Stuff You Should Know - How SETI Works

Episode Date: March 1, 2012

SETI stands for 'search for extraterrestrial intelligence,' and the term is used to describe both the SETI institute and the search for alien life in general. In this spaced-out episode, Josh and Chuck explore the origin, aims and challenges facing SETI. 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 with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant and this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. Don't get it confused. What is that? What was that? That was my impersonation of that was E.T. Burgess Meredith.

Okay. Thank you. That's pretty good. Thanks. This is a good Burgess Meredith, Chuck. Yeah. You in the mood for alien talk? Sure. This is the second time we've done something like this. Almost a year later. Yeah, right at it. We did how UFOs work live in Austin. Yeah, last March, so yeah. I guess once a year we do alien talk aliens. Yeah. But hey, before we get started, may I take a second? Yeah. I want to just say special hi to my wife, Yumi. Right. Who made me the happiest guy in the world. You should just call her, dude. On February 13th. Yeah, I could just call her. On February 13th when we got married. Indeed. Yeah. Any deets or are you just going to? No, that's all. All right. I wanted to share my happiness with everybody

out there. It's very well done. Thank you very much. Hey, Yumi. So let's get back to aliens, okay? Yes. Okay. So we are doing this in honor of Are We Alone Month on Science Channel, right? Yes. So the month of March is Are We Alone Month and Science Channel every Tuesday, I believe at 10 is having a premiere of some new show that has something to do with the search for extraterrestrial life. Yeah. Cool stuff. Yeah. It's going to be very cool. And I mean, there's some like all shows are going to be awesome. Sure. But there's some that are clearly going to be really awesome, like through the wormhole with Morgan Freeman. With Morgan Freeman. I mean that in the context of an Are We Alone Month. Yeah. That's big news. Also, the alien encounters with Nick Sagan.

Got to be related to Carl. Carl Pilkington, yes. And then if you're in the mood for a contest, what would a month be without one? There is a SETI live contest where the prize is to go visit SETI. No way. Go to the California to the Institute. Yes. Wow. Pretty sweet. Yes. So this is all going on on Science Channel all month long. And if you want more details, watch Science Channel, pal. Yeah. We're hitting them up on Facebook. I bet they have info there. Yeah. And in honor of this month, this very special month, we are doing How SETI Works, which is an acronym, SETI, if you don't know, to search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Yes. And I joked before we did this that Are We Alone Month will be followed by Yes, We're Alone Day. Sort of a joke, but

they haven't really found a lot of stuff yet. Well, I don't know. Let me give you an example of something. The wow. Have you heard of the wow signal? Yeah, we talked about this before. We did. When? I think it might have been one of the webcasts. Okay. It definitely rang a bell that had your stank on it. No, we talked about the Yosemite Sam signal. Oh, I know. But I think we talked about wow a couple of years ago. Okay. Well, old webcasts. Let me tell you again, let me refresh your memory because you clearly don't remember. Clearly. August 15, 1977, a guy who's now known as Dr. Jerry Eamon, E-H-M-A-M. I keep wanting to call him Herman. Yeah. He was manning the big year radio telescope at Ohio State University and was analyzing some data from it

and basically saw this is what it looks like. It's a bunch of numbers and letters. It looks like the matrix scroll. Very much so. Captured. Yes. But what that is is a burst of radio activity transmitted on the 1420.456 megahertz frequency for 72 seconds. W-A-L-N. And it was basically the closest thing we've ever gotten to hard evidence of a radio transmission from an alien civilization. Right. It met all of the criteria that SETI follows, which we'll talk about later, for radio transmissions from intelligent life. Right? Yeah. The problem is, is after searching for it for like 50 times specifically, it's never been found again. Right. And the reason it's called the wow transmission is because Jerry Eamon circled

it and wrote wow with an exclamation point. Right. And that's why it's called that. So although it since that time nothing else has come up in that same area and we haven't had anything even remotely close to it, SETI still continues. Right? Yeah. And SETI is both a movement and a group of people. It's an institute. Yeah. Well, there's the SETI Institute and there's just independent SETI operations. Yeah. I mean, you can use SETI as a, would that be a noun? Because it is a search. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Just a funky noun. Right. But let's talk about it, Chuck. Let's talk about SETI, the challenges it has. Well, first of all, have you seen the movie Contact? I have. Apparently, it's not too inaccurate from the writer of this article who was

