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0:53

Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production

0:56

of iHeartRadio.

1:03

Hey, and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh,

1:05

and there's Chuck and Ben's here too, and

1:08

this is stuff you should.

1:09

Know, wind

1:13

edition because it's blowing my microphone

1:15

all over the place. Of what is going on here?

1:17

I feel like you should handle this one

1:19

and I'll just do WIN sound effects in the background

1:22

the whole time.

1:22

Okay, that'll

1:24

be good. My studio's haunted today. I don't know

1:26

what's happening.

1:27

Is it eerie?

1:29

No? Just nothing is right. Sometimes

1:31

I feel like Ruby

1:33

comes in here and messes with stuff. Oh

1:36

no, I think that's the ghost.

1:38

Oh my goodness, that's hilarious. Oh what

1:40

happens in it? I do this?

1:41

Yeah, like the lights are down, everything's different.

1:44

Huh okay, all right, I'm fine. I'm

1:46

back to normal.

1:47

Well I'm back to normal too. I'm gonna

1:49

go ahead and presume Ben's back to normal. So

1:52

you listener. If you're back to normal, great,

1:54

we can get started then. If not, we'll wait.

1:57

Just email us.

2:00

Yeah. So we're talking about wind power, and I guess

2:02

a good starting point would

2:04

be history and

2:07

not to get to like in the weeds with you

2:10

know, sailing ships and stuff like

2:12

that, because people have long

2:14

been using wind for different things. But I think as

2:16

far as generating power early

2:19

on, you know, water was the thing. Obviously

2:22

Cole was the thing. But there was a

2:24

guy, a very intelligent

2:26

Scott and we love our Scottish people. In

2:29

eighteen eighty seven, it was an engineer who

2:32

designed the first wind turbine

2:35

to do what we're talking about today.

2:37

Yeah, and it's not like he was the

2:39

first person to come up with a wind turbine.

2:41

I mean, everybody knows the Dutch had windmills for

2:43

centuries and centuries before, but this guy

2:46

was the first one to try to genuinely

2:48

harness wind power to generate

2:51

electricity. His name was James

2:53

Blythe and he had a

2:55

second home apparently in the town of mary

2:57

Kirk in Scotland, which has great

3:00

gotch I assume. And

3:03

he had so much power from his wind

3:06

turbine, chuck, that he offered

3:09

the access of it to the

3:11

town of mary Kirk. And this guy was so advanced

3:14

he had twelve batteries storing

3:17

the electrical power that his wind turbine

3:19

was generating. He just invented

3:21

it like lock stock

3:23

and barrel the first time.

3:25

Out Great Scott.

3:28

Literally he really wasn't Great Scott,

3:30

so.

3:31

You know, and on small scales. People came

3:33

behind him and were doing it, but it wasn't

3:35

really until a gentleman,

3:38

a Danish gentleman, a meteorologist named

3:41

I've never seen that pou L poll

3:45

I guess polar Coor

3:48

he is the one who really has a lot of

3:50

the you know, gets a lot of the credit rightfully.

3:53

So we're kind of getting when

3:56

generated power going in a serious way

3:59

because in the eighteen nineties he's

4:01

like, you know what, I can produce

4:03

a steady stream of power. This thing isn't

4:06

as intermittent as they were before, and

4:09

I'm actually going to create enough power for

4:11

my village, for the village of Askoff, and

4:14

I'm going to have found something that sounds like sorcery.

4:17

I'm gonna found the Society of Wind Electricians

4:20

even.

4:20

Yeah, and he did. He was very successful.

4:23

Out of the gate. That was nineteen

4:25

oh eighteen ninety five. He started

4:27

nineteen oh eight. There were seventy two different

4:30

systems running in Denmark and

4:32

each of them had a capacity between five and

4:34

twenty five kilowatts, which is peanuts peanuts

4:37

now, but at the time. This

4:40

is remember in our Love Canal episode

4:42

where electricity for a while no matter

4:44

how you generated, it had to be generated

4:47

like right next to where you were distributing

4:49

the power. So it would make sense that you'd

4:51

have a windmill like right at the village that

4:53

was being powered, because if you were getting

4:55

it from a coal fire plant, you had to have it right

4:57

there too, So that

5:00

I made wind kind of competitive for a while,

5:02

and even until the into the twentieth

5:04

century, it was still fairly competitive,

5:07

even as coal and gas

5:09

fired electrical plants started to take

5:11

over because in rural areas they

5:14

didn't have access to the grid, so

5:16

they were using wind turbines. And then finally

5:19

FDR comes along and said, n's to that, We're

5:21

electrifying this whole darn toutin

5:23

country, and the wind

5:25

turbines fell over in surprise, and

5:28

coal fired electrical grids took over.

5:31

Yeah, and they pretty much held the you

5:33

know, the high ground until the nineties,

5:36

when there was a renewed interest in wind.

5:39

Things got a little windy in the nineties and ninety two

5:42

Congress passed a tax credit.

5:44

Clinton came along after that, you

5:47

know, started to fund more you

5:49

know, basically federal projects toward

5:51

wind, and then states got on

5:53

board individually, especially states

5:56

like Texas and Iowa. You know, if you're

5:58

out and you have lots of of

6:00

wind, lots of open planes, you can

6:02

generate more wind energy. And

6:04

Texas, for their part, has really,

6:07

you know, up until recent years, been

6:10

super supportive of wind energy

6:12

and are far and away the leader in US

6:15

wind energy. But

6:17

as just as far as like raw numbers,

6:21

from nineteen ninety to twenty

6:24

ten, we went from almost

6:26

two point eight billion kilowatt

6:28

hours to close to five

6:31

point six billion, and

6:33

then twenty ten that jumped

6:35

to ninety five billion, which is

6:37

just a huge jump over that span of time. And

6:39

then now in twenty twenty two we

6:42

are at four hundred and thirty four billion

6:44

kilowat hours.

6:45

So in thirty two years we went from two point

6:47

seventy nine billion to four hundred and thirty four

6:49

billions. That is right, that's pretty

6:52

rapid progress. I mean, that's amazing.

6:54

That's just in the United States too,

6:57

as we'll see like around the world, they're

7:00

trees who are like, yeah, why don't you catch up,

7:02

lame mos, and then other countries

7:04

like China are just jumping

7:06

ahead of the curve even more impressively.

7:08

But wind is definitely I'm sorry

7:11

for this, but wind is picking up around the world.

7:15

Yeah, so we should probably talk a little bit about how

7:17

the actual machine works. We're

7:19

going to concentrate on the hot systems, that

7:22

is the horizontal axis. Hawt

7:26

just a little bit about the vertical axis. The vaults.

