Stuff You Should Know - Three Innovations We Need Right Now

Episode Date: June 16, 2009

The world's problems necessitate innovative solutions. Listen in as Josh and Chuck propose some innovations, from teleportation to an international language, that the world needs right now in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Sweet, savory, spicy, and smoky flavors that'll satisfy your spirits wherever you choose to wander. Plan your next dining adventure at visitmississippi.org slash dining. Mississippi. Wanderers, welcome. 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 is Chuck Bryant with his beautiful jute rug. Still beautiful. Yeah. So Chuck, how you doing? I'm well, sir. You? I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good into everyone out there listening. If I sound like I'm talking a little fast, that is because Chuck literally has a stopwatch here to keep me from talking too much in this podcast. I kid you

not. Yeah, in a cat of my tails. Yeah, we could very easily, I shouldn't say we, I could very easily traipse into, I guess, long-windedness as a euphemism I should use. Yeah, Chuck says, yeah. I'm just nodding. And so to combat that, Chuck has the stopwatch. So Chuck, let's talk about some innovations that we need and why. Look at you. So proud. Yeah, Josh, you know, the world is in trouble in some ways and big innovations and big innovators come along and correct things and change all that. And that's what we need, buddy. We can, we've named three here. There are many more. Yeah, agreed. And what do you think about blogging? Yeah. And thank you for reminding me. I would like, this is especially, I would like to call out to the blog and get you folks on the Friday

recap when this comes out, because we have only named three kind of pie in the sky innovations that could help the world. And there are many more. And I'd like to hear what people have to say. I would too, Chuck. So that's the call out. Nice, Chuck. So you want to get started on this? Yes. You got your, you got your stopwatch going? Yes. Okay. All right. So Chuck, let's do teleportation. I wish we could. My goodness. So do I. Have you ever been on like a long, long road trip? Yeah, I like road trips. So, so on the way, right on the way back on the way back is awful. Right? What if you could just drive to a place, say, you know, like a subway station? Sure.

Which is a good idea. And instead of getting on a subway, you just go through some sort of teleportation portal. So at the teleportation station? Nice. Yeah. They should call it that. I think they will probably. Did you know this term has been around since 1931? You did some extra, extra research in you. Yes. An American writer and paranormal investigator named Charles Fort wrote it in his book, Lowe. Fort's one of my heroes. You know that? Really? Yeah. Forty in times. Well, he had a book called Lowe within a possible exclamation point at the end. L-O-W or L-O? L-O. Okay. And apparently that's where he first used the word teleportation. Fantastic. So yeah, that would be awesome. And it's not exactly impossible.

No, it's not. Thanks to the magic of quantum physics, we could conceivably teleport ourselves. Indeed. I guess the way that it's starting to look more and more is like we would be faxed. Yeah, exactly. That's a good way to say it. Instead of, what you're doing is you're recreating, you would be recreating every cell in your body and copying it. And that first edition would have to be destroyed, though. That's one of the keys, right? That is the key. I didn't quite get to the bottom of why, aside from, you know, very rapidly overpopulating the Earth. Right. But yeah, I get the impression that as far as quantum mechanics goes, the original would have to be destroyed before transmission or as it was being scanned. Right. And then basically,

it takes these particles and atoms and everything. It doesn't actually transport the atoms. Right. This is the big distinction. Like all teleportation, as far as science fiction goes generally, has to do with actually physically moving the atoms through the air and then recreating them elsewhere, much like images on television. Right. As you've seen, Willy Wonka in the chocolate factory, right? Much like that. That's not the case instead. What we would need to do is basically scan us, what makes us, us, all the information. Three-dimensionally. About where, you know, one of the cells in your liver is. Right. Right. About where, you know, every, your genetic makeup, everything for absolutely

every part of you, including stuff we haven't nailed down yet, would have to be analyzed and then sent. Yes. And then it could be recreated in the first most destroyed. There's a big problem with this. Well, namely, we're too complex of beings to do that. Well, sure. But also, if you subscribe to any kind of Judeo-Christian or any kind of religious ideal, you would have a big problem because basically you've just been destroyed and all the information about you has been transferred. And if you believe the soul is some sort of, well, if it's extant and an externality that's not part of your body, that it's something beyond that. Right. Can that be recreated? Yeah, that's true.

