Companies, it seems, like the unemployed, are just waiting to see what happens.
Michael Lawson, FSRN, Washington.
Our technical production team at KPFAN Berkeley is Rose Ghatopshi, Scott Pham, and Jane Chang.
Visit FSRN's website for special story archives, documentaries, and to find out more about
FSRN's 10th anniversary and how you can support independent journalism, that's FSRN.org.
Thanks for listening today in New York.
I'm Dorian Marina.
And good evening to everybody, the program is Off the Hook, Emanuel Goldstein here with
you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Mike, Rob T. Firefly, Dot Rett, Jim, down
in Philadelphia, Bernie S. Greetings from Philadelphia.
And this is our last fundraising show for this fundraising period, so I'm sure people
will be happy to hear that.
We did pretty well last week, I think.
I think it's sad.
You think it's sad?
You want to do more fundraising?
Well, because, you know, we didn't do so well last week, and I think we can do better this
week, and if we don't, you know.
Well, then the gauntlet has been thrown down, and we'll see how well we do.
We have a couple of special things to incite you, is that the right word?
To call in.
212-209-2950 is our phone number to make a pledge, if you just want to make a pledge
and be done with it already.
I think keeping the station on the air is incitement enough.
It is.
It really is.
And that should be the sole reason.
But we have some special guests we'll be getting to in just a couple of moments.
But I wanted to go over various things that have happened in the news.
Before we do that, I do want to thank, last week we had the premiums from Differware,
and we never gave you their website, which is Differware.com, and you spell that D-I-F-R-W-E-A-R.
So if you want to learn more about their stuff, go to their website.
D-I-F-R-W-E-A-R.com.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Great.
And yes, I want to thank them for their generous donation of Differware wallets, which protect
you from various RFID evil things.
Yeah.
So have you guys been following the war that's been going on?
Which one?
The Great Media War of 2010.
No?
Which one?
Well, this is the one, this is one of the ones where big corporations get into fights
with each other, and the average person is the one who pays.
I'm talking about Cablevision versus Fox, that's what's happening.
See, that's totally not the one I was thinking of when you said the Great Media War.
So it's good you clarified.
Well, which one are you thinking of?
I was thinking of the WikiLeaks versus the world.
There's that too.
That's two right there.
But basically, and we can talk about both, the interesting thing about this is that Cablevision
and Fox are having a dispute over fees that the cable company is supposed to pay the broadcast
network.
And what has happened is that I believe Fox cut their feed to Cablevision.
And as a result, Cablevision now uses the...
That's our guest at 730.
Just tell him he'll be on at 730.
I'm sorry.
It's a little confusing.
Basically, what happened was Fox cut the feed to Cablevision, and Cablevision replaced the
feed for both Channel 5 and Channel 9.
Did you know the same people on both channels?
Yes.
Yeah.
I know you know, Jim, but a lot of people don't realize that.
It doesn't mean that the Fox network owns UPN or whatever UPN turned into, but the local
TV station, they're both owned by a news corporation, I believe.
So yeah, so both of those stations were basically cut off.
The feed to Cablevision was cut off and replaced with this basically repeating message saying
how evil Fox is, which normally would be just fine with me.
But it's just kind of crazy when you think of the fact that there are people paying this
company to bring them signals for free television, and the free television is being cut off as
a result.
Now, weren't you the one that said that people getting on the internet with Comcast IPs going
to Hulu actually would get Fox content blocked for a while?
Cablevision, yes.
Cablevision, I'm sorry.
That was happening for the first day or so.
If somebody actually went to Hulu.com, which is a site where you can stream TV shows, and
tried to watch a TV show that was on the Fox network, well, they would be blocked based
on that.
And I think what this is demonstrating, you may not really care about the World Series
being on tonight that people who have Cablevision won't be able to see.
You may not care about television in general.
But what you should care about is the fact that these are media giants.
They own a lot of things.
Cablevision owns the Knicks and Madison Square Garden.
Do they own the Rangers?
You know, I don't know what they...
They own so many different things.
They own networks.
They own the Long Island Railroad.
Do they?
No?
Okay.
Well, they own Newsday, which is the daily newspaper in Long Island.
And of course, Fox owns everything else under the sun.
So basically, what you have is abuse of power, where there's this contract dispute, and the
people who wind up paying the price are the people who are paying for it.
And the most interesting thing happened yesterday when Fox accused Cablevision of copyright
piracy by encouraging people.
Apparently, they got a recording of some representative saying that, yes, you can stream television
shows via various websites.
And they basically filed a motion saying that's illegal to tell people to download programs.
It's copyright infringement.
And the thing is, the thing that's so ironic about this is that if you simply have a television
set and you don't pay anybody anything, you can watch these programs without a problem.
However, if you're some poor slob who pays Cablevision and you figure out another way
to download the program, you're breaking the law.
What kind of logic is that?
So anyway, you have Newsday basically running stories that don't tell the Fox side of the
story.
You have Fox, of course, not telling the Cablevision side of the story.
And there is never a better demonstration of how if you give all this power to corporations,
they will abuse it.
They will completely control things, not care about the customer, and you wind up losing
as a result.
That's what media consolidation does.
If you have competition, this kind of thing doesn't happen.
Do you agree, Bernie?
I do.
And it's one of the reasons that when we were talking about the digital TV transition last
year, I was saying that over-the-air television is still relevant.
It's still important.
I don't care whether you want to watch Fox or not, but you would not be a victim of these
media giants fighting each other, getting caught in the crossfire, if you simply had
an antenna connected to your TV set and were watching the over-the-air stream.