7:29

They're kind of cool and that you can you don't

7:31

like have to point it at the wind. But

7:34

they're smaller, they're slower,

7:37

they're not as efficient. Therefore, you know,

7:39

small scale generation, So those

7:41

aren't sort of the big daddies, the big players

7:43

in the field. It's really the hot

7:46

rotors that are hot.

7:48

They're hella hot, they are. So

7:50

Yeah, if you have a small what's called a distributed

7:53

system, which is like that thing that say James

7:55

Blyth Paul LeCour came up

7:57

with that just powers like a very small area,

7:59

you're probably going to do

8:02

a vertical axis type. It's like a merry go

8:04

round with sails around it. But

8:06

the sails are actually wind turbines and it looks

8:08

cool, cooler than a

8:10

horizontal axis one if you ask me. But

8:12

the horizontal ones are most

8:15

ubiquitous because they can generate

8:17

power in aces compared

8:19

to the vertical types. Right, they're

8:22

way more efficient. You can make

8:24

them way bigger, because if you're making

8:26

something with a vertical axis, it takes up ground

8:28

space because it's basically on the ground.

8:30

The horizontal ones, they're

8:33

way up in the air, catching generally

8:35

steady streams of air that have very

8:38

little turbulence, that are moving fairly

8:40

fast compared to the stuff on the ground, and

8:42

they can convert it very efficiently, at

8:44

least as far as wind turbines are concerned into

8:47

electricity.

8:48

Yeah, you mentioned the size. These are the you

8:51

know, if you're traveling out west in the planes

8:53

or something and you see a wind farm. These

8:55

are the big daddies that we're talking about. The

8:58

little guys are about eight feet

9:02

in diameter. These you know, these are the rotors.

9:04

But if you go offshore, and we'll talk

9:06

a little bit more about what's going what's

9:09

going on in the ocean, but those can

9:11

be eight hundred feet generate

9:13

up to eighteen megawatts, which is

9:16

just a lot of power being generated.

9:18

And I mean those things are just absolutely enormous,

9:21

Like I can't even picture what an eight hundred

9:23

foot turbine might look like.

9:25

So take three football fields, cut

9:27

off just a little bit of the third one, and

9:29

then that's the the turbine diameter.

9:32

I mean, it's so massive it like boggles

9:34

the mind, even though we're talking about you know, a

9:36

few hundred feet. It's just I

9:38

just can't imagine what that looks like up close.

9:41

Yeah, same, so connecting

9:45

to the US power grid. Like the size

9:47

of these things have basically increased over

9:49

time. They've just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger these

9:52

days. If you're talking like not those gargantuans

9:55

offshore, but irregular like terrestrial

9:58

turbine on a wind farm is

10:00

generally about four hundred to four hundred

10:02

and fifty feet in diameter, they're about

10:04

thirty eight to thirty five feet off the ground, and

10:07

they generate each one about three point two

10:09

megawatts.

10:10

Yeah, and this is actually a case where bigger's

10:13

better. From what I've seen, the

10:15

bigger they are means that they can generate

10:17

more electricity, which means that you need fewer

10:19

of them on site. So I saw the average

10:22

is expected to go down in like next year

10:24

from two hundred and twenty two turbines

10:27

and like a good sized average wind

10:29

turbine farm to eighty

10:31

nine, so you got far fewer.

10:34

They're bigger, but they also are figuring out

10:36

how to make them quieter. Two, So

10:39

by going bigger, they're actually getting

10:41

a lot more out of it. It's kind of like one

10:43

of those things where the economy of scale just exceeds

10:46

the sum of its parts, which is two

10:48

different things. But I put them together expertly

10:50

if you ask me.

10:52

Yeah, and these things they got to be spaced apart.

10:54

You can't put them obviously right on each other, so

10:58

that makes a difference. You know, if you have fewer

11:00

of them, they're not spread out

11:02

as far obviously geographically. And

11:05

we'll talk about it a little bit more, but you know, it's

11:07

not like you can't do anything with

11:09

the land. A lot of

11:11

times you'll just see them out kind of the middle of nowhere,

11:13

but that can be cataland and stuff like that.

11:16

Yes, So usually

11:19

the horizontal axis

11:21

wind turbines, which are just the wind

11:23

turbines you've seen pictures of or video

11:25

of, or maybe even seen off in the distance, depending

11:27

on where you're driving around, they usually

11:30

have three blades, and three is

11:32

kind of this magic number because the

11:34

more blades you have, the more drag

11:36

it produces. Each blade experiences

11:39

drag from the air as it moves through the air. The

11:41

air is like, no, stop doing that and tries to like stop

11:44

it. And even

11:46

though it's individual for each blade,

11:49

they accumulate and combine and transfer

11:51

that to the rotor, so it

11:53

experiences five blades worth of drag. So

11:55

three blades is kind of sweet because you can

11:58

generate quite a bit of electricity, can capture

12:00

a bunch of wind, but you're also reducing

12:02

drag dramatically. So that's

12:05

why basically every single horizontal

12:08

access turbine has three blades.

12:11

What's your ceiling fan?

12:13

Preth definitely

12:15

more than I don't know. I'm

12:17

trying to think. Now I've got such a

12:20

strange variety of ceiling fans that I

12:22

think about it, I'm gonna say I'll

12:25

go with three. Sure, three,

12:28

what's yours?

12:29

I typically like a five blader?

12:32

Okay?

12:33

Uh? Four is okay?

12:36

I've got one three, and I've realized

12:38

that I don't really like it, And boy

12:41

do I hate those two bladers.

12:43

Those should not exist. I think that's that's broken,

12:46

is what you're describing.

12:48

I know people like them, so I don't want to yuck

12:50

someone's jum, but aesthetically I don't care for

12:52

the two blade propeller style ceiling

12:54

fan.

12:55

Okay, here's the big question though.

12:57

Do you like those fans that look like fans

13:00

that they might have used in Casablanca

13:03

in the nineteen thirties.

13:05

Oh? Oh, that are ceiling

13:07

fans.

13:07

Yes, that's what the blades look like.

13:10

No, I don't like to get too like weird. Okay,

13:13

Well here's the real question, though you thought you had

13:15

the real question. Do

13:17

you do you get up and change the direction of that thing

13:19

every year?

13:20

Sometimes yes, depending on whether

13:23

I'm chilly thinking about it or I'm motivated.

13:26

Okay, yeah, those are the two factors that are

13:28

you have to combine.

13:29

I think that's the factor for almost everyone, except

13:31

for the you know, the real fastidious

13:33

person who just has it on their calendar.

13:36

Even I don't have that on my calendar.

