Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technologies? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulett,
Speaker 1: and I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and sitting across from me as usual, though they
Speaker 1: may not want you to notice it, A senior writer,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, Hey there, why are we so quiet today? Well,
Speaker 1: that would be because we're finally going to tackle that
Speaker 1: topic that we said we were going to tackle months ago,
Speaker 1: and then everyone wrote in and asked us to keep
Speaker 1: doing not Cantanna's, don't even go there. We got one
Speaker 1: request for to do an episode on Cantana's like eight
Speaker 1: months ago, and we still haven't done that once. Now,
Speaker 1: this is the one that lots of people have asked
Speaker 1: us to do. We are, of course talking about heck
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories. And before we get into that, though, Okay,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about something that has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with conspiracy theories at all. Okay, this there's there's
Speaker 1: no conspiracy theory behind this, of course there isn't. I'm
Speaker 1: going to ask that's what they want you to believe.
Speaker 1: What what is your opinion about pumpkins? What is my
Speaker 1: opinion about pumpkins? Um? There orange and they love flying
Speaker 1: through the air. I agree, pumpkins do love flying through
Speaker 1: the air. Now, if you were someone who were interested
Speaker 1: in seeing pumpkins fly through the air at great velocity
Speaker 1: and distance, what would you do? I actually I wouldn't
Speaker 1: do it myself. I would have somebody else do it,
Speaker 1: and I would watch it. Right, But I mean I'm
Speaker 1: saying like, if you want to watch that, I mean,
Speaker 1: what opportunity is there? Uh? That would be the opportunity
Speaker 1: to tune into the Science Channel on November. That's right,
Speaker 1: because the Road to Punkin Chunkin, followed by Punkin chunk
Speaker 1: In itself starting at eight pm, will be on the
Speaker 1: air on the Science Channel on November twenty six, and
Speaker 1: you can watch crazy individuals who have built insanely huge
Speaker 1: machines designed to do one thing and one thing only,
Speaker 1: and that is to chunk a punkin. Yep, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's pretty massive. I gotta say, yeah, Flying fruit no conspiracy,
Speaker 1: there no no conspiracy. We can conspiracy to chunk punkins,
Speaker 1: I suppose, so we can talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: some actual conspiracy theories that relate back to technology. Okay,
Speaker 1: I was going to start with our friend Nicola Tesla.
Speaker 1: Oh him, Yes, we talked about this once before in
Speaker 1: an earlier podcast about wireless power, and so I just
Speaker 1: thought I would kind of touch base on that again. Sorry,
Speaker 1: Nate Lankson, if you're listening, I know he hates that phrase.
Speaker 1: So that's okay, We're going to take on the low
Speaker 1: hanging fruit. Yes, we can raise any red flags we see, right,
Speaker 1: I'm hoping for some synergy. So Tesla he came up
Speaker 1: with this idea for transmitting electricity without wires using an
Speaker 1: enormous tower. He actually had a couple of different ideas
Speaker 1: on how to do this. One of them involved firing
Speaker 1: electricity up into the iono sphere, which he thought was
Speaker 1: more conductive than any other part of the atmosphere, and
Speaker 1: then somehow transmitting electricity throughout the globe that way, which
Speaker 1: we mean you'd have to have some sort of antenna
Speaker 1: that could reach up there and and bring the electricity
Speaker 1: back down. The other idea he had was using the
Speaker 1: earth itself as a way to send electricity through some
Speaker 1: sort of resonating kind of technology that that a lot
Speaker 1: of people have tried to explain since then, but no
Speaker 1: one's really got a good handle on it. And some
Speaker 1: of that may be due to the fact that Tesla
Speaker 1: was years ahead of his time, and some of them
Speaker 1: maybe due to the fact that Tesla also appears to
Speaker 1: have kind of gone crazy towards the end of his
Speaker 1: life for good for good reason, he he had a
Speaker 1: tortured existence toward the end of his life. Um, his
Speaker 1: his mind worked unusually even when he was understandable, it
Speaker 1: was sort of hard to get yeah, but he he
Speaker 1: definitely had revolutionary ideas that have since come to fruition,
Speaker 1: but they were just they were just too revolutionary for
Speaker 1: the time that he lived in. But one one of
Speaker 1: these was this idea of of broadcasting electricity wirelessly. Now,
Speaker 1: he had published an article that kind of was all
Speaker 1: over the place, but one of the things that talked
Speaker 1: about was creating a wireless communication system. So this is
Speaker 1: before radio, This is before any of that has really
Speaker 1: taken place. Marconi has not made the big splash with
Speaker 1: radio yet. So one of the people who read this
Speaker 1: article and was interested was JP Morgan. I asked the
Speaker 1: the famous American finance here right right, he was Mr
Speaker 1: money Bags really and uh so actually a Mr monopoly
Speaker 1: is yeah, um yeah, apparently his favorite piece was the anyway,
Speaker 1: he he actually agreed to to invest a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars in Tesla's idea, which was not chicken
Speaker 1: feed at the time. A little money now, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a lot then now. Granted, some experts believe that
Speaker 1: the amount of money Tesla would have needed to complete
Speaker 1: his project would have actually been closer to a million
Speaker 1: dollars even back then, so it's still a drop in
Speaker 1: the proverbial bucket. But Tesla was eager to get on
Speaker 1: this project and he didn't care that it was just
Speaker 1: part of what he would needed. He he wanted to
Speaker 1: get started hope that he could continue to raise money
Speaker 1: throughout the project. So he starts building this and the
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory here is that Morrigan got wind that the
Speaker 1: project was not to build a wireless communication network, but
Speaker 1: rather to create a way of distributing electricity without the
Speaker 1: use of wires, which would essentially mean that people could
Speaker 1: get electricity for free. Yeah, and this is uh, this
Speaker 1: is the famous Warden Cliff or in shore I'm Long Island,
Speaker 1: which which did actually come to fruition? I mean, and
Speaker 1: there was there was there was one. Yes, something was built. Yes,
Speaker 1: part of it is still there. I think it's about
Speaker 1: to get torn down in fact, but most of it
Speaker 1: was taken a part in nineteen seventeen. Yes, yes, So
Speaker 1: the conspiracy theorists say that what happened was Morgan heard
Speaker 1: that there was going to be this free energy system,
Speaker 1: and in order to prevent it so that he would
Speaker 1: not uh see a dip in profits from any kind
Speaker 1: of electricity delivery systems uh, he specifically pulled funding and
Speaker 1: essentially sabotaged the the project by not paying for it. Um. However,
Speaker 1: it appears that that it's not quite that sinister. It
Speaker 1: still doesn't mean Morgan in a very nice light, but
Speaker 1: it's you know, part of it is that Tesla was
Speaker 1: not being upfront about what his project was about in
Speaker 1: the first place. Well, yeah, that's true, and people who
Speaker 1: are lending you money are generally interested in knowing exactly
Speaker 1: what you're going to do with Yeah. Yeah. The the
Speaker 1: de fault is not wholly upon Morgan in this case.