Yeah, it's interesting because Newsday ran a story a few days ago saying how you could
still watch the World Series or watch Fox programs, and the over-the-air solution was
one of them.
Another was basically using legal sites like Hulu, but they never mentioned doing anything
like using their competitors, using Cablevision's competitors, like Fiber to the Home, Fios
by Verizon, or Satellite, DirecTV, or Dish Network.
Newsday just didn't mention those options, and of course, Newsday is owned by Cablevision.
Again, abuse of power because a daily newspaper is not supposed to be beholden to its corporate
masters, but this is a demonstration of how, in fact, they are and why you should support
a station like WBAI, which is not, right?
Yeah.
I think so.
All right.
Is the question whether or not BAI is beholden to its corporate masters, because the answer
to that is clearly no, and I think our listeners will tell us if they should support it or
not.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Anyway, that's what's going on, and if we have any hints as to how people can actually
watch these programs who are listening to us in Cablevision land, I think it's our duty
to let them know how they can bypass the system.
Fox can say all they want that it's copyright infringement, but it's over-the-air free television.
How is that copyright infringement if you connect to something online someplace and
watch what you could have watched if you didn't make the mistake of paying some other corporation
for the privilege to do so?
Even a legal alternative like Hulu, which is part owned by Fox, Hulu is actually owned
by the various networks they threw in together on this one venture, which means they're basically
telling you not to own something else, I mean, not to make use of something else that they
own, which is fairly batty.
It's just so crazy and ridiculous.
It's funny, but it's also, this means something to a lot of people, and I sympathize with
them.
I do want to say get a life and do something else, but I understand that people want to
see the World Series and they can't, and it's because of a corporate spat which never should
have wound up in their living room.
Anyway, if you want to have fun, turn on Channel 5 or Channel 9 on Cablevision and watch the
propaganda coming your way.
They also, they turned off all the cable boxes and turned them on again so that they would
go to a special channel that just fed this nonstop.
It's incredible.
Imagine them being dictatorial governments, the power they would have over you, the way
they can control your TV set, your newspapers, what you read, what you see, everything.
There's also something similar going on in the UK right now where there's this swell
of public feeling that the BBC, which they have over there, is maybe not doing things
in the best way, and maybe they should adopt a more American sort of way of doing things.
It's a big issue right now in their sort of press that maybe we're doing it the right
way.
I don't think we're doing it the right way.
Most likely not.
Most likely not.
It's all right.
Emmanuel, you mean to tell me that they actually uploaded some patch to people's cable boxes
specifically because of this spat?
Well, no.
They have the ability.
They can turn off your cable box at any time.
Right.
But turning it off and back on and having it do something different usually means it's
rebooting after making a change.
Right.
What they did was they reset the default channel for everybody on their network.
I already set my default channel to go to Euronews because that's the channel I like
to watch, and they reset that to their channel.
When I had to turn it back on, it went to that channel, and I had to see the propaganda
for the brief second that it was on my screen.
It's abuse of power.
It really is, and we all wind up paying for it one way or another.
It also seems to be a lot of energy to direct at getting their message out to the customer
who is the one being flung around helplessly with this whole issue.
It's like, what are we going to do about it?
One company is arguing with another company, and they're going to whine to us about their
side of the story.
And I guarantee we don't care.
The vast majority of customers really don't care who's paying what, whom for whatever.
Nobody cares about this kind of thing.
It's corporate shenanigans, and neither side is clean here.
I do find it interesting, though, that Fox apparently cut their signal.
What I would have done was simply kept the signal going and just berated Cablevision
using our own television signal if I was running a TV station, but I imagine they do things
in certain ways.
Okay, next week, of course, is Election Day, and we do want to remind people to vote if
you can figure out how.
Clark County in Nevada, their election officials insisted yesterday that electronic voting
machines were not malfunctioning at polling locations.
Some voters were complaining that Senator Harry Reid's name had been preselected.
Controversy arose after Boulder City resident Joyce Ferrara complained to Fox, of all people,
Fox News, that when she went to vote for GOP Senate candidate Sharon Engel, Reid's name
was already checked.
Something's not right, Ferrara said.
She claimed her husband and several others voting at the same time all had the same thing
happen.
Registrar of voters Larry Lomax said those claims were patently false and said at no
time did any of those voters report the incident to staff at their polling location.
In fact, although over 160,000 people have voted early in Clark County, those allegations
that have been made have gone directly to the media as opposed to election board officers.
Lomax though advised voters to be aware that touchscreens on the screens are sensitive.
For that reason, a person may not want to have their fingers linger too long on the
screen after they make a selection at any time.
Especially in a community with elderly citizens, they have difficulty in casting their ballot,
he said.
Team leaders said there were complaints and the race filled in.
Yeah.
At any time, voters can go back on the screen and review their selections.
They're also allowed to make changes and encouraged to double check their ballot on screen and
on paper before it is cast.
Well, here in New York, we do it for the first time this way.
Next week.
We do it differently.
We have a paper.
Yeah.
They have a touchscreen.
Well, what I mean is we're doing it in a different way than what we used to.
There will be changes and we'll see what happens.
I know I'm going to have fun.
Well, they fired the guy in charge of it in New York.
Yeah, I heard this.
Now, they fired him because of the farce that took place during the primary last month,
I believe.
It's so weird.
They fired this guy.
They said it's all his fault.
But then they say in the next breath that the firing of him and now there's no one in
charge won't affect the upcoming election at all.