13:38

And I'm suddenly impressed with myself and kind

13:40

of relieved.

13:41

No good. So the hats,

13:44

you know, we said that those the vertical winds don't

13:46

need to be pointed at the wind. The

13:48

hats do face into the wind. But you

13:52

might think, well, the wind changes, and josh,

13:54

how is that possible. Well, they do it by

13:56

moving the turbine to face the

13:58

wind. It's got a y'all system, so

14:00

it's you know, it's not too hard to do. And

14:02

they also have pitch systems. They can change

14:04

the actual angle of the blades to

14:07

help control that rotor speed to

14:09

really maximize efficiency A

14:12

and B protect it because what

14:14

you don't want during like

14:16

a really big windstorm is for those

14:19

you might think like, oh man, those things get

14:21

really cooking. That's awesome. They

14:23

don't need to get too cooking. It's like a motor

14:25

spinning too fast is just never good.

14:26

Yeah, it can break pretty easy. So if

14:29

they change the angle

14:31

of the blade relative to the direction

14:33

of the wind, the winds is going to push

14:35

on it rather than making it

14:38

spin. And so if it pushes on it,

14:40

it's going to go much slower. So you still want them

14:42

to kind of move, but not too fast. And that's

14:44

pretty cool that they've got that figured out. Yeah,

14:47

so you got yaw control, pitch control,

14:50

and the whole thing is connected

14:52

to a rotator that

14:55

is connected to a generator and

14:57

sometimes you've got a gearbox in

14:59

the middle. Because here's the thing. One

15:01

of the reasons why wind

15:04

didn't catch on or didn't continue

15:07

to spread as coal

15:09

did is because it's really difficult

15:11

to get a windmill rotor to

15:14

spin fast enough to generate electricity

15:16

using traditional electromagnets,

15:18

right, you need something like eighteen hundred RPMs

15:21

to really get a good electrical

15:23

buzz cooking and win

15:27

windmill rotors, especially the big ones

15:29

these days, they're at like five

15:32

ten eighteen sixty I think is

15:34

about the top that I saw, so about one

15:36

rotation a second, which is still a third

15:38

of what it needs to be to generate electricity. Although

15:41

by the way, they've got that figured out. But

15:43

for like one that's using a traditional dynamo,

15:47

not dynamo, I guess generator.

15:50

Right, where you've got like magnets spinning

15:52

through coils to generate electricity, they

15:54

have a gearbox and somehow, through

15:56

some sort of black magic, I

15:59

just genuinely don't understand gears, Chuck,

16:01

we have to do an episode on and I guess, but.

16:03

Oh no, no, no, no, no, you don't

16:05

want to do that.

16:06

It translates that sixty rotations

16:09

a minute into eighteen hundred

16:12

just by changing the direction. I don't know how

16:14

they do it. I know that it's really

16:16

basic stuff that even like Archimedes

16:18

used to mess with. I just can't wrap my head around

16:21

how that happens.

16:22

Well, I definitely don't want to do something

16:24

on gears because many years ago, I'm

16:27

pretty sure I updated the old House Stuffworks

16:29

article on gears okay, and

16:31

it's it's pretty

16:33

mind numbing and boring. Okay,

16:37

but you know, just think about

16:40

the size of gears and

16:42

like a gears with tons and tons of

16:45

teeth, you know, hooking

16:47

up and making love to a

16:49

gear with fewer teeth is gonna

16:53

like that top one's going to be spinning really fast and the

16:55

other one's gonna be spinning less.

16:57

Don't still doesn't make sense to me.

16:59

Really well, have you ever

17:01

seen a gear like, you know, like

17:03

a gift or something of gears at work?

17:05

Yeah, I looked it up for this just to try

17:07

to see if I could wrap my head around at this time, and it still

17:10

just wouldn't work.

17:11

Well, Fewer teeth just means slower.

17:13

But that doesn't make sense,

17:16

like I understand that there's more

17:18

teeth means faster. How

17:21

that's what I get it.

17:22

It's catching fewer teeth, which

17:25

is like the go button. Basically, ill

17:30

on this, We'll move on.

17:32

I don't think it's gonna.

17:33

Work out, and here, I'm the one like lobbing

17:35

to not do this, and I'm trying to explain.

17:37

It's just sticking a short stuff in the middle

17:39

of this episode.

17:39

Yeah. Here's another fun fact is the uh

17:42

and this is not super consequential, but I just

17:44

thought it was interesting. Is the

17:47

gearbox and all that stuff is

17:50

up tall in the tower and something called a

17:52

nestle And that is an aviation term.

17:54

That's like planes have nestles, so

17:56

just like you have a spinning propeller on a

17:58

plane. Okay, yeah,

18:01

so it's an aviation term. Kind of cool.

18:02

Okay, So like that whole thing that it looks like

18:04

the turbines are mounted to that, that whole

18:06

thing is basically the nestle, and it's where the gearbox

18:09

and the rotor and the generator

18:11

are all tucked in, right.

18:12

Yeah, I think it's like off of the blades,

18:15

just like it would be on a plane.

18:17

So the thing with the gearbox, it really works

18:19

like you can get some pretty good electricity

18:21

out of a relatively small set of moving

18:24

parts. But they are moving parts,

18:26

and they're way up high, usually

18:29

dozens of feet in the air, and

18:31

they can be loud too, and they can get dirty

18:34

and break down like any gears can. So

18:36

there's another kind called a direct drive

18:38

system and it

18:40

it basically they figured out and

18:42

I couldn't get to the bottom of this, they can

18:45

use that regular rotation of

18:48

a of a wind turbine

18:50

to generate electricity. I think

18:53

they just it just requires much larger

18:55

parts. I think it's generally

18:58

what the trade off is. So there's

19:00

pros and cons to both kinds, and

19:02

they've kind of come up with some new stuff

19:05

that's on the horizon are happening now that

19:07

seem to kind of supersede both of those too,

19:09

as we'll talk about.

19:11

Yeah, and you know, no matter how efficient

19:14

you can build really

19:16

any kind of power generation system,

19:19

there are limits. At a certain point. You can

19:21

increase efficiency and increase efficiency,

19:24

but then the laws of physics step in and

19:26

say, you can't be one hundred percent

19:28

efficient. You're never going to capture every

19:30

bit of the wind. It's

19:33

just not possible. And there was a German

19:35

physicist in nineteen nineteen named

19:37

Albert Binns who calculated

19:39

the theoretical maximum of kinetic

19:42

energy that you can zap

19:44

into electricity, and it basically

19:46

caps off a close to sixty fifty

19:49

nine point three percent. Wind

19:51

is about thirty five to forty five percent efficient,

19:53

which may not sound great, but

19:56

Olivia helped us out with this. She points out, you know, wind

19:59

is free, so it's not you know, you've got these things

20:01

sitting out there, so it's not like you're paying

20:03

to generate that wind.

