How SETI Works

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.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from house Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is stuff you should

(00:22):
know the podcast. Don't get it confused? What is that?
What was that? That was my burgess? Meredith? Okay, thank you,
that's pretty good. Thanks. It's a good burgess, Meredith, Chuck,
you're in the mood for alien talk. Sure, this is

(00:47):
the second time we've done something like this almost a
year later. Yeah, right at it? We did? Uh how
UFOs work live in Austin? Yeah, last March? So yeah,
I guess once a year we do aliens aliens? Yeah? Um,
but hey, before we get started, may I take a second. Yeah.
I wanted to say special high to my wife Umi, right,

(01:12):
who made me the happiest guy in February. Yeah, I
could just call her on February when we got married. Indeed,
are you just gonna no, that's all I was just
wanting every I wanted to share my happiness with everybody
out there. Thank you very much. So let's get back

(01:33):
to aliens. Okay, okay, So we are doing this in
honor of are We Alone? Month on Science Channel? Right,
So the month of March is are We Alone? Month?
And Science Channel every Tuesday, I believe at ten it's
having a premiere of um some new show that has
something to do with the search for extraterrestrial life. Yeah,

(01:56):
it's gonna be very cool. And I mean there's some
like all those are going to be awesome, but there's
some that are clearly going to be really awesome, like
Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman. I mean that in
the context of an are We Alone Month, it's big news. Also,
um uh the Alien Encounters with Nick Sagan got to

(02:18):
be related to Carl Carl Pilkington. Yes uh. And then
if you're in the mood for a contest, what would
a month be without one? There is a steady live
contest where the prize is to go visit Sad no Way,
go to the California to the Institute. Yes, pretty sweet. Yes,
So this is all going on on Science Channel all

(02:40):
month long, and if you want more details, watch Science Channel. Pal. Yeah,
we're hit him up on Facebook. I bet they have
info there and in honor of this month is very
special month. We are doing how steady Works, which is
an acronym study if you don't know, for to search
for extraterrestrial intelligence. Yes, and a joke before we did this.

(03:01):
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 let me give you an example of something.
Have you heard of the wild signal? Yeah, we talked
about this before we did WIN. I think it might
have been one of the webcasts. It definitely rang a

(03:21):
bell that had your stank on it. No, we talked
about them, you submity Sam signal. But I think we
talked about a couple of years ago. Okay, well, old webcast.
Let me tell you again. Let me refresh your memory
because you clearly don't remember. August fifty seven, a guy
who's now known as Dr Jerry or Aman e h

(03:43):
m A N. I keep wanting to call him ermine
he uh. He was manning the Big Year Radio telescope
at Ohio State University UM and was analyzing some data
from it and so basically saw this is what it
looks like it's a it's a bunch of numbers and letters.
It looks like the matrix scroll very much so, yes, um.

(04:06):
But what that is is a burst of radio activity
transmitted on the one four, two oh point four or
five six mega hurts frequency for seventy two seconds W
A L N right right um. And it was basically

(04:26):
the closest thing we've ever gotten to hard evidence of
a radio transmission from an alien civilization. It meant like
all of the criteria that SETI follows, which will talk
about later um for um radio transmissions from intelligent life.
Right Um. The problem is is after searching for it

(04:47):
for like fifty times, specifically, it's never been found again.
And the reason it's called the wow Um transmission is
because Jerry aman Um circled it and wrote wow with
an exclamation one and that's that's why it's called that.
So although since that time, nothing else has come up
in that same area and we haven't had anything even

(05:10):
remotely close to it, set still continues, right yeah. And
SETI is both a a movement and a group of people.
It's an institute. Yeah. Well, there's the SETI Institute, and
there's just independent set operations. Yeah, I mean you can
use steady as a with it being down because it

(05:33):
is a search. Yeah, yeah, you're right, just a funky nown.
But let's talk about it, Chuck, Let's talk about Set,
the challenges that has. Well, first of all, if you've
seen the movie Contact I have, apparently it's not too inaccurate.
From the writer of this article who was Freud and Lake,
wasn't it, He said that that movie, if you want

(05:55):
to watch that one, is fairly accurate and on track. Well,
it was based on a book written by Carlson Slegan
and he definitely knew his stuff. He was like, the
Sagan Institute is one of the parts of Set Institute
very nice or the Second Research Center, I think. So
go ahead, and you're saying, oh, well, so let's talk

(06:15):
a little bit about the origin of it. Um. Set
came about in a time when there was a large
intellectual push towards searching for alien life. A lot of
very very smart people suddenly started postulating that there's probably
other people out there. There's gotta be two guys Um.

