0:00

Here's the situation.

0:07

We're in Rapid City, South Dakota.

0:09

We're in my basement. We're hanging out. You

0:12

have been busting your butt for two days,

0:14

slaving over the computer to finish

0:17

line something really

0:19

awesome. And you finally got it pushed

0:21

over the finish line this morning. It was

0:24

a big deal. A lot of people helped you with it.

0:26

You started talking about this ages ago.

0:29

I couldn't tell you how long you've been talking

0:31

about this video, thinking about this video since

0:33

forever.

0:34

And today you published it. So congratulations.

0:37

Thank you. Brilliant. The

0:39

task you were trying to achieve in this video is

0:41

very simple. You're trying to take two things that

0:44

are incredibly precise and

0:46

small and targeted and

0:48

make them be in the exact same place

0:51

at the exact same time.

0:53

And that just doesn't

0:56

naturally happen.

0:58

And I've watched you when

1:00

I've been in Alabama. I've watched

1:02

you have your friends over and you've got

1:04

elaborate things set up in front of you with

1:06

clocks and levers and machines and cranks

1:09

and steam engine, maybe not those things, but

1:11

it's elaborate. The workshop that I've

1:13

seen you goofing around with and the tweaks

1:15

and everything

1:16

that you've been making for years

1:19

while you finally published the video. So

1:21

you made two bullets hit in midair, dude.

1:24

It was awesome, man. We, it

1:26

was several of us. Been working on it

1:28

for a really, really long time. We're

1:31

very, very excited that it happened.

1:34

Also, I will give you a comment. The

1:36

plan was show up in Rapid City. Got

1:38

about three days. We were going to hang out. We're

1:40

going to do some fishing. We're going to do some stuff, you know,

1:42

record a couple of podcasts. And

1:45

I've stayed up to like 3 a.m. for two

1:47

and a half nights. And I've burned through

1:49

a lot of our time because of the rendering

1:52

problems that we've had.

1:53

And you've been very, very patient. I haven't felt

1:55

like you were pressuring me because I guess,

1:58

number one, you get it. what I'm

2:00

doing. Number two, you

2:03

understand how important this particular video

2:05

was to me. And so

2:07

I would just like to say thank you. First of all,

2:09

forgive me for that.

2:11

No sweat,

2:12

nothing to forgive. Secondly, I appreciate

2:14

your patience with me because it's been

2:16

frustrating for me. And by proxy,

2:18

I know it's probably been frustrating to you but you've done

2:20

a good job of not even showing that.

2:22

Not showing it because I'm not feeling it.

2:25

Great, thank you. So the timing just happened

2:27

to work out that this

2:29

is when it got toward the finish line. Camilla

2:31

and I were working on plans for dinner or whatnot.

2:34

She's like, what's Destin doing? Is he hungry?

2:37

Yeah, he's having rendering problems. He's working

2:39

something out. And he said it'd be about half an hour. And she

2:41

said- So three days? Yes. Matt,

2:45

you have to understand that anytime you say half an hour we

2:47

automatically triple it and then triple that. Yeah,

2:50

I know, I know. So the reason it's

2:52

easy to be patient is one, because I

2:54

do the same job as you just worse.

2:57

Two, it's because, I mean,

2:59

this is as cool, a video has hit the internet

3:01

in forever. It's legitimately a remarkable

3:04

achievement. There's a lot of people I know on

3:06

the internet and root for on the internet. And if they make

3:08

something I know they worked hard on, I'm gonna watch it

3:10

because I care about them. And the video is pretty interesting.

3:13

This is a showstopper. It's

3:16

an amazing achievement. For

3:18

me and my buddies,

3:20

so let me just say

3:22

David Linderman, who's a

3:24

gentleman that goes to church with me,

3:26

is very intelligent individual.

3:29

And we spent a lot of time working on this together.

3:31

He,

3:32

much like you were patient with me in doing this, David

3:35

was patient with me on the mechanical

3:37

side because I started talking about this

3:39

five years ago. No,

3:41

five and a half years ago.

3:43

I've had this idea for a long time. The technology

3:45

involved in doing this is something

3:48

that

3:48

I did in the early to mid 2000s on

3:50

something else I did.

3:52

It's been in my head for a while, but five and

3:54

a half years ago, I realized, oh,

3:56

I know how to do it. Like I know

3:58

how to do it. You know, you're like going to bed. and you

4:00

just kinda like, you're falling asleep and

4:02

you're like, oh wow. And then your mind just, everything

4:05

clicks into place and you get the perfect four lines in

4:08

Tetris and whatever the thing is. Yeah,

4:11

so that happened. And I was like,

4:14

whoa, not only can this happen, it will

4:16

happen.

4:17

And this is how it will happen. It's

4:19

been a thing I've been slow rolling in the back of my

4:21

mind for years because I wanted it to be done right.

4:24

And so I got several people involved.

4:26

My buddy Ernie, who was in

4:28

the Navy back in the 80s and

4:31

he's really good at circuitry and stuff. Jeremy

4:33

Fielding, dear friend to both of us, who's

4:36

really good at mechanical design. He designed a critical

4:39

element of this

4:40

and David.

4:42

And so we all worked together on it

4:44

and it was just a blast, man.

4:47

Or actually it was two blasts. Ah,

4:49

let's see what you did. Anyway, I'm excited

4:51

about it. So thanks for the mental high five

4:54

that you're giving me here. I appreciate that. It's very

4:56

much an us and we thing and it was

4:58

a team effort and George as

5:00

well. We had a very, very tight

5:02

window to get this done. About the size

5:05

of a bullet.

5:05

Well, there's that, just

5:08

the physical things about it. But there's also, when

5:10

you do videos on YouTube,

5:12

it's weird because you have all these

5:14

external pressures that a lot of people don't think about.

5:17

And we had a time commitment that

5:19

we had to, hey, in order for this to work, you

5:21

have to do it within a certain time. And you can't

5:23

afford to make the video sometimes.

5:26

When it's an expensive video to make

5:28

that requires equipment and help and time,

5:31

you can't afford to make it without having a really

5:33

good and committed partner to help make it happen.

5:36

But also they have pressures and times

5:39

of year that things need to happen and deadlines

5:41

for when things need to come out. And so

5:43

I'm sure it looks to an outsider

5:45

like people like you who make awesome

5:48

videos, just do it and you

5:50

just get to it when you get to it. But

5:52

you're not as in control as that. There really

5:54

is a window. And if this project is gonna happen,

5:57

it has to be now and it has to be by this point.

5:59

So the reason I asked you to

6:02

walk in here and turn on mics without really knowing

6:04

what I wanted to talk about was because

6:06

you are in that place where the

6:08

baby is born. You did it. We

6:11

did it. You got it done. A big thing

6:13

that George did, for example, like this is how

6:15

weird it got towards the end.

6:16

We were waiting on weather. So first

6:18

of all, we have to do it in the spring or the summer

6:21

because we have to have light for the high

6:23

speed cameras. We've had the hardware

6:25

for ages and

6:27

we just couldn't do it. We were just waiting

6:29

on the right meteorological conditions.

6:32

And then we wanted to do it early in the month and

6:34

then we got a week of rain. And you're like, okay, well, I can't do it then.

6:37

Then

6:38

five day forecast comes up and it's like, okay,

6:40

it looks like we got a window. And then the

6:42

Met team got it wrong. And so we had one

6:44

day of sunlight

6:46

and the rest was rain that week. And so the following

6:48

week it's like, all right, let's do or die.

6:50

And so we went out every day, David and

6:52

I, and we

6:55

worked on it every single day. We

6:57

filmed a ton of stuff. I was processing

6:59

high speed camera data, which in itself

7:02

takes a long time to do.

7:03

And then I would run back at night to the

7:05

computer and I would start uploading.

7:08

And then George would take all

7:10

of that mountain of data. Imagine five

7:13

cameras running six hours a day.

7:15

You

7:15

have a terabyte of data every day. Yeah, and it occurs

7:18

to me, the third chairman, I know who George is. George

7:20

is our mutual, very good friend, former

7:22

Hollywood producer, comedian,

7:25

storyteller. Just a good,

7:28

honorable man across

7:30

the board.

7:31

There are people you meet who choose the right thing

7:33

every time, even if people aren't watching.

7:36

And he got a great upbringing from his

7:38

parents. His dad was a judge, a federal

7:40

judge, who had a very clear

7:42

sense of integrity in that role and

7:45

pass it along to his kid.

7:47

Just to be clear, George is not just some guy. He

7:49

works with me at Smarter Every Day. He's important

7:52

to both of us. Yeah, absolutely on a personal

7:54

and a professional level. But one thing he does

7:56

is the best idea wins. And

7:59

so it's...

7:59

important to surround yourself with good sounding boards

8:02

that are morally aligned. And it's also

8:04

important to surround yourself with people that will tell

8:06

you no.

8:07

And he's one of those people. And we

8:09

knew each other as friends long before we ever started

8:12

working together. And in fact,

8:14

I met George in a very similar way to how you and I met.

8:16

We saw what each other was doing on the internet

8:18

and we had a conversation and we're like,

8:20

you know what, as an adult, I'm

8:23

going to decide to be your friend. Yeah.

8:27

I have a friend slot currently. Yeah,

8:29

exactly. Hey, that sounds funny, but I

8:32

think it's important to identify

8:34

when you have a friend slot and figure out who

8:36

you want to plug into that. We are nowhere near

8:39

done with the bullet conversation, but I want to pull

8:41

on that thread just a little bit.

8:43

How do you know when you have a friend slot?

8:45

Wow. That's a great

8:47

question. I don't know what's your answer to that.

8:50

Like right now at this

8:52

phase in life, we both have children

8:54

and the fuse is burning and we have a limited amount of

8:56

time left. We're counting summers that we have

8:59

left with certain children. I

9:01

remember walking into my friend's office

9:03

one day.

9:04

He's about 10 years down the road from where

9:06

I'm at.

9:07

It's somewhere between eight and 10 years.

9:09

And I walked in the room, we were going to jump on a call

9:11

together to talk to some people or whatever.

9:13

He's like, yeah, go and shut that door.

9:15

And I shut the door and on the back of his door,

9:17

there was, I don't

9:19

remember if it was a dry erase thing or like

9:21

a big post-it note or something. I was guessing

9:23

the Cindy Crawford Sports Sales sort

9:25

of 1988 bathing suit poster that you were allowed

9:27

to buy at Walmart. No, that's not, that's not what's there.

9:31

But

9:31

it was almost like a vision board

9:33

and he's more mature than I am just in all

9:36

the ways. And it said something like

9:39

all his big projects that are his and

9:41

I'm not going to repeat what they are, but they're honorable

9:43

and they're big, good things

9:45

that make the world better.

9:47

And then this word and

9:49

then it had time and like the key items,

9:51

this word and all this. And then it just said

9:53

kids

9:54

and it said six years.

9:57

And I looked at that.

10:00

And I said, what is this? And we

10:02

were supposed to talk about something else. He goes, oh, that's how many years

10:04

I have left with him under my roof. And

10:07

I said, that's a big deal.

10:09

And I had never thought that way. It

10:11

simultaneously hurt. Yeah.

10:14

And also motivated me to be like, man.

10:17

And so right now, friend

10:19

slots are precious and

10:22

don't really have any. Because

10:25

like you and I were talking the deep water last

10:27

night when we had an option to turn on

10:29

microphones and we decided not to, because we needed to catch

10:32

up on personal things in each other's lives.

