0:00

What's the most important resource in

0:03

the entire universe? Water

0:05

maybe? Is it? It's

0:18

a great dumb question I'll say that. Okay, wait there

0:20

can't... I don't know I would say

0:22

I would say water yeah

0:25

because water is the universal solvent and

0:28

water enables our

0:30

biological life to happen. You

0:32

don't have water you're done. You also need

0:34

oxygen but oxygen is kind of in

0:36

water so if you like in a pinch you could figure

0:39

out how to get oxygen out of water. It's

0:41

right in there isn't it? Yeah it is. Yeah but

0:43

how would you get the oxygen out of the water? Electrolysis

0:46

is one way I would do it. Yeah

0:48

that's probably how I would do it. See and that's why

0:50

I'd go energy. I would just say

0:52

energy is the thing. Harnessable, usable

0:55

energy. Okay. Right? Because

0:58

food is energy, heat

1:00

is energy. I mean it seems like

1:02

if there were ever going to be a situation where

1:05

some evil tycoon takes over everything. With

1:07

a monocle. With a monocle obviously. He's

1:09

got a vest. And a dirigible that

1:11

has auto guns. Yes. On all the

1:13

sides of it. That would be awesome.

1:15

That would be so awesome. Yeah.

1:18

Yeah does he have facial hair? No.

1:21

None? No he's just really fat. It's got

1:23

like a big chin that goes like a...

1:25

You don't think that mustache curls at the

1:27

tips? The mustache does. Okay yeah. Yeah okay

1:29

he's got a mustache. I think so. You're

1:31

right. Go ahead. Yeah it almost holds up

1:33

the monocle. Yeah what's this guy doing? Well

1:35

he's harnessing all the energy. This

1:37

guy he figured out how to make

1:39

the energy happen in such a way that he just

1:41

owns all the energy. He discovered

1:43

a thing that renders

1:46

obsolete and so

1:48

inefficient all other forms of

1:50

gathering and harnessing energy that

1:53

now all of the energy business runs

1:55

through him which effectively brings

1:57

all governments to their knees and

1:59

now guy, he's the king of

2:01

everything, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I'm

2:04

with you. I mean, it sounds ridiculous

2:06

in steampunk-y, but also, if you owned

2:08

all energy and nobody else, no other

2:10

technology could touch your ability to access

2:12

it, you're king of everything. You

2:15

are, yeah. You're in control of everything. I

2:17

was thinking about that today in the shower.

2:19

I was thinking about Putin,

2:21

I'll say it. I was thinking

2:23

about Putin, and I was thinking about the

2:25

meetings he has, and he walks out of

2:28

the doors into the big fancy room, and

2:30

everything looks fancy. I was thinking, you've got

2:32

everything. Everything you

2:34

need for your body to work, you

2:36

have every physical thing you would ever need, but

2:38

that's not enough for you. What's

2:41

that in the brain? What is that? Like

2:44

an all-powerful being. It's not so much about me

2:46

having what I need for myself, it's that I

2:48

need to deprive other people of the things they

2:50

want, therefore they have to go through me. I

2:54

was just thinking about that, and thinking about what that

2:57

does to a human soul. Really,

2:59

Putin, who I think, you shouldn't feel weird about

3:01

that, I think most dudes at some point in

3:03

their life just go stand in the shower and

3:05

think about Putin. But Putin,

3:07

what he's really trying to do here. Well

3:10

done. Great face. Well done. Great

3:12

face. Well done. He's

3:14

trying to harness the most energy

3:16

and weaponize it for his purposes. What

3:19

is the energy? The energy of an

3:21

economy, of the state, of political pressure,

3:23

of weapons, of humans who do the

3:25

things he says to do. But

3:28

really, every dictator, every

3:30

power-hungry person is trying to

3:32

harness and weaponize more energy

3:35

than other people can, because that's what gets

3:37

you the dirigible with auto guns on it. Right?

3:41

Okay. Yeah. Basically, you

3:43

want to control other people's access to the

3:45

things they need. Yes. Yeah.

3:48

Like say, fuel to heat your homes. Food. Yeah,

3:50

another great example. Yeah. Not hypotheticals

3:53

in this case. Yeah. At

3:55

all. Interesting. And so,

3:58

throughout history, both in fiction and in

4:00

reality, people pick a target

4:02

when they want power and they

4:04

try to harness that energy from that

4:06

sector or a collection of sectors. One

4:09

of the archetypes that we see, not so

4:11

much in history but in fiction, is this

4:14

evil, mad genius scientist who

4:16

tries to figure out how to do

4:18

energy better than everybody else. If

4:21

he can just figure out cold

4:23

fusion or perpetual motion, for example,

4:25

then all of a sudden, he

4:30

just catapults to king of everything. I just

4:33

went out to Idaho. I

4:36

went to Idaho National Labs and

4:38

I filmed several videos about nuclear

4:40

energy. I'm a big nuclear energy

4:42

fanboy. Likewise. I think it's really,

4:44

really cool. I think nuclear energy gets a bad

4:46

rap, but I get to

4:48

see a test reactor. This

4:51

is a place where they're testing new

4:53

fuels and new ways

4:56

to control nuclear fuels so

4:58

that hopefully, one day in the future,

5:00

we can make reactors that just can't

5:02

melt down, for example. Fuels

5:04

meaning elements with names that are

5:07

hard to pronounce with really high atomic numbers? Yeah,

5:09

that kind of stuff. Okay. But there's different types

5:12

of fuels, I learned. There's uranium type fuels.

5:14

You can have metal fuels. You

5:16

can have ceramic fuels.

5:19

Huh? Yeah, you can have ceramic nuclear

5:21

fuel. Didn't know that. A lot

5:23

of what's going on is figuring out

5:25

how to control the heat because ultimately,

5:28

a nuclear plant makes steam is ultimately

5:30

what's happening. You don't make

5:32

electricity, you make steam, and then the steam

5:34

makes electricity. Yeah. Super cool. Anyway,

5:38

I've been thinking a lot about that recently is my

5:40

point. How to make usable electricity, how to make all

5:42

these types of things. Where are we going with this?

5:45

In that situation, if

5:47

a given country just built

5:49

an incredibly stable, safe, sustainable

5:52

nuclear grid with far

5:54

more capacity even than is needed, and

5:57

the people owned it, then they would

5:59

all be there. be king. Huh. It

6:02

would have a democratizing effect. It's

6:04

interesting that you say this. I spoke to

6:06

a gentleman who was there at the lab,

6:09

and he grew up in

6:11

the American West, where you are. I

6:14

like it there. Yeah, he grew up in Utah. And

6:16

he said when he was a boy, people

6:19

had local energy production

6:21

capabilities. So people would

6:24

have a generator in town, like

6:26

a town named, let's

6:28

name this Freedomville.

6:31

So Freedomville would

6:33

have a generator that everybody locally

6:35

would own and operate. And

6:37

then when they needed the lights to come on, they would

6:40

go turn it on as a collective locally. They

6:42

weren't integrated into the grid, so to

6:44

speak. I'm thinking

6:47

about this because the moment you

6:49

connect Freedomville to, I don't know,

6:51

what's the next town over? Is

6:53

it a good town or a bad town? It's a good town. Libertyton.

6:58

Freedomville and Libertyton, I don't know,

7:00

Goodtown was pretty good. Goodtown. Let's

7:02

go with that. Goodton. Goodton.

7:05

So if you got Freedomville and Goodton, and they're right next

7:07

to each other, and they each have generators, and

7:10

those generators are producing 120 volts, 60 hertz AC. We're

7:15

going to be in America. If we were in Europe, or if

7:17

we were in England, we would have 50 hertz. But here

7:20

in Freedomville, we have 60 hertz. The

7:22

moment you touch the grid in Freedomville

7:25

to the grid in Goodton, you

7:27

have to synchronize the electricity.

7:29

Sure. That makes sense to

7:31

me. Okay. Because you've got the

7:33

sine wave going up and down. If you have them out

7:36

of phase, you basically cancel the power out. It gets really

7:38

weird. Like when you screw things up with your audio recording.

7:40

Yeah. There's certain ways to make it so

7:43

that you clearly just recorded audio, but

7:46

you make an error in the recording in

7:48

a stereo channel, and you actually go

7:50

and listen to it, and there's nothing. But

7:52

then you go and listen to that on a

7:54

device that can only provide a mono rendering. And

7:56

you're like, no, it's there. What

7:58

the heck is going on? Yeah,

8:01

I can understand the principle from sound even though

8:03

I can't visualize it. Yeah, yeah

8:05

additive and subtractive Interference

8:08

what one of the things that's interesting and aside

8:10

here on YouTube They

8:13

have these things when you upload a video

8:15

and they will analyze the audio track and

8:17

they'll pull out the words And then be like

8:19

oh they're talking about this, you know, they

8:21

can analyze things and see compare it to

8:23

other things there was one

8:26

Scammer or whatever you want to call these people that

8:28

do things as a countermeasure to

8:30

YouTube They put a left track and then

8:33

right track because they they figured out somehow

8:35

that YouTube was analyzing everything in mono They

8:38

did this destructive interference

8:41

technique And so they made the left track

8:43

and the right track subtract each other so

8:46

that when it went into the sniffer algorithm

8:48

at YouTube It was just a flat line

8:50

audio signal I thought that was genius

8:52

but actual human ears listening on a mono

8:54

device Could hear it Listening

8:57

on a stereo device. How did they keep that

8:59

from phase canceling to the human ear? Oh Well,

9:03

I mean, I don't know it was left and right ear

9:05

so I I have no idea I have no idea I'm

9:08

realizing there's more to the story. I don't understand at

9:10

this point, but it was pretty interesting. I like it

9:12

Yeah, it's pretty cool. All right, so I'm

9:14

gonna connect freedom bill to good ten and

9:16

we have to get our synchronization, right? I

9:19

just think that's interesting. He said

9:21

when he was younger, they had these generators

9:24

Then when they started connecting to the grid They

9:26

started having to worry about all this stuff and

9:28

then eventually a larger entity at

9:30

a regional level had to take over the

9:32

management of the power Because

9:34

all these things had to be taken into

9:36

account the big town correct septopolis What

9:40

a dump but what he did

9:42

say is in the future This

9:44

gentleman feels that we're going back to

9:46

that Because as

9:49

people are able to generate power

9:51

locally, whether it be Solar

9:55

whether it be, you know small-scale

9:57

interesting things your orphans on tread

10:00

Yeah, that sort of thing. No. Thanks

10:03

for clarifying that you're against that. Yeah, I'm against that. I

10:05

don't think anybody was clear on that. His

10:08

point was as people start to generate

10:10

power locally, whether it be a wind

10:13

turbine or whether it be any of these things,

10:15

and you plug them back into the grid, people

10:17

are going to have to start managing things locally

10:20

again. The holy grail

10:22

or the thing that people really want right now

10:24

is small scale nuclear. And

10:26

so the idea is, hey, what

10:28

if every little town had a

10:31

small containerized nuclear reactor? What does

10:33

containerized mean? Logistically,

10:36

a pallet is a unit

10:38

that you can move around, and all

10:41

the infrastructure is built around moving pallets.

