Tech of Ghostbusters

right now, or talking about the intricacies of Shield. But today we're gonna look at a particularly spooky topic, the tech of Ghostbusters, because we have the Ghostbusters Ectomobile Owner's Workshop Manual, a book that I have a had a chance to look at and have enjoyed thoroughly. Mr Benjamin, Welcome to tech Stuff. Hello Jonathan, thanks for having me on man. That's now I hear that that title is

such a mouthful, the Ghostbusters Ectomobile Owners Workshop. We should have really come up with an acronym or something there. In true Shield fashion, we should have come up with something shorter. I love that, you know in the on the cover that I have, it has the all the different designations for all the different ectomobiles as well, so it's so it's even more complex than that. I love it because you look at this and just from the look of it, it looks like a workshop manual, you know,

it has that appearance. You've got the nice uh diagram of the ECTO one, the classic Ecto one on the cover. And before we jump into how this book came about and and the research you did, just from a casual perspective, guys, this is a book that's got tons of illustrations and photographs from the films. It's got lots of close ups of stuff that you would only have glimpsed at if

you had been watching the movies. So if you're a fan end of the films like I am, this is a real treat because you get a chance to actually look at some of this stuff that you would really only see in passing. So let's let's talk about this. So how did this book come about? Before we we talked about the tech itself. Yeah, I mean, so this book um probably about this time last year. What happened

was I I'm a big Ghostbusters nerd. I I do a fan podcast called The Interdimensional Cross Rip and that's a weekly show. And you know if I've run a fan website since six now, so, uh, Ghostbusters certainly in in terms of my adult life has really continued to resonate as it did back when you know, I was a kid and I was running around with my Kennor proton pack and and trap and everything, and uh, you know,

it's it's it's kind of carried through. So I've kind of been steeped in the lore, and with the new movie that came out, had really gotten in touch with the good the good folks at Ghost Corps, which is Ivan Rightman production company, and uh, you know, they when the new movie came out, they were doing a lot of events. I had worked with them and and kind of consulted on some stuff and done some you know, live shows and and things to help them promote the movie.

And uh, you know, on the side, I also I write books for Marvel. I've been writing Agents of Shield Declassified and several of these you know, big collectors books, these big hardcovers, and so, you know, just in casual conversation, I was talking with them and I said, you know, I really I've always wanted to do you know, like a like a technical manual or like a visual history guide or you know something, because there's so many cool there's so much cool gear in the in the films,

and there's all these little nuanced parts that places like Ghostbusters fans, the website where prop replica builders, they just pour over every single detail and try to figure out what is that little knob, what is that little like elbow that's on there. I want to find that original part, and I want to source so that my my proton pack is as accurate as humanly possible. And so I said, we gotta we gotta do like an official like reference

manual for everybody. We have to put something together that if you are building your proton pack replica or your your replica ectomobile, this is your guide. This is your your bible, so to speak. And you know that there was sort of the stroking of the chins and the you know Eric Reich, who's the great associate producer there, he kind of goes, hmmm, yeah, I like that idea.

Unbeknownst to me, they had already been talking with Inside Editions about doing something like that, and they were looking for an author. So um, again, like every good Hollywood story, it's right place, right time, and just happen happening to say the right things. I guess. So uh So last fall they said oh, we're doing this. It's it's not a it's not a visual history guide. It's more of a like a technical manual, you know, like the hands

manuals that you get at the workshops. Now you go to an auto parts store and they have one for every car. How do you rebuild your carburetor? How do you change out your tires? That kind of thing. I said, Oh my god, that's such a great idea. It would be great to kind of incorporate, like make that a technical manual. Like I don't know, I start Star Trek, the next generation, even the classic Star Trek, They've always had these great technical manuals. Where how does a phaser work,

how do you operate a phaser? How do you operate a transporter? How long does it take you to climb through a Jeffreys to yes, exactly? And how long did they build those Jeffreys tubes on the set? Not that long one section? But uh but yeah. So that kind of began the conversations with both Sony Publishing and and Ghost Corps and and inside additions as to what is this book, what are we gonna do? How do we make this interesting? You know, for for the die hard

fans who already know a lot of this information. For the casual fans who are going to be walking by, you know, at their local Barnes and Noble or whatever, and and they say, oh, ghost Bus, there's ectomobile manual and they pick it up and they go whoop nop, too nerdy putting that down. You know, No, we want you to, we want to be engaged. We want you to, uh you know, have have something there that's entertaining for

you too. So that was it was a very short conversation because they had a very as many things do, they had a very short production schedule, and they needed something right away. So uh yeah, that's that's kind of how it came about. And the tone of this for those who want to know, it's written as if it is in the Ghostbusters universe. It talks about all the different equipment and uh it does you know, you do refer to the the items in our world that have

been repurposed and tweaked within Ghostbusters. You know, Egon has made some changes to the to the equipment or whatever it may be in order to make it work within the Ghostbusters world. But it does mean that you can actually look at this guide and see where many of

these items originated. And that's pretty cool too. Also it means that you've worked in some great little jokes that are are provided by the various characters, often in little notes that are on like post it notes throughout the book,

so you get the commentary from the Ghostbusters themselves. And I also love I mean, we were chatting just before we started recording about how and when I was younger, I played the Ghostbusters RPG a bit and one of the elements of that, one of the big parts of that was this idea of Ghostbusters franchising, and they talk about that obviously in the first movie, and they talk about the franchise rights would make the millionaires. And so

this book also goes to that perspective as well. Like you you're opening up your own ghost Ghostbusters franchise, Well, here are some of the guidelines you should follow. And I like all of that. I love that there's that

flavor in it. So I assume that since you were working from the get go with with people very closely attached to the beloved movies themselves, that you had a lot of really great access to things like the production photos and and maybe some reference photos and that sort of thing, right, Yeah, I mean, and and beyond the photos,

access to the actual cars themselves. You know, people that were going by on the Sony Studio tour would often catch the unfortunate site of my rear end in my feet sticking out of the car because I was on the floor of the car trying to take a photo of the seabed radio that's up on the ceiling and trying to figure out what model it was, and uh, you know, it was it was. It was a whole lot of fun to kind of dissect these cars and get in there and find all of those details. But

