Stuff You Should Know - How Anti-matter Spacecraft Will Work

Episode Date: October 25, 2011

There may be a Bizarro World in our universe. Every particle has a mirror image with a reverse electrical charge, and when these opposites meet an energy transfer 300 times stronger than nuclear fusion occurs. Could this reaction power spacecraft? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Bryant. Yeah, there he goes. The Flash. Here I am. That's your new nickname, Flash, okay? I just moved. I just went and got this beverage and came back. You didn't even see me.

It is amazing. I didn't. Chuck is now the Flash. Charles W. The Flash, Bryant. I'm the anti-Flash, actually. Well, that's funny that you bring that up, because that would make you, buddy, bizarro Flash. Yeah. Did you see this? Surely you saw this. Saw what? Bizarro something? Yeah. No. Man, that was good, Chuck. Really? Yeah. So you just teed me up for my intro, and then I squandered it by complimenting you. But let me pick up again. Proceed. Have you ever heard of a place called Hitre? No. H-T-R-A-E. No. Is that something spelled backwards? It is Earth spelled backwards. And Hitre first appears in the DC Comics canon in the 1960s. It is what we know and love as bizarro world.

Yeah. It is cube-shaped. Its inhabitants include bizarro Superman, bizarro Lois Lane, and their kids, right? And then over time, DC added, whenever they wanted to, more bizarro characters, like the yellow lantern, bizarro Flash, who is you, Wanderzaro, which is Wonder Woman, but bizarro. Is yellow on the opposite end of the spectrum is green? No. Here's, I'm going to get to the problem. Is the cube an opposite of brown? Stop. You're blowing my intro. Okay. Bazzaro is the world's worst detective, which is the opposite of Batman, who is the world's greatest detective. He's not a detective. He got to start in the detective comics. Okay. DC detective comics? Ten years. Okay.

At any rate, the bizarro world, which you also know from Seinfeld. Of course. And Buffy the Vampire Slayer apparently. That was a great Seinfeld concept. Yeah, it really was. It's based on the idea, the concept of anti-matter. Yes. Okay. So the idea that for every anything there is in this realm, in this state of matter that you and I occupy, there is somehow, somewhere out there, a mirror image of it. Yeah. The problem is with bizarro worlds, like you say, the mirror image of earth is not a cube. And although Batman would be the world's worst detective in bizarro world. There's some holes in it, but again, this is DC Comics. Sure. But the idea that it's based on is not

entirely out of the realm of possibility. In fact, the idea that there is anti-matter has been proven definitively by people way smarter than you or I. Yep. So let's talk about anti-matter before we talk about the basis of this podcast or what it's really about, I guess you could say, which is anti-matter spacecraft. I have to say, I'm excited about this one. This goes into our G-Wiz folder. Okay. All right, Josh. It should be a pretty quirky subject. Oh, God. How much do you want to hit me right now? No, it's not that. It's more just like pain. Okay. Matter, Josh, is was always typically defined as anything with mass that occupies volume. That's still true, but it's got sort

of a different definition now because of anti-matter. Yeah. Adams, just to break it down. I don't want to go subatomic yet, but let's go to atomic. All right. Everyone knows an atom has a central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The humanist sign held there, the electrons by a magnetic field. The nucleus is a mix of positively charged protons, neutral neutrons, and when these atoms get together and have a party, they form a molecule. Yes. Eventually you get enough molecules together, you're going to have stuff. And matter. You have our podcast. If that's right. Yeah. So that's matter, which kind of helps. Right. So anti-matter is the exact same thing, but the opposite, right? All it is is for every particle that you just

described, there is another particle that has the exact same mass, but it has the opposite electrical charge. Yeah. So for electrons, there are positrons, which are there electrons with a positive charge, which is a cool name. It is very cool. Protons get screwed. Yeah. Well, basically, yeah. Protons are what? Anti-protons. Yeah. It's kind of a positron. And just like with atoms with positively charged or regularly charged. How about this? We'll call it the straights, the normals. Okay. With the normals, you can build them into atoms and molecules and so on. Conceivably, you can build anti-atoms. That's right. Into anti-molecules, anti-whatever, anti-substances, anti-stuff, like you say. Yeah. So all of this was theoretical. There is a guy

