Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know Doin’ Science in the National Radio Quiet Zone About this episode West Virginia is home to sensitive radio telescopes that could easily pick up your cell phone’s signal on Mars. And the cell reception on Mars is about as good as it is in the NRQZ, since cell towers are banned in the interest of furthering astronomy.
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1:03 Speaker 00 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
1:13 Josh Clark? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too. And we're making really quiet here on Stuff You Should Know because we're doing an episode on the National Radio Quiet Zone. We're not a radio show, we're a podcast, but we feel in solidarity that we should be quiet, too.
1:32 Speaker 02 That's right. And we're not talking about Palm Springs with their oppressive ban on outdoor music.
1:39 Josh Clark? Oh, I hadn't heard about that.
1:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, you can't play music outside, like by your pool.
1:44 Josh Clark? Huh, at all?
1:46 Speaker 02 Supposedly at all.
1:47 Josh Clark? Wow. I guess it probably just depends on your neighbor.
1:51 Speaker 02 Hmm, I think they're pretty strict about it. I mean, I've never been to Palm Springs and stayed there. We should ask our friend who lives there.
1:58 Josh Clark? Yeah.
1:58 Speaker 02 Uh, cause maybe full-time residents have a little more leeway, but you know, they do it cause people, they don't want people just going and renting houses and just blowing out the neighborhood every weekend.
2:06 Josh Clark? No, this isn't Fire Island, guys.
2:08 Speaker 02 Right.
2:09 Josh Clark? No, we're not talking about Palm Springs, though, I guess, is the upshot of that, right?
2:13 Speaker 02 No, we're talking about the opposite of Palm Springs, which is Appalachia.
2:17 Josh Clark? West Virginia.
2:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:19 Josh Clark? Is kind of the opposite of Palm Springs, if there is such a thing. I think even if you folded the United States map in half, they would be pretty close to one another. They would smear one another.
2:30 Speaker 02 Someone's gonna do that.
2:32 Josh Clark? Yeah.
2:33 Speaker 02 They're gonna fold the map up and send us a correction.
2:35 Josh Clark? Yeah, they'll be like, Josh was way off.
2:37 Speaker 02 Well, you know where they might fold a map up is in the National Radio Quiet Zone, cause they still use those things.
2:43 Josh Clark? It's a great place to fold a map, um, because yeah, like you said, that's what you need to get around in a lot of cases. And let's just cut to the chase here, Chuck. The National Radio Quiet Zone does not mean you can't play your music like that. They're saying that this is an area where radio emissions of any kind are heavily regulated, frowned upon, you might even say. And the whole reason they're doing this is to protect the delicate telescopes, radio telescopes used in radio astronomy at a specific place called Green Bank, West Virginia. They've established a whole zone around it that's meant to block out or keep out radio transmissions so that the astronomers can go about their
3:28 Josh Clark? business happily.
3:29 Speaker 02 That's right. Uh, and to be clear, uh, when you say radio transmissions, you're not talking about Casey Kasem's American Top 40.
3:37 Josh Clark? Right.
3:37 Speaker 02 Cause we don't have a time machine and we're not gonna exhume Casey Kasem.
3:41 Josh Clark? They still play those, like, uh, old ones on, on some radio stations on Saturday or Sunday.
3:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
3:46 Josh Clark? It's a great way to pass some time if you're driving.
3:49 Speaker 02 I've stumbled upon those and it is a nice time capsule, for sure. But you're talking about radio waves and we're gonna explain kind of about what radio astronomy is and all that. In fact, we can go ahead and do that right now. Uh, because in 1932, there was an engineer at Bell Labs named Carl Jansky, who noticed some static interfering with some communications going across the pond, as they say. Got together with an astronomer over coffee and they said, you know what? I don't think this is interference coming from here on earth. I think it's coming from out in the Milky Way galaxy. And this was a big deal in 1932. They were like, there are literal celestial bodies emitting radio waves out there.
4:32 Speaker 02 And we need to start studying these and measuring these. And we're going to call it radio astronomy.
4:38 Josh Clark? Yeah. All of a sudden, we didn't just have visible telescopes anymore. We had radio telescopes, which are very similar. I mean, they both are just measuring different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. That's basically it. But the really amazing thing about what some of these radio telescopes can do, just to give you an idea of how sensitive they are. They measure the incoming radio waves that are so weak. They measure them in microjanskis, which is
5:11 Speaker 02 A what?
5:12 Josh Clark? A microjanski.
5:15 Speaker 02 Is it named after Carl?
5:16 Josh Clark? It is named, I hope so, because that would be one heck of a coincidence.
5:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:22 Josh Clark? It's point, it's zero point 32 zeros.
5:27 Speaker 02 Wow.
5:27 Josh Clark? This is watts, by the way. So the electrical energy is so weak. It's point 32 zeros of a single watt, right? And I've seen it compared to a snowflake hitting the ground carries a lot more energy than that. So that's how faint some of these radio signals are. And that's how sensitive these enormous radio telescopes are, which is why the idea of having a quiet zone around a telescope is so vital. Because there's so much noise in modern life. It's just gotten worse and worse and worse. You can find radio interference in everything from bulldozers to power lines,
6:09 Josh Clark? Wi Fi routers, Christmas lights, spark plugs in cars produce a lot of radio interference. It's everywhere, which means then that if you want to create a quiet zone, you have to somehow regulate all this stuff to kind of keep it away from the radio telescopes, which has proven difficult over the years for the National Radio Quiet Zone.
6:29 Speaker 02 You mentioned the less than a watt. Do they have names? I know there's like megawatts and kilowatts and all that stuff, gigawatts. Do they have names for things less than a watt?
6:40 Josh Clark? A micro Jansky is a, a Jansky is like point 26 zeros of one single watt.
6:48 Speaker 02 Oh, well, I just meant a sort of a regular interval, like a something watt, like a Reggie watt.
6:52 Josh Clark? Oh, I'm sure there's like a milliwatt. I know there is. I've heard that, that word before. I know I was at a mixer of some sort and someone used that word.