Freud and Lakewood. He said that that movie, if you want to watch that one, is fairly accurate and on track. Well, it was based on a book written by Carl Sagan and he definitely knew his stuff. Yeah. In fact, the Sagan Institute is one of the parts of SETI Institute. Very nice. Yeah. Or the Sagan Research Center, I think. Gotcha. So go ahead and do your thing. Oh, well, so let's talk a little bit about the origin of it. SETI came about in a time when there was a large intellectual push toward searching for alien life. A lot of very, very smart people suddenly started postulating that there's probably other people out there. Yeah. There's gotta be. Two guys, Philip Morrison and Giuseppe Ciccione wrote a paper in Nature in 1959

and they basically said, look, if we look, we may very well not find anything. Right. But if we don't look, we're definitely not going to find anything. That's a good point. And that came at a time when a guy named Frank Drake, an astrophysicist and astronomer, was trying to start his own search and he eventually founded SETI, I think in 1960. Founded the SETI Institute or just SETI? SETI. Well, he conducted the first SETI search. Okay. The Drake did. Yeah, Frank Drake did. Gotcha. And it was based on something called the Drake equation, which I find just utterly fascinating and refreshingly understandable as far as theoretical math equations go. Yeah. N is the number of civilizations in the Milky Way whose electromagnetic emissions are

detectable. So n equals r times fp times ne times fl times fi times fc times l. And then there's the r is the rate of formation of stars over the lifetime of the galaxy. And that's anywhere from like 10 to 40 a year. Yeah. Stars suitable for development of intelligent life. Right. That narrows it down. Then there's the fraction of the stars with planets. Fp. Then there's the average number of those planets that are Earth type, meaning suitable for life as we understand it. Yeah, that's the NE. That's about 50% of the 50% of stars with planets. But we're starting to whittle down pretty quickly. And then there's the fraction of those planets where life develops. That's estimated at as much as 100%. Yeah. And then

there's the fraction of life that develops intelligence. So it's not just enough to be an amoeba. You have to be an amoeba capable of creating a radio. Right. That's pretty low as well. About 10%. And then another 10% is the fraction of planets where intelligent life develops technology such as radio. Yeah. Okay. So you've got life. And then l. Intelligent life. And then technology. Yeah. And then you have the lifetime of that communicative civilization in years. So boom. Multiply that on out. You got your Drake equation. And you have as little as one as much as billions. Well, plus it's, it's as little as one or billions because it, you know, those are, it depends on what value you put in there and everyone's going to put in

different values. So the Drake equation is going to have a wide swath. Yes. Makes sense. Yeah. So you've got this, this is the framework, the Frank, the Drake equation created by Frank Drake for the founder of SETI. This is the framework that SETI conducts its research with. Like one of the things they do is try to figure out exactly how many stars out there have planets with that are suitable for life. To really kind of plug in the best possible data into the Drake equation and to help them figure out where to look because there's three main challenges for SETI that they face just as a concept and an organization. Yeah. And they are, you have a really big sky out there. Right. Yeah. You have a lot of frequencies that could, that you have a lot of radio frequencies.

And you have a limited amount of telescopes. Not much equipment. No. Because it's very expensive. Exactly. And while SETI is funded to a large degree, it's not funded to a large degree compared to like, like when it was part of NASA, I think it was only like 1% of their budget. Even still, that was like the most money SETI's ever had. Yeah. But they're pretty well funded. The SETI Institute is so as far as private funding goes, they're doing okay. Yeah. I mean, they're nonprofit, obviously, so they're not getting rich. You know what I mean? No, they're kind of hurting right now. Oh, are they? I thought they were doing all right. No. They also received federal funds, and that's all but dried up right now because of the economic downturn. Yeah. SETI's the first

to go in it. Yeah. All right. So you proposed the three problems. Here are a couple of approaches for the large sky problem. A lot of area out there. So they have two approaches there. The wide field search, basically casting a wide non-specific net over, you know, a low resolution over a long period, I'm sorry, a short period of time over a wide area could get you some nibbles if you were fishing, let's say, but it's going to be difficult to find out exactly like where this stuff is coming from. Right. Or a targeted search, which is what my money would be on, which are limited to sun-like stars. Like they basically factor in more of Drake's equation in this one. Say, let's look at places where we might find, you know, target these things,

where we might find ETs. Right. And they do both of those depending. They have various projects going on, ongoing. And some are targeted, some are wide field search. Yeah. So they're kind of covering their bases as much as possible. The next challenge was, you know, what frequency to listen for, to listen to, you know, like it's not a radio dial. No. But even with a radio dial, even with like a walkie-talkie, like if you've ever used one of those. So if you're not on the right frequency, you are going to miss everything that's being told to you. So there's like you said, it's not a radio dial. It doesn't go from like 88.5 all the way to 107.5. They're billions from alternative to country. Exactly. There are billions of radio frequencies. And they,