named Paul A.M. Durak, smart dude, who he had the audacity to revise Einstein's theory of relativity equals mc squared. Durak said. That took some cojones. It did, because he did it in 1928. Yeah. Einstein's alive and well, and he's in full boxing shape. It's ready to go. Yeah. Let's bring it. And Durak revised the equation into e equals plus or minus mc squared, and then he stuck his tongue out at Einstein. And Einstein said, well, if you want to get picky, sure. Yeah. I thought that was assumed. He said, which of us wears flowing fur coats and dirac just hung his head in shame. We both just said the very poor Schwarzenegger almost, which Einstein kind of was. Yeah. He was the Schwarzenegger of math. So he had the cojones to revise that he was dead on

because they actually proved this since that time. Like four years later. That anti-particles do in fact exist. Yeah. Have you heard of Carl Anderson? Well, just from this article. But I mean, did you look into him at all? No. So we won a Nobel Prize for this. I didn't know that. But he found evidence of positrons, definitive evidence of positrons. Like a photograph, right? Yeah. There's like a famous photograph of it. But he used a cloud chamber. And a cloud chamber is a very sophisticated piece of equipment. This guy built his own. But a cloud chamber is basically just like a cylinder filled with gas that's saturated with water vapor. And then you shoot cosmic rays through it and see what happens. And while the cosmic rays leave a trail in the water

vapor, you can measure the density of the water vapor and determine what kind of particle just passed through. Cool. It wasn't enough for Anderson to create his own gas chamber, not gas chamber, cloud chamber. Yeah. Wow. He did that too. History has not rooted that one out yet. But we're going to think differently of them soon. He created his own cloud chamber and put an electromagnet around it so he could direct these cosmic particles in a circle. And he noticed that when he did that, when he shot a cosmic ray through, something that had the same mass as an electron was creating an arc going in the opposite direction. He said, holy cow, that's a positron. He said, what is that? He said, hello, million bucks from the Nobel committee.

Is that what he won? I think that's what you win. Back then? Yeah, probably not. But it was like 20 million bucks compared to today. Yeah, that's a good point. Anti-atoms were discovered by CERN, our buddies at CERN, that we've talked about like many, many times. I know. I forgot about them since they didn't end the world. Yeah, they created the first anti-atom by the tune of nine anti-hydrogen atoms. And at first, this was in 1998. I'm sorry, before 1998, they lasted 40 nanoseconds. But they were there. Yeah. And they had a record of it. Yes. But then they're like poof gone. Yeah, but still quite an achievement. Anti-protons were discovered in 1955 at the Berkeley Bevetron

atom smasher, particle accelerator. What CERN's doing is something that's been around for a while, which is basically you can, we figured out, not we, meaning you and me. We have no idea. But other people have figured out that you can, using magnets, vacuum tubes, and beams of light, you can shoot particles at one another and smash them together. They're called atom smashers. Exactly. That's another name for a particle accelerator. And when you smash them together, like they do at CERN, because they get the atoms going almost to the speed of light. Yeah. And then they smash them together. And when they do, all these particles are created, very exotic ones that, like you said, the anti-atoms lasted for 40 nanoseconds.

Well, back then. And what they think is that this is what the Big Bang looked a lot like, right? Yeah. So they can collect them now. Yeah. Which is step one. It is step one, toward building an anti-matter engine. Gotta have them. But the, I guess the question is, well, let's talk a little bit about anti-matter and what happens when anti-matter comes in contact with regular matter. It's pretty awesome. What happens is they collide and it becomes nothing but pure energy. It explodes, they both are annihilated, and it creates 100% efficient creating pure energy at the speed of light. It's the only reaction, as far as we know, that is 100% efficient, like you said. It's pretty awesome. Where the mass of both the matter and the anti-matter particles are transferred entirely

to this explosion. Yeah. You get some subatomic leftover, but it's nothing like, you know, car exhaust. Right. You know what I'm saying? It's not even like nuclear reactions, like nuclear fusion. Apparently only 3% of the mass of the atoms is transferred. 97% is lost is like heat and light. That is not efficient. No. Light is created by this, the particle or matter and anti-matter interaction. I don't think heat is. It's more like the radiation that's created is where you get all your energy. There may be heat though, actually, because I know that one of the first things you have to do is cool it down if they're storing it. Gotcha. Okay. It's just a guess. So the problem is that this doesn't just happen when you smash our atoms together. This

