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SPEAKER_02: Hey, everybody, get this.We're coming probably to a city near you this year.We've got all of our shows scheduled, and Chuck's going to tell you about them right now.
SPEAKER_05: That's right.We're going to be in Medford, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., and New York City on May 29th, 30th, and 31st.
SPEAKER_02: Right.
SPEAKER_05: Then we're going to be going to Chicago, Minneapolis, and Indianapolis on the 7th, 8th, and 9th of August.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: And they're going to wind it up in Durham, North Carolina on the 5th of September, and then Atlanta on the 7th.
SPEAKER_02: And tickets are on sale now.You can go to stuffyoushouldknow.com or go to linktree.com.And we would love to see you there.Tickets are on sale now.So we'll see you soon.
SPEAKER_09: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
SPEAKER_02: Hey, and welcome to the podcast.I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too.And we're just futzing around, having fun, doing what we do here on Stuff You Should Know.
SPEAKER_05: That's right.Tech Stuff Edition.
SPEAKER_02: It is.Hats off to John Strickland, who's still doing it all these years.
SPEAKER_05: We're all still doing it.I know.
SPEAKER_02: They won't let us stop.
SPEAKER_05: My God, we're still doing it.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think he's in year 15 now.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, he was like shortly after us, right?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.Yeah, right on the heels.I can always feel him breathing on our neck.It's really gross.He has a very humid breath.Gross.So, yeah, the reason you said this is tech stuff edition is because this is super techie.There's a lot of technical stuff that we're going to dance around.It's future-facing technology. And it's the kind of thing that everybody hopes will hurry up and come, but probably doesn't know very much about.
So here we go.Tech stuff.Ahoy.
SPEAKER_05: Everyone except me.You don't want this?I don't know.The whole time I was reading it, I was like, man, it just sounds like a lot of work to just not have to plug in your phone.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it is a lot of work to just not have to plug in your phone.But, I mean, haven't you ever, like, looked around your house and been like, these wires are just so stupid.Like, I hate having cords and stuff you have to plug in.You have to, like, put something where the outlet is or else you have to use a drop cord.It's a little more of a pain if you stop and think about it than it appears because we're used to it.We've lived under the tyranny of cords for so long.It's normal to us.But it's not normal, Chuck.
SPEAKER_05: Oh, so you're thinking a future where nothing in your house is plugged in.
SPEAKER_02: Precisely.
SPEAKER_05: Oh, no.Sure.Great.
SPEAKER_02: I can't wait for that day.I cannot wait for that.And not only that, there's the last thing we're going to talk about is what I'm really jazzed about.
SPEAKER_05: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to spoil it, so don't bring it up, but everybody just stay with us through the end, and you'll be rewarded.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and what we're talking about is wireless electricity, or more appropriately, wireless power transfer, because if you think about your cell phone that you can just sit on a little pad and charge it wirelessly, that thing's plugged into the wall.So what you're doing is you're transferring power from one thing to another.
SPEAKER_02: But imagine if that charger, that pad that you lay your phone on.
SPEAKER_05: Is your house.
SPEAKER_02: Or no, it was like mounted on the ceiling of your room.Yeah.And when you walked into that room, immediately your phone just started charging in your pocket.You turned your TV on and it was going full blast, no problem.And then you look behind it and you faint dead away because it's not even plugged in.And you think there's a ghost in your house or God is messing with you.
SPEAKER_05: I just, I don't think it jazzes me like it jazzes you.
SPEAKER_02: That's fine.I'm not going to try to convince you.
SPEAKER_05: I've never looked behind a TV on a wall to look for cable, so.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, well, then you haven't lived.
SPEAKER_05: But we can talk about the history of it, right?Because this is not a new thing.People have been trying to do this basically since there was electricity.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I would have traced it back to Tesla.Tesla was very famously very interested in trying to figure out how to create wireless electricity that he planned on sending through the earth from one end to the other.Basically a global wireless electrical network, right?He didn't, as we'll see.But what I didn't realize is it predates him even.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.Before him, there was a German physicist named Heinrich Hertz, who he was a guy who said, hey, magnetic electromagnetic waves are a thing.I can prove it.And he was able to send energy in the form of radio waves from between two antennas in the 1880s, which predated Tesla's little party trick. that I think all of us probably saw in science, or not saw, but read about in science class.
SPEAKER_02: Or saw on The Prestige.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, at some point where he's like, I'm going to make this light bulb light up Uncle Fester style, except I won't even put it in my mouth.
SPEAKER_02: Right.And it was a different light bulb.It was the predecessor of the fluorescent light.So the gases, when they came into the presence of either a magnetic field or electrical current, it would glow.It would light up.But he did actually demonstrate this.He showed that you can wirelessly power things.And, yeah, this is still the 19th century technology. There's a legend that a lot of times is repeated as fact by a lot of legitimate sources, but supposedly there's no actual evidence of this happening.There's a legend that he lit up a crop of light bulbs, I think 25 miles away from his research station in Colorado.