20:05

Right. Plus, also, if you look into the other

20:07

types of fuels used to generate electricity,

20:09

it's perfectly in line. Nuclear

20:12

is between thirty to forty five percent efficient,

20:14

coals thirty eight to forty five. Natural

20:16

gas is only twenty five percent efficient.

20:18

So it's way better than natural

20:21

gas as far as efficiency goes. And

20:23

if you're wondering why can it be one hundred

20:25

percent efficient? The explanation

20:27

that I found that I'm still having trouble

20:30

digesting too. I think the gears thing really

20:32

threw me off first. Then I went into

20:34

this and it was just hopeless. To

20:38

transfer one hundred percent of the power from wind

20:40

to a turbine. That means the wind has

20:42

to come to a stop and transfer

20:45

all of its energy to the turbine

20:47

when it comes in contact with it.

20:50

And I understand that means the wind stops.

20:52

But as long as there's a stream of wind

20:54

coming at you. Why would that matter?

20:56

That's my big question.

21:00

I don't know. I'm not gonna hazard, I guess on this one.

21:02

All right, well, how about this. We'll take a break to

21:05

everybody else. It will just be a couple of ads, but you

21:07

and I will spend the next forty five minutes or

21:09

so hashing this out.

21:10

All right, Can we have lunch?

21:12

We can have bult We'll order it.

21:14

Okay,

21:38

all right, we're gonna talk a little bit about

21:40

where we stand today here in the United States.

21:42

We'll get to elsewhere in the world later on. Don't

21:44

you worry. We're looking at you, Denmark.

21:48

Right now, the United States has about

21:50

seventy thousand wind turbines

21:53

going with a capacity a

21:55

total potential capacity of about one hundred

21:57

and forty six gigaway,

22:00

which should make Doc Brown shake

22:02

in his whatever kind of shoes

22:04

he wore.

22:05

I looked up what that is relative to

22:07

what we use. I think we use

22:09

something like thirteen hundred gigawatts,

22:13

so it's like a tenth

22:15

of that. But that's still pretty good.

22:18

I mean, think about it. We went from like basically zero

22:20

wind power in the eighties to a

22:22

tenth of our capacity is

22:24

in the form of wind turbines.

22:27

Nothing on Doc Brown.

22:28

Huh No, I

22:30

just think it was gonna so it fit so perfectly

22:33

that it'd be like me pointing out that we've

22:35

been using the word turbine. You know what I mean?

22:38

Do you know who Doc Brown is? Sure

22:41

who?

22:42

He's like Christopher Lloyd from Back

22:44

to the Future. What kind of person do you think I am?

22:46

Do you know me at all?

22:48

I guess the kind of person who refuses to comment

22:50

on a great Doc Brown joke.

22:52

I was commenting on it. I was saying

22:54

that it was such a perfect joke and it was inserted

22:56

so perfectly that there.

22:57

Was no aid, no comment. Yes, I

23:02

have to remember that your joke was so good.

23:04

A note, you know what that you basically

23:06

just said? Is that so far any I forgot to laugh. So

23:13

last year twenty twenty three, about ten percent

23:15

of our electricity came from win

23:17

Not too bad. I mentioned Texas as

23:20

the leader. They're generating about

23:22

twenty five percent of that a little more.

23:23

Even that's just mind boggling to think

23:26

considering Texas.

23:27

You know they are, well,

23:29

let's talk about Texas for a second, because they

23:32

have been far and away the leader

23:34

they got a lot of wide open land there in West

23:36

Texas. They had their own

23:40

their own power grid. They're the only state with their

23:42

own power grid, so that makes it a lot

23:44

easier for them with interstate

23:46

projects to not have to you know, they can

23:48

rely on themselves like Texans like to do. But

23:52

here's the thing. In

23:54

recent years, I don't think it's a stretch

23:57

to say that there's been some I

24:00

mean, Livia calls it ideological

24:03

warfare, and she's basically right.

24:06

And that's unfortunate because now there are

24:08

conservatives in Texas that

24:10

are making it harder to do something they're

24:12

really really good at, and that's generate

24:15

wind for power. And that's

24:17

a real shame because it seems

24:20

like ideology. I

24:22

mean, I know there are and we'll

24:24

talk about downsides of wind production and

24:26

there are gripes that it's you know, there might

24:28

be inconsistent supply, but it really seems

24:30

to kind of come down to, like, no,

24:33

we are an oil state, and we're

24:35

even though we're great at making win, we I

24:38

guess can't do both.

24:40

I don't know, but I mean, even though they are an oil state,

24:42

they've been an oil state for decades

24:44

and decades like a century basically,

24:46

and they still spend all this time and

24:48

money and effort into creating this

24:51

wind infrastructure.

24:54

Yeah, still in Texas.

24:55

I don't think it has anything to do with oil. I think

24:58

I think a certain vein of conservativism

25:01

equates anything

25:03

part friendly to liberals.

25:06

I know, I know, and like.

25:07

Because everything's so divisive and the sides

25:10

are just so divided that like

25:13

you just can't possibly be into something that liberals

25:15

favor, Like that's just crazy and vice

25:17

versa. Like there's I mean, I don't mean

25:19

to just say like this is all conservatives.

25:21

Like the divisiveness. Definitely,

25:23

it can be found on both sides of

25:25

the equation. It's just sad that there's

25:27

two sides. Let's just get past

25:29

the sides.

25:30

Everybody, Well, it's sad that it's

25:32

affecting something like this, which, like I said, Texas

25:34

is really really good at they have a lot a

25:37

lot of it figured out. They're they're

25:39

the leader in the United States, Like, keep

25:42

it, keep it going, Texas.

25:43

The thing is this chuck they're

25:46

trying, they're not necessarily succeeding.

25:48

In the twenty twenty two twenty twenty three

25:50

session, a whole raft of bills

25:53

that were trying to basically make

25:56

win power investment harder. None

25:59

of them past, and I think the

26:01

reason why, and this is kind of like the thing like, yes,

26:04

you can oppose wind power, but I think the giant

26:07

gears are already in motion, like massive

26:10

corporations. But you don't know how those were, I

26:13

know, I don't, but I can tell when they're moving,

26:15

I guess, so, like just giant

26:17

multinational corporations

26:20

have sunk so many tens and hundreds

26:23

of billions of dollars into this investment

26:25

and are starting now to actually reap benefit

26:28

from it. It's not going back like

26:31

sorry, it's just not so it's still

26:33

moving forward. It just sucks that it has to move forward

26:35

at this in this kind of.

