How Anti-matter Spacecraft Will Work

Flash Bryant and the anti Flash. Actually, well, that's funny that you bring that up, because that would make you buddy Bizarro flash. Yeah did you see this? Surely you saw this? Saw what bizarrow something? Yeah? Man? That was good, Chuck really yeah. So you just teed me up for um for my intro and then I squandered it by complimenting you. But let me let me pick up again oversee. Have you ever heard of a place called hit Tray? No? H t r A. No is that something spelled backwards?

It is Earth spelled backwards and hit Trey Um first appears in the d C Comics canon in the nineteen sixties. Um it is what we know and love as Bizarro World. It is cube shaped. Um. It's inhabitants include Bizarro, Superman, Bizarro, Lois Lane and their kids. Right, and then over time, DC added whenever they wanted to um more Bizarro characters. Um, like the yellow lantern Bizarro Flash, who is you? Uh, wonder Zaro which is wonder woman, but Bizarre is yellow.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is green. No, here's I'm gonna get to the ground. You stop your blowing my intro. Bat Zorow is the World's Worst Detective, which is the opposite of Batman, who is the world's greatest detective. He got to start in the detective comics DC Detective Comics, okay, at any rate, the Bizarre World, which you also know from the Seinfeld of course, and Buffy the Vampire's Layer. Apparently, Yeah, it really was, um, isn't.

It's based on the idea the concept of anti matter. Yes, okay, So the idea that for every for every anything there is in this realm, and this the state of matter that you and I occupy, there is somehow somewhere out there a mirror image of it. The problem is with bizarro world. Like you say, the mirror image of Earth is not a cube. And although Batman would be the world's worst detective in in bizarro world, there's there's some holes in it. But again, this is DC make sure.

But the idea that it's based on is not entirely out of the remal possibility. In fact, the idea that there is anti matter has been proven definitively by people way smarter than you or I. Yep. So let's talk about anti matter before we talk about the basis of this podcast. What what what it's really about? I guess you could say, which is anti matter spacecraft? I have to say I'm excited about this one. This is This goes in the our g whiz folder. Okay, all right, Josh,

it should be a pretty quirky subject. Oh God, how much do you want to hit me right now? No, it's not that. It's more just like pain. Okay, Matter, Josh, is was always typically defined as anything with mass that occupies volume. That's still true, but it's got sort of a different definition now because of anti matter. Yeah, Adams, just break it down. I don't want to go sub

atomic yet, but let's go to atomic. Everyone knows, and Adam has a central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons, the the humanist sign held there the electrons by a magnetic field. The nucleus is a mix of positively charged protons neutral neutrons, and when these atoms get together and have a party, they form a molecule. Yes, eventually you get enough molecules together, you're gonna have stuff, and you have our podcast. Yeah, doesn't matter, which kind

of helps. Right, So anti matter is the exact same thing, but the opposite. Right, All it is is um. For every particle that you just described, there is another particle that has the exact same mass, but it has the opposite electrical charge. So for electrons, there are positrons, which are their electrons with a positive charge, which is a cool name. It is very cool. Um protons got screwed. Yeah,

Well basically, yeah, protons are um what anti protons? It's kind of and just like with um, atoms with positively charged or regularly how about this, we'll call it the straits the normals. With the normals, you can build them into atoms and molecules and so on. Conceivably, you can build anti atoms into anti molecules, anti whatever, anti substances, anti stuff like you say, um, so all of this

was theoretical. There is a guy named Paul am Durrak who he had the audacity to revise Einstein's theory of relativity equals mc squared. Direct said it did because he did it in nineteen Einstein's alive and well and he's in full you know, boxing shape. It's ready to go. Let's bring it um and Direct revised the equation into e equals plus or minus mc squared, and then he stuck his tongue out at Einstein, and Einstein said, well, if you wanted to get picky, sure, yeah, I thought

