Stuff You Should Know - How the MARS Turbine Works

Episode Date: August 19, 2010

MARS stands for Magenn Air Rotor System, but a MARS turbine isn't your typical windmill. It's a blimp floating hundreds of feet in the air. Tune in as Josh and Chuck explain how this turbine works -- and whether it will become the future of wind power. 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. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Charles W. Chuck Bryant is picking his nose. No, but you know what? I had to be off color. I had all these jokes about me generating wind, ready to go, and then like the red light came on and I just went blank. I think it's probably good. I think it's for the best. So can I just say, Josh, I love to generate wind.

Yes, you can. Okay, that's my joke. It's a good one. Chuck, you want to talk about wind generation? Let's do it. Well, let's go a different direction first. Okay. You know bats have been taken a hit lately, right? As in flying bats? Yeah. I thought you meant like baseball bats. No. I've been taking a hit. I know. I wouldn't say something like that. I didn't take stuff, buddy. Bats have been taking a hit. There's this white fungus that basically has been wiping out entire bat colonies and coming close to wiping out entire species around the United States. There's a fungus on the bat? Yeah, it's on the bat's nose, the muzzle. Oh, man. It's really horrible, and it's kind of a big deal. If you study bats, you're alarmed

right now, right? Sure. That's not the only thing. That's probably the biggest risk to the bat population in the United States, but there's another one that was mysterious for a little while, and it was bats dying near wind turbines. Really? Yeah, but the weird thing was is you could walk up to a dead bat on the ground near a windmill, right? A wind turbine that's used for generating electricity, and the bat would be totally uninjured. There's nothing wrong with it. It wasn't bleeding. It didn't have any signs of trauma. See, I thought the radar might have said like this is food and it's smacked into one of the propeller blades. No, it did not actually. That's addressed in this article, wind turbines kill bats without impact on the Discovery

channel. Right there in the title, isn't it? And it says that bats don't run into things. This expert who's coded into it says that. They're really good at it with sonar, so they don't run into things that they didn't mean to, right? Right. Which is weird because so that means when bats come down and hit you in the head, they meant to. Yeah, right. Chirks. What they found out, finally, that solved this mystery was that their lungs were exploding because of a pressure drop. What? Yeah. A pressure drop from the rotation of the blades. When they got close enough to the blades, their lungs would explode. Holy cow. It would take about a four kilopascal change. A pascal is a measure of pressure. A kilopascal is a thousand measures of pressure.

Right. Nice. To kill a bat, it said in the article, and the wind turbines above the turbine, right above it, it generates a five to ten kilopascal drop. So these bats were just getting near it, and then boom, their lungs were exploding and then they were hitting the ground. Their little tiny lungs would just pop. I know. That's like the saddest thing I've ever heard. So what do you do, Chuck? I mean, wind energy is just wonderful. It's generally a very green type of energy. I got some updated stats for you. You want to hear some stats? Let's talk about it. This is some wind energy stats, Josh. Last year in 2009, we produced worldwide 159,213 megawatts of electricity thanks to wind. It's pretty good. It's enough to power Italy for a year.

For a year. The whole country for the whole year. But that's a drop in the bucket for overall electricity production, right? Yeah. Very small percentages is produced by wind. And they do predict by the end of this year that it will crack 200,000. And they have also said that since they started this whole wacky wind capturing stuff, that it doubles every three years capacity does. So we're headed in the right direction. It sounds like it. And wind is a great way to get energy because you put up the thing, the wind blows, it produces, I mean, it's as easy as it gets. Right. It's very Dutch. Very, very Dutch. The problem is, Chuck, as I said, it was a very green technology, but there's a lot of overlooked environmental impact if we may jump