happens anytime an anti-matter particle comes in contact with this. It's normal particle. Yeah. They annihilate one another. So there's this thing, there's this aspect of the standard theory, which includes gravity. No, it doesn't include gravity. It's everything else but gravity. Okay. Electromagnetism, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force, and it doesn't include gravity, which is like that. That's the Holy Grail, right? Sure. So the standard theory says at the beginning of creation, the Big Bang, there were an equal part of particles and anti-particles. The problem is, is within about two seconds, since anti-particles and anti-matter and matter cancel each other out, right through these violent explosions, there should be nothing in

the universe except light left over from the first two seconds when all matter canceled itself out. Right. The fact that we're here proves that that can't be right. And that there's matter but not anti-matter. Right. So there's a couple of explanations for this and one is that there is simply, there was and maybe still is or isn't less anti-matter than matter. Yeah. Right. So the idea is that over time, there was way more matter than we have now, but that canceled out all the anti-matter and there is none anymore. We can produce it now, but it doesn't exist naturally. Right. The second explanation is that it does exist, right? Right. It's just kind of sequestered off elsewhere in the universe.

Yeah. And there's sort of an addendum to the first one that it's not necessarily that there was more matter than anti-matter, but there is a slight asymmetry between them. Right. And they've actually proven that. That was the NA-48 experiment that CERN did and the KTEV experiment at Firmalab and those are the two big daddies with this kind of research. Okay. Not the Berkeley Bevertron? I don't know about them anymore, but they directly measured this asymmetry and proved it. Like there is an asymmetry and that could have been just that little bit could have been enough that matter won out essentially. Right. And when you're talking about asymmetry, it's almost like a coin toss, right? Where when you toss, when you create a particle, say seven times out of 10,

it creates an electron and then the other three times it created a positron. Right. That's the asymmetry. Yeah. So there is evidence of that, but there's also evidence that there is a store of anti-matter toward the center of the cosmos. I couldn't find much about that. They think they discovered it in 1977, but I haven't seen a lot of follow-up. Okay. So let's say it is there, but have they done follow-up? I don't know. Okay. But I have seen recent reference to that idea. Also that your Star Wars came out. No coincidence. If there, if there, if there is a, I guess a deposit of anti-matter, then it is conceivable that there is an anti-world there. There's anti-stuff there. Wouldn't that mean there's no matter there though? Because it would be

colliding, right? No. There's matter. It's just the opposite of what we have. Oh, there's more anti-matter than matter. Yeah. Because think about it like they, at CERN, they created anti-atoms. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe there is no matter there. Sure. It's just anti-matter and everything there's us, but it's the opposite of us. Bizarro Josh and Chuck. Wow. So you mean two guys who are really talented at their jobs? Right. Exactly. Who have the adoration of people, not the scorn. Right. So, okay. For the time being, until we find out if there really is a store of anti-matter at the center of the cosmos and figure out how to go get it. And when they're open. We have, we have to create our own. Yeah. Which is what CERN is doing now. We can do it.

But CERN is doing, they're, they're just not up to snuff. They're, they're creating two to three pica grams a year. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course. Yes. They can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss y'all. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty.

Cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, it's Chuck Wicks from Love Country. Talk to Chuck where we bring you what's really happening in the country music family. We also, if you love country, here's the deal, if you love country music, you can be on the podcast. So if you're a fan country music, well, you can call in anytime you're like, Oh, I want to talk about this. Hall Cogan called in season one. He's like, Chuck Volkster. I love your podcast. I mean, Jason Aldean,

Jimmy Allen, Carly Pierce, Lauren Elena. So many huge stars have been on Love Country. Talk to Chuck. Season two is going to get even better. Going to have the same big giant huge stars, but I think it's time to bring some people in the studio right off the street. You love country music? Fine. Come talk to Chuck. That's how cool we are. I'm just saying it. I'm saying it out loud. Listen to new episodes of Love Country. Talk to Chuck every Monday and Thursday on the Nashville podcast network available on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Yeah, I've got a couple of realities for you here. Since the discovery of the anti proton in 1955, the total amount from Lear, CERN and Fermilab that they've created amounts to less

than one millionth of a gram. Okay. And at the current rate, and it's picking up the rate is, and that's what we're counting on here, but at the current rate, it would take a hundred, hundreds of millions of years and over $1,000 trillion to produce one gram of anti matter. Wow. So they got to pick up the pace. Yeah. Not only do they need to pick up the pace, if we are going to use anti matter as a propulsion device, the ultimate propulsion, because like we said, I mean, this thing is thousands of times more produces thousands of times more energy than oxygen or hydrogen combustion, which is what we use now to power rockets outer space interplanetary rockets like the Mars rover. Yeah, that was hydrogen oxygen