I thought that was assumed. He said, which of us wears flow length for coats? And Direct his hung his head and say, we both just said the very poor Schwartzenegger almost, which Einstein kind of was, Yeah, he's the he was the Schortzenegger of math. So he had the cajones to revise that he was dead on because they actually proved this since that time, like four years later, that anti particles do in fact exist. Have you heard of um, Carl Anderson, Well just from this article, but

I mean, did you look into him at all. Uh no, so we want a Nobel prize for this. I didn't know that, um, but he he he found evidence of positrons. Definitive evidence of positrons a photograph, right, Yeah, there's like a famous photograph of it. But he used it cloud chamber, and cloud chambers is very sophisticated piece of equipment. This

guy built his own. But a cloud chamber is basically just like a cylinder with um filled with gas that's saturated with water vapor, and then you shoot cosmic rays through it and see what happens. And well, the cosmic rays leave a trail in the water vapor. You can measure the density of the water vapor and determine what kind of particle just passed through. It wasn't enough for Anderson to create his own um gas chamber, not gass chamber, cloud chamber. Wow that too. History has not rooted that

one out yet. But yeah, we're gonna think differently of him soon. Um. He created his own cloud chamber and put an electromagnet around it so he could direct these cosmic particles in a circle. And he noticed that when he did that, when he shot a cosmic ray through something that had the same mass as an electron was creating an arc going in the opposite direction. He said, holy cow, that's a pow the tron. He said, what is that? He said, hello, million bucks from the Nobel Committee.

Is that what he won? I think that's what you win back then? Probably not, but it was like twenty million bucks compared to today. Yeah, that's a good point. Uh. Anti adams were discovered by CERN, our buddies at CERN that we talked about like many many times. I know I forgot about them, since they didn't in the world.

They created the first anti adom and by to the tune of nine anti hydrogen atoms, and at first was I'm sorry before night they lasted forty nana seconds, but they were there and they had a record of it. But then they're like poof gone. Yeah, but still quite an achievement. UM. Anti protons were discovered in ninety at

the Berkeley Bevetron Adam Smasher particle accelerator. UM. What CERN's doing, uh is something that's been aroun them for a while, which is basically you can we figured out and not we meaning you and me, We have no idea UM, but other people have figured out that you can using magnets, vacuum tubes, um and beams of light, you can shoot particles at one another and smash them together exactly. That's

what that's another name for a particle accelerator. And when you smash them together like they do, it certain because they get the atoms going almost to the speed of light and then they smash them together. And when they do, um all these particles are created, very exotic ones that like you said, the anti atoms lasted for uh forty nanoseconds well back then. And what they think is that this is this is what the Big Bang looked a lot like, right, So um, yeah, which is step one.

It is step one toward building an anti matter engine. But the the I guess the question is, well, let's talk a little bit about anti matter and what happens when antimatter comes and intact with regular matter. It's pretty awesome. What happens is they collide and it becomes nothing but pure energy. It explodes, they both are annihilated, and it's efficient, creating pure energy at the speed of light. It's the it's the only um reaction as far as we know

that is on efficient. Like you said, where the mass of both the matter and the animatter particles are transferred entirely to this explosion. Yeah, you get some sub atomic left over, but it's nothing like you know, car exhaust right, you know what I'm saying. It's not even like nuclear um reactions like nuclear fusion. Apparently only three percent of the mass of the atoms um is transferred is lost.

Is like heat that is not efficient. No light is created UM by this the um particle matter and antimatter interaction. I don't think he'd is. It's more like the radiation that's created is where you get all your heat though actually, because I know that one of the first things you have to do is cool it down if they're storing it. Okay, it's just a guess. So UM. The problem is is that this doesn't just happen when you smash atoms together.