around a tad. Sure. Right? These things are enormous. I've never seen one. I've seen pictures on the TV. They're big. We're on the Internet, right? And Rain Man. Do they have, do they pass a wind farm? Yeah, like if you could drive to Palm Springs from LA, you go by that huge, like, famous wind turbine farm. Chuck, I'm glad to hear the H is back. Did I say huge? Yes, you did. Sorry, I meant huge. No, you didn't. You meant huge. Okay, yeah. But they're enormous. The turbines apparently are about the size of a 747. They're huge. Wait, thousands and thousands of pounds. And they're catching wind at about 200 feet up. They're enormous. Yeah. Just one single turbine, right? There are a lot of bat and bird deaths. And to get these things in there, you

have to basically construct new roads in a lot of cases. You're promoting soil erosion and habitat fragmentation. So not quite as green as people would like to believe. Yeah. Right? Yeah, Josh, it can have a big impact on the environment in setting it all up. And you kind of don't think about that when you're like, oh, I could get free wind energy. Right. Or not free, obviously. It's pretty expensive. But it's a gift from nature, isn't it? There you go. Yeah. Very nice. So what do you do, though, Chuck? Because everybody wants this more than, say, fossil fuels. Well, everybody outside of the oil industry wants this more than fossil fuels. And by oil, of course, I mean coal as well and natural gas. Yeah. But I mean, in the greener quarters of the

globe, wind energy is a winner, right? Yeah. So how do you overcome these problems, these obstacles to make, you know, wind energy truly green? I'm glad you asked, Josh. Potentially, my friend, we may see little tiny blimp-like balloons hovering in the air at about 1,000 feet, harnessing wind, much higher. And as I said, it's floating in the air. So it doesn't have some huge foundation that needs to be built and erode the ground. It's just tethered to the ground by a tether. A tether that serves as an electrical cable, right? Yeah. So that's the Mars turbine. MARS, it does not have anything to do with the planet, the red planet. It stands for the, is it MAGEN? I did not know how to pronounce it. I didn't want to touch that one for

the same reason. MAGENN is the name of the company, the MAGEN air rotor system, MARS. Right. It's an acronym. Right. And basically, it's a, well, the CEO of, we're going to go with MAGEN. Okay. I'm down with that. Okay. He likened them to floating white sausages with paddleboat wheels, right? Is that what he said? That's what it says. It's like a floating white sausage. Yeah. Okay. It's just a little blimp with some turbines on it. It looks like a blimp with paddle wheels on it, right? Yeah. It's sort of like, I'll call it a football before I call it a white sausage. I don't know where this guy's head is, but he's hungry. I guess he's ready for some bratwurst. Yeah. And you're ready for football season. Yes, I am. 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 acid. Before. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Not too long ago, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, this explorer stumbled upon something that would change his life. I saw it and I saw, oh, wow, this is a very unusual situation. It was cacao, the tree that gives us chocolate. But this cacao was unlike anything experts had seen or tasted. I've never wanted us to have a gun fight. I mean, you saw the stacks of cash in our office. Chocolate sort of forms as vortex. It sucks you win. Like I can be the queen of wild chocolate. We're all lost. It was madness. It was a game changer. People quit their jobs. They left their lives behind so they could search for more of this stuff. I wanted to tell their stories. So I followed them deep into the jungle. And it wasn't always pretty. Basically, this disgruntled guy and his family surrounded the building armed with machetes. And we've heard all sorts of things that, you know, somebody got shot over this. Sometimes I think all all this for a damn bar of chocolate. Listen to obsessions, wild chocolate on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Which also includes bratwurst. Yes. So yours is all encompassing Lee. It is. Chuck. Yes. You said that this so we've got a floating white football sausage with turbines.

