Stuff You Should Know - Doin’ Science in the National Radio Quiet Zone

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

West Virginia is home to sensitive radio telescopes that could easily pick up your cell phone’s signal on Mars. And the cell reception on Mars is about as good as it is in the NRQZ, since cell towers are banned in the interest of furthering astronomy.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, too. And we're being really quiet. Here on the Stuff You Should Know, because we're doing an episode on the National Radio Quiet Zone. We're not a radio show.

We're a podcast, but we feel in solidarity that we should be quiet to. That's right. and we're not talking about Palm Springs with their oppressive band on outdoor music. Oh, I hadn't heard about that. Yeah, you can't play music outside like by your pool. Huh, at all? Supposedly at all.

Wow. I guess it probably just depends on your neighbor. I think they're pretty strict about it. I mean, I've never been to Palm Springs and stayed there. We should ask our friend who lives there. Yeah, check. Because maybe full-time residents have a little more leeway, but, you know, they do it because people, they don't want people just going and renting houses

and just blowing out the neighborhood every weekend. No, this isn't Fire Island, guys. Right. No, we're not talking about Palm Springs, though, I guess, is the upshot of that, right? No, we're talking about the opposite of Palm Springs, which is Appalachia. West Virginia.

Yeah. It's kind of the opposite of Palm Springs, if there is such a thing. I think even if you folded the United States map in half, they would be pretty close to one another. They would smear one another. Someone's going to do that. Yeah.

They're going to fold a map up and send us a correction. Yeah, they'll be like, Josh was way off. Well, you know where they might fold a map up is in the National Radio Quiet Zone, because they still use those things. It's a great place to fold a map because, yeah, like you said, that's what you need to get around in a lot of cases. And let's just cut to the chase here, Chuck. The National Radio Quiet Zone does not mean you can't play your music like that.

They're saying that this is an area where radio emissions, of any kind are heavily regulated, frowned upon, you might even say. And the whole reason they're doing this is to protect the delicate telescopes, radio telescopes used in radio astronomy at a specific place called Green Bank, West Virginia. They've established a whole zone around it that's meant to block out or keep out radio transmissions so that the astronomers can go about their business happily. That's right. And to be clear, when you say radio transmissions,

you're not talking about Casey Kasem's American Top 40. Right. Because we don't have a time machine, and we're not going to exhume Casey Kasem. They still play those like old ones on some radio stations on Saturday or Sunday. It's a great way to pass some time if you're driving. I've stumbled upon those, and it is a nice time capsule for sure. But you're talking about radio waves,

and we're going to explain kind of about what radio astronomy is and all that. In fact, we can go ahead and do this. that right now. Because in 1932, there was an engineer at Bell Labs named Carl Jansky, who noticed some static interfering with some communications going across the pond, as they say, got together with an astronomer over coffee, and they said, you know what? I don't think this is interference coming from here on Earth. I think it's coming from out in the Milky Way galaxy. And this was a big deal in 1932. They were like, there are literal celestial bodies emitting radio waves out there,

and we need to start studying these and measuring these, and we're going to call it radio astronomy. Yeah, all of a sudden we didn't just have visible telescopes anymore. We had radio telescopes, which are very similar. I mean, they both are just measuring different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Yeah. It's basically it.

But the really amazing thing about what some of these radio telescopes can do, just to give you an idea of how sensitive they are, They measure the incoming radio waves that are so weak, they measure them in microjant skis, which is point. A microjant ski. Is it named after Carl? It is named after Carl. It is named, I hope so, because that would be one heck of a coincidence. It's 0.320s.

Wow. This is watts, by the way. So the electrical energy is so weak, it's 0.32 zeros of a single watt, right? And I've seen it compared to a snowflake hitting the ground carries a lot more energy than that. So that's how faint some of these radio signals are. And that's how sensitive these enormous radio telescopes are, which is why the idea of having a quiet zone around a telescope is so vital because there's so much noise in modern life.

It's just gotten worse and worse and worse. You can find radio interference in everything from bulldozers to power lines, Wi-Fi routers, Christmas lights, spark plugs and cars produce a lot of radio interference. It's everywhere, which means then that if you want to create a quiet zone, you have to somehow regulate all this stuff to kind of keep it away from the radio telescopes, which has proven difficult over the years for the National Radio Quiet Zone. You mentioned the less than a watt.

Do they have names? I know there's like megawatts and kilowatts and all that stuff, gigawatts. Do they have names for things less than a watt? A micro-jansky is a Jansky is like 0.260s of one single watt. Well, I just meant a sort of a regular interval, like a something watt, like a Reggie watt. Oh, I'm sure there's like a millawatt. I know there is. I've heard that word before. I know I was at a mixer of some sort and someone used that word. Okay. I got you. You missed my joke.