But let's say most people who are working on teleporting us don't subscribe to any ideas of the soul. Right. Okay. So let's just go with that assumption. Let's just say, physiologically, what are some of the challenges? Well, they have actually teleported atoms and photons. Did you know that? Did you know that? I did. They've sent atoms a distance of about half a meter and they sent some photons over tens of kilometers. Yeah. Pretty impressive. It is. And I know that there's one really smart guy out there, Charles Bennett. Huh? He was a really smart scientist. He said that in principle that teleporting humans does not actually violate any fundamental laws of physics. No, they used to think it violated Heisenberg's

uncertainty principle because we were talking about scanning. Right. And once you get down to the subatomic quantum level, you're dealing with quarks, little pieces of matter, and other non-material stuff. Right. That when you analyze and when you observe them, when you measure them, the more accurately you measure them, the more likely you are to disrupt their behavior until you can't get an accurate measurement anymore. Right. They figured out a way around this. Right. Were you talking about quantum entanglement? Yeah. Yes. That is Einstein actually called that spooky action at a distance, except he said it in German. And it probably sounds cooler in German. Yeah. Although spooky is pretty cool. Yeah, that's true. Basically, it's two separate particles

behaving as if it's one particle, even though they're separated by a great distance. Right. Well, they were together at one point in time. They become entangled. Right. Like their super positions, their states become entangled. And then, yeah, after they're separated, the behavior of one is the same as the behavior of another. And they shouldn't be influencing one another anymore. Right. But Bennett says that that's not even necessary if you were to figure out how to teleport an entire human. He said that, quote, the teleported person would end up slightly different, but not in a biologically important way. So. Well, Chuck, there are some. Think about what you just said. You're reproducing something that's not biologically different.

Think about your mood. The mood you're in right now. That's all a series of chemical reactions. Yeah. So we have to analyze down to that level. Yeah. Or else you come out on the other end, like maybe insane. Right. Or very depressed or ready to kill. Sure. I mean, there's a lot of information that would have to be scanned to accurately reproduce you as you were before the scanning started. But let's say we can do that, right? What are the benefits of teleportation? Why do we need this? And since this is all pie in the sky and pipe dream type of stuff, let's say we can teleport. That would save time. Yes. Time is money. Yeah. How would you love to not commute to beam yourself to work every day? That would be crazy. Workdays would be shorter.

That means you could save energy at the workplace. I know I get a lot more work done when I telecommute. Yeah. And teleporting. Imagine that. I know. You could save on, you were talking about transportation of goods and jets and big barges. Maybe if you could teleport your goods, then you wouldn't have to, uh, you know, fly things halfway around the world. Yeah. That might be a good thing. Yeah. I think there's a lot of benefits to teleportation. What else you got? That's all. You don't have some Brady bunch as any, uh, plot line that you can dream up here. No, no, because the original is destroyed. That's where all the comedy lives. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. When there's duplicity. Yeah. Or multiplicity, except there wasn't that much

comedy there. Yeah. Michael Keaton. Woof. Yeah. So Chuck, um, press your stopwatch. Let's clear it out again. Yeah, let's clear it out. So, I mean, trust me, folks, we could do an hour on teleportation, but, um, we could, but we just stopped making sense after a little while. Yeah. So that's because you couldn't understand us, but because we're dumb. So what's number two, Josh? You ready? Yes. Okay. Number two is universal language. Chuck, consider this. How much conflict, war, misunderstanding, and just general strife, nationalism, isolationism, fascism, all of this stuff. How much of it is the result of this unphysical border we call language? Right. They say that the devil's greatest creation was language. Really? Yeah. Miscommunication. Sure.

Absolutely, dude. And you know what? You're right. If there was an international language, if everyone spoke the same language, I don't think it would make us some big, you know, would make us all the same. So lay those fears to rest, folks. No, most of the people I've read who are talking and thinking about universal language is saying like, this is not meant to supplant native languages. Yeah, exactly. It's just, you know, if you're at home, you're, let's say you're in America, you're speaking English, like Chuck and I speak English to one another, but if we went to give a seminar on podcasting in Norway, we would use the international language. Interesting. You bring up Norway because some folks say that Norwegian might be a good start.

Well, they used to think that in 1911, at least, right? That's true. Yeah, go ahead. Some people have thought about this over the years and they think that you should probably create a new language with another language as a basis, but it probably shouldn't be one of the big boys either because it would give that nation too much of a leg up. Oh, yeah. Yeah, imagine if we said from now on, English is the universal language. Right. Everyone who speaks English should be like, damn straight. Yeah. Yeah. You'd have to create your own language if you want a universal language. And I know you're dying to talk about Esperanto. Chuck, I had only vaguely heard of Esperanto before and didn't really know the nuts and bolts of it.