10:44

Forklifts, you know what a pallet looks like, you

10:46

get two holes in the bottom, you just go

10:48

pick something up, and you load these pallets onto

10:50

containers. Containers are the big metal

10:52

boxes, and on the corners of the containers,

10:54

they have these really interesting cam lock

10:57

lugs. Cam lock, I don't

10:59

know why I said lock. I knew what you meant. Yeah,

11:01

cam lock lugs. And so if

11:03

you ever look at one of these trucks, they have a container on

11:05

the back, and you look at the corners, you can see that there's

11:07

these little, I don't

11:09

know how to describe the shape, it looks like an arrowhead

11:12

that goes into the corners, and then there's a

11:14

little lever, and you throw the lever, and it

11:17

locks the container onto the truck. All

11:19

these distances are standardized, and so you can have

11:21

a 40-foot container, a 20-foot container,

11:24

you can order parts from Hungary, and

11:26

they'll put it on a train, and then they'll ship

11:28

it with a train to the ship, and then they'll

11:30

put it on the ship with a crane, and then

11:32

they'll put it, you know, they'll send

11:35

it across the ocean, and then in Mobile, Alabama,

11:37

they have another crane with the same lugs, and

11:39

they can take it off and send

11:41

it all the way to your house if you want. I

11:44

don't know who created that, it's genius, whoever did.

11:46

That'd be a great deep dive to understand that.

11:49

So whoever came up with a container changed

11:52

the world because everybody standardized

11:54

their infrastructure to be able to do that.

11:56

So the idea is, if we have a

11:58

container that is a nuclear reactor, that could

12:00

generate power, that'd be amazing. I

12:03

know the military's looking at that. They would

12:05

love a way, when I have a FOB,

12:07

a Forward Operating Base, it'd be amazing to

12:09

be able to use the backbone

12:12

of the military infrastructure to be able

12:14

to just like, oh, we're gonna forklift

12:16

a nuclear energy device out there and

12:18

this is a safe nuclear energy device

12:20

that we're not gonna melt down or

12:22

anything like that. Our fuels are designed

12:24

in such a way that they're safe,

12:26

they're low level and they give

12:28

us just enough heat to do what we gotta

12:30

do and make electricity, but there's

12:32

no huge environmental impact if we'll

12:34

say a bomb gets dropped on it because it's

12:37

war. What would happen if a bomb

12:39

got dropped on it because it's war? I have no

12:41

idea, I have no idea. Well, I would want somebody

12:43

to know that. Yeah, they'd probably figure that out. One

12:45

of the taters, something. Yeah, but I think it's- Oh,

12:47

it turns out it's super bad. Turns

12:49

out- Dang. Yeah, that

12:51

stinks. But I think it's interesting

12:53

because moving forward, I can imagine

12:55

Freedomville having a small

12:58

nuclear reactor, tiny,

13:00

that does what it needs to do. Maybe it's hooked

13:03

up to some kind of, I don't know, sterling engine

13:05

or maybe it's a turbine

13:07

or something that's simple to operate. And so

13:09

they're talking about making these

13:12

small scale nuclear plants in

13:14

factories. That would be

13:16

amazing. Small scale plant inside of a

13:18

factory that fabricates something having nothing to

13:21

do with energy. Well,

13:23

I mean, just think about it. So imagine

13:25

a car factory. I'm imagining

13:27

it. Okay, now instead of

13:30

a car being rolled along the line,

13:33

you have a little metal pressure

13:35

vessel looking thing. Okay.

13:37

And that is the nuclear reactor. And

13:39

that nuclear reactor has the ability to,

13:43

you have all the gazentas and the

13:45

gazautas, all the things that

13:47

go into it and go out of it. And they

13:50

hook them all up and then they move that

13:52

forward. And then that gets put into, and then

13:54

at the end, you're sliding that into a container.

13:57

Like you're shoving a whole stack of Pringles into a

13:59

Pringles can. You know, okay, and

14:01

you just combined the words shoving and

14:03

sliding. Okay in your previous iteration Sliding

14:07

and I loved it and

14:09

I'm going to incorporate that into my did I say sliding?

14:11

Yeah, I think you said sliding Okay, if you didn't I'm

14:14

doing it the same way my daughter You

14:16

saw me take my text message that rattle

14:18

off in my pocket there So yeah, that

14:20

was we slipped down into 75% brain for

14:22

you know, my kids combined pointy and pokey

14:25

to create pokey Yeah, I'm

14:27

never giving that up either. No, you

14:29

just grab those things when they come. All right, so

14:32

the idea would be then instead

14:34

of drawing power for Fabrication

14:36

some sort of fabrication plant from

14:38

the same grid that is powering

14:40

a community That

14:42

power would be isolated in some sort

14:45

of little tiny nuclear reactor dedicated to

14:47

that factory that plant Is that what

14:49

you're saying? I can imagine a

14:51

future where a town has the ability to

14:53

hook into the grid and the grid is

14:56

smart and The grid

14:58

can make decisions at the nodes

15:00

right now There are little

15:02

switches on power poles and

15:05

alignment or a line woman or whatever we're saying these days

15:07

We'll go out and just flip that switch. Okay,

15:09

and like break off a whole section of

15:11

the power grid in the area Okay,

15:14

so decisions are being made at the extremities of

15:16

the power grid, but they're also

15:18

these Intertwined things that have

15:20

to be balanced in the power grid The

15:23

difficult thing about electricity is that it's an

15:25

it's a now kind of thing. It's

15:27

expensive to bank it Oh, it's super

15:29

expensive to bank it but but when you produce

15:31

it, it has to go somewhere So if a

15:33

nuclear power plant is running at full capacity, which

15:36

is what you want nukes to do You

15:38

just want to ramp them up and just steady

15:40

state, you know Just I'm gonna run this

15:42

at 100% power and

15:44

I'm making two megawatt or two gigawatts or

15:46

whatever right now And I'm

15:49

just gonna hum along like that. Well, you

15:51

got to send that power somewhere. What if you

15:53

don't? You you dump

15:55

it to a some type of load

15:57

some type of resistive load. Okay You

16:00

know, it's different than a sink because the

16:02

sink is dealing with heat energy here.

16:04

It would just be just a resistor chunk of

16:06

rubber or something like that It's a

16:09

right just ground it out. It's interesting you bring

16:11

that up because in Finland

16:13

they have this place where they they have a

16:15

furnace and they they heat a whole town They

16:17

have pipes under the town and they'll just heat

16:19

the whole town so

16:21

like I'm assuming you're buying heat in your

16:24

house and Talk a radiator

16:26

kind of thing and so when they

16:28

produce extra heat They send

16:30

that heat into the ground and like heat up the

16:32

rock is my understanding. I could be wrong about and

16:34

then that Gradually makes it

16:36

so that there's passive heat you

16:39

can go to town as well When you need

16:41

when you need heat later, you can just go

16:43

get the heat from the ground because you put

16:45

it in the ground You so they're creating an

16:47

artificial geothermal environment a thermal flywheel. Yeah Ah

16:51

Pretty neat, huh? Okay. What

16:53

is the flywheel a flywheel

16:55

is a way of storing energy okay,

16:58

so let's say we have a motor

17:02

and we have the ability to produce electricity

17:05

somehow we can turn that electrical potential into

17:07

kinetic energy and we're gonna do that by

17:10

rotating a large heavy object

17:12

and That heavy object once

17:14

we get it going We

17:16

are storing our energy in the

17:19

form of kinetic energy because this

17:21

flywheel has rotational inertia and Probably

17:25

has been designed so that it has more

17:27

rotational inertia. So there's more mass out on

17:29

the edges We get that

17:31

thing spinning really really fast and then let's say

17:33

we don't have electricity anymore Well, then we can

17:36

start running our motor that was powering it We

17:38

can just flip the electrical contacts

17:40

on it and we can use that motor

17:42

now as a generator Okay, and

17:44

in that same motor that spun it up We can

17:46

now just change the circuit and

17:48

now it is going to pull that energy

17:51

back out of that flywheel So

17:53

as we put a resistive load across the

17:55

contacts on the motor the

17:57

motor voltage will now, you know

18:00

we'll not be able to use it. So

18:02

a flywheel holds that

18:04

energy for later access. A

18:07

sink is used for by-product

18:09

energy, energy that you don't need to redirect

18:11

anywhere, it just needs to go somewhere. I'm

18:14

not familiar with the term sink in that way, but

18:16

I see what you're saying, it makes sense, yeah.

18:19

But there is a difference, right? If

18:21

there are gonna be opportunities where you can hold

18:23

energy for later use, because

18:25

a flywheel isn't a battery. Yeah. Right,

18:28

I mean, a battery is chemical. You're talking about

18:30

something. It's a form of battery. I mean, I

18:32

don't know how you wanna define battery. So, I

18:35

mean, an electrochemical battery, like a voltaic pile back

18:37

in the day, like one of the first batteries

18:39

that was ever invented, there's a jar

18:42

and you've got a stack of

18:44

dissimilar metals, and you've got some type

18:46

of fluid in there, and

18:49

then some type of dielectric

18:51

type substance, I don't know. And

18:54

then you're able to get an electrical

18:56

potential out of two different contacts there.

18:59

One of my favorite ways to store energy

19:01

that I've ever seen is super simple. It's

19:04

in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It's called

19:06

Raccoon Mountain. I thought you were gonna say

19:08

abdominal fat. Fat

19:10

is good, though. It's an option. Raccoon Mountain?

19:13

Yeah. I don't know this. So they have a

19:15

power plant, they have a bunch of power plants all

19:17

up and down the Tennessee Valley.