Oh, no, I need to hear it. I got it. No, I'm going to let you hear it in QA when you listen to it. So great. I have a future humiliation ahead of me. No, no, no, no. It was very quick and it was a pretty lame setup by me because it was all just for that dumb joke. So you have an Easter egg to look forward to. I can't wait to hear it. Something that you've said, though, a few times that we want to, again, just sort of hammer home. You've said, like, a lot of noise and you might hear, like, silence and things like that. Again, it has nothing to do with sound. We're just talking about radio waves, which are, you know, they cast a kind of light, like a radio light, but it's not something that the human eye can see.

So, again, not actual sound is what we're talking about. No, nor actual visible light, radio light, right? So like what I was saying, it's like radio light pollution is absolutely everywhere. And yet they're trying to keep it as quiet as possible in the National Radio Quiet Zone. It used to be a lot easier when they started this whole thing. You said Carl Jansky made that massive monumental discovery in 1932. By 1954, the National Science Foundation started exploring like how to just take radio astronomy to the next level, which is, I guess you would say, the second level because it was still so new.

They created the advisory panel on radio astronomy, and part of what they were discussing was how to create a quiet zone and where you would make one of those things. Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine if they were tasked with this today, it'd probably be nearly impossible. They'd have to use eminent domain just to kick people out. But 1954, like you said, it was a little bit easier. So for a couple of years, they got together over coffee about where they could put this thing.

It needed minimal radio noise, obviously, like we talked about, probably a pretty limited population. By the way, thanks for Anna for this one. She did a great job on this. Yeah, she really did. Surrounded by mountains, because mountains provide a natural barrier

for those radio signals. And probably not near a city, but not too far from Washington, D.C., where things, would likely be headquartered. So they finally looked around. They settled on the Applachian Mountains between Virginia and West Virginia.

That is part one of solving the problem. Part two was getting funding. Luckily, President Eisenhower was kind of into this. So in 1956, he asked Congress, back when that was a thing, for $7 million to fund a radio astronomy center, and Congress said, yeah, let's do it. Yeah, everybody was really jazzed about this new radio astronomy stuff, right? West Virginia was very flattered, and the state legislature passed the

West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone. So the first thing that was created was the National Radio Quiet Zone. And that was actually created before the National Radio Quiet Zone. Yeah, they kind of laid the groundwork, I feel like. Yeah, they laid a 10-mile diameter groundwork around wherever this telescope was going to be built. They said, wherever you put it, there's going to be 10-mile. around it where you can't use radio stuff, right? Yeah. And then the FCC said, we're going to do one better. We're going to put another blanket layer, much larger layer, called the National Radio Quiet Zone,

on top of the West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone to kind of make this huge buffer, right, to make it even harder for radio signals to mess with the radio telescopes in the West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone. That's right. So that smaller NRQZ, the National Radio Quiet Zone, had from the jump, had some looser restrictions than the even much smaller WVRAZ. It covered a much larger area, about 13,000 square miles. But think of it this way. It's really a rectangle, the NRQZ, 13,000 square miles across Virginia and West Virginia. And a little bit of Maryland, the southernmost tip on that western panhandle.

Just the tip. Just the tip. It's very mountainous. It's got parts of the Allegheny, parts of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but mainly the Appalachian Mountains. And within that 13,000 square mile rectangle, you've got that West Virginia, the WVRAZ. In the center of that, you've got a two-mile zone that surrounds Green Bank, West Virginia. And every time you go into a smaller circle within that rectangle, it gets more and more restrictive as for what kind of radio noise that you can have. Because in the middle of that zone, you've got the Green Bank Observatory, and they have even more restrictions right there in the center.

Yeah, at the Green Bank Observatory, you can't even think about using any kind of radio-creating device because that would create radio waves. If you think about Wi-Fi there, you're fired. Yeah. You're fired if you're lucky. Yeah, exactly. They'll really work you over there. They've got a gang of goons that enforced this with the iron fist. That's right.

So we talked about how all of this, the quiet zone itself was established. Simultaneously, they're working on creating the actual observatory that's going to be in the middle of this quiet zone. And initially, it was called the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in that town of Greenbank, which is in the center of the West Virginia Radio, astronomy zone. That was established in 1956, and they started building telescopes, one bigger than the other. They started with the Tattle 85 foot.