Me too. But actually, Ben Bowlin, the creator of one of our soon to be released podcasts, the conspiracy podcast called Stuff They Don't Want You to Know. Very cool. Awesome. Have you seen it? Yeah, looking forward to it. He was telling me about Esperanto. And basically, in the 19th century, a guy named L.L. Zamenhof came up with this idea that we need a universal language that would promote tolerance, equality, that kind of thing. Avoid war? Again, yeah. Specifically, I think he said that was one of his aims. Yeah, he was definitely a pacifist. You know, he also tried to come up with a neutral religion. Yeah, that's all that. Called homeronesmo. Homeronesmo? Maybe that's why I didn't take something. Yeah, right. But he was 27. He was

at the tender age of 27 and he created a universal language. He did. And basically, it sounds a lot like it's a romance language kind of. It is. It's kind of like a broken romance language. Yeah, it's independent in and of itself. So while he did borrow from others, they say they don't describe it as a mix, like a popery of other languages just mixed together. Right. No, it's structurally similar to non-European languages than European ones. I mean, it's very much phonetic and it's spelled the way it sounds. It's supposed to be pretty easy. Very easy. There's 16 rules of grammar and pronunciation to it and that's it. Because I mean, you think about English, you know, you've got like good, better, best. Where the hell did better and best come from? We started out with

good. Right. You know, like where does that come from? And apparently English is one of the most difficult languages to learn. Oh, sure. Yeah, I would say so. Because of all the little problems like that. So I think what Zamenoff was on the trail of and I think anybody who's created a universal language is to get away with all the, get rid of all the foibles, the weird things that make a dialect or language so unique. Right, inconsistencies. For food lovers, there's no place on earth like Mississippi where sweet, spicy, and smoky flavors satisfy your spirits. Wherever you wonder. Plan today at visitmississippi.org slash dining, Mississippi. Wanderers welcome. I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild present Bridgewater Season 2. A lot of people now actually believe that there is

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One of the other problems is that's actually a structural approach. There's also a symbolic approach. Yeah, I like that one. The symbolic approach is like we call a mother for no good reason. It's a symbolic word. It's not like the word cuckoo, where cuckoo is the sound that a cuckoo bird makes. That's very structural. But a symbolic word would probably have even more difficulties than a universal language that was built structurally. Because what a language is, it's a worldview of a culture. Exactly. The people who share that language, right? So how do you get the entire world to agree on the meaning of mother? Mother's probably an easy one. Sure. But let's say the meaning of happiness. Let's pick on happiness. Right. Well, you can't. That's the

problem. And that's probably why there never will be a universal language. That's not necessarily true. Also, I think that most, I think every single language, universal language attempt, and there's been some. Sure. Did you read about idiom neutral, Russian one? That sounded like it got pretty close. Well, what do you mean by close, though? Closer than Esperanto. Two million people speak Esperanto today. That is true. Have you been on Learn New? No. It's a website for dedicated to teaching Esperanto. Oh, cool. It's got the tutorials and everything in there. So if you want to learn Esperanto, Chuck is right. There is actually a thriving little community of Esperanto speakers. And there's also two movies that have been shot entirely in Esperanto.

Really? We're going to talk about one. What about feeling Johnny Depp did one of them? No. No. No. Bill Shatner. Oh, yeah. That's right. There is a 1965 movie called Incubus. And the whole thing is filmed entirely in Esperanto. William Shatner speaks Esperanto. Or at least he spoke the lines from that movie. Yeah. No, it rang a bell that I heard he was. Really? He learned it. Yeah. He knows Esperanto. You know, I worked with Shatner. Did I ever tell you that? Did he speak Esperanto to you? No. Like, oh my God, that explains so much. No. I just thought he was having a stroke. He's a nice guy, though. Yeah. He's a little puffy. Sure. But it was for a TV commercial. He was into it. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. Like, he really gave it his

all. I think he would bring everything. He did. I was impressed because sometimes commercial actors would kind of like go through the motions. Well, Chuck, let's talk about it. What's the, what are the benefits of universal language besides war avoidance or anything like that? I would say economically it would be easier to communicate and negotiate contracts and broker deals and trade and stuff like that, wouldn't you? Oh, definitely. I think we need it. We're becoming more and more globalized. We're interacting with one another more and more. You basically can't be in isolated country any longer if you want to stay afloat. It would save time. Plus, also think about science. I mean, why does science use Latin? It's an agreed upon universal

language. What if there was a real universal language that scientists could more easily communicate their ideas with one another, their findings? Well, yeah. And I saw that in one of the articles we read for this, some, some of the old school Russian scientists used to not like to have to publish in German, which I think at the time was what most German and French German and French and then a lot of TS for you, Russian. Yeah. And a lot of students either today have to read these things in a translated form that may not be quite accurate or, you know, not read it at all. And time. Checking on going to number three. Yes. To clear out your, your stopwatch there. Okay. Okay. All right. You ready? Yeah. And go. Go. This one is Chuck's favorite one. He picked