This happens anytime an antimatter particle comes in contact with this it's normal particle UM. They annihilate one another. So there's this thing. There's this aspect of the standard theory UM which includes gravity. Uh no, it doesn't include gravity. It's everything else but gravity, electromagnetism, weak, nuclear force, strong nuclear force, and it doesn't include gravity, which is like

the that's the Holy Grail. Right. So the standard theory says, at the beginning of creation the Big Bank, there were an equal part of particles and antiparticles. The problem is is within about two seconds, since anti particles anti matter of matter cancel each other out through these violent explosions um, there should be nothing in the universe except light left over from that the first two seconds when all matter

canceled itself out. Right. The fact that we're here proves that that can't be right, and that there's matter but not antimatter. Right. So there's a couple of explanations for this, and one is that there is simply there was and it maybe still is or isn't um less anti matter than matter, right. So the idea is that over time there was way more matter than we have now, but that canceled out all the anti matter, and there is none anymore. We can produce it now, but it doesn't

exist naturally. The second explanations that it does exist, right, it's just kind of sequestered off elsewhere in the universe. Yeah, And there's sort of an addendum to the first one that it's not necessarily that there was more matter than anti matter, but there is a slight asymmetry between them, UM.

And they've actually proven that that was the inn A forty eight experiment that Sern did and the k T e V experiment at firm A Lab, And those are the two big daddies this kind of research, and that

the not the Berkeley bever tron. I don't know about them anymore, UM, but they directly measured this asymmetry and proved it like there is an asymmetry, and that could have been just that little bit could have been enough that matter one out essentially, right, And when you're talking about asymmetry, it's almost like a coin toss, right, where when you toss, when you create a particle UM, say seven times out of ten it creates a um an electron,

and then the other three times that created a positron. That's the asymmetry. So there is evidence of that. But there's also evidence that there is a store of anti matter towards the center of the cosmos. I couldn't find much about that. They think they discovered it in nineteen seventy seven, but I haven't seen want to follow up. Okay, So let's say it is there, but have they done follow up? I don't know, but I have seen recent reference to that idea. Also that year Star Wars came out.

No coincidence. If there, if there um, if there is a I guess a deposit of anti matter, then it is conceivable that there is an anti world there. There's anti stuff there. Wouldn't that mean there's no matter there though, because it would be colliding right, No, there's matter, it's just the opposite of what we have. There's more antimatter than because that's about it. Like they at Certain, they created anti Adams, So maybe there is no matter there.

It's just anti matter and everything. There's us, but it's the opposite of us. Bizarro Josh and Chuck. I mean two guys who are really talented at their jobs, right exactly, who have the adoration of people, not the score right. Um, So okay for the time being, until we find out if they're really is a store of antimatter at the center of the cosmos and figure out how to go get it. And when they're open, we had we had to create our own, which is what Cern is doing.

Now we can do it, but Certain is doing They're they're just not up to snuff. They're they're creating two to three pike a grams a year. Yeah, I've got a couple of realities for you here. UM. Since the discovery of the anti proton, the total amount from Lear Sern and firm A lab that they've created amounts to less than one millionth of a gram. Okay, and at the current rate, and it's picking up, the rate is

and that's what we're counting on here. But at the current rate, it would take a hundred hundreds of millions of years and over one thousand trillion dollars to produce one gram of anti matter. So they got to pick

up the pace. Yeah, not only do they need to pick up the pace if we UM are going to use antimatter as a propulsion device, the ultimate propulsion, because like we said, I mean, this thing is thousands of times more produces thousands of times more energy than oxygen or hydrogen combustion, which is what we use now to power rockets outer space, inner planetary rockets like the Mars

rover that was hydrogen oxygen combustion. Right, this is thousands of times more more potent, more powerful than those engines. If we're going to use that. We need to figure out how to make these engines more efficient. I got

stats on that too. If you want, let's hear, one kilogram of antimatter a kilogram annihilating ordinary like colliding with the ordinary matter can produce ten billion times the amount of energy released with a kilogram of TNT in a single gram of antimatter, the one that you know is going to take hundreds of millions of years to produce, uh, would get you as much energy as uh the fuel tanks of two dozen space shuttles a single gram US.