I mean, which one are you going to listen to? You can listen to them all. But again, you're cycling through them. You're not able to spend a lot of time. It's much like the same dilemma with the sky you have with the radio frequencies. Plus they're full of noise. Yep. That's another problem. Big problem. Natural occurring stuff. Right. But there is a window in the radio frequency that's called the water hole, which is pretty cool. Yeah. It's a natural place in the radio frequency spectrum. And by the way, radio is they're light waves. Yeah. It's a type of light wave, but they're very specific. They exist on a specific frequency. But in this the spectrum, the band, there's this thing called the water hole, which goes from the 1 to 10 giga

Hertz range. Yes. And it has very little natural background noise, like very few things broadcast in this frequency. And the reason being, these frequencies are caused by hydrogen atoms and hydroxyl ions, both of which are constituent of water, which is why it's called the water hole. And they suspect that for a couple of reasons, alien civilizations would be aware of this. One, that it's just so profoundly unique in the radio spectrum that if you had any kind of awareness of the radio spectrum, you would stumble upon this. Yeah. And that you would intentionally broadcast in a low noise frequency. Exactly. Because you want to be heard. Sure. Yeah. I mean, anybody who broadcasts on the radio wants to be heard, right? Sure. And then the other

reason they think that alien civilizations would know about it is because water, with which it's associated, is considered an essential to life and therefore universal among intelligent life. It's not geocentric. The concept of water is. Right. So aliens would be familiar with water and would thus be familiar with the water hole in the frequency spectrum as well. So this is probably where they're putting most of their research or their effort into this water hole band of frequencies. Yeah. I mean, they search all over, but pretty much all SETI operations will search the water hole as part of their problem, part of their ops. Then there's magical frequencies too. Like basically they're saying like, where on this band of billions of frequencies is there's

some sort of universal pattern. And one of the things that they figured out is prime numbers might be a good place to look because prime numbers are part of math and their universal constant. Right. So an advanced civilization might be aware of prime numbers. And if they're trying to communicate to another advanced civilization, they may be broadcasting on prime number channels. Crazy. That's a magical frequency. 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 a 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. 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 as if. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Do you crave a good mystery? Tune in to the great detectives of old time radio podcasts

featuring episodes of different detective dramas from the golden age of radio every day Monday through Saturday. The lineup of radio detectives currently include Sam Spade, Dr. Tim Detective, dangerous assignment, follow Vance, yours truly Johnny dollar and tales of the Texas Rangers. I'm your host Adam Graham and I offer commentary and humor after each episode and also respond to your questions and feedback. Enjoy a good mystery before bed while driving or whenever you crave old school radio goodness. Listen to the great detectives of old time radio on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. I wonder if they've searched pie the pie station. So so far we've got two.

We've got two of the big problems tackled. Yes, generally. Their third one is the most down to earth problem. Yeah, no, no equipment. Basically, these radio telescopes are expensive to build. And so there's not a whole lot of them. So they said, you know, there's a few ways we can handle this. We can conduct limited runs on ones that are already out there, basically rent space from other dudes. We can conduct analysis of data already acquired by other dudes. So like, hey, you've been listening in on all these frequencies. Let us see your data and we'll just work from that. Or we can build SETI dedicated radio telescopes, which is clearly the least popular because it's so expensive. Right. It's the most popular, but least feasible.

Yeah. And like the like the the projects that they have ongoing for a wide target search, or wide field search or targeted search, they have different projects dedicated, different types of radio use like Project Phoenix rents time at some of the better radio telescopes around the world. Australia. Arecibo. And Puerto Rico. The one in West Virginia, Green Bank, West Virginia has a huge radio telescope. And that's where the first SETI conference was held. Oh, really? 1960, I believe. Yeah. And then there's the Serendip project, which piggybacks. Cracks me up for some reason. Why? Serendip. I don't know. Just because it's short for Serendipity. It sounds like your friend Adam that shortens everything.