Um, and that, that would be like the far and away the longest, um, transmission of wireless power in history.No one's even come close to that here in the 21st century.So they think that it probably didn't happen, but he was trying to do that, but he, he didn't actually do it.
SPEAKER_05: I have a question.
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
SPEAKER_05: Well, you remember, uh, what, what, what's it called when you say like a gagalo geese or whatever, we did that short stuff on it. or whatever, you just said a crop of light bulbs.Is that the term for a lot of light bulbs?
SPEAKER_02: I say it is, sure.Oh, okay.Something pronoun.Was it a collective pronoun?
SPEAKER_05: I don't know.But did you just make that up or is that a thing?
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it just came out of my mouth.
SPEAKER_05: Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02: Do you like it?
SPEAKER_05: Sure.
SPEAKER_02: All right, well, I'll start using it for now.
SPEAKER_05: Sounds like you're growing light bulbs out in the field or something.Like ready for harvest.
SPEAKER_02: Next time I go to buy light bulbs, they'll say, you got a crop of light bulbs here I can buy?
SPEAKER_05: I love it.I mean, that's probably a use for crop I just didn't know about.
SPEAKER_02: No, I will say, hey, man, Clark me a crop of light bulbs.
SPEAKER_05: So Tesla's got his party tricks happening.May or may not have done this to a crop of light bulbs over a greater distance.World War II rolls around. And all of a sudden we're using radar and we're learning how to generate like more improved and more directional and precise beams of microwaves and things like that.And in 1964, and you can watch this video on YouTube.It's kind of fun to watch.William Brown of Raytheon kept up a little sort of, I mean, it's a helicopter.It looks like it's made out of a rector set maybe.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: About 60 feet off the ground for 10 hours with no wires.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.And they could have gone longer, but the novelty wore off.So he just stopped after 10 hours.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.He's like, all right, does everyone get it?Right.
SPEAKER_02: Can we go home now?
SPEAKER_05: Like how many times do I have to pass this hula hoop over it?
SPEAKER_02: Right.Right.So that was a huge, huge accomplishment.And I believe the same William Brown of Raytheon created another record that stood until from 1975 until from what I can tell this past January, like a month ago. In 1975, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab transmitted, I think, 35 kilowatts of power.And like 50 percent of what they transmitted, I think a quarter of a mile away or something like that, was received and lit up another crop of light bulbs.That's what people do.They light up crops of light bulbs when they're demonstrating wireless electrical transmission.
SPEAKER_05: Because they light up and everyone's like, ooh.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.And actually, I'm sorry, it was more than a quarter mile.I think it was basically a slap mile.It was like 1.54 kilometers.
SPEAKER_05: Wow.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.So that's a really long way.And it stood from 1975 till 2024, almost 50 years.And then I believe the Korean Space Agency just broke it by like three-tenths of a kilometer.Oh, really?So it's not like we've jumped by leaps and bounds.And almost, if I were William Brown, I'd be like, really?You couldn't just wait until you could beat it by like 10 times that?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's not very sportsmanlike.
SPEAKER_02: No, it's like if you made the world's biggest bagel and somebody made another world's biggest bagel by like 10 more pounds.What's the point?Are we really just going to go back and forth year after year with a new world's biggest bagel?No, you need to really like double it up at least before you break somebody's record.It's just common courtesy.
SPEAKER_05: You know how to really get their goat is just drop one extra poppy seed on top.Has more mass.
SPEAKER_02: Man, I would just start bleeding out of my ears.
SPEAKER_05: So this can happen in a couple of ways, and who knows what the future holds.We are going to get to that stuff, like you were talking about, like you walk in and everything's just like charging the second you enter.But these days we have what's called near field and what I like to call further afield, but far field wireless transfer technology. When you think near field, you're already doing that.If you have an electric toothbrush, if you have a modern smartphone that can wirelessly charge, we'll talk about the two different ways those are happening.But those are examples of near field.And I think a lot of people like I was are amazed to know that when you put that little electric toothbrush on its stand, unless I'm wrong, that little nubbin is only there to keep that thing upright.It's not conducting electricity at all, is it?
SPEAKER_02: As far as I know, no, because the whole thing's fully sealed.So the electricity is going from plastic to plastic.
SPEAKER_05: Via waves.So it looks like a little like a charging stump, but you could just assume lay it down on top of that thing, right?