It is nuts. The problem is we're gonna need tons of the stuff to make it to another star, which you know we're gonna want to do. It will be like, oh yeah, Mars, who cares about ten grahams They think could get you to Mars in one month, where right now it takes about eleven months to get there with

regular fuel, right exactly. So finally we have at our at our fingertips, the way to get from one place to another very quickly throughout the universe without having to take theoretical wormholes or use warp drive or anything that that hasn't be improven. This is this is possible if we can figure out how to how to store it and how to harness it correctly, create it, store it, use it, use it. Right, So, there's three three big components to an antimatter matter antimatter engine is what we

should call it, UM the magnetic storage rings. Remember you can basically tell um particles to do what you on and that's just travel around in a searching circle by using electromagnets. Sure, so you need to store the antimatter that you create until you're ready to use it. You

need to be able to feed it efficiently. So basically you need like a a particle accelerator, and then you need the magnetic rocket nozzle thruster which which takes that energy and and uses it efficiently to through a thruster the spacecraft forward right or backward? I guess if you

want to go backward really fast. Um there are some problems with it right well, yeah, notably the fact that they can't create very much of it right now, even then the speeding up, uh they have as a June of this year, I'm sorry, may have this year um CERN has stored three nine anti hydrogen atoms for one thousand seconds about sixteen and a half minutes, and which

is huge. And I think they said, like four years ago it was like nothing, So it's it's not growing exponentially, but they're really gaining steam with storing it, and pretty soon they hope to be able to store these anti hydrogen atoms long enough to see how it reacts to gravity, like do these things fall up or down? Which would be pretty amazing, especially if they fall up. Robert Hume would be very pleased. But that's still only three nine

antry anti hydrogen havens, which is nothing. No, but you said four years ago, like this is all this is theoretical. You know, seventy years ago. Four years ago, we were just starting out. So I mean, I I imagine we're gonna have some sort of breakthrough. This is why we need a population boom. The more people there are, the more geniuses there are. Uh. They did think about they could storm in magnetic bottles, but because like charges repel though,

that's a problem. So you can't just say, let's load this thing full of positrons because they repel each other and it's gonna start leaking or something, So they can't store a ton of it at a time. And did you have the Steve Hawe guy. He's not Steve half from Yes or or Asia. I think he was in Asia too. Wow, he was in Yes and Asia I guess like a prog rock god. And GTR I think too terrible Now the terrible band called g t R.

What does it stand for guitar? It's like three incredible guitarists in one band and they had one album and some cheesy lead singer. Anyway, different Steve Howe, but he has an idea for a fission based anti matter sale, So like a fifteen foot diameter sale codd of with uranium and basically he said, the key is to store anti hydrogen in the form of a frozen pellet that will evaporate slowly and create this reaction that hits the sale to propel it forward. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. Who

knows if that's gonna work. Um. Another big problem is that anti proton ones um release high energy gamma rays, which can penetrate you and your entire family and dissolve your molecules back into atoms. Isn't that kind of the key though to the propulsion or now, Yeah, the radiation. The problem is is like, unless we figure out how to protect the astronauts they're going to be exposed to it too. Well. And my question too, which I didn't see anywhere in any of my research, was can a

human go that fast? That was my next question. To remember Colonel John Paul Staff from the Murphy's Murphy's Law episode and other things. Um, he survived up to forty six gets that was the peak, but he also suffered red outs and um, lifelong trauma. Um. Apparently right now, if you're on a rocket and you're being shot up into space on a hydrogen oxygen combustion rocket, you experienced four g s, which is substantial, but it's certainly not

life threatening or anything like that. But if this produces ten times the out of thrust, this is my own like backpulation. Yeah, because remember you can get there ten times faster, you can maybe it produces ten times more thrust. Um, it's still forty gs that you have to endure the whole time. So that's a month of forty g s of the of just under the most any humans ever ever survived. So why are they even wasting their time with this? Because they could like a robot or something.