combustion. Right. This is thousands of times more potent, more powerful than those engines. If we're going to use that, we need to figure out how to make these engines more efficient. I got stats on that too, if you want. Let's hear. One kilogram of anti matter. A kilogram. Annihilating ordinary like colliding with ordinary matter can produce 10 billion times the amount of energy released with a kilogram of TNT. That's a lot. And a single gram of anti matter, the one that, you know, is going to take hundreds of millions of years to produce, would get you as much energy as the fuel tanks of two dozen space shuttles. A single gram. It is nuts. The problem is we're going to need tons of the stuff

to make it to another star, which you know we're going to want to do. We'll be like, oh yeah, Mars, who cares? About 10 grams, they think could get you to Mars in one month, whereas right now it takes about 11 months to get there with regular fuel. Right, exactly. So finally, we have at our fingertips the way to get from one place to another very quickly throughout the universe. Without having to take theoretical wormholes or use warp drive or anything that hasn't been proven, this is possible if we can figure out how to store it and how to harness it correctly. Yeah, create it, store it, use it. Use it, right? So there's three big components to an anti-matter. A matter anti-matter engine is what we should call it. The magnetic storage rings. Remember,

you can basically tell particles to do what you want and that's just travel around in a circle by using electromagnets. Sure. So you need to store the anti-matter that you create. Yeah. Until you're ready to use it. You need to be able to feed it efficiently. So basically, you need like a particle accelerator and then you need the magnetic rocket nozzle thruster, which takes that energy and uses it efficiently to propel the spacecraft forward or backward. I guess if you want to go backward really fast. Very true. There are some problems with it. Right? Well, yeah, notably the fact that they can't create very much of it right now, even though that's speeding up. They have, as of June of this year, I'm sorry, May of this year,

CERN has stored 309 anti-hydrogen atoms for 1000 seconds, about 16 and a half minutes, and which is huge. Yeah. And I think they said like four years ago, it was like nothing. So it's not growing exponentially, but they're really gaining steam with storing it. And pretty soon, they hope to be able to store these anti-hydrogen atoms long enough to see how it reacts to gravity, like do these things fall up or down? Which would be pretty amazing. Especially if they fall up. Robert Hume would be very pleased. But that's still only 309 anti-hydrogen atoms, which is nothing. No, but you said four years ago, this is theoretical 70 years ago,

four years ago we were just starting out. So I imagine we're going to have some sort of breakthrough. This is why we need a population boom. The more people there are, the more geniuses there are. They did think about they could storm in magnetic bottles, but because like charges repel, though, that's a problem. So you can't just say, let's load this thing full of positrons because they repel each other and it's going to start leaking or something. So they can't store a ton of it at a time. And did you hear the Steve Howell guy? No. He's not Steve Howell from Yes, or Asia. I think he was in Asia too. Wow, he was in Yes and Asia? That guy's like a prog rock god.

And GTR, I think too. Grand Theft. No, there's a terrible man called GTR. What does it stand for? GTR. It was like three incredible guitarists in one band and they had one album and some cheesy lead singer. Anyway, different Steve Howell, but he has an idea for a fission-based antimatter sail. So like a 15-foot diameter sail coated with uranium, and basically he said the key is to store anti-hydrogen in the form of a frozen pellet that will evaporate slowly and create this reaction that hits the sail to propel it forward. It's like a time release. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. Who knows if that's going to work?

Another big problem is that anti-protons release high-energy gamma rays, which can penetrate you and your entire family and dissolve your molecules back into atoms. Isn't that kind of the key, though, to the propulsion or no? Yeah, the radiation. The problem is, unless we figure out how to protect the astronauts, they're going to be exposed to it too. Well, and my question too, which I didn't see anywhere in any of my research, was can a human go that fast? That was my next question too. Remember Colonel John Paul Stapp from the Murphy's Law episode and other things? He survived up to 46 Gs. That was the peak, but he also suffered redouts and lifelong trauma. Apparently right now,

if you're on a rocket and you're being shot up into space on a hydrogen-oxygen combustion rocket, you experience four Gs, which is substantial, but it's certainly not life-threatening or anything like that. But if this produces 10 times the amount of thrust, that's 40 Gs. Oh, you're just throwing it out there. Yeah, because remember, you can get there 10 times faster. Maybe it produces 10 times more thrust. It's still 40 Gs that you have to endure the whole time. That's a month of 40 Gs of just under the most any humans ever survived. So why are they even wasting their time with this? Because they could send a robot or something? But the thing is, is can a space shuttle even withstand that? Like the textiles that we have? We have no idea.