uh but yeah, I mean, it's it's interesting. You mentioned the tone, and that was that was something that we struggled with because technical manuals not inherently funny pieces of literature. So uh, you know, I one of the things that really appealed to me about this project was here's all these things that are on top of the car. You know, they've got the roof rack and there's all of these great uh um you know, a kutreman. He's got all of these these gadgets and ghack and stuff. What does

it do? I have no idea I've known Ghostbusters now for thirty plus years, and I have no idea what any of the stuff does. Um. And so I I dove into it, and I started thinking of all the theoretical sciences and all of how things would work, and how this component would tie to this component and what purpose they would deserve. Um. But then you start losing the humor, and you, I don't know, it starts getting two technical, it starts getting too bogged down in the

lore and the technical jargon. Uh. And so that's really where my co author, Mark Sumarak, who worked on Proton Proton Pack, see it's all it's ingrained in me. Power Pack, the Marvel comic book, not the Nuclear Accelerator. Uh. He worked on power Pack and Guardians of the Galaxy and

and a lot of Marvel titles. And uh so he came in and he did a really great comedy punch up and and really helped me because I had put those sticky notes, those post it notes all over the place, and you know, he came in and did a really great comedy pass and making those just really shine. UM. So yeah, tone tone was really difficult because you know, we we can only say that you can destroy the world with a component so many times before you're like, Okay,

I got it. I'm on page twenty and you've said that this will blow everything up. I got it. That's not funny. What else you got in here? So? Um it was. It was really really tricky trying to find that right tone right, And of course, I mean Ghostbusters the film is brilliant in many ways, but one of the ways I love it is that the way they produced that film, the way that film rolls out and

and unfolds in front of the viewer. Unless you're just a truly persnickety kind of of audience member, at least for that first viewing, you don't really start to question where did they get this equipment? How did they build it? How do you build up a portable particle accelerator that can fit on your back and not crush you. How do you get the super conductive true magnets cold enough to accelerate a particle at near the speed of light.

I mean, they're all these little technical questions that if you were really thinking about it, you'd be like, well, but the movie it doesn't that's not important, right. The the the gear is fascinating because it really is cool to look at, and it creates they had great effects that went along with it, and it makes you want to know more about it, but it's not important for

the story. So for the purpose of the movie, you can just watch it and they can have a little casual line about something and they don't even have to just they don't have to justify it as long as it works within the context of the story. And and that's perfectly fine. I find I I like, I like a hard science fiction, but I also like stuff that doesn't take the hard science fiction route as long as

it as long as everything works for the story. So then so your job then is to come around and take this stuff that gets casual mentioned or sometimes no mention at all. It's just some thing that shows up on screen or it just happens to be part of the car that was never really meant to to get more than maybe a casual glance, and you have to give it a purpose. Yeah, and and you take a little bit of the mystery out of it, which is uh for for those of us that pour over every detail,

that's that's great. But then you know, uh, you and I were talking offline about lightsabers. You know, As a kid, you're like, oh, man, a lightsaber is the coolest thing. But then you start thinking, it's like the magic sort of comes from you wondering how it works, what what's in there that's powering it. And then of course you read the books and you know it's khyber crystals and these are a long Jedi tradition and blah blahlah blah, and it sort of takes a little bit of the

mystery out. So you have to be careful too. You don't want to delude things to a point where you know there's not there's not a little room for interpretation too, because that's what fans since since they saw this movie up on the big screen, have been, oh, how does that work? How how is the lightning shooting out of this one? Right now? I don't understand the reasoning or the actual technical reason behind it, but it looks cool and they're catching ghosts with it, and that's all that matters.

You can't You have to have that suspension of disbelief so that you keep moving forward and you're able to believe the the stay Puff marshmallow Man is walking down the streets of Manhattan. So yeah, it was it was. It was kind of it was fun in a way to put on a certain hat and be like, well, why would they have this on top of the car, and what would it be connected to and for what purpose? You know, why would Egon and Ray have decked this

car out with a missile guidance system? And you have to sit and think of the like theoretical science behind it. That's a probably a bad example because we have a joke in there that they put that in there for when the e p A inspects them. They just want to freak them out by having a Tomahawk missile guidance system in there, just to keep them on their toes.

But um, you know, it's it's tough, and but it's also a lot of fun because you can sort of reverse engineer like the cross section sensitivity analysis unit which is on the top of the car made by Texas Instruments, and you go, well, that was that was used to to filter out radar data. You know, if if you've got a radar sweep, that's filtering things out because they're

looking for ballistics, missiles, are incoming aircraft. Uh, it's it's sifting through that data and then giving you a refined result. Oh they could use that, Like what if what if they had this p k E detection array that you've got every single human being on the planet has some sort of a soul or some sort of an essence that they're projecting. How do you weed out the ghosts from that? You know? Oh, and then things just like kind of slowly start being you connect the dots between

them all and uh. That that was. That was a lot of fun. That was. It was like being a detective, a reverse engineering detective. Yeah. I liked it being the techno geek that I am. I loved reading about this and seeing that connectivity because see seeing you refer to gadgets and what they actually do in our real world and what they are for. And then saying, all right, well, if we start from that premise, can we apply that

by tweaking it a little bit. Let's say that someone has has ascertained that ghosts have a particular uh quality to them. That would we would need to separate the signal from the noise. How how could we take this thing and then tweak it and we'll get to to the the negative spectral particles? Because that, I think is all right. Let me let me just say, Troy, if

I may call you, Troy, I am. I am so thankful now to know why they are called proton packs, because because it makes so much sense in the mythology you've set up in this book. So uh, for I mean, a proton obviously is positively charged particle. It's also you can call it just a hydrogen ion because a hydrogen atom is a proton and an electron. If you strip the elect trono way, you now have a charged ion,

thus a proton. This is what particle accelerators do. It's what like the the large hadron collider has has a proton collider. And so having that, I had never even questioned why they were called proton packs ever and just

didn't even occur. And you have the whole explanation of where the hydrogen gases, which makes sense you would have to strip the electrons from the hydrogen to create the protons less they have hydrogen ions, and that you accelerate these and then you just have a gun that's shooting

these particles, and why would you use protons. So having ghosts have negatively charged particles makes it makes so much sense, right, Yeah, I mean, and so you're you're sharing in the glee that I had when I was figuring all of this stuff out. And and thanks to uh AN m I T Professor Dr James Maxwell, who had done a lot of the research for the new movie and had written

a dissertation about all of this stuff. And he he sent me all of his research and let me go through it and and sort of translated into layman terms. So he had sort of started this path. And then again I started putting the pieces together. Um, you know how if you're shooting a ghost with a proton pack, and if it's comprised of negative electrons, why does it get tired? Oh, well, it's being hit by positive energy.