19:19

It's part of the

19:22

Tennessee Valley Authority. There's a lot

19:24

of hydroelectric dams. There's several nuclear

19:26

plants that operate. There's a lot of stuff. I

19:28

mean, we're very blessed in this area to have

19:30

many different ways to produce power, and a lot of

19:32

them are clean. And so

19:35

that's really cool. But one of the things they

19:37

do at Raccoon Mountain is they have

19:39

all these ways to produce electricity, but sometimes

19:41

they're like, oh, we're making electricity

19:44

and it's no longer peak time. So

19:46

when do you think the most power

19:48

demand, is that a word,

19:50

demanded? How

19:52

do you say what the sentence I'm trying to say? One

19:54

tower would be the most in demand? Yeah, there you go.

19:57

When do you think that would be the case? times

20:00

of year, what times of day? I would say

20:03

pre-electric vehicle revolution. It would be

20:05

midday through the afternoon and the

20:07

hottest part of the day when

20:09

you have to use climate

20:11

control and people are at work. Post-EV

20:15

revolution, I would say we are either there

20:17

already or we are trending in this direction,

20:20

that it's going to be late afternoon into

20:22

the evening where you're still doing climate control,

20:24

people are still on devices, but the vehicle's

20:26

already in the garage and plugged in. Interesting.

20:30

Yeah, I would think dead of winter,

20:33

cold, cold, cold time of day if you

20:35

have electric heat and stuff. Electric heat's pretty

20:37

unusual in the West, so my mind didn't

20:39

go there. If you've got a

20:42

house that you're trying to heat with electric heat

20:44

... You've done it wrong? Yeah, respectfully, kind of.

20:46

Yeah, and that happens when you're way

20:49

out in the sticks at a house that was built 20, 30

20:51

years ago before there was development in the mountains

20:53

or whatever. You can get

20:55

electrical out there, but then you're paying

20:58

unbelievable money to heat that house

21:00

with electric. The little

21:02

place that we had in the woods,

21:04

you remember that. You'll

21:07

notice that we had baseboard heat

21:09

throughout that entire rickety old cabin that

21:11

we were trying to fix up. You'll

21:15

also notice that it was never on. Do

21:17

you remember how we heated that house? You

21:19

had a pellet stove, right? Yeah. You

21:22

put these pellets, little rabbit turds, and you

21:24

would put them in this little burner and

21:26

it would feed them in, right? Yeah, there's

21:28

an auger that went from the reservoir and it

21:31

would spin them down at a certain pace. Or they

21:33

would? Yeah, they're sawdust

21:35

pellets, basically. This is what happens to your sawdust.

21:37

It gets repurposed for

21:40

heating. There's some sort of

21:42

process by which they get, I

21:44

don't know, packed together and covered in

21:46

a little organic seal that holds that packed

21:48

sawdust in a tiny little ... You described

21:51

it well, like a rabbit turd pellet. And

21:53

then you get them in bags. They're 45-pound bags,

21:55

same weight as a plate for your

21:58

bench press. you

22:00

dump them into a reservoir and you set

22:02

your temperature and the way that

22:04

thermostat works is that the auger just runs

22:06

harder when you have it set at a

22:08

higher temperature, the auger runs lighter

22:10

when you have it set at a lower temperature.

22:13

And so you turn it on there's an ignition

22:15

pot down in the middle of this, well

22:18

you know, whatever cast iron, cast

22:20

metal stove and you'll just hear

22:22

the clinks all day clink clink clink clink clink and

22:25

it's burning at any given time. We

22:27

have 15 or 20 of those little rabbit pellets.

22:29

Is there like a flame or is it a

22:31

smolder? It's a flame. If it's smoldering

22:33

your house is smoky and it smells bad and it's

22:36

not efficient. But it's

22:38

a finely tuned ratio

22:40

where the mixture of oxygen and

22:43

fuel and circulation throughout

22:45

that device is really

22:48

well balanced for a hyper efficient burn and you

22:50

can tell if you've got a good stove and

22:52

if you're burning properly because you go outside and

22:54

what do you see coming out of the chimney?

22:57

No smoke. Correct. Yeah. Yeah, nothing.

23:00

If you get a bunch of black smoke coming

23:02

out of the chimney, I mean

23:04

it just means that you're a total mess and you need

23:06

to go clean out the pot. What does it mean if

23:08

there's white smoke coming out of the chimney? Mmm.

23:11

There's wet pellets. New Pope.

23:13

So, I don't know. The new

23:16

Pope. Hey Matt, my audio is

23:18

kind of messed up. Can I

23:20

just, can we just record

23:23

this? And then you edit it on your

23:25

side with my Bluetooth? Is that cool? Oh

23:27

yeah, just phone call or you sound, I

23:30

mean you sound great to me. Let's do

23:32

it. Yeah, absolutely. So, this episode of Notum

23:34

Questions is sponsored by HelloFresh and

23:37

Matt, what's the deal with HelloFresh? HelloFresh

23:39

is a meal kit delivery service

23:41

that takes food geniuses and

23:43

puts them in a room and it makes

23:46

them figure out what would be a good thing to

23:48

eat and all the components you'd need and how to

23:50

get the good components and how to design

23:52

a recipe. They do all of that, the food geniuses, then

23:55

you sign up for the service and they just send it to

23:57

you and then all you got to do is follow the instructions

23:59

and cook it. and it tastes good and it makes your family

24:01

love each other more. Was that, I mean, did that just

24:04

wear with your experience? Yeah,

24:06

the family love each other more is hard

24:08

that you don't expect, but it does actually happen.

24:11

The food geniuses part, if you were

24:13

to create a food genius, you were

24:15

to cultivate them for some big, you

24:18

know, futuristic food genius competition, how would

24:20

you do that? Yeah, well, when I

24:22

was in sixth grade, there was a

24:24

five week special all one series episode

24:26

at the GI Joe, where Cobra tried

24:28

to make the perfect evil dictator. And

24:30

so what they did is they went

24:32

and raided the tombs of the greatest

24:35

evil geniuses of all time. They stole

24:37

their DNA and they put it all

24:39

in the same bucket. Yeah, absolutely, that's

24:41

how they created Serpentor. They

24:43

took all the evil geniuses and they dumped

24:45

all of the DNA in a bucket and

24:47

they spun the bucket real hard and

24:49

then a science lady moved some

24:52

levers and knobs and then hit it with

24:54

a bolt of electricity. And what came out

24:56

of that goop? A guy

24:58

wearing a snake costume, riding a floating

25:00

snake chariot, and he was as evil

25:02

as you would expect. So, based on

25:05

what I learned about the world, oh,

25:08

they clearly did, it worked on the first

25:10

try. Did you, you, I mean it. So

25:13

I would go and get all of the food

25:15

geniuses, I'd harvest their DNA by reading the tombs.

25:17

Who would we get? Well, you're not listening to

25:19

my question. In the Earl of a Sandwich, you

25:21

gotta get the guys who invented the sandwich. Yeah,

25:25

okay, Julius Caesar, who invented Little

25:28

Caesar's pizza and the Caesar salad.

25:32

You gotta get Paul Newman, he made that

25:34

dressing everybody likes. Dick and Catherine Wershesteshire. So

25:36

you gotta get them, I'm pretty sure those

25:39

are the inventors of that. I'm doing all

25:41

the heavy lifting here. What are you, why

25:43

are you even here? I'm,

25:46

I'm, I'm scupified it.

25:49

You did all that for nothing. We

25:52

just turned these microphones on, it's like, hey, it's time to

25:54

record the hella fresh at it. You

25:56

just pulled all of that. What is, your brain

25:58

is so fascinating, dude. It's incredible.

26:00

And then you put it all, you put the DNA in

26:02

a bucket, you swirl it up and you get the guy

26:04

who makes the Hello

26:06

Fresh recipe. Yeah, I think Emeril Lagasse,

26:08

the guy, the Italian chef guy, I

26:11

think I would get Justin

26:14

Wilson, the guy, that guy, I

26:17

think he should be in there. Oh, excellent. And so,

26:19

yeah. And what's the lady, she, oh, she

26:21

had a show, she was,

26:23

hello! Do, do, do, do,

26:25

do. Meryl Streep. No,

26:27

Julie Child? No, duh. Oh, you got

26:30

it, you got it. Okay, anyway, the

26:32

point is Hello Fresh. Yes, it

26:34

is. So, if you want meals

26:36

that are prepared by, I mean,

26:38

I don't know if we told you this, but Matt and

26:40

I went and got all the DNA from

26:42

all these chefs and we put it in

26:44

a bucket and we spun

26:47

it up real hard. And we hit it

26:49

with a bolt of lightning. A bolt of

26:51

lightning, that's right. And then out popped the

26:53

Hello Fresh chef and they

26:55

decided they were gonna give you this

26:57

following offer. If you want

26:59

to go to hellofresh.com/NDQ free, that's like no

27:01

dumb questions, NDQ,

27:04

NDQ free, and use code NDQ

27:06

free for

27:09

breakfast for life. Now, Matt, we have to explain

27:11

breakfast for life. That's a big, yeah. I mean,

27:13

that's a big deal. So, here's what I've done

27:15

to learn more about that. I went to hellofresh.com/NDQ

27:17

free on

27:21

my smart device. It's an exclusive

27:23

offer for podcast listeners. It's for the NDQ audience

27:25

here. You get the free breakfast for life. And

27:28

so, then what I see right under the free

27:30

breakfast for life are

27:32

four circular waffles that all look

27:34

delicious. I'm scrolling here. You pick

27:37

your preferences. So, I

27:39

went through that. I said I like the

27:41

protein. I said, what are you

27:43

trying to accomplish here with your HelloFreshing? And

27:45

I said, I want healthy food that I

27:48

can make quickly by myself. And

27:50

so, then it put that in its HelloFresh

27:52

computer, hit it with a bolt of

27:54

lightning, pulled a lever, a bunch of smoke comes out,

27:57

and then they figure out what meals.

28:00

would fit that profile for me and they send me awesome

28:02

things which it looks like is going to be a

28:04

lot of meat and veggies is

28:06

what it's telling me. Yeah. Given the

28:08

input that I gave. What did you

28:10

say? Let me explain the free breakfast

28:13

for life thing. If you go ahead

28:15

and go to IndieCue, basically hellofresh.com/IndieCueFree. Use

28:17

the code IndieCueFree. They give you

28:19

one breakfast item per box while

28:21

your subscription is active. So I

28:23

think this is a

28:25

program where if you sign up now you

28:27

get that breakfast item in every

28:29

box as long as you keep that subscription

28:32

active. That's awesome. That's a good

28:34

idea. That's like, if

28:36

you heard about that guy that bought, I forget

28:39

his name, but it was some airline where

28:41

he bought a ticket for $25,000 for like

28:45

airline tickets for life. Yes. It's kind of like

28:47

that only you get a breakfast item in every

28:49

box at HelloFresh as long as you keep your

28:51

subscription active. That's how it works. Yeah and they

28:53

finally gave up trying to run that guy off

28:55

and finally they just embraced it.