That's another whole aspect of this that's going to need to be worked out. Maybe we need to be stored in some sort of liquid for a month. Who knows? That's why this one's in the G-Wiz folder. I love it though. I need to. Pretty cool. So I guess the point is, is you can look for antimatter spacecraft in the next couple years. Next billion years. That'll be cool. I can't wait to go see one of those launches. NASA will be over like that. Didn't they say that like possibly in the next few decades? Yeah. So they must be ramping it up here soon. Yeah. It's true. Good for them. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind

the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of a tax. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

Hey, it's Chuck Wicks from Love Country. Talk to Chuck where we bring you what's really happening in the country music family. We also if you love country, here's the deal. If you love country music, you can be on the podcast. So if you're a fan country music, well, you can call in anytime. Like, oh, I wouldn't talk about this. Hall Cogan called in season one. He's like, Chuck Larkster. I love your podcast. I mean, Jason Aldean, Jimmy Allen, Carly Pierce, Lauren Elena, so many huge stars have been on Love Country. Talk to Chuck season two is going to get even better. Going to have the same big giant huge stars, but I think it's time bring some people in the studio right off the street. You love country music? Fine. Come talk

to Chuck. That's how cool we are. I'm just saying it. I'm saying it out loud. Listen to new episodes of Love Country. Talk to Chuck every Monday and Thursday on the Nashville podcast network available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to know more about the promise of space flight, the dream of man and bird alike, you can type in anti-matter spacecraft. Pretty cool stuff in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. That's right. And Star Trek fans, we know. We know. We know. I think I said search bar at howstuffworks.com, right? You did. Well, that brings up then Listener Mail. Josh, you're going to be pretty excited because we get periodic updates from our amazing

fan, Sarah, the 11-year-old who is now 14. Yes. We've watched her grow up before her very eyes. She's awesome. She acts now, I believe, and plays at school. Yeah. She's become a very cool person, in my opinion. All right. This is from Sarah, the amazing 14-year-old fan. Dear guys. Oh, God. Really? Another letter from Sarah? Well, that's not you. No. Boring. I did not expect this. John Hodgman. How are you, buddy? Hi, guys. This is me, John Hodgman. I'm surprised you didn't see me sitting here the entire podcast. Well, it was weird. You literally materialized in front of our eyes. Yeah. Well, I was wearing my cloaking mechanism. Well done. Wow. Yeah. You've been here the whole time? Yeah. Yeah. What did you think? It was good. It was good. I was satisfied. Fair to midland.

Long. It was a long. And getting longer. Yeah. We don't know when to stop talking these days, John. Well, you know, it was an extremely interesting topic, but I feel like you guys went off into some weird pop cultural rat holes and stopped talking about the topic for a while, and then you came back to it in a mostly satisfactory way. So I would say, you know, right down the middle for you guys. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. No, I just, it's just this letter column thing. No. Yeah. Just the last few letters, you know, I just realized that I don't have a lot of me in them. Okay. Sure. You know what I mean? They're like from other people. Yeah. And that's not really what I want in a podcast. Sure. And, you know, so I just took the chopper down and I landed on the

roof here at how stuff works tower. Great. And I thought I would just come by and see you guys. And well, all right, look, I just finished this new book. Oh, okay. Here we go. Okay. Yeah. You know, there we go. You don't get the chopper out for just anything these days. Well, almost anything. Okay. But it was the easiest way to get to Atlanta from Sri Lanka where I was at my compound. But I have, you know, I'm a deranged millionaire now. Yeah, we've heard that. And I've written a new book. This is the last book in my compendium of complete world knowledge, and it's called That is All. Yeah. But is it like the last book or like the last crusade kind of confusing last book? Oh, I see what you're saying. No, this is the last one because not only is it

called That is All, and I don't have anything else to write about. But also, as you know, in about 13 months or so, the world is going to end. Sure. Or at least the Mayan Long Count calendar ends, and probably will, I mean, look, we don't really know what's going to happen. I mean, you know, I'm not saying that the world is going to end in fire and flame and famine and flood and all the other Fs, leaving only John Cusack alive. Yeah. That's the ancient Mayans were saying that, blame those guys. That's not me. Right. But you know, I am keeping John Cusack prisoner in my home just in case because it just seems like something's going to happen. I feel a lot better knowing that. Yeah, those Mayans will say anything. Because you just stick close to John Cusack. I think you're