(06:36):
Philip Morrison and Giseppe Cony wrote I wrote wrote a
paper in Nature, and they basically said, look, if we look,
we may very well not find anything. But if we
don't look, we're definitely not going to find anything. And

(06:56):
that came at a time when a guy named Frank Drake,
an astrophysicist, UH, an astronomer, was um trying to start
his own search, and he eventually founded CET I think
in nineteen sixty founded the CET Institute or just set seat.
He well, he conducted the first set search. Yeah, Frank

(07:18):
Drake did, and it was based on something called the
Drake equation, which I find this utterly fascinating and refreshingly
understandable as far as like theoretical math equations go. Yeah,
and and is the number of civilizations in the Milky
Way whose electromagnetic emissions are detectable. So n equals are

(07:40):
times FP times in A, times f L 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 ten to four
to a year. Yea stars suitable for development of intelligent life.
That narrows it down. Um, then there's the fraction of
those stars with planets that be Then there's the average

(08:02):
number of those planets that are Earth type, meaning suitable
for life as we understand it, that's about of the
fift of stars with planets, so we're starting to whittle
down pretty quickly. Um. And then there's the fraction of
those planets where life develops that's estimated at and as

(08:22):
much as a And then there's the fraction of life
that develops intelligence. So it's not just enough to be
in a me, but you have to be an amba
capable of creating a radio. UM. That's pretty low as well,
UM about ten percent UM. And then another ten percent
is the fraction of planets where intelligent life develops technologies

(08:45):
such as radio. Yeah, so you've got life and then
l intelligent life, and then technology, 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,

(09:09):
well plus it's it's as little as one or billions
because it you know, those are it depends on what
value put in there, and everyone's gonna put in different values.
So the Drake equation is gonna have a wide swath. Yes,
that makes sense. Um. So you've got this. This is
the framework different the Drake Equation created by Frank Drake
for the founder of CT. This is the framework that

(09:33):
CD 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, um,
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 CT

(09:55):
that they face just as a concept and an organization,
and they are, um, yeah, you have a really big
sky out there, right, you have a lot of frequencies
that could that we have a lot of radio frequencies,
and um, you have a limited amount of telescopes, not

(10:16):
much equipment. No, because it's very expensive. And while CET
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's only like one percent
of their budget. Even still that was like the most
money city has ever had. But they're they're pretty well funded,
the Seti Institute is so as far as private funding goes,

(10:38):
they're doing okay, yeah, I mean they're nonprofit obviously, so
they're not getting rich, you know what I mean. Now
they're they're kind of hurting right now. They all thought
they were doing all right. No, they they also receive
federal funds and that's all but dried up right now
because of the economic downturn. Yea, he slippers to go,
isn't it all right? So you propose the three problems.

(10:59):
UM here 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 uh you know, a low resolution
over a long period I'm sorry, short period of time
over a wide area could get you some nibbles if

(11:22):
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 sunlike
stars like. They basically factor in more of Drake's equation
in this one. Say, let's look at places where we
might find uh, you know, target these things where we

(11:45):
might find E. T. S. UM. And they do both
of those depending They have various projects going on ongoing
UM and some are targeted, some are wide field search. Um,
so they're kind of bring their bases as much as possible. Um.
The next challenge was you know what frequency to listen

(12:06):
for to listen to you know, like it's not a
radio no, but even with a radio, 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 eight point five all the way

(12:27):
to one or seven point five. They're billions from alternative
to country exactly. Um, there are billions of radio frequencies
and they um, I mean, which one are you gonna
listen to? You? You can listen to them all, but
again you're cycling through them. Uh, you're not able to
spend a lot of time as much like the same
dilemma with the sky you have with the radio frequencies.