Speaker 1: What appears to actually have happened is that while this
Speaker 1: project was under construction, Mark Marconi successfully was able to
Speaker 1: transmit the letter S transatlantically and it was able to
Speaker 1: prove that his system of wireless communication worked and it
Speaker 1: was relatively cheap. So now Morrigan is looking at his project,
Speaker 1: that he's funding this hundred fifty project, and saying, well,
Speaker 1: if there's a reliable and cheap way to to transmit information,
Speaker 1: why am I pouring money into this very expensive and
Speaker 1: so and so far unproven method. And that is why
Speaker 1: he cut the funds to Tesla's project. Had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with worrying that he was going to go bankrupt
Speaker 1: because suddenly he had no way of making money out
Speaker 1: of delivering electricity. Right, So that's that's one conspiracy theory
Speaker 1: more or less debunked. Again, there was definitely a disagree
Speaker 1: between these two gentlemen, Um, but I think it was
Speaker 1: partly due to Tesla not being completely honest about what
Speaker 1: his project was for, and also Morrigan was, you know,
Speaker 1: he just wasn't willing to to to see if the
Speaker 1: the this project would pay off in the future. So
Speaker 1: but that's a good one to start with. Now, Um,
Speaker 1: did you have any you want to bring up specifically
Speaker 1: or shall I move on to the next one. I
Speaker 1: was thinking maybe since we've been talking about energy and
Speaker 1: people uh possibly conspiring to prevent a more efficient means
Speaker 1: of using energy, that maybe we would stick with that
Speaker 1: theme for a moment, since we were going to talk
Speaker 1: about the the auto companies, yes, and basically how they
Speaker 1: want to squash other forms of other forms of propulsion
Speaker 1: in favor of the internal combustion engine that runs on
Speaker 1: diesel petroleum based rather than than than a electric cars.
Speaker 1: We're really getting down to the oil companies here. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of conspiracy theories out there that oil
Speaker 1: companies have conspired to to essentially squash any project that
Speaker 1: would have created an affordable and efficient electric vehicle. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of evidence out there that kind of
Speaker 1: suggests that, you know, some projects that would have brought
Speaker 1: an electric vehicle to market earlier than we've seen were
Speaker 1: in fact kind of squashed. But whether that was because
Speaker 1: the oil companies were coming in and throwing their weight around,
Speaker 1: or whether it was because other considerations had to pop up,
Speaker 1: that's still that's still under debate. For one thing, let's
Speaker 1: say that we did put electric vehicles out there earlier,
Speaker 1: you have to have some sort of infrastructure to support that. Well,
Speaker 1: there were electric vehicles earlier, much earlier, and in fact,
Speaker 1: Henry Ford was not a big fan of using assolene
Speaker 1: at all. No. Um. Well, my point being that to
Speaker 1: switch over to an all electric system needs more than
Speaker 1: just putting electric cars on the market for people to buy.
Speaker 1: They need a place to plug the things in to
Speaker 1: make sure they remain charged so that or to have
Speaker 1: some sort of stations where they can get there the
Speaker 1: battery or whatever it is is going to provide the
Speaker 1: electrical power to keep the car running. Uh. That infrastructure
Speaker 1: costs money. Well, see, the people at Honda probably agree
Speaker 1: with you, because one of the conspiracies that I saw
Speaker 1: around there. One of the theories conspiracy theories around this
Speaker 1: that I saw was that some people think that Honda,
Speaker 1: you know, having their fc X and then later the
Speaker 1: Clarity hydrogen powered cars, they had a home fueling station
Speaker 1: that would basically convert natural gas to hydrogen that could
Speaker 1: be used in the cars, and they said, well, they've
Speaker 1: had this technology for years and Honda is suppressing it. Um.