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.I think for an electric toothbrush, what we're talking about at this point is called wireless induction charging.It's the same kind of principle that you use for an induction cooktop.Magnetic fields are generated that create an electric current that's passed to another coil on the that gets recharged, right?And I think for something like a toothbrush, it has to be really precise.So the coils have to basically line up as close to one another as possible, but they don't have to physically touch, which is why you can encase it in plastic and seal it off and use it for an application that's around water like an electric toothbrush.But I do think that has to be precise.I think you can get a little more jiggy with it with the resonant induction charging, where... The coils are bigger or there's more coils, but they also have, I don't know how they do this, but they make the frequencies that come out of one coil and go in or receive by the other perfectly in sync so that the coils are basically tuned to one another.
So you can actually keep something a little further away and still get a charge out of it.
SPEAKER_05: Okay, so I was wrong then.That stump serves the purpose of probably aligning it perfectly.
SPEAKER_02: Probably.
SPEAKER_05: Although it's not actually, you know, like a charging stump.You probably could not just set your toothbrush down with a button near that stump.You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_02: No, but if you're talking about like your phone on like a pad charger, you just kind of set it down.Sure, sure.It'll still charge even though it's not like perfectly centered on the charger, depending on the type of charging station.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.And I have seen those to be fairly hit or miss through the years.Yes.The little charging pads, sometimes they work.Sometimes you've got to move your phone around it.And it makes more sense now that I know how it works, why you may have to move your phone around.And it's also slower than like a wall charge, which, you know, is one of the the humps to get over that we'll get to.
SPEAKER_02: It is, and they have basically gotten over that hump.So for a while, I didn't realize this, but Nokia was the first to be like, hey, everybody, check out our wireless charging pad.Back in 2012, I had no idea.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, same.
SPEAKER_02: And that set off like a whole stampede where every phone company wanted to create a wireless charging pad, right?Yeah. And so everybody was coming up with different protocols, different structures on how to make this happen.And finally, a group called the Wireless Power Consortium basically emerged with their Qi standard, QI, like the Chinese traditional medicine concept of the life force that flows through everything.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, like Qigong.
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.That's also associated with this wireless power transfer to where everybody builds it the exact same way, right?So that's pretty cool.But you had to get it pretty much dead on to get a decent charge out of it.And like you said, it transferred far less power, I think about 5 watts, rather than the standard 15, 18 or more that you get from plugging your phone in.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: So they came up with Qi 2.0.And you know the new Apple chargers that like snap onto the back of your phone with a magnet?
SPEAKER_05: No.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, really?Do you have an iPhone?
SPEAKER_05: I do.Is it fairly new?Let me see.I usually get like every third or fourth version.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, you may or may not have this.I don't know.I couldn't even tell you what.If you told me which one it was, I'd be like, oh, well, actually, I don't know.So I don't know why you've been asked to do that.But the newer iPhones have something.
SPEAKER_05: I got the 13.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it should have it.I think that's what I have, too.Yeah, it is, and it works.So there's a type of charger you can get called the MagSafe charger.Yeah, yeah, I got that.Okay, so then you have what I'm talking about.It snaps into place, so like a magnet, it holds the phone in place, right?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I got one of those in my car.
SPEAKER_02: OK, so what that's doing is it's holding the coil to the coil so that in addition to them being powerful and tuned to the same frequency, they're also precisely interlocked.So the transfer of power is way more efficient.And now they're reaching like power transfer at like 15, 18, 20 watts, just like you would have with a traditional like plug in cord.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.And you know what?I'm not much of a what do you call it?Buzz marketer. But I have to say the car charger from Spiegel is what I use.
SPEAKER_02: Spiegel, like the catalog?
SPEAKER_05: I don't know.It's S-P-I-E-G-E-L.
SPEAKER_06: Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.Is that spelled the same?
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I believe so.
SPEAKER_05: Spelled the same, I mean?Mm-hmm.Their charger, it's 50 bucks, and it works flawlessly, and it looks good, and it just— It has a pompadour.Well, it sticks on, you know, but the little stick-on base is smaller than other ones I've seen.Mm-hmm.So if you, you know, sometimes your car, you can't get it in, like, a great place or whatever.Right.But anyway, I think it works great, and so I do actually use this technology.
SPEAKER_02: Very nice.Okay.
SPEAKER_05: It's MagSafe.
SPEAKER_02: So you have that.But the thing is, is we've actually kind of gone backwards in that sense, where you're getting more power transfer.Again, wirelessly, like you're not plugging your phone into anything.It's laying on something that is connected to a power source, but your phone's not plugged in.So it is wireless power transfer. But rather than making it easier to just toss your phone onto a pad or a table or something like that and it immediately starts charging, it has to be more precise, hence the magnets.We want to be going in the opposite direction to where your phone doesn't even really have to be anywhere near that charging pad to get a charge.And that's where people are moving toward. But the cool thing about the Qi 2.0 is that this protocol is spreading out so that if you had, say, like an Android phone and iPhone, you would be able to use the same charger for both, which is brand new.That's a new thing.
And that's a really great way for the industry to be going because it cuts down on packaging, cuts down on manufacturing, cuts down on all sorts of stuff.It costs.So it's a good direction to be going in.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.Divided houses can come together once again.