(12:50):
Plus you're full of noise. Yep, that's another problem occurring
stuff right. Um. But there is a window in the
radio frequency. It's called the water hole, which is pretty cool. Um.
It's a natural place in the radio frequency spectrum UM.
And by the way, radio is their light waves. It's

(13:11):
a type of of light wave UM, but they're very specific.
They exist on a specific frequency. But UM. In this
the spectrum, the band, there's this thing called the water
hole UM which goes from the one to tend giga
hurts range and it has very little UM natural background noise,

(13:32):
like very few things you know broadcast in this frequency.
And the reason being UM, they these frequencies are caused
by hydrogen atoms and hydroxyl ions, both of which are
constituents 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

(13:55):
so profoundly unique in the radio spectrum that if you
had any kind of aware irness of the radio spectrum,
you would stumble upon this, and that you would intentionally
broadcast in a low noise frequency exactly because you want
to be heard. Yeah, I mean, anybody who broadcast on
the radio wants to be heard, right UM. And then
the other reason they think that alien civilizations would know

(14:16):
about it is because water with which it's associated UM
is considered a an essential to life and therefore universal
among intelligent life. It's not geocentric. The concept of water
is so aliens would be familiar with water and would
thus be familiar with the water hole in the frequency
spectrum as well, So that this is probably where they're

(14:38):
putting most of their research or their effort into this
waterhole band of frequencies. Yeah, I mean they search all over,
but pretty much all CET operations will search the water
hole as part of their problem, as part of their ops.
Then there's magical frequencies to like Basically, they're saying, like,
where on this band of billions of frequencies is there's

(15:00):
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 they're universal constant. 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. That's a magical frequency. I wonder if they've

(15:21):
searched pie the Pie station. So so far we've got
to we've got two of the big problems tackled. Yes, generally,
the 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

(15:43):
they said, you know, there's a few ways we can
handle this. We can UH conduct limited runs on ones
that are already out there, basically rent space from other dudes. UH.
We can conduct analysis of data are 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

(16:04):
just work from that. Or we can build set dedicated
radio telescopes, which is clearly the least popular because it's
so expensive and it's the most popular but least feasible. Yeah,
and like the UM, like the projects that they have
ongoing for wide target search UM or wide field search

(16:26):
or targeted search. They have different projects dedicated different types
of radio use, like UM Project Phoenix. UH rents time at.
Some of the better radio telescopes around the world Australia
are Cebo YEA in Puerto Rico, U the one in
West Virginia. Green Bank, West Virginia has a huge radio

(16:47):
telescope and that's where the first city conference was held
at ten sixty I believe yeah. Um. And then there's
the serendip project, which piggybacks cracks me up for some reason.
Why erendipp I don't know, just because it's short for serendipity.
It sounds like your friend Adam that shortens everything, Like

(17:07):
he would say, yeah, we met up. It was a
bit of serendip he would say that, total serendipd um. Yeah.
So they piggyback by basically saying like hey, like you said,
let me see your dad. I once you're done with it,
we want to go over it too. Yeah, And like,
hey man, it's like the hippie rob version exact of
astronomy Boy. He had made an appearance in a while,

(17:29):
he just did. I didn't expect him to pop up
in steady if he didn't pop up in magic Mushrooms,
you know. Uh So Project serendip like you said, it
takes um takes advantage of a lot of telescope time,
but they don't have the control to say, hey, pointed
over there, so they have a lot of hours, but

(17:49):
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. Study figured
out something rather than making a huge you're paying for
a huge radio telescope. Um, they figured out that they
can take a bunch of backyard satellite dishes, which I'm

(18:10):
sure are really easy to come by these days. Um,
you know the kind like from the eighties. Put a
bunch of those together there, like eight ft wide. You
put a bunch of those together and connect their signals
using a process called interferometry. Nice, thank you, dud, well
done first try and uh, you can basically simulate a huge,