Speaker 1: The thing is, you know, Honda says, well, you need
Speaker 1: the infrastructure away from your home because what happens if
Speaker 1: you run out of fuel when you're away from home. So,
Speaker 1: you know, but the conspiracy theorists who who think Honda
Speaker 1: is hiding something don't necessarily agree with that. The vehicle
Speaker 1: doesn't do you much good if you can only travel
Speaker 1: five to ten miles away, you know, and then you're stuck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you couldn't go even even under on you know,
Speaker 1: you say, okay, well I take a hydrogen could get
Speaker 1: me around town for a week. Well what happens if you,
Speaker 1: you know, say, drive to your in laws house and
Speaker 1: well they don't have a hydrogen fueling station and there's
Speaker 1: no fueling station around. Then you're stuck. And that's that's
Speaker 1: the that's the biggest obstacle I think to really adopting
Speaker 1: a new and efficient and uh and and green um
Speaker 1: strategy as far as transportation goes, it's that the initial investment,
Speaker 1: that upfront investment and building the infrastructure necessary to support
Speaker 1: that kind of of endeavor is phenomenally expensive. Of not
Speaker 1: only that, but you would still have to continue to
Speaker 1: support the gasoline industry until you were able to make
Speaker 1: a full transition over to whatever your alternative fuel was.
Speaker 1: You couldn't just make the switch overnight because too many
Speaker 1: people are driving gasoline powered cars. What are they gonna do?
Speaker 1: You know, you can't just necessarily, like unless the government
Speaker 1: does some weird subsidized thing where you can trade in
Speaker 1: your gas vehicle for an electric vehicle, and that's it. Uh,
Speaker 1: it just wouldn't work. And I can't imagine how expensive
Speaker 1: a program like that would be. I mean, you think
Speaker 1: about how many cars are on the road just in
Speaker 1: the United States alone, That kind of program would be
Speaker 1: insanely expensive. I think peak oil is also going to
Speaker 1: force the petroleum companies to rethink their strategy, so I
Speaker 1: think it's in their best interest to find other types
Speaker 1: of fuels now. I mean honestly, there, as with all
Speaker 1: of these, there may actually be something to these conspiracy theories,
Speaker 1: but you know it doesn't to This one, to me,
Speaker 1: doesn't really make a lot of sense. I think the
Speaker 1: most sense, the most sense I can make of it
Speaker 1: is that it from a business standpoint, it really didn't
Speaker 1: make sense to to invest in these other technologies because
Speaker 1: it just again, building out that infrastructure was so expensive
Speaker 1: until you get to the point where you absolutely have
Speaker 1: to do it, you don't really want to take that expense. Now,
Speaker 1: It kind of stinks that we have to wait until
Speaker 1: we get that far because it means that you're depending
Speaker 1: on foreign oil, you're also polluting the environment. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of really negative things. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I mean, the world runs on money. It's it's a
Speaker 1: sad fact. You cannot get around that. And whereas we
Speaker 1: would love to think that these big companies would turn
Speaker 1: an altruistic leaf and do what's right for the rest
Speaker 1: of humanity, unless every single person is willing to do that,
Speaker 1: I don't think you can really cast stones. Um. Now. Granted,
Speaker 1: some of these companies act in a much more uh
Speaker 1: irresponsible manner than others, and for that they should be
Speaker 1: derided and you know, insulted or whatever. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's necessarily as I don't think it's a
Speaker 1: group of old men in a smoky room chuckling evil
Speaker 1: e to themselves as they squash he had another electric
Speaker 1: vehicle design. No there, they make them smoke outside. Now,
Speaker 1: that's true. They're still in the room, but you know
Speaker 1: they go take a break every once in a while.
Speaker 1: On a related note, here's the conspiracy theory of the
Speaker 1: oil companies getting together to uh to dismantle the electric
Speaker 1: cable car uh systems in various cities in the United States,
Speaker 1: because a lot of cities had electric cable cars and
Speaker 1: then they started to kind of go away and they
Speaker 1: were replaced by buses. So there's a theory out there
Speaker 1: that oil companies kind of got together and bought up
Speaker 1: a lot of these cable cars in order to run
Speaker 1: them out of business and create a monopoly. Now there's
Speaker 1: some truth to this. There were a lot of companies
Speaker 1: that did get together in order to make a monopoly
Speaker 1: so that they would be the one and only provider
Speaker 1: of the various parts you would need to replace the buses.
Speaker 1: But on the flip side of that coin, by the
Speaker 1: time a lot of these cable companies cable car companies
Speaker 1: started to go out of business, it was because they
Speaker 1: had rising costs and not enough revenue. It wasn't that
Speaker 1: they were being run out of business. It was just
Speaker 1: that they were becoming obsolete. They were the A lot
Speaker 1: of these were having problems with maintenance. You know, cars
Speaker 1: were falling apart, and there were no longer companies that
Speaker 1: actually made the parts that originally went into these these systems.
Speaker 1: This sounds familiar to those of us who live in Atlanta. Um.
Speaker 1: But so, it doesn't look like to me that the
Speaker 1: oil companies really had to do that much to run cable.
Speaker 1: If they did had any anything to do with it,
Speaker 1: they didn't have to work hard. It was just a
Speaker 1: matter of time before these companies went away already, just
Speaker 1: based upon how much they were in the whole. So
Speaker 1: but um but that's another one of those common energy things.
Speaker 1: I've got another one for cold fusion. So fusion, we're
Speaker 1: talking about a nuclear process where you fuse two nucleus
Speaker 1: is together. Turns out that's hard to do. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it requires a lot, a whole lot of heat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of energy, because what you're talking about is
Speaker 1: you've got a nucleus, you know, it's it's protons, neutrons,
Speaker 1: So neutrons carry no charge. Protons carry a positive charge.