Not bad. And then the 300-foot telescope, and the 140-foot telescope, which are very boring names. Yeah. But originally, as you might imagine, everybody associated with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory lived in this ultra-quiet zone around the observatory,

And they ran into some early problems where the employees are like, we can't live here, sorry. Right. Yeah, I mean, they said, you know, the medical care and access to great health care isn't awesome. The schools here aren't great for my kids. And so they relocated the admin headquarters to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The researchers remain there on site in 88. And I think that was in 1965 when they, you know, built most of this stuff, those big tall towers. in 88, the 300-foot telescope collapsed.

The 140-foot said, ha-ha, but then it was replaced by the Robert C. Bird Green Bank Telescope in 2001, which still stands today. And not only stands, but it's like, it is the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world with, get this, a 2.3 acre dish and almost 500 feet, 485 feet, which is 2116 Big Macs. Is it?

That's all for you, my friend. Thank you, buddy. Wow, that was a delightful little lanyap. What? A what? A lanyap. We've talked about this before. Oh, it will remind me.

A lanyap is just like a little something extra. Okay. And I find it incredibly obnoxious to use. Well, I think it's great, and it sure beats the heck out a cherry on top. All right. Let's come up with something else. The lanyap on top. Okay, there you go.

There's one other thing that the Green Bank telescope, the one that's currently in use, can boast. You ready for this? Yes. It has the world's largest ball bearing. Oh, wow. The ball bearing inside of this thing that this massive telescope steers on is 17.5 feet in diameter. Wow. Which means it's as big around as a male adult giraffe is tall.

What? That's the best I could come up. I know. It's awful. It's clumsy, but I could not come up with anything else. Hey, Alexa, what's 17 feet tall? I asked Duck, Duck, Go instead. Oh, okay. And I'm sorry for everyone who's Alexa, I just triggered. Alexa, Alexa. Alexa, play one direction.

Oh, boy, that's good. You want to take a break while everybody's trying to turn off one direction? Yeah, let's take a break. We'll be right back. We were work pals. All right. So within that 13,000 square mile rectangle, the National Radio Quiet Zone, you cannot, and this is where the restrictions begin, and we're going to get more granular. You can't have any fixed or permanent transmitters installed unless you get approval from the NRQZ and the FCC.

What's the NTIA? The national telecommunications and information agency. Very obscure. But they supposedly are replacing FEMA as the new world orders jackboot troops. Okay, good to know. So you can't build any big permanent things there. So that means just within that big 13,000 square mile rectangle, just somebody living there doesn't have to worry too much.

That means that no company can come in and build something. really big. Right. That's really what we're looking at here. If you're in the actual 13,000 square mile thing, you don't have to really worry about a cell phone. The thing is, that also means since there's no cell phone towers that are allowed there, your cell phone's going to be useless in a lot of places.

I think that's fair enough to expect anyway because Pocahontas County, which is where a lot of the main part, which is definitely where Green Bank is. Yeah. I think three quarters of it is national and state protected wilderness. So you're not going to expect to get a cell phone signal there anyway. And if you're passing through this area, you're probably going to the quiet zone on purpose. So you can expect this. It's really just an issue if you actually live or work in this area or your company trying to set up new infrastructure.

That's really who's being affected by this. Yeah, for sure. Like if you read, and I had heard of this before. at some point, like I saw some news report or read an article that portray it as like, you know, it's like going back in time, basically. And we'll get to the ways it is sort of like that, but it's not entirely like that. They've never entirely banned any kind of radio transmission. It's just really regulated.

Like, they have certain radio broadcasts because they have to have those emergency transmissions that we talked about in communications and the AM radio episode. Those have always been there. You can have TV. It is restricted, but they permit like cable TV and even satellite TV, which kind of surprises me. And Wi-Fi was not available for a long, long time until I think just last year, but they could have wired internet with the Ethernet cable. Right. If it was wired, no problem. But the Wi-Fi was going to produce a lot of problems because your, I mean, your router is a radio transmitter.

So apparently a lot of people. as we'll see are like, well, whatever, I'm still going to have Wi-Fi, including Green Bank Observatory employees who live there. But it's still a big problem because if you live in that region, it still affects you in all sorts of ways. Like Anna gives the example of if your car breaks down, you don't just call somebody on the cell phone and be like, I need a toe. Sure. You're walking unless somebody friendly drives by who you know.

and trust and probably had dinner at their house and we'll give you a ride to somewhere. People use pay phones, as we'll see. You can definitely feel disconnected just from not having cell service, let alone from Wi-Fi. But that said, I think we'll talk a little more about it later, but the people who work for Greenbank Observatory try to work with the community because although technically

it's law that they can regulate this, and punish people who violate these rules, they don't. They are trying to keep a happy relationship with the community and figure out compromises that work for everybody. That's what they try to do. I think if you talk to some of the people who live around there or elected officials around there, they might not necessarily agree with you,

but that seems to be at least the mission of the Green Bank Observatory. Yeah, and again, that's specifically the Green Bank, which is the most restrictive area where you're not going to have any cell service, and like I said, until very recently, no Wi-Fi at all there, like no Bluetooth devices, no RC cars and trucks for the kids. Man. And playful adults, no microwaves. But like you said, I think you hinted at it. A lot of people, or some people, because there's not a lot of people there, period, but some people move there for that reason.