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
SPEAKER_05: This kind of charging, there is a future application that might be kind of cool if you drive an electric car to where you pull in your garage and you just pull over a charging mat, much like your telephone, basically, to where you wouldn't have to plug it in or whatever.Again, for me, it's like it's no trouble to plug something in, so it's not that big of a deal.But I imagine these little conveniences are a big deal to a lot of people.
SPEAKER_02: For sure.I think the one that I'm really excited about is like the that plus application, which is putting those kind of coils that transmit electricity wirelessly to a receiver coil in your car in asphalt. So when you're driving on the highway, your car is actually charging.That would do it.That would do it for gas engine cars.People, you would have to just be a total jerk to have like an internal combustion engine after that point because that's the big problem with it.Like, do you remember that stupid electric car that I rented in Seattle and drove to Portland?And I had to sit for 45 minutes in this little town doing nothing but waiting for this super Stupid rental car to charge?That is no way to live.
But if I had just been able to drive down, what is that, five?The five?Isn't that what they call it?
SPEAKER_05: I think that's a California thing.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.Well, if I had just been able to drive down I-5 and my car's charging the whole time, perfect.There's no reason for any fossil fuel car any longer.
SPEAKER_05: Now, is the idea there that every road in America is redone with charging capabilities underneath it?
SPEAKER_02: What I would guess is they would – you would probably just need to do one lane and then the – And then maybe only on expressways or something?Right.So one lane on an expressway and you – like if your car has over some amount of charge, like the cultural folkway would be you don't go on that lane.You leave it open for people who really need to charge their car.
SPEAKER_05: That will go over well.Exactly.In the United States.That will become the – Look at that jerk lane.
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.Yeah.It'll be like the new driving slow in the fast lane thing.
SPEAKER_05: I look forward to that day.I'm going to be old and feeble.And I just you can send me updates on how things are going from the road.
SPEAKER_02: But that's but that's all.But you just need one lane like that on a stretch of highway.And I think that would do it at least at first.All right.I think we get this done like tomorrow.
SPEAKER_05: All right.But in the meantime, we should take a break.
SPEAKER_02: OK.
SPEAKER_05: Because we're going to have to buy some tools.
SPEAKER_02: OK.
SPEAKER_05: All right.We'll be right back.
SPEAKER_07: Have you heard about the social media platform for kids?It's called Zigazoo.It's a great place where kids like me can come together to make fun videos.
SPEAKER_08: Zigazoo is moderated by real live people who review content before it's posted on the feed.Oh,
SPEAKER_07: I especially love the dance challenges.
SPEAKER_08: So much fun.Oh, and there's no comments or messaging, so you don't get any of that negativity that's all over other social networks.Oh, my friends love it.I love that it's KidSafe Kappa certified.I don't know what that means.It means it has built-in privacy protections for your online data.
SPEAKER_07: Eh, that's great, but I wouldn't be doing Zigazoo if it wasn't fun.
SPEAKER_08: She would not be doing it if I didn't think her data was safe.Zigazoo, the world's largest social network.For kids!Download the Zigazoo app today.
SPEAKER_05: Maybe you've stayed in an Airbnb before and thought to yourself, this actually seems pretty doable.Maybe my place could be an Airbnb.It could be as simple as starting with a spare room or your whole place when you're away.You could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it.Maybe there's a big tournament in town and lots of fans will be visiting. You could Airbnb your home or extra room and make some extra money while people are in town.Whether you could use extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your home might be worth more than you think.Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host.
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SPEAKER_05: That's right.Anniversary savings await you for a limited time only at dell.com slash deals.That's D-E-L-L dot com slash deals. All right, so we're back.Josh is, oh boy, look at the smile on your face thinking about driving untold miles without having to stop.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's just going to change everything, Chuck.
SPEAKER_05: You're peeing in a Gatorade bottle.You're not stopping for nothing.
SPEAKER_02: No, no way.
SPEAKER_05: Just think of the cannonball run.
SPEAKER_02: I'm just going to take this opportunity.All right.But yes, the cannonball run would work really well with that.Yeah.If you, I see this enough that I feel like this is worth mentioning.If you ever find yourself in an emergency situation where you have to pee into a water bottle or a Mountain Dew bottle or something like that, that's fine.That's fine.Like that is a thing you have to do sometimes.I never have, but people do it and I get it. But you don't leave that on the side of the road for somebody else to pick up.
That is yours to hang on to until you're able to dispose of it in the trash where it belongs.Put the cap on.Get it out of your way.Make sure it doesn't spill or anything like that.But you do not set that outside of your car until it goes into the trash.That is, it's tied for first with throwing your dental floss stick down on the ground for someone else to pick up.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.The only time I will do that is camping.If it's rainy or really, really cold and I'm in my tent, I will have the forethought to bring an appropriate bottle.Smart.So I can just get out of my sleeping bag and, you know, and pee pee in the bottle.