10:34

Those friend slots just don't exist at the moment.

10:36

I kind of stole your thunder because you kind of said

10:38

that yesterday. We were talking

10:40

about intentional relationships

10:43

and you were like, I'm going to plug in

10:45

all the time I can with kiddos. And so, I guess

10:47

that's how I know I have an open friend slot.

10:50

How do you know?

10:51

If I've got windshield time and I got nobody to

10:53

call. If you're traveling, couple

10:56

other friends are busy and I'm driving along,

10:58

I'm like, but I have 20 minutes. I

11:01

should use this time. That's so right. What's up with

11:03

somebody? That is so right. What

11:05

a hollow feeling. When you just look at your phone

11:08

and you kind of scroll through your speed dial.

11:10

No, I can't. Now they're busy. They're,

11:12

oh, I guess it's just me. I

11:15

guess I'll just think about

11:17

some things. I wonder if introverts

11:19

feel this as well, or if it's just us, the extroverts

11:21

that feel this way. I'm an introvert. You're

11:24

not an introvert, Matt. Matt,

11:26

you are the least introverted person I know. You're

11:29

the least introverted person. Your face

11:31

is the least introverted person. Your face is the least introverted

11:34

person. I knew it was gonna happen eventually.

11:37

Okay, all right. I'm not as extroverted as

11:39

I maybe once was. I will say that about

11:41

myself. I am able to appreciate

11:44

time by myself more than I used to. But

11:46

I think about those friend slots, those inventory

11:48

slots, what a way to dehumanize my friends,

11:51

but you know what I mean. Yeah, at times

11:53

you got room, and the rhythm can change

11:55

from time to time in terms of just

11:58

who you have a project going

11:58

with or whatever. and some friends kind

12:01

of come and go out of your life a little bit because of circumstances,

12:04

but then some others are just sort of permanent and

12:06

they're on the windshield time dial list

12:08

automatically.

12:09

Yeah, okay, the point is all these people in your life

12:12

are awesome and I respect

12:14

you for giving a mountain of credit to everyone

12:17

else. Were you talking about in the video? Yeah, and

12:19

it's true. You're not just blowing smoke or

12:21

trying to deflect.

12:22

All those people really did contribute hugely.

12:24

I watched it happen.

12:27

This episode of No Dumb Questions is brought to

12:29

you by Raycon, who makes earbuds

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that we both use all the time and like

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a ton and they've been a friend of the show forever.

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Destin, what do you like about Raycons? Raycon,

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they're simple. Stick them in your pocket. It's

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They just do what they're supposed to do. Low

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got one of my daily carry sets

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of Raycons right here. This is the blue one in my

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phone in the Bluetooth list. This is labeled

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blue Raycons because of the color

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and this is what it sounds like when you hold that Raycon

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pill. What? Am

13:09

I supposed to be able to hear that? Would that be helpful? No,

13:12

I couldn't hear it. Let me hold it. Now I'm going

13:14

to hold it louder. Okay.

13:16

I can't hear that, Matt. Well,

13:17

I'm moving it in my hand so my hands, when

13:20

they interact with the plastic case, You're

13:22

so dumb. ... will listen harder. I'm

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listening. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The holding.

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Yeah, that's what I hear. Seriously. The

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14:04

Okay, I a moment ago

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suggested that you were being

14:08

amateurish for not hearing me holding

14:11

the Raycon case and that this was your first time.

14:14

And then you made that glorious,

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beautiful segue. I know, right? I

14:19

mean, I can't ask for better. I think it's why people

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14:26

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What? Yeah, 50%. That's half the price.

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Nope. It doesn't say that. Doesn't say

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Doesn't say that. I mean, sorry. That's

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buyraycon.com slash NDQ. Feel

15:41

like you're not looking closely.

15:45

But

15:45

I want to get to the heart of the matter, which is you

15:48

figured out a way to make two bullets hit each

15:50

other in midair and film the collision. I

15:53

guess my question is, how

15:55

does one do that? So the trick is, so it's all

15:57

a time. I

16:00

mean, the alignment is easy. You

16:02

can accomplish a tremendous amount

16:05

with threaded fasteners and just bolts

16:07

and screws and creating things that can pivot

16:09

and you can adjust it and find ways.

16:11

That's how you do the alignment of the barrels. But the timing

16:13

is the trick, actually. So

16:17

there's this thing that all weapons have. It's

16:19

called lock time. And let's say you have a revolver.

16:22

It's the easiest thing to conceptualize. And

16:24

let's say you... But a revolver,

16:26

just for people who aren't into guns at all, we're talking

16:28

about a handgun. This is what you would

16:30

see a cowboy have in like, you know, tombstones.

16:33

Yeah, it's got the little spinny cylinder right there

16:35

in the middle of the gun. I fire

16:37

five shots, six shots. It's

16:39

the spinny kind. So we usually have a

16:41

hammer. Well, let's just go to why a revolver

16:43

exists. Okay. This is interesting. I

16:46

had a friend named Wally who had an old

16:49

Navy pistol. And so if you think back to the

16:51

Civil War,

16:52

the action was, well, brass cartridge

16:55

technology for bullets had not been developed. So

16:57

the bullet is the part up front that's either copper

17:00

or

17:00

gray lead, right? That's the part of the flies.

17:03

That's the part of the flies. And the brass part

17:05

in the back,

17:06

the yellowish metal part, that's the

17:08

part that contains the powder. And what do

17:10

we call that part? The cartridge. Okay.

17:13

And at the very, very back, you have a primer.

17:15

And the primer is usually a...it's got

17:17

a chemical in it. I

17:19

want to say lead stiphonate. I don't

17:22

know what it is. That sounded like chemistry. That sounded like

17:24

chemistry. I don't know. It's

17:26

some...no, mercury fulminate. I thought it might be sodium

17:28

glutamate. That

17:31

sounded like chemistry. Is

17:33

it mercury? What is it? That's

17:36

also chemistry.

17:37

Anyway, it's a chemical. Okay. So

17:40

you got this chemical in the back in

17:42

this little metal cup. It

17:44

is sensitive to shock

17:46

and friction and heat. And if it hits

17:49

a certain value of all those things,

17:51

it'll explode. It'll detonate.

17:55

Is that detonation what projects

17:57

the bullet, or is that lighting something else on

17:59

you? Yeah, that lights something else. That's,

18:02

it's the thing that lights the gunpowder

18:05

most often. So there's three stages here.

18:07

The initial ignition. Which

18:10

is a detonation. It's a supersonic

18:13

burning. This is important. So

18:15

that's a detonation. Okay.

18:17

The powder burning on the inside of the cartridge

18:20

is a deflagration. That is a subsonic

18:23

burning of the powder.

18:25

Okay. And then that creates a

18:27

supersonic, not all the time, but

18:29

in some cases a supersonic projectile.

18:32

It can, yeah, depending on the design of the barrel,

18:34

the barrel length, the chamber pressure,

18:36

and a lot of stuff. The amount of explosive.

18:38

Yeah, yeah, a lot, a lot of stuff. And

18:40

so

18:41

when we're sitting there thinking about how to do this, we're like, okay, well,

18:43

what we're ultimately trying to do is replicate

18:46

two bullets that hit each other

18:48

in Fredericksburg in December 1862. What

18:52

was going on in Fredericksburg in December of 1862? Is

18:55

it 1862 or 63? I don't remember. Give

18:57

me grace on that. I don't have Wikipedia in front of

18:59

me,

19:00

but the United States civil

19:02

war.

19:03

And so you had

19:06

two sides that were going at each other, and there were

19:08

a lot of people shooting rifles

19:10

at each other really, really fast.

19:13

What's interesting about that

19:14

is somewhere on that battlefield,

19:18

a Yankee

19:19

soldier and a rebel soldier were on two

19:21

sides of

19:23

a field, and they shot at each other.

19:26

And the bullets that they fired traveled

19:29

across the field toward each other,

19:31

and they hit nose to nose somewhere

19:34

on that battlefield. That's a metaphor for

19:36

the civil war. It is.

19:38

It's like when an unstoppable force hits an unstoppable

19:41

force, they hit each other and

19:42

they created a plane,

19:45

an intercept plane

19:47

that happened. And so you have this axial bullet

19:49

flying along its flight axis and another one

19:52

flying in the other direction. And when they hit nose to nose,

19:54

the momentum equation balances

19:57

and they stop. They

19:58

stop each other.

19:59

So I'm to believe that that display

20:02

that I've seen, you know, video

20:04

that you shot, that display

20:07

with the bullet kind of in the other bullet

20:09

is reflective of something where two bullets

20:12

came right at each other, they hit and

20:14

they just dropped to the ground. They nullified

20:17

the momentum of each other equally or close

20:19

to equally. I don't know. And thought

20:21

about that. Well, that's the way people think

20:23

it happened. But here's another interesting thing.

20:26

Some time in the future from 1862, 1863, I'd really

20:28

like to know the answer to that. I've got

20:32

it in the video. Did

20:33

you mind looking that up? Not a problem. Somewhere

20:35

in the future, there was a person,

20:37

they were probably a hobbyist or maybe they were

20:40

a professional archaeologist. They

20:42

were running over that battlefield and

20:44

they were either just

20:45

maybe the field was plowed up for a farmer

20:48

and a person was walking the field

20:50

looking for artifacts and bullets. I

20:53

found arrow heads when I was younger down

20:55

by the Tennessee river, when the farmers would plow the

20:57

fields, that's when you would go walk and look for arrow heads.

20:59

And sometimes you'd find them.

21:01

Was it 1862 or 63? Right at the end of 62. December 1862, which means,

21:03

I mean, early

21:07

part of the Civil War. You look really good either way, because early part

21:09

of the Civil War, though, in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

21:12

So the thought is this person found

21:14

these bullets and they're like, Oh, wow, look at this. And they

21:16

look at it and they're like,

21:17

this is two bullets. If you look here, there's the back

21:20

of a bullet on one side, there's a back of a bullet on the other side, and

21:22

there seems to be a plane where

21:23

they mushroom against each other and they spread

21:26

out. That's incredible.

21:27

Your brain, my brain, instantly

21:30

imagines what that dynamic event was

21:32

like. It plays it out. It says, okay, well,

21:34

there was a person with a rifle on this side and a person

21:37

with a rifle on that side. Both with dreams

21:39

and ambitions and parents.

21:41

They fired at each other and

21:43

those bullets hit

21:46

and the bullet didn't go to where it was trying to

21:48

go. It stopped right there. And so, there's

21:51

another part of your brain that plays out. Wow.

21:53

What happened because those bullets hit and didn't go

21:55

to their intended target? That's interesting. Yeah.

21:58

And to be clear, you've spent a lot of time working.

21:59

working on defensive systems when

22:02

it comes to ballistics, weaponry,

22:04

et cetera, where would you

22:06

rank on a scale of, let's

22:08

say, zero to a hundred

22:11

as a defensive strategy for when

22:13

bullets are being shot at you, just trying

22:15

to shoot the bullets down with another

22:17

bullet before it hits you? You know

22:19

what you just asked me. And

22:22

you know, you

22:23

know there's stuff I haven't told you. Yeah,

22:27

well, I'll never tell you. I got stuff I haven't told

22:29

you before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How about that? I

22:32

kissed this one girl in 10th grade and I did

22:34

not like her anymore after that. Really? Yeah,

22:37

so I got stuff I don't tell you too is the point. I

22:40

got stuff that's classified. It's really interesting.