Of course it's going to be getting tired because it's decaying at a more at a rapid rate um and and a lot of that was so fun again getting into this. Now you can see why my editor was like, Troy, it's not funny enough, Like what are you doing man? You're talking about this reads like a physics book. But it was so interesting and so exciting to me that it's it's hard not to get into it. Yeah, why

why did they call it a proton pack? Why? Why does the ghost get contained in the trap and they can't get out, Like, what what is it in the technology there that keeps them locked in? Um And and also how do they adapt that for bigger ghosts, for more powerful ghosts, for uh And and if it's exuding radiation,

how are they combating that? You know, there's a whole lot of those levels that were just so much fun to dive into, and like, you know, the reality of it is Steven Dane, uh And and John to Cure, the production designer on the film, they just went to apex in in Pasadena and grabbed all of this technical stuff that like NASA, JPL or somebody had just tossed out into the garbage, and they're just grabbing stuff in there.

Put oh, that looks cool, that's got some great lights, and that looks like a great control panel, and they're they're pulling and cludging all of this stuff together. They weren't thinking about I mean, I'm sure in a certain sense like Ron Cobb, they were thinking about how things work and okay, that needs to control that thing, but they weren't thinking about this level of detail at that point. So sure it was it was cool to kind of help them now thirty years later and be like, oh,

you did that on purpose. That's why that's the hair, you know, right, And then they can they can sit back and say, well, yes I did, when in reality it was just like this thing looks cool on top of this car, and uh and and ultimately like, hell, you know, subconsciously I must have known that this was connected to sonar and therefore, but with some gentle tweaking, you could have it to listen for ghosts instead of

you know, for anything else. Yeah, I like that. I mean I've been I have been known to claim credit for brilliant deductions I have made without knowing about it. So so I am not above such things myself. Uh yeah, I I found that really really entertaining to to dive

into that. It also, I mean, once you once you come down to that explanation where you know, you you think, well, if you're tackling something that's supernatural with science, you've got to find some scientific basis somewhere for for the two to meet, right, you know, otherwise you you have I fight your magic with science and and ultimately you can't really you can't really see anything useful then, right, So, but once you made that determination of all right, well

we're getting to work from the the foundation of these ghosts having some some spectral energy that has a negative charge to it. That's great because the word negative has so many different connotations. There's one one connotation in engineering or physics and a totally different one obviously if you're

just using it as a regular adjective. And not only that, but it meant that you could then explain other things that they talk about where they just casually mentioned the different classes of ghosts, and and then you think, well, now now we have something quantifiable that we can measure.

We can measure, say, the the magnitude of a negative charge, and then the tools we use to detect these things suddenly become much more easy for us to explain from even just a theoretical technical point of one of my favorites, and I want to know some of your favorites too, but one of one of my favorites were the goggles, and because you talk about how it provides it's a heads up display or HUD for the p k A meter, and that it gives you information, but you also and

I'm so glad you did, because I was thinking as I was reading the description you point out how it's similar. In fact, it's based off of night vision goggles, and the whole the whole premise by night vision is that it's taking light that we as humans are incapable of seeing, you know, infrared light. We cannot we cannot see that light, but it has It takes that light and then it

has to use algorithms. Actually, it's using technology to convert that into light we can see, so that we can actually view stuff in darkness when otherwise we could not. It's kind of like what NASA uses with their telescopes. They use near infrared telescopes. They then you'll see on any NASA picture where they've used those telescopes that they will indicate that they've used various UH enhancements in order for us to be able to appreciate what is we're

actually looking at their using various colors. And in the world of Sbusters, you explain that this technology has been tweaked to be able to view various UH otherworldly supernatural creatures ranging from poulter Geist all the way up to you know, deities that that normally would be invisible. But this is because because it can interpret that data, it can then project essentially an image that we could perceive ourselves.

And I thought that's so clever. I love that explanation because again, it is based on something that really does exist out there. It's something that we've been using for decades now, and it's just that people don't necessarily think about. They just think, oh, when I put these goggles on,

I can see in the dark. Yeah. Yeah, And it makes a certain amount of sense that if you, if you put yourself in the shoes of Egan Spangler, he's probably looking at technology that previously exists and wondering how he can adapt that to the needs that they have as quickly as they can. Because in the movie they're small business takes off quite literally overnight, so he has to go out and find, oh, oh, there they are these night vision goggles that have been decommissioned by by

the army. I know that they have these sensor rods on them. If I just tweak the sensor rods, they won't be detecting infrared or heat or or heat signatures things like that. They'll start detecting the decay of those negative electrons that are out there, and we can we can sort of quantify that and visually put that into our ghostbusters eyes so that they can help track these

things down totally. But then the funny thing about this stuff, and and even on those two particular pages in the book you find the designers of the film, we're just doing things because they looked cool, because it made a certain amount of sense that like, when he's looking around the ballroom, you know, the numbers in the corner are moving, and when they lock in on Slimer, it locks into

a certain value. But what we found was, as he's looking around the room, the value on the numbers is higher, and then when he locks in on Slimer, the value on the numbers is lower. So we had to figure out this way, which it was totally counterintuitive. You know, why would when he's looking around the room and it's at like three thousand, when you then find Slimer and it's at one thousand, why why does it become lower?