I don't get it.
Yeah.
The troubles that occurred during last month's primary, including the failure of dozens of
polling sites to open on time, prompted a furious Mayor Michael Bloomberg to declare
the board's handling of the election a royal screw-up.
Election officials said that the firing of George Gonzalez would have no impact on next
Tuesday's election.
When New Yorkers are expected to turn out in much bigger numbers than they did for the
September 14th primary, voting for governor, attorney general, comptroller, Congress, and
other key offices, still even election watchdogs who have been fiercely critical of Mr. Gonzalez
expressed trepidation about the latest internal rumblings at the elections board.
Mr. Gonzalez, a longtime Democratic loyalist from the Bronx, had been in his post since
August.
Wow.
A whole month and a half there.
He'll be replaced temporarily by Don Sandow, the deputy executive director.
The whole thing is pretty interesting and crazy.
Bernie, you're looking forward to Election Day, right?
Yes, I will be voting, and I would like to encourage all our listeners to get out and
vote.
If you've been watching television, and I have not except when I visited my aunt last
week, billions of dollars are being spent on just the most grossly misleading ads I
have ever seen in my life.
And if you're against that kind of stuff, get out and vote.
Do your own research and vote.
Next Tuesday is Election Day.
It's important.
Thank you.
Thank you, Bernie, for that public service announcement.
And now, what we have on tap is something very interesting that we've come across.
This is a musical selection by some friends of ours.
It comes from a television program, yes, it comes from a television program that I don't
think you'd be able to see if you have cable vision, because I think it's on Fox, actually.
Can we watch it on the internet?
You can't watch it on the internet, but you can listen, and hopefully it'll work when
I press this button.
This is from a television program called America's Got Talent.
Does anybody know?
Is that on Fox, or is that on NBC?
Nobody knows.
Okay.
Good.
I'm glad nobody knows.
Let's listen to what this sounds like.
Yo, that's great.
This is amazing.
Wow.
Well, the reason they're saying that's great and amazing, apart from the fact that the
music's pretty damn good, that was all done with Tesla coils.
There's a guy standing there on stage.
Electricity was just coming out of his hands, and all that music was created by robotic
computer-controlled, self-resonating pipe organ, I believe, and Tesla coils and all
kinds of things like that.
Part of the Architect Project, and joining us tonight on the phone is one of the coordinators
of that project, Joe DiPrima.
Are you with us, Joe?
Yes, I am.
I'm here with my brother, John DiPrima, too.
Oh, great.
You're both involved in the project, I take it?
Yes, sir.
Wow.
America's Got Talent.
I didn't know that you guys were on that show.
Yeah.
Well, actually, it's a really funny story, because the musical selection that you picked
there, there's a funny story behind it, because basically what we do is we use the Tesla coils
and musical instrument in our performance, and that particular performance was taped
here in Dallas, Texas.
When it went to post-production, they actually edited out the sound of the Tesla coils from
the recording, and they replaced it with stock electrical effects.
So, what you actually heard there on the air did not have any Tesla coils in it, because
NBC edited it out, because they had no idea what they were doing.
Oh, my God.
Well, if that doesn't demonstrate even more the incompetence of certain broadcasters,
wow.
So, we heard a fake then.
Yeah.
You heard a fake.
Well, everything was real, like the guitar playing was real, the drums were real, the
computer effects were real and everything, but what they did is they used condenser microphones
to mic the Tesla coils, and when it went into post-production, some producer decided that
instead of actually playing the music from the Tesla coils, they figured it would be
a better idea to edit it out and add in just fake zapping and electrical noises.
Now, for the benefit of our listeners who may not know what a Tesla coil is, could you
give a brief layman's explanation?
Sure.
A Tesla coil is basically a resonant transformer.
It takes a fairly low voltage at a high current, and it turns it into a high voltage at a very
low current, and we just use it to create voltage potentials that are so great that
the electricity actually breaks out from the top of the machine and creates a lightning
bolt.
And how does this turn into music?
Well, that's where it gets a little bit more complicated.
Our Tesla coils are actually not very much like the original machine.
They're solid-state devices, so it means that they use transistors to switch the voltage
across the primary circuit.
In the old-style Tesla coil, they would use inductors and capacitor banks and spark gaps
and things like that, but we actually use transistors, and so that gives us the ability
to computer control them.
So they're basically, the transistors in the Tesla coil are being controlled by a digital
logic board that is hooked up to a homemade microcontroller that is interpreting MIDI
data and turning it into pulse rate modulation signals.
Fascinating.
That's not layman's talk at all, sorry.
Well, no, it's easy to follow, but I met you guys at last month's Maker Faire here in New
York, and you were playing concerts to enthusiastic crowds.
How did that go?
Oh, it was really great.
We've been doing the Maker Faire for, I think this was our fourth time.
So, you know, it's always great doing the Maker Faire because we're surrounded by a
bunch of people that are doing things similar to us, and we have a crowd that's obviously
enthusiastic about do-it-yourself electronics, et cetera.
So I'd say Maker Faire, we probably get some of our better crowds because they're more
educated crowds, you know, and they know what they're looking at, and it tends to help a
lot when you're doing something as strange as what we are, you know.
Yeah, it's really cool to see the awe and fascination in young faces as they're watching
the whole demonstration in front of them and hearing the music.
It's really inspiring.
Yeah, absolutely.
And that actually leads into what we're working on currently.
We're putting together a performance and an educational performance that is going to be
going on tour in theaters starting next fall for schools from grade 3 to 12.
Oh, wow.