28:57

We're like, all right Mr. fly five flights

28:59

every single day because you're allowed to. You

29:02

got us. Let's make it a thing. I think

29:05

you want to be that person with HelloFresh

29:07

breakfast. Yeah, like you and your cell phone

29:09

plan. I know about that. Oh

29:12

yeah. So go

29:14

to hellofresh.com/IndieCueFree. Use

29:16

the code IndieCueFree for free breakfast for

29:18

life. One breakfast item

29:20

per box while subscription is

29:22

active. We'd be grateful. Yep.

29:25

Again, that's hellofresh.com/IndieCueFree and use

29:27

the code IndieCueFree for free

29:29

breakfast for life. The

29:31

boxes are going to show up on time. Stuff's going to

29:33

be fresh. There's going to be a recipe card in there

29:36

that's going to be easy to use. You're going to want

29:38

to save. If you haven't tried out HelloFresh, you're going to

29:40

love it. If you have tried it out, it's

29:42

time to get back on that because the HelloFresh

29:44

is doing free breakfast for life and it's delicious.

29:47

Thank you very much for supporting the sponsor that

29:49

supports Matt and I's goofy little podcast

29:51

that we hope you enjoy. It's

29:54

a really impressive device and we had two

29:57

of them there in that house. And so

29:59

what we'd have to do. is take the truck

30:01

down into town and you buy

30:03

a whole bunch of bags or maybe you have them deliver

30:05

a pallet and then your

30:08

heating routine for your house is

30:10

you sling up a bag yeah bring it

30:12

in I had a way that I cut it I was like

30:15

I'm like an assassin I had this really cool

30:17

cut that I would do on the bag made

30:19

me feel rad and then you dump it into

30:22

the reservoir basically perform seppuku on the bag exactly

30:25

Harika I don't know what the word is I

30:27

don't know what you meant yeah it sounded yeah

30:30

our Eastern yeah that and

30:33

and then you know so part of my nightly duties

30:36

you have those as the husband and man

30:38

of the house you lock certain things you

30:40

check certain things you arm certain things whatever

30:43

part of my nightly duties was got to put

30:45

that fresh bag of pellets in the stove so

30:47

everybody's warm all through the night it's

30:49

just a very different routine to heat

30:52

your place so why would I go through all

30:54

of that effort and energy on that cabin way

30:56

out in the woods far from most

30:58

of the infrastructure in the grid to

31:01

heat my house when I could just use electricity

31:03

well cost I

31:05

could heat that that whole poorly

31:08

insulated home out in the woods

31:10

with pellets for a reasonable amount

31:13

but electricity was four or five six times

31:15

the cost insane but you got to have

31:17

that because if you travel even if you're

31:19

gone for you know a whole long day

31:22

you can't keep the pellets full

31:24

and so you set it to

31:27

48 degrees and your pipes don't freeze

31:29

there's also a new grill design this

31:32

is by a company called Traeger

31:34

okay and it heats the

31:36

grill with these little pellets or smaller

31:38

pellets like they're not they're

31:40

closer to rat turds than pellet then

31:42

rabbit turds but it'll also auger

31:44

in and it can it has a burner

31:47

a little element right there that is pretty

31:49

cool that's neat yeah does it have a

31:51

smell to it like can you buy potpourri

31:53

smelling oh oh well

31:55

yeah okay so these kind

31:57

of stoves some of them have a hot

31:59

area on top, many do not. But

32:02

the ones that have a hot area above the

32:04

burner, you can get a real

32:06

heavy cast iron pot that has

32:09

the spring to dissipate heat for the grip,

32:11

you can picture it. And

32:13

you can set that on there, and there is entirely

32:15

natural potpourri that you can throw in

32:17

there with water, it humidifies the space,

32:20

and you get that potpourri smell. Yeah, the wood burning

32:22

stove in here has a flat grid on top, and

32:25

I remember the power went out one time, we were

32:27

hitting the house with it, and we cooked pancakes on

32:29

it. Oh, really? It was really cool, yeah. I always

32:31

threatened to do it, and we never did it. What

32:33

I got is I had the

32:36

little pot that I would use on my wood

32:38

burning fireplace, and on my pellet stove. We

32:41

had two pellet soaps in that cabin and a wood burner in

32:44

our previous place in Wyoming. But

32:46

eventually, my fan started

32:48

to break down and make noise. You

32:51

know, the fireplace unit on all of these, it has

32:53

a fan, or else the heat just sits there, it

32:55

doesn't do you any good. And

32:57

it was expensive. I just didn't have the

32:59

money to do the repairs. It was a

33:01

very expensive fix to make that fan work.

33:03

So I ordered in parts, I

33:06

replaced everything I could, but when we ran

33:08

it, it would work, but it

33:10

was super loud. There's just nothing I could do

33:12

without replacing the whole unit. So what

33:14

do you do? You can't watch TV, you can't

33:16

talk, maybe every now and then to really warm

33:18

up the house fast, you run it, but everybody's

33:20

super excited to turn it off. Well,

33:22

then I went and visited a buddy, an

33:25

old mountain man of the woods,

33:27

Dubois, and he had these simple

33:29

machines that were entirely made of metal

33:32

and they sat on top of the fireplace.

33:34

I've seen these. Okay. They're

33:37

like a sterling, basically it takes

33:39

the temperature differential and

33:41

it operates a fan. Yes. No

33:44

external source other than the temperature differential. Yes.

33:46

That's amazing. It was the coolest thing ever. And so I just

33:49

bought a few of those. You set them

33:51

up there and you just watch your fireplace heat up.

33:53

And that little fan blade is just sitting there. It looks

33:55

like a, almost like a windmill

33:58

tower, like a miniature black matte. black

34:00

windmill tower, but there's sort of this

34:02

heat distribution set of prongs up at

34:04

the top. Like blades. Heat

34:07

blades up at the top. Like a heat

34:09

sink on a processor in your computer. Exactly

34:12

that. Yeah. The heat would move up that and

34:14

you would just see the silver blades of

34:16

the fan start to twitch. Oh,

34:19

the heat demons are back. Look out kids.

34:22

And then pretty soon, woop woop woop woop

34:24

woop woop woop woop woop woop woop woop

34:26

woop woop woop woop woop. And this thing

34:28

would just kick heat across the whole room.

34:30

Was it fast? Yeah, it moved hard.

34:32

I mean, you could put your finger in there

34:34

and it wouldn't gas you, but it didn't feel

34:36

good. Yeah. Either. I mean, so it was enough

34:38

to move air. Yeah. And two or

34:41

three of them, it would really cover the

34:43

room pretty well. It wasn't instant heat

34:45

distribution, like the loud fan that I

34:47

repaired, half repaired, but

34:50

it would move. And I always thought that was

34:52

the coolest thing because I'm not doing anything. I'm just

34:54

using this passive energy to make it do something active

34:56

that I want it to do kind of neat. That's

34:58

cool. Because the energy was going to go in the

35:00

room anyway. Yeah. Yeah, that's

35:02

cool. So what it is, is an

35:04

even localer energy

35:06

management strategy. Now

35:09

I'm sure there are people listening to

35:11

our conversation, there's cringing at the idea

35:13

of burning biomass because

35:15

I mean, it's easy to get that mixture wrong and

35:17

have that burn ugly. But

35:20

also, I think a lot of

35:22

the assumptions people have about the

35:24

polluting qualities of burning biomass are

35:27

a little bit antiquated because I tell

35:30

you what, the pellet stove that was in

35:32

that place that we bought was on

35:35

its last leg. It was super old, it was

35:37

not tuned, and it was not efficient. You

35:39

could see it in the box the way it burned. You

35:42

could see it coming out the chimney that it wasn't

35:44

burning efficiently. You could feel it

35:46

in the unevenness and unmanageability of the

35:48

heat in the living space. And

35:51

you could see how inefficient it was and how much it

35:53

cost, just in pellets, how often

35:55

I had to put more in. Eventually,

35:57

it just broke, it quit running well enough to jump.

36:01

and maybe the biggest expense that

36:03

I put into trying to fix up

36:05

that house, I went and bought a

36:08

super efficient new pellet stove. And

36:11

that thing was incredible.

36:14

It occurs to me real quick, I misspoke. We had a wood burner on one

36:17

side of the house, and we had a pellet burner on the other in this

36:19

place. I said two

36:21

pellet burners. So at any

36:23

rate, this new pellet stove, it

36:25

was incredible. Just

36:27

immediately, our costs went in half in

36:29

terms of how much we were burning.

36:31

So right there, I can

36:34

tell you that this old stove that wasn't

36:36

tunable was consuming double

36:38

the resources for less of

36:40

the heat than the

36:42

new stuff. So just anecdotally, I

36:44

sure get the impression that we have

36:46

made big strides in terms of tuning

36:49

and being more efficient with biomass consumption. But I

36:52

mean, is that square with what you've seen and

36:54

what you've heard, or am I just making stuff

36:56

up from my own experience? I've never had a

36:58

pellet heater or anything like that, but I definitely

37:00

think we're getting more efficient. In engineering,

37:03

I took a thermodynamics and the heat

37:05

transfer course, and it's

37:07

a thing that all mechanical engineers do, and

37:10

we all just like, let's just kind of grit our teeth and get

37:12

through these classes. But eventually, you

37:14

appreciate it because it teaches you to think

37:16

about the world in terms of thermodynamic laws.

37:19

And so there's this thing that you always calculate, which is eta.

37:22

It looks like the capital letter, the Greek letter –

37:24

Oh, the Greek letter eta, not A-D-A. E-T-A.

37:28

Yeah, okay, gotcha. Eta – Yeah,

37:30

we would go with eta. We thought it was fine. Yeah,

37:32

it looks like a capital cursive N, and

37:35

you learn to always

37:37

calculate eta, which is the

37:39

efficiency of the system. And

37:41

of course, the goal is a

37:43

1.0 efficiency

37:46

will never happen. Wait, what does 1.0

37:48

efficiency mean? Repeatable, perpetual motion?