7:00 Speaker 02 Okay, I got you. You missed my joke.
7:03 Josh Clark? Oh, well, no, I, I need to hear it. I got.
7:05 Speaker 02 No, I'm not. I'm gonna, I'm gonna let you hear it in QA when you listen to it.
7:11 Josh Clark? So great. I have a future humiliation ahead of me.
7:13 Speaker 02 No, no, no, no. It was very quick and it was a pretty lame setup by me because it was all just for that dumb joke. So you have an Easter egg to look forward to.
7:21 Josh Clark? I can't wait to hear it.
7:23 Speaker 02 Uh, something that you've said, though, a few times that we want to, again, just sort of hammer home. You've said like a lot of noise and you might hear like silence and things like that. Again, it has nothing to do with sound. We're just talking about, uh, radio waves, which are, you know, they cast a, a kind of light, like a radio light, but it's not something that the human eye can see. So again, not actual sound is what we're talking about.
7:47 Josh Clark? No, nor actual visible light, radio light, right? So like what I was saying, it's like radio light pollution is absolutely everywhere. And yet they're trying to keep it as quiet as possible in the National Radio Quiet Zone. It used to be a lot easier when, um, when they started this whole thing. You said Carl Jansky made that massive monumental discovery in 1932. By 1954, the National Science Foundation started exploring, like how to just take radio astronomy to the next level, which is, I guess you would say the second level because it was still so new. They created the Advisory Panel on Radio Astronomy.
8:29 Josh Clark? And, um, part of what they were discussing was how to, how to create a quiet zone and where you would make one of those things.
8:37 Speaker 02 Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine if they had, were, were tasked with this today, it'd probably be nearly impossible. They'd have to use eminent, eminent domain just to kick people out. Uh, but 1954, like you said, it was a little bit easier. So for a couple of years, they got together over coffee. About where they could put this thing. It needed minimal radio noise, obviously, like we talked about, probably a pretty limited population.
9:00 Josh Clark? Yeah.
9:01 Speaker 02 By the way, thanks for Anna for this one. She did a great job on this.
9:03 Josh Clark? Yeah, she really did.
9:05 Speaker 02 Surrounded by mountains, because mountains provide a natural barrier for those radio signals, and probably not near a city, but not too far from Washington DC, where things would likely be headquartered. So they finally looked around. They settled on the Appalachian Mountains between Virginia and West Virginia. That is part one of solving the problem. Part two was getting funding. Luckily, President Eisenhower was kind of into this. So in 1956, he asked Congress, back when that was a thing, for $7 million to fund a radio astronomy center. And Congress said, yeah, let's do it.
9:44 Josh Clark? Yeah, everybody was really jazzed about this new radio astronomy stuff, right? West Virginia was very flattered, and they, the state legislature passed the West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone. So the first thing that was created was the National Radio Quiet Zone. And that was actually created before the National Radio Quiet Zone.
10:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, they kind of laid the groundwork, I feel like.
10:08 Josh Clark? Yeah, they laid a 10-mile diameter groundwork around wherever this telescope was going to be built. They said, wherever you put it, there's going to be 10 miles around it where you can't use radio stuff, right?
10:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:22 Josh Clark? And then the FCC said, we're going to do one better. We're going to put another blanket layer, much larger layer, called the National Radio Quiet Zone, on top of the West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone, to kind of make this huge buffer, right? To make it even harder for radio signals to mess with the radio telescopes in the West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone.
10:45 Speaker 02 That's right. So that smaller NRQZ, the National Radio Quiet Zone, had, from the jump, had some looser restrictions than the even much smaller WVRAZ.
11:00 Speaker 02 It covered a much larger area, about 13,000 square miles. But think of it this way, it's really a rectangle, the NRQZ, 13,000 square miles across Virginia and West Virginia, and a little bit of Maryland, the southernmost tip on that western panhandle.
11:18 Josh Clark? Just the tip.
11:19 Speaker 02 Just the tip. It's very mountainous. It's got parts of the Allegheny, parts of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but mainly the Appalachian Mountains. And within that 13,000 square mile rectangle, you've got that West Virginia, the WVRAZ. In the center of that, you've got a two-mile zone that surrounds Green Bank, West Virginia. And every time you go into a smaller circle within that rectangle, it gets more and more restrictive as for what kind of radio noise that you can have. Because in the middle of that zone, you've got the Green Bank Observatory, and they have even more restrictions right there in the center.
12:00 Josh Clark? Yeah, at the Green Bank Observatory, you can't even think about using any kind of radio-creating device, because that would create radio waves.
12:08 Speaker 02 If you think about Wi-Fi there, you're fired.
12:11 Josh Clark? Yeah, fired if you're lucky. I mean, they'll really work you over there. They've got a gang of goons that enforce this with an iron fist.
12:19 Speaker 02 That's right.
12:20 Josh Clark? So we talked about how all of this, the quiet zone itself was established. Simultaneously, they're working on creating the actual observatory that's going to be in the middle of this quiet zone. And initially, it was called the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in that town of Green Bank, which is in the center of the West Virginia radio astronomy zone. That was established in 1956. And they started building telescopes, one bigger than the other. They started with the Tattel 85-foot.
12:50 Speaker 02 Not bad.
12:51 Josh Clark? And then the 300-foot telescope, and the 140-foot telescope, which are very boring names.
12:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:58 Josh Clark? But originally, as you might imagine, everybody associated with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory lived in this ultra-quiet zone around the observatory. And they ran into some early problems where the employees were like, "We can't live here, sorry."
13:15 Speaker 02 Right. Yeah, I mean, they said, you know, the medical care and access to great healthcare isn't awesome. The schools here aren't great for my kids. And so they relocated the admin headquarters to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The researchers remain there on site. In 88, and I think that was in 1965, when they, you know, built most of this stuff, those big tall towers. In 88, the 300-foot telescope collapsed. The 140-foot said, "Ha ha!" But then it was replaced by the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in 2001, which still stands today. And not only stands, but it's like, it is the largest
13:57 Speaker 02 fully steerable radio telescope in the world with, get this, a 2.3-acre dish and almost 500 feet, 485 feet, which is 2,116 Big Macs.