22:43

That question is really, really interesting because

22:45

when you pull the trigger on a rifle, it

22:48

starts to fly, it's on a ballistic trajectory.

22:51

And so what that means is you have to

22:53

detect

22:55

the launch of the other projectile.

22:58

You have to track it and

23:01

calculate its future trajectory.

23:05

Because bullets don't just go on lines like

23:07

lasers. No, they don't. Not like

23:09

they do in Star Wars. Is it just because of gravity and wind?

23:12

Well, air resistance, yeah,

23:13

drag.

23:14

There's all kinds of other things. Like the fact that

23:16

the bullet is spinning matters because

23:19

the Magnus effect comes into play and the

23:21

bullet will fall in a certain direction.

23:23

There's so much. Bend it like Barrett.

23:26

Yeah, Beckett. Barrett

23:29

was just switching it over to a gun reference. Oh,

23:32

I see, that's good.

23:33

So it's very interesting to think about

23:35

all that. And then let's say you're able to calculate

23:37

where that bullet is at with perfect

23:40

knowledge. And you're able to calculate the last 10

23:42

milliseconds of where that

23:44

bullet is. And if it was a supersonic bullet,

23:46

I just remember speed of sound is about a

23:48

foot per millisecond.

23:50

And that's a really good back of the envelope kind of thing.

23:52

So if you had 10 milliseconds of data, you'd

23:54

have 10 feet

23:56

of flight tracking.

23:58

You would then say, okay, well, I have...

23:59

have a ballistic device on my end.

24:02

I get to choose where I point it and I get to choose

24:05

when I ignite it. A hyper accurate

24:07

late 1850s model muzzle

24:09

loading rifle. Right. Yep. Hyper

24:12

reliable. Exactly.

24:13

So if I was going to track something

24:15

in flight, let's make it easier. Let's

24:18

say it's

24:19

a mortar, a mortar that goes up, up,

24:21

up and then falls down on you and it goes to terminal

24:23

velocity as it's falling.

24:25

So you have to figure out where it is

24:27

and then you have to calculate where it's going

24:29

to be.

24:30

And in that equation, you have to say, well, it

24:33

takes my thing X amount of milliseconds

24:35

to get from here to there

24:37

because it flies at a certain velocity.

24:39

Oh, by the way, that's not a constant velocity. That's

24:42

a decreasing velocity because of drag.

24:44

So I have to say, well, if I point it here, I

24:47

can shoot now.

24:48

But if I wasn't able to get the shot off, I can point over

24:50

here

24:51

and anticipate it being there but I'm not going to slow

24:53

my bullet down. So you have to anticipate all these things. There's

24:55

this fancy pants math thing called a Kalman

24:58

filter.

24:59

And a Kalman filter uses past data

25:02

or data you know about a system to predict what

25:04

you're going to do in the future. This is

25:06

how wars are fought. It's

25:08

also how I catch footballs when they're thrown

25:10

at me. Exactly. I can run this algorithm. Yeah.

25:13

Just there's a certain speed at which

25:15

my on the fly calculations

25:17

can't keep up.

25:18

Too much data too fast and I just can't

25:21

run that. It's why, I don't

25:23

know about now, but it's why

25:25

steadily, I could hit a ball in

25:27

the upper eighties if it didn't have too much movement

25:29

on it, playing baseball.

25:31

And if I knew that a guy was just grooving

25:34

pitches in the low nineties, I faced

25:36

that and I could put a bat on that consistently.

25:38

When that guy moved his

25:41

finger, I was facing a major

25:43

leaguer in this particular batting cage session.

25:46

When he moved his finger a little bit off of the seams

25:48

and put the tiniest bit of cut on that

25:50

low nineties fastball, I hadn't

25:53

seen anything like that before. No chance. That

25:55

exceeded my calculation speed. I

25:57

simply could not make the bat that I

25:59

was. throwing in a sense at

26:02

that position that I was anticipating the ball being

26:04

at,

26:05

it broke my calculator.

26:07

I love the way you said that.

26:09

Because the beautiful thing about swinging a bat

26:11

is you're defining a plane. Mm-hmm.

26:13

And you have a pie-shaped

26:15

piece of space that the

26:17

bat can occupy in the amount of time

26:20

it takes for the baseball to traverse

26:22

the plate. Okay.

26:23

That's a fun thought. I've never thought about

26:25

that, the way you just said that. That's great. Thank you for that.

26:28

Well, it's just one of those things where we all do this thing

26:30

you're describing with mortars and with running this

26:32

Kalman filter. Kalman filter.

26:35

It's just we can only do it at a very basic,

26:38

slow level, and the stuff you're talking

26:40

about grossly exceeds our ability

26:42

to calculate.

26:43

And the idea- Human brains are great at this.

26:46

They are great at this. Great at this. I'm gonna throw this at

26:48

your face right now. Why would you do that? Get that crap

26:50

out of here. I'm gonna knock

26:52

that all the way across the room. No. Then I'm gonna wag my

26:54

finger. Why are you standing over me wagging your finger

26:57

in my face? I mean, you asked for it. You threw

26:59

a thing at me and now it's over there. So

27:01

that's interesting that you were able to calculate that. But- Ring

27:03

that crap in the house. So in this particular

27:05

case, we wanted to figure

27:08

out how to hit a bullet with a bullet. And so what

27:10

do you do? You start systematically eliminating

27:13

every variable.

27:14

We want it to fly in a straight of a line

27:17

as possible.

27:18

An added benefit, if we can create symmetry,

27:21

then the math gets even easier.

27:23

Wait, so if you want to smash a bullet into a bullet

27:25

and you want it to fly into a straight of a line as

27:27

possible, there are two things you can do.

27:29

One, you can shoot the

27:32

bullets harder so that they maintain

27:34

their forward velocity without degradation

27:37

on that flight path longer. Or

27:40

two, you can shoot the bullets slower,

27:42

but move the two firearms closer.

27:45

Yeah, that's a great point. And so we wanted

27:47

it to be in free space. We wanted the bullet intercept

27:50

to be out in the middle of something. So

27:52

I bought an I-beam.

27:54

Okay. It was about 12 feet

27:56

long. Apple makes those? No. Idiot.

27:59

I think technically

28:02

this was called an H beam. I learned there's

28:04

a difference. The idea was, well,

28:06

if I can bolt a gun to one side

28:08

and I can bolt the gun to the other side, then that handles

28:11

all the geometry problems.

28:12

I'm gonna pick one of the guns to be stationary and

28:14

I'm gonna try to move the other one to it to

28:17

align them. Obviously, okay. Yeah, I

28:19

hadn't thought of that. You don't move both

28:21

of them at the same time. You're just like, okay, this is my

28:24

datum and then align that one to this one. Of course. Yeah,

28:26

it's, yeah. And so that's step one,

28:28

eliminate the geometry problem. Step two,

28:31

eliminate the timing issue associated

28:34

with lock time.

28:36

That Yankee had a certain type of rifle

28:38

and

28:39

that Rebel had another kind of rifle

28:41

and

28:42

they had mechanisms. They

28:44

didn't have a primer in a cartridge

28:47

like we do now where you've got that little

28:49

percussion primer, meaning you hit it percussively

28:52

and it explodes.

28:53

They didn't have that in a cartridge.

28:56

What they had is probably a muzzle

28:58

loading rifle. Like the one behind you

29:00

on the wall. That's exactly that error

29:02

rifle, go grab it. Oh yeah, but okay. What

29:04

you have there is Johnny Bannon's rifle. That's

29:07

the one that my grandfather,

29:09

the marksmanship instructor who.

29:10

Really? Taught people how to shoot for years

29:13

and years here at the base, Ellsworth Air Force Base,

29:15

where we're right next to here in South Dakota.

29:18

That is the rifle that he learned to shoot

29:20

on in Bannon's Holler, Iowa.

29:22

Johnny Bannon, for whom Bannon's Holler

29:25

was or is named, showed him how

29:27

to shoot on that and that's

29:29

a Civil War era design. I

29:31

think the rifle itself was manufactured

29:34

just a little bit after the Civil War. It's beautiful.

29:37

What's interesting about it is there's

29:39

no breach.

29:40

Right. Like you don't put the bullet

29:42

in the back. Right. Like

29:45

on an AR-15, you pull the bolt back

29:47

and you put a bullet in there. This

29:50

is like a long pipe

29:51

that's closed on the backside.

29:54

I don't know if the ramrod will come out. Okay,

29:57

let's just don't do it. It's old wood. But describe

29:59

what you were reaching.

29:59

for them. So the ramrod is underneath

30:02

the barrel. And so you pull the ramrod out. And

30:04

so what you do is this is like a pipe

30:06

with only one end open.

30:08

That's the barrel. And so what you do is you

30:10

take your gunpowder in the

30:13

Civil War, they had paper cartridges. And so you have this,

30:15

it looks kind of like a half a cigar.

30:17

And

30:18

so you have a lead

30:20

bullet,

30:21

then you have some paper, and then you have the

30:23

gunpowder all wrapped in one little that

30:25

was a cartridge then. And so

30:28

you take out that cartridge and you take your teeth and

30:30

you bite off the end of the paper.

30:32

And then you point this barrel to the sky. And

30:35

then you pour that gunpowder down the end

30:37

of the barrel.

30:38

And then you take some of that paper,

30:41

and you shove it down in there on top of the powder.

30:43

Okay. And then you can tamp

30:45

that down into the way back here in the

30:47

back of the barrel. And

30:48

do they put the bullet in first before they tamp it with

30:50

the ramrod? Or they do that? My understanding is they

30:53

did. Okay.

30:54

But that's my understanding.

30:57

But sometimes what they did is they put beeswax

30:59

on the bullets too. So you get a good seal in

31:02

the bore of the rifle. I've wondered about that.

31:04

Yeah. What's really cool is, so you got

31:06

this and way back here at the back of the rifle, there's

31:09

this mechanism and I'm going to cock

31:11

it now.

31:12

And then I'm going to pull the trigger. Is this unloaded?

31:15

It is unloaded and has

31:17

been for several generations.

31:20

Also I can tell that there's not an issue here

31:22

because this little part right here, there's a nipple

31:25

on the back

31:26

that is like a little bitty hole that's

31:28

drilled into the base of that powder. And if

31:30

I was about to try to fire this thing, what I would do is I would

31:33

kind of poke a little piece of wire in there to make

31:35

sure I had a clear path to the powder.

31:37

And then I would put a percussion cap

31:39

over that nipple with that mercury fulminate

31:42

or I'm

31:42

wondering if lead stiphonate was the tracer

31:44

stuff. Is it mono sodium glutamate?

31:47

Shut

31:49

up. So by the end of this episode, we have to know what

31:51

the chemical percussion primers are.

31:54

So anyway, you put the little percussion cap on there.

31:56

And then when you pull the trigger, this hammer

31:58

falls and hits that. that nipple like

32:01

so. I'm so glad

32:03

that didn't fire. I would have just

32:05

hated that. That would have been the most embarrassing thing

32:07

ever and I wouldn't have edited it out. We would have turned this

32:09

into an episode about gun safety. So

32:13

it's really neat. This is a really neat rifle. I've

32:15

never had one. Do you know what type of rifle

32:18

this is? I don't know. It's really

32:20

lightweight compared to rifles like this. I've seen.