So how's that going to work?
Well, it's going to be pretty interesting.
Right now we're actually working on a workbook that's supposed to just – it's supposed
to work with the curriculum, and it's basically electronics-based.
And they get this a few weeks before we actually come into the schools, and they go through
a series of projects with the teacher, and then it ends up with them going on a field
trip to a theater to see our performance, in which we may explain some of the science
behind it.
Most likely it's just going to be a rock show for the kids.
Uh-huh.
Do you know much about the history of Nikola Tesla, the guy responsible for all this?
You know, I know a bit of it.
You know, I know what I've read, but it's kind of hard to decide what may and may not
be totally factual.
Uh-huh.
Right?
Well, he was born over in, I believe, Serbia – what's now Serbia – and died here in
New York, actually.
Died at the New Yorker Hotel.
I'm not sure why everybody knows that, but that's where he actually died, in the New
Yorker Hotel.
Right.
And yeah, he has a fascinating history to him.
People all over the world follow him, like some kind of cult leader almost.
I mean, there's so much that can be said.
Bernie, I know this is somebody that you know a lot about.
Well, I wouldn't say a lot, but there's a great book called Nikola Tesla, Man Out
of Time, which I think is probably one of the more interesting books about him.
But Nikola Tesla has affected everyone listening to the show, and everyone else in the United
States, and the world, frankly, who has electricity, because he invented the practical implementation
of alternating current, AC, which was considered just a crazy idea, because Thomas Edison
was saying, no, we've got to have DC, direct current.
This alternating current idea will never work.
And the whole point was you couldn't transport over long distances like you can alternating
current.
And Nikola Tesla, among many, many, many other amazing ideas and inventions, some of which
he went to his grave with, because he never took notes, because he was afraid people would
steal them, and he was right.
Because Edison stole some of his ideas.
AC current.
Anytime you plug anything in a wall, you can thank Nikola Tesla.
Well, how come Thomas Edison gets all the credit, then?
He was much better at marketing himself.
He was a shameless self-promoter.
Wow.
Well, he'd fit in good in today's world, I think.
Now, that's actually the exact kind of attitude.
Yeah, Tesla, actually, he did a lot of great things, just besides the invention of AC current.
Also, the first radio that was ever made by Marconi was actually built using 17 of Nikola
Tesla's patents.
And he has done a lot of things that have just revolutionized the way that we use technology
today, as far as wireless transmitters and such.
It's really hard to just pin one thing on him, because he did so many things that were
so far ahead of his time.
He has definitely shaped the way that we put electronics together.
Well, now that we've talked up Nikola Tesla so much, let me let the folks know what it
is that we're offering tonight, as a special thank you to anybody who calls in and pledges
$75 to the radio station by calling 212-209-2950.
We have a DVD that Joe has been kind enough to donate to us.
It's the Architect Project in Action.
How would you describe the DVD, exactly?
I'll let John explain this one.
Okay.
The DVD that we put out, we actually filmed everything ourselves, and we burned it ourselves.
We're a very DIY-oriented group.
And it's basically the better shows that we've done over the years, like strange shows, like
shows we've done in Abu Dhabi, shows we've done in New York, and just snippets here and
there.
Some comedy involved with it.
Some Netherlands.
Yeah, some Netherlands stuff.
And yeah, it's just kind of like this evolving DVD that we change from time to time, just
constantly updating it.
Amazing.
Okay.
So we have that DVD.
We also have a T-shirt you guys make.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
You want to describe what's on the T-shirt?
Yeah, sure.
The T-shirt actually has a schematic of a solid-state Tesla coil driver board.
So it's actually one of the pieces that's responsible for making solid-state Tesla coils
able to play music.
Okay, cool.
And so it has all the parts labeled on it and everything.
It is actually a functional schematic.
All right, so you get the DVD, you get the T-shirt, and you get this special thing, which
we only discovered this last spring when my friend Kyle and I went over to Serbia.
We discovered that Nikola Tesla is on the 100 DINAR bill.
In fact, Joe, I gave you one of those at Maker Faire, and I think you were pretty intrigued
by it as well, right?
Yeah, I've got two of them sitting on my desk right here, actually.
They're the coolest thing.
They're blue in color, very picturesque.
You get a 100 DINAR note, you get a DVD of the Architect Project, and you get a T-shirt
for a pledge of $75, but only for the next half hour or so.
The 212-209-2950.
Tesla is one of those names that simply commands respect in the hacker world, in the science
world, and if you walk around with a Tesla Architect Project T-shirt or have the video
or have the 100 DINAR note, people will know that you're well-connected and you know of
what you speak.
Yeah, and one thing that a lot of people have mentioned to me about the bank notes is, well,
isn't it just foreign money?
Can't you just go and exchange regular money and get it anywhere?
But you cannot.
These are not easy bills to find.
They are not.
They really aren't.
They're not exchangeable in this country.
No bank will give them to you.
Basically, the only way to get them is to get them out of the country, which technically
I'm not sure is legal.
Well, at least in their country.
I'm not sure they want you to take the money out of the country.
But whatever, we have it.
It's here.
If you call and pledge $75 to 212-209-2950, you'll get one of those, you'll get the video,
and you'll get the T-shirt.
It's a pretty good deal.
The Tesla package, we're calling it.
You get the video, the T-shirt, and the bill?
Yes.
And the radio station.
Yes.
And the radio station.
Exactly.
Wow.
212-209-2950.
We have one call on the line.
Limited number of these items, so please call in now.
This is the last night of our fundraiser for this show.