Speaker 1: If you take two positively charged anythings and put them
Speaker 1: next to each other, they repel one another because like
Speaker 1: repels like correct, so positive repels are positive. In order
Speaker 1: to fuse two nucleus is together, you have to you
Speaker 1: have to essentially put in enough energy to break down
Speaker 1: that that effect, and that's a lot of energy. That's
Speaker 1: the problem. With fusion. That's why fusion is is looked
Speaker 1: at as a difficult problem to solve if you want
Speaker 1: to use it to get energy out, because you have
Speaker 1: to put so much energy into it that it doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense as far as a source of energy. Cold
Speaker 1: fusion is a theory or a process by which you
Speaker 1: would be able to fuse two atoms together without pouring
Speaker 1: all this energy into it, and therefore it could theoretically
Speaker 1: be a source of practically endless energy, right, and it
Speaker 1: sounds great, Yeah, it would be. It would be. When
Speaker 1: they say cold fusion, they don't mean cold like in
Speaker 1: you know, the inside of the large headron collider, but
Speaker 1: that's very, very cold, almost as cold as the deepest
Speaker 1: depths of space. Now, this is this is room temperature
Speaker 1: we're talking about, So cold is relative in these things.
Speaker 1: Cold being that it's not taking millions of degrees of
Speaker 1: celsius of heat in order to do this, right, And
Speaker 1: you also wouldn't necessarily need fancy equipment. You could by
Speaker 1: the process of cold fusion. The idea is that you
Speaker 1: would use existing lab equipment at working at room temperature
Speaker 1: to do this, which is you know, really seriously, we
Speaker 1: could do that, Yeah, a pair of scientists back in
Speaker 1: the UH I think it was March is when they
Speaker 1: made their announcing. Hey look at that, Martin Fleishman and
Speaker 1: Stanley Ponds, and they announced that they had successfully achieved
Speaker 1: cold fusion. They they found in their experiment that um,
Speaker 1: the experiment generated some heat that they could not otherwise explain,
Speaker 1: and there were also some other byproducts that they could
Speaker 1: not otherwise explain unless some sort of fusion had occurred. Uh.
Speaker 1: Here's the problem. Uh, No one's really been able to
Speaker 1: replicate this experiment and get exactly the same results that
Speaker 1: they got without having some other problem pop up where
Speaker 1: it kind of explains away the result, Like a faulty
Speaker 1: piece of equipment, for example. Uh, a faulty thermometer. It
Speaker 1: doesn't measure the temperature correctly, and therefore you think you've
Speaker 1: got unexplained heat phenomena, and it turns out you don't. UM. So,
Speaker 1: even though there are a lot of people out there,
Speaker 1: a lot of different scientists still working on cold fusion,
Speaker 1: the scientific community as a whole still regards cold fusion
Speaker 1: as essentially an impossibility, or at least it's unproven. They
Speaker 1: say it's an extraordinary claim, and so far there is
Speaker 1: no extraordinary proof to back it up. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, the Ponds and Fleishman's theories, you know, once
Speaker 1: they made them public, basically they were pounced upon by
Speaker 1: an army of their peers, all of whom basically uh
Speaker 1: ridiculed might not be a strong word to use in
Speaker 1: this case. Yeah, the criticism was not kind. Now, scientists
Speaker 1: and other cold fusion enthusiasts who all subscribe to the
Speaker 1: whole cold fusion theory or process, argue that the scientific
Speaker 1: community is now suppressing anything that has to do with
Speaker 1: cold fusion um out of arrogance or uh refusal to
Speaker 1: look at evidence, however you want to define it. But essentially,
Speaker 1: what they're saying is that their voices are being shut
Speaker 1: out by the scientific community at large, even though they
Speaker 1: claim that they have uh at least some fairly convincing
Speaker 1: evidence to prove that it works. Uh. The scientific tift community,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, says, everything that's been presented so
Speaker 1: far doesn't meet the burden of proof necessary to show
Speaker 1: that ColdFusion actually does work. So you've got these two
Speaker 1: sides going back and forth. Of course, the scientific community,
Speaker 1: the supporters point out, they're they're the ones with the power.
Speaker 1: They're the ones who choose what papers get published in
Speaker 1: in pure reviewed journals and what information essentially gets out
Speaker 1: to the media. Although trust me, the media is all
Speaker 1: about publishing weird, wacky scientific explanations. If if the media
Speaker 1: thought that they could get away with talking about some
Speaker 1: sort of free energy source, I can pretty much guarantee
Speaker 1: you it would be all over the place. Even if
Speaker 1: there were, there was not a shred of proof. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just a sad fact. We know. Anybody who's watched
Speaker 1: the movie Back to the Future knows that in the
Speaker 1: future we'll all have a Mr. Fusion machine on the
Speaker 1: back of our cars into which we can throw our
Speaker 1: junk and it will turn into a miraculous propulsion system,
Speaker 1: when in fact, of course, it's just a coffee grinder.
Speaker 1: What an amazing segue. Really, Yes, because now we can
Speaker 1: talk about hoverboards. Yes, well they really exist, right according
Speaker 1: to the people who watched Back to the Future, to
Speaker 1: who have lots of wishful thinking, Yes according to reality. No,
Speaker 1: well you know, even uh even Bob Zemeckis was was
Speaker 1: saying that they were real. Uh so, if you don't
Speaker 1: know what we're talking about, First of all, get some culture.
Speaker 1: People rent the Back to the Future trilogy. Actually, you know,
Speaker 1: the second one is really the worst one of the trilogy.
Speaker 1: It's terrible. It depends on how you look at it.
Speaker 1: But that's we can argue about whether three are really
Speaker 1: whoa whoa whoa. Three was awesome. It was a western.
Speaker 1: It was a western, and therefore was awesome, just like
Speaker 1: Sundown was a Western vampire movie and therefore is awesome. Okay,
Speaker 1: we need to stop talking about movies and get back
Speaker 1: to the future. I mean, well that's still so anyway,
Speaker 1: if you remember you were back to the future too.