It's connected to a tether at each end. Right. And the wind hits it and it spins. The whole thing spins. It is like a pinwheel. The whole thing rotates as if a football were spiraling. Right. So the turbine is connected to the blimp. So the whole blimp is spinning turbine blimp and all. Right. And then at the ends, there's electrical generators. So the tethers, like I said, actually are double as electrical cables. It's not just a rope. Right. And so the blimp is spinning. It's generating electricity. Yeah. It's sending the electricity down the tethers to a transformer which serves a power station which is connected to the grid. Yeah. Or stores it in batteries. There's other things you can do with it. Sure. And it's really that simple. It runs on the the it runs on electromagnetic induction. Right. Which I looked this up a little bit. Let's hear it. Remember Michael Faraday. He was on our genius list. How could I forget. So Michael Faraday in 1831 came up with this. He I guess was just sitting around his house drunk on Scotch screwing with wire coils and magnets. Right. And he discovered that you could generate an electrical current by passing a magnet through a series of wire coils. You're actually changing what should be a static electrical field. Yeah. Right. It was a very big discovery. It was. And he also found that the faster you pass the magnet through the faster you move the magnet the higher the current or the higher the voltage. Right. Stronger the current. Right. So what the the Mars turbine is doing is the faster it turns the quicker it moves this the magnets through their wire coils. The stronger the electrical current. Right. Yeah.

Which is one reason why they float so high up because the air speeds at a thousand feet are significantly stronger than they are at you know 200 feet where the ground based wind turbine is is located right. Yeah. Every time you double your elevation there's a 12% increase in wind speed and every doubling of wind speed there's an eight times eight fold increase in wind power. So a 200 foot turbine attached to the ground is just not nearly as effective as one that's floating a thousand feet up in the air. Right. And the reason obviously is because there's no trees or buildings there's no wind resistance. So it's just free flowing buddy. Yeah. And it's it's pretty constant up there as well. It's it's kind of windy up high. Yeah. Which helps because inconsistent wind is one of the problems with wind generation obviously. But not only that the Mars turbine also we should say here that we're getting no money whatsoever for this we're just fans. But the Mars turbine is sensitive enough to be able to produce usable electrical voltage with wind speeds of as low as seven miles an hour. Yeah. But it can also withstand really strong winds that you know land based turbines are designed to shut down in. So I think a land based turbines designed to shut down at about 45 miles an hour. Yeah. And the Mars turbine can continue to produce electricity in sixty three mile an hour winds I think. Yeah. And anything above that anything above sixty three to sixty five they have just like blimps do they have controls on it like over speed controls and emergency deflate. So if it gets they can do two things if it starts spinning way too fast they can has a system that kicks in that reels it in automatically and like lowers it and the wind might not be as you know as great at like 300 feet so they can keep

running it if it's really out of control they'll just reel it in all together the system will or if there's some really big emergency like the tether breaks and all sudden it's flying you know over your neighbor's farm it will automatically deflate which is what blimps have this emergency system. Right. And that's one of the things that we should probably mention is it's designed it floats because it's filled with helium right or a lighter some lighter than air gas but I believe they use helium. They use helium. And the blimp itself is made out of as the writer Jennifer Horton put it the same material used in bulletproof vests. I was wondering is that Kevlar is that chicken feathers or spider silk harvested from goats. I actually know the answer. What is it. I checked into this because it was slightly vague. The outer fabric is Dacron woven Dacron and that is what's used for boat sales. Okay. The actual fins that catch the wind to spend the football is Vectran and that is what is used in bulletproof vests these days apparently some of them. All right. And then the coating it's also lined with something called Tedlar and that's the same kind of plastic coating you find on like house siding. So that's what protects it from UV damage abrasion stuff like that. And your new nickname is Chuck Trann. Chuck Trann. Yeah. Chuck Trann. No Chuck Trann. And then the inner portion of it is you've ever seen those little mylar balloons. Yeah. The little funny aluminum looking balloons. Yeah. It's not aluminum it's mylar. Right. And that's what this thing is lined with because that holds in your helium really well they found it. And just to keep it even greener if you look closely inside the Mars turbine you'll see little