And so we kind of had to help them with a little bit of a gap in their logic or or in in the way that they had sort of defined things, and say, oh, okay, the closer you get to zero, the more powerful the entity is. And that's you know, if you are. If you see a zeroed out number in that corner, you're probably looking at the end of the world, you know, when they're the the temple rooftop looking at Goes or the Goes are and if you were to throw those goggles on there, it

would be a zero number, a negative number. Uh. And then when you get to Slimer, it's still fairly low. It's in the you know, I think it's thirteen thirty five, thirteen thirty three. Oh shoot, I'm gonna it killed. On the forums, I think it's thirteen thirty three. When they walk in, uh to Slimer it is thirteen thirty three point five. Yes, all right, man, I'm so glad you

you had that. But so yeah, so so figuring out okay, so the class the classification system that they're defining these ghosts by, maybe that thirteen area is about a class four or a class five, and kind of going from there and then building around that because that's the only number that we've defined in the context of the film. Of course, you watch the cartoons. There's all the cool

gag and stuff in the cartoons, but it's a little different. So, you know, it's it's finding finding those little stepping stones and then building out from that. We know that slimer is in the dred range, let's say that you know something more like m I think what we ended up doing is like in the five hundred range, that's like a class seven like that's that's a huge metaspector that is uh, probably not the friendliest and probably doing some damage to you, uh, and then building out that chart

from there. So we we We've got a lot of proof readers that came back on the book and they said, well, this doesn't make sense. Wouldn't zero be like normal zero? It should start at zero and it should go up, you know that once you get to five thousand, that should be the biggest entity. And it's like, well, yeah, but we're helping out the movie again. Here are helping helping them apply this this logic and and this sort of procedure to their stuff. And so hopefully that communicates well.

And then also again like you were saying, hopefully, you know Ivan rightman looks at this and he's like, yeah, that's that's what I intended the entire time. Yes, of course, that's that's the intention all along. Well, the nice thing is there is there is precedence in the world of science where someone has made a decision where the scale as it goes up is measuring an effect that goes down unless you are looking at the world at atopsy

turvy way. So for example, celsius, originally one was freezing, and then you'd go up to zero to boiling. So you look at that and you're thinking, are you just saying that like that that you're saying it's less cold until it gets to very much not cold? How does that make sense otherwise? Or zero is just really hot and then the higher you go, the colder it is. Are you thinking elevation? What where's your thinking in this Celsius?

So that's that's that was I'm glad you latched onto that because that's that was my my simplistic not scientific reasoning behind it was a percent is normal is okay, and when you hit zero percent things are crazy. You are looking at the end of the world as you know it. That's that's how we kind of went about it. So, so since I was talking about my favorite being the goggles, do you have a particular piece of equipment that, out

of all of it is is your favorite. I mean, I know it's hard to say when you're working on each individual little piece, but yeah, I mean it's it is hard, I would say, just on a at a fifty thou foot view. Just getting to dive into the Ecto one A from the second movie was a whole lot of fun because that was, you know, the second movie. They never showed the inside of the car in the film, and of course because they had the that Ecto one

A out at Universal Studios Florida. As kids, we would climb in there and we would see stuff and you'd see photos of oh my god, there's a computer in there, and there's all of this great equipment that you never see in the actual film that they don't do anything with in the actual films. So, um, we I may be divulging too much, Eric maybe ready with the sniper rifle here, but we we did dive into what is left of the Ecto one A there in the process

of hopefully restoring that car. Uh, and I was able to just dive in and see, oh my, that's that's a Trio Tech centrifuge, and that's that's like a clock, power controller, and all of these tiny details that nobody's

ever really seen because it's not photographed, it's not documented. Well, um, and so we were able to pull those components out, and to me, it was like an archaeological dig finding all of these these things and you'd you'd pull out this, it looked like garbage and you go, oh, that's this part of the big white pill looking cylinder that's on the back of the car. Um. So I think on a on a on a broad view, that that's my

favorite part of this book. But uh, if I were to pick one component, I would say it's the tu sniffer, which, uh, it has been long debated among fans as to what it's the thing that's on top of the original car that looks like a double barreled shot a red double

barreled shotgun. And uh, you know in a deleted scene from the movie, a cop is coming to write a ticket and put it on the windshield of the car, and that that sniffer sort of turns and acts like eyeballs, like it's following the cop around and he can't quite dodge. It's it's gaze. And we said, wow, that we could go with that. It could be like a sensor device if the car was are normal or had some sort

of of you know, blues mobile powers. But let's let's set that aside, and again let's start thinking about how this would be useful to the Ghostbusters. Why would they put that on the car and with for what purposes? And so finally getting to say what that particular piece of the roof rack was was a whole lot of fun um. And we do get a good joke in there about it looking like Egan's nose and that's why

they called it a sniffer. But uh, yeah, I think I think that's probably the one because we were finally getting to define stuff that that fans have have wondered about for a long time. And it's all Ghost Corp. Approved. So it's cannon guys. Now, such power, such amazing power. Power. And after you came from Marvel, did you not learn with great power comes great responsibility? And no, I know, Ben, I know, but um yeah, it's uh, it's it's one

of those things where and we were very careful. There were a few things in there where we didn't want to get too carried away. There's uh, I think I've said it before, but there's a hose that's on the uniforms where if you if you look in the original film, they have these yellow hoses that kind of look like they go out from around the waist area kind of down to about mid thigh with with a little plug. And but unfortunately, and Harold Ramos has joked a whole

lot about it, they made the hoses yellow. So everybody everybody's thinking, like, do they have cathos? What are they walking around with these hoses that kind of very conspicuously go from around the growing area down to this part that's by their knee, and uh, you know they've they've joked about well, you know, you see stuff and sometimes

things happen. Um. But so so we we thought about actually defining that and what it what its purpose was, and that that's one of those where I was like, Eric, should we finally tell people what this is? And He's like, no, let's leave that one up to the imagination for a

little while. That's amazing. Well, one of the things I wanted to talk about was, you know, interesting stuff that that I think a lot of people don't necessarily realize, especially because the world of cars is so different today. And that's you know, when you talk about the Ecto one and the fact that It's essentially it's a it's

a type of Cadillac. But in that time, Cadillac would create these chassiss that other car manufacturers, like specialized car manufacturers, would end up taking, and then they would make their own uh models built on top of those basic chassis, which is why you could end up with several cars that look very different from one another, but they all

are worked on the same basic foundation. And and and why this this fifty nine Miller meter is so difficult to find because they only made a certain amount of them, but other manufacturers made very similar looking cars. Uh, you know, and and fans have similarly can converted those into ectomobiles too. But yeah, the Miller Meteor car, I mean it has because of Ghostbusters. It's so iconic. I think it's kind