(18:33):
large telescope for a fraction of the cost. Yeah, it's
like linking a network of computers, which, um is actually
something also being done. We might as well get into
that the set at Symbol at Home project and uh,
that's actually the SETI Institute, isn't it. So they decided that, hey,
instead of building a couple of supercomputers to analyze this data,

(18:56):
because that's one of the big problems is there's so
much data. It's not like you can just plug it
into your laptop. But you can plug a tiny chunk
into a laptop and network a bunch of laptops together
to do the power of the supercomputers and that is
what they've done and you can participate. Yeah, it's pretty ingenious. UM.
And there's there's other things that I think Setting at
Home started it. And now there's things like folding at home,

(19:19):
which you simulate protein folding for cancer research, the same
thing UM. 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 screen saver UM, but
it's also a program. And while it's running, it's it
downloads a chunk of UM data from the air CBO

(19:40):
radio telescope 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 ten to
twenty hours for the normal UM computer to process it.
But like you said, if it's if you have thousands
of computers doing this, you have a thousand times the
processing power all of a sudden, for pretty cool. Uh.

(20:01):
And while your computers analyzing it, it's making notes of
all this stuff using statis algorithms, and then it uploads
the results to city and then downloads another chunk for analysis.
And that this is a very popular thing. To do
for star gazers, for stargazing nerds of the world. There
was a guy I remember who was in Arizona, I think,

(20:24):
and he uh was fired from his job as like
the I T head for the Department of Education in
this one community. Um, because he 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. Um. Well,

(20:46):
he was made a mockery of by the local news
like that. He was fired because of his search for aliens. Yeah,
it was pretty bad. But yeah, some poor guy got
fired for that. So the at home got him fired.
I bet he got a job with CT or something,
though I don't bet that, you don't think so they

(21:08):
said sorry, thanks anyway pretty much. Um well, you talked
about building your own and 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, is it who donated all
of the money for it. Well that is still underway.

(21:29):
Um as far as its construction. I think they they
were down for a little while because of a lack
of funding, and it's a twenty six million dollar deal.
But I think as of h two thousand eleven they
were up and running again and part of it is
complete to the extent I think where they can use
it for for things, right, but they're still not finished
with them. No, they're not. They have enough money to

(21:51):
construct it, but they didn't have enough money to run it,
so they have like a skeleton crew on it right now.
But it is operational. I think it is. UM. They're
hoping that they're they're going to be able to fund
it by um releasing some time on it to the
Air Force who was interested in using it. They should
try a bake sale. I don't know, you know, you know,
it'll be a great day when schools have all the

(22:14):
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
stick or something. That's we could shorten it, but yeah, agreed, Uh,
should we mention the Fermi paradox. Yeah, it's as good
a time as any. I mean. One of the things
that happens to set is that they're constantly pummeled by critics,

(22:38):
and a lot of them cite the Fermi paradox too. Well,
here's what Seti Institute says, because I dug into their
f a Q a little bit on one of the
questions is why do we think that there might be
life out there? Quote and Setti said, you should keep
in mind that we are one planet around a very
ordinary star, and they're roughly four d billion other stars

(23:00):
and nearly one billion other galaxies, and they think it
would be extraordinary if we were the only thinking beings
in all these enormous realms. Fare Me Enrico fare Me
said that, uh, 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,

(23:22):
and the universe is thirteen 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, interesting, anti Drake. So what happens

(23:46):
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 a strict set
of protocols that start with, you know, the first person
who finds it to the um the you know who
gets told first, what what agencies learn of it? And um,

(24:10):
it's pretty cool. Apparently contact follows the course of it
pretty pretty um accurately. But so its 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 gonna lose your signal. But you can't do

(24:31):
that because you gotta prove that's genuinely coming from there, right. Um,
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. 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.