Oh, yeah. Like he would say, yeah, we met up. It was a bit of Serendip. Yeah. He would say that Tote Serendip. Tote Serendip. Yeah. So they piggyback by basically saying like, hey, like you said, let me see your dad. I want you done with it. We want to go over it too. Yeah. And like, hey, man, that's like the hippie Rob version of astronomy. Boy, he had made an appearance in a while. He just did. I didn't expect him to pop up in SETI if he didn't pop up in magic mushrooms. Yeah. Yeah. So Project Serendip, like you said, it takes advantage of a lot of telescope time, but they don't have the control to say, hey, point it over there. Right. So they have a lot of hours, but they're just basically that's the wide search being cast. And then you said like

the most desirable one was having their own telescope. Well, yeah, that'd be great. SETI figured out something rather than making a huge, you're paying for a huge radio telescope. They figured out that they can take a bunch of backyard satellite dishes, which I'm sure are really easy to come by these days. Yeah. You know, the kind like from the 80s. Oh, yeah. Put a bunch of those together. They're like eight feet wide. Right. Yeah. You put a bunch of those together and connect their signals using a process called interferometry. Nice. Thank you. Dude. Well done. First try. And you can basically simulate a huge, large telescope for a fraction of the cost. Yeah. It's like linking a network of computers, which is actually something also

being done. We might as well get into that. Yeah. The SETI at symbol at home project. And that's actually the SETI Institute, isn't it? Yeah. So they decided that, hey, instead of building a couple of supercomputers to analyze this data, because that's one of the big problems, there's so much data. It's not like you can just plug it into your laptop. Right. But you can plug a tiny chunk into a laptop and network a bunch of laptops together to do the power of these supercomputers. And that is what they've done. And you can participate. Yeah. It's pretty ingenious. And there's other things that I think SETI at home started it. Now there's things like folding at home, which you simulate protein folding for cancer research. Same thing.

Huh. And I'm sure there's other ones that I didn't get a chance to look. But SETI at home started it where you, it's a screensaver, but it's also a program. And while it's running, it downloads a chunk of data from the AirSibo radio telescope. Yeah. And that's like your little assignment. And it's like a hundred second chunk, maybe something like that. It doesn't seem like much, but it takes like 10 to 20 hours for the normal computer to process it. But like you said, if you have thousands of computers doing this, you have a thousand times the processing power all of a sudden for free. Pretty cool. And while your computer's analyzing it, it's making notes of all this stuff using SETI's algorithms. Yeah. And then it uploads the results to SETI and then downloads

another chunk for analysis. And dude, I bet this is a very popular thing to do for stargazers. Oh yeah. For stargazing nerds of the world. There was a guy I remember who was in Arizona, I think, and he was fired from his job as like the IT head for the Department of Education in this one community because he booted SETI at home onto all the computers without asking. But I mean, it's not a big deal. It doesn't take that much processing power and it just kind of runs in the background. Yeah, who cares? Well, he was made a mockery of by the local news, like that he was fired because of his search for aliens. And right, they made him out of some crackpot. Yeah, it was pretty bad. But yeah, some poor guy got fired for that.

SETI at home got him fired. I bet he got a job with SETI or something though. I don't bet that. You don't think so? They just said, sorry. Thanks anyway. Pretty much. Well, you talked about building your own in the alien telescope array. I'm sorry. The Allen telescope array. Yeah, I kept taking it like that until I found out it's named after Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, who donated all of the money for it. Well, that is still underway as far as its construction. I think they were down for a little while because of a lack of funding and it's a $26 million deal. But I think as of 2011, they were up and running again. And part of it is complete to the extent,

I think, where they can use it for things. Right. But they're still not finished with it. No, they're not. They have enough money to construct it, but they didn't have enough money to run it. So they have like a skeleton crew on it right now. Gotcha. But it is operational, I think. It is. They're hoping that they're going to be able to fund it by releasing some time on it to the Air Force who is interested in using it. They should try bake sale. I know. You know, it'll be a great day when schools have all the funding they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a stealth bomber. That'll be the day. Somebody should put that on like a bumper sticker or something. We could shorten it, but yeah, agreed. Should we mention the Fermi