going to be okay. That's the lesson that I took from reading the the purple, the ancient Mayan text. Okay, good. Well, I mean, you're here. Yeah. Well, see, that's a thing because I because I'm, I'm, you know, I used to be in all these ads and on television all the time and the ads are over now because we sold all the computers, I think. Right. Are they are they done? Yeah, I think I'm, I mean, why else wouldn't we be doing the ad? They must have sold them all. Okay. So good work for us. But that sort of left me just this idle deranged millionaire. Right. And so I wrote the book and I arranged for a major publishing house to publish it. And I can just afford to take myself on book tour wherever I want. And today I'm I decided to come here.

So you have a chopper now, if I may call it that you can, you can call it a chopper. It's more like a helicarrier. Okay. Yeah. What happened? Your zeppelin, it's cracked. You're talking about you're talking about my my speed zeppelin hubris. Yeah. That's the the the H the HZ hubris. Right. Hodgman zeppelin hubris that I bought off of emo Phillips a few years ago. Yeah. Not only did that crash, it crashed and burned. Was it something ironically, ironically, given the name? Yeah. Was it something that that had to do with emo Phillips uptake maintenance caretaking of this zeppelin? No, no, no, it was perfect. So you eliminate it was in perfect condition when I got it. Okay. Do you know what I mean? But I just like, you know, when I when I'm having a zeppelin

party, it's not a zeppelin party unless you have a fire breather. Someone should have warned me, that zeppelins have this problem with fire. Right. Like, if this were a known problem, this were a known issue, as they say in the software developing game, I wish I'd gotten that memo. Do you know what I mean? It's not a bug. It's or at least in the in the zeppelin, the radiogram that I should have gotten about that. We should probably tell everybody this is not a video cast. So, you know, we have to often describe things that are going on. John looks great. Yeah, sure. And he's holding in his hand a hardcover volume of his third book, the third in the trilogy, that is all. And it's handsome. And John, we do want to mention

an all earnest here that the book is coming out November 1st. That is so it is called that is all. Yes, it is. By John Hodgeman. Correct. Available. Where would you like people to buy their local bookstore? Well, they should buy wherever they would like to buy. They should support their local bookstore, of course, if they like, but it is available for preorder now at this moment, even though it is not November 1st. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound, Powell's, great. All your major book selling websites. Be smart. Buy this book, because if you get the first two, you got to have the third. You're not going to know how everything ends. I want to say be smart. I think it's more like stop being a dumb dumb. Okay, fair enough.

And buy my book. Fair enough. And if you would like to know what it sounds like, it sounds like this. I'm just going to, I think your audience will enjoy this. I'll just read the entirety of the book. Good evening. I write to you now from my secret retreat in the Internetless Hills of rural Massachusetts, or else I am in my custom built survival brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn, or else I'm on the high seas cruising on the luxury passenger ship Hodge Manic. I'm sorry. I can't tell you where I am for reasons of safety. My location must be kept secret, even from myself. But it is good to write to you again. So much has changed in my life since I wrote my first book, John, the areas of my expertise. If I'm sorry, I love your book. Yeah,

I've read your book. Oh, and you don't mind hearing it. Well, I would want to hear it again, but I don't know if we have the time to read it in its entirety. Well, I don't. Well, wait, wait, wait, this is a podcast, right? Pretty, pretty good. Yeah, what are you saying? There's no rules. Yeah, look, I, I know it's like, you know, it's not like you got another podcast coming on after this one. We want to sell some of these though. You don't want to spoil it all right. Oh, but everyone's bugging me for the audio book. And so I just figured this would be the easiest way. Really? Okay, podcast. So don't give it away. Interesting. All right. How would I mean, I'm, we're delighted to have you here, John. I'm delighted to be drawing pictures. Yeah, read some words.