14:09 Josh Clark? Is it?
14:11 Speaker 02 That's all for you, my friend.
14:12 Josh Clark? Thank you, buddy. Wow, that was a delightful little lanyap.
14:16 Speaker 02 A what?
14:18 Josh Clark? A lanyap. We've talked about this before.
14:20 Speaker 02 Oh, remind me.
14:21 Josh Clark? A lanyap is just like a little something extra.
14:25 Speaker 02 Okay.
14:25 Josh Clark? And I find it incredibly obnoxious to use.
14:28 Speaker 02 Well, I think it's great, and it sure beats the heck out of cherry on top.
14:32 Josh Clark? All right. Let's come up with something else.
14:36 Speaker 02 The lanyap on top.
14:38 Josh Clark? Okay, there you go. There's one other thing that the, um, the Green Bank Telescope, the one that's currently in use, can boast. You ready for this?
14:46 Speaker 02 Yes.
14:47 Josh Clark? It has the world's largest ball bearing.
14:50 Speaker 02 Oh, wow.
14:52 Josh Clark? The ball bearing inside of this thing that this massive telescope steers on-
14:57 Speaker 02 I can't wait.
14:58 Josh Clark? Is 17 and 1/2 feet in diameter.
15:00 Speaker 02 Wow.
15:00 Josh Clark? Which means it's as big around as a male adult giraffe is tall.
15:05 Speaker 02 What?
15:06 Josh Clark? That's the best I could come up with. I know, it's awful, it's clumsy, but I could not come up with anything else.
15:14 Speaker 02 Hey, Alexa, what's 17 feet tall?
15:18 Josh Clark? I asked DuckDuckGo instead.
15:21 Speaker 02 Okay. And I'm sorry for everyone who's Alexa I just triggered. Alexa, Alexa.
15:27 Josh Clark? Alexa, play One Direction.
15:34 Speaker 02 Oh, boy, that's good.
15:37 Josh Clark? You want to take a break while everybody's trying to turn off One Direction?
15:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, let's take a break. We'll be right back.
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17:05 Josh Clark? When you came along, it was like boom.
17:15 Josh Clark? Yeah, well, we were work pals.
17:17 Speaker 02 All right, so within that 13,000-square-mile rectangle, the national radio quiet zone, you cannot, and this is where the restrictions begin, and we're going to get more granular. You can't have any fixed or permanent transmitters installed unless you get approval from the NRQZ and the FCC. What's the NTIA?
17:41 Josh Clark? The National Telecommunications and Information Agency.
17:45 Speaker 02 Ooh.
17:46 Josh Clark? Very obscure, but they supposedly are replacing FEMA as the new World Order's jackboot troops.
17:54 Speaker 02 Right, okay, good to know. So you can't build any big permanent things there, so that means just within that big 13,000 square mile rectangle, just somebody living there doesn't have to worry too much. That means that no company can come in and build something really big.
18:11 Josh Clark? Right, that's really what we're looking at here. If you're in the actual 13,000 square mile thing, you don't have to really worry about a cellphone. The thing is, that also means since there's no cellphone towers that are allowed there.
18:26 Speaker 02 Right, yeah.
18:27 Josh Clark? Your cellphone's going to be useless in a lot of places. I think that's fair enough to expect anyway, because Pocahontas County, which is where a lot of the main part, which is definitely where Green Bank is.
18:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
18:40 Josh Clark? I think three quarters of it is national and state-protected wilderness. So you're not going to expect to get a cellphone signal there anyway. And if you're passing through this area, you're probably going to the quiet zone on purpose. So you can expect this. It's really just an issue if you actually live or work in this area, or you're a company trying to set up new infrastructure. That's really who's being affected by this.
19:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. Like, if you read, and I had heard of this before at some point, like I saw some news reporter Reddit article that portray it as like, you know, it's like going back in time, basically. And we'll get to the ways it is sort of like that, but it's not entirely like that. They've never entirely banned any kind of radio transmission. It's just really regulated, like they have certain radio broadcasts because they have to have those emergency transmissions that we talked about in communications in the AM radio episode. Those have always been there. You can have TV. It is restricted, but they permit like cable TV and even satellite TV, which kind of surprises me.
19:45 Josh Clark? Yeah.
19:46 Speaker 02 And Wi-Fi was not available for a long, long time until, I think, just last year. But they could have wired internet with the ethernet cable.
19:56 Josh Clark? Right. If it was wired, no problem, but the Wi-Fi was going to produce a lot of problems.
20:00 Speaker 02 Sure.
20:01 Josh Clark? Because your, I mean, that's a, your router is a radio transmitter. So.
20:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:05 Josh Clark? Apparently, a lot of people, as we'll see, are like, well, whatever, I'm still gonna have Wi-Fi, including Green Bank Observatory employees who live there.
20:14 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
20:15 Josh Clark? But it's still, it's a big problem because if you live in that region, it still affects you in all sorts of ways. Like, Anna gives the example of if your car breaks down, you don't just call somebody on the cell phone and be like, I need a tow.
20:31 Speaker 02 Sure.
20:31 Josh Clark? You're walking unless you're, somebody friendly drives by who you know and trust.
20:37 Speaker 02 Right.
20:37 Josh Clark? They probably had dinner at their house and will give you a ride.
20:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
20:41 Josh Clark? To somewhere. People use payphones, as we'll see. You can definitely feel disconnected just from not having cell service, let alone from Wi-Fi. But, that said, I think we'll talk a little more about it later, but the people who work for Green Bank Observatory try to work with the community because although technically it's law that they can regulate this and punish people who violate these rules, they don't. They are trying to keep a happy relationship with the community and figure out compromises that work for everybody. That's, that's what they try to do. I think if you talk to some of the people who live around there or elected officials around there,
21:23 Josh Clark? they, they might not necessarily agree with you, but that seems to be at least the mission of the Green Bank Observatory.