And this offer will not be repeated.
212-209-2950.
Joe, how did you develop a fascination for things Tesla?
I've been into electronics since I was pretty young.
My dad is a biomedical engineer, so my first job out of high school actually was at a TV
repair shop.
I don't know, it's just something that I kind of evolved into.
My second repair shop boss was a big fan of Tesla, and he got me introduced to the
Tesla coil.
And then I met a friend of mine named Steve Ward, who is one of the major innovators of
solid-state Tesla coils today.
He developed a lot of the principles that make these solid-state machines able to produce
such giant lightning bolts.
And he inspired me to learn the solid-state technology.
And it's been pretty fun.
It's a pretty challenging thing.
All right, there's two calls on the line.
You know, one phone's not being picked up.
There's a lot of people down there.
I'm not sure why the phone's not being picked up.
But if you have a ringing phone, three calls on the line.
Please be patient.
Maybe they're having a philosophical discussion or something.
212-209-2950.
Call for the Tesla package, the 100 DNR note, the DVD, and the T-shirt, and learn a whole
lot about what this whole Tesla culture is all about.
Now, let me ask you, Joe, is it at all dangerous for people to be messing around with this
kind of thing?
I mean, we're talking about huge arcs of electricity flying out in all directions.
Yeah, I think the tendency tends to be if you're a smart enough person to get one of
these machines working that well, then you're smart enough to know the safety limitations
of it.
Because it's actually a pretty difficult thing, especially when you get into the solid-state
design, because the parts are expensive.
You blow a lot of them up, et cetera, et cetera.
So you have to be a pretty technically savvy person to get your Tesla coil to a point where
it's potentially dangerous.
Okay.
So only the smart people really will make it dangerous, hopefully.
Yeah, exactly.
All right.
That usually doesn't work that way, but it's good to see.
Speaking of which, I remember when you did your show here in New York at Maker Faire,
you were inviting people from the audience to get up into a cage that you had.
Oh, boy.
A nice Faraday cage that, as you were performing, had these bolts going all around it in all
directions.
Right.
How did that idea come about, to get people out of the audience and put them in such peril?
Well, I think a lot of it was just over the years we've had a lot of demand for some type
of interactivity between the audience and our Tesla coils.
At first, the natural assumption is to maybe let them play the keyboard or something like
that, but that only tends to be entertaining to the person who's actually playing the keyboard.
Yeah.
Everybody else is pretty annoying.
Very true.
Faraday cages have been around longer than we've been doing Tesla coil performances,
and so it was a pretty natural idea to implement it into the set.
The science behind it is solid.
It's very safe, and people love it.
Well, I was one of the people, actually, that was put in the Faraday cage.
Obviously, I'd never done anything like that before.
Basically, you guided me into this thing, this steel cage, and all of a sudden, these
bolts of electricity were being shot directly at me.
I didn't feel in danger, but it was definitely something to be concerned about.
I've never actually had that happen before.
I assume you've spent time in the Faraday cage as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's pretty cool, isn't it?
Yeah, absolutely.
We have a Faraday suit performer, a guy that actually wears a chain mail suit and goes
out between the sparks and just plays with the electricity with his hands and stuff like
that.
It's the same principle.
Was that the guy in America's Got Talent?
Was that what he was doing?
Yeah.
Yeah, basically.
Yeah, we do it every performance.
What we've done recently is we've built a MIDI guitar from scratch that is able to
control the Tesla coils, and we shielded all the computers in it so it's lightning-proof.
Now, we have a Faraday suit performer that actually takes this lightning-proof MIDI guitar
into the middle of the Tesla coils and actually plays music while he's being struck by the
Tesla coil lightning.
Oh, it just keeps getting better.
This is unreal.
You can see this on the DVD.
That's not on the DVD, but that was actually our second performance on America's Got Talent,
and you can find that on YouTube.
We played Iron Man on America's Got Talent, the lightning guitar.
I guess the point I was getting at is I'm looking at some pictures on your website,
and it's amazingly awesome.
To see it on the video, to hear it on the radio really doesn't do it justice, so you've
got to get the DVD and watch it.
Yeah, basically, you have to see it.
First of all, nothing beats just being there and standing 10 feet away from it, but the
video is definitely the next best thing.
Yeah, short of having you come to people's houses and do this thing, this is about as
good as it can get, and hopefully that'll get people to go to the next show when you
guys come into town or maybe start experimenting with it themselves.
Again, this is the package we're offering.
We have the Tesla DVD of the Architect performances.
We have the T-shirt from Architect, and we also have a 100 dinar Nikola Tesla bill from
Serbia, which is impossible to get in this country.
It's called the Tesla package, a pledge of $75 gets it for you.
We've had about four calls so far.
We can probably do for another four or so.
212-209-2950.
Yeah, not only does it make for a great second if you can't necessarily get to see this in
person because it's only one group and you may not be able to be around whenever they're
around, but if you've seen them before, such as if you were at Maker Faire, because there
were a lot of listeners I saw at Maker Faire.
It's a great way to have a good memory of some amazing show you've seen or you're trying
to tell somebody about what you've seen.
You're like, you know what?
Let me just show you, and you have the DVDs.
You can just show them, and they'll be like, really?
What?
People do that?
Yeah, it's a great thing to show your grandparents just to basically explain to them how things
work.
Science.
There are a lot of kids out there, a lot of small kids who are into this kind of thing,
and wow.
We didn't talk about this when I was in grade school, but there are kids out there experimenting.