26:36

Like slow pace.

26:38

It's just a negative but with a negative

26:41

vibe, you.

26:41

Know, yeah, no, totally. I mean

26:44

hopefully you know, Americans

26:46

are capitalists, and hopefully money well went out on the end,

26:48

because, like you said, a lot of money invested

26:50

and a lot of money to be made.

26:52

The thing is, though, that's not to

26:54

say that people who oppose,

26:57

especially locally, oppose when

27:00

projects don't have a point.

27:02

There's a lot to be said about not wanting to

27:04

live near a wind turbine, in

27:07

particular a wind farm, because

27:11

it's just one of those things that like, this is

27:13

going to impact your life. It

27:16

can impact your real estate values, it can impact

27:18

what's called the view shed, just simply

27:20

your view. There's actual

27:23

legitimate reasons for people to push back

27:25

on this stuff, but that doesn't mean that

27:27

there can't be like a compromise, a way forward

27:30

to find legitimate places

27:32

where wind can be generated

27:34

well and efficiently without

27:37

you know, ruining some nearby community.

27:40

Yeah, I mean there's definitely a lot of what's

27:43

called nimbi going on, Yeah,

27:45

on both sides, you know, well,

27:47

yeah.

27:48

For sure, And again I don't blame anybody for

27:50

that. It sucks because that whole

27:54

idea means that usually poorer

27:56

communities who can't represent themselves

27:58

and don't have the the means to

28:00

really like have the political clout

28:03

to push back on that kind of thing, end up with

28:05

this stuff. But it seems

28:07

like that with with

28:09

things like wind turbine farms in particular,

28:13

the decision making is being decentralized,

28:15

so more and more local communities are being

28:18

able to step in and being like, no, this is not happening.

28:20

Here.

28:21

Sorry, we're our city council voted against

28:23

it. It's not happening, And I

28:25

think that that's I think that's legitimate.

28:28

I think that I don't

28:31

know what the way forward is, but I know that there's

28:33

a way forward. But I don't think it's shoving

28:36

a wind farm down in a local community's

28:38

throughout, whether they like it or not.

28:40

Yeah, and by the way, an MBA people are like,

28:42

what the heck is Chuck talking about. That's

28:44

just the acronym, the not in my backyard

28:46

thing. You're like, no, wind energy is great, we should

28:48

totally do it, but I don't want one of those in my backyard

28:51

over there. Go do it over there, much

28:53

much better exactly. But moving

28:56

on, we promised to talk about offshore. Most

29:00

of what's going on right now is on land.

29:02

In terms of wind collection. I

29:04

guess they're not collecting it, but in a way they are, sure.

29:07

But if you think about a lot of wind out

29:10

on the open ocean, that seems

29:12

like a no brainer in some ways. And

29:14

we will get to the environmental

29:16

aspects of all this stuff later. So people out

29:18

there screaming like how can you put more things

29:21

in the ocean, Like, we'll get to it, but

29:24

it is a promising idea stronger

29:26

winds. There's a lot

29:28

of permitting issues, obviously

29:30

what we just talked about with the NIMBI thing. A lot of

29:32

communities, you

29:34

know, beachfront property or generally

29:36

people who either you know, if you're

29:39

lucky enough to have owned it forever, you may not be super

29:41

wealthy, but most people who like live

29:43

on the beach are wealthy and they don't want

29:45

to see that stuff. So there's been a

29:47

lot of complaints about

29:50

looking at that kind of thing. But we

29:52

may be headed toward I

29:55

mean that they're building more and more of them in

29:58

the coming years. It seems like is.

30:00

Kind of what I was talking about. There was a big push

30:03

against the Vineyard wind project.

30:07

Yeah, I should say there was a vocal push against

30:09

it. And it's still happening. Like they're they're

30:11

doing i think sixty two turbines,

30:13

they've already got five installed, and

30:15

it's just it's moving forward. But at

30:18

the same time, like a bunch of local people who make

30:20

their money off of fishing, they were

30:22

affected by this, Like they're fishing grounds

30:25

were now a wind

30:27

turbine farm. They couldn't fish there

30:29

anymore, so they're being compensated

30:31

for that.

30:32

They're paying commercial fishermen to not fish,

30:35

essentially.

30:36

To stay out of this area at least or

30:38

to accept a buffer zone. So like,

30:42

yeah, there's like that's what I'm saying. There's compromises

30:44

to be to be made here. And other people

30:46

are like, this view shed thing, what are you talking about?

30:48

Like, if you hold your hand up, the windmill

30:51

that you see on the horizon is smaller than

30:54

your fingernail, Like, that's

30:56

what you're seeing. And other people like, I don't want

30:58

to see it.

30:59

I don't think it's swimming out.

31:01

I don't want to see it. But

31:03

those people seem to have I

31:06

guess they're outnumbered or

31:08

outgunned by the people

31:11

who are like, no, this project's going forward. And

31:13

again it's tough to argue about it because

31:15

sure, right now, the sixty eight

31:17

megawatts that that Vineyard Wind project

31:21

is putting out with just the five turbines,

31:23

that's enough to power thirty thousand homes,

31:26

and their goal is something like eight hundred

31:28

megawatts, So there's

31:30

going to be a lot of people getting a lot of clean

31:33

energy from the wind project.

31:36

Yeah, and there are more kind of people

31:39

are looking to the Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico may have one

31:41

at some point. The mid Atlantic is being targeted.

31:45

Joe Biden and his administration have a target

31:47

of thirty thousand megawatt

31:49

offshore hours by

31:52

twenty thirty. It seems

31:54

like like we're going to mention a lot of like goals

31:56

and things. It doesn't seem like any of these will

31:58

be reached, but those are the goals at least, And

32:01

you know, we're kind of explaining why as we're

32:03

going. But California

32:05

is trying to get twenty thousand, I'm sorry, twenty five

32:07

thousand megawatts by twenty

32:10

forty five. These are going to

32:12

be floating because of Pacific is

32:14

so deep and cal Berkeley they

32:17

did a study and they said that offshore

32:19

wind by twenty to fifty could

32:21

potentially supply between

32:23

ten and twenty five percent of all US

32:26

energy, not just wind energy.