21:29 Speaker 02 Yeah. And again, that's specifically the Green Bank, which is the most restrictive area where you're not gonna have any cell service. And like I said, until very recently, no Wi-Fi at all there. Like, no Bluetooth devices, no RC cars and trucks for the kids.
21:45 Josh Clark? Man.
21:45 Speaker 02 And playful adults, no microwaves. But, like you said, I think you hinted at it, a lot of people, or some people, because there's not a lot of people there, period, but some people move there for that reason. They want a simpler lifestyle, they want less technology. And we'll talk a little bit more about, you know, kind of some of the people that attracts, because it can get very interesting. Other people can get annoyed. Most people there probably just, you know, that's where they've always lived, and so that's just the deal. It's a way of life. I think in 2016, there was an Italian graduate student named Giuffredo Collini. Who traveled there to study like the people and were like, you know, what's it like for the for the people that live there?
22:29 Speaker 02 And he found, and this is a very small scale study. It wasn't like the most robust scientific thing. But I think just walking around and studying and talking to people, he found that people seem to have lower anxiety there.
22:41 Speaker 02 But it's different, you know, they use maps, they use payphones still.
22:47 Josh Clark? Just the idea of not having
22:52 Josh Clark? access to like social media and
22:54 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's great.
22:56 Josh Clark? Just a lot of like modern life or having a cell phone, like being able to be contacted all the time. I can't, I can't help but think that yes, you as a group would have less anxiety on the whole.
23:08 Speaker 02 Especially teens, I think it was Australia. Didn't they just pass a law saying you couldn't be on social media until you were a certain age?
23:15 Josh Clark? I think 16.
23:16 Speaker 02 Hats off to you guys because that's how it should be. Teens there do have things like iPhones. They can't use them for texts or calls. So there was one teen that said it's basically a clock and a calculator. So I imagine calculator watches are very much in style still.
23:34 Josh Clark? Yeah, those Casio ones?
23:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:36 Josh Clark? Those are awesome.
23:39 Josh Clark? The thing is, is this is all, I mean, as of last year, I think, meaning 2025, but also some changes really started to take place. I think in the summer of 2024, like certain kinds of wifi is now allowed. And things are now changing. I mean, once you add widespread internet access, like the world's going to change or this area is going to change overnight, basically.
24:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, for the better, right?
24:08 Josh Clark? Imagine going, right, imagine going from 1997 to 2025 in this, in the span of like a day after installing a wifi router in your house.
24:20 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, that's one thing Anna mentions sort of at the end of her research was like, there was a while there where the Gulf was really big. Like when, you know, for the longest time it was like, oh, things aren't that much different.
24:32 Josh Clark? Sure.
24:32 Speaker 02 But then, once the internet came along and then they weren't getting things like wifi and Bluetooth, like the Gulf got pretty wide there for a while. But like we said, it attracts a lot of interesting folks. There are certainly some, some conspiracy theorists that go there on purpose. The National Alliance Headquarters for the Neo Nazis has been in Pocanice County for a long time.
24:55 Josh Clark? Mm-hmm.
24:55 Speaker 02 Obviously, you're gonna get some hippies, some communes. There was a quasi-cult, perhaps, called Zendik Farm that was there for a little while. They kind of moved all over. I looked into them all over the United States, but ended up there until their, one of their dear leaders passed away in 1999. The other, Errol Zendik, passed away in 2012, so that's when that kind of ended. But, and we'll talk about this last group toward the end, but most famously, it's probably known in where you might have seen articles or news reports, people moving there that suffer from electromagnetic hypersensitivity.
25:32 Josh Clark? Yeah, we'll talk a little bit more about that later, right?
25:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:36 Josh Clark? So, if you have heard about this, it's a good chance that you stumbled across a Wired article on it, appropriately.
25:47 Speaker 02 That might have been where I read about it.
25:48 Josh Clark? There's a guy named Stephen Cursey, who's an author, he's a journalist, who just kind of, I was reading one of his Wired articles, and he was talking about how he became kind of obsessed with the idea of living without a phone.
26:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
26:03 Josh Clark? And did so quite impressively for a very long time, and he found out about the National Radio Quiet Zone, and was, you know, naturally attracted to it, wanted to find out more about it. So he started hanging out there and writing about it. So a lot of the best information about what life is actually like in there, and what, how things are actually done, come from some of his reporting. And one of the things that he points out is that if you are caught using, say, like a cellphone, within the, like, the two miles of the Green Bank Observatory, you are subject to a $50 a day fine for as long as you're using that phone.
26:41 Speaker 02 That's right.
26:42 Josh Clark? And as far as Cursey can tell, absolutely no one in the history of the Green Bank Observatory has ever been fined.
26:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
26:49 Josh Clark? Because, again, they're trying to do this all through cooperation, rather than, they're trying to use the carrot, not the stick, I guess.
26:58 Speaker 02 Exactly. So if you're listening to your DVDs, your CDs, that's fine. You can't stream your music because there will be an enforcer that comes along to probably very kindly ask you, enforcer's not the right word at all, a nudger that will come along. And that job, for a very long time, was held by a man named Wesley Sizemore. Which, by the way, this all sprung, I think, a banger of a movie idea for me.
27:25 Josh Clark? Oh, good. I can't wait to see it.
27:28 Speaker 02 You'll never see it, but I'll tell you about it one day.
27:30 Josh Clark? Okay.
27:30 Speaker 02 I'll blow the dust off the script and hand it to you.
27:33 Josh Clark? You don't know. It could be, it could be your ticket to stardom.
27:36 Speaker 02 Hey, you never know. But Wesley Sizemore did this job of enforcer. It's a guy who drives around in a truck or a van equipped with RFI identifying gear and look for this interference. Sometimes you say, "Hey, man," or they don't say, "Hey, man." He goes, "Hey, Mr. Ronald," because he probably knows everybody.
27:57 Josh Clark? Sure.