of like the DeLorean from Back to the Future. You see that vehicle and your and that's another great example of a car where there was uh not on purpose, but there was a limited number of them. And uh, it's it's really neat to get a little bit of a look behind that, because you know, you don't typically see that kind of stuff. Now, you don't really see a car company creating a basic found, you know, chassis

that other companies are using to make other vehicles. Now you might find a car company that makes a chassis for their line of vehicles and then they build different bodies on top of it. But that's the kind of stuff you can find out with this book, as you learn more about that basic technology that was used uh in in the film, and obviously learn more about the the Ecto one from the new film as well, so, which is of course a totally different car. It's uh

so that was really cool. I also love the idea of going into things like like the concept of plasma plasma being the most plentiful of all the forms of of of matter out there, although you know, most of us don't think of it that way because we don't tend to run into a whole lot of it here on earth. But absolutely, you look at your nearby stars, they're lousy with the stuff. So uh And of course that's ionized gas. It's it's a gas that actually can

carry an electric current. And I love that you talk about it being a plasma that comes out from the the the wands of the proton packs, uh because that also helps when you see the lines of electricity going up and down. You think, oh, well, of course it's a it's an ionized gas. It can carry an electric current.

That makes perfect sense that that there moves. It moves in a wavelength like sound too, you know, so that because it's coming out with such force that you've got that wave pattern that is happening, and and getting to explain why everything is the way that it is. That that was a whole lot of fun and and that's that's one of the things that is still rooted in

the original research that Michael C. Gross did for the film. Uh, and he was very detailed because they had to when they were animating things come up with that logic that okay, it originates at at at the ghost or at the wall or the bar or whatever they end up hitting with this this particle thrower. Um. And so you you can watch if you step through frame by frame, you see the light beam start on where it ends and then go back to the emitter. So it's it's like

a bolt of lightning. You you see it hit the ground first and and go up back into the sky kind of thing. And so, um, yeah, it's it's all there. Everything, all of the breadcrumbs were left For us, it was just kind of putting the pieces together and you know, well, it's an ionized gas, it's plasma, and it's it's being based in hydrogen. And trying to figure out all of all of the technical details behind it was was a lot of fun. Yeah, I very much appreciate all that.

As I was reading it, I just kept thinking, like, it so nice to see something that is is referring enough to the tech and science that we really know that people who are interested in recreating the uh, the effects by going out and finding as many similar objects out there as possible in order to make their own ECTO one or to make their own proton pack. That's interesting.

But it's also cool that it can introduce people into realms of science that perhaps they didn't know they were interested in, and then they can legitimately start to learn more about physics. They can learn more about particle physics,

in particular about electro magnetism. Uh. And even like some of the equipment and you have like sonar detectors, radar detectors, it's amazing that they were able to get hold of all that that junk equipment because some of the stuff is like I mean, some of it was was pretty top secret military stuff back in the day. I mean, and it's just sitting in a junk yard in three when they're doing pre production, Like, yeah, this was kind of scary that you could go to any place and

pick this stuff up. But yeah, yeah, you know, twenty years ago you wouldn't be allowed to know what this was. And now here it is just laying around right next to a whole bunch of copies of of the Atari twenty et. The Extraterrestrial's right there, there's your Tomahawk Missile Guidance System cartridge. Oh what a world we live in. Uh So, exploring this and and going through this experience, I'm sure it was really a rewarding experience for you and uh and we know we've talked about some of

the favorite stuff. Were there anythings in particular that you found a real challenge while you were researching and trying to figure out, all right, how do I how do I make this fit? For instance, I would say that one of the ones that would have jumped out at me, you have an illustration of some sonar canisters, And if I had seen that immediately, I would have thought, well, what the heck am I gonna do with these things. Yeah, yeah,

I mean, uh, there's there's a naval sona buoy. Uh that's and and Star Trek fans will notice it because it used to be the proton torpedoes that they would use in I think all the way through Next Generation. You still see them in some of the cargo bays and next Generation, but so so that that exterior case is something that they would use just as as cargo

around the ships and things like that. And my guess is that on on Ghostbusters too, they happened to go to whoever sourced those two Star Trek about that time. It was eighty nine, so it makes sense they were working on I think that was Star Trek five at that point. And again, you do you see these in those films, Um, so they probably, oh, that looks futuristic. We're gonna put that on the side of the car. It looks a whole lot more futuristic than you know,

the first movie. They've got these storage tubes that you see on plumbers vans, and so they swapped one of those out with this this sona buoy, and I had to I had to think why, for what purpose? And and knowing that what's in there is a sonar a booty that they would use in submarines and things like that. Well,

why why would they use that? But then again kind of reverse engineering and and and thinking, like one of the biggest differentiations between the Ecto one A and the Ecto one from the original film was the digital age. They moved from analog to digital. So you see a satellite dish on the top, you see a personal computer

inside the car. Um So they're they're upgrading things. They're going through the components that are on the car, and if you look at things that are missing, you can think, oh, they replaced something on the original car with the sona booty. And then I had to go, uh to the library and figure out what these buoys did and what they use them for, and again kind of start to reverse engineer that as to why Egon Spangler would build that

into his p KU detection array. But it ended up working out pretty well, but that that was a tricky one. And also you know, getting Ian Morris who is the illustrator, and he's awesome, he works, uh, he is actually a Haynes manual illustrator by trade, so he's he's actually diving into the real cars, doing the engines, doing the cutaways, um. And so it was a lot of fun working with him saying, oh, no, Ian, there's a wall there. You can't you can't build this electro magnet around there because

there's a cartridge and there's a wall. And he goes, oh, I didn't know that. All right, great, thanks mate, and he would kind of like revise things. UM. So I would send Ian this, uh, just reference of Okay, here's the deal. There's this thing on the car on the outside and it looks like this, but what we want to do is illustrate what's inside. And it looks like this. You don't have reference for that. Let me help you. And he goes, wait, so there's a thing inside a