They want a simpler lifestyle. They want less technology. And we'll talk a little bit more about, you know, kind of some of the people that attract. because it can get very interesting. Other people can get annoyed. Most people there probably just, you know, that's where they've always lived. And so that's just the deal.

It's a way of life. I think in 2016, there was an Italian graduate student named Jofredo Kalini, who traveled there to study, like, the people. And we're like, you know, what's it like for the people that live there? And he found, and this is a very small-scale study, it wasn't like the most robust scientific thing.

But I think just walk, around and studying and talking to people, he found that people seem to have lower anxiety there. But it's different. You know, they use maps. They use pay phones still. Just the idea of not having access to, like, social media and a lot of, just a lot of, like, modern life or having a cell phone, like being able to be contacted all the time, I can't, I can't help but think that, yes, you as a group would have less anxiety.

on the whole. Especially teens, I think it's Australia. Didn't they just pass a law saying you couldn't be on social media until you were a certain age? I think 16. Hats off to you guys because that's how it should be. Teens there do have things like iPhones. They can't use them for texts or call. So there was one teen that said it's basically a clock and a calculator.

So I imagine calculator watches are very much in style still. Yeah, those Cassio ones? Yeah. Those are awesome. The thing is, this is all, I mean, as of last year, I think, meaning 2025, but also some changes really started to take place, I think, in the summer of 2024. Like, certain kinds of Wi-Fi is now allowed, and things are now changing. I mean, once you add widespread Internet access, like the world's going to change or this area is going to change overnight, basically. Yeah, for the better, right?

Imagine going, right, imagine going from 1997 to 2025 in the span of like a day after installing a Wi-Fi router in your house. Well, I mean, that's one thing Anna mentions sort of at the end of her research was like there was a while there where the Gulf was really big. Like when, you know, for the longest time, it was like, well, things aren't that much different. Sure. But then once the Internet came along and then they weren't getting things like Wi-Fi. and Bluetooth, like the Gulf got pretty wide there for a while. But like we said, it attracts a lot of interesting folks. There are certainly some conspiracy theorists that go there on purpose.

The National Alliance headquarters for the neo-Nazis has been in Pocahontas County for a long time. Obviously, you're going to get some hippies, some communes. There was a quasi-cult, perhaps, called Zindick Farm that was there for a little while. They kind of moved all over. of them all over the United States, but ended up there until one of their dear leaders passed away in 1999. The other Errol Zindick passed away in 2012, so that's when that kind of ended. And we'll talk about this last group toward the end, but most famously, it's probably

known in where you might have seen articles or news reports, people moving there that suffer from electromagnetic hypersensitivity. Yeah, we'll talk a little bit more about that later, right? Yeah. So if you have heard about this, it's a good chance that you stumbled across a wired article on it appropriately. That might have been where I read about it. There's a guy named Stephen Kersey, who's an author, he's a journalist,

who just kind of, I was reading one of his wired articles, and he was talking about how he became kind of obsessed with the idea of living without a phone. Yeah, yeah. And did so quite impressively for a very long time. and he found out about the National Radio Quiet Zone and was naturally attracted to it on to find out more about it. So he started hanging out there and writing about it.

So a lot of the best information about what life is actually like in there and how things are actually done come from some of his reporting. And one of the things that he points out is that if you are caught using, say, like a cell phone within the two miles of the Green Bank Observatory, you are subject to a $50 a day fine

for as long as you're using that phone. That's right. And as far as Curzey can tell, absolutely no one in the history of the Green Bank Observatory has ever been fined. Because, again, they're trying to do this all through cooperation rather than,

they're trying to use the carrot, not the stick, I guess. Exactly. So if you're listening to your DVDs, your CDs, that's fine. You can't stream your music because there will be an enforcer that comes along to probably very kindly ask you. Enforcer's not the right word at all.

A nudger that will come along. And that job for a very long time was held by a man named Wesley Seismore, which, by the way, this all sprang, I think a banger of a movie idea for me. Oh, good. I can't wait to see it. You'll never see it,

but I'll tell you about it one day. Okay. I'll blow the dust off the script and hand it to you. You don't know. It could be your ticket to start them. Hey, you never know. But Wesley Seismore did this job of Enforcer. It's a guy who drives around in a truck or a van equipped with RFI identifying gear and look for this interference.