32:23

An Enfield rifle. I don't know. It's

32:25

amazing though. It's beautiful.

32:27

That Yankee and that Rebel, when they were firing

32:29

at each other, they each did that. And if you can

32:31

imagine, there's a spring on

32:33

the other side of this hammer, when I cock that

32:35

thing and pull it,

32:36

that spring has to accelerate

32:38

the hammer

32:39

and the hammer has to go fall and

32:42

boom, land

32:44

right there against that percussion

32:46

cap. And that takes time.

32:49

If a bullet travels 10 feet and 10

32:51

milliseconds, and it takes that

32:53

hammer 40 milliseconds to fall

32:56

or 10 milliseconds to fall, whatever it is,

32:59

the amount of time it takes for that hammer to fall is

33:01

important and that's called the lock time. Didn't

33:03

know there was a term for that. Yeah, the lock time. Lock

33:05

time. And then

33:08

the amount of time it takes, once the primer

33:10

is struck and the burning process starts,

33:12

you get the detonation and the deflagration and

33:15

the pressurization of the barrel that starts

33:17

pushing the bullet down. And if you think

33:19

about it, the volume of that burning

33:21

is changing as it moves down the barrel.

33:24

All that is called the bullet dwell time.

33:26

The amount of time that it takes for the

33:29

first spark to happen to when the bullet

33:31

exits the barrel. Okay, so we're active, but we're

33:33

not out of the barrel yet. That's the bullet

33:36

dwell time. Bullet dwell time,

33:38

okay. Yeah, so

33:40

you've got lock time and you've got bullet dwell time.

33:42

Lock time, typically around 10 milliseconds.

33:45

Bullet dwell time, depending on the powder,

33:47

depending on all the things, you're looking

33:49

more like a millisecond and a half.

33:52

So one and a half thousandths

33:54

ph of a second. It's

33:57

super hard to dodge. Yeah, yeah,

33:59

it is.

33:59

being said in our problem,

34:02

if we were to try to shoot a bullet with a bullet

34:04

with revolvers, for example,

34:06

that's difficult because that lock time

34:09

is not predictable because friction,

34:11

and it's different every time. The

34:16

aha moment was, oh wow,

34:18

we can't shoot at the same time. I

34:20

think Adam Savage and Jamie

34:22

at MythBusters, they tried this a while

34:24

back.

34:25

I did not watch the entire episode, but I remember

34:27

a scene of them having

34:29

a pistol and they had some way of pulling

34:31

the trigger. I think it was a string. I

34:34

don't remember exactly how the rest

34:36

of it went down, but Adam's great. Adam

34:38

is great. Adam's an awesome, awesome dude.

34:40

I had a chance to chat with him recently at

34:43

an event and he was very charitable

34:45

with his time. That's

34:46

it. The lock time is the issue.

34:49

It's not repeatable.

34:50

And if you had a way of deleting the lock

34:52

time from all the equations,

34:54

the math problem would simplify. And that's what we did.

34:57

Let's let that question hang there

34:59

for one second. I see the conundrum.

35:01

You've done a great job of explaining it. And

35:04

I'll admit I did not initially see the conundrum.

35:07

We'll just pull the triggers at the same time.

35:09

Clearly you can't just grab it with your hand

35:11

or both hands and be like, all right, ready? One, two,

35:13

three, and time it with your brain.

35:16

You're telling me that even if you could do that in

35:18

a way that was safe and you can't,

35:20

even if you physically pulled both triggers at once,

35:23

the specificity of time we're talking about

35:25

here. Microseconds matter.

35:28

It's not going to be uniform. Even with your brain

35:30

physically controlling your fingers, you

35:32

won't get it quite right. What would be interesting is if you

35:34

took your fingers, like you were just

35:36

trying to pull your, you had two imaginary

35:39

pistols in your hands. You were trying to pull the triggers at the same time

35:41

with a trigger finger.

35:43

What would be interesting is to take your two fingers

35:45

and try to tap them on a table

35:48

at the exact same time. Three, two, one.

35:51

That sounded like the same time. I

35:54

think that's a rhythm question.

35:55

My friend Jeff, who does all the music

35:57

for the daily, the TMB, eight, 10 minute buy.

35:59

on our podcast. He's ridiculous.

36:02

His awareness of tempo

36:04

and his fine muscle control, that's not natural

36:07

what he's able to do. My guess would be that

36:09

if we got out the Phantom and we did

36:11

a synchronization of both hands

36:13

competition between Jeff and

36:15

somebody who's a musical hack,

36:17

Jeff would annihilate them and we would

36:20

see it in super slow motion that

36:22

his taps would indeed be

36:24

synchronized.

36:25

And the other person I think would have trouble sinking up

36:27

their two hands to the same degree. But it's an interesting

36:30

problem, right? Because

36:32

it's a distance thing. Like

36:35

where does the contact between the

36:37

drumstick

36:37

and the drumhead actually happen?

36:39

In the drum problem, that's very

36:42

interesting because that gets into the vibration

36:44

of the drum head itself. It's in different places

36:46

depending on where it is in the amplitude and

36:48

if it's a bass drum versus if it's a snare

36:51

drum, that's interesting. Never thought about that before.

36:53

And even what we were talking about years ago in

36:55

terms of how a snap happens,

36:57

the actual sound of the snap occurs

37:00

after the friction is released, all

37:02

that kinetic energy built up is now free

37:04

to fly becomes, or the potential

37:07

energy that's built up becomes kinetic and

37:09

it's when you hit the fat part of your thumb.

37:12

So I think I can make these snaps match.

37:16

I could actually hear that it wasn't.

37:19

That's not match. Wow, I was like 100 milliseconds off.

37:22

That was pretty close.

37:26

That's very hard. That's

37:28

a great illustration because most firearms

37:31

have a device called a SEER

37:33

mechanism in them. And so what the SEER

37:35

is, SEER,

37:38

SEER. I think, man, you got

37:40

me questioning everything today. Just like on snapping

37:43

your finger, man, it's a great explanation, man. I appreciate

37:45

it. This is helping me. The fact that you don't

37:48

really know when your finger

37:50

is going to break friction with

37:52

your thumb and start accelerating towards

37:55

the fat of your hand,

37:56

the SEER is the same way. You don't really know

37:59

where the SEER is.

37:59

is going to quit, you know, imagine

38:02

trying to slide, like

38:03

you have a pencil and you're moving

38:06

it off a table. When does it actually

38:08

break free of contact and start moving?

38:11

So that matters depending on if there was

38:13

a little piece of dust in the sear

38:15

mechanism between one shot and next

38:17

is, you know,

38:18

the heat is going to change

38:21

the timing because the

38:23

sear, Paul itself or whatever the

38:25

word of it,

38:26

if it's hotter, it's going to be longer because

38:28

of, I mean, there's so many things

38:31

that go into that. And yeah,

38:33

it's fascinating. So you had to figure out a way.

38:36

Okay. Still, the conundrum is set

38:38

up really well. I am super understanding

38:40

that and intuitively without just

38:42

thinking about it, I'd be like, well, how would you do this thing?

38:45

We

38:45

just pull the triggers at the same time.

38:47

Like, I don't know, get some string or something. And then

38:49

just be like one. Okay. Wait, are

38:51

we going to pull it on three or where four

38:53

would be? Oh,

38:56

let's go where four would be. Okay. Ready?

38:59

One, two, three.

39:01

And I would think you could get pretty close with that.

39:04

But I understand as we think about snapping,

39:07

as we think about

39:08

double tapping on the desk, drumming,

39:11

I understand why, no, that's not,

39:13

I mean, at the level of specificity and precision we need,

39:15

that's not good enough. So let's say

39:17

we wanted to put a

39:20

solenoid on those triggers, like a little,

39:22

you

39:22

know, an electromagnetic coil

39:24

that pulls the trigger because our fingers just

39:27

can't be repeatable enough. Sure. Would

39:30

you want it to be like a really strong coil, like something you'd

39:32

plug into the wall or would you want it to be something you'd

39:34

run off batteries?

39:35

I don't know which better achieves this.

39:37

What I would want is something that has a very

39:40

predictable breaking point. You want

39:42

batteries. And the reason you want batteries

39:45

is because the AC power that's

39:47

coming out of that wall right there has a 60

39:49

Hertz cycle.

39:51

There's a sine wave going up and down

39:53

and up and down and up and down.

39:55

And depending on if you trigger it at the top

39:57

of that wave

39:58

or at the nodal point. where

40:00

there's literally no voltage

40:02

or at the bottom of that wave, there's a 16.67 millisecond

40:06

variance. That's way too much. That's way

40:08

too much. That's way too much. That's 16 feet if you're super

40:11

solid.

40:12

And so you can't use AC power.

40:14

That's out the door. You have to use DC power.

40:17

What kind of solid state electronics do you

40:19

want to use? Because we want to get

40:21

things that trigger at the same time, right? Or are

40:23

we going to use solid state or are we going to use

40:25

relays, like clicking relays?

40:28

No, you're going to use solid state electronics, right?

40:30

And so all this stuff matters.

40:33

And the threshold voltages on

40:36

certain pieces of silicon can matter. It

40:38

depends on what you're doing. There's

40:40

things that have to happen. Imagine

40:43

these collisions that they do in these particle

40:45

accelerators.

40:47

Not an exaggeration, like femtoseconds

40:50

matter. I've never even heard that term.

40:52

So my brain thinks in, because

40:55

of working with timing of stuff like this,

40:58

for weapons and stuff,

41:00

I have a fundamental unit of time

41:03

in my head and it's not seconds.

41:05

It's not minutes. It's not hours. It's milliseconds.

41:09

And I even think in microseconds

41:11

as well. I don't think in microseconds. You understand

41:13

what I'm trying to say, right? I think in 129 point something,

41:19

what a second. Do you know why?

41:21

Brain rate of a camera. That's exactly it. Yeah. Yeah.

41:23

I

41:23

used to think in seconds.

41:26

Now I think in roughly one 30th of

41:28

a second for how I want to, what I control,

41:30

what I do. For example, if

41:33

your bit rate, it's okay. People don't know what

41:35

this means, but it's just the bit rate in which your audio

41:37

was encoded on your camera,

41:39

which has your just clumsy camera microphone

41:42

on it. It's not going to sound good, but it's just giving you a comparable

41:44

audio. And you record, say

41:46

on the equipment we're recording on right now, these

41:49

road microphones. These will do up to like 192, won't they? 192

41:51

kilohertz? Is that right? 350. Yes,

41:56

at least. More than that? Yeah. But

41:58

if the bit rate... is just slightly

42:01

different, then what happens is you get audio

42:03

drift over the course of syncing the audio

42:05

to the video. So your audio source is separate.

42:08

You put them together, it sounds fine at first,

42:10

but you'll notice an hour into a file, oh,

42:12

this sounds terrible. You actually

42:15

go in when it sounds wrong to your

42:17

ear,

42:18

and you go all the way down to a single frame

42:20

view, your tightest view in a

42:22

sequence, an editing window, you know

42:24

this. The actual issue

42:27

is 1 30th of a frame, 1 30th

42:30

of a second is the issue that you're

42:33

actually contending with. It just makes the audio

42:35

insufferably echoey.