32:27

And offshore is the smallest one,

32:30

so it's the smallest segment. And

32:32

the fact that the offshore

32:34

wind farms are so small right now, that's significant

32:37

growth. And I get the impression that one of

32:39

the reasons they're growing is one it's not up on anybody's

32:41

real estate. It's like way out in the ocean,

32:44

even though you can kind of see them. But secondly,

32:46

fifty percent of Americans live within fifty

32:49

miles of a coast, and transmission

32:51

lines are a real thing, a real issue

32:53

for wind power. So

32:56

if you can get you know, a fifty

32:58

mile length of transmission

33:00

wire to fifty

33:03

percent of Americans, that's a pretty

33:05

significant number of people.

33:07

Yeah, I wonder if some of these, you

33:09

know, like the younger generation is generally,

33:12

I mean, this is a broad stroke,

33:14

but generally a little more into trying

33:17

to go toward renewable energy. So

33:19

I wonder if they're sort of you know, if

33:21

like the rich kids are even fighting back

33:24

against their parents about stuff like this. Like,

33:27

I wonder how you know you said it was

33:29

like a pinky nail, right, Dad's

33:31

complaining he's on the beach, and

33:34

the kids are like, Dad, just hold

33:36

up your pinky nail. Block it out roomor

33:39

exactly.

33:40

The thing is is, I was very interested

33:42

to find this out. There's a lot of environmentalists

33:45

who are opposed to these wind projects too.

33:47

They're making strange bedfellows with people

33:50

who don't like renewable at all. They're like, you're

33:52

an environmentalist, how can you be opposed to this.

33:54

They're like, look at those giant turbine.

33:58

That's just one of them, and they're put more

34:00

and more offshore. They're ruining habitats,

34:03

they're ruining communities, Like, this

34:05

is not the way to go. And they're like, well, what

34:07

way do you want to go? Hippie, Like, what's wrong?

34:09

Now? We're finally doing the stuff you wanted to do.

34:12

And the thread that seems to be emerging

34:14

among younger environmentalists or among environmentalists

34:17

in general, is degrowth. It's

34:19

like, no, we don't need to create more and more

34:21

wind farms to meet electrical demand

34:23

that's going to increase over the next

34:25

two decades. We need to decrease the

34:28

electrical demand, and yeah, we need

34:30

to supply it with wind and stuff like that,

34:32

but we're going in the wrong direction here.

34:34

We're billing, billing to meet growth,

34:36

growth, growth. They're like, we need to stop growing.

34:39

So that's actually made them opposed to a lot of these

34:41

projects, especially the biggest ones.

34:43

Yeah. I mean, I think those people look out and see

34:45

a big wind farm and it doesn't look

34:47

any different to them than a nuclear power plant

34:50

or a huge coal plant. All they see is some

34:53

giant monstrosity of capitalism

34:55

at work.

34:56

That's exactly right.

34:58

Yeah, then you know there's a point, so.

35:00

I say we take a break and we'll jump back into the

35:02

more of the nuts and bolts of this, all

35:05

right, okay,

35:28

Chuck. In addition to a lot of the pushback that

35:30

we just covered for a while, there's

35:33

a lot of practical issues and challenges

35:35

to making wind. What

35:37

was it like, up to twenty five percent of

35:40

US demand by twenty fifty.

35:42

I think that's crazy. One

35:44

of them is transmission.

35:45

Like I said, you had, the wind is out in the middle of

35:48

nowhere. That's the problem.

35:49

That's exactly right. Yeah, the

35:51

places where it blows the most there are the

35:53

least number of people, and

35:55

that means you have to build an infrastructure to get

35:57

it from those less populated areas

36:00

of the populated areas that want to use it.

36:02

That's a big one. And apparently there

36:04

was a Princeton study that found that

36:07

transmission infrastructure is growing

36:09

at just like one percent a year, and

36:12

that if we keep that pace up. The

36:15

reduction and fossil fuel emissions

36:17

that the Inflation Reduction Act

36:20

envisioned with a lot of it's green stuff.

36:22

That was associated with it, we'll lose eighty percent

36:24

of that. Yeah, that reduction, so

36:27

we need to definitely expand transmission

36:29

lines. It's a big, big step.

36:31

Yeah, for sure, getting the power there

36:33

is a big deal. One idea that you

36:36

know has a lot of promise, but

36:38

you know, it all has its downsides of course, like

36:41

there is no like perfect system

36:43

is storing the energy. So there's

36:46

a lot of work being done toward you

36:49

know, storage capacity because you

36:51

know, right now, if the sun

36:53

isn't shining, if it's super cloudy

36:55

a lot, if the wind isn't blowing very much, then solar

36:58

and wind are going to take a hit. And then

37:00

that means that the fossil fuel plants just

37:02

sort of make up for that. But if

37:04

you know, if we're leaning more and more on

37:07

solar and wind and other renewables, we're

37:09

gonna have to figure out a way to store that

37:11

stuff.

37:13

Yeah. So so just real

37:15

quick for people who are in the United States or who

37:17

are in the United States and don't pay attention to congressional

37:20

packages, The Inflation Reduction Act

37:22

was a bill, was a law

37:25

that was passed in twenty twenty two that

37:27

had it was just this huge, huge,

37:30

spending package. But one of the things

37:32

that it really focused on was the US

37:34

infrastructure, which needs updating big

37:36

time. But it also looked forward

37:38

down the future and was like, how can we invest in

37:42

energy and renewables And basically it said the

37:44

government's even more open for business for

37:47

renewable investment than before and

37:49

as a results, already had huge impacts.

37:52

That was passed in twenty twenty two. In

37:54

twenty twenty three, the investment

37:57

in renewables storage so

37:59

basically giant batteries that can

38:01

store solar and wind power

38:03

for use later, has increased by

38:05

three hundred percent. They predicted

38:07

that in twenty forty there was going

38:09

to be fifty gigawatts

38:12

of storage capacity, and

38:14

now they're up to they're predicting it'll be more

38:16

like two hundred gigawatts of storage capacity

38:19

by twenty forty, just because of the Inflation

38:21

Reduction Act.

38:22

Yeah, but again, you know these batteries

38:24

are you know, not

38:27

environmentally friendly to create batteries

38:30

like that. I don't even think we mentioned really the

38:32

rare earth metals and

38:34

things that are used for these, for the magnets,

38:37

for the turbines, like that stuff isn't

38:39

great either. So like

38:41

like we said there is no perfect system. I think early

38:44

on the sort of pie in the sky stuff

38:46

with renewables was just like use wind

38:49

in u sun, which is great, but

38:52

you can't just talk about the blue sky stuff

38:54

without talking about the downsides.

38:56

Yeah, and we need to listen to the downsides

38:58

too, and then go back, say the drawing board,

39:00

and not be like, Nope, this is the way we're doing it totally.