Speaker 1: There's uh, there's there's a scene where Marty McFly grabs
Speaker 1: hold of a hoverboard, a skateboard like device that hovers
Speaker 1: above the ground seemingly by magic, and it had the
Speaker 1: brand name Mattel on it, and he floats around and
Speaker 1: the bad guys chase him and blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Basically they recreated the skateboard scene from the first movie, Yes,
Speaker 1: except this time everyone's floating. And uh. After the movie
Speaker 1: came out, there were people who were saying, hey, you
Speaker 1: know what, there really are hoverboards. They're real and you
Speaker 1: can buy one if it weren't for the fact that
Speaker 1: parents were so freaked out by it that they had
Speaker 1: banded together and demanded that the these devices not go
Speaker 1: on sale because they would be too dangerous for children
Speaker 1: to have. That or the other story which went that
Speaker 1: Mattel did some intensive testing and somebody died horribly in
Speaker 1: a nasty accident. Yeah, either way, Um, neither of those
Speaker 1: are true. Uh. The fact that Mattel was on the
Speaker 1: name on of that hoverboard had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the fact that, you know, it didn't support the fact
Speaker 1: any any sort of any sort of claim that the
Speaker 1: hoverboard was an actual product, because I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've seen the movie or not. Product placement was rather
Speaker 1: rampant and back to the future too. I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: Pepsi and tab and like. There were tons and tons
Speaker 1: of different products mentioned in that series. And so just
Speaker 1: because something is mentioned does not make it real. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was. It was what snopes dot Com referred to
Speaker 1: as wishful thinking legend. You know, people want there to
Speaker 1: be a hoverboard, so therefore there must be a hoverboard
Speaker 1: and all the way reality works. Unfortunately, Snopes also seems
Speaker 1: to feel that the reason that Bob's and Meckis actually
Speaker 1: started saying there were hoverboards was because he got tired
Speaker 1: of fielding questions about it, so he said, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what, sure thing, there are real hoverboards. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: once saw Simon Peg say something similar when someone asked
Speaker 1: him an annoying question of whether or not he would
Speaker 1: attend Dragon Con. He says, look, there's only one way
Speaker 1: we can get we can answer this question and get
Speaker 1: past it. Yes, we'll come to dragon Con. Of course
Speaker 1: he said, yes, we'll come to dragon Con, meaning no,
Speaker 1: we're not coming to dragon Con. But it was just
Speaker 1: to stop getting that question. Um. Now, there are actually
Speaker 1: are hoverboards, but they don't look anything like this. They're
Speaker 1: more like they're more like regular hovercraft the size of
Speaker 1: a skateboard. You know, they have the skirt and you
Speaker 1: hover you know, like an inch two inches off the ground.
Speaker 1: So it's using air. So yeah, it's using air. It's
Speaker 1: not not some weird magnetic field. No, when you can't
Speaker 1: you know, fly through the air and do crazy stunts
Speaker 1: on it, you would basically be you know, floating an
Speaker 1: inch above the ground, probably at a fairly low rate
Speaker 1: of speed, right until you fell off. I was about
Speaker 1: to say I would probably be falling off, because that's
Speaker 1: I have no sense of dexterity on something like that.
Speaker 1: But if you want to, you know, pull a steel
Speaker 1: fishman twist on it, I'm not gonna happen. I got
Speaker 1: another segue for you. Okay, So we're talking about the future.
Speaker 1: We are, Oh, yes, yes we were, and time travel.
Speaker 1: One of our other conspiracy theories has something to do
Speaker 1: with time travel, does it really? Yes, we're talking about
Speaker 1: the Large Hadron Collider. And this is the weirdest conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory in my opinion, because it involves a conspiracy of
Speaker 1: nature against man. That yeah, it's a completely non sentient
Speaker 1: thing stopping people. All right, So let's let's this is
Speaker 1: going to take some explanation. First of all, you've got
Speaker 1: the Large Hadron Collider, which is a particle accelerator. It's
Speaker 1: going to be an Adam smasher essentially. Really, it's a
Speaker 1: particle smasher. Fifteen years, nine billion dollars, it's been we've
Speaker 1: been waiting for it to be We've been waiting for
Speaker 1: it to come online for a while now. It was
Speaker 1: supposed to be online last year and then some stuff
Speaker 1: went wrong and it got delaid. Yeah, so one of
Speaker 1: the things the Large Hadron Collider is possibly looking for.
Speaker 1: Just one of the many things that the scientists are
Speaker 1: looking for using this machine, it's something called the Higgs
Speaker 1: Boson particle. It's also sometimes referred to as the God particle,
Speaker 1: which I think is absolutely ridiculous, but there you go. Now,
Speaker 1: the Higgs Boson particle is a theoretical particle. We do
Speaker 1: not know if it actually exists. It's hypothetic. It's been
Speaker 1: theorized as the the thing in the universe that would
Speaker 1: explain why stuff has mass because if you look at
Speaker 1: the Big Bang theory. This is really getting complicated complicated,
Speaker 1: but if you look at the Big Bang theory, but
Speaker 1: for just when when the universe came into being, that
Speaker 1: that first instant, there was no such thing as mass.