27:57 Speaker 02 At least in my script, he does. And says, you know, "You gotta, you know, you can't use that microwave. You gotta, you gotta unplug that thing or just give it to me so it's not a temptation." Sometimes he's, he goes, "I can probably work something out for you that works without interference."
28:15 Josh Clark? I know a guy.
28:16 Speaker 02 Very famously, he is the guy, I think. There was a malfunctioning electric blanket that was causing some interference. And so he went out and got one that worked. And, you know, it's funded by the NRA, obviously. He's not doing it out of his pocket. But apparently, a lot of people in town sort of see him or saw him while he was doing the job as like a free repairman in town.
28:37 Josh Clark? Yeah. Like, yeah, you just sit around and wait for Chuck Nadey to come find you and repair your...
28:42 Speaker 02 He's the new guy.
28:44 Josh Clark? Oh, sorry. Yeah, that was Wesley Sizemore. Chuck Nadey is the new guy. You're right. He's been going since 2011. As far as I can tell, he's still the guy who does this. I believe he has a background in electrical engineering. And one of the things that, like, Green Bank does, including Chuck Nadey, in working with people who, like, want to put up some sort of radio antenna, they'll actually help you design it. So that it works really well, but it doesn't interfere with the telescope. Like, that's the level of coordination and cooperation they're doing ideally. And Chuck Nadey is one of those guys. He goes around and finds, you know, who's using Wi-Fi routers, but also kind of is hands-on as well,
29:28 Josh Clark? helping come up with solutions, basically.
29:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, I don't know if you have your phone, but I just texted you a picture of Chuck Nadey, or Nadei. He looks exactly like you would think. He looks like, like, like the dude, super friendly, that drives around in this truck full of electric gear, looking to, to friendly solve problems in a friendly way.
29:50 Josh Clark? Like Steven Seagal, basically.
29:52 Speaker 02 No, no, no, not at all. Did I ever tell you about being behind Steven Seagal's house in LA?
29:58 Josh Clark? No, this one's new.
30:00 Speaker 02 Uh, I think I talked about being in Meatloaf's house at one point or another.
30:05 Josh Clark? Yeah.
30:05 Speaker 02 Um, the, the, what's the cherry on top called again?
30:10 Josh Clark? The lanyap on top.
30:11 Speaker 02 The lanyap on top of that story that I don't think I ever revealed, or I may have, and it was years ago, was that Steven Seagal lived behind him. And I knew this because when I was jumping on the trampoline in Meatloaf's backyard, every time I went up, I saw these little, like, Asian pagoda tops. It looked like little tops of little Taj Mahas. And I was like, what is that? And they were like, that's Seagal's place.
30:36 Josh Clark? Are you sure that you didn't mean George Seagal?
30:38 Speaker 02 Oh, well, this is George Siegel, but sure. That would have been a twist.
30:43 Josh Clark? Yeah, what a, so, did you see Steven Seagal there?
30:46 Speaker 02 Oh, no, no, no, no.
30:48 Josh Clark? I remember.
30:48 Speaker 02 No matter how high I jumped, I could not get a, a picture.
30:52 Josh Clark? I remember, um, I read, there was a GQ profile, I believe, years and years and years ago, about him, and the title of it was "The Biggest Liar in Hollywood."
31:01 Speaker 02 Oh, jeez. Yeah, he's supposed to be not a good guy.
31:04 Josh Clark? It was eviscerating. I would, I would recommend going and reading it.
31:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'll check it out.
31:10 Josh Clark? Yeah, just add it to your list.
31:12 Speaker 02 Uh, should we take a break? I feel like yes.
31:16 Josh Clark? Okay.
31:17 Speaker 02 All right, we're gonna take a break, and we're gonna talk about what they're doing out there, right after this.
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32:45 Speaker 02 And you came along and it was like,
32:54 Speaker 02 uh, yeah, well, we were work pals.
32:58 Josh Clark? Okay, Chuck, so we were talking about how cellphone towers and transmitters, like GPS transmitters, that kind of thing, like, commercial-grade stuff are really the biggest problem for the telescopes. The reason why, I don't think we said, the reason why it's not just interference, right? I saw a side-by-side picture of a radio telescope, I think of a pulsar, and one of the same thing, but with a lot of interference. Meow. And it's just like, yeah, it'd be impossible to pick some of this stuff out. Interference is one problem. Another problem is that, remember how sensitive those telescopes are? Their amplifiers get blown out really easily.
33:42 Josh Clark? There was a, in that article, they were talking about Chuck Nadey helping fashion an antenna for a smoke alarm. And they were like, if this smoke alarm went off and it sent this message out through the antenna, if we didn't make it right, it would blow the Green Bank telescope, like it would blow the amplifier out.
34:01 Speaker 02 Oh, wow.
34:02 Josh Clark? That's all it would take. So that's really, there's a couple of problems with it, right? But there's also another problem that very few people can do anything about, and that is from all of the satellites that are in orbit these days.
34:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure, especially the low Earth orbit satellites. Not only you're going to get visible light pollution, which is its own problem with all the telescopes, but radio interference is a big problem.
34:25 Josh Clark? Yeah.
34:26 Speaker 02 So what they're doing there, again, these seem like the greatest bunch of people, because they don't come at it, again, with a stick. They're like, hey, let's work together to make sure you can do what you need to do, and we can still do what we need to do.
34:40 Josh Clark? Right.
34:41 Speaker 02 So they're working on developing what's called a National Radiodynamic Zone, which is a collaborative initiative, basically, between the two, well, not two groups, between one group and a lot of other groups that have these satellites, to try and, you know, just talk with each other better and make sure that they can all, like I said, get their jobs done. They don't have a permanent home yet, but they're, they're working on it.
35:03 Josh Clark? Yeah, they're trying to build a research center where satellite operators can test new technologies that will let satellites work, but minimize radio interference.
35:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:15 Josh Clark? Hopefully, they get that up, because there's a huge problem with radio and light pollution from satellites, and we're just adding more and more and more every year.