sentiments like get well soon or you're one year cuter. Yeah. It's a boy. Right. I did that was one of my big questions though when I was reading this was wait a minute what about the helium because I've had those mylar balloons. They don't hold it forever. No they don't. But two weeks later it's sadly hovering it like your kneecaps. The helium I think helium being held in a mylar space is greatly increased in cold temperatures. It's cold at a thousand feet. OK that helps much colder and the pressure there's less air pressure at a thousand feet as well. Right. So there's less well there's less pressure trying to force it out. Good point. I think. But I did find out how much leaks because it does leak. Well yeah I would think it would have to point 5% per month. So if you buy one of these things and we should point out that theoretically these are going to be available to consumers like 2011 early 2011 is what they're looking at right now. OK. And you it doesn't have the price of the thing does not come with the helium just like when you buy a new car they don't necessarily have it full of gas for you. You have to provide your own gas and the 100 kilowatt version requires 200,000 cubic feet of helium. Wow. This is about 60 grand. Wow. To fill it up with helium. That's how they get you. Yeah exactly that's how they get you. But if it leaks point 5 per month that means they say on the website like every six months just top her off with helium for five grand and you'll be fine. Right. But these things are built to last the company I think estimates it said that they can float there I guess without being patched is what they meant for maybe 15 years without the need for maintenance. Because of all the tough stuff it's made of. Right. And Chuck if you happen to wonder this thing is spinning in the air right on an axis. How does the Magnus effect factor in does it factor in at all the answer to that one

buddy is yes. Are you talking about the Magnus Von Magnus effect or just the Magnus effect the Magnus effect. Okay. Because the Magnus Von Magnus effect is when you are able to lift a beer keg made of concrete in your overalls and carry it 100 feet. Well yeah everybody knows that much lesser known is the regular old Magnus effect right. You see it in every day it's the spin on a curveball. Yeah basically as a spherical around ish object travels through the air as it's spinning on an axis. It creates an actual area of high pressure beneath it. Yeah. That creates lift right that stabilizes it. Yeah. Right. So it well it stabilizes it if the things tethered. Right. Which is how the so that combined with the fact that it's filled with helium which is lighter than air allows this thing to stay vertical pretty much vertical all the time. Yeah they said on the website that but the helium in the Magnus effect will not allow it to lean more than 45 degrees from vertical at any point. Wow. Even if it's like when swirling in all different directions it still stays pretty stable. I wonder if there's a money back guarantee on that. There's a lot of money but they don't pay you back for the helium. No no yeah. And actually Chuck the there's this thing called the Magnus airship that operates on the Magnus effect principle that was invented in the 70s that gave rise to the Mars turbine right. Yeah Freddie Ferguson who is the founder of this company old Fred Ferguson. Yeah he invented the Magnus airship patented it in the 1980s and then that later became he was like hey I can actually use this thing to generate wind I bet. It's pretty awesome. It's very awesome. Every once in a while you're on across like a green idea that's like wow this could actually work really well. Oh yeah the bad news is it's going to be really pricey. At first. At first.

But like all wind power this price is already going down. Right. Right. So the initial the initial cost when this article was written the initial expected cost is about five to ten dollars per watt right. Yes. And it's actually less now as of right now. Yeah look today it's four fifty to seven dollars so it's already dropped and this was written upfront cost. Yeah this is like two years old it's already gone down that much. Yeah so take away the 10 it's not five to ten anymore it's five or less it's say four four dollars and seventy cents a watt. That's way more than what you pay for electricity as it is now. Right. But you know you don't generally pay unless you're a Georgia power customer upfront costs to create electricity you're paying for the electricity generated right. Right. This is you're paying for the turbine like you buy this turbine and hey here's your turbine go create your own power. Right. Right. So again that the price probably will come down dramatically but once you've got the thing up and running the operating cost is about. Fifteen cents a kilowatt hour. Is that right. Which is still more than what we pay now. Right. But it's half of what wind energy used to cost it when it first really started to come along saying the Rayman era. Right. It was 30 cents a kilowatt hour so. Yeah. As wind power as electricity generated by wind becomes more ubiquitous that the price for it's going to drop across the board no matter how it's generated. Yeah. And it's for God's sakes is a green technology. It's always a little expensive at first but typically the people that outfit their houses with solar panels.