But the thing is that canna space shut Even withstand that we have, we have no idea. That's another whole aspect of this that's gonna need to be worked out. Maybe we need to be stored in some sort of liquid for a month. Who else. That's why this one's in the g whiz folder. I need to pretty cool. So I guess the point is is you can look for anti matter space spacecraft in the next couple of years.

That'll be cool. I can't wait to go see one of those launches that didn't They say that like possibly in the next few decades, so they must be ramping it up here soon. It's true. Good for them. Uh. If you want to know more about the promise of spaceflight, the dream of man and bird alike, UM, you can type in anti matter spacecraft pretty cool stuff UM in the search bar at how stuff works dot com. That's right.

And Star Trek fans, we know, we know, we know. Uh. I think I said search bar at how stuff works dot com. Right. Well, that brings up then listener mail Josh, You're gonna be pretty excited because we get periodic updates from our amazing fans. Sarah, the eleven year old who was now fourteen. Yes, we've watched her grow up before very eyes. She's awesome. She acts now, I believe in plays at school. Yeah, she's become a very cool person in my opinion. This is from Sarah the amazing fourteen

year old man. Dear guys, really another letter from Sarah. Well that's not you boring. I didn't not expect this, Hi, guys, this means John Hodgen. I'm surprised you didn't see me sitting here the entire podcast. Well, it was weird. You literally materialized in front of our eyes. Yeah. Well I was wearing my cloaking mechanism. Okay, well done. Yeah you've been here the whole time. Yeah, yeah, what did you think? You know? It was? It was good, I was. I

was satisfying. It wasn't long. It's long and getting longer. Yeah, you know, know when to stop talking these days, joints. Well, you know, it was an extremely interesting topic. But I feel like you guys went off into some weird pop cultural rattles and stopped talking about the topic for a while, and then you came back to it and they mostly satisfactory way. So I would say, you know, right down the middle for you guys, absolutely, thank you. Yeah, no,

I just it's just this letter call thing. No, yeah, just the last few letters. You know, I just realized that I don't have a lot of me in them, you know what I mean, They're like from other people, and that's not really what I want in a podcast. And uh, you know, so I just took the chopper down and I landed on the roof here how stuff works tower, and uh, I thought I would just come by and and see you guys, And well, all right,

look I just finished this new book. Okay, okay, yeah, you know you don't get the chopper out for just anything these days, well almost anything. But it was the easiest way to get to Atlanta from Sri Lanka, where I was at my compound. Um, but I have I you know, I'm I'm a deranged millionaire. Now we've heard that. And uh and I've written a new book. This is the last book in my compendium of Complete World Knowledge. And it's called That is All, but the last book

or like the Last Crusade, kind of confusing last book. Oh, I see what you're saying. No, this is the last one, because not only is it called That is All? And I don't have anything else to write about. But also, as you know, about um thirteen months or so, the world is going to end, or at least the mind long time calendar ends, and and probably will. I mean, look,

we don't really know what's going to happen. I mean, you know, I'm not saying that the world is going to end in fire and flame and famine, flood and all the other fs, leaving only John Cusack alive. That's the ancient minds were saying that playing those guys. That's not me. But you know, I am keeping John Cusack prisoner in my home just in case, because it just seems like something's gonna happen. Don't you think I feel a lot better knowing that those minds will say anything.