Sometimes you say, hey, man, or they don't say, hey, man. He goes, hey, Mr. Ronald, because he probably knows everybody. Sure. At least in my script, he does. And says, you know, you can't use that microwave. You got to unplug that. or just give it to me so it's not a temptation. Sometimes he goes,

I can probably work something out for you that works without interference. Very famously, he is the guy, I think. There was a malfunctioning electric blanket that was causing some interference. And so he went out and got one that worked. And, you know, it's funded by the NRAO, obviously. He's not doing it out of his pocket.

But apparently a lot of people in town sort of see him or saw him while he was doing the job as like a free repair man in town. Yeah, like, yeah, you just sit around and wait for Chuck Nadee to come find you and repair your... Well, he's the new guy. Oh, sorry, yeah, that was Wesley Seismore. Chuck Nadee is the new guy. You're right. He's been going since 2011.

As far as I can tell, he's still the guy who does this. I believe he has a background in electrical engineering. And one of the things that, like, Green Bank does, including Chuck Nadeh, in working with people who, like, want to put up some sort of radio antenna, they'll actually help you design it so that it works really well, but it doesn't interfere with the telescope. Like, that's the level of coordination and cooperation they're doing ideally. And Chuck Nadee is one of those guys. He goes around and finds, you know, who's using Wi-Fi routers,

but also kind of is hands-on as well helping come up with solutions, basically. Yeah, I don't know if you have your first. phone, but I just texted you a picture of Chuck Nadei or Nadei. He looks exactly like you would think. He looks. Like the dude, super friendly that drives around in this

truck full of electric gear. Looking to friendly solve problems in a friendly way. Like Stephen Segal, basically. No, no, no, not at all. Did I ever tell you about being behind Stephen Seagall's house in L.A.? No, this one's new.

I think I talked about being in Meatloaf's house at one point or another. You have. Yeah. The, what's the cherry on top called again? The land yap on top. The land yap on top of that story that I don't think I ever revealed or I may have, and it was years ago, was that Stephen Seagal lived behind him.

And I knew this because when I was jumping on the trampoline in Meatloaf's backyard, every time I went up, I saw these little, like, Asian fagoda tops. It looked like little tops of little Taj Mahas. And I was like, what is that? And they were like, that's Seagall's place. Are you sure that he didn't mean George Segal? Oh, well, this is George Segal, but sure. That would have been a twist.

Yeah, woulda. So did you see Steven Seagall there? Oh, no, no, no, no. No matter how high I jumped, I could not get a picture. I remember, I read there was a GQ profile, I believe, years and years and years ago about him. And the title of it was the biggest liar in Hollywood. Oh, geez.

Yeah, he's supposed to be not a good guy. It was eviscerating. Yeah. I would recommend going and reading it. Yeah, I'll check out. Yeah, just add it to your list. Should we take a break? I feel like yes.

Okay. All right, we're going to take a break, and we're going to talk about what they're doing out there right after this. Well, we were work pals. Okay, Chuck, so we were talking about how cell phone towers and transmitters Like GPS transmitters, that kind of thing. Like commercial grade stuff are really the biggest problem for the telescopes.

The reason why, I don't think we said, the reason why it's not just interference, right? I saw a side-by-side picture of a radio telescope, I think of a pulsar, and one of the same thing, but with a lot of interference. Meow. And it's just like, yeah, it'd be impossible

to pick some of this stuff out. Interference is one problem. Another problem is that, remember how sensitive those telescopes are, their amplifiers get blown out really easily. There was a, in that article, they were talking about Chuck Nadegh, helping fashion an antenna for a smoke alarm. And they were like, if this smoke alarm went off and it sent this message out through the antenna, if we didn't make it right, it would blow the Green Bank telescope.

Like, it would blow the amplifier out. Oh, wow. That's all it would take. So that's really, there's a couple of problems. with it, right? But there's also another problem that very few people can do anything about, and that is from all of these satellites that are in orbit these days. Yeah, for sure, especially the low Earth orbit satellites. Not only you're going to get visible light pollution, which is its own problem with all the telescopes,

but radio interference is a big problem. Yeah. So what they're doing there, again, these seem like the greatest bunch of people, because they don't come at it again with the stick. They're like, hey, let's work together to make sure you can do what you need to do and we can still do what we need to do. So they're working on developing what's called a National Radio Dynamic Zone, which is a collaborative initiative, basically, between the two, well, not two groups, between one group and a lot of other groups that have these satellites to try and, you know, just talk with each other better and make sure that they can all, like I said, get their jobs done. They don't have a permanent home yet. but they're working on it.