42:37

You can hear it. Your brain knows

42:39

it's not synced at eight milliseconds

42:42

is the point. It makes you angry. Yeah. It

42:45

makes you angry. It does make me angry. There's a video I

42:47

have on the channel right now that I know it was

42:49

wrong and it bothers me and I want

42:51

to be able to fix it, but I can't.

42:53

Oh. All these things add

42:55

up and they matter.

43:01

Yeah. So this percussion primer becomes

43:04

the issue.

43:05

It's the striking of the percussion primer

43:07

that's the issue because it even gets more interesting

43:09

there. Like if we were able to do it with percussion

43:11

primers,

43:12

the threshold of mechanical

43:15

deformation required to trigger

43:17

the chemical would matter.

43:19

Meaning the moment the hammer

43:21

starts to hit the percussion primer, it

43:23

has to crush it and move it into

43:26

the chemical in order to create the friction required.

43:28

And it might deform at a different rate than the opposite cartridge.

43:31

Yes, depending on the day it was formed,

43:33

depending on the alloy of brass.

43:36

How much air? That was in the mixture in

43:38

the pour. The stoichiometry.

43:40

Wow. On the day that it was made. All

43:42

that stuff matters.

43:43

It's super cool. And so anyway,

43:45

you got to think about all kinds of things you don't normally

43:48

think about. And then you start going through and you

43:50

do a time budget and you're like, okay, well this,

43:52

there's my tolerance stack up. Okay, there,

43:54

I could be off by five microseconds right

43:57

there. I could be off by whatever.

43:58

My spring might not be.

43:59

repeatable, you know, all these different things. And so the

44:02

answer, the obvious answer

44:04

is get rid of all of the mechanical mechanisms

44:07

that trigger that percussion primer.

44:09

There's a thing that's used now all

44:11

the time in the Olympics.

44:13

You mean human growth hormone? No.

44:17

Oh, no, sorry.

44:19

Marksmanship in the Olympics often

44:21

comes down to a shooter's ability to

44:23

predict this lock time, because if you think about

44:26

holding a firearm, this gets

44:28

even more interesting.

44:29

A human holding a firearm, when you pull the

44:31

trigger

44:32

to every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.

44:35

So the fact that you're moving a physical

44:38

hammer into a firing pin

44:40

means that the gun itself has

44:42

to move in response to that.

44:44

Yes. So the heavier the gun, the

44:47

lower the distance it will move in

44:49

response to the acceleration

44:51

of the hammer itself. Yes, I've seen TikTok

44:53

videos of

44:55

dudes handing their girlfriends a shotgun

44:57

and they don't shoulder it. They're holding it

44:59

like above their shoulder. And I'm thinking,

45:02

oh, you're just not familiar with this

45:04

principle yet. That gun has to go backwards

45:06

after you pull that trigger. I'm talking about

45:08

even before you pull the trigger.

45:10

Look at this rifle right here.

45:12

I'm holding it. When I pull the

45:14

trigger. You're talking

45:16

about the action of the trigger. This hammer,

45:19

this hammer is moving forward.

45:21

And the trigger pull is moving backwards. What is, well,

45:24

there's that. What has to happen?

45:26

There's a momentum thing that has to. Yes.

45:29

So the gun has to physically move

45:31

backwards or at least push backwards. Yeah,

45:34

you can restrict that with resistance, I

45:36

would assume. I mean, I assume you could nullify that.

45:38

Yes, yes, you can if you, if you have something rigid

45:41

enough. So that's important, right? Yeah. But in

45:43

the Olympics,

45:44

can you do that?

45:45

No, you have to hold the gun. Sure.

45:47

What do you do?

45:49

So that lock time and the movement

45:51

of the gun while you're pulling the

45:53

trigger, both because you're using muscles at

45:55

the trigger place. And because the hammer's

45:57

moving and stuff like that. Like

45:59

you just got to think. all the way down to the nit

46:01

noi details,

46:02

that's going to affect where you shoot. And so a good

46:04

shooter would be able to predict that and

46:07

be able to compensate for that. Here's

46:09

another one.

46:10

The rifling direction inside

46:13

the barrel matters. I

46:15

figured it all went the same way. Yeah, it does.

46:18

But if that's left or right, if I take a gun

46:20

and I point it down range and I pull the trigger,

46:22

I want a certain twist direction

46:25

on my rifling if I'm a right-handed shooter versus

46:27

if I'm a left-handed shooter. Really? Yes, because

46:30

you're taking the bullet

46:31

and you're spinning it up. Of course.

46:34

You don't get that force for free. You're

46:37

imparting the counter torque into the

46:39

gun. So when you're shooting,

46:41

does the gun come straight back?

46:43

No. Where does it

46:45

go? No, yeah, it pushes out

46:47

to the side of my shoulder.

46:49

Yeah, well- Away from my shoulder and body, just

46:52

a small amount. So you're holding the pistol out and you pull the trigger,

46:54

it doesn't come straight back in plane, it goes

46:56

a little bit to the side. That's why it looks

46:58

so unnatural in the original Star

47:01

Wars when Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill

47:03

and Harrison Ford are firing those

47:06

prop blasters.

47:07

Carrie Fisher is just

47:09

like a child. And

47:12

it doesn't go anywhere that makes sense. And

47:14

it betrays the special effect

47:17

because the performance is great. I

47:19

mean, it's a charming movie. I'm not gonna criticize Carrie

47:21

Fisher. The performance there takes

47:23

away the believability. It wrecks the suspension

47:25

of disbelief because well, one, that

47:28

gun just wouldn't kick

47:29

because of what it's shooting. But two,

47:31

it definitely wouldn't kick like that. And so it just

47:34

looks unnatural and weird.

47:35

But you see somebody shooting an actual gun. You got me

47:38

thinking now, I think a laser pistol would kick.

47:40

At least it did a men in black. Why would it kick?

47:43

Is it force? It's light.

47:46

Is it force? It's light. I'm

47:48

just asking the question. Okay, yes. Yeah.

47:51

But how much force would it

47:53

take for light to cause your

47:56

firearm to kick? It's not even a firearm. Your light

47:58

arm to kick. I don't know.

47:59

I've seen a little device called a radiometer.

48:03

No. I'm gonna ship you a radiometer.

48:05

Thanks.

48:06

So it's a little globe with a vacuum

48:08

in it and a little needle pointing straight up and

48:10

a little, it looks like a windmill. My needle

48:12

always points straight up. That's a little windmill

48:15

and you've got- And that wasn't dirty.

48:17

Black paint on- I mean optimism. Black paint

48:19

on one side and white paint on the other. Okay. One

48:22

side of the little windmill will absorb light

48:24

and the other side will repel light and it'll spin

48:27

just from light, light pressure.

48:29

This is a thing. Like light sails are

48:32

a thing. Spacecraft have to account for- Yeah,

48:35

you're right. Solar pressure. You're right, you're right.

48:37

But is that enough to make it kick? I don't know.

48:39

I don't know. You've taken me to a really fun, I

48:41

don't know the answer to that, but it's fun to think about. I

48:43

don't, hmm.

48:45

I mean, it's held out in Star Wars as being a killing

48:48

blow. It's enough

48:50

shot. It knocks you down. And they're bolts

48:52

of light, which is interesting. When you get hit with the

48:54

red beam from a, oh wait, the

48:57

stormtroopers don't ever hit anybody. No, there's absolutely

48:59

nothing. No, there's explosions in the background

49:01

and so forth. Meaningless rabbit trail. No, it's absolutely

49:03

not happening. So my point is the

49:05

rifling in a gun, you don't

49:08

get that torque for free, it goes somewhere. So what

49:10

would happen to you if I were to put a pistol

49:12

in your hand with a left hand twist in the rifle rifling?

49:15

So the beautiful thing about how

49:17

a pistol kicks, everybody hold out

49:19

your imaginary finger pistol. Unless

49:21

you're in line at like

49:24

a Starbucks. Yeah, don't do that. Don't

49:26

do that. Maybe you're going

49:28

through customs or immigration

49:30

right now. Don't do it. So it's

49:33

a mental finger pistol. Pull

49:35

the trigger and then

49:36

let the recoil happen. And

49:38

if you think about where the muscles are in

49:40

your forearm, if it goes back

49:43

towards the side, it cannot

49:45

come straight back. It can't come. It does

49:47

not work. I got a tennis elbow again,

49:49

just from simulating it. Thanks a lot, you jack.

49:51

But if you come back to the side, boom, boom, boom. Now

49:54

what happens if I put a left-handed twist, I don't

49:56

know if it's left or right, but what if it happens if I put the opposite

49:58

rifling

49:59

to be a little different. Wow. I've never

50:02

experienced this, but a person that

50:04

used to shoot matched

50:07

pistols,

50:08

he told me this matters. I thought it was

50:10

interesting. It wouldn't hurt. Here's what you would do.

50:13

You would compensate improperly, and

50:15

your wrist would

50:16

think about it. Yeah. You would

50:18

just spin,

50:18

take your thumb,

50:20

and point it straight up in the air like you're shaking

50:22

a hand. If you fired a gun

50:24

that was rifled the wrong way,

50:26

just twist that thumb straight down. Yeah.

50:29

At the ground. Yeah. That's what it would

50:32

do.

50:32

That doesn't hurt. No, it doesn't hurt. I mean, that's where

50:34

the energy would go, but it doesn't feel like good technique for

50:36

shooting with accuracy. What shooters

50:38

do to take all this stuff

50:40

into account is, and

50:43

the rifling thing comes back and to get back

50:45

on target, right?

50:46

What Olympic shooters do is they use electric

50:49

primers in the gun.

50:51

Olympic shooters use electric primers in their

50:53

pistols. And so

50:54

the Olympic pistol shooting stuff, it's

50:57

more like Star Wars type technology.

50:59

You know, you're using a bat, there's a battery in the gun

51:01

that fires the bullet.

51:04

What you can do is you can get rid of all the mechanics and

51:06

the lock time, but you still have other things to worry about.

51:08

Whatever element is that

51:11

makes the primer element fire,

51:14

you have to put some current in there and that creates

51:17

an explosion. So that has to be very repeatable.

51:20

But the good news is if

51:22

the bullet dwell time is normally one

51:24

and a half millisecond,

51:26

and the lock time is normally eight and a half milliseconds,

51:29

you just eliminated a lot of uncertainty.

51:31

And we're getting down to the place where

51:34

we can kind of predict within

51:36

inches where that bullet's gonna

51:38

be, you know, a few feet from the barrel. It's

51:41

cool, right? So pointing

51:43

the barrels at each other, that's not

51:45

that hard. Easy, yeah, that's just turning

51:47

bolts, yeah. Right, you could

51:49

solve for this problem another way. You could get

51:52

more high-speed cameras and line

51:54

them up so that they are covering a larger

51:56

area of potential impact.

51:59

You could... bread out your firearms

52:01

and you could afford to be more

52:04

sloppy with the dwell time

52:06

and the lock time

52:07

because you simply have more coverage

52:10

downrange coming at each other. Now,

52:12

instead of covering a 16 inch area,

52:15

you're covering 40 feet.

52:17

But even that's just a matter then of just finding

52:19

the right

52:21

intercept point, intercept point, even that

52:23

wouldn't work

52:24

because

52:25

as you pointed out earlier, bullets drop.

52:28

Let's say in your head, you've got a gun on your

52:30

left and the gun on the right and they're intercepting right in front of your nose.

52:33

If the one on the left fires first,

52:35

it's going to come out and it's going to start dropping more.