thing here. I don't, Troy, you're crazy. I don't. I don't understand this. And so I'd have to say like, oh, okay, look that is the weather proof container that the booy goes in at Like when you go when you go to the mountains and you've got skis but you've got to get on an air plane, you put your skis into one of those hard clamshell cases. That's what this is. Why they did that on the car um. Maybe it's not waterproof. Yeah, that's the ticket. It's not waterproof, even

though it's an underwater booie. Don't worry about it. We'll figure that out later. But so that I'm trying to help him kind of figure things out too, So that that was that was also a challenge, you know, having to describe what's in your head to an illustrator and uh and and a technical illustrator at that. So it had to make sense. It had to be put together. It couldn't just be like, you know, it's a it's a circle, you know for kids. There was just no

way to to communicate that to him. You had to tell him exact details. I appreciate your Hudsucker proxy reference, you know for kids, big Coen Brothers fan here. So uh, well, I can completely appreciate that. My father is an author and he has written extensively in science fiction and has worked with illustrators as well, and so he has told me stories that are very similar. He's also he's actually written for Star Trek. So yeah, so I I've I've lived through this my my life as well. I've seen

it from that side. So it's cool to talk to someone else who also has had these experiences. It's really it's really interesting to learn about it from Ghostbusters because that's the property that I love, but I've never had any other connection to apart from just being being a fan of it. Um I. I also think that it works really well within the context. This kind of gets it into film critiquing, which is not what this episode is about. But I don't care. Uh, it's my show.

Um I think it also works. Something that serves you well as the author is that in the film, the Ghostbusters are essentially they're exterminators, right, They're not, you know, they're scientists and they're the Egon in particular is a brilliant engineer. But they are they It comes down that they are. They are ghost exterminant eaters are ghostbusters and and as such, one, it gives you a little license for things to be a little you know, Jerry Rigged

and Jenkie because they're they're glorified exterminators. And too, it does make sense that you would have people say, well, let's repurpose technology, because one, I don't have the access to a lab where I'm going to be able to do the R and D and the production and the manufacturing of all of these pieces of equipment we need and be that would be way too expensive anyway, Let's buy stuff that's cheap and then we'll just change it.

Like from from a movie like within the universe of Ghostbusters. It makes sense because you're talking of again about a small business. They they you know, put all the mortgages on to raise house in order to afford starting it, and they don't have the money to build particle accelerators with brands. It's all found. I mean, you look at they throw this device on Louis Tully's head, and it's a calendar, you know, it's a calendar with a bunch of electrodes and wires and stuff hanging out of it.

And it makes sense because it's just stuff they found and they know it. It's a conductive material um and and that's one of the things that the new movie I think got right was, you know, Jillian Holtzman is a dumpster diver. She goes in and she finds these lead pipes and she wants to turn them into proton shotguns. That's that's the the spirit essentially of what the first film was. It's this found garbage that people have thrown

away that they've turned into treasure. Yeah, and I like that also when we get into the later films, I like that they were thinking about how they would update the technology. As you pointed out, between Ghostbusters one and Ghostbusters Too, they went from analog to more digital. They had computers, and so the design of things started to change a little bit, not so dramatically that it's no

longer recognizable as Ghostbusters, but it has changed. Whereas and then we get into the the latest film where you start getting the printed circuit board as a more important motif and some of the elements and and a of course obviously circuit boards transistors that transformed electronics. It's something

that has allowed for maniaturization. And in the context of the film, you get to see the different variations of the proton packs and with the last one being the most compact and at least according to canon, the lightest of the three. Yeah. The evolution of technology, yeah, yeah, So it's great to see that reflected as well within

the mythology of the world. It's it's nice to see something that's consistent with the way the world actually works, you know, and it's not just oh well, this looks cool. We don't have to worry about justifying it. It actually it actually works logically as well. Uh. Also, if just an aside, I really dug the fact that the different variations of the proton packs in the latest film had special code names that relate relate to a particular author.

But I don't want to give it away for people who want to get the book and find out who it is for themselves, I will say it is very appropriately Halloween themed. It is. It's very appropriate. And then we also got another great joke in there from the scientist of the group saying that they wish they had been named after more, you know, highly esteemed scientific minds.

But uh, you know, that's that's that's one of my favorite little again, the little things that you kind of put in there to add a little bit of levity to it, because it is we're talking about the evolution of these packs, uh, and and the miniaturization of the technology, but you also want to add a little bit of that that special sauce in there that makes it kind of amusing and fun. And oh that's right. It's a technical, technical manual, but I'm having fun reading it. And that's

that's one of those things that's in there. Yeah, yeah,

I like it a lot. I mean I've also read through technical manuals for things like the Star Trek universe, and those are really interesting too, especially the ones the the gadgets that are dependent upon very theoretical science things like nanotechnology, that that we're still in the infancy for most of that stuff, and we really don't know if we're ever going to get those nanobot style uh at atomic assemblers that will be able to build stuff out

of raw material the way. Yeah, because yeah, once you get the replicator, it's game over. Right, You've you've you're in a post scarcity environment. Yeah, I'm good. Yeah, yeah, hot,

I do want that. Yes, same here. But it was it was fun to see that and again see it within the Voice of the world, like they're they're little bits and pieces where you can hear like this is this is raised kind of way of communicating this or this is how they would have written the workshop manual because there's just a little bit of a reverence there, but it's it's it's subtle. It's not like beating you

over the head with it. Yeah. So that's what I also appreciate was that it had that tone because you make a good point, you have to walk that fine line. You can't go super zaney because if you do, then you're not really saying anything useful. But if you go total technical manual, it's so dry that only the hard the hardest of the hard cores. Yeah, I gotta one.

Oh my god, I mean, I'm I'm so glad to hear you saying this because you're you're one of the first people that's seen it and been able to be analytical about it in this way. And again, the tone on the book was one of the hardest things to struggle with. And I had I had done a draft.

I don't even think I made it through a full draft. Um, it was more from like Peter Bankman's kind of snarky you know, the trademark Bill Murray Wit where you know he was making quips, and it was it just didn't read correctly when it talks about cynical all, how all the different types of equipment can get you girls that

kind of thing. Yeah exactly, yeah exactly, And and it made more sense to let him sort of chime in and get the one liners, uh, you know, the in in true Bill Murray fashion, he tries to get the last word in um and then so then we moved to a more kind of Egon Spangler um voice for the for just for the main, for the meat of the book. And it just it's too technical, you know, it's too you get you get too wound up in things.