37:51

Well, basically,

37:54

the amount of power that you put in is

37:56

the power you get out. So

37:59

that's 1.0. So it's not perpetual motion that

38:01

is. Maybe it

38:03

is, yeah. I mean, like, you know, you're

38:05

having to put energy into the system. Sure.

38:08

Okay. To get something out.

38:10

But you're always going to get out less energy

38:12

than you put in. Always.

38:16

That's just thermodynamics. And so. But

38:19

the balance between the two,

38:22

obviously it doesn't go away. It's

38:25

lost. It's lost. It's

38:27

distributed in some other way that isn't efficient

38:29

or useful. Correct. Yeah. Right.

38:33

Friction. Heat. Like

38:35

you're losing loss in heat. Maybe even the material

38:37

itself. Maybe you're converting it to strain energy. I

38:39

mean, there's really weird ways that you can lose

38:42

sound. Like you're making sound

38:44

and that sound vibrates the air

38:46

molecules and that takes power to

38:48

do that. Sound heat? Oh

38:50

gosh. Uh, the

38:53

sound is a lot of things. Okay. I

38:56

mean, sound is complicated and a pressure

38:58

wave through air is super,

39:00

super complicated. I took a couple of classes

39:02

on that kind of stuff or it was

39:04

in my classes and you

39:07

start hearing words like, oh, the

39:09

adiabatic compression of, or whatever.

39:11

And then you're just, my eyes

39:13

just kind of glaze. I know compression. Adiabatic.

39:15

That one I didn't have. No. Yeah.

39:19

It's a. Yeah. Adiabatic

39:21

and enthalpy and, you know, isentropic

39:24

adiabatic. You start using these

39:26

words and then every engineer that

39:28

I know, they hear those words and they're like,

39:30

okay, yep, I know those words. And in a

39:33

pinch, I could go grab that book over there.

39:35

Yeah, there you go. And I could get you

39:37

back to it, but. We got words like that too. Like

39:39

pumps and all this kind of stuff. You'll look

39:41

at the enthalpy charts and you'll figure out like,

39:43

well, if I'm getting this energy out of the

39:45

system, putting this energy in, it's

39:48

a complicated thing. And as you compress and

39:51

you compress

39:53

fluids and as you convert

39:56

water to steam, you can get the,

39:59

just the fact. of the phase changeover

40:01

between water to steam, that

40:03

alone is incredible

40:06

because ideally you would have water at

40:08

211 Fahrenheit and then you have to

40:10

put just a little bit of energy

40:12

into it, bam, you blow it into

40:14

steam. Once you cross

40:16

that phase change and you

40:19

get the expansion, you

40:21

can do incredible things with steam. And then

40:23

nuclear plants, you can do superheated steam. So

40:25

what they'll do is they'll have

40:28

water under incredible pressure

40:30

and it'll be past the boiling

40:32

point at atmospheric pressures, but

40:34

then they expand it and not

40:36

only does it just flash the steam immediately, but

40:39

because it's superheated steam, it

40:41

just does crazy stuff that I don't understand. And

40:44

I'm not an expert in that area,

40:46

but it's incredible what these engineers

40:49

are doing these days. This

40:53

episode of No Dumb Questions is

40:55

sponsored by Morrison Nordman Wealth Management.

40:58

That is new. I haven't said that on

41:01

the podcast before. That's interesting, right? The

41:03

reason it is sponsored by Morrison Nordman

41:05

is we put a call out and

41:07

we said, hey, we would

41:09

love to open it up to anybody that listens

41:12

to the podcast that's interested in sponsoring because

41:14

we want to talk about people that like

41:16

the podcast. The company is made by two

41:19

people, Matthew Nordman, Scott Morrison, and

41:21

they do wealth management. And I already had somebody

41:23

that I was working with to do financial management

41:25

and stuff like that. Matt, you

41:28

actually called and did the 15 minute getting

41:30

to know you call, right? Yeah,

41:32

I did the 15 minute get to know you

41:34

call. And then I did another one after that.

41:36

And look, the company has

41:38

wealth management in the name and I

41:40

don't really think of wealth as something

41:42

that I have, but we do save

41:44

every month. We do have

41:47

a little retirement plan thing that

41:49

we do. I mean, we're trying

41:51

to do smart things with whatever

41:53

extra we have, like theoretically, everybody's

41:56

doing every family is doing, but

41:58

dude, I have no. plan. I

42:01

don't know what to do. I don't know how

42:03

this works. I'm busy doing things. And

42:05

so the 15 minute get to know you

42:07

call was great, because they told us a

42:09

little bit about what they do and took

42:11

some of the edge off in terms of the question

42:13

of like, do I even qualify? Am I wasting your

42:16

time here? Because I don't, I don't have what I would consider

42:19

to be wealth. They took the edge off of

42:21

that, explained what they do, and then just asked a

42:23

bunch of questions about who we are and what we're

42:25

into and what we're going for with life and things

42:27

like that. And that was really it there. Now you

42:29

know who we are. Now we know who you are.

42:31

You want to keep talking. We can look

42:33

at your stuff and give you some opinions

42:35

on that. And I guess that was

42:37

the second step in the whole process. And I jumped

42:39

on that first call, not the one that you did,

42:41

but the one before we were like, Hey, what do

42:43

you do? Why do you want to sponsor NoDum questions?

42:46

And I remember talking about like the

42:48

whole process and like, Hey, is this

42:50

actually worth it to you? Like would

42:53

sponsoring NoDum questions be beneficial to you

42:55

guys? And the answer was yes, because

42:57

there are, I would call it a

42:59

virtual office. So if you're looking to

43:01

talk to somebody that manages finances, they

43:04

can help you. If you're at the stage

43:06

where you don't really know how to get

43:08

everything in order, but you know it needs

43:10

to happen, it would be worth

43:12

time to call these folks. And so the thing

43:14

I thought was interesting is I was just very

43:16

honest. I said, Hey, would it benefit you to

43:19

run an ad on NoDum questions? And one of

43:21

the reasons why I was cool with it is

43:23

Matthew said, yes, if we did this, and I

43:25

was able to get a client that worked out

43:27

well, and it was mutually beneficial, then it would

43:29

have been worth it to sponsor NoDum questions. And

43:32

that's when I started feeling good about it. And

43:34

so then you took the ball and did the

43:36

due diligence from our side to figure out, Hey,

43:38

is this something we actually want to put in

43:40

front of the listeners and NoDum questions? So thank

43:43

you for doing that. And then what did you

43:45

find overall? On the personal side for me, it

43:48

was an unsticking process.

43:51

Maybe there are people in the third chair who feel

43:53

this, like you're going through this part

43:55

of life, whatever you're in, and there

43:58

are things you know, you should be thinking about. And and organizing

44:00

and getting in order and you imagine everybody else has

44:02

a plan and has all of this stuff in order.

44:05

Like everybody's got a team with all

44:07

the people that do taxes or estate

44:09

planning, wills, whatever, any of that stuff.

44:12

But you're like, but I don't have that. I don't

44:14

have a clear plan on that. I was feeling that

44:16

and also feeling kind of stuck and overwhelmed. Matt

44:19

just did a great job of breaking it

44:21

down into manageable parts that I could understand,

44:24

really offering effectively what was a

44:27

second opinion on how I

44:29

have things set up right now. It

44:32

was so helpful, not just from

44:34

a, you plan some boring detail

44:36

stuff perspective, but it was

44:38

helpful because we got right past the things that

44:40

I thought would be really boring and into, here's

44:42

what that looks like life-wise. Here's

44:45

how that unsticks you in your

44:47

decision-making and moves things forward. And

44:49

I found it to be a

44:51

very empowering conversation, I guess. I

44:54

didn't expect it to have any kind

44:56

of counseling cred, but it was super

44:58

useful for Camilla and I for getting

45:00

unstuck and feeling like we have

45:02

the beginnings of some kind of plan in

45:04

this aspect of our lives now. Does that

45:06

make sense? Yeah, absolutely. Retirement is scary. That's

45:08

a scary thing. And so if you don't

45:11

have a plan for retirement, they

45:13

do this thing, I'm reading this right from the

45:15

website, they do this thing called Income Conductor, where

45:18

basically they look at where you're at

45:20

and they set up milestones. And

45:23

then they can break it down

45:25

into short-term goals, mid-term goals, long-term

45:27

goals, and what kind of

45:29

return you hope to get based on what

45:31

your investments look like. That's what they do.

45:33

They wanted to support Know Them Questions by

45:36

getting us basically to let you know that they

45:38

exist. What do you do, Matt? How do you

45:40

sign up for the call? How do you do

45:43

that? Yeah, you can call or you can go

45:45

to the website, which is Morrison Nordman. Nordman has

45:47

two Ns at the end, nordman.com. morrisonnordman.com.

45:50

You can sign up for one of

45:53

the 15-minute Get to Know You meetings,

45:55

which can then roll over into a

45:57

longer discovery meeting. earlier

46:00

that I heard Matt use a lot when

46:02

we were talking the idea of a virtual

46:04

family office that collaborates with all

46:07

of the existing team that you have or

46:09

that we have in place. Those

46:11

conversations provide a second opinion on how you

46:13

have things set up and what you're doing.

46:16

Also in kind of a weird way

46:18

it's sort of a fear of missing

46:20

out insurance. That if you never

46:22

talk to anybody else you're like I don't really know why

46:24

this is what we do. We talked to one lady one

46:27

time at a thing and she said do this and we

46:29

just signed up and now we've been doing that for 15

46:31

years. I really came away

46:33

feeling like okay somebody else

46:35

has put eyes on this and they did

46:37

so efficiently and empathetically that was

46:39

really helpful. And I think the other thing that

46:42

they could be really useful for would be somebody

46:44

who's really seen a lot of growth in

46:46

their family or what they're doing in terms of

46:48

their income or where they're at in life and

46:51

maybe they've kind of outgrown the team that they have

46:53

worked with and they want to start the process of

46:55

building a new team or adding new elements to their

46:57

team for all of this aspect of life. Seems

47:00

like they're really good at seeing the big picture

47:02

of that as well. Yeah the impression I got

47:04

from Matt from the call I was on with

47:06

him is he's looking to build relationships with people.