(24:51):
Right after that, you're starting to shake, Your palms are
sweaty um, and you start to allow extraterrestrial sources like pulsars, quasars,
other things that broadcast radio frequencies. By this time, you
may have tinkled a little bit in your pants. Um,

(25:12):
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 if you're getting this frequency?
Point your little machine that way. What do you see
are here? And if they come back and say yep,
you say, well, it's time to announce it to the world.
Now I gotta get out my book, the SETI Institute,

(25:33):
the Declaration of Principles concerning Activities following the Detection of
Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and SETI Institute says, no one's keeping anything
a secret. No, they wanted disseminated quickly and widely, but
they want you to follow the proper channels. First and all,
the astronomical community gets first DIBs on learning of it.

(25:58):
Then after that you go to the u N. Oh, yeah,
the u N a lot of other international bodies and
you say, hey, guys, we have confirmed extraterrestrial contact. And um,
they say awesome. And the astronomer goes along and says Okay,
we're moving on to the next people. Eventually you get

(26:18):
to the public and the person who discovered it um
is meant to have the honor of announcing it to
the world, according to the protocols. Jodie Foster uh and
CETI 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,

(26:40):
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 be 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

(27:01):
desert of New Mexico, harvesting on water farms, and that's
where we got our microwaves from, exactly. Uh and I
also looked at their f a Q 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 completely passive experiment. They're only looking,
they are not sending. However, we have been sending signals ah,

(27:27):
unintentionally for fifty years or more. Yes, since the thirties,
since we started broadcasting on the radio. Yeah, in television. Uh,
this is the early TV broadcast reached out about to
about one thousand 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

(27:53):
the water hole too, I would think. And the other
reason we don't send out signals is because if the
nearest civilization they said, is a hundred light years away,
it would be two hundred 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
UM we decide through like the u N and other

(28:13):
international bodies, whether or not to respond to a signal.
That's like one of the last steps. Well, they said
that we've sent UM symbolic messages before, like, hey, here's
what our solar system is like. Here the compounds important
for life. Here's the structure of our DNA in the

(28:33):
form of a human. They say, it's symbolic. But I
think they're like, oh, you never know, 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
said it was like the seventies. They're passive as far
as astronomy goes, active as far as lying on their
f a Q go. Now, I think it was Sniking

(28:53):
seventy four was the last time they sent out a message.
There was what the Viking or some I can't remember,
the spaceship we send into orbit or into outer space
that had like um gold records containing all sorts of
information like the world's great information and knowledge on them.
Do you remember that sort of Viking? Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(29:15):
I think it's probably get that wrong though. So what's
in the future for CET right now? Uh, well, the
future with the programs like SETI at Home could get
more people active than that they're interested in their home
future could be good there. They said, they might be

(29:35):
UM sending or looking for light at some point because
it may not come via radio, it may come via light.
Uh 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 study is optical UM astronomy. Yeah,
and of course finishing up things like the Allen telescope

(29:56):
array is important. And then they're study at home. I mean,
if you want to go do that, it's pretty easy
to go download UM folding at home. I've never had
steady at home. You did folding? Uh huh cool? Uh?
And then my computer crash and I was just like,
maybe that crashed it. I don't know. Maybe I could

(30:18):
tell the difference when it was processing UM and that's steady.
So if this kind of piqued your interest, there's plenty
more information out there. UM. You can also check out
sets stuff on Science Channel. UM. During Are We Alone
Month in March, premiers come on I think Tuesdays at

(30:41):
ten starting March six, every Tuesday, like Moonlighting? Um? Was
it was that on Tuesday? I think? So I seem
to remember being drawn to the television on Tuesdays. I
think it was Moonlighting and eighteen nice? Where was it Moonlighting?
In love Boat? That was Loveboat Fantasy Island? Yeah? Yeah,
that's too definitely together, let's see recamping. What else is

(31:02):
at the begame? I'm married? Do you mean? And I
are married? Um? And I guess that's it. If you
want to read set, you can type that word into
the search bar. Howstuffwork dot com s E T I
and that will bring up this very nice article including
cool graphs and screenshots from CETI at home for some reason. Um,

(31:23):
and since I said search bar, I think I said
handy search bar. Even Um, 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. V I T S as it were.