SPEAKER_02: A big wide mouth bottle.Am I right?
SPEAKER_05: And then I just leave it there in the woods.
SPEAKER_02: No.No, of course not.Okay.Okay.I was shocked.
SPEAKER_05: All right, so we're back, and we're getting started now on Farfield wireless transfer because your phone on your nightstand, that's great.Driving over a mat in your garage would be amazing.But you really are cooking with gas, as they say.Ironically, not with gas. If you can start figuring out how to do this over longer and longer frequencies and they are figuring that stuff out by ways of electromagnetic waves or which, you know, what you do is you send it out as an electromagnetic wave.It transmits it as a beam and then it converts it to power or through laser beams.
SPEAKER_02: Yes.So you can do laser.You can do millimeter waves.You can do – I think microwaves are the big ones.That's the big one.Because they'll – I mean, they're electromagnetic waves, so they're an energy carrier.And all you need is a way to convert electricity to electromagnetic energy and then a way to convert it back on the other side, and then you've just transmitted power from a distance.That's what they're working on.
SPEAKER_05: Like this is possible already, right?
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_05: They just haven't figured out – a great consumer application because it's not efficient or great or cheap.
SPEAKER_02: That's the problem.It's not cheap and it's inefficient.So yes, I believe there are consumer products out there, just a handful of them that you can spend a lot of money on and be like, look, this thing's charging.It takes 48 hours to get to 5%, but it's charging wirelessly.Right. That's where we're at right now.But it is possible.People have figured it out.But just like with that Qi protocol with like the charging pads.Yeah.
The industry is in the same place right now with figuring out a common protocol for everybody to use now.So it's kind of the Wild West.They're trying to figure out the best way to efficiently do it and also safely do it, as we'll see.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and one application they can use it on today that does make sense, and Livia dug this up and helped out, and this one makes a lot of sense, with RFID tags, radio frequency identification tags.And you've probably heard of these.There's all kinds of applications for these, but one of the big applications is if you have like a warehouse full of stuff, instead of having a barcode, on every single thing that you have to walk up to with a barcode scanner, like several inches away or whatever, you can track your inventory more efficiently because it can, if you do it through RFID, you can group things together.You can scan a bunch of stuff at once.You can scan it from, you know, three, four, five feet away.Maybe you don't have to be right there up on it.So using this technology to have little RFID tags that don't require batteries is a realistic application.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you just said a mouthful with that they don't require batteries because that's a big reason why you would want to use something like wireless power transfer is with the little RFID tags, they have an antenna in them, but they don't actually have any power.They're not internally powered.But when that radio wave hits it, it carries just enough energy to make contact with it, give it a little juice. There's a modulator inside that takes that radio wave and converts it back to shoot back out to the scanner with its number associated with it.All without batteries.They figured out how to use the energy in that electromagnetic wave in the form of radio waves.And so we're already doing this. Again, it's just really inefficient.But they're on to something with that because we've entered the Internet of Things.I think we did a whole episode on that.
We did.I'll bet that needs so much updating.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, probably so.
SPEAKER_02: But all the little sensors in your refrigerator, all the little – Little gadgets, the thing that connects your refrigerator to Wi-Fi now, all of these things are like really tiny little components.And the smaller the component, the harder it is to put a decent battery in there. And you also kind of want a rechargeable battery, too.But some of them don't have batteries.They still are going to report that, say, like you're running it low on ketchup or something like that.Wireless energy would be able to do the same thing that we're doing with RFID tags, but with the little sensors and chargers that make up the Internet of Things, that make your home a smart home.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, or to not have to have follow-up surgeries to replace batteries in your pacemaker would be pretty remarkable.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because that's another really big part of this.In addition to the whole gee whiz aspect of it and the no cords thing, which I'm really happy about, the bigger point in the near term is that it will do away with disposable batteries.Okay. All we'll have is rechargeable batteries.If we have any batteries at all, some things won't need it.But things that do need a battery to keep going without a power source, those will be rechargeable and they'll be more easily replenished with wireless power transmission.So you can say goodbye to buying batteries at the store.They'll just be gone and the earth will breathe a deep, deep, happy sigh.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, well, that is – and now we're getting into sort of your utopia, which is these companies that are exploring initially probably like a room system and then eventually a whole home system to where what you described at the beginning of the show would be possible where you can walk in your house.The second you walk in, your phone is charging in your pocket.If you have a smart home and you have like a powered – Blinds on your windows, those are always charged.They're not plugged in.If you have remote controls for your TV and everything else in your home, they actually have a tiny battery made by the company.In this case... I mean, we can go back and talk about Guru, but there's a company called OSIA Inc., O-S-S-I-A.And they have a system called the COTA system, C-O-T-A.And that's the idea is you have a unit in your house.