47:08

In order to do that

47:10

that 15-minute call they're gonna make sure that

47:12

your values are aligned and your goals are

47:15

aligned or at least he wants

47:17

to understand your goals and then he's going to

47:19

use that information to help you align with what

47:21

you're trying to do. Like he's gonna try to

47:23

set up a plan for you. My understanding

47:25

is the 15-minute consultation basically it's just a

47:28

hey let's chat let's see if it's a

47:30

good fit and if it's a good fit great and

47:32

anybody can do that and you just

47:34

go to their website morrisonnordman.com two N's

47:37

on Nordman. If you scroll

47:39

down there's a little sign up

47:41

for the 15-minute call thing. Once

47:43

you do that it's like a calendar you just

47:45

pick a calendar just did it right now. There's

47:48

a thing that says schedule a discovery meeting and then

47:51

you just go right there you can select

47:53

the time just do it. Hopefully it'll help

47:55

your life help your family in the future.

47:58

Also I think it's really awesome that Matt recognize

48:00

that we were looking for a sponsor here on No Dumb

48:02

Questions and he jumped in to do that. I just

48:04

want to say thanks. That's really cool of you. I'm

48:07

grateful. Yeah, I agree and

48:09

the service was really, really helpful. We've

48:11

implemented a ton of stuff that came

48:13

out of these two conversations in our

48:16

household and in our plan. This is

48:18

kind of a watershed moment for our

48:20

family in terms of what our plan

48:22

looks like. We've taken a lot

48:25

of his advice and very helpful. That's awesome.

48:27

A big thank you to Matthew Nordman

48:29

and Scott Morrison for supporting the podcast.

48:31

They went to our little thing, nodumquestions.fm.com.

48:34

They put a bid on the sponsorship

48:36

slot for the podcast to support the

48:38

podcast. We're grateful. If you'd like to

48:40

show them that you're grateful, please consider

48:42

going to morrisonnordman.com and schedule your Getting

48:45

to Know You call today. Last little

48:47

thing I have to say here is

48:49

securities offered through Securities America Inc., member

48:51

FINRA, SIPC. Advisory

48:53

services offered through Securities America Advisors

48:56

Inc. Morrison Norman Wealth

48:58

Management and Securities America are separate

49:00

entities. Thank you very much for supporting

49:02

the podcast. Back

49:05

to the biomass thing and I suppose in keeping

49:07

with what you're just saying, biomass

49:09

in a sense is

49:12

that local vision that the dude in

49:14

Utah was telling you about at the

49:16

simplest localist level. That is

49:19

energy you are responsible for, energy that

49:21

you manage and make decisions for. It's

49:24

just incomplete energy. It only does so

49:26

much. But the principle is

49:28

there. I mean, from the dawn of time, humans

49:31

have managed their own energy, usually

49:33

heat energy, to meet

49:36

needs, augment things about their natural environment

49:38

to make things go. It's only

49:41

really very recent that

49:43

we are managing that at such

49:46

a grand corporate scale with so

49:48

many influences and so many hands

49:50

in that. Honestly, it seems like

49:52

it's going pretty well. One of

49:54

the things I do not have big gripes with

49:56

is the grid in America.

49:59

Yeah, fair. In the upper

50:01

Midwest or Mountain West. I know there are other

50:03

places where people might have complaints about how the

50:05

grid works. Yeah. But we've

50:07

got a company called Black Hills Energy

50:10

that has Black Hills in the name, but it's Iowa

50:13

and Wyoming and Colorado. And

50:15

it's just this gigantic energy company that's out

50:17

of Rapid City, South Dakota. I

50:20

have no complaints. It seems to

50:22

work. It doesn't seem to be politicized. It

50:24

doesn't seem like there's a bunch of stupid debate

50:27

and argument and bickering about it. Basically,

50:29

people would like to have affordable energy in

50:31

their homes. And for the

50:33

most part, they get pretty affordable, very

50:35

reliable energy in their homes. How

50:38

would nuclear make that better, either locally

50:40

or regionally, in your opinion? Well, number

50:42

one is cleaner. So no

50:46

matter what you think about climate change, I

50:48

mean, there are people that have very strong

50:51

opinions about this. What I've

50:53

decided to say about this is, hey,

50:56

what if we do everything cleaner and

50:58

all we have to show for it

51:00

is this much greener, cleaner earth? Man,

51:03

that sucks. That's a

51:05

crazy way of thinking. So I'm

51:07

all about clean energy, no matter what you

51:10

think. And I think we should

51:12

be doing things cleaner. In France, for example,

51:14

they're at 80% of their grid nuclear energy.

51:16

Did you know that? What's

51:19

Germany at? I don't know. It's getting

51:21

less every day. Right. They're reducing it, correct? They're shutting

51:23

down nuclear plants, which I think is... Do

51:25

you know why? I think it's political.

51:27

I don't know why. What political party

51:29

would want clean energy to go away?

51:31

I just don't understand. I usually

51:34

have a pretty good sense of the political matrix. Yeah.

51:37

Like, oh, if you have this theory, then

51:39

right now it's fashionable to be against this

51:41

and really for this in a way that

51:43

everybody knows. That's how politics works. Yeah. This

51:46

is one of the places where my political grid just

51:48

breaks down. I don't understand who

51:50

it would benefit to be against

51:52

nuclear. Right. Exactly. Especially

51:55

when you're bringing in a big pipe from

51:57

Russia and you're coupling yourself in a very,

51:59

very... real political way to an

52:02

unstable dictator. I don't

52:04

know if he says a dictator, but

52:06

an unstable country that does drastic things

52:09

in a short time frame. So

52:11

if you're the kind of president where

52:14

there's a possible threat of imprisonment for

52:16

playing a fake staged

52:19

hockey game with him, and if

52:21

you hit him or disrupt his goal scoring,

52:24

your family could suffer consequences. I think

52:27

you're a dictator. It's pretty wild. I

52:29

think that's it. He skates pretty well. You got to give the

52:31

guy credit. He moves, he's an

52:33

old dude, he moves pretty well on skates anyway.

52:36

I mean I think it makes

52:38

sense to have more nuclear plants. I do. I

52:41

think, and so I'm about to

52:43

start making that push on Smarter Every Day. I'm gonna

52:45

start talking about that, but I'm gonna try to do

52:47

it in a really cool way. I

52:49

got to go to the first ever nuclear

52:51

plant, the first place in

52:53

the world that produced light

52:56

from nuclear energy. Where's

52:58

that? It's in Idaho. It's there

53:00

at Idaho National Labs. It's called EBR-1,

53:03

Experimental Breeder Reactor 1. How big

53:06

is it? It's not big at all.

53:08

It's not big at all. It's like a grocery store. It's

53:10

tiny, and there's just a tiny reactor, and

53:13

they have they had a little old-school steam

53:15

turbine left over from World War II, and

53:18

yeah it just flipped on lights

53:20

for the first day. And it's really cool. They

53:22

have on the wall there written in

53:24

chalk, and said this

53:26

place was the first place in the

53:28

world where nuclear energy created

53:31

usable power for people. It said something

53:33

like that. It happened on this date,

53:35

and these people were present, and they

53:37

wrote it all down, and then at the end

53:39

they said yeah a couple days later they had the

53:41

janitor come sign it too. So the janitor came and

53:43

signed as well, and then they immediately covered it in

53:45

glass. So this is a big deal. We're going to

53:48

cover this in glass. And so it

53:50

was declared a historical site.

53:53

Yeah. It's no longer producing

53:55

electrical power with nuclear

53:57

energy, but it's all preserved. You

54:00

can see the hand-drawn curves from

54:02

the engineers that were running the

54:04

different things like for example If

54:08

you're to try to measure

54:10

temperature on something and you

54:12

have a thermocouple Do you know what a thermocouple is? I don't take

54:14

two dissimilar metals and you create a

54:16

junction Just think of it

54:19

as like soldering kind of okay soldering

54:21

a junction between those two dissimilar metals

54:24

You take that and you put it somewhere the

54:26

fact that it is There's

54:28

a temperature difference at that location I don't remember what

54:30

the effects call it may be the it's not the

54:32

PEL TA So you're taking two metals

54:34

where you know the the conductivity value

54:36

of an EconL or just some ramp how

54:38

comparing that Yeah, it's how you draw the

54:41

well. No it'll produce a voltage. It'll produce

54:44

a voltage really Yeah, you take two dissimilar

54:46

metals and and there's all

54:48

types of standardized Thermocouples and you

54:50

put them together two wires and you and

54:52

you put them in a place where

54:54

there's a change in temperature And

54:56

you will get a voltage out of that in fact

54:59

you can create energy like this. It's a I think

55:01

it's called a pile I don't

55:03

remember but anyway, so this is a thing you can do

55:06

but when you do this You get a

55:08

voltage out and you have to equate that to a temperature

55:11

So the way you would do that is if you had a

55:13

cup of ice water like this cup of ice water I have

55:15

right here Okay, the water

55:17

in that is what temperature

55:20

cold. You know what temperature it is. What was temperature

55:22

the water? How would I know what the temperature

55:24

is? I mean it's just ice water. It's I

55:26

don't know 34 degrees it's

55:29

the freezing point So why would it's

55:31

got to be above freezing point or that would all be

55:33

frozen? I mean you have ice water there So it's got

55:35

to be just a little bit above because your ice is

55:38

gradually melting right so I'm holding the cup and so everything

55:40

Outside the water is above the freezing

55:42

point right mm-hmm and so heats going into the

55:44

water mm-hmm And then that's slowly trying to heat

55:46

the water up But the ice is keeping it

55:48

from doing that because the ice is a boundary

55:50

condition So you got a boundary condition outside the

55:52

cup you got a boundary condition at

55:54

the ice But my assumption would be that that

55:56

heat working from the outside in is not evenly

55:59

distributed through that water I mean you did shake

56:01

it just a little bit. Yeah, yeah at the

56:03

micro level you're right you got some convection going

56:05

on So the you know yeah You're

56:08

right, but for the most part. It's

56:10

right at freezing put a thermocouple in there and You

56:13

just have water put a thermocouple in there, so it'll be

56:15

at whatever room temperature is right you drop

56:17

ice in it Then the temperature

56:20

of the water is going to go down until

56:22

it gets to the freezing point to

56:24

the ice temperature right and then

56:26

you've got This tug of war that's happening between

56:28

the temperature of the water and the temperature the

56:30

ice and they kind of Neutralize

56:32

right at the freezing point okay,

56:35

and so the ice itself Could

56:37

be colder than the freezing point right well.

56:40

Yeah sure yeah that makes sense Yes, so the

56:42

temperature is going to it's gonna stay

56:45

right there at that level until all the ice

56:47

melts And then the temperature will start to rise

56:49

again Likewise when you

56:51

boil water same thing happens.