52:38

If the gun on your left fires first, the intercept is going

52:40

to happen to your right a little bit right of your nose

52:43

and that bullet is going to be lower because

52:45

the bullet on your right is coming out,

52:48

it's going to be higher and so you're going to have an off axis

52:50

intercept. So you really want them to hit right in the middle.

52:53

If you're, you know. The

52:55

other solution is just so many more

52:57

bullets. Yeah, exactly.

52:58

Just do it a hundred times.

53:00

Yeah. Yes. Just lay on the trigger. Borrow

53:03

some military grade, then get a special

53:05

permit and just hose bullets

53:07

at each other until it works. And we

53:09

could actually, next time I'm there, we

53:12

could do that at no risk with

53:14

two super high powered airsoft

53:17

guns. You're

53:17

just not going to hurt yourself.

53:19

We could literally sit back there on the

53:21

trigger with guards and shielding.

53:24

Nobody's going to get, I mean, they're airsoft guns and

53:26

we could sit there and look at the stream of rounds

53:28

and we could just find it working with each other.

53:31

The water hose technique. Until we get the impact that

53:33

we want. At one point I took some training

53:35

on the minigun, the M134D. Okay.

53:39

I asked the question in training.

53:41

I was like,

53:42

how do you aim?

53:43

And the guy given the class was

53:46

like,

53:47

you ever used a water hose?

53:49

Oh, sure. I was like, yeah. He's like, yeah. You

53:51

just kind of look at what's getting wet. And you're like, I don't want

53:53

that to get wet. I want this other place to get wet. It's

53:55

already wet by the time you say that. And my

53:58

eyes just got so big.

53:59

I was like, are you being serious right now? He's

54:02

like, you get used to it. So basically, yeah,

54:04

it's crazy. Did you get used to it? I did.

54:07

Very, very quickly. Okay, I'm impressed. I'm

54:09

not used to it. If we ever do that, and I know that it's

54:11

very unlikely we're ever gonna do that, we

54:13

should get one of those nighttime tracer

54:15

versions. High speed couldn't catch it up.

54:18

My airsoft gun, when I was playing that with

54:20

my buddies all the time, just goofing around. They have glow

54:22

in the dark BBs? Yes, I put

54:24

a tracer system on mine. I'm

54:26

not kidding. So you can like light up the,

54:29

is there an LED that charges up the bullets as

54:31

they leave the barrel? There you go. So what I

54:33

did- Really? I had an

54:35

H&K G35C.

54:36

You had me at H&K. Okay,

54:39

cool.

54:39

That was the battle rifle I used for playing

54:42

airsoft. It was a beast.

54:44

Now of course airsoft rounds are tiny. They're

54:46

little pellets. And so I had a drum

54:48

mag, an electric feed drum

54:50

mag.

54:51

Oh, so you were really into this? Oh,

54:54

I don't know about that. You had a drum mag,

54:56

Matt. Well, yeah, I mean, I didn't wanna run out of ammo. So I

54:58

got something that would hold like 3,000 rounds.

55:00

All the ammo, yeah. But

55:02

then what happened is there was a barrel attachment

55:04

that I got

55:05

that had a sensor for when a round was

55:07

passing through it.

55:09

This thing would fire off, I said 11

55:11

or 14 rounds a second. This was one

55:13

of those two. It was a lot. Wow. So then

55:15

what would happen? So what does it sound like? Do you have it here?

55:18

No, I sold it.

55:19

What does it sound like when you fire it? Oh, just, I

55:22

mean, it's just bullet hose. Really? It's

55:25

nuts, nuts.

55:26

If people would hear it and just, I could

55:28

see them take cover at the sound of it. It was great.

55:31

But what I figured out is I could put this mock silencer.

55:34

It didn't silence anything. Nothing needed to be silenced

55:36

in there. And it had this

55:38

flash bulb in there that would fire. You

55:40

could set the timing.

55:41

It would fire for me once every 10 rounds.

55:45

And so then you just get glow

55:47

in the dark biodegradable rounds. You don't ever wanna

55:49

play that with something that won't go away.

55:51

They don't perform as well, but you gotta play with the stuff

55:53

that rain will eat.

55:55

I just fill this thing with these glow in the dark

55:57

rounds or sometimes a 50-50 mixture

55:59

of glow.

55:59

in the dark and the standard, because the glow in the dark is a little more expensive.

56:02

I love this. But then you play at night

56:05

and you just get this, it would flash

56:08

inside the silencer, the mock silencer,

56:10

it would flash and that would just

56:12

be enough to charge a glow in the

56:14

dark round.

56:15

And then as it sails, it's bullet hose.

56:17

You got 3000 rounds of green bullet

56:20

hose to put on people in the dark, you know exactly

56:22

where everything's going, just trace around, it was the coolest thing

56:24

ever, man. I didn't know that technology existed.

56:27

So it sounds like there's a proximity sensor inside

56:29

that mock silencer that

56:31

detects a bullet coming in. It's

56:33

like bullet present.

56:35

You call them bullets, what do you call the? The pellets?

56:37

Pellets. Pellet present. And then

56:40

it says, okay, it's here.

56:41

It's gonna take X amount of milliseconds for it to

56:43

traverse this mock silencer.

56:45

We can flash it anytime in here.

56:47

Because the flash duration is gonna be set.

56:50

It's gonna be 10 milliseconds or no, no,

56:52

it won't be that, it'll be microsecond.

56:54

Okay, you took me to a place.

56:56

I used to take pictures of bullets in

56:59

my garage. I used Doc Edgerton's

57:01

technique.

57:02

Dr. Harold Edgerton at MIT,

57:04

really amazing guy. When I finished

57:07

my master's thesis,

57:09

Dr. Robert Frederick said, I have something

57:11

for you. I was like, what is it?

57:12

And it was a book

57:14

called, Electronic Strobe,

57:17

Flash. That was the name of the

57:19

book. Catchy. Yeah.

57:21

And it was a beautiful book

57:23

of all the photos that Dr. Edgerton

57:26

took with his stroboscope.

57:28

But the beautiful thing about the book is that

57:30

it was like the nuts and bolts of how he did it. He's like,

57:32

well, this is why I use xenon.

57:35

Xenon has a spectrum that's more like daylight.

57:37

And

57:38

I also tried

57:40

to charge these different types of noble gases

57:43

and I got a longer pulse duration out of this

57:45

one at this voltage. And it just tells

57:47

you like how he figured it all out.

57:49

Because we take it for granted. We're like, oh, I need a flash.

57:52

No, that flash was the result

57:54

of a collaboration between the physics department

57:57

and the MIT department at MIT. It's

57:59

really cool.

58:00

All that to say I used to have a

58:03

sound detector

58:04

It was a speaker and

58:06

I would put a speaker. I'd wire it up into

58:08

the electronics thing I had

58:10

anytime that piezoelectric sensor

58:12

would move it

58:13

would give me a voltage and I would say oh I

58:16

have a voltage I can now use that to trigger

58:18

my flash And so what I would do is I would set my 22 up

58:21

I have a video on this one smart every day from the

58:23

early days.

58:24

I'd set my 22 up

58:26

I would move that speaker down range of

58:28

the muzzle and I would pull the trigger

58:31

and then the bullet would exit the barrel and

58:33

Then the sound from the firing would

58:36

then make it to the speaker which would trigger

58:38

my flash which would flash which would give

58:40

me A picture of the bullet, huh?

58:43

Then I was like, oh man, it fired

58:45

too early. I

58:46

just moved the speaker. I just moved the speaker Oh

58:48

my goodness, and how much would I move it if I was off

58:51

by one? Let's say I was off to nothing.

58:53

Listen, let's say if I was off by one millisecond

58:56

How far would I move this later exactly?

58:59

Yeah, that fun. Yes,

59:01

it's great It's so much fun. And so your

59:03

your little I

59:04

have a strobe thing that's gonna make my bullets

59:07

glow

59:08

That tickles all the right things

59:10

in my brain. Oh, yeah Yeah, I can

59:12

see on your face that you're enjoying the observation

59:15

of how excited I just got so that's fun.

59:17

That's fun Yeah, it's fun. So thank you for giving me that

59:19

a quick question before we get back to the whole strategy Though

59:21

yeah, you brought up firing a 22. Yeah

59:24

in a different scenario where timing it up is

59:26

the goal the objective

59:28

Now that's a rimfire round as a 22

59:30

long rifle you were shooting there.

59:32

Oh, yeah in the garage. Yes. That's a rimfire

59:34

That's a little different in terms of the ignition

59:38

Initiation

59:39

would it be more or less difficult to accomplish

59:41

what you just accomplished making bullets collide

59:43

with a rimfire ignition

59:45

I don't know

59:46

I don't know the repeatability of a 22 But

59:48

but I feel like larger primers that are in

59:50

the center of the cartridge will give you a more even

59:53

burn And

59:53

so I feel I feel like they'll be more repeatable

59:56

But what I don't know is how long it takes to crush

59:59

the primer and it

59:59

ignite the powder, what I would

1:00:02

have to do is I would set up an oscilloscope

1:00:05

and I would send my trigger to my solenoid

1:00:07

to pull the trigger mechanically. And then I would

1:00:09

set up my little speaker technique that we just talked

1:00:11

about and I would just do it a bunch of times

1:00:14

and I would graph it and I would say, okay,

1:00:16

22s, about seven

1:00:18

milliseconds, plus or minus half a millisecond

1:00:21

every shot, you know, let's say 357 Magnum,

1:00:24

12 milliseconds, plus or minus 100 microseconds

1:00:27

every time. So what I would do is I would just test them.

1:00:30

I wouldn't care how long it took the bullet

1:00:32

to exit. All I would care about is the repeatability

1:00:34

of it.

1:00:35

Yeah. The fact that you have the tools,

1:00:37

the fact that you just know off the top of your head, oh,

1:00:39

here's how I would answer that.

1:00:41

That's awesome. I would have to think for a very

1:00:43

long time to problem solve that.

1:00:45

You just have all those things in your utility belt. That's

1:00:48

pretty cool, man. I don't know if you know this, but we're

1:00:50

sitting here talking and I'm looking behind

1:00:52

you at

1:00:53

a bunch of books. I see 501

1:00:55

Italian verbs. I

1:00:58

see a book on China. I

1:01:01

see the

1:01:02

living Talmud.

1:01:04

I see a lot of humanities

1:01:07

books behind you and those are the tools you have. We

1:01:09

just have different skill sets.

1:01:11

And so if I were to be like, you know, I'm

1:01:14

not even going to, you know. Fair

1:01:17

enough. Yeah. So thank

1:01:19

you for the compliment. Also, we just do different things. Yeah, fair

1:01:21

enough.

1:01:22

Fair enough. We're playing around in the

1:01:24

world of the things you do. So land

1:01:26

the plane for me. How did you finalize

1:01:29

this? How did you make two bullets smashed together?

1:01:31

We shot one of the guns. The orientation

1:01:33

was north and south because we knew we were going to be filming

1:01:36

later in the day and the sun would be in the west.

1:01:39

Clever. Yeah. I mean,

1:01:41

we weren't trying to be like, oh, the civil war, north and south. It's just

1:01:43

how it worked out.

1:01:44

We fired the north gun and we use that

1:01:46

as our datum.

1:01:47

And then we aligned the south gun to

1:01:49

the north gun and we made an adjustment.