Joe, how do you feel about that, having five, six-year-olds talking about Tesla coils now?
I think it's amazing, and I don't really know how it's going to all unfold, but I know that
we've introduced this technology and these concepts to thousands.
After our television appearance, millions of people, and so it's pretty interesting
thinking that we might be influencing people to learn these technologies better, and I'm
really happy about that.
That's all I can say.
Well, Joe, I have to congratulate both of you and, of course, everybody else involved
in your group for basically keeping us entertained, educated, inspired.
This is exactly the kind of thing that the hacker world is all about, that the maker
world is all about.
You have any plans for new projects in the future?
Well, at this point, I think we're trying to take a lot of the projects that we've already
built and make them better, make them smaller, make them travel better and such, but at this
point, most of our energies are being exerted towards the tour that we're going to be going
on next fall and creating this educational workbook and trying to get some more electronics
actually in the classroom.
I think that it's a pretty overlooked aspect of science that should be taught in school.
And speaking of the classroom, this is a great video to bring into the classroom and show
other students and get people just inspired to learn more about this.
So with the DVD, you can do that, and with the T-shirt, you can start all kinds of conversations.
We have five calls on the line.
Really good.
Really amazing.
Thank you for calling in and for showing their enthusiasm about this.
And Joe, I hope we see you in New York for the next Maker Faire, whenever that happens
to be.
Yeah, absolutely.
We'll be there.
Okay.
Well, Joe, thank you very much for being a part of this, for donating this to the station.
We have other guests to get to, but again, I look forward to the next show.
I look forward maybe to being in the Faraday cage again.
Anything else that you'd like to tell our listeners, websites, contact information,
things like that?
Yeah, just come see us at www.architect.com.
We're on Facebook, too.
You can find us there.
Well, you can probably find us anywhere.
Just come look for us.
Okay.
Well, again, I'm sorry.
We're doing all kinds of coordination here.
We're going to play the musical piece one more time just to give people some more inspiration
here.
Oh, look at that.
It went off.
Hang on.
We've got to get it to replay again.
Does anybody know how to work this?
Okay.
Watch again.
I've got to play watch again.
I hope it doesn't play that ad.
Okay.
It's loading.
It's loading on the BAI internet connection here.
I don't know.
It's giving an advertisement.
Well, Joe, I want to thank you in the time the advertisement is playing for being a part
of this.
We'll be in touch.
Sure.
Yeah.
Anytime.
All right.
All right.
Okay.
This is where the guy comes out, starts shooting electricity out of his hands.
But as Joe told us, apparently NBC replaced the sound with stock sound of electricity.
So it sounds cooler than that.
Yeah, it's like something they've never seen before.
But you can see it every day if you get the DVD and if you call 212-209-2950, you'll learn
all about the Architect Project, you'll learn all about Tesla Coils, you'll get a Tesla
Coil Architect t-shirt, and you'll even get a 100 dinar Serbian note with Nikola Tesla's
face and some equations on it.
Can you imagine money in this country that has equations on it?
That kind of thing just doesn't happen very often.
212-209-2950.
Bernie, tell us why people should call.
I know you can always bring a bunch of calls in.
This is a really great premium.
It's a nice package if you're into electronics hacking.
You know that you owe a lot of the history of electronics to Nikola Tesla, who some of
his concepts were responsible for the invention of radio.
And it was an amazing performance by Architect, and those guys are really great for donating
this stuff.
This is a fantastic DVD showing some awesome applications of Tesla Coils, a t-shirt showing
this stuff, and an amazing note from the country of Serbia honoring Nikola Tesla and his equations.
212-209-2950.
And you're getting WBAI, which is the only station that would broadcast this weird stuff.
It's funny.
When I travel around with Kyle, he's always flashing these Tesla bills, and he has this
unique ability to be able to just get people to want to buy them at any price.
People walk up and say, I want that.
I must have it.
I can't seem to do that.
But it just gives you an idea of the kind of manic obsession many people have with anything
having to do with Tesla.
So this bill is definitely something that will probably get you invited to parties,
maybe get you on television.
All sorts of nice things will happen to you as a result once you start flashing 100 DNR
notes with Tesla's face on it.
All right.
212-209-2950.
Time to move on to our next segment.
We have with us on the phone Bill Pollack from No Starch Press.
Bill, are you with us?
I think I'm here, right?
I think you're partially there anyway.
I can hear you, sort of.
All right.
We're using an alternate long distance carrier, so maybe you're about two-thirds of the way
there.
We have another exciting thing for our listeners tonight, and this is something that, for reasons
I don't entirely understand myself, this is one of the most popular things that we do.
We occasionally talk about, are you ready?
Legos.
Yes, we talk about Legos, and everybody goes mad for Legos.
Why don't you understand?
Legos are awesome.
Maybe it's because I've never actually had a Lego set myself.
I played with Tonka toys, you know, and Logcat.
Apparently not.
Apparently not, because we sure don't give those away.
That's really interesting.
Yeah.
The Lego company would never call them Legos, plural.
Oh, they wouldn't?
That's against the rule.
There's a series of Lego rules.
One of the rules is it's always Lego, it's never Legos.
FYI.
Is one of the other rules that there are no rules?
Not according to the Lego company.
Okay.
Well.
Well, we're not beholden to them, so it's okay.
It's funny.
At almost every hacker conference, at almost every hacker conference, there's Lego representation
of one sort or another.
Anybody have any memories of particular ones?
Rob?
Yeah.
We had a Lego table a couple of hoops ago that was going really well.
I think it was fairly popular.
