that we you know, we should just we should
Speaker 1: use them all the time, but rather we should really
Speaker 1: think about what we're doing as we proceed, and we
Speaker 1: should proceed with a full knowledge of what the technology
Speaker 1: is and what it isn't um because it's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and we've we've talked about this before. It's really easy
Speaker 1: to to trick yourself um into into thinking robots are
Speaker 1: doing things that they're not, like like attributing them with
Speaker 1: with wisdom that they're not capable of our judgment, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Um and just and like I say, keeping in mind
Speaker 1: like how changing changing the way we wage war changes
Speaker 1: the the changes how easy it is to partake in
Speaker 1: it right right, So if you guys are curious about
Speaker 1: Amanda aerial vehicles, we have some pretty good articles at
Speaker 1: house to first dot com. Now yeah, yeah, we have
Speaker 1: a really good one on on the Predator and a
Speaker 1: really good one on the Reaper h and a number
Speaker 1: of artic was about like the like future war and
Speaker 1: robot soldiers. So you can just dropping in that stuff
Speaker 1: into the search bar and you'll get a load of
Speaker 1: cool stuff. And we've covered those this kind of thing
Speaker 1: on the blogs a lot too cool. What you got
Speaker 1: in front of you? Oh, I have some listener mail here, Oscar,
Speaker 1: do you remember, Oscar. He wrote us a rather exhaustive
Speaker 1: um passionate. I mean, I loved it. I've read the
Speaker 1: whole thing. Um. He admitted that. He even admitted though
Speaker 1: that he was a bit long winded in it, but
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna read a part of it. And he said, quote,
Speaker 1: let's start by saying, I found your podcast interesting, although
Speaker 1: in a different way from the other podcast. And which
Speaker 1: podcast was he talking about stuff in the science which
Speaker 1: podcast episode? Oh? Um? Well he was talking about too.
Speaker 1: He was talking about our robots a lot, and the
Speaker 1: one we did about aliens destroys. Yeah. And he says,
Speaker 1: while stuff you should know, tech stuff and stuff you
Speaker 1: missed in history class deal mostly with facts, you guys
Speaker 1: tend to deal with abstract issues where personal opinions it
Speaker 1: counts a lot, and that always brings up great conversations.
Speaker 1: So thank you for that, um, which you know. And
Speaker 1: then he went on to discuss his own thoughts about
Speaker 1: the nature of humanity, um and how that plays into
Speaker 1: our expectations of alien life and uh and and also robotics. Um.
Speaker 1: So it was a really cool email, thanks, Oscar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for sharing your thoughts, Oscar. It's really great to
Speaker 1: hear from listeners. We we read every single one and
Speaker 1: we appreciate it more than you guys know. And then
Speaker 1: I got a really cool one from this guy named
Speaker 1: Mark and uh and and this is awesome too because
Speaker 1: he's he's a former sailor, so excellent. So I always
Speaker 1: love to hear navy stories. Um, he says, I just
Speaker 1: started listening to your podcast and his skyrocketed one of
Speaker 1: my faves. I had listened to your podcast about the
Speaker 1: virtues of venom, and it reminded me. When I was
Speaker 1: in the Navy, I had a drink in Japan called habusaki.
Speaker 1: We were officially warned about the drink from my chief.
Speaker 1: Haboo is a Japanese cobra which is added to saki,
Speaker 1: which is rice wine. The bottles had the whole snake
Speaker 1: coiled at the bottom of the bottle. It was explained
Speaker 1: to us that the venom shuts off the liver and
Speaker 1: all the alcohol is sent into the bloodstream. Nothing is filtered.
Speaker 1: Help I of course had to try it. As a
Speaker 1: season sailor, I developed a very high tolerance for alcohol,
Speaker 1: and after my first shot, I hadn't felt anything. I
Speaker 1: was extremely, extremely smooth. Now it was extremely smooth and sweet,
Speaker 1: like a good saki usually is. After my second shot,
Speaker 1: the room got very warm and I broke out into
Speaker 1: a sweat. I stopped drinking after that and made it
Speaker 1: back to the boat. Others did not have the same
Speaker 1: discretion and had a much harder time finding their way
Speaker 1: out from under the table. So he's referring, of course,
Speaker 1: to some of our discussions in that podcast about alcohol
Speaker 1: that has been infused with with typically snake venom, right
Speaker 1: the Cheese of Venom podcast. And I'm really interested in that.
Speaker 1: So I really enjoyed hearing people, you know, tell us
Speaker 1: about their own experiences with crazy snake wines. So hapusaki
Speaker 1: is not gonna be on your happy hour cat Deilist, No,
Speaker 1: but it's I would love to have just a selection
Speaker 1: of it, you know, like you know people have a
Speaker 1: little mini bars, Like what if you had a mini bar,
Speaker 1: it would be most impressive, ye had it only had
Speaker 1: like venom liquor, you know. Um and then he uh.
Speaker 1: Also he also added that he says, my uh, my
Speaker 1: senior year of high school, I was part of the
Speaker 1: robotics team and we competed in the in the first competition.
Speaker 1: This is the first robotics competition that we also did
Speaker 1: a big road trip podcast about I didn't actually build
Speaker 1: a robot. Part of the competition when I participated was
Speaker 1: a three D animation short about the robots movement capabilities.
Speaker 1: I work with two of the guys to make an
Speaker 1: animation of our robot loading a cannon with a big
Speaker 1: rubber ball and shooting a flying car out of the sky. Awesome.
Speaker 1: The flying car and cannon had nothing to do with anything,
Speaker 1: but we spent most of our time animating the explosion,
Speaker 1: which always got a lot of cheering when it was
Speaker 1: played at the competition. I also met my now current
Speaker 1: wife and the robotics team, so this nerdy club did
Speaker 1: wonders for my social life as well. Keep up the
Speaker 1: good work. So that's great that he is a former
Speaker 1: sailor who drank snake wine and and it's lovely white
Speaker 1: man after our own heart. Yeah yeah, Well, like I said,
Speaker 1: we do love hearing from you guys. So what do
Speaker 1: you guys want to tell us about how you met
Speaker 1: your spouse, how you build a robot, or what your
Speaker 1: thoughts are on unmanned aerial vehicles. Send us a line
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