It looks sort of like a – It's a little smaller than a board game and a little more square.And it's just a little transmitting stand.And it shoots power across the room.It bounces it around.And you have receivers that are attached to your devices.Like your receiver would be built into your phone case in the case of a phone.Or they're making what they're calling forever batteries, which is a little AA battery that actually has a tiny receiver in it. So that remote control battery will never die.And it essentially just makes any device in your house compatible with this transmitter.
The one thing I wondered about, though, was like, well, when is Duracell going to buy them out and just shut it down?
SPEAKER_02: Oh, man, I hope we don't run into something like that.I mean, big battery is a major threat to democracy.True.But I don't know.I think I don't know.I think these other startups have some pretty good clout, too.
SPEAKER_05: Well, should we talk about Guru then? Sure.Jump back a little.
SPEAKER_02: Guru got together with Motorola and two years ago they they debuted basically a charger, an over the air charger, a wireless power charger.That was very similar in design, it seems like to that Koda charger.And it can, I think, charge four phones at once up to 10 feet away with 100 degree field of vision. Which is pretty cool.It's still not out to market.I think people are like, yeah, but you guys didn't mention how efficient it is.Like, how many watts does it transfer?And Motorola was like, stop asking questions.And they went back to the drawing board.But the CODA stuff seems like it's so close it might actually already be available in some areas.
SPEAKER_05: I didn't see it for sale yet, but I might be wrong.
SPEAKER_02: They are touting their wireless power security camera, the Archos.Now, that's a good use. Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, because if you have a house where you didn't have, like, if you have security cameras, whatever, you didn't have them built in and wired initially, and you're just like, oh, I want to get Nest cameras or any other brand.Like, you've got to plug those things in.Yeah.And if they're outdoor cameras, you're either running wire to an outdoor plug that someone could just unplug.
SPEAKER_06: Right.
SPEAKER_05: Or you're drilling holes in your wall.So I think this is a really realistic, like, worthy application.Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: It's part of, like, my week to go around and connect the charger, the outdoor charger to the outdoor cameras and just top them off because they're not hardwired.So, yeah, I agree with you.I think it's a great application.Now, imagine that for your TV.
SPEAKER_05: Although, can I make one complaint real quick about security cameras?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: They're great to have.They can help out with different things and help out with neighbors.Hey, I saw someone breaking into my car.Your neighbor has a camera pointing.We can all help.But in my experience in Atlanta with car break-ins and house break-ins, I've had both.They don't help you catch anybody.They don't help stop anyone.So it's almost more like, hey, you want to watch some guys steal your stuff?
SPEAKER_02: Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: Police can't really do much with them.And it certainly doesn't keep anyone from doing anything.So I don't know.It's good for more than just like break in security.I think there are a lot of if you have dogs and you're like want to see what your dog's doing is eating the wrong thing or throwing up or, you know, it's beneficial for a lot of different reasons.But catching a bad guy, in my experience, security cameras don't really help with that.
SPEAKER_02: No.You're likelier to have some weird footage from your camera end up on the national news or America's Funniest Home Videos.
SPEAKER_05: Exactly.Catch a UFO or something.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.Yeah.Yeah.You are likelier to catch a UFO than somebody stealing packages off of your porch with your security camera.
SPEAKER_05: Sort of the real deal here is like one day when they can come up with a system where it's built into Amtrak and subways and airports.So all of these sort of heavily used public spaces are just charging everyone's everything.
SPEAKER_02: Yes.And the problems are the same with the wireless phone charging.Just across the board, anytime we're talking about wireless power transfer, the inefficiency is what's the big stumbling block right now. The bugaboo?Yeah.The further you get away from the charger, the less power the receiver is getting.The most I've seen, I think that Archos security camera gets like less than a watt 30 feet away at its maximum distance, which is still, I mean, 30 feet is a decent.
SPEAKER_05: Is that enough to power it?
SPEAKER_02: I think as long as it had – you probably would have to charge it first, plug in when you first get it.And then if it had continuous contact and was constantly receiving it, I don't know.I would hope that they would design it so that it uses less energy than it can get at its maximum distance.I don't know.But that could be a challenge right now.That's the kind of inefficiency problems that it's running into. I think typically when you try to transmit electricity through an electromagnetic beam, you get about 20% on the other end of what you sent out.And that's even a step backwards from what the Jet Propulsion Lab did.They got 49% across a mile.So I guess they just didn't tell anybody how to do what they did because we're still catching up to what they did in 1975.