And yeah, it's not just at hacker events.
If you put a bunch of Legos down anywhere, in any situation, people will start playing
with them.
They're universally just awesome.
If I put a bunch of Legos down in the middle of Times Square, you're saying people will
start playing with them?
Yes.
Yes.
And Homeland Security won't come and arrest me for doing that?
Well, I never said that.
Maybe both.
Maybe both.
I don't want to get away with it.
We should try it.
I want to do it now.
Okay.
Well, how do we get a whole bunch of Legos on short notice?
But you know what?
We'll be sure to get Homeland Security if the Legos are arranged in the configuration
described in No Starch Press's new book.
Yeah.
And this book, this book is called the ... Hold on, I'm looking at the wrong page here.
This is ... I'm still looking at the wrong page.
There's so many different Lego things here.
Hold on.
I'm getting to the right page.
You know what?
I don't have the right page.
I bet Bill knows the answer.
Bill, what's the latest book?
Because there's just so many Lego things.
We actually have a few ... The one you're talking about is Badass Lego Guns.
That's the one.
Badass Lego Guns.
That's the one.
Yeah.
Now ...
Actually, it has ...
Yeah.
Tell us about these.
I mean, Bill, there are ... I think there are five guns, and they're all operable.
They shoot rubber bands, bricks, or there's some kind of funny combination of a brick
and rubber band.
And they look like weapons.
Wow.
Yeah.
They do fire.
They fire rubber bands.
And you can ...
One of our ...
Tell us about the book.
One of our resellers actually asked whether they fired real bullets.
I thought that was pretty funny.
I mean, they're just made with Lego, but they require gluing and stuff, so that breaks additional
Lego rules.
But it's written by this guy who goes by the name Zubor.
He's a big Lego fanatic.
The Technic idea books are four-color books, and that's by a guy named Yoshihito Isogawa
out of Japan.
He's probably the most...
He's got to be in the top five most inventive Lego Technic builders in the world.
He builds these amazingly simple models that become like building blocks for other things,
and they'll be in these two books, like basic gears, pulleys, different types of vehicles,
and they're all very simple ideas that you're...
I'm sorry.
The blue angels are flying over.
Where exactly are you, Bill?
I'm hiding from the police.
Wow.
No, I'm...
This is awesome.
Ever since we started doing Lego gun books, they keep coming after me.
Yeah, I can see why.
Yeah, well, so the Technic books are pretty...
They're very different.
I mean, the Technic stuff is...
The Lego Technic stuff is harmless.
I mean, both these books are essentially harmless, but Badass Lego Guns,
we published a book about two years ago now called Forbidden Lego
that I think you guys gave away as a premium.
Yes, that was very popular.
That book got quite a lot of attention.
It got picked up by the Daily Mail and Fox,
and I actually had an interview with Fox where they were asking about
whether this was okay or a bad thing.
I said, these are toys.
But anyway, this is actually much more extreme than Forbidden Lego.
This is serious stuff,
and the Technic stuff is brilliant for anyone that does any kind of Lego building
because these models, they're simple, they're beautifully elegant,
and they do interesting things.
They all move. Everything moves.
Well, these are great gifts for anybody interested in Legos at all
or technology or building things.
In fact, it goes very well with the Tesla package.
You'll get three books all about Legos, two Lego Technic idea books,
two Lego machines, and the Wheeled Wonders.
In addition, you'll get the badass Lego gun book,
and that's sure to draw attention.
The pledge is $75, 212-209-2950,
only being offered for the next 10 minutes though.
So give us a call now.
We'll show you support for the radio station.
Get something really cool in exchange.
You get all three books?
All three books for $75.
Because I'm on Nostalgia's website, and these are not cheap books.
No.
You're almost paying for the books,
except that Bill is donating them,
and you're paying for the radio station instead.
Exactly, and you're getting the radio station,
and you're showing your support.
Everybody wins.
You're getting some really cool books.
And what more can be said about that?
212-209-2950.
Now, as a kid, I remember throwing Legos at my sister.
Now you have a gun. You can do it more accurately.
I never thought to weaponize them further.
How did such an idea come about?
The badass Lego guns?
He's not the only one that makes Lego guns.
If you've got a brick gun, you can see some other guys that do it.
There's a company called Brick Arms.
They make little miniature guns that you can stick in the arms of minifigs.
There's a lot of this in the Lego community,
because a lot of the Lego fans,
I mean, the serious Lego fans,
many of the serious Lego fans are adult Lego fans,
adult fans of Lego,
and that's really our main target audience.
But there are kids out there who have built these super powerful Lego crossbows.
Now, let's go back a little bit.
How did Legos get started?
What was the original intent of Legos when they first came out?
It wasn't this, was it?
No, it wasn't.
I mean, Lego is all about play.
I don't remember the exact history.
I want to say Lego started in the 50s, 60s, something like that.
We'll be doing a book actually next year that goes a little bit into the history.
The idea is, of course, that these are building blocks for things.
You can make anything out of them.
I think one of the challenges is that people look at a pile of bricks
and they don't know what to do with them.
So what I love about the Lego Technic idea books
is basically it's like, okay, well, here's your pile of Lego Technic stuff
that's sitting in the basement, and here are things that you can make with it.
And they're beautifully simple models you can probably put together
in like 15 minutes in most cases.
And then they do something interesting.
And then it's like, oh, cool, I can make a differential
that actually shows you how to do like a change rotation or something,
like change direction of force and stuff like that.
And then you look and it's like, oh, I can turn this into this kind of vehicle.