Because you just stick close to John Cusack, I think you're gonna be okay. That's that's the lesson that I took from reading the Purple of the Ancient Mind text to kick well. I mean, here, yeah, we'll see. That's the thing because because I'm I'm you know, I used to be in all these ads and on television all the time. And remember the ads are over now because we sold all the computers, I think, and are they

are they done? Yeah? I think, I mean, why else wouldn't we be doing They must have sold them all, so good work for us. But that's sort of left me just this idle, deranged millionaire. And so I wrote the book and I arranged for a major publishing house to publish it, and uh, and I can just afford to take myself on book tour wherever I want. And today I'm I decided to come here. So you have a schopper now if I may call it that, you can you can call it a chopper. It's more like

a hellic harrier. Yeah, what happened here? Zeppelin? It's you're talking about my my speed Zeppelin Hubris, the the the h the h Z Hubris Hodgman Zeppelin Hubris, that that I bought off of Emo Phillips a few years ago. Yeah, not only did that crash, it crashed and burned. Was it something ironically given the name? Was it something that that had to do with Emo Phillips uptake maintenance caretaking of this Zeppelin? No? No, no, it was. It was in perfect condition when I got it, do you know

what I mean? But I just like, you know, when I when I'm having a Zeppelin party. It's not a Zeppelin party unless you have a fire breather. Someone should have warned me that Zeppelin's have this problem with fire like if this were a known problem, this were a known issue, as they say in the software Developing game. I wish I had gotten that memo, you know what I mean, or at least in the in the Zeppelin the radiogram that I should have gotten about that. We

should probably tell everybody. This is not a video cast, so you know, we have to often describe things that are going on. John looks great, Yeah, sure, And he's holding in his hand a hard cover volume of his third book, the third in the trilogy, That is All, and it's handsome and John, we do want to mention in all earnest here that the book is coming out in November one. That is so, it's called That is All. Yes, it is by John Hodgman. Available where would you like

people to buy their local bookstore? Well, they should buy wherever they would like to buy it. They should support their local bookstore of choice if they like. But it is available for pre order now at this moment, even though it is not November one, Amazon, Barnes and Noble Indie Bound Powells all your major books selling websites. Be smart by this book, because if you get the first two, you gotta have the third. You're not gonna know how

the everything is. I want to say, be smart. I think it's more like, stop being a dumb dumb Okay, fair enough and buy my book fair enough? And uh and if you would like to know what it sounds like. It sounds like this, I'm just gonna I think your audience will enjoy this. I'll just read the entirety of the book. Good evening. I write to you now from my secret retreat in the Internetlace hills of rural Massachusetts,

or else. I'm in my custom built survival Brownstone in Parkslow, Brooklyn, or else I'm on the high seas, cruising on the luxury passenger ship Hodge Manic. I'm sorry I can't tell you where I am for reasons of safety. My location must be kept secret, even from myself. But it is good to write you again. So much has changed in my life since I wrote my first book, The Areas of my Expertise. If I'm sorry, I love your book. Yeah, I've read your book, and then you don't mind hearing

it again. I would want to hear it again, but I don't know if we have the time to read it in its entirety, because well, wait, wait, wait, wait, this is a podcast, right, what he's saying, there's no rules. Yeah, I know. It's like it's not like you got another podcast coming on after this one. We want to sell

some of these though. You don't want to spoil it, all right, but everyone's bugging me for the audio book, and so I just figured this would be the easiest way podcast, So don't give it away, sting, Alright, how do it? Uh? I mean, I'm We're delighted to have you here, John, I'm delighted to be drawing pictures, read some words. I could talk. I could talk all day long. But we've beefed up security here recently. I noticed, and you just appeared. They waved me through. No, I don't

understand how that happens. I got a ticket? Did you a ticket? Ticket? Your podcast? Live podcast taping? We don't have tickets, Oh, yes, you do, you do. I got it through my credit card, don't Yeah, my credit card, all all kinds of perks, like I'm not a sporting fellow, but you know, if I wanted to go see a sports a sports thing exhibition, like a sports contest. Do you know what I mean? I just call up my independent concierge at my credit card and they get me

a ticket, and you know where my ticket is? Where is it? Well, let's say I go to a New York Jets game. Okay, all right, you know where my ticket is? Where Nick Mangolds shoulders. He's a player on that team. Yeah, yea, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Your book a lot too? Can you get to watch it? He is? He is the Well I don't. Maybe look,

can I stick around until next time? All right? Maybe we can talk about the coming NERD Jock convergence then, But right now, I look, I don't know if you guys mind a little plugging, but I'm doing some you know me, I loathe the advertising, but I'm doing some work with with this company, this credit card company, and it's really amazing. Check. Do you remember what page it's on? You come on the diners Club. It's not just a Diners Club card, you understand, it's a special. It's the