Yeah. But so even if you're like, OK, we're getting 20 percent of the electricity that we are generating, converting to an electromagnetic wave, transmitting to another receiver and then converting back to electricity.We're losing 80 percent of that.That is ridiculously inefficient. And people in the industry, which is basically just nothing but startups and venture capitalists right now, are saying, whoa, whoa, whoa.Yes, that's true.That's ridiculously inefficient.But we're talking about replacing batteries right here.And the cost of the electricity that is wasted is like 5,000 times less than the cost of a AA disposable battery.So really, if you look at it in terms like that, we're not that far off from it being cost effective if we can use it to replace batteries, disposable batteries.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.And one of the cool pieces of or cool parts of this tech is let's say you have a room that's set up to charge everything in there.It's apparently with this OSI system, it is it's bouncing all over the room, pinging like 100 times a second.So it's not like if you turn your back, it's not shooting waves through your body.And we'll get to safety here after the break.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: Regardless of that, it bounces around you.If you have your phone up to your head, it will bounce around your head off the back wall to hit the back of that phone.Oh, really?
SPEAKER_02: The OSI system does that?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, supposedly.And only delivers power like if something needs it.So it's not constantly on and supposedly will prioritize whatever's in the room that needs juice the most.
SPEAKER_02: Smart.Yeah, because just like RFID tags, that charger is constantly surveying the stuff in the room that have a code or receiver attached to it and saying, like, where are you at?What's your levels?Do you need some juice?I got some for you.They're like, no, not right now.I'm good.Okay, but I'm here if you need it kind of thing. Yeah.So I didn't know that it actually went around people, though, which is a big deal because that's a genuine concern at this point.
If you're beaming electricity throughout a home, if you're creating an electrical field that's just indiscriminately moving everywhere in a room, it's going to come in contact with things that are conductive.So like someone one issue I've seen raised is the idea that you're hot. Yeah, your pots and pans are going to get super hot just sitting in the drawer in your kitchen.Yeah, that's so good.If you're using microwaves, if the microwave is powerful enough, it can cook you from the inside out.That doesn't seem to be a threat.I mean, the people who are designing these things are, like, well aware of the dangers of microwaves cooking human beings.So the stuff they're, like, deliberately setting these things at levels that wouldn't be able to do that.But it just kind of goes to show, like, that's the stage that we're at. Still technically possible with what we're doing.
Laser beams can still shoot you in the eye.They can still burn your skin.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, those are the ones that don't ping around the room.If it's laser based, then you have to have a direct line.
SPEAKER_02: Yes.And supposedly if you get in between the laser and the receiver, it just automatically turns off.But, you know, there's still that moment that singes your hair.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, or you could have the high-tech mirrored system like any bank security in the movies.Or, I'm sorry, museum security probably.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.Like shooting the lasers all around?The grid, yeah, for sure.That's awesome.
SPEAKER_05: And then before you know it, Catherine Zeta-Jones is slinking underneath one of those things.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you're like, what are you doing in my kitchen?
SPEAKER_05: You're too old to be slinking around like that, lady.You're going to pull a muscle.
SPEAKER_02: So what else is there?
SPEAKER_05: Well, we should take a break probably.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05: And then we'll come back and finish up with the serious future right after this.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, Sarah, I love that spring break vlog you posted on Zigazoo.OMG, you watched it?Yeah, it was edited so well.I think you're so talented.
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SPEAKER_02: All right, Chuck, so we're talking about future applications that, like, this is the real whiz-bang stuff that I'm just really jazzed about because we're approaching that dream that Tesla had of fulfilling that dream of basically creating a world where everything's just getting wireless power all the time.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so there's a group called the Persistent Optical – this is a plan.The Persistent – and we love our acronyms.It's one of the best.
SPEAKER_02: This is a good one.
SPEAKER_05: The Persistent Optical Wireless Energy Relay.What does that spell?
SPEAKER_02: Power.What have you got?Power.
SPEAKER_05: It's a great one.I love it when it perfectly aligns like that.And that was proposed by the U.S.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which we all know is DARPA.And this is a situation where they could beam electricity from a web of aircraft flying above Earth. Into onto the ground into, let's say, either, you know, Libya said a conflict zone, but maybe a disaster zone where there's no power on the ground anymore and people are dying.Potentially a web of aircraft above could shoot this stuff down to the ground.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, but it does have immediate military applications because just like how people were saying like, wait a minute, we have 20% efficiency of the electricity we're transmitting here.Yeah.The same thing is running into this problem too.Like there's a loss of efficiency, but even if there's a massive loss of efficiency, it's still more efficient than literally flying in tanks of oil and gasoline and into a conflict zone or disaster area, filling up generators and then plugging into those, it'd be still much more efficient than that.And because it'd be more efficient, because it would just give such a ridiculous advantage on the battlefield, this is probably coming down the pike.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.But like you said, they have a leg up because it's so inefficient.The alternative that we've been using is that it doesn't have to be as efficient as like a home version that we're talking about for people to get on board.Because that's one of the problems is people aren't going to start buying this stuff up.Even that cool system we were talking about for like one room. You'd have to be a really you have to have a lot of money and be a super into early tech adoption to just kind of show it off to friends at this point to make it mass marketed.They have to make it so everybody sees the benefit and can afford it.And that's not that that's not the case with these potential military applications.