39:03

We need to say okay, great, like we're all

39:05

we're all on board with moving forward, with us

39:07

like, how can we figure out enough of us

39:09

are on board with moving forward? How can we figure

39:11

out how to do it so that it impacts the

39:14

fewest people possible in the least amount

39:16

possible. And that's I mean, we're smart,

39:18

like humans are fairly smart animals,

39:20

and we can figure that kind of stuff out.

39:22

We just have to go out of our way to take that into

39:25

account. I feel like that's going to happen.

39:28

I think so too, I

39:31

say, with trepidation. Right,

39:34

So we talked about where we promised

39:36

talk about what's going on around the world,

39:38

and we mentioned Denmark of

39:40

course, because just like those

39:42

windmills back in the day, they were leader

39:45

then and they're the leader. Now they

39:47

create fifty four zo point three

39:49

percent of their power

39:51

supply from when in Denmark

39:54

as of a couple of years ago in twenty twenty two. Other

39:57

European countries Spain, Germany, Portugal

40:00

and then the UK they're over twenty

40:02

percent. So they're doing pretty good if

40:05

you're talking and that's percentage wise. If you're talking

40:07

just total wind generation. The US

40:09

is number two with four

40:11

hundred and thirty watt tarawatt hours annually

40:14

right now, but you mentioned China.

40:17

We're at four thirty four in second place. China

40:20

is generating seven hundred and sixty three tarawatt

40:23

hours per year and like running

40:25

away with it.

40:27

Yeah, And actually the world is extraordinarily

40:29

fortunate that China has decided to do that rather

40:31

than just rely on fossil fuels, because the

40:34

pollution that would be even

40:37

worse than it is now if they were used

40:39

if they use fossil instead of like wind

40:41

and solar as they're planning on doing, it would

40:44

just be the impact would

40:46

be nuts essentially.

40:48

Yeah. I mean, I think their goal in China

40:50

is full carbon neutrality

40:52

by twenty sixty and

40:55

wind is a very very big part of

40:57

that.

40:58

Also, we should point out China is

41:00

not doing that because of their magnanimous

41:02

benevolence towards humanity and the

41:04

planet. They're doing it because there's

41:07

they recognize that there's a lot of

41:09

money coming down the pike

41:12

for for whoever is prepared for this

41:14

kind of revolution, and it's

41:16

actually happening right now. That figure

41:18

from how much just the US alone improved

41:21

as far as wind generation goes from the nineties

41:24

is just astounding. Like I knew

41:26

it was going on in the background, I had

41:28

no idea that we were this far along

41:30

already, which I found very heartening.

41:32

Yeah, yeah, same. So we talked

41:34

a lot about the downsides here and there. We haven't

41:37

talked about animals yet. Obviously,

41:40

anytime you're screwing

41:42

up a habitat for animals in

41:45

nature, that's going to have a real bad

41:47

effect. You know, there's no way around it. They're gonna

41:50

I mean, just those spinning blades are gonna

41:52

kill birds and bats and things that fly into

41:54

them. But the wind pressure

41:56

around these farms can affect the habitats.

42:00

The terrestrial animals are affected.

42:02

I think they did a study in Europe

42:04

about their row deer and the European hair

42:07

that are like they're just not here anymore because

42:10

of these wind farms in

42:12

Norway. You know, they're obviously

42:15

got a lot of wind going there, but they're they're

42:17

shutting things down because

42:21

reindeer. It's affecting reindeer, which is, you know, a very

42:23

big deal in Norway and the indigenous

42:25

Sami people who heard the reindeer.

42:28

So they can't mess with the indigenous

42:30

cultures there. So they're shutting some of those down right.

42:33

They're they're they're it's impacting local

42:36

communities, no matter how small the community

42:38

that's they're they're responding to it. That's

42:40

a big that's a big deal. There's

42:43

also, i think you said earlier, a lot of impact

42:46

with ocean based wind because

42:50

these things are huge. They're like giant oil

42:52

dereks, but there's a bunch of them and

42:54

they have to be like mounted to the continental

42:57

shels so they don't blow over. So

42:59

it's a huge, massive project. And

43:01

the sound that it generates can rupture

43:03

whales, ear drums, it

43:05

can completely disturb breeding grounds,

43:07

it can do a lot of stuff. But again

43:09

it's been pointed out like if you do this right

43:12

and you do the right kind of studies. If you look around

43:14

and say who is this going to impact,

43:16

and then how can we mitigate those impacts?

43:19

There's stuff you can do to make

43:21

the impact that much lesser as

43:23

low as possible. Like, if

43:26

you're impacting whales, then

43:28

plan the construction phase of it for a time

43:30

when the whales are off migrating on another part

43:32

of the ocean, so it's not going to blow out their

43:34

ear drums when you pile Drive the pylons

43:36

into the continental shelf, or move

43:39

it over a little bit, keep it out of the whales breeding

43:42

ground, put it somewhere else. Like, there's

43:44

just little things you can do that will

43:47

decrease that impact tremendously.

43:50

Yeah, for sure. One thing

43:52

we haven't talked about that. I

43:54

mean, I never really considered this, which is really short

43:57

sighted of me. But these

43:59

are big, massive machines, and

44:02

when big massive machines reach the

44:04

end of their life, you know, it's not like they'll go

44:06

forever. These are physical materials that wear

44:08

out, including those huge

44:11

turbines and blades. So

44:15

when that stuff, you know, the ones

44:17

that kind of came on early in the nineties, in

44:19

two thousands, some of those are nearing the end of their life,

44:22

and all of a sudden, you're stuck with these blades

44:24

that you know, are just gargantuan

44:27

and they're not made of bamboo

44:30

or banana fiber. You know, they're fiberglass

44:33

and epoxy resin, and

44:35

they're kind of an environmental nightmare,

44:37

and so like, what do you do with those? You can't

44:39

just fill landfills with these giant beasts. No.

44:43

There's a company in Tennessee called Carbon Rivers

44:45

that says that they recycled about a

44:47

thousand of the blades in twenty twenty

44:50

three, so I'm guessing is probably

44:53

significant, but still maybe a drop in the

44:55

bucket. Yeah, But they figured out how to

44:57

extract the carbon fibers

44:59

from the POxy resin, and then

45:01

you can reuse the carbon fibers because they're

45:03

very strong stuff. So

45:06

that's great, that's good to have that online.

45:08

But the better solution, at least

45:10

in the future, is to start manufacturing

45:12

the turbine blades in ways that

45:14

they can be much more easily recycled. So I think

45:16

they're using the same material still, they're

45:18

just using processes that can later

45:22

on down the road be reversed more

45:24

easily, and you can separate the fiberglass

45:26

from the epoxy more

45:28

easily.