Yeah, they're trying to build a research center where satellite operators can test new technologies that will let satellites work but minimize radio interference. Hopefully they get that up because there's a huge problem with radio and light pollution from satellites, and we're just adding more and more and more every year. Yeah, for sure.

All right, so if you were thinking, guys, when are you going to talk about aliens? Now's the time because we talked about kind of the things they're doing there, and this is one of the things they're doing there. One of the very first projects they started out on years ago was what would be the origins of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In 1959, the NRAO researcher named Frank Drake launched a study called Prazac Ozma, so named for one of L. Frank Baum's characters in his Oz books. he started looking for life out there. And while it didn't work initially, that really launched what SETI would become.

Yeah, Frank Drake, we've talked about him plenty of times. He came up with the Drake equation, which is a really interesting formula for trying to figure out how many intelligent civilizations might be in the universe. He's the guy who came up with that. And Green Bank is the place where he came up with it because he was working there.

And he also hosted a... Pretty rocking party. A rock and party. That featured Carl Sagan, a guy named Melvin Calvin, who's a biochemist, John Lilly, who he talked about, the whacked-out dolphin researcher, used to give acid to dolphins. Yeah. And they, so Frank Drake came up with the Drake equation as basically the agenda for this conference, and then they kind of hashed it out. And they very famously calculated that there's at least 10,000 advanced intelligent alien. civilizations just in the Milky Way galaxy.

If you don't know about the Drake equation, go look it up. It'll open up a whole world of interesting stuff with you. But the option it is, like you said, this still continues today because this research at Greenbank essentially, thanks to Frank Drake and others, gave birth to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence or SETI, and SETI is still performed at the Green Bank telescope to this day. Has the rapper Drake ever put out a song or album called The Drake Equation? No, but I'm glad you brought. I don't know.

He may have. He should have if he hasn't. That seems like a no-brainer. I'm glad you brought that up, though, because I had heard of the quiet zone before. I didn't know much about it. But the thing that prompted this episode is one of our listeners, a guy named Andrew Phelps. He's a photographer with another photographer named Paul Kranzler. They went to the quiet zone around Greenfield.

Bank. It took, like, they basically made a photo documentary of life in the area. Oh, cool. And they named their book Drake equation and they sent us a copy. So hats off to those guys for the book, for making the book and sending it to us. I thought you were talking about someone else at first because I wish I could remember his name. I follow him on Instagram now. There's a listener that is an astro or astral photographer. Oh, neat. where basically he's i don't know where he goes to get these pictures it's obviously in another quiet zones of the world okay or at least dark places you know uh and gets and it's not just like he sets up a a nice camera and does a long exposure like it's really sophisticated equipment

uh and and process that he goes through to get stuff that looks like it doesn't look real it's like you know celestial bodies that like it looks like some AI generated art. It's incredible stuff. I think if it was an astral photographer, he'd be taking pictures of like oras. Oras, yeah, as soon as you come out. I got to see that. Tell them to make sure you figure out that guy's name. I will and I'll follow up on an episode. I'll see if I can find it. Okay. It's really, really impressive, super cool and very just a super cool hyper specific art form, I think, you know.

Yeah, or people if you can't wake, they can go to you, Chuck the podcast or on Instagram and look at who you follow and figure it out. Yeah, sure. There you go. I follow Josh Um-Clark. Do you? Of course I do. I follow you too.

Yeah. Thanks. Are you just now realizing that? Yeah. Well, you don't post much. No, I really don't. Good for you. I want to say I should more, but I shouldn't.

Nah. I'm doing it just fine. I think you're doing just great. Well, you do great too. Hey, you know who also does great? Who? Jerry. She does do great, doesn't she?

All right, we're, okay, we were talking about things that go on there, SETI. Another thing that might not surprise you is military intelligence goes on there. Many years ago, they started something called the Sugar Grove Research Station at the time called the Sugar Grove U.S. Naval Radio Station. This was in 1959. When the Navy started building what was going to be the world's largest radio antenna, it was called the Vig Ear, where they were going to listen in and interstate. up, you know, Russian intel. They never finished the big ear because they were worried it was

not structurally sound. So rather than moving on to the medium ear, I guess they didn't think it sounded cool enough, they just scrapped it all together, but they still have a station at Sugar Grove and the NSA is also there. So I'm sure it's all on the up and up as to far as who and what they're listening to. Well, actually, I saw actually, Chuck, I saw that the NSA abandoned Sugar Grove. Oh, they're not there anymore? Within like the last year. Oh, okay.

And it's for sale. You can buy the whole dang town, which has like a number of houses, it has like a recycling plan. It has everything. How much?