So all of this is very consistent, as far as I'm concerned,
with the whole existence spirit of what Lego is about,
which is building things from basically building blocks.
Have you ever heard from the Lego people
as to their feelings about these kinds of books coming out?
Yes, that's why they don't call it Legos.
But yes, I have.
And we've had a number of discussions with them.
And I can't say they are excited about this.
Were they in a room with a table and a lawyer?
Or was it cordial?
We weren't in a room, but we talked with them.
So the thing about Badass Lego Guns is it's not actually released yet.
So this book will be out, I think, in about a month and a half.
So that will come out, but it will go to your readers,
to your listeners first.
Yes, well, our listeners are readers as well.
And they will be really informed readers if they pledge for this package,
212-209-2950.
By the way, you can pledge for both packages.
For the Tesla package and the Lego package.
You could call twice.
You could say you want both.
Do whatever you wish.
But these are really good, unique things that we're offering tonight.
We've never offered these things before.
But the three Lego books are yours for a pledge of 212-209-2950,
a pledge of $75.
We'll get you that.
We take Visa, MasterCard, American Express.
And, yes, it's fascinating.
Where do you find most people?
You say adults make up a good part of the audience for these books.
But do you think a lot of kids get involved with this as well?
Oh, for sure.
When we published Forbidden Lego,
we got so much press that we basically ran out.
I think in two days we sold 2,500 copies,
and then we were out of stock for three months.
Wow.
But I had people come up to me at Lego shows.
I remember this woman come up and say,
you know, you're the guy from No Starts.
You published that book, and I promised it to my son.
Over the holidays, he couldn't get it, and we were really upset.
But kids track this stuff.
I mean, guns are fun.
And, of course, ultimately these are toy guns.
But there's a very strong adult community that takes Lego very seriously,
and they do some pretty amazing things,
some of which we'll be covering in future books.
The nice thing about this package, I would say, too,
is that the two Lego Technic idea books could be given to any child
that can look at pictures.
There's no text in the books.
They're just pictures.
So that's a really great gift.
And then the Badass Lego Guns is probably more for adults.
But I asked someone, too, who was interested in it,
if she minded the word badass, and she said,
if I'm going to give my kid a book on Lego guns,
I don't mind if you use the word badass.
Well, that's enlightened.
At least if you embrace one thing,
you should probably embrace the other as well.
I'm just looking at the list of things in these Technic idea books,
and there's just, I don't know, there must be a hundred things in each book.
There's a music box, a xylophone, a garage door.
It just goes on and on.
A garage door?
Garage door.
There are doors, so he's teaching you basic concepts,
like how to make working an operable door.
One of the challenges, think about it, like, okay,
you make some construction and you want an operable door.
How do you do it?
You mean I could replace my garage door with Legos?
I think it's a little garage door.
I have a little garage.
Well, okay, this goes to show the incredible things that you can do with Legos.
Almost the imagination boggles.
We have four calls on the line, 212-209-2950,
whether or not you're into Lego guns or Lego houses
or Lego garage doors or God knows what else.
Maybe you'll be the next person to invent something else with Legos
that no one else has thought of before.
I really think they've pretty much thought of everything by now, right?
Bill, what's the most surprising Lego invention you've seen?
There's a pretty amazing machine that people build collectively.
I don't remember the name, but it's sort of like a Rube Goldberg machine,
but it goes all around the room and has all kinds of constructions that are part of it.
You'll see this at Lego shows.
It might have a carousel and a rail with a train going.
It's a really interesting construction.
It's always amazing because it combines a lot of different talents.
So I think that's pretty amazing.
Some of the stuff in the Lego Technic Idea Books,
and there are videos, people can find them on YouTube and also on our website,
of some of these constructions.
They're pretty amazing to watch.
So it might be a very simple vehicle that wiggles when it walks
or it's powered by – I thought this was brilliant – it's actually powered by fans.
So he uses something very simple and he controls this thing
by changing some direction of the fan.
He can move this construction in different ways.
It's very simple, elegant constructions.
But I think the kind of massive thing they do at shows is pretty amazing.
I just wonder if there's a way that maybe we can combine Legos and Tesla coils
and build something with Legos that actually uses Tesla coils as well.
I'm sure our listeners will figure it out.
We're out of time, though, so join the four calls on the line right now,
212-209-2950.
You can get the three Lego books and really impress your friends,
your parents, your kids, whatnot.
And you can also call for the next few minutes for the Tesla package as well,
the video, the shirt, and the Tesla bill, 212-209-2950.
The most important thing, though, is to support the radio station.
Bill, I want to thank you very much for joining us and best of luck with NoStarch.
What's your website?
NoStarch.com.
Okay.
NoStarch.com.
All right.
Well, keep doing what you're doing and inspiring people all over the place.
And we're going to go out with a song suggested by a listener.
Justin wrote in saying,
I thought you might like this song called Electronic Brain by the Moonbillies
from an early 1960s, 45.
Let's listen.
Listen, oh listen, and we will explain
The sad, sad story of Electronic Brain
The greatest invention, the smartest of all
But he just kept us saying as he stood by the wall
I am the Electronic Brain
With the highest IQ that you cannot claim
I can count every star in the heavens above
But I have no heart, I can't fall in love
He has no heart, he can't fall in love
A girl in the office where the brain was installed
Saw him in action and she was enthralled
She said, I love you and will till I die
His tubes turned red when he said goodbye
I am the Electronic Brain
With the highest IQ that you cannot claim
I can count every star in the heavens above