I could talk, I could talk all day long, but we've beefed up security here recently. I noticed. And you just appeared. They waived me through. Now, I don't understand how that happens. I, I got a ticket. Did you a ticket to your podcast live podcast tape? We don't have tickets. Oh, yes, you do. You do. I got it through my credit card. Yeah, my credit card, all kinds of perks. Like I'm not a sporting fellow, but you know, if I wanted to go see a sports, a sports thing, exhibition, like a sports contest, right? Do you know what I mean? We're guys throw things. I just call up my independent concierge at my credit card, and they get me a ticket. And you know where my ticket is? Where's that? Well, let's say I go to

New York Jets game. Okay. All right. You know where my ticket is? Where? Nick Mangold's shoulders. Oh, wow. Wow. He's a player on that team. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. He's in your book a lot too. I get to watch it to the Ragnarok. He is, he is the, well, I don't, maybe, look, can I stick around until next time? Absolutely. All right. Maybe we can talk about the, the coming nerd jock convergence then. Okay. But right now I look, I don't know if you guys mind a little plugging, but I'm doing some, you know me, I love advertising. Yeah. But I'm doing some work with, with this company, this credit card company, and it's really amazing. Chuck, do you remember what page it's on? Are you talking about the diners club? It's not just a diners

club card. You understand. It's a special, it's the diners club P O F H nine times diamond card. Because you had the MX black and you said, forget that. You had the literally platinum card. Yeah. Would you put your gum on? Right. Because it's platinum. Sure. Because you could put the gum on it, get it off very easily. Because it's, because of the nature of platinum. But now you have been upgraded to the nine times diamond diners club card. It's not, it's not even a card. It's not even, doesn't even take the shape of the card. I know what it is, but I'd like you to explain it. It takes the shape, it's a, it's a feather. It's a, you actually get this beautiful feather in the mail and you carry it around with you. Here, I have mine here. It's spun from

gold. Is that right? Yeah. That is nice. Yeah. It's nice, right? Yeah. And then when you want to make a purchase, like you don't have to like hand over your card and have the guy put it in the thing. Do you know what I mean? I mean, here's the thing. You go into a store now and you want to, you want to buy something that's very expensive and you want to treat the person like they're human garbage. You used to be able to just toss in their card and then look away like you don't care. Now you have to swipe your own card. Like I can't live like that. No. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So that's why I have this nine times diamond P O F H card that isn't a card. It's a feather. This is beautiful golden feather and I just carry it around with me and the purchases

are like automatic. So if I want to buy something with it, I don't have to give them a card or anything. I just take the feather out and I just lightly touch their cheeks with it two times and then it belongs to me. And you point out that some, some men have even met their wives this way, correct? Yeah, exactly. So because the thing about it is the thing about having the feather is not only is it beautiful and thus reflecting you as a deranged millionaire's love of beautiful things in the world, but it allows you to treat other people in the most humiliating way possible, which is really all a deranged millionaire really wants. You know what I mean? So it has these amazing perks. I told you about the, I told you about the, the, the watching

a Jets game from the shoulders of the mangled. Right. The ticket to anything. The ticket to anything. Obviously you have a lot of travel services because deranged millionaires like me like to travel around quite a bit. So if you go to the airport, you have access to special lounges. Well, like what? Well, not like the admiral's club, right? Or, or, you know, but like a really special lounge. Like all you have to do is like you wouldn't even know that it was even there. So I'm not even familiar with the admiral's club. Oh, really? Yeah. That's where the admiral's go before flying the planes. And they, and they drink crock and they sing sea shanty. And then they fly. Really? Okay. This is a, this is a super secret, like super exclusive lounge.

And it's, you just go up to, you have to find a Chili's to go. Yeah. Chili's Express. The Chili's Express or whatever it is. Well, which one? Those are two very, very, very different. The important thing is don't go to the seating area. Go to the, the big refrigerator bank where they have all of the different tacos and quesadillas. Like the pre-made ones. The pre-made stuff. Right. And then you just, you just gently brush your feather across a particular quesadilla. I can't tell you which. And then that slides back and is a secret door into the special lounge. Huh. Did you know that? I did. And they have leather chairs, a full honor bar, a Japanese soaking tub, and all of the Chili's Express food you can eat. Oh, wow. Yeah. But this time it tastes like actual

food. Oh, wow. It's really good. It is a special club. Yeah. What else does this card get you, John? I can't, I could go on and on. There are just so many perks. If you are a fan of the theater. Who is it? Yeah. And you don't like, you have a hard time getting tickets to the Broadway theater, right? Right. Well, let's say you get tickets and the show is terrible. Like now you're not going to go back. Right. But what if you could call your concierge and have them call Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Lindsay a bear and make him write a new play to your specifications, maybe even starring a character based on you. Wow. Right. And all of a sudden that's in the Broadway theater. Wow. And not only do you get the best seats in the house to that particular show,

you get to watch as the ushers kick out the people who were sitting in your seats before you. Wow. Yeah, that's gratifying. And are we talking about a good theater? Oh, the best. Huh. Oh, the best. Only theaters that are named for corporations. So we're talking about the good ones. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. American Airlines Theater, Foxwood's Theater, Chili's Express Theater. Right. Yeah. That's, uh, that's where there's a round. Yeah, it's in the round. That's where Book of Mormon is moving to. So okay, good. And, uh, and what if you don't have someone to go with you? Well, you just call a concierge and they'll set up someone to go with you. Uh, could be Lawrence O'Donnell from MSNBC is the last word. Uh, could be James Spader.