Just, I think the highest bid recently was like $11.6 million. And I guess it was a joke because they couldn't come through with it. So I think if you come up with $11 million, they'd be happy to take it and you could probably get it for less.

Wow, I mean, considering what Kim Basinger paid for Brazzleton, Georgia in the 80s or 90s. How much was it? Do you remember? It was a lot. Was it? I think so. But, I mean, that was she bought a town. I remember. Does she still own it?

No, she got out of the Brasselton business. She had the market cornered for a minute, though. I usually don't look these things up. Guess what? The AI overview talks about the average home. Sale price. Oh, wow. How surprising.

Yeah. And home is misspelled. I'll find it at some point. You can continue. Okay. So there's also been a bunch of great scientific discoveries there, as you can imagine. $20 million in 1989. Do you know how much she sold the town for?

No, I'm not going to look that up either. Some things have to be left at the imagination. I think that's great, Chuck. Plus, the AI overview just shrug. put a shrug emoji up. All right, I interrupted. You were talking about scientific discoveries? Yeah, and we're talking radio astronomy.

So there's stuff like interstellar molecules. Some of the first ones were discovered. I think half of the interstellar molecules we know about were discovered in the 60s at Greenbank. Like pictures of pulsars. We understand the universe a lot more thanks to it. But they're also really arcane, I guess, discoveries that, seemed like they were just like total, like they would only interest like two people.

Right. For example, the Z, it was the first detection of Zeman splitting. Zeman splitting is where spectral lines, you know, those black bands like on the, on the spectrum. Sure. It just kind of pop up. There are spectral lines. They split in the presence of a magnetic field. That was discovered at Green Bank Observatory.

You might say, like, great, who cares? But this is just one of those things that shows you how science builds on science. This actually confirmed quantum theory for the first time because it showed that electrons respond to magnetic fields and it proved a lot of like the math that had been proposed for quantum theory but hadn't been confirmed yet. That discovery at Greenbank Observatory confirmed it. That's just one of a number of incomprehensible discoveries that were made there. So it is important.

This isn't just a group of astronomers who want their cake. They're just fat little bully boys or anything like that. There are actual, like, important, there's important work being carried out because this is such a unique place. Oh, man. The mental picture was astounding that just came over me. All right. So we mentioned earlier on people that move there that suffer from what's called electromagnetic hypersensitivity. This may be where you have read about it or seen.

news reports because there's a woman named Diane Schau, I guess, S-H-O-W, who has been there for a long time, and she's basically the most, kind of the foremost sufferer of EHS. She moved to the NRQZ a while ago, got 14 acres near Green Bank, founded the wave analysis verification research. Not a center? No. Because then it'd be waiver. I guess so, but it's a nonprofit.

And basically she went there to live more healthily for her own needs. And to also do research on the disease and also help bring people in and educate and care for people with the disease. And the idea is that people are super sensitive, obviously, to electromagnetic waves. And they feel like it gets them sick, headaches, nausea, dizziness, chest pain. hair loss. And I say it feels like because it's never been proven that this is a real thing, right? No, one of the things that really undermines the concept of electromagnetic hypersensitivity is an actual medical condition is that people who suffer from it can't reliably tell when they're in the presence of electromagnetic frequencies. Right. They've been given tests and

tests and tests where they are being bombarded with an electromagnetic pulse. And next, they say that they are and they're not actually being bombarded with it. And they can't say, like, yes, now I'm being exposed to electromagnetic radiation. Now I'm not. So that alone makes it seem like it's simply a psychological disorder or a nocebo effect that people are being, like their symptoms are real. Like they're losing their hair. They're not pulling it out in secret and saying, I lost my hair because of this.

Their symptoms are real. What's causing it seems to just be in their mind. I say that, though, at the kernel of salt, grain of salt, because there have been diseases before that were treated like this initially. Yeah. And it turned out, like, no, these people were just a group of mistreated sufferers who actually were suffering from something that's now recognized. So it's possible that's the case. And even if that's not the case, these people actually are suffering. Right.

So the World Health Organization recognizes it as a medical condition, but a medical condition that warrants further study, figure out what the heck's going on, and how to actually help people who suffer from this, regardless of what the cause is. Yeah, for sure. And either way, in either case, it's really great that Diane Schell

and whoever has met her and followed her there, have a place to go where it is quiet for them, you know? Yeah. And if you're like, this kind of sounds familiar, Lenny from Laverne and Shirley on Better Call Saul, he suffered from electromagnetic hypersensitivity. Ah, I did not see that show. It's still on the long list,

but I thought you were going to say Julian Moore in the Todd Haynes film, Safe. But that was a little different. I think that was, and I don't know the name for it, it, but the people that think it's like everything's dirty and everything is going to get them sick. Hypochondria? No, but more of, I mean, I'm sure it's maybe a subset of hypochondria, but it's like everything is dirty, everything I touch will get me sick.