They cost a little dough to do that. Typically there are people that want to do a little favor to the environment and they realize over time they're going to make their money back probably. But not many people are going out and outfitting their house with thirty thousand dollars with the solar panels because you know they want to save a dime you know. Well yeah that's true. But it would be helpful if there were I don't know rebates for buying something like this like government rebates or subsidies. Are they. I think they all expired. Oh really. Yeah. We'll have to look into that. I bet there's still some out there. The war on drugs impacts everyone whether or not you take. 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 twenty two hundred 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. 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. Cops are they just like looting. They just think 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 I heart radio Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Not too long ago in the heart of the Amazon rainforest this explorer stumbled upon something that would change his life. I saw it and I saw oh well this is a very unusual situation. It was cacao. The tree that gives us chocolate. But this cacao was unlike anything experts had seen or tasted. I've never wanted us to have a gun fight. I mean you saw the stacks of cash in our office. Chocolate sort of forms this vortex. It sucks you win. Like I can be the queen of wild chocolate. We're all lost. It was madness. It was a game changer. People quit their jobs. They left their lives behind so they could search for more of this stuff. I wanted to tell their stories. So I followed them deep into the jungle and it wasn't always pretty. Basically this like disgruntled guy and his family surrounded the building armed with machetes and we've heard all sorts of things that you know somebody got shot over this. Sometimes I think all all this for a damn bar of chocolate.

Listen to obsessions. Wild chocolate on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I have another question. I don't know if you know the answer to. Does the do these things show up on radar. Airplanes. Yeah. They do. I'm glad you asked that. We said I really didn't know. I really didn't. The Air Force and the government uses tethered balloons up to like thousands of feet up in the air. And so they're they're they're cleared with the FAA. And in order to get one of these things you have to get a special permit from the FAA and you have to have a blinking tether. It's a system that it blinks once per second. That's an extra $50,000 blinking tether. So there's some other rules to the FAA has already put forth here too. You cannot have one within five miles of an airport at all or within any flight path in North America. Do you want to meet flight pass or I imagine there's quite quite a few that you have to avoid. There's at least 17 or 18 17 or 18 flight pass.

And you have to have the lighting system like I said and then you can't have it like you can't have it you got to live out in the open. You're not going to be able to put one of these up in your neighborhood in suburban Atlanta. Well originally the thing was designed to be used in very remote places that are off the grid like if you're on an Antarctic expedition. Exactly. Or an Arctic expedition whichever one. It could also be used in a disaster situation. That's the one I love. That's pretty cool. It makes a lot of sense. So if you have the Mars turbine and remember that water manufacturing device that sucks it out of the ambient air. You're set. You're done. Build a bomb shelter and you're all set for life. I should also point out before we leave they do envision one day probably five to ten years from now Josh where there is a four kilowatt backpack model

that you can actually carry with you dude take it camping out in Yosemite and the TV fly that sucker up. Yeah. Take your TV and your your computer and you can online gamble out there in the woods just like everyone else just like home. Pretty cool. Yeah. So that's the Mars turbine. I saw on the site that they're taking orders for them. Yeah. And you can also if you fit requirements you can be a test location for these things. Awesome. There's a lot of requirements and imagine a lot of people that live on farms in North Dakota by like hey I'll test it out on my house. Right. Come out and set it up. I'll bet being photogenic is is one of the requirements. And no bare midriff shirts. Yeah. Nothing see through. So again if you want to see some cool illustrations of the Mars turbine you can go to howstuffworks.com type Mar s and the search bar

and I'll bet it brings up a lot more than just this article. Yeah. Yeah. Chuck. Yes. That means it's time now for a listener mail correct. Yeah. I got a couple of short ones today. We're going right into it. You want to plug. Nah. OK. South by Southwest. Yeah. We should say we're trying to go to South by Southwest next year in Austin Texas and we are trying to get on a panel and apparently 30 percent of whether or not they determine we can go to a panel is decided by votes. Right. So you can go to H T T P colon slash slash panel picker P A N E L P I C K E R dot S X S W dot com. Yes. And then you register and then you vote for the stuff you should know panel under interactive panels. Right. Yeah. When you go to click on our little thing to thumbs up and vote for us it'll it'll say wait you're not signed up yet and it'll walk you through how to sign up. They promise that you won't start getting email from South by Southwest just to verify