45:29

And like, you know, kind of what you've been

45:31

saying about, like why

45:33

don't you change the way you're doing things as we go

45:35

instead of being locked in? That is

45:37

happening with those blades. And there's

45:40

a company in Germany. Oh, actually it's

45:42

Semens, big

45:44

company. Sure. Is that the same company

45:46

Semens Gamesa as regular

45:48

Semens Sure? Okay, I just

45:51

never heard the full name. I guess I didn't know Semens had

45:53

a last name. But

45:55

they're basically saying, well, why don't we make a

45:58

better kind of blade that uses a

46:00

different kind of resin that is much more

46:02

easily separated

46:04

from that fiberglass. So things

46:07

like that, like you're talking about, like make the

46:09

parts more easily recyclable

46:12

or reusable. You

46:14

know, I know they're using them on like

46:16

like playgrounds and stuff, trying to repurpose them. I

46:18

guess it makes it a heck of a slide or

46:21

something like that. But that

46:23

they're you know, there are limits to how much you can

46:26

I mean, it all helps, but how much Because

46:28

there's a lot of blades out there, they're going to be coming offline,

46:30

you know.

46:31

Right, and they're big also by

46:33

the way. I think I was using carbon fiber

46:35

and fiberglass interchangeably, and I'm not quite

46:37

sure that's right. So they're

46:40

fiberglass, right.

46:41

Yeah, I think so.

46:44

So there's a couple of other things that

46:46

that are drawbacks to turbines that

46:48

need to be addressed. Once called

46:51

shadow flicker. When the sun is

46:53

lowish on the horizon

46:56

and it's just kind of beaming through the wind

46:58

turbine. As the turbines bins,

47:00

it makes a flickering shadow, and

47:02

if you live in range of that shadow,

47:05

it can drive you crazy. As a matter of fact, they did a

47:07

study to make sure that it wasn't

47:10

rapid enough to trigger seizures,

47:13

and apparently the max is again

47:15

sixty RPMs, so I

47:18

think it's like one hundred. It takes double that to

47:20

start to trigger photosensitive seizures.

47:24

They're like, it's not going to trigger a seizure, but yes, it's

47:26

extremely annoying when it happens.

47:29

But they're like, it only happens certain times of

47:31

the year for a couple of hours out of

47:33

a day. Can you just get used

47:35

to it? And some people are like no, and then other

47:37

people are like, yeah, it's not They did another

47:40

study of people who lived in

47:42

proximity of wind turbines are like, I don't even

47:44

really notice anymore. And then noise

47:46

too, Like it makes a noise.

47:48

But again, the fewer parts that you have,

47:52

the less noise

47:54

is gonna make. Like if you don't have a gearbox, those

47:56

gears aren't there to make a bunch of noise. If you do

47:58

have a gearbox to soundproof,

48:00

you're what'd you call that that package

48:03

that the airplane has to uh nestle

48:05

a nestle. And then

48:07

also they're making I

48:09

think these giant those giant turbines

48:12

are also going to be quieter. They're like eighteen

48:14

percent quieter or something like that. So, yeah,

48:17

there's a lot of stuff that needs to be addressed,

48:19

but I feel like I

48:21

just think it's going to get addressed. If I can share

48:23

my.

48:24

Opinion, Yeah, it's

48:26

a sunny opinion.

48:27

Are you got anything else?

48:28

I got nothing else.

48:30

All Right, Well, that's it for wind turbines

48:32

for now. We'll have to revisit it in

48:34

your thirty five of stuff you should

48:36

know. Uh And since I said that, it's

48:39

time for listener mane.

48:42

Yeah, I'm gonna call this. Marcie

48:45

is definitely Asian. We heard

48:47

from quite a few Asian listeners for our Peanuts

48:49

episode who were

48:51

very kind, but they were kind of like, guys, you

48:54

seemed a little hesitant to kind of to kind

48:56

of go there, but go there

48:58

because Marc was clearly

49:00

Asian to every kid that was Asian

49:03

and reading Peanuts. And

49:05

this one is from Hugh Nuian.

49:08

So, hey, guys, I'm a

49:10

forty three year old Vietnamese American who

49:13

grew up reading and watching Peanuts my friend's

49:15

family, and I assumed without question that

49:18

Charles Schultz intended Marshy to be Asian

49:20

American by drawing and writing

49:22

her with so many shortcuts to signal

49:24

Asian American identity. First,

49:27

her haircut. Marshy's hair's

49:29

short black bob with bangs. Many

49:31

Asian American girls had this bus free

49:33

homemade haircut exacted upon them

49:35

by their frugal mothers. Number

49:38

two, her glasses. Asians and Americans

49:40

and Asian Americans do have a

49:42

higher rate of myopia and developed countries,

49:45

so I wear is just more common with us. She's

49:48

awkward because she is so busy. I

49:50

quote an article by Kevin Wong which resonates

49:52

with me and so many

49:55

children raised by overly protective immigrant

49:57

parents who carried the trauma of war

50:00

and or forced immigration. Marci

50:02

couldn't come out to play because she had to practice

50:04

her organ she had to study, she had

50:06

to read. This was our experience

50:09

number four. She is mothered by everyone.

50:12

Asian language, food, religion, and culture in general

50:14

were and might still be

50:16

considered foreign and weird in many parts of

50:18

the US. And I just assume Marcy

50:21

was depicted as a strange little girl, because

50:23

that's how the Peanuts Gang and the rest

50:25

of America would perceive an

50:28

unathletic, bookish Asian child. And

50:30

then finally she calls Peppermint

50:32

Patty sir because English is her second language.

50:35

Guys, In many East and Southeast

50:37

Asian languages, children address

50:39

adults and people in positions of power and respect

50:41

with courtesy titles that have

50:44

no gender. So that's

50:46

why Peprimitt Patty was called

50:48

sir.

50:49

Wowey, who is this?

50:51

This is from an I

50:53

got a pronunciation guide. It's spelled

50:55

hi eu pronounced

50:57

hugh and n g u y e n

51:00

and Hugh said, I pronounced that hugh

51:03

ewan. But different people

51:05

even pronounced my last name differently

51:07

within my own country.

51:08

Yeah, I've always seen it pronounces or

51:11

heard it pronounces when.

51:12

Yeah. So that was a great

51:14

email, and we appreciate all our Asian

51:17

and Asian American listeners who wrote in about

51:19

that saying, guys, we

51:21

thought she was Asian, so it's okay to say that.

51:24

That's awesome. Thanks for sharing. If you

51:26

want to get in touch with us, like Hugh

51:28

did and everybody else, you

51:30

can send us an email, send it off to stuff

51:32

Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot

51:34

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51:38

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51:40

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