1:01:53

We said, okay, we only fired the north gun. We

1:01:55

got a hole in a piece of paper. We said, okay, let's

1:01:58

go to the south gun. Now let's get a laser.

1:01:59

and let's line it up to that.

1:02:01

And let's put a hole in the piece of paper by only firing

1:02:03

the South gun.

1:02:04

And then we measured the distance that was off.

1:02:07

And we said, oh, it was a quarter inch off. According

1:02:10

to how many threads are on this bolt

1:02:12

back here at 54 inches

1:02:14

of bullet travel. Oh yeah. We use

1:02:16

triangles and we're like, turn it this many

1:02:18

turns. Yeah.

1:02:20

And then we took a shot. We took our first

1:02:22

shot

1:02:23

and it hit on the first shot.

1:02:25

David and I looked at each other and we're like, that

1:02:27

just happened. Like we wanted to do

1:02:29

a thing and we slowly

1:02:31

worked on it. We had all the tools,

1:02:34

as you mentioned, and we just slowly used all those

1:02:36

tools and we just arranged them together in

1:02:38

such a way that it happened. And it

1:02:40

was kind of a weird feeling.

1:02:42

Like what happens when you think a thing can

1:02:44

happen and then you go try to do it and

1:02:46

it actually happens. Well, what does that feel like to you?

1:02:48

Like, have you ever had a goal

1:02:50

that you wanted to accomplish

1:02:52

and you worked really, really hard to accomplish

1:02:55

it? And then you did?

1:02:58

I wanted to dunk a thing when I was

1:03:00

a younger man.

1:03:01

That is, I wanted to jump up, reach

1:03:04

above the rim of a 10 foot basketball

1:03:06

hoop and put that object

1:03:09

in the rim with force.

1:03:11

And so I started by thinking, well, I'll try

1:03:13

to do that with the basketball. I can jump pretty well.

1:03:15

I'll give it a go. Not a tall guy, but

1:03:18

I can jump a little bit. Couldn't ever get

1:03:20

to a place where I could palm the basketball with my right hand.

1:03:23

Like, well, that's out. I won't be able to do this

1:03:25

off of my natural jump side with

1:03:27

my right hand, I can't palm it.

1:03:28

So I kind of did some of the same exercises

1:03:30

and stretches with my left. And I was like, I got a little

1:03:33

bit bigger left hand. I can palm a basketball with my

1:03:35

left hand, but not my right. Really? Yeah. Hold

1:03:37

the hand up. How big is that hand? Not big,

1:03:40

but it's shaped the right way to palm the basketball.

1:03:42

You can palm a basketball. Absolutely.

1:03:44

Yeah, I will show you later. Wow.

1:03:47

Yeah, and control it. You can actually

1:03:49

palm it.

1:03:50

Yeah. That's amazing. But I can't with my right. I

1:03:52

can't well. There's something about, look at the flatness

1:03:55

I can achieve with this hand. Yeah.

1:03:58

And look what I can achieve with my right. Can you see that?

1:03:59

I can. My right is a little

1:04:02

more clawed up. My left, I can actually invert

1:04:04

the fingers. Is your left hand more powerful than

1:04:06

your right?

1:04:07

Right now it is, because I had that tennis elbow

1:04:09

injury. So yeah, right now

1:04:11

it's pretty funny. I mean, when I was coming

1:04:13

off the injury, I'd go to bench press

1:04:16

and the left is just like, go. And the right's like, please

1:04:18

don't, please, please stop. I've

1:04:20

been so good to you over the years. I just need you to look out

1:04:22

for me for once. Okay, whoa, all right, cool.

1:04:24

We all got needs. Then I tried to get

1:04:26

a basketball up and over the rim and I just couldn't.

1:04:29

That means you have to jump off your right leg

1:04:31

to dunk with the left hand.

1:04:33

I tried a lot of different

1:04:36

things to try to make this work. It was

1:04:38

very clear, even after I could palm, figured

1:04:40

I had a palm, a basketball, this just is, it's

1:04:42

not gonna happen. I can't push this any further.

1:04:44

I already feel a little bit scared sometimes

1:04:47

coming down. Like, it's just, it's just unnatural.

1:04:50

You were just way up there. Yeah, I worked

1:04:52

really hard on it. I trained really hard to

1:04:54

jump better.

1:04:55

I just couldn't do it. So I went down to a volleyball.

1:04:58

Still couldn't do it.

1:04:59

I went down to one of those miniature basketballs.

1:05:02

I could just tell, and this is over the course

1:05:04

of weeks, right? Then I went down to a softball.

1:05:07

I was close. Man, there's so many times

1:05:10

I was close. There were times I'd go up and

1:05:12

I'd push it against the rim and then touch

1:05:14

the rim and it would go in, but it wasn't.

1:05:16

I mean, it was still a shot. I just touched the rim

1:05:19

after.

1:05:20

And then finally, I went through baseball.

1:05:22

I went down to tennis ball and just that

1:05:24

slight bit of squish in the tennis

1:05:27

ball. A little more forgiving. Yeah, it enabled

1:05:29

me to kind of jam the ball against

1:05:31

the rim, just a little on the way up and

1:05:33

almost use the ball

1:05:35

to roll it over the rim. And

1:05:37

that was repeatable. I got it a couple of times

1:05:40

one day and that was it. So

1:05:43

that was a thing I really wanted to do. And obviously

1:05:45

every dude wants to be able to say, yeah, when I was in college,

1:05:48

I could dunk a basketball. I wanted to be able to say that. I knew

1:05:50

I'd want to be able to say that when I was an old man.

1:05:52

And I can't, because I couldn't do it,

1:05:54

but I got a tennis ball.

1:06:01

I appreciate the story that you picked

1:06:04

ended up framing you in a humble light because you are

1:06:06

a humble man but

1:06:08

that's not really what I'm talking about. Okay

1:06:11

here's what I think it is. So

1:06:12

I was trying to solve a problem for a year.

1:06:14

It

1:06:15

was a year of work on

1:06:17

that. Yeah. I did not approach this

1:06:20

from just I'm just gonna be more athletic. It

1:06:23

was very strategic in how I trained

1:06:25

and what I did

1:06:26

and I was strategic in carefully

1:06:29

analyzing what different tool,

1:06:31

what different item I might be able to finally

1:06:33

accomplish this with.

1:06:35

And so no it was it was pretty calculated

1:06:37

and when I got to the end of that and it actually

1:06:39

worked and I dunked that

1:06:41

silly little tennis ball, was over the

1:06:44

rim with my fingers, gave the rim a little

1:06:46

tug on the way down. I was like no that's a legitimate

1:06:48

dunk.

1:06:49

It's a tennis ball but it's

1:06:51

a legitimate as a legitimate a dunk as

1:06:53

a dunk can be with a tennis ball.

1:06:56

I came down and was like yeah there

1:06:59

I could envision that in my mind nine

1:07:01

months or a year ago and now the

1:07:03

thing just happened. That's amazing

1:07:06

this is great. What do you do with that? Um

1:07:09

apparently you never do it again because that

1:07:11

was it.

1:07:14

It's just a weird thing there's almost like a morning

1:07:16

that happens because because

1:07:19

you're like I had this pursuit of this thing

1:07:22

and it was always on the horizon

1:07:25

and it was always something I could walk towards and then you

1:07:27

just like walk up to the thing and you pick

1:07:29

it up and you're like

1:07:30

okay I got it I got the thing. Yeah

1:07:33

and then the pursuit of the thing

1:07:35

dies in that moment and

1:07:38

you're like oh

1:07:39

that's not the case in the bullet versus bullet but

1:07:41

in that moment in that first little

1:07:43

moment

1:07:44

when I was like the pursuit was I want

1:07:47

a bullet to hit a bullet and then that happened

1:07:49

in that fraction of a moment

1:07:51

when I saw it happen before my eyes I was like we

1:07:54

did it we did it

1:07:57

and I was like did that

1:07:59

was That was it. And then the pursuit changed.

1:08:02

The pursuit changed to better,

1:08:04

better picture, tighter. Yeah. Like

1:08:07

tighter shot, different angle. It

1:08:09

morphed quickly, but there was this morning

1:08:11

that happened

1:08:13

and I felt that it was like a flash in the

1:08:15

back of my mind. Or like the

1:08:17

promotion that you're going after or

1:08:19

whatever as a young man, you're very ambitious and you're

1:08:21

like, if I can just make salesmen

1:08:23

of the quarter or whatever it is, and then you get

1:08:25

it.

1:08:26

And you're like, now what? It's

1:08:30

getting back to the Michael Jordan episode where we're talking about

1:08:32

achievement and success. In this

1:08:34

case, this is just a thing I really, really

1:08:37

wanted to see.

1:08:38

And I didn't really care who did it.

1:08:40

I just want to see it. I just want this to happen.

1:08:43

You know what I mean?

1:08:44

And it wasn't happening. Like I kept

1:08:46

thinking, somebody's

1:08:47

going to do this. And then a year

1:08:49

went by and nobody did it. Another year went by, nobody's

1:08:52

done that. I was like, I get

1:08:54

to do it. You get to do it. Yeah, that was fun.

1:08:56

It was a fun thing. So

1:08:58

the other cool thing is all the people that

1:09:00

were involved,

1:09:01

Jeremy making the shielding. I got to call my

1:09:03

buddies out. Jeremy shielding, I like the- Jeremy

1:09:06

fielding made the shielding. Yeah, that worked. Another

1:09:09

fun thing about it is my buddies from work,

1:09:12

I knew that this was dangerous

1:09:14

and I got to call them out. And I said, hey,

1:09:17

this is what I'm doing. And they instantly

1:09:19

said, well, how are you going to? And I was like, ah,

1:09:22

just come out and let me show you what I'm

1:09:24

doing.

1:09:25

And you tell me everything I did wrong.

1:09:27

And

1:09:27

they're like, what? And I was like, no, seriously,

1:09:29

I need you to protect me from

1:09:31

me. Please

1:09:33

come out,

1:09:34

come to the field with me. Look at this. I'm

1:09:36

going to hand you a piece of paper. And so I took it seriously.

1:09:39

I did a presentation to them

1:09:41

and I printed out this checklist. I put their name

1:09:43

at the top of the checklist. Like you would invite

1:09:45

a guest that you really cared

1:09:47

about. So Coop and Sheldon,

1:09:50

they came, guys that I've worked with for years, done

1:09:53

very dangerous things with them.

1:09:55

And I was just like,

1:09:56

hey, I'm laid bare before you.

1:09:58

And David and I just showed them every. And it's

1:10:01

a really fun exercise because intellectual

1:10:03

humility and the right answer wins. That's kind

1:10:05

of peer review.

1:10:06

Yeah. Friendly peer review. Yeah,

1:10:10

but it's serious. And

1:10:12

what's really fun is these guys have authority

1:10:14

in my life. Like when I, you know, work with

1:10:16

them, they've been authorities at times and they've been

1:10:18

able to tell me, no, you can't do that. Okay.

1:10:21

A younger Destin always pushed against that,

1:10:23

not with them, but with other people that I'd push against that.

1:10:26

But the older I get, the more I'm

1:10:28

like, wow, I have someone in my life

1:10:31

willing to take me seriously, whom I

1:10:33

take very seriously. I respect them very much.

1:10:36

And they're willing to push against me and

1:10:38

say no in love.