Paradox? Yes, as good a time as any. I mean, one of the things that happens to SETI is that they're constantly pummeled by critics and a lot of them cite the Fermi Paradox too. Well, here's what SETI Institute says because I dug into their FAQ a little bit on one of the questions is why do we think that there might be life out there quote and SETI said you should keep in mind that we are one planet around a very ordinary star and there are roughly 400 billion other stars and nearly 100 billion other galaxies and they think it would be extraordinary if we were the only thinking beings in all these enormous realms. Fermi and Rico Fermi said that if it takes life billions of years to develop intelligence and signal or travel to the stars

and there are billions of the worlds in the universe and the universe is 13 billion years old plus then why haven't we been visited yet? Yeah, when you look at it like that the odds are makes sense. They just increase exponentially. It's kind of like a perverted version of the Drake equation used to disprove the existence of life. The anti-Drake? Yeah, there's the anti-Drake. So what happens if we get a signal? What happens if they're sitting around one day and they hear phone home come over the radio waves? Well, they have a strict set of protocols that start with the first person who finds it to who gets told first what agencies learn of it. It's pretty cool. Apparently, contact follows the course of it pretty accurately. Yeah,

but so it signals detected, right? The first thing they do is they move the radio telescope away from the signal and then they move it back. I bet that's nerve-wracking. I'll bet too. Because you probably just want to stay locked on it, you know? Right, you're going to lose your signal. But you can't do that because you've got to prove that it's genuinely coming from there. Right. So if you move it and then move it back and the signal wanes and then comes back, you know that you have an extraterrestrial signal. Right. That's a big one. The next step then is to figure out whether you're getting it from like a satellite or from elsewhere on earth. Right. After that, you're starting to shake, your palms are sweaty, and you start to rule out extraterrestrial sources

like pulsars, quasars, other things that broadcast radio frequencies. By this time, you may have tinkled a little bit in your pants and you are on the phone with another radio telescope, hopefully one on another continent saying, hey, can you go check these coordinates and see you're getting this frequency? Point your little machine that way. What do you see or hear? And if they come back and say, yep, you say, well, it's time to announce it to the world. Now I got to get out my book, the SETI Institute, the Declaration of Principles Concerning Activities Following the Detection of Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Yeah. And SETI Institute says no one's keeping anything a secret. No, they want it disseminated quickly and widely. Yeah. But they want you to follow the proper

channels first and all the astronomical community gets first dibs on learning of it. Oh, sure. Then after that, you go to the UN. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. The UN, a lot of other international bodies and you say, hey, guys, we have confirmed extraterrestrial contact. And they say, awesome. And the astronomer goes along and says, okay, we're moving on to the next people. Eventually you get to the public and the person who discovered it is meant to have the honor of announcing it to the world. Yes. According to the protocols. Jody Foster. And SETI is on record, by the way, the SETI Institute is saying that they don't think that there are aliens that we've been hiding in Roswell, New Mexico. They said that, you know, the presence that would be like

the biggest discovery in the history of science and A, you wouldn't want to keep it a secret and B, there would be thousands and thousands of people working on it. And they said it would just be impossible. So they're not, you know, they're not these crackpots that think, oh, we've got aliens hidden away, working on a farm in the desert of New Mexico, harvesting on water farms. And that's where we got our microwaves from. Exactly. And I also looked at their FAQ under the, are we sending signals? Because I thought that was kind of interesting because obviously close encounters, they sent messages out. And they said they are a completely passive experiment. They're only looking, they are not sending. However, we have been sending signals

unintentionally for 50 years or more. Yes. It's the 30 since we started broadcasting on the radio. Yeah. And television, this is the early TV broadcast reached out about to about 1000 nearby stars. And, but they said it's very unlikely that any, any alien civilization could have picked up on that. But we are inadvertently broadcasting probably in the waterhole too, I would think. And the other reason we don't send out signals is because if the nearest civilization, they said is 100 light years away, it would be 200 years to get a reply. And it's just not a very good way to spend your time. Well, plus also it's in the protocols that we decide through like the UN and other international bodies, whether or not to respond to a signal, right? That's like one of