Diners Club po f H nine times Diamond card. Because you had the m X black and you said, forget that, we had the literally platinum card. Yeah, would you put your gum on because it's platinum. Sure, because you can put the gum on it, get it off very easily because it's because the nature platinum. But now you have been upgraded to the nine times Diamond Diners Club card. It's not it's not even a card. It's not even doesn't even take the shape. I know what it is,

but like you to explain it. It It takes a shape. It's a it's a feather, it's a You actually get this beautiful feather in the mail and you carry it around with you. Here, I have mine here, it's spun from gold. Is that right? Yeah, it's yeah, it's nice. Right. And then when you want to make a purchase, like you don't have to like hand over your card and have the guy put it in the thing. Do you

know what I mean? I mean, here's the thing. You go into a store now and you want to you want to buy something that's very expensive, and you want to treat the person like their human garbage. You used to be able to just toss in their card and then look away like you don't care. Now you have to swipe your own card like. I can't live like that, do you know what I mean? So that's why I have this nine times diamond po FH card. Isn't a card,

It's a feather. This is a beautiful golden feather, and I just carry it around with me, and the purchases are like automatic, So if I want to buy something with it, I don't have to give him a card or anything. I just take the feather out and I just lightly touched their cheeks with it two times, and then it belongs to me. And you point out that

some some men have even met their wives this way. Correct, exactly so, because the thing about it is, the thing about having the feather is not only is it beautiful and thus reflecting you as a deranged millionaire's love of beautiful things in the world, but it allows you to treat other people in the most humiliating way possible, which is really all a deranged millionaire really wants, you know

what I mean. So it has these amazing perks I told you about the I told you about the watching a Jets game from the shoulders and mcmangled ticket to anything, the ticket to anything. Obviously, you have a lot of travel services because deranged millionaires like me like to travel around quite a bit. So if you go to the airport, you have access to special lounges we like what well, not like the Admiral's Club right or or you know,

but like a really special lounge. Like all you have to do is like you wouldn't even know that it was even there. I'm not even familiar with the Admiral's Club. That's where the admirals go before flying the planes and they and they drink rock and they sing sea chanty and then they fly. Okay, Uh, this is a this is a super secret, like super exclusive lounge, and it's you just go up to you have to find a Chili's to Golis Express, the Chili's Express or whatever it is,

which are two very very very different. The important thing is don't go to the seating area. Go to the big refrigerator bank where they have all of the different tacos and Casadilla's pre made stuff, and then you just you just gently brush your feather across a particular case of dilla I can't tell you which, and then that slides back and there's a secret door into the special lounge. Uh, did you know that, and they have leather chairs, a full honor bar, a Japanese soaking tub, and all of

the Chili's express food you can eat. Yeah, but at this time it tastes like actual food. Yeah. What else is this card? Do you? John? I can't. I could go on and on. There's just so many perks. Uh. If you are a fan of the theater, who isn't yeah, um, and you don't like it's you have a hard time getting tickets to the Broadway Theater. Right, Well, let's say you get tickets and the show is terrible, Like now,

you're not going to go back. But what if you could call your concierge and have them call Peoplitzer Prize winning playwright David Lindsay a bear and make him write a new play to your specifications, maybe even starring a character based on you. Right, And all of a sudden, that's in the Broadway Theater And not only do you get the best seats in the house to that particular show, you get to watch as the ushers kick out the

people who were sitting in your seats before you. Yeah, I know, we're talking about a good theater and oh the best, Oh the best, only theaters that are named for corporations. So we're talking about the good ones. Do you know what I mean? American Airlines Theater, h Foxwood's Theater, UM Chili's Express Theater. Yeah, that's that's where. Yeah, it's in the round. That's where a Book of Mormon is moving to Oka And uh and what if you don't have someone to go with you? You just call a

concierge and they'll set up someone to go with you. Uh. Could be Laurence O'Donnell from MSNBC is the last word, could be James Spader, He's could be Lonnie Anderson or any one of a number of stable of celebrity pals that will go with you to see the show based in your Life that David Lindsay a bet had to write for you. So do these people sign up to be a pal? Or are they kind of corralled into this?