this one. Are we ready? Yeah. Okay. Chuck picked this one. I think it's a good idea to Chuck. What is the third innovation that we need right now? Innovator is what we need. Ladies and gentlemen, Chuck just spun it. Yeah, we need a human. We need another Einstein. We need another Newton. We need another Tesla. Sure. To come along. Just not another Edison. No, that lying rat. Yeah. And Josh, some people might say when it comes to innovators, you're probably thinking in the world of science, which is appropriate. And a Renaissance scientist, maybe where you need to start your search. Sure. Chuck, we found this article about Renaissance scientists and how actually in the United States in the higher educational system that the cards are stacked against any of these

people actually being produced that very much that we have to just basically hope that one comes along. And if it does, it's going to be a total fluke, right? You know, because the idea is that in order to be a true innovator, then you have to be a whole brain scientist. Definitely. And the graduate system that we have today, they said the undergraduate system does a pretty good job of it. Well, yeah. I mean, think about all the different kinds of classes, the core classes. And then, you know, I took biology for no good reason. Yeah. Statistics. I hated stat. Oh, it's awful. But the whole brain thinkers are the ones that have the more well rounded approach. So not only are they are they a brilliant physics mind, but they can understand the human side of

maybe how to apply that. And that's what's missing a lot of times. Right. So Mills and Latino, I think wrote this, this, this opinion piece we found in Forbes, that basically are saying like, yes, yes, undergrad, we have it. It's great. Same generally with high school, middle school, grade school, kids are exposed to all these different fields of study. The problem is it's geared generally toward funneling them one way or another. Yeah. And this becomes most evident when you get to grad school, big time, where if you're a doctoral student and you need money, you better come up with a a an incredibly specific unique and specific idea or field of research that you're going to go into. It's all geared toward that. And like you said, as you,

as you go forward in education, the path gets narrower and narrower till you're literally your pinpoint. Yeah. To where you may be researching one thing for your career. Yeah. And maybe you'll come up with an innovation that way to change the world. But my money is on a whole brain thinker. Well, yeah, or at least somebody who can take all these various fields of research or all this various research data and put it all together. Right. What does it mean? Sure. Because research is just research until you apply it. So Chuck, is there anybody on the horizon? Is there anybody we should be keeping an eye on? Maybe. Who? There's a few. I know some people might say the first answer that comes to mind might be a Stephen Hawking, but did a little

research and while Hawking is no slouch, there are some in the physics community that think Hawking gets a lot of attention because he's generated a lot of attention through his books and maybe through his disability has garnered a lot of attention. So certainly not to knock anything he's done, but within the physics community, I don't know if he's as high on the list as some of these other guys and gals. Okay. Guys and gals. Yeah, I love that. They're so much smarter than I am. I'm calling them guys and gals. These dudes and chicks. Ed Whitton is one of them. Okay. You ever heard of Ed? I have not. No. He is a physicist, specifically a mathematical physicist, and studies at Princeton. He's gotten the MacArthur Genius Grant. He's won the Fields

Medal, which is the highest honor you can get in math. So he's been called the next Isaac Newton, but he works with string theory, which I know you're not a big fan of. I have one word about string theory. What's that? Boo. Yeah. So he's up there. And then there's a guy, a dude named Murray Gelman. Have you heard of him? Sure. Tell us about him. No. Okay. MGM is I like the column. He's a prominent scientist. And once again, he won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1969 for his work with the theory of elementary particles. And he is the one that came up with Quark. The Quark. Yeah. So he's no slouch. No, he's not a slouch. I mean, to predict the existence of a theoretical particle and then have it confirmed. Not bad. You're a pretty smart guy. And then, you know, some people

might say folks like Bill Gates, who he's not a physicist or a mathematician. No, but he has a high emotional intellect, a very high emotional intact intellect, a lot of money, and a true visionary and a guy that likes to spread his money around to good causes nowadays. So I don't know what got in him or if he was always this way and he was just really focused on Microsoft. But I got to tell you, I like this repackaged Bill Gates. Yeah, he's very generous guy, apparently more than half his fortune. He's invested outside of Microsoft. That's fantastic. So if you're talking about an innovator, I mean, you can only really do good if you're if you're trying to help your fellow man, right? Well, yeah, or if it's a happy byproduct of your evil deeds, like Oppenheimer.