Everything, there's, everything's tainted and dangerous and germy. I mean, that's just normal for me. Right. No, to the point where they can't function in the world. Yeah, I don't mean to make light of it. No, I know. I know what you mean, no. But you're a little germy.

The whole thing reminds me of our episode from 2014 about Morgolan's disease. Remember that? Oh, yeah. What was that again? It's where people, I think, think they're suffering from something that comes out of their skin. And when they bring samples of what they think is like this evidence that they're sick, it turns out to be like lint or thread from a skin. code or just the smallest, weirdest stuff.

And they're like, this doesn't exist, guys. And I don't know where it left off, but it was really interesting. That's right. And a nice way to remind people that a Morgolan's disease is from the old vault, and there are lots and lots of episodes in the vault that you probably don't even know about unless you've been listening for 17 years. Sure. Coming up on 18.

That's right, in April. So what's going on with the National Radio Quarrow? quiet zone, Chuck. It's still putting along, you know. They're still trying to work it out with the satellites in orbit near them. They're still trying to work it out with the residents.

And they're keeping on, keeping on. There were two things that happened recently. Well, one, not too recently, but one very recently. The National Science Foundation turned the Green Bank Observatory out. Said, we're done with you. Oh, really? And it looked like the end of it. I think back in

2012, it looked like the end of the observatory and instead everybody who worked there banded together and looked for private funding and now it's privately funded. Oh, that's cool. The other thing that happened is that they seem to have figured out how to address the Wi-Fi issue for everybody. And that was Starlink, the basically global internet. Yeah.

They figured out that if you use fixed Starlink where like you're just using it in your house, you're not moving around using it. It doesn't disrupt the function of the radio telescope. The problem is if you use like the moving around, the mobile version to where like it's, you're getting signals, say like on your phone while you're driving, that messes with the telescope. So for 95.5% of the population around Green Bank, their problem is solved because they can use the fixed Starlink. For that other point five percent, though, it's a big point. problem because emergency medical services wanted to use Starlink to communicate with each other to respond to emergencies.

And now they're like, we can't use radios, we can't use Starlink, what are we going to do? And that's kind of where it stands right now. There's a, they're at an impasse trying to figure out how to let EMS do its thing. Yeah, and again, as of just August of last year is when they were allowed the Wi-Fi, but I don't think we said the speed at a robust 2.4, what is it? I don't even know what is it that slow mega something? Gigahhertz. Gigajhertz?

I think the reason why they allowed that is I read that because there's so many Wi-Fi routers operating on 2.4 now that that band of the radio universe is just, it's just trash now. You can't do astronomy on it anyway, so I think they were like... You can't do astronomy on it? No, you can't. Don't even try. Yeah. You got anything else? I got nothing else.

Okay. I think then everybody, that means it's time for listener mail. This sort of ties in a little bit. It's about the AM radio episode because we mentioned it was an important alert system still. And this happened to Hannah from Texas in 2016 when Hannah lived in Denham Springs, Louisiana. It was hit by a terrible flood that knocked out cell phone communications. So it was like Greenbank for a short time. Guys, we still had enough internet to receive information but couldn't send anything.

So we had gotten word that we could tune in to a specific A. radio station each evening between a certain time to hear families who were calling and asking if their loved ones were okay. My partner at the time and I would go out to my car, turn on the radio, and listen. And every evening we got updates on who was looking for who, who was on the way to help us or not, and who had been marked as safe. Sure enough, a couple of days in, we heard my mom calling in to try and confirm that her baby girl, me, was okay. We also got word that my dad, who was part of the Cajun Navy at the time, haven't even looked that up yet. But that's I absolutely need to find out what that is.

I guarantee it's interesting. Nice. They would be headed our way if they didn't get word within the next couple of days. We were able to, through a long chain of communication, though, to let my family know we were okay. And we heard our own names marked as Alive and Well, which was surreal on the AM radio. And a few days later, we were able to coordinate our evacuation using that same AM radio station. Wow. I know.

It's pretty great. I've been listening to you guys for years, and you never cease to delight me with your jokes, references, and general information. I recommend you to everyone I meet. Much appreciated, Hannah. And I frequently cite your episodes when sharing fun facts with coworkers and friends, Hannah from Texas. Man, Hannah, thank you. I'm glad you guys are okay over there. And that was an amazing email.

That was one of the tops, Hannah. Agreed. You can get a sash that says as much. If you want to be like Anna and send us a top email, we would love to get that. You can send it off to us at StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is an IHeart podcast.

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