35:24 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. All right, so if you were thinking, guys, when are you going to talk about aliens? Now's the time, because we've talked about kind of the things they're doing there, and this is one of the things they're doing there. Uh, one of the very first projects they started out on years ago was what would be the origins of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. In 1959, the NRAO researcher named Frank Drake, uh, launched a study called Prozac Ozma, so named for one of L. Frank Baum's, uh, characters in his Oz books.
35:59 Josh Clark? Mm-hmm.
36:00 Speaker 02 Um, he started looking for life out there. And while it didn't work initially, it, that really launched, uh, what SETI would become.
36:07 Josh Clark? Yeah, Frank Drake, uh, we've talked about him plenty of times. He came up with the Drake Equation, which is a really interesting formula for trying to figure out how many intelligent civilizations might be in the universe. Um, he's the guy who came up with that. And Green Bank is the place where he came up with it, cause he was working there. And he also hosted a, um, a pretty-
36:29 Speaker 02 Pretty rockin' party?
36:31 Josh Clark? A rockin' party. That, that featured Carl Sagan, a guy named Melvin Calvin, who's a biochemist, John Lilly, who we talked about, the whacked out dolphin researcher who used to give acid to dolphins.
36:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
36:44 Josh Clark? Uh, and they, so Frank Drake came up with the Drake Equation as basically the agenda for this conference, and then they kinda hashed it out. And they, uh, very famously calculated that there's at least 10,000 advanced, intelligent, alien civilizations just in the Milky Way galaxy. Um, if you don't know about the Drake Equation, go look it up. It'll open up a whole world of interesting stuff with you. But the upshot is, is like you said, this, um, still continues today because this research at Green Bank essentially, thanks to Frank Drake and others, gave birth to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI. And, um, SETI has still performed at the Green Bank Telescope to this day.
37:26 Speaker 02 Has the rapper Drake ever put out a song or album called the Drake Equation?
37:31 Josh Clark? No, but I'm glad you brought. I don't know. He may have.
37:34 Speaker 02 He should have if he hasn't. That's it seems like a no brainer.
37:37 Josh Clark? I'm glad you brought that up, though, because I'd heard of the this quiet zone before. I didn't know much about it. But the thing that prompted this episode is one of our listeners, a guy named Andrew Phelps. He's a photographer and with another photographer named Paul Kranzler. They went to the the quiet zone around Green Bank and took like they basically made a photo documentary of life in the area.
38:02 Speaker 02 Oh, cool.
38:02 Josh Clark? And they named their book Drake Equation and they sent us a copy. So hats off to those guys for the the book, for making the book and sending it to us.
38:11 Speaker 02 I thought you were talking about someone else at first because I wish I could remember his name. I follow him on Instagram now. There's a listener that is an astro or astral photographer.
38:22 Josh Clark? Oh, neat.
38:24 Speaker 02 Where basically he's, I don't know where he goes to get these pictures. It's obviously in another quiet zones of the world.
38:29 Josh Clark? Okay.
38:30 Speaker 02 Or at least dark places, you know, and gets and it's not just like he sets up a a nice camera and does a long exposure. Like it's really sophisticated equipment and and process that he goes through to get stuff that looks like it doesn't look real. It's like, you know, celestial bodies that like it looks like some AI generated art. It's incredible stuff.
38:56 Josh Clark? I think if it was an astral photographer, he'd be taking pictures of like auras.
39:00 Speaker 02 Auras, yeah. As soon as it came out of my mouth.
39:03 Josh Clark? Tell them to make sure you figure out that guy's name.
39:06 Speaker 02 I will, and I'll I'll follow up on an episode. I'll I'll see if I can find it.
39:10 Josh Clark? Okay.
39:10 Speaker 02 It's really, really impressive, super cool and very just a super cool, hyper specific art form, I think, you know?
39:17 Josh Clark? Yeah, or people if you can't wake, they can go to you, Chuck the Podcaster on Instagram and look at who you follow and figure it out.
39:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, sure.
39:26 Josh Clark? There you go.
39:27 Speaker 02 I follow Josh Umm Clark.
39:29 Josh Clark? Do you?
39:30 Speaker 02 Of course I do.
39:31 Josh Clark? I follow you too.
39:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:32 Josh Clark? Thanks.
39:33 Speaker 02 Are you just now realizing that?
39:35 Josh Clark? Yeah.
39:36 Speaker 02 Well, you don't post much.
39:38 Josh Clark? No, I really don't. I
39:39 Speaker 02 Good for you.
39:40 Josh Clark? I want to say I should more, but I shouldn't.
39:42 Speaker 02 Nah.
39:43 Josh Clark? I'm doing it just fine.
39:44 Speaker 02 I think you're doing just great.
39:45 Josh Clark? Well, you do great, too.
39:48 Speaker 02 Hey, you know who also does great?
39:49 Josh Clark? Who?
39:50 Speaker 02 Jerry.
39:50 Josh Clark? She does do great, doesn't she?
39:53 Speaker 02 All right, we're, okay, we were talking about things that go on there, SETI. Another thing that might not surprise you is military intelligence goes on there. Many years ago, they started something called the Sugar Grove Research Station, at the time, called the Sugar Grove US Naval Radio Station. This was in 1959. When the Navy started building what was gonna be the world's largest radio antenna. It was called the big ear, where they were gonna listen in and intercept, you know, Russian intel. They never finished the big ear because they were worried it was not structurally sound. So rather than moving on to the medium ear, I guess they didn't think it sounded
40:35 Speaker 02 cool enough, they just scrapped it all together. But they still have a station at Sugar Grove, and the NSA is also there. So I'm sure it's all on the up and up, as to far as who and what they're listening to.
40:48 Josh Clark? Well, actually, I saw, actually Chuck, I saw that the NSA abandoned Sugar Grove.
40:54 Speaker 02 Oh, they're not there anymore?
40:56 Josh Clark? Within like, the last year.
40:57 Speaker 02 Oh, okay.
40:58 Josh Clark? And it's for sale. You can buy the whole dang town, which is, has like, a number of houses, it has like, a recycling plant, it has everything, all sorts of stuff.