He's, he's huge right now. Could be Lonnie Anderson or any one of a number of stable of celebrity pals that will go with you to see the show based on your life that David Lindsay Abair had to write for you. So do these people sign up to be a pal or are they kind of corraled into this by the credit card company? Usually there's usually there's this, like they've done something in their past that they would rather not know or they've racked up terrible debts or, or, you know, maybe they're just trying to plug the last word with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC. Former deranged millionaires, some. Yeah, there might be people, but that won't ever happen to me. No, of course not. No, that'll never happen to me. What are you saying? I'm not concerned about

that. Here's the best thing and I'll leave it with this. After five years of membership and good standing, premium feather holders will be visited in their bedroom by an old man. Yeah, they'll wake up and they'll be a dude. They'll have long white hair. Yeah. I'll be wearing like a white suit and a white tie and he won't be wearing any shoes because he has bird feet. And he'll invite you to go with him and he'll give you, he'll tell you to become naked and they'll give you a robe to wear. But the robe is like a little too short. And then you go on a limousine and you go to a high rise, like a skyscraper in New York City

that you never noticed before. Like, was that always there? Yeah, it was always there. You were just not allowed. You were not allowed to see it. It's actually a ziggurat in the middle of Manhattan. You were not allowed to see, but now you can. And then you will go in and you will go in and you'll see all the other five-year golden feather holders there. They're all wearing golden robes. You probably know them from the Chili's Express lounge or whatever. And then the old man will encourage you to bathe in special waters and be anointed with special oils. And then you'll be told that you are among the very, very few to ever see the ziggurat and be given the ever, the very rare opportunity to

apply for the Diners Club premium Excelsior TOF D card, which costs $2 million a year to join. Wow. And it's in the, it's not in the form of a feather. It's in the form of a talking milk snake. But only you, that you carry around on your fingers and on your forearm all the time. You ever see how like an old Marx Brothers movies or whatever, how like the really rich people are walking around in their hands. They sort of like out in the air as though they're holding a cocktail, but there's nothing there. Right. Yeah. They're holding an invisible milk snake. Wow. They can talk to, they can talk to, can talk to them, but they're the only ones who can see it. Wow. And the other card holders as well. So just another four years for me and I won't,

I won't have to ever see you again. Do you, I was going to say, do you think you'll still drop by? Yeah, I'll drop by, but I'll keep my cloaking mechanism on so I don't have to interact. You know, I'll drop by for the next three weeks, maybe even. Yeah. No, I'd like to come back and talk to you more about what's, you know, well, yeah, are you going to, are you leaving and coming back? Are you going to, can we have your word that if you do leave, you'll actually have left. You won't be hanging around with invisibility. No, no, I had, I had, I had them set up an office here at how stuff works as a, as a safe, as a safe room for me. And I'll just go over there and, uh,

you're going to stay here. I'll just hang out. Yeah. And then I'll come when you guys are doing it again. I'd love to come back and prevent you from reading more reader mail. Perfect. What is it? Is it Tuesday? Listener. More listener mail. We'll be back in here Thursday because we record and then publish immediately. Okay. Great. All right. We'll send you an outlook invite then. That'll be terrific. Yeah. Okay. Good. All right. Let's do this at least one more time, maybe. So that's it. We'll do it one more time. Yeah. Okay. That's it for this show. All right. Well, um, our apologies to Sarah, the amazing 14 year old fan. Yeah, we'll get to that. Um, if you are an amazing fan or how about this? If you have a question for Hodgeman, we want to know

it. It sounds great. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can also tweet directly at Hodgeman, but don't, um, you can visit us on Facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know, or you can send us a good old fashioned email at stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast stuff from the future. Join house to work staff as we explore them as promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you the war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff stuff that'll piss you off the cops. Are they just like looting? They just like pillaging. They

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