56:53

It's 212 Fahrenheit 100 degrees C That

56:57

cup of water right there is basically zero degrees C

57:01

Seven Fahrenheit whatever it is

57:04

and so what you can do is you can take this

57:06

thermocouple that we were talking about and you

57:08

can make An ice water bath, and

57:10

you can put the thermocouple in there, and you read the voltage

57:12

and it says five volts So

57:14

we know that on our little chart

57:16

five volts equals thirty two point one

57:18

seven degrees Fahrenheit No, I

57:20

had no idea how that worked And then we

57:22

go to a boiling water and we stick

57:25

our thermocouple in the boiling water

57:27

and we say okay That's seven

57:29

volts and so seven volts is equal

57:31

to I'm making things up seven volts is equal to

57:34

212 Fahrenheit or 100 degrees C And

57:36

so we now have a scale between zero

57:38

degrees centigrade and 100 degrees centigrade from five

57:41

to seven right yes

57:43

I understand yeah, so what temperature is

57:45

six volts? Well,

57:47

I don't know a little more. Oh come on. You

57:49

know did math from zero to a hundred

57:52

Okay, five volts to seven volts, so what

57:54

a six volt fifty. Yeah, you said it

57:57

in this new nuclear power plant

58:00

first place they ever created nuclear energy,

58:02

there were charts all over the

58:04

place. So you'd have a meter that would

58:06

say current and it would be an ammeter

58:08

so it'd be measuring amps. Right

58:11

beside it there'd be a little bitty frame and

58:13

a piece of graph paper just sitting there

58:15

and it would have

58:18

somebody's hand-drawn curve and

58:20

what they did is they said okay well this

58:22

this thing right here is the level of water

58:24

in that tank over there and

58:27

they have some kind of device in there that

58:29

when the tank was empty because somebody went

58:31

and measured it with a tape measure when

58:34

the tank was empty we're at 4 volts

58:37

when the tank is full we're at 12

58:39

volts or 12 amps or whatever

58:41

the device however the device was measuring it sure

58:43

and so they just literally drew the graph and

58:45

they drew it on the page there that's

58:48

how you measured it and so you read you read your

58:50

meter like oh we're at 12 amps and

58:52

then you go over to the graph and you and

58:54

the left and right okay okay we're at 36 inches

58:57

of water in our tank it's cool it's

58:59

cool to see that how these people were trying

59:01

to figure out how to measure all the things

59:04

and they didn't have the instrumentation so they

59:06

just made it. I'm particularly

59:08

fascinated by the implications for all

59:11

of this in terms of scale

59:13

I mean that gets us pretty

59:15

close to why I brought this whole thing up the

59:18

relationship between energy and power

59:20

not energy power but power

59:22

power to expand the

59:24

influence of the individual or

59:27

to expand the influence of a

59:29

noble state or to expand

59:31

the influence of an ignoble state it

59:34

seems like power is very attached

59:36

to energy every

59:38

single stupid action sci-fi comic

59:41

book movie seems to understand

59:43

this relationship there's a

59:45

blue light laser going into the sky

59:47

that's a bad guy trying to harness

59:50

energy so that they can rule the

59:52

world and it seems

59:54

to me that a great

59:57

way to democratize power not

59:59

just through the force of the law

1:00:01

and saying we're going to have democracy

1:00:03

and saying we're going to respect the

1:00:06

nobility of the individual. It

1:00:08

seems like a great way to do it is

1:00:10

to come up with more ways that take energy,

1:00:12

make it safe, make it clean, but put you

1:00:15

in charge of it. Yeah, everybody gets

1:00:17

their own little fusion reactor. Because power

1:00:19

is power. Which is incredibly, I feel

1:00:21

a little bit of pause over the

1:00:23

fusion reactor side of things. But

1:00:26

solar and little local wind generators, they don't

1:00:28

get this done. It doesn't accomplish

1:00:30

this vision that I'm talking about here. And

1:00:32

the reason is because it's cyclical.

1:00:34

Like the sun's only out at certain

1:00:36

times of day. If you're

1:00:38

in Finland, you get several months where you just

1:00:41

don't get sun. They should vote

1:00:43

to change that. The wind, you

1:00:46

don't get to decide when the wind kicks on.

1:00:48

And so you do in Wyoming. Do

1:00:50

you? Always. Really? Yeah,

1:00:53

it's always on. Do you guys have a lot of

1:00:56

Condor Kucinarts out there? Have you ever heard that term?

1:00:58

No. Windmills are going to

1:01:00

save the world, right? And then they noticed, I

1:01:02

don't remember where it was, maybe it was California

1:01:04

where they were starting, the birds couldn't see them.

1:01:06

It's just a bird blender? It's a bird blender.

1:01:09

It's a reference to the Condor Kucinarts. But

1:01:11

the windmills are wind turbines. I always try

1:01:13

to say turbines, not windmills. So a mill

1:01:15

is a thing that grinds up the grain.

1:01:17

A turbine is a thing that, you know,

1:01:20

it's like a gear train. You can create power with it. So

1:01:22

I always try to say wind turbine. So I

1:01:24

think the wind turbine is the promise of a

1:01:26

beautiful future that Al Gore gave us all. But

1:01:29

then I don't think it's actually what it all cracked

1:01:31

up to be because there's many issues

1:01:34

with wind turbines like at

1:01:36

the end of the life cycle, how do you dispose

1:01:38

of that thing? It's proven to

1:01:40

be brutally difficult. I mean, we're making

1:01:42

giant landfill graveyards with parts

1:01:45

of these non-recyclable wind turbines. And

1:01:47

I mean, it was fun

1:01:49

to imagine that would be clean, but

1:01:51

there's a huge economic energy and environmental

1:01:53

cost to getting rid of the thing.

1:01:55

And my impression is that the equation

1:01:57

is upside down. The negatives in

1:01:59

those times. three categories are outweighing the

1:02:01

positives. I could be wrong,

1:02:03

I'm not against wind power, I'm against power

1:02:06

that doesn't do what it's supposed to do.

1:02:08

And if wind power is what I'm starting

1:02:10

to get the impression it is, then I'm

1:02:13

against it because it would mean the only

1:02:15

reason we're really doing it is performative. It

1:02:17

makes people feel good, you know? It makes people, it

1:02:20

looks neat to have a big thing. I saw it.

1:02:22

That's gonna pivot then, because things that make people feel

1:02:24

good but aren't what they thought it was, as

1:02:26

soon as it quits making people feel good,

1:02:29

people turn on those things aggressively. I think

1:02:31

the important thing is you have

1:02:33

to be intellectually honest. We talked about

1:02:35

eta before, efficiency. In

1:02:38

order to be intellectually honest about nuclear power,

1:02:40

we have to take into account the

1:02:43

diesel fuel that was in the dump

1:02:45

truck or the big loader that

1:02:47

helped get that uranium out of the ground.

1:02:49

Yes, you do. And we have to take

1:02:51

into account the energy in the welder, the

1:02:54

power being used in the welder that helped

1:02:56

make that reactor. Yeah, and if you really

1:02:59

wanna get it, how about the $3.50 gasoline

1:03:03

for the person running the welder to get

1:03:05

to work that day? Yeah. How

1:03:07

many people had to show up? What did it take to put

1:03:09

food in their bellies? I mean, all of those things really

1:03:12

are part of the equation. They go into the

1:03:14

equation. And so the interesting thing is

1:03:17

a lot of people don't like

1:03:19

nuclear because it feels bad in

1:03:21

their minds. I feel

1:03:23

the exact opposite. But if you look

1:03:25

at the amount of people that have been killed by nuclear

1:03:28

power versus the amount of people that have been killed by,

1:03:31

for example, what was it, Kentucky

1:03:33

or Tennessee where they had this

1:03:35

big ash flood? We talked, when we were

1:03:37

talking about our floods, all

1:03:39

these people that died as a result of this storage

1:03:42

facility of all this coal fly ash or whatever it

1:03:45

was called. How many people have been killed as a

1:03:47

result of nuclear power? Not including

1:03:49

nuclear attack. Oh, it's very,

1:03:51

very small. You know, who knows is the

1:03:53

internet? In Fukushima, I think the answer was

1:03:55

zero, wasn't it? It was a one. Was

1:03:58

one guy? No, the guy who went in. It was

1:04:00

late in life the one engineer who was like somebody needs to

1:04:02

go in there I'll do it like

1:04:05

Spock and Star Trek 2 or whatever it

1:04:07

was Remember that you just

1:04:09

you will just spoil a movie for me

1:04:11

in a heartbeat and just like Star Trek

1:04:13

2 from 1982 with zero from 1982 Inhibitions

1:04:18

you're like, you know what? Do you have

1:04:20

had four plus decades to go and watch

1:04:22

that there's a movie really existed for your

1:04:24

entire life The dude Leonard Nimoy has been

1:04:26

dead for the better part of a decade.

1:04:29

Just sayin. I'm just saying it's a thing

1:04:31

It's a blind spot. Okay. I'll have hair.

1:04:33

Hey Like

1:04:35

look I'm not trying to be a jerk. Yeah, I

1:04:38

actually am Esther

1:04:40

gets the king to execute Haman at the end of the

1:04:42

book Why would you tell me that you should have read

1:04:44

it and you had a chance to read it It's

1:04:47

been out since 450 BC if

1:04:49

you didn't get around to it. That's your own

1:04:51

problem I Was

1:04:54

why would you tell me how

1:04:56

good you uh No,

1:04:59

I want to know how many

1:05:02

total deaths from

1:05:06

Nuke layer Okay

1:05:11

All right. Here we go pal

1:05:14

engineering.com February 2021 Have

1:05:16

we had any nuclear meltdowns that have killed people

1:05:18

since 2021? Not that I'm aware of not that

1:05:20

I'm aware of either So

1:05:22

let's assume these numbers are somewhat

1:05:24

reliable There have been

1:05:26

three major accidents and nuclear power plants since

1:05:28

their inception in 1951 Chernobyl three

1:05:30

mile island and Fukushima nailed it Yeah.

1:05:33

Yep. All right, you were three mile island.

1:05:35

Yes, New York. That's what I

1:05:37

thought too. This says Middleton, Pennsylvania Really?