Sure. No, that's the reverse of that. Okay. That's what I thought. So Chuck, there's three innovations. You said we could do a lot more. I'm kind of glad we didn't. But I am interested as well. Thank you for turning off the stopwatch. I too am interested to see what our listeners who go to the blogs think too. There's certainly some. I mean, we were talking if we were just on pipe dream time, like a food pill, where you could just drop some water on it or create a meal. Sadly, that was one that we considered talking about. Right? Yeah. And you said it's called a vitamin. Yeah. And I felt kind of stupid. Yeah. So, you know, we're not talking about George Jetson type of stuff. I mean, real attainable things like teleportation. Sure. Yeah. It's right there.

Right there. It's faxing people. So who all speak the same language? Esperanto. And Chuck, I guess it's time for listener mail, right? Indeed. Yes, Josh, we're going to call this a walk around the world listener mail. I have three quickies from different parts of the world. And we're going to read them right now. Okay. We don't actually have to walk though, right? You're in a silly moment. I hate walking. The first one is from Australia. G'day. My name is Nicola, and I'm a student from Melbourne. I am finally sending you an email after months of nonstop listening. I just want to say thank you for putting metric conversions in your more recent shows. I've been confused by your measuring method Imperial, is it called? Also, I must confess,

I love how you guys say Australia. Oh, yeah. Especially how you pronounce it. Would you say it again on the air for me? Chuck, go ahead. Australia. Australia. Thanks a million. And that is from, uh, I won't say your biggest fan because that's what everyone says. I will call myself a committed fanatic. Actually, that sounds way better than fans. Slightly creepy, if you ask me, Nicola. So Nicola, uh, this one is from Luca in Serbia. Luca says, I'm writing about Nicola Tesla. You said that he was Austrian. That is not true. He was an ethnic Serb. Wait a minute. Our last one was, our last listener was Nicola from Australia. And now Luca from Serbia is writing about Nicola Tesla. How about that? This is crazy. It's crazy. So he says,

that is not true. He was an ethnic Serb who was born in today's Croatia, which was part of Austria. So he's not what you would consider today Austrian. Although I'm pretty sure, uh, Luca just said he was born in Austria. So Croatians like to say he was Croatian, but he's a Serb because his father was an Orthodox priest. And Croatians are Catholics. So that is from Luca. And then my final favorite from China. Remember Yao Jian? Uh-uh. No, this is great. I'm just going to read it as it stands here. And we should go ahead and tell Yao. We're not making fun. I love broken English. I think it's adorable. And when people make the effort, it really, you know, gives me a good feeling. There you go, Chuck. Well done with that.

I'm a loyal fan of stuff you should know. You guys always make me laugh. And when there have some weird words that I don't know, I will hear it repeatedly. So I am a hardworking fan of your program. I got an interesting topic. I think why you guys don't talk about the internet censorship and how to skip it. Because in my country, China, people can't access the YouTube. And interestingly, I even can't access your blog. So we're banned in China. I know. I blogged about it. Uh, this is the American life podcast, maybe also illegal, because I can't download it. There has a defense system named Great Wall. Wish you can see it and read it in your program, but don't mock me. It's what he says. And I think what he means

there is, I'm a, you know, apologies for the broken English. Or he meant don't mock it. So that is from Yao Jian. And we appreciate Yao listening and yes, Yao. And thank you for the information. Cause I actually did blog about Tiananmen Square, the anniversary, the 29th anniversary that happened. I couldn't remember which listener told us that we were banned there, but I gotta tell you, that's a point of pride for me. Yeah, that's awesome. And we love folks writing in and giving their best attempt at speaking our weird language. Yeah. Xiao, Chuka, Nicola, thanks to all of you. And I just think it's cool that there's people on the other side of the world that think we're interesting. Yeah, weird. Yeah. Well, if you

want to tell us that we're interesting or correct us about where some guy was born or whatever. Or mock us. Sure. You can send an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Want more how stuff works? Check out our blogs on the howstuffworks.com homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? It's been said that a day of traveling will bring a basket full of learning. Fill your basket to the brim in Mississippi with family friendly experiences like the new Mississippi Aquarium, the recently expanded Hattiesburg Zoo, the Tupelo Buffalo Park & Zoo,

and sports and literary attractions too. Expand your sense of wonder today at visitmississipi.org slash family fun, Mississippi. Wanderers, welcome. In 1968, five black girls were picked up by police after running away from a reform school in Mount Megs, Alabama. I'm writer and reporter Josie Deffie Rice. And in a new podcast, I investigate the abuse that thousands of black children suffered at the Alabama Industrial School for Negro children and how those five girls changed everything. Listen to unreformed on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.