There's usually there's this like they've done something in their past that they would rather not they've racked up terrible debts or or you know, maybe they're just trying to plug the last word with Laurence o'donald and MSNBC for deranged millionaires. Yeah, there might be people that that won't ever happen to me. That will never happen to me. What are you saying, I'm not concerned about that. Here's

the best thing, and I'll leave it with this. After five years of membership and good standing, premium Feather holders will be visited in their bedroom by an old man. Yeah, they'll wake up and they'll be a dude. I'll have long white hair, and I'll be wearing like a white suit and a white tie. And he won't be wearing

any shoes because he has bird feet. And he'll invite you to go with him, and he'll give you, uh, you'll he'll tell you to become naked, and then he'll give you a robe to wear, but the robe is like a little too short. And then you go on a limousine and you go to a high rise, like a skyscraper in New York City that you never noticed before, like was always there, Yeah, it was always there. You're just not allowed you're not allowed to see. It's it's

actually a zigaratte in the middle of Manhattan. You were not allowed to see, but now you can. And then you will go in, and you will go in and you'll see all the other, uh, five year golden feather holders. They're they're all wearing golden robes. You probably know them from the Chili's Express Lounge or whatever. And then the old man will encourage you to bathe and special waters

and be anointed with special oils. And then you will be told that you were among the very very few to ever see the zigguratte and be given the ever very rare opportunity to apply for the Diners Club Premium Excelsior pof D card, which costs two million dollars a year to join. And uh, it's in the It's not in the form of a feather. It's in the form of a a talking milk snake, but only you. But you carry around on your fingers and on your forearm

all the time. You ever see how like an old Mark's Brothers movies or whatever have Like the really rich people are walking around in their hands they sort of like out in the air as that they're holding a cocktail, but there's nothing there. Yeah, they're holding an invisible milk snaithe they can talk to that, they can talk to, can talk to them, but they're the only ones who can see it. Wow. Another card holders as well, so just another four years for me and I won't I

won't have to ever see you as again. Do you I was gonna say, do you think you'll still drop by? Yeah, I'll drop by, but I'll keep my cloaking mechanism M so I don't have to dract. I'll drop by for the next three weeks maybe even. Yeah. No, I'd like to come back and talk to more about what's you know? Well, yeah, are you gonna? Are you leaving and coming back? Are you going to? Can we have your word that if

you do leave, you'll actually have left. You won't be hanging around with invisibility on Oh no, I had, I had. I had them set up in office here and how stuff works as as as safe as a safe room for me. And I'll just go over there and you're gonna stay here. I'll just hang out and then I'll come when you guys are doing it again. I'd love to come back and prevent you from reading more read

or mail. What is it? Is it Tuesday? We'll be back in here Thursday, because we record and then publish immediately. All right, we'll send you an outlooking by then. That would be terrific. Okay, okay, good, all right, let's do this at least one more time. Maybe we'll do it all more time. Okay, that's it for this show. All right, well, um, our apologies to Sarah the amazing fourteen year old fans. Yeah,

we'll get to that. Um. If you are an amazing fan, or how about this, If you have a question for Hodgeman, we want to know it. That sounds great. You can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can also tweet directly at Hodgeman but don't um. You can visit us on Facebook at facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know, or you can send us a good old fashioned email at Stuff Podcast at how Stuff works dot com. M be sure to check out our

new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join housto Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you