1:05:40

I thought it was New York. I did too. I was

1:05:42

wrong about that then I mean,

1:05:44

I would have said that with absolute confidence kind of

1:05:46

like you did. Hmm. You were Chernobyl

1:05:48

is That's in

1:05:50

West Texas, right? According to this

1:05:53

Haiti really? I huh

1:05:57

Who would have thought Fukushima? Fukushima

1:06:00

that that's in Mexico right now. It's Japan

1:06:02

coming and I thought I knew this stuff

1:06:04

There was a pattern and you failed to

1:06:06

pick up on it. All right Capacity

1:06:09

factor by energy source. I don't

1:06:12

okay this ratio Energy

1:06:15

looks like nuclear looks really really good there All

1:06:18

right loss of life in nuclear accidents here we

1:06:21

go With the caveat that

1:06:23

no loss of human life should be considered acceptable.

1:06:25

Hey good writing. Yeah, that's good way to not

1:06:27

classify it Why didn't I think of that? I

1:06:30

agree with that caveat. I affirm it

1:06:32

the International Atomic Energy Agency,

1:06:34

okay, so they're gonna be a little

1:06:37

bit biased in favor of atomic energy. I

1:06:39

think I don't know that they are the International

1:06:42

Atomic Energy Agency. They're

1:06:44

pretty good. All right. I mean,

1:06:46

I mean the nuclear regulatory agencies are

1:06:50

Incredibly depending on who you talk to like if

1:06:52

you work at a nuclear plant you would almost

1:06:54

view them as oppressive Okay, I can see okay.

1:06:56

I can picture that. Yeah, because I mean people

1:06:58

are scared of nuclear So they go over the

1:07:00

top to make sure it's safe the

1:07:03

IAEA is It

1:07:06

kind of serves double duty because they want

1:07:08

to make sure nobody's refining stuff

1:07:10

more than they should okay How

1:07:13

many people do you think they say died at Chernobyl?

1:07:16

Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I

1:07:18

haven't watched the HBO series I don't know they say

1:07:20

31 Wow. Yeah, two

1:07:23

of those deaths were due to the explosion.

1:07:25

Okay 29 were

1:07:27

first responders. Okay, but isn't

1:07:29

there like life shortened by cancer?

1:07:31

There's got to be that from Chernobyl. There's

1:07:34

got to be I mean, I guess that's

1:07:36

a comorbidity at that point Where's the first

1:07:38

responders and obviously? Yep regrettably getting exploded. Yeah,

1:07:40

that's not a comorbidity Like

1:07:42

if you had COVID when Chernobyl

1:07:45

exploded and you were in Chernobyl,

1:07:48

I think that's just a Chernobyl death Okay

1:07:52

Fukushima 20,000

1:07:55

died in the earth Wow in the earthquake

1:07:57

itself 20,000

1:07:59

in the flood and the earthquake dude. That's a lot of

1:08:01

people. Golly, that's a lot

1:08:03

of people. Three lander Wyoming's. Wow, that's

1:08:06

amazing. Total number killed

1:08:08

us from the radiation exposure?

1:08:11

There was one. There's one guy.

1:08:13

Mm-hmm. That's amazing. That said an

1:08:15

additional 573 indirect deaths

1:08:17

are attributed to the disaster mostly due

1:08:20

to evacuation stress.

1:08:23

Oh weird. Yeah. Oh and

1:08:25

here's the one that I always heard about when I was a kid.

1:08:28

Total deaths at Three Mile Island? I

1:08:30

don't know. Zero. Yeah. Since

1:08:33

1951, 667 nuclear power plants have been built across

1:08:36

the world. Today 440 are operating

1:08:38

across 32 countries and

1:08:41

account for more than 10% of total electricity

1:08:43

produced. To put these

1:08:45

numbers into perspective in 70 years and with

1:08:47

a total of 667 nuclear power plants that

1:08:49

have ever operated, only three major accidents have

1:08:52

taken place and the combined death total is

1:08:54

32. This sentence is

1:08:56

amazing. In fact estimates

1:08:58

on the number of deaths caused

1:09:00

by the nuclear energy sector overall

1:09:03

is 90 per... I

1:09:06

don't know what these numbers and letters mean. I'm

1:09:08

going to show you 1,000 capital

1:09:12

terawatt hours. Huh.

1:09:15

That seems pretty good. They estimate

1:09:18

that coal, if nuclear is

1:09:20

9 per what I just say 1,000

1:09:23

terawatt hours. Yeah. Coal

1:09:25

they say is 100,000. Whoa! Those

1:09:27

are very different numbers.

1:09:31

Those are very different numbers. If

1:09:33

that is to be trusted those are

1:09:35

very compelling numbers. Yeah. Yeah

1:09:37

that's amazing. Interesting. So my initial

1:09:39

thought was I

1:09:42

like nuclear power and I am bulky

1:09:44

about the idea of any kind of

1:09:46

democratization of that, any

1:09:48

local expression of that, but

1:09:51

yes you could take

1:09:53

those safety standards and have them applied

1:09:56

at more local levels and we could

1:09:58

get those numbers that amount. of energy

1:10:01

with that amount of safety or even close

1:10:03

to that amount of safety, I don't

1:10:05

get why we wouldn't do that. Yeah,

1:10:08

but you're thinking about traditional reactors

1:10:10

too. Like some of the

1:10:12

newer reactor technologies are incredibly safe. Some

1:10:15

of the newer reactors they're working on,

1:10:17

they can't melt down because

1:10:19

they're already molten. So melt

1:10:21

down though, that doesn't, that's

1:10:24

not just an expression for like break. Melt

1:10:27

down is a specific heat

1:10:29

reaction, it's a specific process

1:10:31

that occurs. I'm not prepared to talk about

1:10:33

this and this is why because I

1:10:36

am on the beginning of

1:10:38

my journey to learn a

1:10:41

lot about nuclear power and for example

1:10:44

one of the videos I recorded and

1:10:47

it's amazing is how

1:10:50

to measure the temperature of a

1:10:52

nuclear reactor core. Anal

1:10:54

thermometer? Close, except

1:10:56

for the anal part. It's not, okay so

1:10:58

you don't, nothing, nothing, there's no, I think

1:11:00

there's a special tip on those. Nope, none

1:11:02

of that, okay, none of that, yeah. So

1:11:04

just a regular one. I don't know, I

1:11:06

don't want to talk about it yet because

1:11:08

it's so cool and I went so deep

1:11:11

down the rabbit hole and it's amazing,

1:11:13

it's amazing. Like the

1:11:15

fact that you can monitor inside of

1:11:18

a nuclear reactor is incredible

1:11:20

because the fact that the reactor is

1:11:22

running means you are irradiating the device

1:11:24

that you are using to record the

1:11:26

temperature. And so the ability

1:11:29

of that device to measure temperature changes

1:11:31

and so you remember the curve we

1:11:33

drew earlier between ice and boiling water?

1:11:35

Yeah. So what that means

1:11:38

is your thermometer, the curve

1:11:40

that it responds to different temperatures is changing

1:11:44

as you're measuring. So it's

1:11:46

kind of a weird

1:11:49

differential equation and

1:11:51

so it gets more complicated than just

1:11:53

sticking that thermocouple down there. You have

1:11:55

to do really neat things including I

1:11:57

got to meet a scientific glassblower. And

1:12:00

he showed me how to make

1:12:02

a thing that could tell you

1:12:05

some That's as opposed to like

1:12:07

an artisanal medieval Renaissance fair glass

1:12:09

blower. Yes. Okay. Exactly. Yeah. It's

1:12:12

a whole thing. It's a whole thing.

1:12:15

So instead of using soda lime

1:12:17

glass, they're using quartz. They're using

1:12:19

borosilicate and they're using, you know,

1:12:21

like, which is Pyrex. They're using really interesting

1:12:23

things, which means the working

1:12:25

time they have on these materials

1:12:27

is lower because they don't have

1:12:29

this, uh, this plateau of workability

1:12:31

in the temperature curve. I don't

1:12:34

know. Okay. Well, we're not done

1:12:36

with that conversation. Deep rabbit hole.

1:12:38

And I understand that the

1:12:40

biggest thing that I wanted to pick your

1:12:42

brain about and you were the right person.

1:12:45

I mean, dude, the fact

1:12:47

that you could just engage in an hour

1:12:49

of that with no warning, no notice, no

1:12:52

heads up and take me down that rabbit

1:12:54

hole is great. But if you

1:12:56

recall all the way back at the conversation,

1:12:58

we're talking about the monocled steam punk super

1:13:00

villain who controls all the energy and has

1:13:02

a dirigible with auto guns on it. For

1:13:04

some reason, he looks like Wario in my

1:13:06

head. He does. Yeah. Yeah. And Curly Mutt's

1:13:08

ass holds up the monocle. Maybe not the

1:13:10

hat. He's a little overweight, but he has

1:13:12

suspenders. So it's working and the suspenders are

1:13:14

metal. Okay. We're picturing the same guy,

1:13:17

right? Yeah. Okay. We can agree on that.

1:13:19

Perfect. It's a

1:13:21

laughable caricature, obviously,

1:13:24

but also there's a reason that motif keeps

1:13:26

coming up in storytelling because it's

1:13:29

a believable motif. Power

1:13:32

is power. If you

1:13:34

distribute actual power, not imagined power,

1:13:36

like we will not comply. We're going to

1:13:38

resist. Okay, cool. But actual

1:13:41

practical usable energy. If

1:13:44

you distribute the control over that, I think

1:13:46

human rights abuses are harder to

1:13:48

have happened. I think justice is

1:13:51

more likely to happen. With power

1:13:53

comes resources. It comes with

1:13:55

the ability for people from any background

1:13:57

who speak any language coming from any

1:13:59

story. just history

1:14:01

aside, here's access to energy

1:14:03

and power that you can just do

1:14:06

things with, build things with, be creative.

1:14:08

I think the result could be, I think

1:14:11

there could be answers to some of the

1:14:13

questions we have societally about justice, about

1:14:16

how we move forward, about

1:14:18

community and unity and being

1:14:20

one people in the

1:14:23

democratization of energy. So

1:14:25

I wanted to pick your brain a little bit about what

1:14:27

that could even look like and this was really helpful.

1:14:29

Thank you very much for asking these questions. I've got so

1:14:31

much stuff in my head right now and I'm scared

1:14:33

to say any of it because it's not fully formed and

1:14:36

I want to revisit this in the future because I've got

1:14:38

some ideas that I want to

1:14:41

run past you including the geopolitical ramifications

1:14:43

of certain countries using certain types

1:14:46

of reactors. Yes, I'm down

1:14:48

for further conversation and also I have another

1:14:50

whole thread of questions about this that I

1:14:52

want to pick your brain about. We'll do

1:14:54

that in the future.