1:10:40

And I think it's very, very important to

1:10:42

have people in your life who you can say, here's

1:10:45

the thing I'm working on. I

1:10:46

need you to critique it and give me negative

1:10:48

feedback. And it makes you so

1:10:51

much better and it makes you safer. It

1:10:53

makes you all the things. I can remember

1:10:55

being in situations that I won't go into, but I

1:10:57

can remember calling a person from somewhere

1:10:59

and saying, Hey,

1:11:00

I'm about to do something dangerous.

1:11:03

I've been working with these people here.

1:11:05

They're

1:11:05

going to let me do whatever I want.

1:11:06

And that's a problem

1:11:08

because they're not thinking with me and they're not helping

1:11:10

me. They trust me too much.

1:11:12

I need you to assume the role

1:11:15

of not trusting me for a second. And I

1:11:17

need you to prove to yourself that this

1:11:19

is okay.

1:11:20

And then give me permission or don't

1:11:22

give me permission based on the quality

1:11:25

of my argument.

1:11:26

Cool. And they're like, lay it on me. Let's

1:11:28

go. Those

1:11:29

are some of my favorite discussions because

1:11:31

of the intellectual

1:11:32

humility involved and the technical

1:11:35

prowess of the other person.

1:11:37

And you can say things in a very

1:11:39

quick moment that they understand at a

1:11:41

very deep level.

1:11:42

No, you can't do that.

1:11:44

Why can't I do that? Well, think about the induction

1:11:46

that might happen if you do XYZ. What

1:11:49

frequency are you operating at

1:11:50

this? Well, why did you choose that? And

1:11:53

it's just like, it's fun. It's so

1:11:55

fun. It's forthright, pure

1:11:57

communication too.

1:11:59

there is no thing where like, well,

1:12:02

if my science says this, you

1:12:04

have to vote for my thing. If

1:12:06

my science says this, you have to celebrate

1:12:09

this idea I have, you have to do

1:12:11

it. I mean, when we

1:12:14

get into the public sphere, the

1:12:16

conversation is completely compromised. We

1:12:19

all know. Because you have people at the table

1:12:22

that haven't earned the right to be there. Yeah, and

1:12:24

they're not even using it for the right reason. They don't

1:12:26

care about whether or not the thing actually works. They

1:12:28

got a completely different thing they want to do.

1:12:30

And they know that the goodwill and gullibility

1:12:33

of most people, which is how we decide things

1:12:36

in our culture, whatever most people think,

1:12:38

let that be true.

1:12:39

Anything. And science

1:12:41

works the same way. And anybody who tells them otherwise

1:12:43

is kidding themselves. I don't mean real science.

1:12:46

I mean, public the science. Air

1:12:48

quotes science. Yeah, it's just whatever

1:12:50

opinion most people have about a thing, regardless

1:12:53

of how they got it.

1:12:54

Yeah, it's just how science is just true. That's

1:12:56

what we all think. It's interesting. The word science

1:12:59

has been politicized, obviously,

1:13:01

but like the science doesn't lie.

1:13:03

I would argue that depending on your definition

1:13:05

of that,

1:13:06

sometimes it does.

1:13:07

Right. The beautiful thing about this is the

1:13:10

bullets don't lie.

1:13:11

Right. It either works or it doesn't. Yeah,

1:13:14

and every version of epistemology, every

1:13:16

approach to claiming truth

1:13:19

ends up going through the ringer at some point

1:13:21

when the hubris kicks in and when it starts being used

1:13:23

dishonestly. We just watched it happen to

1:13:25

religion and religion had it coming. Christianity

1:13:28

had it coming.

1:13:29

Cultural Christianity

1:13:31

was making truth claims about ethics and

1:13:33

theology and all kinds of stuff

1:13:35

that were more just really public

1:13:37

consensus than any kind of carefully evaluated

1:13:40

thought process. Science

1:13:42

had its heyday,

1:13:43

but now science is

1:13:46

also a bit of a cute, funny word because

1:13:48

we know there's certain science that just means public

1:13:50

consensus, regardless of actual reality.

1:13:53

And we just do this. We all use knowledge and

1:13:55

truth claims to the advantage of things that we

1:13:57

like or care about

1:13:59

or that are popular.

1:13:59

because we're insecure and we're weird, we're all busted

1:14:02

up in actually very similar ways. But

1:14:04

what you're talking about is not that.

1:14:06

What you're talking about is capital

1:14:08

T truth. You're getting people together,

1:14:11

it doesn't matter what they think about anything

1:14:13

other than you got a situation here.

1:14:15

And it is very important that we solve for

1:14:18

all of these things. We're not trying to make a point,

1:14:20

we're

1:14:21

not trying to beat anybody. Nothing

1:14:23

matters other than just getting this right. That's

1:14:25

it. That's so fun. It's really

1:14:28

cool to hear you talk about it. And when

1:14:30

I sit and I think about the people in my innermost

1:14:32

circle of trust,

1:14:34

they may not get everything right,

1:14:36

but I trust them all because they're trying to do that

1:14:38

with everything.

1:14:39

Parenthood relationships, philosophy,

1:14:42

God, faith, whatever, everything,

1:14:44

they're trying. Ultimately,

1:14:46

we all got our biases and we got our stuff. But

1:14:49

all the conversations feel

1:14:51

forthright and honest.

1:14:53

And that's the difference between the circle of trust

1:14:56

and the world and the

1:14:58

conversation at large. And

1:15:00

so I think it's cool that,

1:15:02

yeah, two bullets hit each other and you filmed it, cool.

1:15:05

But it's the product of

1:15:07

people doing actual

1:15:09

thought and problem solving and science

1:15:12

together

1:15:12

with trust in the process and trust

1:15:15

in the motives of the people you're talking

1:15:17

with.

1:15:18

And that's how cool, amazing things

1:15:20

get accomplished.

1:15:21

I think it's super, super neat, man. I think it's an

1:15:23

amazing achievement,

1:15:25

way cooler than dunking a stupid tennis

1:15:27

ball.

1:15:27

And I congratulate you on it.

1:15:29

Not true, but thank you for the congratulate.

1:15:32

Not true that it's way cooler than dunking a basketball

1:15:34

because I never did that. Okay, it's really cool. It's

1:15:36

cooler than dunking a tennis ball. I

1:15:39

think you're right to celebrate the teamwork part of

1:15:41

it because that part's the most fun. I

1:15:43

mean,

1:15:44

me sitting there across the table from

1:15:47

my buddy, Arnie, knowing he has the knowledge

1:15:49

of the electronics.

1:15:50

George being able to say, hey, you

1:15:53

need to do it at this angle. You need to put the camera

1:15:55

over here at this angle for these reasons. And

1:15:57

David doing all the things David

1:15:59

did.

1:15:59

with the hand loading of the ammunition,

1:16:02

Jeremy making shielding that keeps us safe, and my buddies

1:16:04

Sheldon and Coop being willing to lend

1:16:07

a hand and

1:16:07

correct me on the misfire procedures I got wrong.

1:16:10

All that stuff's great. And I think

1:16:12

that's what makes it so fun.

1:16:14

I think the biggest thing about it is I don't care

1:16:16

about the YouTube part of it.

1:16:19

I

1:16:19

just don't. Like this video- I see

1:16:21

that in you. Yeah, I just really wanted this to

1:16:23

happen and I wanted to see it. And it just

1:16:25

so happens that YouTube is a thing that exists

1:16:27

and

1:16:28

we all get to share it together. And

1:16:30

it's fun. The YouTuber, like, I'm

1:16:32

gonna do this to make a video, you

1:16:34

know, be a banger.

1:16:36

I just don't care about that.

1:16:38

I don't know, it's a weird thing. Of course I want it to be

1:16:40

successful so that I can frankly afford

1:16:43

to invest in a right-handed

1:16:46

twist 1 16th 45 caliber barrel that's

1:16:49

made out of stainless steel so it won't rust.

1:16:51

I care about that part of it because, you know, it's, I

1:16:53

don't know.

1:16:54

I'm just really glad that I got to see those

1:16:56

two bullets smoosh against each other.

1:16:59

And I've got some other ideas about how to make them stick

1:17:01

when they hit.

1:17:03

I think it's wild that you

1:17:05

went to a battlefield and you looked at

1:17:07

little things, just a simple object. Smithsonian's

1:17:10

where I saw that. Okay, it's two pieces of metal

1:17:12

and they're mushed together. Okay, cool.

1:17:14

That's interesting. There are lots of scenarios in the world where a couple

1:17:16

pieces of metal mushed together, but

1:17:18

stuff means stuff.

1:17:20

And not all two pieces of metal mushed

1:17:22

together means the same thing.

1:17:24

That meant something very special.

1:17:27

Told a story about a chapter in our

1:17:29

history, told a story about

1:17:31

writing some age old cultural

1:17:33

wrongs or trying to, told

1:17:35

a story about families fighting against families,

1:17:39

told a story about military technology

1:17:41

and how level the playing field was

1:17:43

between those two sides in that moment and therefore

1:17:46

how gritty

1:17:47

and ugly that war was gonna be. Cause those are the

1:17:49

ones that get really bloody is when you have

1:17:51

the same kind of gear on both sides and it's

1:17:53

sort of stalemady.

1:17:55

That chunk of metal means

1:17:58

so many things. It also has

1:18:00

a probabilistic meaning. That

1:18:03

just shouldn't happen. Shouldn't happen.

1:18:05

The two bullets smashed together like that. There was

1:18:07

so much more space for them not to hit.

1:18:10

There was so much more time for them not

1:18:12

to be fired during simultaneously.

1:18:15

It's a one in a gajillion kind of thing.

1:18:17

And if we say, you know, how likely is it the two

1:18:19

bullets would smash together? Well, that's one in, I

1:18:22

mean, it's just so unlikely,

1:18:24

but what is the possibility that those

1:18:27

two bullets in the grand scheme

1:18:29

of the cosmos would even exist,

1:18:32

let alone be on that battlefield the same

1:18:34

day, let alone collide

1:18:36

in midair.

1:18:38

And then you looked at that and all of

1:18:40

the meaning surrounding it and be found you

1:18:44

looked at that took into account

1:18:47

all of the meaning behind it or a lot of it and

1:18:49

felt this is a big deal thought about

1:18:51

all of the probability and how crazy it is

1:18:53

that that would ever happen. Recognize a crazy

1:18:55

flukey thing when you saw it. And then

1:18:57

you tried to science

1:19:00

your way to duplicating

1:19:02

one of the randomest results, a

1:19:05

metaphor, that chunk of metal, two bullets

1:19:07

fused together. It's a metaphor for

1:19:09

a crazy random outlier.

1:19:11

And you tried to figure out a way to

1:19:13

control all of the variables

1:19:16

to such a degree that

1:19:17

you could duplicate it again and again

1:19:20

and not just duplicate it.

1:19:22

Capture it in a way that other people could see

1:19:24

what you did for themselves and enjoy it and

1:19:26

appreciate it. And I just think it's a

1:19:28

really cool journey. I think it's a cool

1:19:31

quest to take something that shouldn't

1:19:33

be duplicatable and pull it off. So

1:19:35

congratulations. I say it again.

1:19:37

Thank you. It's not over yet.

1:19:39

Okay. We've still got to make the bullets

1:19:41

fuse together.

1:19:42

Okay. And, uh, we've got thoughts.

1:19:45

Okay.

1:20:00

Thank you.