the last steps. Well, they said that we've sent symbolic messages before like, Hey, here's what our solar system is like. Here are the compounds important for life. Here's the structure of our DNA in the form of a human. They say it's symbolic, but I think they're like, Oh, you never know. Right. You know, so they're liars then when they say they're passive. Well, they are passive. They have done that in the past. They say it was like the 70s. They're passive as far as astronomy goes, active as far as lying on their FAQ. No, I think it was 1974 was the last time they sent out a message. There was what the Viking or some I can't remember the spaceship we sent into orbit or into outer space that had like gold records containing all sorts of information, like the

world's great information and knowledge on them. Oh, yeah. Do you remember that sort of Viking? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it was Viking. Let's probably get that wrong there. So what's in the future for SETI right now? Well, the future with the programs like SETI at home could get more people active and that they're interested in their home. The future could be good there. They said they might be sending or looking for light at some point because it may not come via radio. It may come via light. You know, you never know. Yeah. Frank Drake is all about that one. Now he says that this is like the hot new field for SETI is optical astronomy. Oh, yeah. And of course, finishing up things like the Alan Telescope

array is important. And then there's SETI at home. I mean, if you want to go do that, it's pretty easy to go download. I had folding at home. I've never had SETI at home. Oh, you did folding? Uh-huh. Cool. And then my computer crashed and I was just like me. Oh, really? Maybe that crashed it. I don't know, maybe. I could tell the difference when it was processing. Oh, yeah. 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 that. 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 asset for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Do you crave a good mystery? Tune in to the great detectives of old time radio podcasts

featuring episodes of different detective dramas from the golden age of radio every day, Monday through Saturday. The lineup of radio detectives currently includes Sam Spade, Dr. Tim Detective, Dangerous Assignment, Follow Vance, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, and Tales of the Texas Rangers. I'm your host Adam Graham and I offer commentary and humor after each episode and also respond to your questions and feedback. Enjoy a good mystery before bed while driving or whenever you crave old school radio goodness. Listen to the great detectives of old time radio on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. And that's steady. So if this kind of piqued your interest, there's plenty more information out there.

You can also check out SETI's Stuff on Science Channel during Are We Alone Month in March. Premiers come on I think Tuesdays at 10 starting March 6th every Tuesday. Yep, like moonlighting. Was that on Tuesday? I think so. I seem to remember being drawn to the television on Tuesdays. I think it was moonlighting in 18. Nice. Or was it moonlighting in Loveboat? No, it was Loveboat Fantasy Island. Yeah, yeah, those two are definitely together. Yeah. Let's see, recapping. What else is it to begin? I'm married. You, me and I are married. And I guess that's it. If you want to read SETI, you can type that word into the search bar howstuffworks.com, S-E-T-I. And that will bring up this very nice article, including cool graphs

and screenshots from SETI at home for some reason. And since I said search bar, I think I said handy search bar even, it's time for Listener Mail. Uh, wait Chuck, before we do Listener Mail, let me stop you. I know you're usually stopping me, but I got the drop on you. You did. Let's announce some very important things, VITs, as it were. Yes, our Austin, Texas, South by Southwest activities. We will be live podcasting. This is for official batch holders. We will be live podcasting Sunday, March 11th at 3.30 at the Driscoll Hotel. One of our favorite places. The Maximilian room. In the Driscoll Hotel. In the Driscoll Hotel. Awesome. It's brunch. Did you have brunch there? Yeah, I actually managed to

eat. You and I did before we live podcasted last time. I decided I think I had a Bloody Mary. I know you did. That's all about all I did. You had a sweaty Bloody Mary. We were nervous. Yeah, but this is in the afternoon, so it'll be more acceptable to have. You'll have had five Bloody Mary. Exactly. So that is the live podcast. And then the following day, Monday, March 12th, from 5 to 9, Fado Irish Pub. I'm 4th Street. 214 West 4th in Austin, Texas. This is for the public at large. Yeah, you don't need to be a batch holder. You don't need to be a South by Southwest attendee. You can live in Austin. You can live in Greater Austin. You can live in New Mexico. Yeah. Just drive there and show up. Don't pay any cover. You get in to the stuff you should know