that you're a human. Yeah. Just explore the interactive panels and on the interactive panel page you can search for panels and under title put stuff you should know and it should bring up ours and just ours. Right. Yeah. And even if you're not in Texas we would appreciate your help here to get us to Texas. Yeah. So we can go to South by Southwest and like hang out with bands. That's what I'm looking forward to. That's awesome. OK Josh. These are two short wins and it's funny you said the word search bar because David from SUNY Canton. Yeah I saw this. Did you see this one. I'm sorry David. This is a good one. Darn you Josh. It's how he opens. I work at one of the state universities of New York. We are a week away from classes beginning and my office has been besieged by calls from students and staff related to working on campus. This morning I took two calls in a row of which I referred to callers to information on our website by saying you can type work study and the handy search bar.

You're totally right. It is an awful phrase because remember you had a big problem with this. I hate it. I hate handy search bar after 200 plus times you've said it. I love it. I don't love it. I love it that you said that. But Josh is an awful phrase but it's awful because it's awful and campy. It's like Karma Chameleon. I hate that song but if I hear it just once it's in my head. You know I think Culture Club is one of the more underrated bands that came out of the 80s. They get lumped in with like crappy bands from the 80s but they like they and Duran Duran were actually very talented musically. I would like to add Adam and the ants on that list too. OK. They were awesome and not at all campy to me. You know he's in the he was in a mental institution for a while. He had a breakdown at a benefit concert. He started railing on Christians and they took him away and said you need some rest. Really. And he's like no I just don't like Christian. He's like I'm rested fine. Let's finish this email. He says these things are like

gray matter super glue with great power comes great responsibility. Josh you started this. You need to finish it. Come up with a better meme. Help us. Oh be Josh Kenobi. You're our only hope. That is David from Cooney. I'm sorry. I'm from Cooney Canton. Right. And David from Cooney Canton which I assume means State University of New York. You got it. OK. I am taking your email quite seriously. I'm already beating you to the punch. I haven't come up with anything yet but I will get handy so far out of everyone's head including my own. OK. Yeah. OK. And I got another quick one. Josh this one made me laugh. This is from Kurt in Minnesota. After listening to the tick episode guys I was reminded of one of my most disgusting memories. When I was little my neighbor and I were sitting on his front porch playing with his dog out of nowhere the neighbor kid gets really excited has this look on his face pulls a tick off the dog and eats it. You didn't see this one. No. The memory still haunts

me today after looking online about similar cases. I came across someone calling them dog berries which makes it even more disturbing. Hope this hasn't ruined your day. Kurt from Minnesota. Kurt it takes a lot more to ruin our day than that doesn't it. Oh no. Dog berries. It's pretty gross. Yeah. What's sad is our days are consistently ruined. Yeah. Every day. So thank you for that. So Kurt and then David. Right. Yes. Thanks for sharing. We appreciate that. I promise you I will come up with something to replace handy search bar. I've just kind of gone to the sterile search bar now. Have you noticed. Hinky search bar. No. Not Hinky either. Hinky's in that same group. The same ballpark as handy. We've been overusing it. We're going to mix it up. We will. All right Frank. OK Jimmy. So if you want to send Frank or Jimmy an email you can do that and don't forget Chuck's new nickname is Chuck Tran. Just send us an email. So we can end this podcast. Wrap it up and send

it off to Stuff Podcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com home page. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that will piss you off. The cops are they just like looting. 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 answer for it. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. What if you had the chance to change the past? September 27th 1996 and create the future you've always dreamed of. Einhorn's Epic Productions and I Heart Radio bring you a new 12-part scripted audio time travel adventure. Join Nikki and her friends as they

travel back to the 90s and change the past to save our future. Listen to Nikki Fix's Time Mix on the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.