And he starts going into these technical jargon paragraphs that are dense, and it's not a whole lot of fun to read. But what what I found was writing from raise point of view, um, you know where he's so he's so enthusiastic about everything and everything is just very endearing. He loves the fact that this piece of technology is in his car and he wants to tell you why, um and and that once once we sort of like tuned into that frequency, that's when the book started coming

together because it made a whole lot of sense. This is race Dance, And he's got an intro in the beginning because we we wanted to make sure that everybody knew like he's he's super proud of this book. He's proud of all of the equipment that they are licensing out to all of these franchise ees. Um and and then hopefully your enthusiasm. It's hopefully it's infectious. Hopefully you're reading it you're like, oh, oh that's really cool. Oh that makes a whole lot of sense. Oh that's so funny.

Why why they did that? Now I know, and I'm hoping that that little bit of you know, this is great. We we gotta stay here. I'm gonna go get my stuff. Like I want that same sort of enthusiasm to be conveyed through the books. So I'm I'm breathing a very heavy sigh of relief and say all of these things. I guess that's what I'm saying. Well, I think anyone who has that level of of fandom for Ghostbusters and

they really want to have this. You know, we've seen lots of of supplemental materials that go towards the supernatural side of the things. But to go to something where you're looking at the tech side and it it's not just being explained away as uh, you know, it's it's essentially magic, but we're giving it a scientific name. It's it's really cool to see that, because I mean, there is a lot of signs and I'm not taking away from science fiction authors who do this because again, if

the story is the most important thing. That's really what I care about. But it is really easy to write a thing of a jigger and say this is the you know, you do do what Futurama did. You just take whatever the thing does, and then you put an er at the end of the name of it, and that's what it is, a thing longen er, and then that's the thing. Uh, you could do that, So I appreciate that this is UH taking that extra step. I also am very eager to show this book off to UH.

We have a a a car expert here at the office who loves he loves to talk about movie cars in and so I think he's really gonna be thrilled. I haven't shown it to him yet because I wanted to all for myself until we had this interview. But but then I will show it off to him because I think he's really gonna dig it. That's Scott Benjamin, so he's he's a huge UH car buff and and

knows far more than I ever will about vehicles. Yeah, so he'll be very because that was the other thing too, is you know there's a page that we talked about the tires, the engine, oil, maintenance, and things like that. Um, which it's all true. I mean again, my goal of every uh Ghostbusters fan that has their own ecutomobile replica, I want this in their glove box because it's all real. This is this is that's what your tire pressure needs to be. Uh, this is when you need to check

your oil. Um it's hopefully knock on my desk here. Hopefully it's all completely technologically proof that you can go in there and oh yeah, the the tires need to

be at thirty p s I and and things like that. Um. So again, going back to tone being such a difficult thing on this, I wanted car enthusiasts to have something in here, and that's kind of the reason we went into the history of the Miller Meteor and talking about those chassis builds that they would do, and and even going in and describing, you know, the difference between Miller Meteor made three different coaches, the Landau, the Future and

the Sentinel, and helping people that that don't really know the difference between those three. You know, hopefully when you see a car out on the road or you go to a car show, you can look now at a car and be like, oh, that's a future and here's why. Um so yeah. Getting getting the getting the car and driver crowd interested in this too was was a big challenge because I'm I'm not a big car guy. My dad taught me how to change my own and change my tires and that's about all that I can do.

But you know, especially after working on this book, I have such a great respect and I love the classic car enthusiast now because they keep these machines from the fifties and the sixties, uh, still running and still pristine in their original conditions. And it's hard work, especially when they're not making these replacement parts anymore. They've got to keep these things fine tuned. So I can't call myself a car guy, but I feel like I am a car guy after this, Like I I know how this

car works. I feel like I can tell you. I feel like I can help you do some maintenance on it and that, and that's kind of the goal. I want you guys to read it and think that you can do maintenance on the actomobile. Well. I think it's great because I was telling a friend of mine that I was going to have this conversation with you, and the first thing she asked me, and I am not making this up, was what's the tire pressure for the

ectol one. I said, I can actually tell you that because in the beginning of the books, right, so I was like, I said, I've got that detail. She was even asking me, like, so so hard the tires the same and Ecto one and Ecto one, am and no they are not. Let me tell you why because that's explained in the book too. We why did the white wall tires go away? Well, we explain that, um, And uh yeah, I mean it's it is. It's very much a car manual. It it's funny, it's a technical manual.

It's an entertaining book for Ghostbusters fans. It's a car manual. Um. It's a reference book for people that need to have something to look at when they're doing prop replica replicas. So kind of like the shield books that I'm doing.

It has to serve so many different purposes, and then having to hit a page count makes it really difficult because one of the joke that I wanted to put in there was at the very back of the book, every car manual has those blank pages with the lines for you to to mark down all of your maintenance um.

I I wanted to and was unsuccessful in pitching have two or three pages in the back that had those lines, but then had handwritten notes of uh, you know, a paranormal specter spit ectoplasmic goo at the siren, stripped all of the chrome away from it, replaced chrome with a

spray paint until further chrome is available. You know that like putting those things down there that I thought would be a whole lot of fun for fans to like, Oh, what would would have maintenance log on an ectomobile look like? You know what? What are the terrible things that happened to them that they had to deal with? The wear and tear. The wear and tear on that car would be very different from your average vehicle, Yes it would.

So the good news is a lot of that trickled into the actual UM, the pages of the actual text, because you know, there's a sound replicator on the original car UM and we surmised, okay that because the car has such a distinctive siren, that's what feeds the federal

siren that's on the front of the car. But then I also wanted to put something in there about the Jersey Devil, which we know has an affinity for certain sounds, and they can have the Jersey Devil be chased out of town because it's drawn to the sound and it's it's following it. So, uh, you know, we we worked that in there. That was something that was originally in the handwritten notes in the back of the book and

and kind of got worked into the text. But yeah, it was tough, and and we had a whole lot of stuff on the firehouse that just got cut for space. Um so there sequel maybe, I don't know. I mean, you know, the potential for the whole franchise stuff. I mean, there's a lot of stuff you could cover. Uh. Yeah, And and you know, we talked about how in the in the you know, before we started recording, about the RPG.