Variety Show. And in fact, if you're one of the first 100 people, we will even give you a drink ticket to get yourself a little drinky. That's a present from Uncle Josh and Uncle Chuck. And Uncle Science Channel. And Uncle How Stuff Works. That's right. And the reason we say Science Channel is because they have been kind enough to give us a chance to do a TV pilot for their network. And they are super cool and awesome, supportive, creative people. And we did that TV pilot about a month ago. Or actually, I don't know when this comes out, but it was a month ago today. Oh, was it? Yeah. Well, or close to it. And we are putting that thing together in the edit room. And we are going to be previewing clips from said show. Like before anyone else gets to see

this thing literally except for the people at Science Channel, you can do so if you come to Fido. I don't know if you really got that point across. Chuck, we made a half hour TV pilot that's going to Aaron Science Channel at some point, correct? In the spring. Yes. And this is the public debut of any, even a second of it. That's right. Everybody's seen it are just some sweaty weirdo editors in a man cave that stinks to high heaven, I can tell you. Yeah, it's all stinky. And this is it. This is it. If that's not enough, although it should be, special appearances by Mr. John Honjman, comedy set by standup extraordinaire Eugene Merman. Yeah. Music by Lucy Wayne Roach, who plays Jerry in the pilot. Yep. Henry Clay people are buddies for a while now.

They worked on the score, not worked on the score. They did the score. They did the theme song. And local Austin band crooks who are awesome and we're kind enough to let everyone else use their gear, which is a big deal. They will all be rocking and rolling. That was about the squareest thing I've ever said. And yeah, so that's it. Comedy, Haji, us, TV show, pilot, and music. Excellent. Well done. It's a big deal. It's a big two days. March 12th, five to nine, Fado Irish pub 214 West Forth. And if you're laying around in your hotel room, not wearing pants or a shirt, and it's March 11th, and it's three o'clock, be like, I should probably get up and get dressed and get down to the Driscoll and watch Uncle Josh and Uncle Chuck

do some live podcast. Agreed. Good night. Back to Listener Mail. At long last. All right. On to Listener Mail. Yes. All right, Josh, I'm going to call this Lucha Libra slash American Wrestling from Zach. That was a good one. Chuck, you suggested that wrestlers carry fake blood packs, not quite true, or at least usually not true. Instead, most wrestlers carry a razor blade in order to blade their foreheads. I've heard this actually. I knew that. I'll cut make a little cut and bleed right around the hairline after being hit in the head with a chair or a cage or another hard weapon. You were also talking about the big companies in America. The WWE is the biggest right now with TNA is the second biggest and Ring of Honor is the third.

WWE and TNA are on big TV networks, while the Ring of Honor is only on the air in certain markets. And there are many, many independent leagues, including Smashing Pumpkins, Billy Corgan's Resistance Pro. Do you know that? No. I guess so, dude. He's got his own wrestling league. I wonder if he's still on the dope. I don't think so. I saw him one day. He's really tall, which surprised me for some reason. I think I noticed that when the Cubs were in the World Series and he sang the National Anthem, or no, he sang the Take Me Out to the Ball Game. Oh, really? He was taller than all those guys. So Zach says, when talking about the rules, you're saying that weapons are not allowed.

And I think I might have said that it's different with American wrestling, but not true. He said, the chair was just really popular in the late 90s because they book matches specifically to be more violent. So they would knock the ref down and people would use the chair when the ref wasn't watching, but you would still get DQ'd if the ref was to see that. And he also said, Ray Mysterio is out with injury, but there's a good chance he will be back soon. So he's still kicking it. That was a heck of a dispatch from the wrestling world. Yeah, and, dude, I redacted about half of it. Thanks, Zach.

That is Zach from, I don't know where he's from. He's from Billy Corgan's basement. Well, wow. If you have some supplementary information, not even necessarily correction, I think Zach handled that very well. Sure. We like to hear that stuff all the time, and we frequently read them as listener mail. So please feel free to go ahead and send us something. You can tweet to us at SYSKpodcast. You can send us a note or a message on Facebook at facebook.com slash wshnow. And you can email us at stuffpodcast at discovery.com. 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 for it. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Teslan Figaro, host of Straight Shot No Chaser on the Black Effect Podcast Network on iHeart radio. On my podcast, we'll cover a number of topics, politics, black lifestyle, racial justice, and food for the soul to inspire you. My guests will include everyone from gangsters, pastors, politicians, activists, you name it, they pulling up. Come sip this truth with me,

and like I always say, you can either use it or lose it, but I can't make you choose it. Subscribe now and listen to Straight Shot No Chaser with Teslan Figaro on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.