(31:46):
Yes are Austin, Texas south by Southwest Activities. We will
be live podcasting. This is for official badge holders. We
will be live podcasting uh Sunday, March e leventh, at
three thirty at the Driftll Hotel when our favorite places
in the Maximilian Room in the Drisco Hotel and the
Drisco Hotel. And that's did you have brunch there? Yeah?

(32:09):
I actually manage you mean I did before we live
podcasted last time. I just said it. I think I
had a bloody mary. I know you did. That's all
that all I did. You had a sweaty bloody Mary.
We were nervous. Yeah, but this is in the afternoon,
so it will be more acceptable to have You'll have
had five bloody Mary exactly. So that is a live podcast.
And then the following day, Monday, March twelve, from five

(32:31):
to nine fade Irish Pub on Fourth Street to fourteen
West Fourth in Austin, Texas. Uh. This is for the
public at large. Yeah, you don't need to be a
Badge holder. No, 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
and just drive there and show up. Don't pay any cover,

(32:51):
you get in to the Stuff you Should Know variety show.
And in fact, if you're one of the first one
hundred people, we will even give you a drink ticket. Yeah,
at yourself a little drinking. That's a present from Uncle
Josh and Uncle Truck and Uncle Science Channel, uh and
Uncle House 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

(33:14):
for their network and they are super cool and awesome,
supportive creative people, and uh, 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, and we are
putting that thing together in the edit room, and we
are going to be previewing uh clips from said show

(33:38):
like before anyone else gets to see this, saying literally
except for people at Science Channel, you can do so
if you come to put out the 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, um,
and this is the public debut any even a second

(34:01):
of it. Everybody's seen it or just some sweaty weirdo
editors in a man cave that stinks to high heaven.
I can tell you this is it. This is it,
and that's not enough, although it should be. Special appearances
by Mr John Hodgman, comedy set by stand up extraordinary

(34:22):
Eugene Merman, music by Lucy Wayne White Roach who plays
Jerry in the pilot. 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 ban crooks who are awesome,
and uh, we're kind enough to let everyone else use

(34:43):
your gear, which is a big deal. They will all
be rocking and rolling. That's about the squarest thing I've
ever said. And uh yeah, so that's it. Comedy hogg
Us TV show pilot and uh music X one, well done.
It's a big deal. It's a big two days March twelve,

(35:05):
five to nine bade Irish pub to fourteen fourth. And
if you're laying around in your hotel room not wearing
pants or a shirt and it's mark eleventh 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 dose a my podcast. Agreed,
good night, back the listener, Man at long last Um,

(35:28):
all right on the listener mail, Yes, all right, Josh,
I'm gonna call this uh Luca libra slash American wrestling
from Zach uh 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, any of that, we'll cut,

(35:50):
make a little cut and bleed, uh, right around the
hairline after being hit in the head of a chair
or a cage or another hard weapon. You were also
talking about the big companies in America. The w w
E is the biggest right now, with ten as the
second biggest, and Ring of Honor is the third. W
w E and t n A are on big TV networks,

(36:10):
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. Did you know that?
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,

(36:32):
which surprised me for some reason. I think I noticed
that when the Cubs were in the World Series and
he's saying the uh, the national anthem. You know, he's
saying that taking out to the ball games stretch. Yeah,
all those guys, uh, so Zack 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

(36:53):
American wrestling, but not true. He said the chair was
just really popular in the late nineties 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 Q
if the ref was to see that. And he also
said Raymond would get day queened. Oh man, that'd be great. Uh.

(37:15):
And then he said ray Mysterio is out with injury,
but there's a good chance he we'll be back soon.
Did he's still kicking it. That was a heck of
a dispatch from the wrestling world. And dude, I redacted
about half of it. Thanks Zack. That is Zack 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.

(37:39):
I think Zach handled that very well. Sure. Um, 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. Um. You can
tweet to us at s Y s K Podcast. You
can send us a note or a message on Facebook

(38:00):
at facebook dot com. Slash Stuff you Should Know, and
you can email us at Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com.
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join How Stuff Work staff as we
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought

(38:24):
to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
are you