Speaker 1: It was this kind of combination of energy and mass
Speaker 1: that then split, so then you had energy and you
Speaker 1: had mass. The Higgs Boaston particle would be the theoretical
Speaker 1: particle that would explain why that mass has mass. So
Speaker 1: that's one thing they helped to find by using this
Speaker 1: particle accelerator because it it in a way is simulating
Speaker 1: the events that immediately followed the Big Bang on a
Speaker 1: very very very tiny scale, and this is all happening
Speaker 1: in less than a second. I mean, it's it's so
Speaker 1: fast that it's difficult for me to even imagine. So anyway,
Speaker 1: two physicists, Dr Holger Nielsen and Dr Missile uh Ninomia
Speaker 1: have proposed that the Higgs Boson particle itself, the nature itself,
Speaker 1: has sent the Higgs Boson particle back in time and
Speaker 1: sabotage the Large Hadron Collider because the purpose, yes, because
Speaker 1: the Large Hadron Collider has broken down a couple of times.
Speaker 1: The idea here is that nature itself is so abhorrent
Speaker 1: of the Higgs Boson particle that were you to create one,
Speaker 1: they there will be horrible consequences. So before you can
Speaker 1: create one, Nature is sending stuff back in time to
Speaker 1: stop the creation, to prevent horrible catastrophe. Okay, now here's
Speaker 1: my problem with this. First of all, it's suggesting there's
Speaker 1: some sort of sentient aspect to the Higgs Boson particle,
Speaker 1: which again is just theoretical. We don't even know it
Speaker 1: exists and we're already giving its sentience. Well you know,
Speaker 1: it's not listed in the in the white pages. Secondly,
Speaker 1: it's suggesting that time travel back in time is possible,
Speaker 1: something that right now we do not believe is actually possible.
Speaker 1: We think that if if time travel is possible, you
Speaker 1: can only do it going forward, not backwards. Thirdly, okay,
Speaker 1: so if you are given the choice between saying, all right,
Speaker 1: you've got the world's most complex, huge machine, with lots
Speaker 1: and lots and lots of parts, all from different manufacturers,
Speaker 1: all put together, and it's insanely complex. Is it more
Speaker 1: likely that one little part of that could break, thus
Speaker 1: screwing up the project? Or is it more likely to
Speaker 1: say that some particle that gains sentience traveled back in
Speaker 1: time and stopped it knowing human beings. I say that
Speaker 1: the breaking part is more likely. Acom's razor demands that
Speaker 1: we say, hey, guys, this is a really complex machine.
Speaker 1: I can't make sure that my car will run two
Speaker 1: months in a row. We're talking about a machine that's
Speaker 1: orders of magnitude more complex than a vehicle. You know,
Speaker 1: if you want to know, if you want to keep
Speaker 1: up to date on what's going on with the l
Speaker 1: h C, you can always check out has the LHC
Speaker 1: destroyed Earth dot Com? And it will let you know
Speaker 1: was it say right, now okay, good. Also, I think
Speaker 1: if you really want to destroy the Earth, you would
Speaker 1: need a Q thirty six space modulatur Where was the
Speaker 1: earth shuttering? Kaboom um? So the Yeah, there's the LHC. Also,
Speaker 1: there's the theory that they will create a black hole
Speaker 1: and it will destroy the Earth. Any black hole that
Speaker 1: would be created in the LHC would be so incredibly
Speaker 1: tiny and would last for such a brief moment of
Speaker 1: time that it would not affect anything really. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the LHC does not do anything that isn't already happening
Speaker 1: everywhere in the universe right now, Like it's happening everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's just that in the LHC, it's under controlled conditions
Speaker 1: that can be observed and measured. All right, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: good for that. Now, I'm done with that. Did you
Speaker 1: want to did you want to pick the next one?
Speaker 1: Or shall I know? I just uh, I was thinking that,
Speaker 1: you know, if they did, if we did find a
Speaker 1: Q thirty six space modulator, it would require the presence
Speaker 1: of aliens. Ah. I think I see where you're going
Speaker 1: with this one. Are we are? We taking a little
Speaker 1: trip out west to Nevada to Nevada. Yes, so, ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen, maybe you've heard of a top secret location
Speaker 1: called Area fifty one. First of all, Area fifty one
Speaker 1: does exist, all right. That's not a conspiracy that it
Speaker 1: is a it is an actual location, although the government
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily refer to it as that. And that would
Speaker 1: be the Atomic Energy Commission Nevada test site. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: they were the ones who came up with the idea
Speaker 1: of calling it Area fifty one. And there are different
Speaker 1: theories about why that is, the main one being market.
Speaker 1: The main one being that they had they had marked
Speaker 1: out land in a grid for testing nuclear bombs, and
Speaker 1: they gave each grid a number, each square of the
Speaker 1: grid a number, and Area fifty one happens to be
Speaker 1: adjacent to Area fifteen. So it could just be that
Speaker 1: the number itself has been flipped, and that's why it's
Speaker 1: called Area fifty one. It's usually referred to as Groom Lake,
Speaker 1: but it has lots of other different names as well. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's then go. It tends to be. It tends
Speaker 1: to be. Uh. It tends to figure fairly highly in
Speaker 1: the uphology and alien conspiracy theory. UH circles. Yes, of course,
Speaker 1: because they're not testing nuclear weapons, they're you know, dissecting aliens.
Speaker 1: I saw the Alien Autopsy TV show, so yeah, this
Speaker 1: often has a lot too. Is tied in with Roswell, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, is nowhere near Groom Lake. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean it's closer than say, you know, Atlanta. You know,
Speaker 1: it's closer than it's closer than Georgia, but it's not
Speaker 1: it's not nearby. Um, but yeah, there are there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people who say, well, there's strange lights
Speaker 1: that would be flying over Area fifty one. It's probably
Speaker 1: alien technology, and the the United States is testing different
Speaker 1: craft that they managed to confiscate from aliens. And well,
Speaker 1: you know they've got hangars that they can you know,
Speaker 1: wheel aircraft into. Should a satellite flyover? Yes, And that
Speaker 1: is true because Area fifty one is a testing location.