SPEAKER_02: No, but it's sad but true that the like military research and development has trickled down to a lot of really important consumer items over the years too.And this could be the same exact thing.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02: There's another, there's a group in New Zealand called MROD.And they are basically creating line of sight towers to where that just beams from one to the other.Basically like those bonfire towers in Lord of the Rings.Yeah. It's the same thing, but rather than like line of sight, you're transmitting electromagnetic waves carrying energy.And then at the other end, or probably at each one of these transmitters, you're able to convert it to usable electricity and then, you know, power up a disaster area, a rural area, whatever area you want to.Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: I don't remember that from Lord of the Rings.Was it just a signal over long distance?Yeah, like that.Like a visually signal?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, from like mountaintop to mountaintop.They had like a bonfire and then somebody else noticed it and they lit their bonfire.And it was like a transmission of information.That's what we're talking about.In much the same way that Wi-Fi transmits information, we're talking about the same exact thing using the same essentially kind of electromagnetic spectrum, but instead to transmit energy rather than information.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, absolutely.Like people don't freak out over Wi-Fi being beamed through their house.And it's essentially the same thing.
SPEAKER_02: Some people do like Chuck McGill from.Oh, well, that's true.
SPEAKER_05: No, no, no.I haven't seen that, but I know there are people.Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: So there's a really exciting application with that New Zealand structure where it's a tower to tower.Yeah.The M-Rod one. is you could transfer wind energy from remote places to an urban area that really needs that electricity.Solar, all those renewables, it's like the fatal flaw is like they're too far away from the grid.Nope, not any longer.You can transmit it wirelessly through New Zealand at least.
SPEAKER_05: Well, talking about being too far away, think about being in outer space and having a web of satellites outfitted with these huge solar panels far above the Earth that could transmit energy down as microwaves That is not out of the realm of possibility.In fact, it's even been done just last year in 2023.Caltech.Yes.Caltech Space Power Project.They sent a detectable amount of energy from a satellite to Earth.
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
SPEAKER_05: You know, I don't think they were charging a car or anything like that, but they showed that it's possible.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and get this, Chuck.I mean, aside from the infrastructure costs involved, that's free energy.You're just taking solar energy and transmitting it.Even if it's just a little bit and there's a massive loss of efficiency, you're not burning coal to get that.You just built a satellite that's harvesting it out in outer space, which is a huge advantage, you know?
SPEAKER_05: Totally.Totally.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's like the first step toward a Dyson sphere, really, if you think about it.I love it.That's the one I was jazzed the most about.
SPEAKER_05: The satellite one?
SPEAKER_02: Yes.Harvesting solar energy in space and transmitting it as usable power down on Earth.That is jazz worthy for sure.Totally.You got anything else?
SPEAKER_05: I got nothing else.
SPEAKER_02: All right.Well, Chuck has nothing else.Neither do I. We'll just have to sit and wait and see what the future holds.And while we do that, let's say it's time for Listener Mail.
SPEAKER_05: This is an email, again, from our old buddy Mark Kuntz.Mark and Gail Kuntz in the Ohio area.Longtime supporters and pals.And this is what Mark has to say.And you might remember Mark.He's an art therapist. Hey, guys, licensed art therapist and the director of mental health services at the Clark County Education Service Center in Springfield, Ohio.My team worked extremely hard to provide sources of strength to as many students as we can in the state for free.Most people assume that suicide prevention work focuses on sad shock and trauma.But we run a program in our schools called Sources of Strength, which capital S, capital S, by the way, which focuses on hope, help and strength.
Sources of Strength is made possible to us through funding and support from the Ohio Suicide Prevention Foundation and Prevention First.Sources of Strength is more than just suicide prevention.It's an overall wellness program focusing on eight protective factors, some of them being positive friends, healthy activities, generosity, stuff like that.It is free to all Ohio students and can be started in the classroom as early as kindergarten.Meanwhile, the junior high and high school students can can work with adult advisors to the program to run school-wide campaigns and events.Only skimming the surface here, guys.So if you live in Ohio, you should look up sourcesofstrengthohio.org to learn more about it and become one of the many schools participating.If you don't live in Ohio, you can still be a part of the movement that's taking place in the U.S., Canada, and Australia by going to sourcesofstrength.org.And that is from our old buddy, Mark Goons.
SPEAKER_02: Well, thanks a lot for that, Mark.Good to hear from you as always.And if you want to be like Mark and talk about some amazing stuff you're doing so we can tell everybody else about it, we love that kind of thing.You can wrap it up and send it off to Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio.com.
SPEAKER_10: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, Sarah, I love that spring break vlog you posted on Zigazoo.OMG, you watched it?Yeah, it was so cool.I think you're so talented.
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