The beauty of that is, of course, you know, whenever you're making any kind of role playing game, you have to build out you have to build out the world sort of as you have done. Uh. Usually people take less of a technical mind towards that. You know, it's they want to make stuff that's going to be great for game play purposes, but doesn't necessarily have to reflect the real world. In fact, it really doesn't have to

reflect the role world at all. But the problem of course with that is that you know, those explanations aren't really know, they're not confirmed anywhere else. It's not like they're canon. So you might be able to use that as inspiration on jumping off point, but it could very well be that you look at and you think, well, that's not gonna fit with everything else. So I can't really adopt that that approach, I mean, and it's tough.

You know, the the role playing games, the g b I role playing games, that was a whole lot of fun to go into those and just sort of use those as inspiration for tone and content, and because I loved and adore those as well, and I still have my podcast co host Chris Stewart was kind enough to send me some of the expansion books that I didn't have too, so it's I'm kind of diving back into it. But um but you know, yeah, and in the cartoon, because there were a hundred and said a whole lot

of episodes of the cartoon. Um, but all of the gear was used mainly as like a da a sex machia too. All of a sudden there would be a gyrocopter that came out of the car and you'd be like, well, what how did that get there? Or you know, the storage tube would sort of unfold and become a chair that they could sit on, kind of you know, suicide Gunner style, and he'd go, oh, that's cool, but that doesn't make any practical sense. Why would you do that?

It just obviously it inhabits the same universe as Inspector Gadget. It really does. It really does, and but it makes sense for a Saturday Morning cartoon that they had to have all of these things that would progress the plot, that would be more toy toy edics so that they could add it onto the Kenner toys. Um. So we we didn't really raw too much save for a couple of things. There are some nods to um one of my favorite real Ghostbusters vehicles, uh, the the Ecto two.

There's there's a little bit in there about that. Um. But yeah, we we tried to steer away from because again, you can just get so caught up in trying to figure out, well, oh, in this episode it does this, but then in this episode it does something totally different. So we kind of had to stick more towards the movies, um and and the role playing games. We're kind of the same way. You know, the role playing games were written before cellular technology, before personal computers, before all of

the stuff that I know, like the Ghostbusters Resurrection. Guys, they've rewritten all of the rules and they've rewritten all of the character sheets because well, you need to have more challenges. You're living in a modern world. You can't go back to the eighties. As much fun as it is to be nostalgic about that time, you want to have more challenges, more modern day challenge just so it was, it was tough, and uh, you know, it's also from

an audience perspective. Obviously, you want to aim for the widest audience you can so that they can appreciate it. And if you if you start including stuff from further afield from the movies, then you then you start you start losing people because fewer and fewer of them have any experience with that particular material. Right, So you start with the films because those the I would argue that I'm pretty sure those are the the versions of the

Ghostbusters that most people have encountered. Uh, and then that number starts to drop off when you start looking like the cartoons probably is the next biggest. And then I would argue are the role playing games and the video games. Video games are probably smaller and smaller, and whereas all that material is still out there, so there's no reason

why people can't go out and also enjoy that. I mean, the role playing game stuff, a lot of that is out of print, so that might end up looking for, you know, stuff then and use game stores and things like that. But you know, the video games, the computer games and stuff, those are still out there as well, so there's there's plenty for fans to to enjoy. But this in particular I like, again, I love it that

it's that it's tied to our real world. I love that you have sourced as many of those gadgets as possible so people can actually look into and see what they were really intended for. Uh So I'm very appreciative of this. Oh well, thank you. Yeah, that's uh And and that was selfishly just because I wanted to know what every component is. And also, again, if you're out there and you happen to come across the fifty nine

Miller meteor and you want to build your own replica. Well, now you know that that's the spotlight that you need to get, and that's the dimensions of the storage tube that's on the side. Um. A lot of these things that we know fans have poured over details and in the very last page of the book has a huge amount of special thanks to people because over the course of already some years, this book would not have been possible without those fans because they have found the clippered valves,

they've found uh, the lagree elbows. They they sourced all of these things over the course of you know, thirty some years, where the Internet actually helped crowdsourcing those parts and those components, and um, you know, being that we had to relatively write this in a short amount of time, I am so indebted to all of those fans because they did a whole lot of that legwork. This book would have taken another two or three years had not

a lot of that stuff been done. So Um. But the good news is we're able to identify stuff that they haven't too. So when you pick this up, well, now you know that that's a pile siren and you know, especially again on the ecto of one A, here's all of those components with their exact model numbers, their exact makes, their exact dimensions, So even if you can't find it,

you can probably recreate it. Um. So yeah, it's a I mean, that's I just hope that the level of detail comes through, uh to every and everybody finds something different within the paages of the book that they enjoy. Yeah. I I certainly think that there's there's plenty for your your Ghostbusters fans to pour through with this book. Troy Benjamin, thank you so much for joining my show. The book

is Ghostbusters Ectomobile Owners Workshop Manual. It really is a treat to look through this, So make sure you pick one up for the Ghostbusters fan in your life, and might want to get one for yourself too because it's a really good read. Excellent, Thanks Jonathan. Thanks again to Troy Benjamin for joining us on this episode of Tech Stuff. I very much appreciate his time. It was a lot of fun exploring the world of Ghostbusters and and kind of reverse engineering the the science of ghosts in this

fictional universe. Uh. Those who have listened to tech Stuff for a long time, you guys know how I feel about the whole ghost hunting thing, so being able to talk about it from a standpoint of all right, we're starting with this fictional world, how do we explain how this technology actually interacts with ghosts? And then coming up with semi quasi scientific explanations actually is a lot of fun.

So I very much enjoyed this conversation. If you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, tell you what, Send me a message, write me an email tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on Twitter or Facebook. The handle it both of those tech stuff hs W. Remember you can watch me record this show live on Wednesdays and Fridays over at twitch dot tv slash tech stuff. And before I go, I have to wish you all a very happy Halloween. I hope you guys get lots of nice

treats out there. I'll be going around dressed as a ghostbuster and I'll talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Because it how staff works dot com and wh who