Speaker 1: It's where the Air Force tests out various secret projects
Speaker 1: that are going to eventually possibly become actual equipment that
Speaker 1: the the United States depends upon for military purposes. So
Speaker 1: lots of aircraft got there, like Stealth Bomber, got their
Speaker 1: start in facilities like Groom Lake or Area fifty one.
Speaker 1: This was where the tests were conducted, where the planes
Speaker 1: were built and flown. Um, it's a no fly zone
Speaker 1: even for the Air Force because it's meant to keep
Speaker 1: secrecy at the highest levels. Um. Actually, from why I heard,
Speaker 1: it's not even used that much anymore because they've moved
Speaker 1: a lot of their operations to Colorado now. But Roy Mountain.
Speaker 1: I but it's not a it's not a home for aliens.
Speaker 1: It's a home for top secret, cutting edge technology aircraft. Um.
Speaker 1: But Terrest really derived aircraft. Yeah. Well, I mean if
Speaker 1: we were home for aliens, and they wouldn't be aliens anymore, right,
Speaker 1: So I'm just saying, fine, people from other planets have
Speaker 1: visited US, gained a visa and became citizens, get a
Speaker 1: green card. Yeah, someone's been watching too much Third Rock.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so Area fifty one. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of conspiracy theories around it, and part of it is
Speaker 1: because the area does have such a reputation for secrecy,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a well earned reputation because the government
Speaker 1: really does protect the stuff that's going on there because
Speaker 1: it's top secret. It's not but it's not necessarily related
Speaker 1: to aliens. It's just related to technologies they don't want
Speaker 1: the rest of the world to know about. Before they
Speaker 1: get a chance to, you know, because then you would
Speaker 1: lose the edge, right and in whatever arms race you're
Speaker 1: currently pursuing, or if you just want to think of
Speaker 1: it another way. In in an effort to keep the
Speaker 1: country safe, of course, the Silvius took pictures of it
Speaker 1: from overhead, and you know, you can go look at
Speaker 1: it right now on Google Maps or Google Earth. Yea,
Speaker 1: I actually see in picture. Like I said, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a legitimate place. And there are other things that
Speaker 1: have happened there that relate to conspiracy theories. There was
Speaker 1: this whole element of destroying certain materials which ended up
Speaker 1: being carcinogenic and and dangerous, and several employees came down
Speaker 1: with various illnesses and ailments and and sued the government
Speaker 1: a perfectly perfectly mundane diseases caused by hazardous materials being
Speaker 1: burned in there and their proximity. So the problem was
Speaker 1: that because everything was under top secret orders, it was
Speaker 1: very difficult to pursue a legal claim against the government,
Speaker 1: uh saying that you know, essentially the government caused my
Speaker 1: illness in some cases. In many cases, in fact, people
Speaker 1: died as a result of this, and um and there
Speaker 1: was a real struggle in the government, a debate on
Speaker 1: what was more important keeping all this secret or revealing
Speaker 1: certain information because people were dying and um some of it.
Speaker 1: That was about when when some of them information was
Speaker 1: actually declassified, not all of it by any stretch of
Speaker 1: the imagination, but enough of it to kind of sort
Speaker 1: of admit that there was a facility there, because up
Speaker 1: to that point there was no admission whatsoever. I mean,
Speaker 1: there was a physical facility there that you could take
Speaker 1: pictures of and everything, if people didn't run you off
Speaker 1: the property before you got chance to snap a photo,
Speaker 1: But the government consistently denied the presence of any facility
Speaker 1: there for many many years. Nothing to see here exactly.
Speaker 1: So you wanna, hey, how about another government thing? Hey,
Speaker 1: did you know that CIA is running Facebook? Are? No,
Speaker 1: they're not, or at least there's no proof. There's a
Speaker 1: rumor going around the internet, actually been around for a
Speaker 1: couple of years that the CIA is somehow involved and
Speaker 1: gathering information using Facebook as the front for getting as
Speaker 1: much personal information about people as it possibly can. The
Speaker 1: way the theory goes is that Facebook got some venture
Speaker 1: capital funding from various sources in its second round of
Speaker 1: venture capital funding. It received money from a company called
Speaker 1: Excel Partners, which was managed by a man named James Bryer. Oh.
Speaker 1: James Brier also sat on a board called National Venture
Speaker 1: Capital Association, which had happened to have on the board
Speaker 1: a man by the name of Gilman Louis. Now Louis
Speaker 1: had sat on the board of a company called n
Speaker 1: q TELL, which was a venture capital firm established by
Speaker 1: the c i A. So you've got a guy who
Speaker 1: sat on a VC firm for the CIA, who happens
Speaker 1: to also sit on a board that this other guy
Speaker 1: sits on, who happens to also be on a board
Speaker 1: that then funds Facebook. So somehow this series of connections
Speaker 1: means that CIA has become involved in Facebook. I don't
Speaker 1: buy it. It's just it's venture capital funds exist for
Speaker 1: one purpose, mainly, which is to to make money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they invest in ventures that they think are going
Speaker 1: to be successful. And I think the connection seems pretty tenuous.
Speaker 1: But I am concerned because I didn't hear Kevin Bacon's
Speaker 1: name mentioned once. He has a Facebook page, UM, or
Speaker 1: at least there's a fan page falls into place. UM.