41:09 Speaker 02 How much?
41:10 Josh Clark? Just, I think the, the highest bid recently was like, 11.6 million dollars. And I guess it was a joke, because they couldn't come through with it. So I think if you come up with 11 million dollars, they'd be happy to take it, and you could probably get it for less.
41:24 Speaker 02 Wow, I mean, considering what Kim Basinger paid for Braselton, Georgia in the 80s or 90s.
41:30 Josh Clark? How much was it? Do you remember?
41:32 Speaker 02 It was a lot.
41:34 Josh Clark? Was it?
41:35 Speaker 02 I think so. But I mean, that was, she bought a town.
41:39 Josh Clark? I remember. Does she still own it?
41:42 Speaker 02 No, she got out of the Braselton business.
41:45 Josh Clark? She had the market cornered for a minute, though.
41:48 Speaker 02 Uh, I usually don't look these things up. Guess what? The AI overview talks about the average home sale price.
41:53 Josh Clark? Oh, wow, how surprising.
41:55 Speaker 02 Yeah. And home is misspelled.
42:00 Speaker 02 I'll find it at some point. You can continue.
42:02 Josh Clark? Okay, so there's also been a bunch of great scientific discoveries there, as you can imagine.
42:08 Speaker 02 Twenty million dollars in 1989.
42:11 Josh Clark? Do you know how much she sold the town for?
42:13 Speaker 02 No, I'm not gonna look that up either. Some things have to be left to the imagination.
42:18 Josh Clark? I think that's great, Chuck. Plus, the AI overview just shrugged. Put a shrug emoji up.
42:24 Speaker 02 All right, I interrupted. You were talking about scientific discoveries?
42:27 Josh Clark? Yeah, and we're talking radio astronomy. So there's stuff like interstellar molecules. Some of the first ones were discovered. I think half of the interstellar molecules we know about were discovered in the 60s at Green Bank.
42:42 Josh Clark? Like, pictures of pulsars. We understand the universe a lot more thanks to it. But there are also really arcane, I guess, discoveries that seem like they were just like total like, they would only interest like two people. For example, the Zeman splitting. Zeman splitting is where spectral lines, you know, those black bands like on the on the spectrum?
43:09 Speaker 02 Sure.
43:09 Josh Clark? It just kind of pop up. They're spectral lines. They split in the presence of a magnetic field. That was discovered at Green Bank Observatory. You might say like, great, who cares? But this is just one of those things that shows you how science builds on science. This actually confirmed quantum theory for the first time. Because it showed that electrons respond to magnetic fields. And it proved a lot of like the math that had been proposed for quantum theory but hadn't been confirmed yet. That discovery at Green Bank Observatory confirmed it. That's just one of a number of incomprehensible discoveries that were made there. So it is important. This isn't just a group of astronomers who who want their cake.
43:55 Josh Clark? They're just fat little bully boys or anything like that. There are actual like important, there's important work being carried out because this is such a unique place.
44:05 Speaker 02 Oh, man. The mental picture was astounding. It just came over me. All right, so we mentioned earlier on, people that move there that suffer from what's called electromagnetic hypersensitivity. This may be where you have read about it or seen news reports, because there's a woman named Diane Shaw, I guess, S-H-O-W, who has been there for a long time, and she's basically the most, kind of the foremost sufferer of EHS. She moved to the NRQZ a while ago, got 14 acres near Green Bank, founded the Wave Analysis Verification Research, not a center?
44:47 Josh Clark? No, because then it'd be waiver.
44:51 Speaker 02 I guess so, but it's a nonprofit. And basically, she went there to live more healthily for her own needs, and to also do research on the disease, and also help bring people in, and educate, and care for people with the disease. And the idea is that people are super sensitive, obviously, to electromagnetic waves, and they feel like it gets them sick: headaches, nausea, dizziness, chest pain, hair loss. And I say "feels like" because it's never been proven that this is a real thing, right?
45:27 Josh Clark? No, one of the things that really undermines the concept of electromagnetic hypersensitivity as an actual medical condition is that people who suffer from it can't reliably tell when they're in the presence of electromagnetic frequencies.
45:43 Speaker 02 Right.
45:44 Josh Clark? They've been given tests, and tests, and tests, where they are being bombarded with an electromagnetic pulse, and next they say that they are, and they're not actually being bombarded with it, and they can't say, like, "Yes, now I'm being exposed to electromagnetic radiation, now I'm not." So that alone makes it seem like it's simply a psychological disorder, or a placebo effect that people are being, like, their symptoms are real, like, they're losing their hair. They're not pulling it out in secret and saying, "I lost my hair because of this." Their symptoms are real, what's causing it seems to just be in their mind. I say that, though, with a kernel of salt, grain of salt.
46:31 Josh Clark? Because there have been diseases before that were treated like this initially.
46:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:37 Josh Clark? And it turned out like, no, these people were just a group of mistreated sufferers who actually were suffering from something that's now recognized. So it's possible that's the case. And even if that's not the case, these people actually are suffering.
46:50 Speaker 02 Right.
46:51 Josh Clark? So the World Health Organization recognizes it as a medical condition, but a medical condition that warrants further study to figure out what the heck's going on and how to actually help people who suffer from this regardless of what the cause is.
47:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. And if, either way, in either case, it's really great that Diane Chao and whoever has met her and followed her there have a place to go where it is quiet for them, you know?
47:22 Josh Clark? Yeah. And if you're like, this kind of sounds familiar, Lenny from Laverne and Shirley on Better Call Saul, he suffered from electromagnetic hypersensitivity.
47:33 Speaker 02 Ah, I did not see that show. It's still on the long list, but I thought you were gonna say Julianne Moore in the Todd Haynes film Safe, but that was a little different. I think that was, and I don't know the name for it, but the people that think it's like everything's dirty and everything is gonna get them sick.
47:53 Josh Clark? Hypochondria?
47:55 Speaker 02 No, but more, more of, I mean, I'm sure it's maybe a subset of hypochondria, but it's like, everything is dirty, everything I touch will get me sick, everything, there's, everything's tainted and dangerous and germy.
48:11 Josh Clark? I mean, that's just normal for me.
48:13 Speaker 02 Right. No, to the point where they can't function in the world, you know?
48:17 Josh Clark? Yeah. I don't mean to make light of it.
48:19 Speaker 02 No, I know. I know what you mean, though. But you're a little germy.
48:23 Josh Clark? The whole thing reminds me of our episode from 2014 about Morgellons Disease. Remember that?
48:28 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. What was that again?
48:30 Josh Clark? It's where people, I think, think they're suffering from something that comes out of their skin. And when they bring samples of what they, what they think is, is like this evidence that they're sick, it turns out to be like lint or thread from a coat or just the smallest, weirdest stuff.
48:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
48:47 Josh Clark? And they're like, this doesn't exist, guys. And I don't know where it left off, but it was really interesting.
48:52 Speaker 02 That's right. And a nice way to remind people that Morgulon's disease is in, from the old vault, and there are lots and lots of episodes in the vault that you probably don't even know about unless you've been listening for 17 years.
49:05 Josh Clark? Sure. Coming up on 18.
49:07 Speaker 02 That's right, in April.
49:09 Josh Clark? So what's going on with the, the, the National Radio Quiet Zone, Chuck?
49:14 Speaker 02 It's still, it's still putting along, you know? They're still trying to work it out with the satellites in orbit near them. They're still trying to work it out with the residents. And they're, they're keeping on, keeping on.
49:27 Josh Clark? There were two things that happened recently. Well, one, not two recently, but one very recently. The, the National Science Foundation turned the Green Bank Observatory out, said, we're done with you.
49:38 Speaker 02 Oh, really?
49:39 Josh Clark? And it looked like the end of, I think, back in like 2012, it looked like the end of the observatory. And instead, everybody who worked there banded together and looked for private funding. And now it's privately funded.
49:50 Speaker 02 Oh, that's cool.
49:51 Josh Clark? The other thing that happened is that they seem to have figured out how to address the wifi issue for everybody. And that was Starlink. The, the, basically global internet.
50:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
50:07 Josh Clark? They figured out that if you use fixed Starlink, where like, you're just using it in your house, you're not moving around using it, it, it doesn't disrupt the function of the radio telescope. The problem is, if you use like the, the moving around, the mobile version, to where like, it's, you're getting signals, say like on your phone while you're driving, that messes with the telescope. So for 95.5% of the population around Green Bank. Their, their problem is solved because they can use the fixed Starlink. For that other 0.5%, though, it's a big problem because emergency medical services wanted to use Starlink to communicate with each other, to respond to emergencies.
50:50 Josh Clark? And now they're like, we can't use radios, we can't use Starlink, what are, what are we gonna do? And that's kind of where it stands right now. There's a, they're at an impasse trying to figure out how to let EMS do its thing.
51:01 Speaker 02 Uh, yeah, and again, as of just August of last year is when they were allowed the Wi-Fi, but I don't think we said the speed at a robust 2.4, uh, what is it? I don't even know what it is at that slow, mega something?
51:13 Josh Clark? Gigahertz.
51:15 Speaker 02 Gigahertz?
51:16 Josh Clark? And the, I think the reason why they allowed that is I read that be, because there's so many Wi-Fi routers operating on 2.4 now, that that band of the radio universe is just, it's just trash now. You can't do astronomy on it anyway, so I think they were like-
51:32 Speaker 02 You can't do astronomy on it.
51:33 Josh Clark? No, you can't. Don't even try.
51:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
51:36 Josh Clark? You got anything else?
51:38 Speaker 02 I got nothing else.
51:39 Josh Clark? Okay. Uh, I think then, everybody, that means it's time for listener mail.
51:45 Speaker 02 Uh, this sort of ties in a little bit. It's about the AM radio episode, uh, because we mentioned it was an important alert system, still. Uh, and this happened to Hannah from Texas in 2016, when Hannah lived in Denham Springs, Louisiana. Was hit by a terrible flood that knocked out cellphone communications. Uh, so it was like Green Bank for a short time.
52:03 Josh Clark? Mm-hmm.
52:04 Speaker 02 Uh, guys, we, we still had enough internet to receive information, but couldn't send anything. So we had gotten word that we could tune into a specific AM radio station each evening between a certain time to hear families who were calling and asking if their loved ones were okay. Uh, my partner at the time and I would go out to my car, turn on the radio and listen. And every evening, we got updates on who was looking for who, who was on the way to help us or not, and who had been marked as safe. Uh, sure enough, a couple of days in, we heard my mom calling in to try and confirm that her baby girl, me, was okay.
52:34 Josh Clark? Wow.
52:34 Speaker 02 Uh, we also got word that my dad, who was part of the Cajun Navy at the time, haven't even looked that up yet, but that's, I absolutely need to find out what that is.
52:43 Josh Clark? I guarantee it's interesting.
52:46 Speaker 02 Nice. We would be, they would be headed our way if they didn't get word within the next couple of days. We were able to, through a long chain of communication though, to let my family know we were okay. And we heard our own names marked as alive and well, which was surreal, on the AM radio. And a few days later, we were able to coordinate our evacuation using that same AM radio station.
53:08 Josh Clark? Wow.
53:08 Speaker 02 I know. It's pretty great. Been listening to you guys for years, and you never cease to delight me with your jokes, references, and general information. I recommend you to everyone I meet. Much appreciated, Hannah. And I frequently cite your episodes when sharing fun facts with coworkers and friends. Hannah from Texas.
53:23 Josh Clark? Man, Hannah, thank you. I'm glad you guys are okay over there. And that was an amazing email. That was one of the tops, Hannah.
53:32 Speaker 02 Agreed.
53:32 Josh Clark? You can get a sash that says as much. If you want to be like Hannah and send us a top email, we would love to get that. You can send it off to us at [email protected] .
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54:03 Josh Clark? Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota Fordibility. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.
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