Speaker 1: There are other connections as well. I'm sure I'm going
Speaker 1: to get listener mail about this. There are other connections
Speaker 1: as well that that can that are concerning because it's
Speaker 1: people who have obviously been involved in various functions that
Speaker 1: include things like data mining. I mean, it's the stuff
Speaker 1: that they've been involved in really does link back to
Speaker 1: get gathering information for intelligence purposes. Well, you know, Facebook
Speaker 1: is renowned for its ability to collect information. That's that's
Speaker 1: the thing though. That's the thing is because of that,
Speaker 1: it's easy to draw those connections, right because you say, okay,
Speaker 1: well Facebook is very good at gathering information. It's receiving
Speaker 1: funds from a person who also sat on a board
Speaker 1: that was set on by people who were interested in
Speaker 1: gathering information. That's enough of a connection for some people
Speaker 1: to say that there's a conspiracy. For me, there needs
Speaker 1: to be a little more proof than that. I could,
Speaker 1: I could definitely see why the concern would pop up
Speaker 1: that I don't necessarily jump to that conclusion. So just
Speaker 1: because there's a guy who knows a guy who knows
Speaker 1: a guy, that that doesn't tie it all together for you.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of guys who know guys, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't make me any sort of mastermind. I think
Speaker 1: most people would have yeah exactly, Yeah. Yeah. People people
Speaker 1: who know me, they'll be like, well, there goes that theory,
Speaker 1: because you know, you never I always put blue in
Speaker 1: the second spot, and you never get that. Jove, I
Speaker 1: don't even get the white peg. I used to play
Speaker 1: that game too, So uh, for those of you that
Speaker 1: we lost, let's do you get anything else? You have
Speaker 1: any other conspiracy theories? I have one other one I
Speaker 1: can bring up. We have tons of conspiracy theories. I
Speaker 1: think we're gonna have to do another one of these. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what, I agree, this will just be conspiracy
Speaker 1: you know, tech conspiracy theories one and then we will
Speaker 1: do a series of them. Some of these you could
Speaker 1: probably do a full podcast on, like Area fifty one
Speaker 1: could be a series of podcasts, But that really wouldn't
Speaker 1: be what we would talk about. I mean that's not
Speaker 1: really our place none. Really. I wonder if we could
Speaker 1: you know what, I bead stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to know, could do something about Area Yes, but we
Speaker 1: have to find a way to contact them, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The problem is that now that ben uh is kind
Speaker 1: of masterminding things like that, he's really difficult to track
Speaker 1: down like he changed his name and his face. I
Speaker 1: think he wears a dress. Actually he did that before,
Speaker 1: but he's really gotten better at coordinating now belt and
Speaker 1: pumps fabulous. A Well, that wraps up this conversation about it.
Speaker 1: We will have another one in the near future, and
Speaker 1: I guess that leads us to listener mail. And this
Speaker 1: listener mail comes from Rowland. Oh he put the O
Speaker 1: in parentheses. Hey, Josh and Chuck ha ha, just kidding. Hi,
Speaker 1: Chris and Jonathan just wanted to say I love your
Speaker 1: podcast and you two are really good at what you do.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed your How Podcasting Works podcast. Great info,
Speaker 1: and you have helped me select some microphones to buy
Speaker 1: a KG. If it's not too much trouble, could you
Speaker 1: tell me if your mix could also double for recording music,
Speaker 1: more specifically loud music guitar and drums with lots of distortion.
Speaker 1: Maybe your producer Matt knows. I'm not so good with
Speaker 1: decoding the specs on certain things. Anyway, Great job and
Speaker 1: keep up the good work. Thanks Rowland. Oh t S.
Speaker 1: I noticed How Stuff Works dot Com has moved to
Speaker 1: a mobile browser for smartphones, possibly another podcasting topic. I
Speaker 1: thought I would throw this one over to Chris, as
Speaker 1: Chris is a rock and roll legend in my own mind.
Speaker 1: Perhaps go for it now. Um yeah, I just just
Speaker 1: to be on the stay side. Actually, Tyler is doing
Speaker 1: our podcast day. We have a number of folks who
Speaker 1: produced with us. Um and just as a matter of confirmation,
Speaker 1: and yes, you probably could use these microphones to record
Speaker 1: loud music, um, if you'd like to. UM. When I've
Speaker 1: gone into the studio in the past a lot of times,
Speaker 1: it takes sort of some trial and error. Um, you're
Speaker 1: you're gonna wanna do some testing some uh, some line
Speaker 1: checks and and mike checks to make sure that you're
Speaker 1: not overwhelming those mics. Depending on the kind of equipments
Speaker 1: you've got on the other end to capture that's the sound. Uh,
Speaker 1: you may end up needing baffles. Uh, because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm being a drummer. I've actually tried to record drums
Speaker 1: straight into a microphone and it basically just distorts it
Speaker 1: to the point of non recognition. Although it kind of
Speaker 1: sounds that like it might be something that already down
Speaker 1: your alley. But yes, these are these are very nice
Speaker 1: mics that we use here. And um, I think they
Speaker 1: would probably work fine, although you know your minlage may
Speaker 1: very some restrictions apply off or not dealt in all
Speaker 1: fifty states. You might want to try it out and
Speaker 1: see how it goes. Um, so you know, give it
Speaker 1: a try. Cool all right? Well, thanks Roland. Oh, if
Speaker 1: any of you have any questions, comments, concerns, suggestions for
Speaker 1: podcasts that kind of thing, you can email us or
Speaker 1: email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. Remember,
Speaker 1: we have our live show every Tuesday one pm Eastern.
Speaker 1: You can find that on the blogs how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Just look on the right hand side. You'll
Speaker 1: see the links there and Chris and I will talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com And be sure to check out the new tech
Speaker 1: stuff blog now on the how Stuff Works homepage. Brought
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Speaker 1: are you